New Who is not more popular than classic who

[Deleted]

Ian is absolutely right, Destiny is one of the best directed stories. The steadicam footage (which was relatively new at the time) really adds a lot to it. The general camerawork in the story brilliant too. The serial has loads of atmosphere. Those early scenes where the Doctor and Romana are investigating the planet are quite unsettling I find. Yeah, there's the odd mistake here and there but that's common in Doctor Who.

[Deleted]

And I prefer Tom and Lalla in Season 17, too. The latter is clearly wearing a buttplug (she's so happy and giggly) and the former is just a mad bastard which is my favourite version of the Fourth Doctor.

[iank]

It is one thing for someone to not like a story for various reasons (having no sense of humour, for instance) but when you say stuff that's just clearly, demonstrably untrue... it kinda makes you look like an idiot.
And I do find the idea that Traken looks in any way better than Destiny comical. The staginess of Traken is through the roof, as is the case with a number of early 80s stories (compare the comedy studio jungle of Kinda to the amazing one in Creature from the Pit, for instance. In fact most of the Davison era looks tacky and cheap compared to most of the late 70s stories). But fans of a certain breed would rather make shit up than just admit that their preference is not qualitative but a purely subjective one.

[rushy]

Oct 15, 2023 21:42:29 GMT iank said:

It is one thing for someone to not like a story for various reasons (having no sense of humour, for instance) but when you say stuff that's just clearly, demonstrably untrue... it kinda makes you look like an idiot.
And I do find the idea that Traken looks in any way better than Destiny comical. The staginess of Traken is through the roof, as is the case with a number of early 80s stories (compare the comedy studio jungle of Kinda to the amazing one in Creature from the Pit, for instance. In fact most of the Davison era looks tacky and cheap compared to most of the late 70s stories). But fans of a certain breed would rather make shit up than just admit that their preference is not qualitative but a purely subjective one.

I thought it went without saying, but there are different kinds of humour. I'm much more attached to the cynical Holmes/Nation style that's more rooted in character and situation, than Adams' happy-go-lucky flippancy. 

Traken is obviously staged. Its script is entirely theatrical. The director gets it. It's a patient, lovingly crafted, intelligent piece of work. Very beautifully done. Destiny is trying to be sort of like The Chase I suppose, but it just falls flat for me. It looks cheap. The Daleks aren't given any love and attention. Steadicam doesn't make up for a lack of common sense. No shadows, no atmosphere, no sense of tension whatsoever. At least The Chase had amusing gags. I can't remember a line of dialogue from Destiny. 

I think Kinda's script and avant-garde style is fantastic, but yes, the jungle sets of Creature are much better. It's the one thing that story has going for it, along with the laughs you get from seeing Tom suck a dick.

The Davison/Colin era tackiness was pretty bad, and I am not a huge fan of those eras. 

Acting pissy because you don't have the flexibility to even consider alternate points of view makes you look like an idiot. I don't know why you're so convinced that what you see is objective truth. What I believe and see is not objective truth to me. It's what I believe and see. Your love of season 17 is as valid as mine for 18. People naturally gravitate to and appreciate different things for different reasons.

[burrunjor]

Oct 15, 2023 20:42:14 GMT iank said:

Looking at Tom's list, aren't you just so glad JNT came along to "save the show" from Williams by... er... halving his audience figures? lol

Haha yeah if we are talking about the biggest drops that is an unbelievable drop off not just for DW, but for a tv show in general. It may be unprecedented in fact for a show to lose over half its audience in one year. 

Only thing in JNT's defense is that the last Williams season was hugely inflated because of the ITV strike. JNT meanwhile had the opposite problem, with his first season having stiff competition. Overall I'd say that the drop off had it not been for the strike would probably be from 8 million (the average for a Williams season) to 5 million which is still a steep decline, but not quite the unprecedented more than half of your audience. 

Meanwhile as for last Williams vs JNT's first season? Well ironically I think they are the reverse in terms of which parts are good and which are shit, just about. 

