Post by burrunjor on Jul 30, 2024 19:04:24 GMT
I decided to have a rewatch of the first 7 seasons of new who which I've not watched back properly barring maybe the odd episode here and there for close to ten years.
I didn't think I'd last long, but I just finished The End of Time today and overall the RTD 1 era was a lot more enjoyable than I thought.
I love the way Freema moves her hips incidentally.
Okay my overview of the era. Basically I think the first 7 years of new who are fine as a tv show, indeed as a version of DW in its own right. It does NOT work as a sequel to the original, despite the odd reference and character. It's written for all intents and purposes as either a clean reboot, or a loose sequel. It has a new core characterisation of the Doctor and all of his enemies, apart from the Daleks. Most are even given new origins like the Cybermen and the Master, it's also more of a mix of a soap opera and sci fi/ fantasy, like say Buffy or Spider-Man, where as old Who was more HG Wells and Dan Dare. It's also got a bit of a supernatural twist to it with the science being more like magic, as well as other fantasy tropes like curses, prophecies, ancient lovecraftian horrors etc, it's also in some ways a lot darker, others less so. On the one hand there is considerably less visceral horror, the Doctor overall is a lot less ruthless, and he doesn't get his hands dirty when fighting bad guys as much in terms of killing them directly or even just inflicting actual acts of violence on them, (I'm baffled for instance at how little fighting Eccelston and Tennant two of the youngest, tallest and fittest actors in the role did. Okay the Doctor's not exactly Bruce Lee, but still all the classic era Doctors did a little bit of fighting if they needed with some like Pertwee and Tom Baker being full blown action heroes. Eccelston throws one guy into a wall, Tennant has two sword fights and that's it in 4 years. Hartnell's Doctor who was played by an older, less fit actor, who was playing the role as someone older than him did more fighting than that alone. Well not so much fighting as smashing people over the head with sticks and shovels but still LOL.) However the new series is much darker in that the Doctors life is a lot bleaker and characters story arcs tend to end on a more pessimistic note and the universe feels more like a broken shell of its former self than classic who.
Again wanting to reinvent the idea of DW that way is not bad at all, any more than making Dracula more vicious and sexy in Christopher Lee's time was. I'm the very person that says classic who's continuity can't go on forever and it's stupid to want it too, and that the only way DW will truly reach the level of say Sherlock Holmes or Dracula is if we are allowed to do remakes, alternate sequels etc, that give subsequent producers a chance to be more creative, not be bound by classic who's continuity if they don't want to, and for classic who to stand as a work in its own right. That's the only way to save DW.
Sadly the makers of new who didn't think that far ahead and tried to make their version a remake, a sequel and a reboot at different times which ultimately caused it to rip itself apart in the end, as all of these different mediums inevitably pulled at it from different angles. Still for its first 7 years at least it remained largely consistent within itself and like I said if taken as just a loose sequel to the original, then yeah it's fine in its own right. More than fine. Love it or hate it the RTD era at least was very original when it aired.
It created quite an interesting blend of the slightly more cynical, low key British sci fi series like Quatermass, classic who and B7, and the then contemporary angsty, sexy, soapy, melodramatic American genre shows like Buffy/Angel/Xena/Smallville. That ended up being a good mix, as both styles surprisingly complimented each other by limiting the others worst traits. On the one hand the cynicism of the British style stopped it from getting too wangsty like some American genre shows can be, on the other the angstyness could maybe stop it from being too dry like some of the British shows were. This style would later be used by the likes of Primeval, Merlin and Being Human ushering in a new golden age of genre shows in the UK.
Overall I still wouldn't rate the Davies era as highly as the best eras of classic who. The Pertwee era is more consistent, the Tom Baker, Troughton and Sylvester McCoy eras hit greater heights, the Hartnell era is immeasurably more creative and indeed even the subsequent Matt Smith era I find to be more consistent, but I can't deny that RTD 1 was an era that kept my interest right the way through.
