How to like both New and Old Who?

[mott1]

This is a question I wasn't sure I'd ever ask, but there's probably more fans of both the 1963-1989 and 2005- versions of the show on here than on the 'old' Hives - how do you like both New and Classic Doctor Who?

Personally I think there are moments in Nu Who that are strong, albeit often different in tone from the old show - Torchwood s3, The Girl Who Waited, Blink, Mummy On The Orient Express, the one with the scarecrows, the one with the 'gangers', Sleep No More, Dalek, Utopia and Into The Dalek - and of course the old show had its clunkers, notably s24. But for the most part I hold the old version of 'Dr Who' in high esteem and can't stand the new one, so why do those of you who are proudly 'bi-Who-ual' like both, and (how) do you see them as being the same show?

Fire away!

[rushy]

I think I just value the historical context and intention over everything. It's still the same show building on the same timeline, because that is the intention of the people who made it. I don't mind that. Nothing can destroy or truly alter the Doctor Who stories that I'm personally attached to. Those old stories still exist and I know they were not made with the works of another writer (who might not have even been born at the time) in mind.

Anyway, as for HOW I like both... I don't know, I just do. I'm sure we all have our own subconscious criteria for what makes an episode of television enjoyable lol.

[iank]

Switch off the brain when you put the latter on?

[burrunjor]

Well I think New Who was excellent for its first seven seasons. Granted I'm not keen on Eccelston's single season, but I forgive its problems more because it was the first season. 

The best of Classic Who DOES still top the best of new who, but I strongly disagree with the idea of the worst of old who is better than the best of New Who. To me that is just cutting your nose off to spite your face. 

Things New Who genuinely did well for its first 7 years, maybe even better than Classic Who in some cases. 

Story arcs. Classic Who was never that good for them in terms of a seasonal story arcs at least. Key To Time is a good season, but the arc is very basic, and the resolution is quite poor. Ironically however I think classic who was better at spreading stories out over years, possibly decades like say the Davros arc. Even then however, New Who was able to do that for its first seven years with the Cult of Skaro for instance being a brilliant arc that spanned many seasons. 

Building a shared universe, as seen with the failure of the DCEU, shared universes are very hard to pull off. New Who however succeeded where others failed, because I think it found the right balance of having them all be connected enough, via the odd big crossover, but still largely separate so you could watch one on its own without the others unlike these modern shared universes. The Doctor never even appeared on Torchwood. It was also smart enough to aim the shows at different audiences too. SJA for the kids, Torchwood was the x rated one and DW fell in the middle. Even in terms of themes, SJA was more old fashioned adventure like the Famous Five, Torchwood was a bit supernatural, horror themed and DW was sci fi. 

Great leads. I know everybody hates David Tennant here LOL and outside he is not so popular these days. Still I'll defend him. His Doctor is an interesting hero in his own right. Flawed, unpredictable, old and young, has quite interesting love/hate relationships with his enemies and I totally get why he was popular among the young boys and girls who watched the show. He was a nerdy hero that was brave because he was nerdy, and sensitive therefore a positive role model to little boys, and a more accessible pin up for little girls too. Kind of like what Buffy was in reverse, and before her Spider-Man. 

I also think it used the Daleks brilliantly, with a kickass new design and not just relying on their fame, but showed us why they were the Doctors archfoes in terms of power, tragedies they had inflicted on him etc. 

I think it also combined the melodrama of the American genre series like Buffy, Xena etc, and the more cynical nature of the British genre shows like Classic Who and B7 together quite well. This style would become popular on both sides of the Atlantic, with Primeval and Merlin and Being Human (all great shows) in particular borrowing it. 

Also the run from season 3=7 is one of the most consistent of any show. Sure there are shitty episodes here and there, but overall I like those seasons for the most part, and the Doctor/companion teams of Martha/10 11/Amy/Rory and 11/Clara are brilliant.  

Also consistently it had great visual effects. Sure it had a better budget than old who, but even then it must be said the new who boys have been very smart in not stretching their budget the way other series do (including DW under JNT in the Davison era.) Also it's one of the few genre shows along with classic who, Lost in Space and Buffy/Angel to actually make a real effort in terms of making its aliens/monsters look inhuman. 

Charmed/Supernatural/Being Human, other than a few exceptions the monsters all look completely human, whilst even the big budgeted Star Trek series often just have aliens with wobbly foreheads. 

Some New Who monsters like the Weeping Angels, the Beast, the Silence, the Whispermen, the Gelth, the Vastha Nerada, the Midnight Entity, the Flood, and the monsters from Flatine, were all either stunning visually or genuinely fasicnating and original concepts and in some cases brilliantly acted.

I know if I'd seen the Vastha Nerada or the Flood as a child I would have shat my pants. 

