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Post by rushy on Sept 20, 2023 14:10:43 GMT
Judging from the writing, Moff is the worst of them all
Chibnall's writing is less talented, but at least it's sincere. He's a fine workman writer a la Bob Baker/Dave Martin who should never have been promoted to the top seat.
Moffat's bilge is excruciatingly smug and self-glorifying
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Post by burrunjor on Sept 20, 2023 14:36:21 GMT
Judging from the writing, Moff is the worst of them all Chibnall's writing is less talented, but at least it's sincere. He's a fine workman writer a la Bob Baker/Dave Martin who should never have been promoted to the top seat. Moffat's bilge is excruciatingly smug and self-glorifying In no universe is Chibnall comparable to Bob Baker and Dave Martin. Bob Baker and Dave Martin had too much imagination. Their first drafts are always insane. The first draft of Claws of Axos had a spaceship in the shape of a giant skull landing in Hyde Park, piloted by space vampires, luring us in with promises of making our food grow larger, which they use to create giant vegetables including a fifty foot carrot that eats people. Their first draft for the Three Doctors had the Federation of Evil, the Time Lords dark counterparts invading their planet, with the Time Lords sending the three Doctors into the Federation's territory to stop them. There the Doctors would battle the Goddess Kali and her vampire horde, zombies, centaurs, griffins, Cyclops, before facing the head of the Federation, Death herself. Needless to say all of these stories were rejected for being too impractical, but the basic ideas remained and with guidance from Terrance Dicks ended up being great stories. (IE Three Doctors still revolves around Gallifrey being attacked and the Doctors being sent into a dark mysterious place where the natural laws don't apply, Claws of Axos still revolves around space parasites who try and trick us by making our food grow larger etc.) Honestly though a part of me would have wanted to see Bob Baker and Dave Martin run DW. Not saying their era would have been as successful or as consistent in quality as Dicks/Letts, Hinchcliff/Holmes, or Williams, but it would have been by far the most insane! Chibnall meanwhile it seems to me suffers from having no imagination. It's like it was surgically removed from him at birth LOL. His monsters from the Pting to the rags, to the butch tooth fairy are all fairly unoriginal, bland and nondescript and he struggles greatly in thinking up or even understanding sci fi concepts, like the death particle or having the Doctor hang three inches away from the sun and not even get a tan. Also many of his stories and ideas are derivative with nothing new added. IE his Silurian adventure that follows the Pertwee story beat for beat, but in an inferior way, Power of Three that's a bland retread of the Davies era, his finale that brings the Cybermen and the Master together again, his Torchwood sex gas episode that is just a retread of the Angel sex monster epiode, destroying Gallifrey again. (Seriously killing the Time Lords again after the entire 50th revolved around saving it is one of the most creatively bankrupt ideas in the shows history. I don't mind writers taking other ideas. No one and NOTHING is original, but you have to add something new to it, like Pyramids of Mars did with old Mummy films. Chibnall however never does.) Honestly he's the last writer who should ever do anything sci fi. He's maybe good at doing gritty, down to earth crime dramas, which don't require imagination I don't know. (Not saying it's not just as valid a skill writing them, but you know what I mean, that you don't have to think up crazy worlds or concepts.) However no he is not a sci fi writer. I think a warning sign for this should have been that interview he did before Jodie was announced where he ran through all of his favourite tv shows. Not one of them was a sci fi show. It was all dreary murder mysteries or Ooop North dramas. Not a Buffy, or a Star Trek, or a Xena, or a Blake's 7, or a Firefly, or a Twilight Zone, or a Red Dwarf among them. Also in terms of smugness I'd argue Chibnall exceeds Moffat, as at least Moff until he was bullied and had pressure from above didn't ever think he would lecture the little people about being more progressive like him. I'd also argue that casting a woman is the most egocentric thing any producer has ever done. That said though I do agree that some of Moff's issues tend to show up in his work more often, IE his terror of being seen as a nerdy and not a jack the lad shagging about, and later his other terror at being seen as a sexist. |
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Post by Monster X on Sept 20, 2023 17:24:51 GMT
So according to Blum, using offensive terms is OK as long as you are a successful TV producer. Off topic slightly but wasn't there an incident some years ago when Moffat supposedly ridiculed an Autistic fan at a convention? That seems to have been forgotten. I don't think it caught on because it was only rumoured. IE no videos or anything, so we can't be sure. From what I remember the fan said that he didn't like the Matt Smith era and Moffat blew up at him. He also apparently kept swearing at the event too, even though there were little children there. I do seem to recall the head of GB had to step in or something. It's a bit of a blur. To be honest I'm not sure Moff is that bad of a guy. Who knows I mean he is part of an obnoxious clique, but I haven't heard anything particularly bad about him, apart from that and he comes over well on social media (for instance he didn't block me when I brought up NPH. EVERY other writer on the show did, RTD, Paul Cornell, even Robert Shearman, who I've never interacted with but it would seem got wind of me LOL Moff took his lumps which earned him some respect from me.) Moff DID also have a falling out with a producer that ended with them shouting at each other all over the set in Matt's last season, but again who knows who was at fault there. For instance I don't blame Eric Saward for falling out with JNT. I blame him for being such a dick about it afterwards LOL. To be fair neither Moff or the producer did anything like that. Of course having said all this, I do think Moff's contributions to DW were by and large, barring the odd episode like Heaven Sent SHIT post Matt Smith, and had it not been for Chibnall he would be the man who killed it. Still overall RTD who ironically (so far) did the least damage of the three has definitely come over as the most unpleasant and extremely hypocritical and cliquey, but then again I don't know the man.