I'd say in a way it's probably most like the Pertwee era with a more earthbound setting, a more straight forwardly heroic Doctor in David Tennant, who is also a bit more dashing, greater reliance on recurring enemies, and a big family of people the Doctor works with back on earth. In a way Matt can be seen as the modern day Tom to Tennant's Pertwee being the more alien Doctor who took us back into space again after a period of the Doctor being too cosey and domesticated on earth (and who brought the show to America.)
In terms of rankings I'd say.
Best Doctor: Overall David Tennant. I'll be honest here, I actually don't think there's much difference between Tennant and Eccelston. It's funny for all RTD pushed the all about change mantra, 9 and 10 are by far the most similar Doctors of them all. Really can anyone point to any major differences in characterisation between them? Other than minor quirks like Allonsy vs Fantastic? I suppose you could say that Eccelston hated the Daleks more, but so did Tennant up until Evolution of the Daleks. Eccelston could easily have gone through that development. I mean again I think the Doctor should always have the same core characterisation and they did in classic who (more than New Who eventually would.) Still ironically I think at first RTD just wrote the Doctor as completely the same from 9 to 10. He basically always wanted a brooding, sexy Angel/Xena style Doctor and that wasn't going to change when Eccelston left. Both really are about the same for me with that in mind, as both actors did a good job playing that type of hero, but since Tennant was there longer and had better stories I'll give it to him.
Best Companion: Martha, though I really liked season 1 Rose, but since she became the unlikable character in season 2 and an annoyance later, I'll stick with Martha. Mind you Martha's arc came to a dismal end, being made into a looney who was going to blow up the earth, and then she became Rose rebound again for Mickey. Still that's only at the tail end and throughout I found her to be the bravest, kindest and most down to earth and likable of the companions with the most natural chemistry with the Doctor as it wasn't too overwritten. In all honesty though I liked all the companions. Apart from season 2 Rose, and Donna near the end of season 4 where she became the ultimate creators pet, I found them all likable throughout. Even the one offs like Lady Christina.
Best supporting character: Captain Jack by a country mile. Sorry Jackie LOL, I do LOVE her actress who I've met and was so cute, sweet, charming and lovely I wanted to marry her. Still Jack is a really interesting character who had a great arc from coward to hero, was extremely likable, had great chemistry with all the leads from Mickey to Sarah, to Rose, to Martha (though again I preferred him with Martha.) Jack seemed like the type of guy you wanted as a friend, as he'd be there for you no matter what. Even when the Doctor abandoned him he was still willing to help him. They didn't use Jack enough.
Best of the classic era villains: The Daleks again by a country mile. You can tell RTD LOVED these guys and really went out of his way to make them the ultimate monster in the series. They also were reinvented in a really cool way as Lovecraftian horrors trying to rebuild their forces, yet unlike other villains such as Missy, this reinvention didn't change what they were and represented. Also the redesign is surely one of the most successful. Combining the cooler swish of the Cushing Daleks, but also the dreary conformity of the classic era Daleks, again with a little bit of the lovecraft element tossed in via the symbols and markings on their casings and the cthulu like Dalek mutants.
Best new villain: This is very, very hard for me to choose. I suppose the Angels as they were the most iconic and creative (though I think the Flood was the scariest by far.) Still I'm going to say that the Beast is my favourite thanks to the concept (before the universe is a subject that has always terrified and fascinated me) and the spectacular effects and Gabriel Wolf's voice. I think he could have carried season 5 with David Tennant and Lady Christina in 2009.
Best episodes: In no particular order, Utopia, Midnight, The Next Doctor, Dalek, Tooth and Claw, Army of Ghosts, Doomsday, The Satan two parter, Waters of Mars, Library two parter, Blink, Smith and Jones, The Lazarus Experiment, Fires of Pompei, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, Initial Cyberman two parter, Gridlock, Sontaran two parter, Planet of the Dead, School Reunion, The Unquiet Dead, The Sound of Drums, The Runaway Bride.