If nothing else I think the original 7 years will always be remembered  for having a positive impact that way, no matter what shit happens now. It's kind of like the Simpsons in that respect. Think of Eccelston = Smith  as Simpsons seasons 1 = 12 (funnily enough I think the first season of the Simpsons is kind of shit too. It's way too sappy and crude. Maybe you could compare New Who to Family Guy mind you that was fantastic for its first five years and dropped off. It hasn't done as many crap seasons to be fair as either Simpsons and Family Guy, though like them it will soon have done more crap than good.)

Meanwhile in terms of enjoying it and the original, well for me the only way to do that is to split them up into different universes that ran parallel to each other (that way you can fit in, other versions too like Shalka, Peter Cushing, Death Comes to Time, any other alternate sequel as part of the same multiverse.) 

Anyone opposed to that idea I'm sorry is just being pretentious and tribal. It's the best practical solution for the mess the show has become embroiled in. Trying to make one continuity go on for all eternity is a stupid idea anyway. It goes against common sense. Humanity itself won't go on forever ffs never mind DW. When one version of DW and I don't mean an incarnation, I mean the overall story reaches its natural end, end it. Then do a remake, or an alternate sequel that you can link ever so fleetingly via a multiverse. Best of all worlds, no pun intended. The alternative to the multiverse is trying to keep one story going on, and trying to reboot it in universe, which leads to the Timeless Children, and if rumors are to believed the upcoming Giggle on Saturday that will attempt to reboot the series in universe, will prove my point possibly to a greater extent. 

As far as I'm concerned, Classic Who reached its natural end with "Come on Ace we've got work to do." Anything else from here on out is an alternate universe, New Who works as a loose sequel, like the 1970s Dan Dare. 

This was always the case even in its heyday. Tennant whilst a good hero in his own right and a good rebooted version of the Doctor, is not believable as being the same specific character as the original, for the reasons he works. Matt Smith meanwhile DID I feel bridge the gap somewhat, and the end of his era represented a turning point where New Who could have been an official sequel to the original, with the early out of character moments just being dismissed as being because of the Time War, but ultimately with everything that has happened since, yeah New Who is definitely an alternate universe. 

[rushy]

Dec 8, 2023 22:18:55 GMT burrunjor said:

The alternative to the multiverse is trying to keep one story going on, and trying to reboot it in universe

No, it isn't? There was no need to reboot anything in-universe. If a show can manage just fine in terms of continuity for 26 years, there's no reason why it cannot manage 26 more. Doctor Who by design does not require a natural endpoint, and I definitely wouldn't count Survival as an endpoint by anything other than default. 

This whole idea of "McCoy tying up loose ends" is just fan speculation to make his era seem more final than it really was. Any of the old villains could just as easily resurface in a new and interesting way.  

[rushy]

Also, I don't really agree with New Who being great for its first seven seasons. There was a serious drop in quality and consistency after series 5 imho. The whole Silence arc was a lot of muddled nonsense.

[burrunjor]

Dec 8, 2023 22:54:50 GMT rushy said:

Dec 8, 2023 22:18:55 GMT burrunjor said:

The alternative to the multiverse is trying to keep one story going on, and trying to reboot it in universe

No, it isn't? There was no need to reboot anything in-universe. If a show can manage just fine in terms of continuity for 26 years, there's no reason why it cannot manage 26 more. Doctor Who by design does not require a natural endpoint, and I definitely wouldn't count Survival as an endpoint by anything other than default. 

This whole idea of "McCoy tying up loose ends" is just fan speculation to make his era seem more final than it really was. Any of the old villains could just as easily resurface in a new and interesting way.  

Yes it is. There absolutely is no reason to assume DW could go on for another 26 seasons in that continuity. That's ridiculous. The circumstances are completely different now. Plus even if classic who had run to the 13th Doctor, then HE would have had to have been the ending. It would have reached its natural end, and honestly by that point the Daleks, Cybermen, Master would all have reached a natural end too. 

Let's compare it to another similar franchise shall we? Marvel and DC. Now I am ONLY talking about the comics here, and I am only comparing them because like DW, they seemingly have no end in sight. In their case it's because they are cartoon characters who don't age. 

Now Marvel has adopted a floating timeline formula. In actual fact the multiverse is never used for anything but the odd crisis story. All of Marvel's main series are set within the same continuity. Now that worked for them I'd say up until the 90s. 

From that point on, it just became ridiculous. I'll buy that less time passes in comic book world to an extent. Like Spider-Man was a teenager in the early 60s, and is still only in his early 30s at most in the mid 90s. That's a reasonable break from reality. Meanwhile over the course of those 30 years, we've seen the characters develop, stories come to an end, things naturally move on, like the Green Goblin, Spidey's archfoe being killed in a classic story, him making peace with his other arch foe Venom etc. Also Spider-Man himself has grown up and is happily married to Mary Jane, she becomes pregnant, Aunt May dies and makes peace with her nephew.

