Which is more crap?

[Bernard Marx]

A simple question.

Chibnall or Davies Redux: Which era is shittier?

[burrunjor]

Chibnall. Let's not forget he was the one that took it the point of no return. Well to be fair that was still arguably Moffat before with Missy. Even then Chibnall still did more damage than RTD. At this stage RTD is just kicking a corpse.

I'll give you though that RTD has been a lot more unpleasant in the media and online than Chibnall who kept a dignified silence for the most part. Also Chibnall's choice of guest stars was Shobna Gulati, Sophie Aldred and the four classic era Doctors, rather than number 1 Amy Winehouse hater Neil Patrick Harris LOL, so in that respect he obviously wins out.

Overall though I don't think we should let the crap we're in now drown out how bad the Chibnall era was. The Timeless Children was at the end of the day, the most thoughtless, selfish, and disrespectful retcon I've ever seen. Only the Late Philip J Fry comes close to completely destroying a series as much, and even then whilst it ironically might be worse, I don't think it came from the same disrespectful place of I WANT to smash up the past and annoy the fandom that Timeless Children did. It to me more came about from the writer just not thinking about the full ramifications of his story.

Also like I said RTD does have at least some talent. For all we joke about him being Mr Heat Magazine, when he puts his mind to it he can write good sci fi like Midnight, Utopia, Waters of Mars etc. Chibnall however truly is an unimaginative plodder whose work is extremely basic, formulaic and unoriginal at best.

It's got to be Chibnall for me.

[Cherry Pepsi Maxil]

RTD 2.0 leaves a really horrible taste in my mouth (actually, I might have to rephrase that...). He had THREE opportunities to give us a good 60th special and he utterly failed on each and every one. The Christmas Special was rubbish too. Even a short Children in Need sketch done damage to one of the show's best villains. Every episode thus far has been the equivalent to a bomb going off. Stuff gets destroyed.

[ClockworkOcean]

The Chibnall era was the point of no return. With the best will in the world, there would've been no coming back from The Timeless Children. However, Davies feels more actively spiteful and malicious. His every decision is carefully calculated to be maximally hurtful to long-term fans of the show. All four episodes and even the five-minute Children in Need minisode have been about as destructive as The Timeless Children. This era quite literally cannot go five minutes without laying waste to something fundamental to Doctor Who's identity. I've never seen something with such open loathing for its source material.

[Bernard Marx]

The Chibnall era was characterised by complacency, technical ineptitude, vacuous characterisation and the most shrill incarnation to that point. However, Davies' inability to leave the series alone and park his ego outweighs Chibnall's incompetence, even if I understand the argument of Chibnall's era being technically worse.

Davies' ego and overarching self-aggrandisement is exuded in every scene, resulting in a vacuous identity-obsessed sanctimony even unseen in Chibnall's era (The Star Beast is a key example). Davies' first era, which was often afflicted by his worst excesses, doesn't compare to the awfulness being churned out today. Whatever merits you could derive from particular episodes of his first era, I can't see any of those merits gestating in Davies' Redux era, because every episode is designed to suit Davies' celebrity-obsessed "camp" sensibilities built on self-congratulation.

If Chibnall was more technically inept, Davies' 2020s tenure is markedly more dislikable. As such, I'm struggling to settle on a final vote...

[Deleted]

I laughed my way through the Chibnall era, thinking it'd be alright again in a few years' time. Now it just feels like the end...

[Ludders II]

I voted Davies Redux.

At the time I couldn't ever have imagined anything worse than the Chibnall era, but perhaps because much of it passed me by in a bit of a haze due having gotten used to it being so shit, perhaps I've become blasé about just how shit it was. Even now I can only remember around a dozen or so of Jodeh's episodes for what they are. The rest are just an indistinct, jumbled haze of crap.
So perhaps because Davies Redux is largely still fresh in my memory, I'm definitely feeling the heat of contempt for it pretty large right now. Although I will say, that at least Jodeh was basically recognisable in so far as being the closest to the Tennant model, (which is not a recommendation or any kind of good thing considering my antipathy to Tennant still burns as bright as it ever has), whereas Gatwah's model is just unrecognisable to me in any shape or form.
It may be unfair to judge so early in the day, but all my intincts are telling me that Davies Redux is, and will be, an even further leap away from anything that has gone before in terms of being recognisably Doctor Who, and that is amplified hugely by the things that Davies himself has said and done since he came back to shit on the program even further. Infact, I would say that so far, he's been even more clumsy and ham-fisted than Chibnall in forcing in political scoring points.