Episodes that are a hot mess but I like them anyway: Last of the Time Lords, Stolen Earth/ Journeys End, Parting of the Ways, The End of The World.,
Best writer: Can't believe I'm saying this, RTD but only when he is writing a story about at least one of the following things.
Monster possession (The Beast, the Flood, the Midnight Entity.)
A borderline supernatural creature. (Werewolf, vampire lady in Smith and Jones, his best light episode, the Beast, the ghosts from Canary Wharf, again the Midnight Entity.)
Set in earth's past. (Tooth and Claw, Next Doctor.)
Journeying into the unknown. Again it's hilarious to say this, but RTD for all his not wanting to do a story about the planet zog, was actually brilliant at doing stories about the Doctor and other characters venturing into somewhere, or something that they had no clue about. For all we rip on him as Mr Heat magazine, he actually could be quite a thoughtful guy when it came to things like life, death, why are we here, what awaits us etc. He did more stories that really took the Doctor out of his element than a lot of other writers, where the Doctor didn't have the answers and encountered something that challenged his beliefs like the Midnight Entity or the Beast, even Waters of Mars plays around with that by showing him break the rules and go into new territory. When he has that subject on the brain it brings out the best in him as a writer.
Worst companion: Donna at the end of series 4. She's fine when it's just her and Tennant going on adventures (though I do think Tate is the weakest of the three main female leads at times like in Pompei when her shouting undermines the tension.) Still I hate the way they undermine all the great companions like Martha and Sarah and the Doctor himself just to make her the most important woman in all of creation and all the gushing other characters do about her. At least Rose was meant to be arrogant and annoying in universe.
Worst supporting character: Definitely Donna's mother. To be fair she was meant to be unlikable, so mission accomplished I guess LOL, but yeah Jackie was a sweetheart with the actresses cuteness shinning through (plus let's be honest here who wouldn't react like her if some weird guy in his 40s showed and took your teenage daughter away for a year. Again reminds me of another joke from Married With Children when Kelly asks Al if he's going to be mad at her 40 year old boyfriend and he says with a psychopathic look in his eyes "Oh don't worry Kelly I'll show him the same respect any man would show a 45 year old who dates his teenage daughter" LOL. The Doctors lucky Kelly wasn't his companion as hilarious as that would have been.)
Martha's mother whilst more antagonistic than Jacke meanwhile was less intrusive and more involved in the actual Saxon plot than just wallowing in soap opera dirge, whilst Sylvia seemed to combine the worst of the two mums, of it was soap opera crap when she was around, but she was less likable than wonderful Jackie LOL. I know she got better but eh it was too late for me.
Worst classic era villain: Sadly the Cybermen. They weren't quite as bad as I remembered. In some ways New Who improved on a few things from their late 80s appearances like focusing back on the body horror theme, and two of their stories are among the best, but sadly them being made into the bitch boys of the Daleks in the season 2 finale undermined them too much and made them longstanding jokes with the GP until the Capaldi era. It's also a shame that they're the only badguys not to get a season to themselves like all the others did.
Worst new villain: The Abzorbaloff. Just awful in every way. Nasty, mean spirited jab at Ian Levine, unpleasant to look at, and both revolting and too silly to be taken seriously. To be honest though it's hard to pick out the worst as sadly there were a lot to choose from in the first two years with special shout out also going to the Slitheen and Lady Cassandra.
Worst episodes: In no particular order, Love and Monsters, Partners in Crime, Unicorn and the Wasp, New Earth (which I skipped actually as it's so bad.) The Christmas Invasion, the Slitheen two parter, The Idiot's Lantern.