However past the mid 90s, then Marvel have to start reseting and undoing all of these developments because it does become harder to keep it going with them. For instance the Green Goblin is a classic character and it's understandable young writers would want to write for him. I would if I was doing a Spider-Man thing. However they can't because he is dead, so they have to do some bullshit story to bring him back. At the same time however what was the solution to this problem, as either you are telling subsequent generations they can't write for a great character, or you tell other writers never to develop and end stories? 

Similarly Spidey getting married and having kids ages him, brings in too many complications and Aunt May is similarly too big an icon to leave dead, so they have to do other bullshit retcons, like have it that it was just an actress who died, then they had him sell his marriage to the devil to make him single again. Also on top of all that, the floating timeline is an utter joke now as here we have Spider-Man in the 21st century who is still a 30 year old, despite his stories having explicitly mentioned him being a teenager in the 60s. FFS in the Marvel universe, the fall of the Berlin wall, Trump, 9/11, Vietnam all have happened in about 10 years at the most. Also how the hell do we have guys like the Punisher who were Vietnam vets still in their 30s. 

It's an absolute joke and a mess, and worst of all you know ANYTHING that happens in Marvel doesn't matter. Any character death like Wolverine and Captain America you know will be undone. Any development like a marriage will have to be erased in some stupid, pointless way. Nothing matters. 

Now DC actually had a good alternative to this. They revealed in the 1960s that all of their stories from the 30s to the mid 50s took place in another universe, rather confusingly called earth 2, whilst all of their stories from the mid 50s to the then present took place on earth 1. 

This allowed DC to actually develop and end their original characters. Batman of earth 2, married Catwoman, had a daughter who became a new hero in her own right, and eventually died, and NONE of that was undone. At the same time, the new mainline Batman had a fresh start and was his own thing, with only the very rare crossover with his daughter from the other earth linking them that was fine. 

Now if DC had been smart, they would have kept this formula up and had say every mainline story set on earth 1 until say 1980, then wrapped up all of their earth 1 stories and then jumped to another earth for the next twenty years, and now and again returned to earth 1 for the odd story. 

However the ORIGINAL anti multiverse hipster Marv Wolfman f*cked it up, by doing Crisis on infinite Earth's that destroyed the multiverse, to make everything be set in one continuity, which then ran into the same problems as Marvel, nothing could change, characters weren't aging and it was stretching credibility, which forced them to bring the multiverse back. 

Now with this in mind, what the f*ck is wrong with applying this same formula to DW? Rather than undo its stories like the earth invasions, 13 regenerations, etc. Just have that okay, this version of DW, this production is one universe, and another production is another. 

That doesn't split every Doctor up into a different universe, it just ensures that again each version like say the BBC Wales version and the Bad Wolf version and Shalka are different realities. Far from the usual anti multiverse hipster complaint of "nothing matters" this ensures that it DOES as this production doesn't have to be made with the knowledge of "this goes on forever, so anything that happens now will have to be undone in a few years."

All the multiverse does is, just a cool, rare crossover where you can link them up every now and again. That's it! Apparently rather than that, you'd rather it all just go on as the same, never ending story, which again is a contradiction in terms. On the one hand you want it to all be one story, but when I point out eventually the story comes to a natural end, and you'll have to ignore, it then gets to a "well who cares about the continuity".  That is what is so f*cking frustrating about the anti multiverse hipster stuff. 

Meanwhile this Saturday you will see exactly where the no multiverse law gets you as RTD tries to similarly give it a fresh start in universe. 

Finally as for the 7th Doctor being the end, well that is just because he was the last of the classics. Ideally classic who should have reached the 13th Doctor and ended it there. However it got cut short, and now that is its ending. The original was one work of fiction that largely had an unbroken run, then ended and after it ended there were half a dozen or so different versions of what happened next, many of which were the official sequel at the time. 

There can never be an official sequel. All you can do are alternate sequels, or remakes and reboots. That's it. That way future writers can actually end their stories, not get bogged down in stamping themselves over the lore and history and the original is safe. 

Again only a "I want it to be all the one thing" mentality which I've pointed out why that has to end sooner or later and let's hate multiverses because a few multiverse superhero films were crap seems to be the reason not to do it?

[iank]

A lobotomy?

[rushy]

Dec 9, 2023 0:07:30 GMT burrunjor said:

The circumstances are completely different now. Plus even if classic who had run to the 13th Doctor, then HE would have had to have been the ending. It would have reached its natural end, and honestly by that point the Daleks, Cybermen, Master would all have reached a natural end too.