[ClockworkOcean]

While there have been zero episodes of NuWho since July 2017 that could even be described as half-decent, the Chibnall era at least had its share of episodes that were simply tedious and forgettable. Davies 2.0 has thus far failed to produce a single episode that hasn't been in some way devastating to the core identity and history of the show. It's like getting a Timless Children level disaster every single week.

[rushy]

Mar 16, 2024 4:25:46 GMT ClockworkOcean said:

While there have been zero episodes of NuWho since July 2017 that could even be described as half-decent, the Chibnall era at least had its share of episodes that were simply tedious and forgettable. Davies 2.0 has thus far failed to produce a single episode that hasn't been in some way devastating to the core identity and history of the show. It's like getting a Timless Children level disaster every single week.

Wait, what did Wild Blue Yonder do wrong? Aside from that mavity gag, it was perfectly fine.

[ClockworkOcean]

Declared the Doctor gay, explicitly reaffirmed the Timeless Child, and race-swapped Issac Newton. I'll grant you that it's the only one from which a respectable fan edit could probably be salvaged, but I'm not interested in appraising the episode it would have been had it not done those things. It is what it is, and it did what it did.

[rushy]

Mar 16, 2024 5:45:17 GMT ClockworkOcean said:

Declared the Doctor gay, explicitly reaffirmed the Timeless Child, and race-swapped Issac Newton. I'll grant you that it's the only one from which a respectable fan edit could probably be salvaged, but I'm not interested in appraising the episode it would have been had it not done those things. It is what it is, and it did what it did.

It didn't declare the Doctor gay, though. He just said Newton looked attractive. If I say Tennant is hot, does that automatically mean I'd date him?

Timeless Child sucks but I find it hard to hate RTD for actually following continuity. It's not like the episode made a big deal out of it. It was a few throwaway lines.

Newton is the only real fair point.

[RobFilth]

Both of them are shit, but I went with Chinballs because the state of his moronic f*cktard sub juvenile scribblings with crayons make Fatheads first-draft third rate doggerel look like Harold Pinter or Dennis Potter by comparison.

Both of them excel in writing dialogue for completely cretinous moron characters.

[Ludders II]

Mar 15, 2024 15:56:05 GMT Bernard Marx said:

If Chibnall was more technically inept, Davies' 2020s tenure is markedly more dislikable. As such, I'm struggling to settle on a final vote...

Are you still on the fence?

[Bernard Marx]

Mar 16, 2024 9:38:07 GMT Ludders II said:

Mar 15, 2024 15:56:05 GMT Bernard Marx said:

If Chibnall was more technically inept, Davies' 2020s tenure is markedly more dislikable. As such, I'm struggling to settle on a final vote...

Are you still on the fence?

Sod it. I’ll vote for The Second Cumming of Davies.

Chibnall is a more uniformly incompetent writer, but Davies’ second era is an amalgamation of Davies and Chibnall’s worst excesses. Chibnall would get my vote if I were pitting him against Davies’ first era, but I can’t think of a single redeeming quality to be found in the previous four episodes (barring the basic premise of Wild Blue Yonder).

Clockwork’s right- almost every creative decision in this era feels like a spiteful refutation of some facet of the series’ 60 year history. Although The Timeless Children qualifies under this bracket too, a lot of Chibnall’s era beyond this barely registers beyond being dreadful TV. It wasn’t quite as obnoxious either…

[Cherry Pepsi Maxil]

Chibnall's era is over. The horrible reality is that RTD 2.0 hasn't even had a full series yet. Who knows what crap awaits us!