Episodes that are well done but I can't stand them anyway: The Madame De Pompadour one and the Gas mask two parter. Again both have great plots and some moments of inspired horror and imagination, so they aren't bad, but I just find them both far too mawkish and sappy. I also can't stand Moffat not being able to get over his raging heterosexuality to the point where has to turn the Doctor into more of a jack the lad, making jokes about having a craving for blondes and having a girl of the week love interest. (Unlike a lot of fans I'm consistent as I call this out and RTD turning Ncuti's Doctor into an avatar for him having a guy of the week love interest and dancing around in night clubs.) Never mind classic who which it is obviously completely inappropriate for, even the more sensitive romantic new who Doctor I don't think it's a good fit for either. I also cannot stand the EVERYBODY LIVES ending for the Gas mask one. Again I have 0 problem with a happy ending, it's just oh dear god the way it's so overdone takes it to a level of mawkishness I didn't think was possible. Eccelston annoyed me so much with his gurning and the "I just remembered I can dance again, I can dance" I wanted to be sick into my own scorn.
Worst writer: Incredibly enough RTD, when he is writing stories about the following things.
Set in modern day..
Political in nature.
Invasion earth stories where everything is at stake.
Religious imagery.
Most of the time these bring out his absolute worst traits as a writer. Not always. Again he's done some good modern day stories like Smith and Jones and Doomsday, and like I said even though they are complete messes there are things to enjoy in Journeys End and Last of the Time Lords. Still the modern day setting often makes him indulge too much in the soap opera at the expense of the sci fi, celeb cameos that date it (this is where he is Mr Heat Magazine) and it also often forces him to use a deux machina as he can't destroy modern day earth either. He also really doesn't have anything to say about politics I'm afraid. His takes are often just the current thing and he has nothing new to say about them and they are not well integrated into the plot. The religious imagery meanwhile is just..... weird? I don't know why he is so obsessed with it as he's an atheist, and it's not like he does it to mock religion (which I'm glad at, as even though I'm agnostic I can't stand edge lord atheist crap.) Still again it just comes over as weird like he's trying to turn the Doctor into Jesus?
Even in his better stories like Gridlock, what is that bit where everybody starts praying about? Why does Martha cry?
Overall I'd give the era a 7/10. Not my ideal take on DW by any means, but I can enjoy it for what it was. Honestly it's a shame that RTD came back and has kind of overshadowed his legacy.
Onto Matt Smith tomorrow.
I didn't think I'd last long, but I just finished The End of Time today and overall the RTD 1 era was a lot more enjoyable than I thought.
I love the way Freema moves her hips incidentally.
Okay my overview of the era. Basically I think the first 7 years of new who are fine as a tv show, indeed as a version of DW in its own right. It does NOT work as a sequel to the original, despite the odd reference and character. It's written for all intents and purposes as either a clean reboot, or a loose sequel. It has a new core characterisation of the Doctor and all of his enemies, apart from the Daleks. Most are even given new origins like the Cybermen and the Master, it's also more of a mix of a soap opera and sci fi/ fantasy, like say Buffy or Spider-Man, where as old Who was more HG Wells and Dan Dare. It's also got a bit of a supernatural twist to it with the science being more like magic, as well as other fantasy tropes like curses, prophecies, ancient lovecraftian horrors etc, it's also in some ways a lot darker, others less so. On the one hand there is considerably less visceral horror, the Doctor overall is a lot less ruthless, and he doesn't get his hands dirty when fighting bad guys as much in terms of killing them directly or even just inflicting actual acts of violence on them, (I'm baffled for instance at how little fighting Eccelston and Tennant two of the youngest, tallest and fittest actors in the role did. Okay the Doctor's not exactly Bruce Lee, but still all the classic era Doctors did a little bit of fighting if they needed with some like Pertwee and Tom Baker being full blown action heroes. Eccelston throws one guy into a wall, Tennant has two sword fights and that's it in 4 years. Hartnell's Doctor who was played by an older, less fit actor, who was playing the role as someone older than him did more fighting than that alone. Well not so much fighting as smashing people over the head with sticks and shovels but still LOL.) However the new series is much darker in that the Doctors life is a lot bleaker and characters story arcs tend to end on a more pessimistic note and the universe feels more like a broken shell of its former self than classic who.