Why? The Daleks, the Cybermen and the Master are timeless. There was never a consistent timeline for them in the classic series. And even if there had been, there's no reason why they should suddenly be wiped out.

I mean, if the Daleks can come back from "Evil", the Cybermen from "Tenth Planet" and the Master from "Planet of Fire", there's nothing stopping them. Those were pretty definitive endings, and yet none of them were permanent. There will always be an excuse to bring back popular characters. And if nobody got bored of them by season 26, they won't be by season 52 either. Not as long as the writers invent new and interesting scenarios for them. Which we know they can. Big Finish continues to do so.

Even without that, we can always have new villains. The show managed fine without the Daleks in seasons 13-16, without the Cybermen in seasons 7-11 and without the Master for absolute ages.

As we saw in "Time of the Doctor", there is no necessity for 13 to be the last incarnation. There was nothing too lore-stretching about a new regeneration cycle, an idea that goes all the way back to "Five Doctors".

The mechanics of the classic series permit it to run in perpetuity.

[medicusitic]

Dec 8, 2023 20:28:35 GMT mott1 said:

This is a question I wasn't sure I'd ever ask, but there's probably more fans of both the 1963-1989 and 2005- versions of the show on here than on the 'old' Hives - how do you like both New and Classic Doctor Who?

 The "old" hive was based Iank is still holding that line. I'd like to think I am as well. As to how you can like Nu and Real Doctor Who is to be a COONSUMER like Ian Levine and have a soygasm at an objectively bad episode (Power of the Doctor) because there was nostalgia bait in it. So if you can deal with over an hour of incoherent plot, that has the flow of a tik tok video, so you can get under 2 minutes of previous doctors talking about robes then you can be both a NuWho and Classic fan. Lots of classic fans will watch the Day of the Doctor one of the worst episodes in existence and clap like seals because we had under a minute of classic who clips/ audio being used. NuWho is a show for dumb people not to say Classic Who was this intellectual masterpiece, but it was written (its plot and dialogue) was vastly more intelligent than anything NuWho has done. NuWho is basically slop so if you turn of your mind eat some processed slop you can soyjack about to the show to people on reddit.

[rushy]

the biggest mistake New Who did was start tinkering with the continuity. Going back to undo the Time War, bringing the Time Lords back, killing them off again... this lack of consistency is the number one reason that puts people off the show.

Just remove "Day of the Doctor", "Hell Bent" and "Timeless Children", and the show would be fine. The Doctor can just move on from the War.

[Deleted]

Dec 9, 2023 1:04:21 GMT medicusitic said:

Dec 8, 2023 20:28:35 GMT mott1 said:

This is a question I wasn't sure I'd ever ask, but there's probably more fans of both the 1963-1989 and 2005- versions of the show on here than on the 'old' Hives - how do you like both New and Classic Doctor Who?

 The "old" hive was based Iank is still holding that line. I'd like to think I am as well. As to how you can like Nu and Real Doctor Who is to be a COONSUMER like Ian Levine and have a soygasm at an objectively bad episode (Power of the Doctor) because there was nostalgia bait in it. So if you can deal with over an hour of incoherent plot, that has the flow of a tik tok video, so you can get under 2 minutes of previous doctors talking about robes then you can be both a NuWho and Classic fan. Lots of classic fans will watch the Day of the Doctor one of the worst episodes in existence and clap like seals because we had under a minute of classic who clips/ audio being used. NuWho is a show for dumb people not to say Classic Who was this intellectual masterpiece, but it was written (its plot and dialogue) was vastly more intelligent than anything NuWho has done. NuWho is basically slop so if you turn of your mind eat some processed slop you can soyjack about to the show to people on reddit.

Thank you so much for this, I feel liberated. Day and Power of the Doctor are both horrendous episodes

[Deleted]

Dec 9, 2023 1:07:26 GMT rushy said:

the biggest mistake New Who did was start tinkering with the continuity. Going back to undo the Time War, bringing the Time Lords back, killing them off again... this lack of consistency is the number one reason that puts people off the show.

Just remove "Day of the Doctor", "Hell Bent" and "Timeless Children", and the show would be fine. The Doctor can just move on from the War.

I hate modern society's obsession with "trauma". The Doctor having a tantrum last week in Wild Blue Yonder was honestly exhausting. You can have deep and inquisitive moments with the Doctor (Pyramids of Mars for example) without having him malding over a past conflict. Could you imagine Tom Baker or Sylvester McCoy screaming and crying like that? It's just silly

[iank]

The Time War was a shit idea to start with.

[zarius]

Dec 9, 2023 2:00:45 GMT iank said:

The Time War was a shit idea to start with.

To this day I cringe at the idea I thought the series was going to seriously consider the recent BBC Novels Time War when it first got mentioned.