Space Babies / The Devil's Chord thread

[Deleted]

Oh yeah that's terrible. I don't know if it's ever gone that low before

[Deleted]

I can't even see the ratings, where are you guys getting them?

[burrunjor]

May 20, 2024 10:45:37 GMT @theyakemperor said:

I can't even see the ratings, where are you guys getting them?

I can't see the source either, but if it says 7 day consolidated figures, that means how many people viewed it in total, so if it's 4 million in total then that would come to about under 2 million watching it on I Player. 

That's about typical. Back in the day when a Capaldi story or even a Matt Smith story would get about 4.7 million overnights, then the consolidated could bump it up to about 6 or 7 million which was fine. Things became problematic when the overnights went down to three for some Capaldi stories and even with the consolidated they'd be down at 5, and then of course when we got the 2 million, that was seriously crisis point. 

I Player could only ever add about 2 million at the most, so again when the overnights were that low it was always going to be a disaster. 

[Deleted]

I wonder what the excuse will be this time. In fairness, quite a few Reddit users have resigned to the bitter reality that the show just isn't doing big numbers anymore. I got a handful of upvotes for saying that it's not gonna do well in the States and that deprioritising the general UK audience was a mistake. I even got a few upvotes on a comment I made about Ncuti being a bad actor.

[burrunjor]

May 20, 2024 11:03:33 GMT @theyakemperor said:

I wonder what the excuse will be this time. In fairness, quite a few Reddit users have resigned to the bitter reality that the show just isn't doing big numbers anymore. I got a handful of upvotes for saying that it's not gonna do well in the States and that deprioritising the general UK audience was a mistake. I even got a few upvotes on a comment I made about Ncuti being a bad actor.

I think they just have to bite the bullet and accept both its failure and the fans role in its failure. Hilariously in their attempts to avoid it being like the 80s, where the show and its fandom were seen as an exclusive little club, that only a select few were allowed to be part of, and the consensus was the show didn't take itself seriously and was a panto, that it was too obsessed with its own lore and identity, and that it was woefully out of touch with the zeitgeist and behind other sci fi series etc. The Fitzroy Crowd and their toadies like Benjamin Cook and the heads of GB ended up making it ALL of those things to a far greater extent than ever before. 

The only difference is if those things were true about 80s who they were more understandable. Rather than it being based on political opinions, the 80s shows fandom was a club for people who really loved the show and were maybe a bit too elitist in their love for it back then. Rather than it being panto because it had actual panto dames as the villains and musical numbers, in the 80s some of the stories were too ott in terms of their sci fi concepts and the effects were bad. Rather than be obsessed with destroying its foundations and lore to reshape the character into something else (like a feminist icon, or a gay icon) 80s who was perhaps too obsessed with honouring it like bringing back the Brig out of love for the character. Rather than being out of touch because it is written by the same people from 20 years ago and still trying to hopelessly cash in on fads from 20 years like today, 80s who may have seemed out of touch simply again because of its production values. 

Just as the 80s writers were condemned and that side of fandom like Ian Levine cast out into the wilderness, then the same thing has to happen with the current lot. I'm not advocating for bullying of them obviously LOL, but what I mean is that it needs to be recognised that their direction is NOT healthy for the show. 

[cyberhat]

The modern show is way way more Panto than anything JNT did. Sing songs, over the top villains dressing up, bits for the audience to go "awwww" in sympathy, bright colours, D list celebs like Anita Dobson, men dressing up as women. They also bring back the most panto thing that 80's Who ever did, casting Bonnie Langford.

[Ludders II]

May 20, 2024 12:06:00 GMT cyberhat said:

The modern show is way way more Panto than anything JNT did. Sing songs, over the top villains dressing up, bits for the audience to go "awwww" in sympathy, bright colours, D list celebs like Anita Dobson, men dressing up as women. They also bring back the most panto thing that 80's Who ever did, casting Bonnie Langford.

S24 is like Dennis Potter compared to The Devil's Chord.

To be honest, 3 eps in and even the novelty of having new eps to laugh at and take the piss out of is wearing thin pretty fast.

[Deleted]

DoctorWhoTV is taking so long to put them out, the BBC must be messing around with the ratings

[Deleted]

May 20, 2024 15:35:54 GMT Ludders II said:

May 20, 2024 12:06:00 GMT cyberhat said:

The modern show is way way more Panto than anything JNT did. Sing songs, over the top villains dressing up, bits for the audience to go "awwww" in sympathy, bright colours, D list celebs like Anita Dobson, men dressing up as women. They also bring back the most panto thing that 80's Who ever did, casting Bonnie Langford.

S24 is like Dennis Potter compared to The Devil's Chord.

To be honest, 3 eps in and even the novelty of having new eps to laugh at and take the piss out of is wearing thin pretty fast.