Again wanting to reinvent the idea of DW that way is not bad at all, any more than making Dracula more vicious and sexy in Christopher Lee's time was. I'm the very person that says classic who's continuity can't go on forever and it's stupid to want it too, and that the only way DW will truly reach the level of say Sherlock Holmes or Dracula is if we are allowed to do remakes, alternate sequels etc, that give subsequent producers a chance to be more creative, not be bound by classic who's continuity if they don't want to, and for classic who to stand as a work in its own right. That's the only way to save DW.
Sadly the makers of new who didn't think that far ahead and tried to make their version a remake, a sequel and a reboot at different times which ultimately caused it to rip itself apart in the end, as all of these different mediums inevitably pulled at it from different angles. Still for its first 7 years at least it remained largely consistent within itself and like I said if taken as just a loose sequel to the original, then yeah it's fine in its own right. More than fine. Love it or hate it the RTD era at least was very original when it aired.
It created quite an interesting blend of the slightly more cynical, low key British sci fi series like Quatermass, classic who and B7, and the then contemporary angsty, sexy, soapy, melodramatic American genre shows like Buffy/Angel/Xena/Smallville. That ended up being a good mix, as both styles surprisingly complimented each other by limiting the others worst traits. On the one hand the cynicism of the British style stopped it from getting too wangsty like some American genre shows can be, on the other the angstyness could maybe stop it from being too dry like some of the British shows were. This style would later be used by the likes of Primeval, Merlin and Being Human ushering in a new golden age of genre shows in the UK.
Overall I still wouldn't rate the Davies era as highly as the best eras of classic who. The Pertwee era is more consistent, the Tom Baker, Troughton and Sylvester McCoy eras hit greater heights, the Hartnell era is immeasurably more creative and indeed even the subsequent Matt Smith era I find to be more consistent, but I can't deny that RTD 1 was an era that kept my interest right the way through.
I'd say in a way it's probably most like the Pertwee era with a more earthbound setting, a more straight forwardly heroic Doctor in David Tennant, who is also a bit more dashing, greater reliance on recurring enemies, and a big family of people the Doctor works with back on earth. In a way Matt can be seen as the modern day Tom to Tennant's Pertwee being the more alien Doctor who took us back into space again after a period of the Doctor being too cosey and domesticated on earth (and who brought the show to America.)
In terms of rankings I'd say.
Best Doctor: Overall David Tennant. I'll be honest here, I actually don't think there's much difference between Tennant and Eccelston. It's funny for all RTD pushed the all about change mantra, 9 and 10 are by far the most similar Doctors of them all. Really can anyone point to any major differences in characterisation between them? Other than minor quirks like Allonsy vs Fantastic? I suppose you could say that Eccelston hated the Daleks more, but so did Tennant up until Evolution of the Daleks. Eccelston could easily have gone through that development. I mean again I think the Doctor should always have the same core characterisation and they did in classic who (more than New Who eventually would.) Still ironically I think at first RTD just wrote the Doctor as completely the same from 9 to 10. He basically always wanted a brooding, sexy Angel/Xena style Doctor and that wasn't going to change when Eccelston left. Both really are about the same for me with that in mind, as both actors did a good job playing that type of hero, but since Tennant was there longer and had better stories I'll give it to him.
Best Companion: Martha, though I really liked season 1 Rose, but since she became the unlikable character in season 2 and an annoyance later, I'll stick with Martha. Mind you Martha's arc came to a dismal end, being made into a looney who was going to blow up the earth, and then she became Rose rebound again for Mickey. Still that's only at the tail end and throughout I found her to be the bravest, kindest and most down to earth and likable of the companions with the most natural chemistry with the Doctor as it wasn't too overwritten. In all honesty though I liked all the companions. Apart from season 2 Rose, and Donna near the end of season 4 where she became the ultimate creators pet, I found them all likable throughout. Even the one offs like Lady Christina.
