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Kaijuko wrote:Bernard Marx wrote:Kaijuko wrote:Bernard Marx wrote:burrunjor wrote:All good points raised here, but I think the biggest reason New Who failed in its own right, and not just in comparison to the original is the mantra "DOCTOR WHO IS ALL ABOUT CHANGE."
Speaking as a 90s fan who came to the show through random video releases, I was able to get into the show as a whole because it always felt like the same programe. I could believe that Tom Baker was William Hartnell, that Jon Pertwee and Slyvester McCoy were the same guy. I was interested in seeing how Jon Pertwee ended up exiled, how McCoy's adventures began as Hartnell etc.
The makers of Classic Who may have made the odd mistake in terms of continuity, but they always stuck to the template of the character of the Doctor, and tried to do something new within that.
New Who however hasn't bothered to maintain any kind of template, because ALL CHANGE IS GOOD, and as a result it feels disjointed.
Tennant fans aren't going to want to watch Smith. Smith is a totally different character. He has a totally different moral code. (Tennant refused to let guns be used, even if he and his friends were going to be eaten alive by monsters, whilst Matt Smith got sexually aroused at River using guns to mow down hundreds of bad guys!)
There are also very few connections between Matt and David's eras in terms of story. The earth invasions are quietly erased, no Davies era supporting characters appear, all of his story arcs are dropped etc. The changeover from producers is literally like a different show. (A lot of RTD era fans HATED Matt's time as a result.)
This never happened in Old Who. The eras all flowed into one another, because the writers and producers all saw it as being the one show. Look at Pertwee to Baker in comparison. Sarah is there for a year with Pertwee to ease the transition, UNIT the staple of Pertwee show up in 5 Baker stories, the Brig's in two, Benton's in three, even Bessie shows up in a few of Tom's early adventures etc.
Its not until Tom's third year when Sarah leaves that it cuts ties with Pertwee, but by then Tom is well established. Troughton to Pertwee meanwhile, not only where UNIT with Troughton, but Pertwee's era follows on from Troughton's last story.
Tennant to Smith however have no ties with each other really, which is why I suspect it shed millions. Imagine if Tom's era had dumped the Brig and UNIT right away, and Sarah wasn't there to ease the transition. Its viewers would have tanked too as it would have been too big a change for the Pertwee fans.
Worse still in the long term people arent going to be as interested either. Do you think if a young boy or girl watches Pisstaker they are going to equate her as being the same character as Matt or David, like I did with Hartnell and McCoy?
Similarly even Matt, slapping Clara on the bum, and going on about how horny he is when looking at guns is not going to register as the same character as Tennant.
Old Who is something that people want to see all of, because it feels like one character's adventures, New Who feels like 3 different series, vaguely linked where nothing matters.
One writer can spend years building up that the 21st century is where everything changes, only for it not mean a thing in a years time. Again in Classic Who, the odd blip aside there was nothing like that. UNIT weren't erased from existence for instance in Tom's first year.
You can't run a show by the all change is good mantra. Sooner or later you'll drive away your own fans if there is nothing concrete for them to latch onto, which New Who ultimately did even before the sex change.
I agree when all points raised here, and think it brilliantly encapsulates why New Who will not translate well to future generations. Its lack of consistency in its world building and characterisation is a fundamental flaw and ensures that long-term interest will not be sustained. Although I still think that its immediate flaw was RTD commissioning it as a series which celebrates mediocrity and vacuity in pop culture, as opposed to celebrating intelligence and imagination, as I outlined in my first post. This is why I become disappointed when one declares New Who to be superior due to featuring more ‘sophisticated’ effects (as Eccleston put it in that moronic BBC Breakfast interview from 2005), even though New Who is so fundamentally ordinary and unchallenging at its core. The original programme would not only embrace the counter culture of its time period as I discuss in my first post, but also frequently include allusions to challenging philosophical and scientific concepts through genuinely sophisticated dialogue.
See the Master’s rumination on existentialism in ‘The Daemons’, or the allusions to Carl Jung in ‘Warriors’ Gate’, or the ponderances on the nature of death in ‘Revelation Of the Daleks’ (which was itself based on ‘The Loved One’, a satirical novel acclaimed within its era of literature). To introduce kids to such ideas, whether it be implicit or not, is indicate of an intelligent and respectable programme at its core. I can’t think of an instance where New Who will ever inspire its audience to read up on philosophy or literature, as it has no such value to speak of at all. The ‘All change is good’ mantra derives from such an anti-intellectual stance derived from a postmodernist way of thinking- if New Who had set itself apart from such a moronic corner of modern culture, and had instead challenged and broadened the minds of those watching, perhaps such an awful mantra wouldn’t have become instilled into the programme in the first place.
Excellent post that I wholeheartedly agree with but in fairness, both Professor Lazarus and the Doctor quote from TS Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' in (the otherwise execrable) 'The Lazarus Experiment' (2007):
Lazarus: I find that nothing's ever exactly like you expect. There's always something to surprise you. Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act
Doctor: Falls the Shadow.
Lazarus: So the mysterious Doctor knows his Eliot. I'm impressed.
That’s very true actually. I guess I didn’t give New Who as much credit as I should- although having watched Apocalypse Now last night and seeing Eliot’s ‘Ths Hollow Men’ being implemented in an intelligent and Jungian manner (via the layering of the ‘shadow’ via Kurtz’z half lit face and hindered posture amidst his reading of the text) as opposed to via a throaway line, it does seem a bit half arsed. Although I’m curious as to what The Lazarus Experiment would have been like if done in the original series, especially given the borderline allegorical way in which Warriors’ Gate alludes to the suppression of imagination whilst also evoking Jean Cocteau’s inherently philosophical filmography (see ‘The Orphic Trilogy’) in its direction and script.
Yes, all true and please don't think I'm attempting to defend NuWho - the Eliot quote is just one gem in the usual deluge of disposable pop culture references. In general, TLE is very poor indeed, even by NuWho's low standards (as is usually the case when Gatiss' name is attached to an episode) and probably owes more to a Quatermass fixation than anything else (though a very dumbed-down, superficial understanding of Nigel Kneale's iconic stories). Oh, and RTD's insistence that the episode should resemble a typical Marvel Comics plotline '"a good old mad scientist, with an experiment gone wrong, and an outrageous supervillain on the loose."
Now, using Quatermass and old Marvel Comics as inspiration (not to mention Eliot: "I am, Lazarus, come from the dead.." - 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock') should have produced a great (or at least memorable) episode - yet 'The Lazarus Experiment' is shallow and silly and utterly unconvincing - a pointless runaround with simply awful special effects.
It’s hilarious that RTD insisted that, given that Barry Letts and Terrence Dicks were desperately trying to ensure that their season 7 stories (post Spearhead) didn’t fall under the cliché of ‘Alien Invasion’ or ‘Mad Scientist’. I guess TLE could make for a case study on how New Who fails on a literary level, as it has all the components to work as such a story, yet as you say, fails in every conceivable way.