The Jodie era was easier for that because it was so incompetent on every level. The horrific acting, the way characters talked like computers or aliens and not like real people at all, the laughable season arcs and "Thasmin", the abysmal direction, editing and post-production. In comparison, something like Boom is just dull as dishwater. I guess the "relationship" between Castro (?) and Varada Sethu's character was pathetically written enough to warrant laughs. 

Say what you want, but Ncuti is a much better Doctor than Jodie. There is genuine charm and charisma there, even if it feels misdirected. Ruby is generally likeable if a bit bland, though that's more down to a scripting problem than it is bad acting. I enjoy Millie Gibson in the same way I enjoyed Pearl Mackie; very nice and sweet in a down-to-earth sort of way, but not really enough to keep me interested in their characters. And honestly the season arc is enough to keep me moderately intrigued, even if it does give me flashbacks to Clara and the Silence and Da Hybrrrrrrrrid. It's just a sick dog at this point, it's run out of steam. Give it a rest, come back to it in 5 or 10 years when the bullshit has passed over, and see what you can do.

Shows like this aren't meant to go on for that long continuously. It's 20 years old now, it was about 20 years old last time, well 26 but at least 5 of those years were on borrowed time. 

[zarius]

BARB figures

www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/most-viewed-programmes/

Space Babies: 10th place
Devil's Chord: 12th place

Beating both? Corrie. We meet again old foe.

[Deleted]

Corrie was never a foe. If people wanted to watch Doctor Who, they'd watch it. Scheduling conflicts, with the exception of something ubiquitous like the world cup, were never the real issue. It's just as much an excuse as the May "dead period" weather is for Ncuti's run. The truth is, it was f*cking pants.

[Deleted]

Also, Space Babies consolidated ratings just scraped 4m? Excuse me while I piss myself laughing. 

[burrunjor]

May 20, 2024 16:37:19 GMT @theyakemperor said:

Corrie was never a foe. If people wanted to watch Doctor Who, they'd watch it. Scheduling conflicts, with the exception of something ubiquitous like the world cup, were never the real issue. It's just as much an excuse as the May "dead period" weather is for Ncuti's run. The truth is, it was f*cking pants.

That's not strictly speaking true. I know that sounds incredibly lame "when it's the version I like that got poor ratings it's because of this, but when it's the one I don't like it, it's just because it was shit."

In all fairness I do think that S24 put a lot of people off. I mean compared to what came after it seems like f*cking gold, but at the time yeah that was as low as DW had ever been and audiences hated it. Still even then you do have to say that Corrie was getting like 30 million back at that period, so to put DW opposite that was the death slot. Any other show opposite it would have got trounced too. Even then it took three years to get them low enough to be finished. 

BTW I actually didn't have an issue with them axing classic who in 1989. It had a good run and ended when it was really good again. If anything I'm relieved as the Fitzroy Crowd were waiting in the wings. As I've said before whilst we like to think that it would have gone to John Carpenter and starred Tim Curry in the 90s, truth of the matter is that it would most certainly have gone to the Fitzroy Crowd and their absolute shit would have then been a legit part of the original. 

My only issues were the weasly way they did it, and the way they'd bully it for the next 15 years. 

[burrunjor]

Remember fiddled viewers took Ncuti's first episode at Christmas to over 7 million, so three million switched off even with this method. Well Disney Who will be cancelled now that much is sure and this hiatus will be long given the state of the BBC who can't make it on their own according to Mr Osgood, but are not likely to find another backer after this catastrophic flop. Question is do you think the DW brand has a future or is this end of the road for DW in general? I don't think we need DW in all honesty. All we need is an expy to fulfill the same role and Doctor Omega is just sitting there, unspoiled. (Don't worry I'm NOT saying my upcoming Doctor Omega series would do that LOL. I mean an actual tv version made by proper writers.) 

Still it would be a damn shame for the legacy of the show to end not even with a whimper, but a bowel movement. Still in all fairness the classic series actors and writers should have done a better job of protecting their legacy and not been so desperate to jump into bed with vandals like Moffat, RTD and Chibnall. I mean they were all given fair warning, and some like Colin spat back the fans faces. 

We'll see if DW can crawl back, but for now it's completely dead. No chance of a 60s/70s/early 80s/00s/early 2010s style mainstream period for a very long time. It will take some getting used to to be honest. I mean I know the show hasn't been popular since 2013, but there was always the chance no matter how remote that it could be. Even with Jodie, it was still a topic of discussion at the heart of the gender war, but now it doesn't even really have that.

It's another wilderness years boys at least, only this time the legacy has been soiled. 

[rushy]

May 20, 2024 17:22:57 GMT burrunjor said:

Question is do you think the DW brand has a future or is this end of the road for DW in general?

I think it absolutely has a future. It's become too big of a brand/potential moneymaker to die out permanently. Like Star Trek after 2005. They gave it another shot after a decade of rest just to see if it would take off again. The same is likely to happen with Doctor Who.

However, any new version of the show will keep the modern era canon. It'll just pick off at a certain point after Gatwa with the 16th Doctor.