Best supporting character: Captain Jack by a country mile. Sorry Jackie LOL, I do LOVE her actress who I've met and was so cute, sweet, charming and lovely I wanted to marry her. Still Jack is a really interesting character who had a great arc from coward to hero, was extremely likable, had great chemistry with all the leads from Mickey to Sarah, to Rose, to Martha (though again I preferred him with Martha.) Jack seemed like the type of guy you wanted as a friend, as he'd be there for you no matter what. Even when the Doctor abandoned him he was still willing to help him. They didn't use Jack enough.
Best of the classic era villains: The Daleks again by a country mile. You can tell RTD LOVED these guys and really went out of his way to make them the ultimate monster in the series. They also were reinvented in a really cool way as Lovecraftian horrors trying to rebuild their forces, yet unlike other villains such as Missy, this reinvention didn't change what they were and represented. Also the redesign is surely one of the most successful. Combining the cooler swish of the Cushing Daleks, but also the dreary conformity of the classic era Daleks, again with a little bit of the lovecraft element tossed in via the symbols and markings on their casings and the cthulu like Dalek mutants.
Best new villain: This is very, very hard for me to choose. I suppose the Angels as they were the most iconic and creative (though I think the Flood was the scariest by far.) Still I'm going to say that the Beast is my favourite thanks to the concept (before the universe is a subject that has always terrified and fascinated me) and the spectacular effects and Gabriel Wolf's voice. I think he could have carried season 5 with David Tennant and Lady Christina in 2009.
Best episodes: In no particular order, Utopia, Midnight, The Next Doctor, Dalek, Tooth and Claw, Army of Ghosts, Doomsday, The Satan two parter, Waters of Mars, Library two parter, Blink, Smith and Jones, The Lazarus Experiment, Fires of Pompei, Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, Initial Cyberman two parter, Gridlock, Sontaran two parter, Planet of the Dead, School Reunion, The Unquiet Dead, The Sound of Drums, The Runaway Bride.
Episodes that are a hot mess but I like them anyway: Last of the Time Lords, Stolen Earth/ Journeys End, Parting of the Ways, The End of The World.,
Best writer: Can't believe I'm saying this, RTD but only when he is writing a story about at least one of the following things.
Monster possession (The Beast, the Flood, the Midnight Entity.)
A borderline supernatural creature. (Werewolf, vampire lady in Smith and Jones, his best light episode, the Beast, the ghosts from Canary Wharf, again the Midnight Entity.)
Set in earth's past. (Tooth and Claw, Next Doctor.)
Journeying into the unknown. Again it's hilarious to say this, but RTD for all his not wanting to do a story about the planet zog, was actually brilliant at doing stories about the Doctor and other characters venturing into somewhere, or something that they had no clue about. For all we rip on him as Mr Heat magazine, he actually could be quite a thoughtful guy when it came to things like life, death, why are we here, what awaits us etc. He did more stories that really took the Doctor out of his element than a lot of other writers, where the Doctor didn't have the answers and encountered something that challenged his beliefs like the Midnight Entity or the Beast, even Waters of Mars plays around with that by showing him break the rules and go into new territory. When he has that subject on the brain it brings out the best in him as a writer.
Worst companion: Donna at the end of series 4. She's fine when it's just her and Tennant going on adventures (though I do think Tate is the weakest of the three main female leads at times like in Pompei when her shouting undermines the tension.) Still I hate the way they undermine all the great companions like Martha and Sarah and the Doctor himself just to make her the most important woman in all of creation and all the gushing other characters do about her. At least Rose was meant to be arrogant and annoying in universe.
Worst supporting character: Definitely Donna's mother. To be fair she was meant to be unlikable, so mission accomplished I guess LOL, but yeah Jackie was a sweetheart with the actresses cuteness shinning through (plus let's be honest here who wouldn't react like her if some weird guy in his 40s showed and took your teenage daughter away for a year. Again reminds me of another joke from Married With Children when Kelly asks Al if he's going to be mad at her 40 year old boyfriend and he says with a psychopathic look in his eyes "Oh don't worry Kelly I'll show him the same respect any man would show a 45 year old who dates his teenage daughter" LOL. The Doctors lucky Kelly wasn't his companion as hilarious as that would have been.)