I'm glad he didn't block you, but what about that infamous interview from the '90s, where he slagged off Classic Who and its fans ? or the one time he was boasting about how many women he'd had from his production office ( when he described himself as some kind of shagging machine?- I forget the exact wording...) Or when he said he wished certain members of fandom were fans of something else, other than Dr Who? I agree, he's not a terrible egotist like Davies or as talentless as Chibnall, but he still seems rather smug and self important. |
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Post by burrunjor on Sept 20, 2023 17:40:54 GMT
I don't think it caught on because it was only rumoured. IE no videos or anything, so we can't be sure. From what I remember the fan said that he didn't like the Matt Smith era and Moffat blew up at him. He also apparently kept swearing at the event too, even though there were little children there. I do seem to recall the head of GB had to step in or something. It's a bit of a blur. To be honest I'm not sure Moff is that bad of a guy. Who knows I mean he is part of an obnoxious clique, but I haven't heard anything particularly bad about him, apart from that and he comes over well on social media (for instance he didn't block me when I brought up NPH. EVERY other writer on the show did, RTD, Paul Cornell, even Robert Shearman, who I've never interacted with but it would seem got wind of me LOL Moff took his lumps which earned him some respect from me.) Moff DID also have a falling out with a producer that ended with them shouting at each other all over the set in Matt's last season, but again who knows who was at fault there. For instance I don't blame Eric Saward for falling out with JNT. I blame him for being such a dick about it afterwards LOL. To be fair neither Moff or the producer did anything like that. Of course having said all this, I do think Moff's contributions to DW were by and large, barring the odd episode like Heaven Sent SHIT post Matt Smith, and had it not been for Chibnall he would be the man who killed it. Still overall RTD who ironically (so far) did the least damage of the three has definitely come over as the most unpleasant and extremely hypocritical and cliquey, but then again I don't know the man.
I'm glad he didn't block you, but what about that infamous interview from the '90s, where he slagged off Classic Who and its fans ? or the one time he was boasting about how many women he'd had from his production office ( when he described himself as some kind of shagging machine?- I forget the exact wording...) Or when he said he wished certain members of fandom were fans of something else, other than Dr Who? I agree, he's not a terrible egotist like Davies or as talentless as Chibnall, but he still seems rather smug and self important. Oh yes I forgot about the mechanical digger comment that was awful. To be fair whilst I think the feminists were a bit harsh in some of the things they said about him, he did kind of bring it on himself with that remark and his comment about how women can't live without men, but men can live without women. (Which completely explains Missy and River Song, and Irene Adler and Tasha Lem. All it would seem sexist caricatures of his ex wife.) Meanwhile whilst I felt his comments about classic who and its writers were obnoxious and hilarious given how much he'd f*ck up DW, I can't say that is proof he is a bad guy, as hey he was just slagging off a tv show and being a bit of an ass about it, which I've done many a times. (Ironically about his shows LOL most of all.) To be clear though I'm not going out to bat for Moffat. He could be a total wanker for all I know and he at least knows some wankers LOL, but still of the three generally speaking I think he is the most inoffensive. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2023 17:48:59 GMT
RTD strikes me as a nastier person than Moffat, though Ian Levine did remark in an interview once that Moffat does not take criticism of his work well so I can see a bit of truth in the above story. RTD is just a massive tosser. Didn't he remark once as well that the only people that didn't like a particular episode were "straight men that never got in touch with their emotions?" I like certain episodes of his era, but by no means is he a great Doctor Who writer.