The first two stories of the Williams era are brilliant. Destiny is lots of fun, though it's definitely flawed with shoddy production values, i do appreciate that it continues the trend from both the 60s and the Pertwee era, the former in trying to give the Daleks a robotic adversary (like the Mechanoids) the latter in showing the Daleks as an actual intergalactic threat who have conquered races from all over the galaxy. 

Overall I like how the Daleks are portrayed. People say they are silly, but other than the hat sequence, they are really menacing. The interrogation of Romana, the camp scene and when they slaughter their servants. (One scene though that Adams and Williams cut that should have been left in is that the last person the Daleks were going to select to slaughter before Tom says STOP would have been a little girl. They thought, even though the Doctor would have saved her that it was still too scary. It was included in the novelisation at least.) 

I admit I think people can't get over the hat scene and I've been like that too. It's like the dying emo Dalek in Death, an otherwise great story that actually uses the Daleks well, but that's all anyone ever talks about. 

That said I think Davros is short changed in the story, but at least it does move things on and sets up the next adventure well. 

City of Death is one of the best stories ever made meanwhile and deserving of the hype. 

Sadly however the last three stories of that season are either forgettable or crap. I used to like Creature from the Pit, but on a rewatch it didn't hold up. It was just too silly seeing the Doctor give an alien a blow job. I can't believe when people are talking about how gay Classic Who used to be, they try and dredge up non existent UST between Delgado and Pertwee and don't mention the time Tom sucked an alien off? 

Shada as Rushy said in another thread is hard to judge because it was never completed and what we see now isn't how it would have been. It's in a grey area.

Meanwhile JNT's first season is the reverse. The first two stories are f*cking shit The Leisure Hive is honestly one of the most boring pieces of television ever made. I'm not surprised the shows viewers absolutely tanked that year with that opening. Contrary to what Rushy said if I'd been alive then and it had opened with that I'd have tuned out. 

However the E-Space Trilogy is DW at its best and State of Decay is one of the best stories ever written for the show and very ahead of its time. It does things Buffy, Blade and Supernatural would later do decades later. The Keeper of Traken is an excellent Master story, whilst Logopolis is a story I keep going back on. It has some of the best ideas the show ever did, but it also slow and silly in lots of places. Ironically I think it feels more first draftish than any from the previous year. Things like the Masters plan for instance. It makes sense that he'd try and capitalise on the destruction, but the way he does is soooo stupid it feels like more thought should have been put into it. Similarly the science of flushing the TARDIS out and the Doctor being willing to risk going to Logopolis with the Master, and the Watcher, all feel like good ideas in their infancy. 

So yeah basically first two of Williams last good, last three silly and bad, first two of Turners first season, so boring they are almost coma inducing, next four great fun, and in both cases last one is in a grey area. 

On the one hand Destiny is better than Full Circle and Warriors Gate, whilst City of Death is possibly better than any in JNT's season. However JNT's first season has more good stories so yeah they probably average out for me? I may be alone in this but I think Davison's first season trounces them both in terms of quality. Other than Time Flight which is utter crap, I like everything in Davison's first season and think it had a great variety of stories, with the best being classics like Castrovalva and Earthshock. 

[rushy]

tbf, when I talk about season 18, I am talking about E-Space onwards. Leisure Hive is Bidmead crapping out a Williams era script (in the sense that he clearly disliked working on it), and I don't know what Meglos was trying to be. The only good thing about them is the production value, Jacqueline Hill and the "arrest the scarf then!" line.

[burrunjor]

Oct 15, 2023 22:06:18 GMT rushy said:

tbf, when I talk about season 18, I am talking about E-Space onwards. Leisure Hive is Bidmead crapping out a Williams era script (in the sense that he clearly disliked working on it), and I don't know what Meglos was trying to be. The only good thing about them is the production value, Jacqueline Hill and the "arrest the scarf then!" line.