Martha's mother whilst more antagonistic than Jacke meanwhile was less intrusive and more involved in the actual Saxon plot than just wallowing in soap opera dirge, whilst Sylvia seemed to combine the worst of the two mums, of it was soap opera crap when she was around, but she was less likable than wonderful Jackie LOL. I know she got better but eh it was too late for me.
Worst classic era villain: Sadly the Cybermen. They weren't quite as bad as I remembered. In some ways New Who improved on a few things from their late 80s appearances like focusing back on the body horror theme, and two of their stories are among the best, but sadly them being made into the bitch boys of the Daleks in the season 2 finale undermined them too much and made them longstanding jokes with the GP until the Capaldi era. It's also a shame that they're the only badguys not to get a season to themselves like all the others did.
Worst new villain: The Abzorbaloff. Just awful in every way. Nasty, mean spirited jab at Ian Levine, unpleasant to look at, and both revolting and too silly to be taken seriously. To be honest though it's hard to pick out the worst as sadly there were a lot to choose from in the first two years with special shout out also going to the Slitheen and Lady Cassandra.
Worst episodes: In no particular order, Love and Monsters, Partners in Crime, Unicorn and the Wasp, New Earth (which I skipped actually as it's so bad.) The Christmas Invasion, the Slitheen two parter, The Idiot's Lantern.
Episodes that are well done but I can't stand them anyway: The Madame De Pompadour one and the Gas mask two parter. Again both have great plots and some moments of inspired horror and imagination, so they aren't bad, but I just find them both far too mawkish and sappy. I also can't stand Moffat not being able to get over his raging heterosexuality to the point where has to turn the Doctor into more of a jack the lad, making jokes about having a craving for blondes and having a girl of the week love interest. (Unlike a lot of fans I'm consistent as I call this out and RTD turning Ncuti's Doctor into an avatar for him having a guy of the week love interest and dancing around in night clubs.) Never mind classic who which it is obviously completely inappropriate for, even the more sensitive romantic new who Doctor I don't think it's a good fit for either. I also cannot stand the EVERYBODY LIVES ending for the Gas mask one. Again I have 0 problem with a happy ending, it's just oh dear god the way it's so overdone takes it to a level of mawkishness I didn't think was possible. Eccelston annoyed me so much with his gurning and the "I just remembered I can dance again, I can dance" I wanted to be sick into my own scorn.
Worst writer: Incredibly enough RTD, when he is writing stories about the following things.
Set in modern day..
Political in nature.
Invasion earth stories where everything is at stake.
Religious imagery.
Most of the time these bring out his absolute worst traits as a writer. Not always. Again he's done some good modern day stories like Smith and Jones and Doomsday, and like I said even though they are complete messes there are things to enjoy in Journeys End and Last of the Time Lords. Still the modern day setting often makes him indulge too much in the soap opera at the expense of the sci fi, celeb cameos that date it (this is where he is Mr Heat Magazine) and it also often forces him to use a deux machina as he can't destroy modern day earth either. He also really doesn't have anything to say about politics I'm afraid. His takes are often just the current thing and he has nothing new to say about them and they are not well integrated into the plot. The religious imagery meanwhile is just..... weird? I don't know why he is so obsessed with it as he's an atheist, and it's not like he does it to mock religion (which I'm glad at, as even though I'm agnostic I can't stand edge lord atheist crap.) Still again it just comes over as weird like he's trying to turn the Doctor into Jesus?
Even in his better stories like Gridlock, what is that bit where everybody starts praying about? Why does Martha cry?
Overall I'd give the era a 7/10. Not my ideal take on DW by any means, but I can enjoy it for what it was. Honestly it's a shame that RTD came back and has kind of overshadowed his legacy.
Onto Matt Smith tomorrow.