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Post by burrunjor on Sept 20, 2023 18:29:05 GMT
RTD strikes me as a nastier person than Moffat, though Ian Levine did remark in an interview once that Moffat does not take criticism of his work well so I can see a bit of truth in the above story. RTD is just a massive tosser. Didn't he remark once as well that the only people that didn't like a particular episode were "straight men that never got in touch with their emotions?" I like certain episodes of his era, but by no means is he a great Doctor Who writer. I think that sums him up well. He can write good sci fi stories unlike Chibbers, such as, Midnight, Turn Left, Utopia, Waters of Mars, Next Doctor, but his biggest problem, much like Saward is that he just does not like the character of the Doctor. It's funny actually that RTD and Saward are the most comparable out of all the writers on classic and new who. Both of their fanbases would recoil in horror at that suggestion. Saward is the ultimate niche, hipster favourite as his era got the harshest treatment from panel show c*nts and the Beeb and it's fans therefore deemed it too edgy and adult for the idiotic masses, whilst RTD is viewed as the sell out by them who dumbed it down. Meanwhile RTD worshippers look on Saward as the ultimate misguided, ill suited writer who didn't think about the masses and drove everyone away, unlike Rusty who was in tune with them perfectly and made DW popular again. Still for me RTD is just Saward given more control and support. Both of them LOVED the iconography of the show like Cybermen in Saward's case, and the Daleks in Russell's and both at least treated them with respect and made them a big deal again, however neither can stand the lead character for the same reasons. They both think he is uncool, out of date, boring, stiff, lacking in any depth and would much rather write the type of character that was popular at that time. In Saward's case the tough guy mercenary who is as evil as the villains he fights that were in things like 2000AD, in Davies' the Angel/Xena angsty immortal who has done bad things and who seeks redemption, but could go evil again and falls in love with a little blonde girl he picks up. (Not that there is anything wrong those types of characters, but obviously none of them are exactly in line with the stuffy, professorial Doctor.) Both basically either turned the Doctor awkwardly into one of this type of character, or sidelined him for one of these types of characters. A huge criticism of both Saward and RTD is that they undermined the Doctor and it's true. In the bulk of the 6th Doctor stories the character doesn't become part of the action until half way through, whilst RTD did Doctor lite episodes, and both writers often didn't even have him save the day. Only difference is that, Saward didn't have the support that RTD did. On the contrary he had the BBC working against him, so he wasn't as popular with the masses. Meanwhile at the same time, Saward being just a script editor wasn't able to damage the lore of the show as much so his reputation ironically is probably better among classic era fans. (PS had Saward been given that power he most likely would have done. Look at his story Birth of a Renegade. It's a precursor to the Timeless Children.) Basically both Saward and RTD could have been fine as regular writers, like Bob Baker and Dave Martin, pitching stories and ideas for stories, with the script editor who knows and loves the Doctor tidying their scripts up to include the Doctor properly. Neither should have been put in charge of it however. It's funny I used to think that RTD was like Barry Letts ten years ago. To be fair it wasn't completely baseless. Both did enjoy giving the Doctor big families of people to work with on earth, both wrote Doctors who were more straight forward heroes, both tapped into the zeitgeist, from American genre shows in RTD's case, to spy thrillers in Letts etc. However I think that comparison is now only really surface level. Go under that and they couldn't be more different. Meanwhile as for the straight men who have never got in touch with their feelings, the source from that is the RTD is his own stupid words video. It certainly could be true, but be warned that video has been accused of taking things Russell said out of context, like the "Hitler would make a good Doctor" remark that was clearly a joke on Russell's part but is presented as serious in the video. |
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Post by Monster X on Sept 20, 2023 18:40:42 GMT
"To be honest I'm not sure Moff is that bad of a guy. Who knows I mean he is part of an obnoxious clique, but I haven't heard anything particularly bad about him, apart from that and he comes over well on social media (for instance he didn't block me when I brought up NPH. EVERY other writer on the show did, RTD, Paul Cornell, even Robert Shearman, who I've never interacted with but it would seem got wind of me LOL Moff took his lumps which earned him some respect from me.)"