Yes the E-Space stuff is very underrated by fandom. I'm a sucker for multiverse stuff and I was before it became trendy. Also the vampires are an amazing addition to the shows mythology too and set a trend for DW to genuinely dip its toe into the paranormal, something that hadn't been done at that point since the 60s and even then only fleetingly, but it would become very prominent in the 80s with the Mara and finally the McCoy era that is a science fantasy show. 

To be fair though Bidmead wasn't the perfect script editor either. Had State of Decay been made the way he wanted it would have been awful. He wanted to cut all the supernatural, gothic horror elements out and it was only Terrance Dicks who was openly hostile to his changes that stopped it from happening. You do have to say it's ironic that Williams let Dicks do a gothic horror story with no problems in Horror of Fang Rock more than Bidemead did with State of Decay. 

Also if he is to be believed Bidemead DID want a female Doctor. He claimed he wanted to cast an old girlfriend, Helen Mirren as the fifth Doctor, and JNT stopped him. Granted the first time he mentioned this was in the middle of Jodie's run so to me it seems like he was just trying to say "I was the one who got there first." He probably doesn't try and push that now given how shit it all turned out LOL. 

[Deleted]

I don't mind Season 18. It is a bit dry, but State of Decay is a real gem. Doesn't get talked about enough in fandom.

[rushy]

Bidmead was very stolid, and remains so. However, the way he constructed season 18 has to be admired. The way the E-Space storyline and the entropy theme come back into the fore in Logopolis is very ahead of its time. In that sense, it's the most modern of all Doctor Who seasons.

[burrunjor]

Oct 15, 2023 22:13:08 GMT @kengrubshaw said:

I don't mind Season 18. It is a bit dry, but State of Decay is a real gem. Doesn't get talked about enough in fandom.

It should get talked about not just in DW fandom, but by fans of vampire fiction too. 

It's the perfect transitional point between the old hammer horror style and the Buffy/Being Human/Blade/Supernatural style of vampire fiction, whilst also taking the vampire genre into new places, alternate universes, aliens, spaceships. It's Terrance Dicks best story by far. 

[burrunjor]

Oct 15, 2023 22:14:22 GMT rushy said:

Bidmead was very stolid, and remains so. However, the way he constructed season 18 has to be admired. The way the E-Space storyline and the entropy theme come back into the fore in Logopolis is very ahead of its time. In that sense, it's the most modern of all Doctor Who seasons.

Good point, it does play out like a story arc. Quite ironic given what a flop it was that it would become the template not just for DW, but for modern genre shows. 

[rushy]

Series B got there first XD

I might be completely mistaken, but I read somewhere that Blake's 7 was the first TV show to end with a season finale cliffhanger.

According to the wiki, "the sitcom Soap was the first US primetime television programme to utilise the end-of-season cliffhanger, at the end of its first season in 1978."

Same year. B7 might have been there first

[burrunjor]

Oct 15, 2023 22:19:36 GMT rushy said:

Series B got there first XD

I might be completely mistaken, but I read somewhere that Blake's 7 was the first TV show to end with a season finale cliffhanger.

According to the wiki, "the sitcom Soap was the first US primetime television programme to utilise the end-of-season cliffhanger, at the end of its first season in 1978."

Same year. B7 might have been there first

Probably. There certainly wasn't anything like that in Star Trek or DW. B7 does always get the credit for that. 

[cyberhat]

Nerdrotic's love of Rusty's time on the show and his anti PC crusade makes no logical sense whatsoever.

[burrunjor]

Oct 16, 2023 2:47:32 GMT cyberhat said:

Nerdrotic's love of Rusty's time on the show and his anti PC crusade makes no logical sense whatsoever.

It makes perfect sense to me. It's tribalism, pure and simple. RTD is seen as the big man for them, so he can do no wrong, consistency be damned. Look at the way Nerdrotic treats Brie Larson and other actresses who are woke, like that Snow White woman. It's EXACTLY the same way as the SJWs treated Gina Carano. Taking every little thing she says and doing videos about it calling for her to be fired, relishing in any perceived failures she has, smearing her as the worst thing possible. (In Carano's case she is a Nazi, in Larson's case she is a Communist! As if any of these celebs have political opinions that complex or deep.)

Similarly look at the way he and Critical Drinker complain about the portrayal of men in films and tv? It's exactly the same as Anita Sarkeesian. In both cases they did have some genuine complaints. There are obviously problematic trends in how women have been portrayed in fiction, either as damsels or being oversexualised (and if I'm saying they are oversexualised how bad can it be LOL.) Similarly there are problems with how many male role models like Luke Skywalker and the Doctor are treated in modern culture, but Sarkeesian and Drinker types both exaggerate it, like Anita claiming video games are going to make boys rape women when they get older, and Drinker claiming there are no strong roles for men in modern fiction and that it's part of a communist take over! 

The only difference is that the phony, faux liberalism that the SJWs push is adopted by the elite to create a faux image of being lefty (and  Nerdrotic and sadly these days other young people who are fed up with woke crap buy into it being lefty too, hence why they now buy into shit like Hillary Clinton is a communist and communism killed 150 million.) Naturally the elites will listen to Sarkeesian and dump Gina Carano if the SJWs make a stink, and crowbar awkward, shallow woke messages in like in that ghastly Supergirl series. However if the culture war changes, which given the backlash to trans people could be happening, we're already seeing elites trying to rebrand themselves as anti woke. Then Nerdrotic and his baying mob could very well end up ruining some people's careers and having a negative impact on the industry too. Personally if I was a big shot director I'd do a film with Brie Larson and Gina Carano just to force all of these culture warriors in the fandom at least to grow the f*ck up. Hell I'd have them play lesbian lovers (not just for erotic value LOL, but to see how these tribal, only think in absolutes wankers would square it?) 

In all fairness however, I DO think that the first RTD run wasn't as bad as either Chibnall or even later Moffat era for the woke crap. RTD wrote some bad caricatures of gay people, but he did still put story first. Other than the awful Slitheen two parter, I can't really think of politics taking priority over story in Davies time? He also at the very least had the decency not to rewrite classic who's past. The proof of that was that the show was still salvagable after RTD left. Matt Smith was able to take us back to a more classic Doctor, Moff was able to bring the Time Lords back. 

Really for me the turning point in the DW being taken over by woke/PC bullshit is 2014. It's actually really sad to think how different it could have been. That year Moffat was faced with a cross roads. On the one hand he could have done a more proper update of classic who. He had the perfect type of actor for the Doctor in Peter Capaldi. Old, strange looking yet handsome, known for playing villainous, mad bad and dangerous to know, comedy characters before, who loved the original and wanted it to be a mysterious, into the unknown, otherworld spooky series. (This type of casting had been made possible again thanks to Matt Smith who had been a nice way to bridge the gap between the young superhero Doctor like Tennant and the old classic types.) You had a real love for DW in general among the public, not just the revival thanks to things like An Adventure in Space and Time, and Gallifrey was back too, so the whole last of the Time Lords baggage was gone. I genuinely do think Moffat for all his faults was wanting to get us to that point of a proper updated version of classic who. 

However on the other side you had the young woke fans, who were furious that the 12th Doctor wasn't a black woman, were angry that the RTD era traditions of soap opera, focusing more on companions home life, than in sci fi were being abandoned etc. Since the self loathing mentality of Steven Moffat will always be drawn to the younger side of fanbase in order to look keeeewwwwwlllllll, he instantly went for what they wanted, and abandoned all he had built up in Matt's time, hence Missy, hence the overt pc posturing, and hence sidelining his new retro classic Doctor in penance for not casting a woman. 

You can maybe blame RTD somewhat by bringing this fanbase to the show with his soap opera shit and building a cult of personality around himself like Joss Whedon, but at the end of the day Moff should have had the courage of his convictions and just stuck with his plan. He's the supreme traitor!