I'm glad he didn't block you, but what about that infamous interview from the '90s, where he slagged off Classic Who and its fans ? or the one time he was boasting about how many women he'd had from his production office ( when he described himself as some kind of shagging machine?- I forget the exact wording...) Or when he said he wished certain members of fandom were fans of something else, other than Dr Who? I agree, he's not a terrible egotist like Davies or as talentless as Chibnall, but he still seems rather smug and self important. Oh yes I forgot about the mechanical digger comment that was awful. To be fair whilst I think the feminists were a bit harsh in some of the things they said about him, he did kind of bring it on himself with that remark and his comment about how women can't live without men, but men can live without women. (Which completely explains Missy and River Song, and Irene Adler and Tasha Lem. All it would seem sexist caricatures of his ex wife.) Meanwhile whilst I felt his comments about classic who and its writers were obnoxious and hilarious given how much he'd f*ck up DW, I can't say that is proof he is a bad guy, as hey he was just slagging off a tv show and being a bit of an ass about it, which I've done many a times. (Ironically about his shows LOL most of all.) To be clear though I'm not going out to bat for Moffat. He could be a total wanker for all I know and he at least knows some wankers LOL, but still of the three generally speaking I think he is the most inoffensive. - Yep, I suppose I agree with that. And the Moffat Doctors - Smith and Capaldi - while far from perfect, are still more Doctor-ish than Eccelston, Tennant or Whittaker. |
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Post by burrunjor on Sept 20, 2023 19:12:21 GMT
Oh yes I forgot about the mechanical digger comment that was awful. To be fair whilst I think the feminists were a bit harsh in some of the things they said about him, he did kind of bring it on himself with that remark and his comment about how women can't live without men, but men can live without women. (Which completely explains Missy and River Song, and Irene Adler and Tasha Lem. All it would seem sexist caricatures of his ex wife.) Meanwhile whilst I felt his comments about classic who and its writers were obnoxious and hilarious given how much he'd f*ck up DW, I can't say that is proof he is a bad guy, as hey he was just slagging off a tv show and being a bit of an ass about it, which I've done many a times. (Ironically about his shows LOL most of all.) To be clear though I'm not going out to bat for Moffat. He could be a total wanker for all I know and he at least knows some wankers LOL, but still of the three generally speaking I think he is the most inoffensive. - Yep, I suppose I agree with that. And the Moffat Doctors - Smith and Capaldi - while far from perfect, are still more Doctor-ish than Eccelston, Tennant or Whittaker. That's the sad thing about Moffat. I actually think he IS a good Doctor Who writer. He does seem to actually like the character and understands him, hence why he cast two actors who were perfect for it, with a decent base characterisation for both, IE Matt the overgrown child, Capaldi the stern professor. However I think a combination of being given the showrunner role where every whim of his can be put into it and never questioned, being forced to write every story, even ones for characters he despises and has 0 interest in like the Master, and also his own insecurities about being seen as a dork, and a loser who likes sci fi stuff, and later his desperation to be seen as a 21st century modern man led to him to do ridiculous crap like River Song, Missy, Doctor lusting after Clara etc. When you look at the classic writers give any of them the power Moff had via the showrunner role, and force them to write half the season, never have anyone question their decisions, and they'd have been crap too. Barry Letts would have stood on his soap box, Terrance Dicks would have given us ridiculous, sexist caricatures of female characters, hell as I've pointed out, there were hints of a romance between Sarah and the Doctor in seasons 11 and 12, which most certainly came from the producer not Pertwee (as poor April Walker can attest.) Who knows if Barry had absolute say if that wouldn't have devolved into a full blown Rose Tyler situation. Had Moffat been placed in a situation like the classic era meanwhile, where he didn't have to write half the stories, IE someone else could do the Master story for him, he had a producer with equal say who could curb some of his ideas, then I genuinely think he could have been one of the absolute best. Still not on the level of Bob Holmes or Terry Nation, but a brilliant DW writer. Again RTD is like Saward, even as script editor he would sideline the Doctor, whilst Chibnall as we have been over just cannot write sci fi or fantasy at all. To be honest I dread to think what a classic who Chibnall story would be like. Imagine one of his unimaginative scripts stretched for six episodes. |
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Post by cyberhat on Sept 20, 2023 19:22:54 GMT
If you completely disconnect his era from the classic series and just view it as a regular mid 00s show does it still hold up? The problem with mid 00's Doctor Who is the appallingly weak plotting you never even got in the most mediocre TV shows of that period. An endless gigantic build up to a operatic, life-changing, things will never be the same again, bigger than life, bigger than God crescendo of an episode. Then when that crescendo comes along, turns out, they haven't thought of one. Just a load of rushed, half thought out explanations that make no sense at the last minute. The even bigger problem with mid 00's Doctor Who is that this has never changed, not even to the present day. In fact I think it might continue forever. |
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Post by Monster X on Sept 20, 2023 21:28:34 GMT
"of the three generally speaking I think he is the most inoffensive" - Yep, I suppose I agree with that. And the Moffat Doctors - Smith and Capaldi - while far from perfect, are still more Doctor-ish than Eccelston, Tennant or Whittaker. That's the sad thing about Moffat. I actually think he IS a good Doctor Who writer. He does seem to actually like the character and understands him, hence why he cast two actors who were perfect for it, with a decent base characterisation for both, IE Matt the overgrown child, Capaldi the stern professor. However I think a combination of being given the showrunner role where every whim of his can be put into it and never questioned, being forced to write every story, even ones for characters he despises and has 0 interest in like the Master, and also his own insecurities about being seen as a dork, and a loser who likes sci fi stuff, and later his desperation to be seen as a 21st century modern man led to him to do ridiculous crap like River Song, Missy, Doctor lusting after Clara etc. When you look at the classic writers give any of them the power Moff had via the showrunner role, and force them to write half the season, never have anyone question their decisions, and they'd have been crap too. Barry Letts would have stood on his soap box, Terrance Dicks would have given us ridiculous, sexist caricatures of female characters, hell as I've pointed out, there were hints of a romance between Sarah and the Doctor in seasons 11 and 12, which most certainly came from the producer not Pertwee (as poor April Walker can attest.) Who knows if Barry had absolute say if that wouldn't have devolved into a full blown Rose Tyler situation. Had Moffat been placed in a situation like the classic era meanwhile, where he didn't have to write half the stories, IE someone else could do the Master story for him, he had a producer with equal say who could curb some of his ideas, then I genuinely think he could have been one of the absolute best. Still not on the level of Bob Holmes or Terry Nation, but a brilliant DW writer. Again RTD is like Saward, even as script editor he would sideline the Doctor, whilst Chibnall as we have been over just cannot write sci fi or fantasy at all. To be honest I dread to think what a classic who Chibnall story would be like. Imagine one of his unimaginative scripts stretched for six episodes.
Don't forget that long before NuWho, Moffat wrote 'The Curse Of Fatal Death'. Although just a comedy spoof for a Charity Telethon, Curse still feels like proper Doctor Who - certainly more than anything since 2005. |
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Post by rushy on Sept 20, 2023 22:27:54 GMT
Don't forget that long before NuWho, Moffat wrote 'The Curse Of Fatal Death'. Although just a comedy spoof for a Charity Telethon, Curse still feels like proper Doctor Who - certainly more than anything since 2005. That's because it stars Rowan Atkinson and Jonathan Pryce, not because Moff wrote it. |
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Post by rushy on Sept 20, 2023 22:31:58 GMT
And Capaldi, bless him, is grossly overrated in the part. His attempts at hammy grandiose acting a la Tom and Matt are just cringeworthy. Until Whittaker, he gave the weakest overall performance as the Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor is an inconsistent mess of a character who swings wildly from cold and pragmatic to emotional braggart. Matt BARELY sold Moffat's writing by being genuinely quirky. Capaldi could not, because he isn't. He's a dramatic actor in the vein of Charles Dance and deserved a far darker and more serious take on the role to bring out his strengths.
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Post by burrunjor on Sept 20, 2023 22:50:02 GMT
And Capaldi, bless him, is grossly overrated in the part. His attempts at hammy grandiose acting a la Tom and Matt are just cringeworthy. Until Whittaker, he gave the weakest overall performance as the Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor is an inconsistent mess of a character who swings wildly from cold and pragmatic to emotional braggart. Matt BARELY sold Moffat's writing by being genuinely quirky. Capaldi could not, because he isn't. He's a dramatic actor in the vein of Charles Dance and deserved a far darker and more serious take on the role to bring out his strengths. I wouldn't say he gave the weakest performance but I definitely agree he needed a darker take on the character. The Capaldi era should have been like the modern day Hinchcliff era. IE moves away from a previously cosy era, with a lighter, or more straight forward heroic Doctor and back into the unknown of space. All the attempts to carry on the quirkiness of Matt like the tank bit, and having him say shuttity up, were dreadful. I don't know how overrated he is however? His era absolutely tanked. I mean he is popular on reddit, but that's it. Had it not been for the Whittaker era, his era would be its low point in terms of popularity (which given the Beeb were actively trying to sabotage it in the later half of the 80s is really saying something. The Capaldi era, with adverts in the cinema and being on on Saturday, and counting how many viewers watched it again on I Player, and being on after Strictly which got 11 million viewers, STILL got less than McCoy on at the same time as Corrie and an England qualifier for the world cup!) |
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Post by iank on Sept 20, 2023 22:58:12 GMT
lol Not a massive fan of Capaldi but he certainly was nowhere near as cringe as Tennant, and at least vaguely resembled the character unlike Eccles, Tennant or Pisstaker.
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Post by rushy on Sept 20, 2023 23:16:57 GMT
Tennant was at least a fully formed character, whether you like that character or not. Capaldi was whatever meme Moff was trying to push that week
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