If New Who had never happened, would you be satisfied?

I’ve been thinking to myself recently just how fundamentally damaging New Who has been to the brand, not just recently, but since its inception. From dumbing it down for the masses and stripping away the original series’ intellectual aspirations in favour of moronic soap storylines (not to mention Tennant’s puzzling popularity- an incarnation characterised as a gurning lothario with an inherently hypocritical moral code, and as pointed out by UncleDeadly, one who moreso resembles Jimmy Mallet than The Doctor much of the time- which seems to indicate a lack of understanding of the central character from the general public), to undermining the very legacy of the original character in 2017 and transforming the series into a laughing stock via Chibnall, it’s fucked the integrity of the brand completely.

Honestly, it’s difficult to discuss and analyse the genuine integrity of the series outside forums such as this, indicative that New Who has also damaged the critical capabilities of fandom and the general audience concerning Doctor Who as a whole (evidenced by places such as Gormless Bastards, which I have yet to visit, though can assume as such based on word of mouth by those with sanity and critical faculties, as well as quotations from GB distributed on the Hive- as well as the sheer amount of fan related pages on social media outlets such as Facebook which seem reluctant to criticise New Who at all). It’s not only dumbed Doctor Who down, but also fandom as a whole.

Naturally, I’d feel obliged to declare that the series shouldn’t have ever happened, though I just happened to get into the Classic Series via New Who, which makes my relationship with it rather troubling. Is there anyone else here young enough to feel the same way? There’s the fact that New Who has stimulated interest in Classic Who from younger fans such as myself, which I can partially thank it for, and due to the media’s general dismissal of the Classic series, I might not have discovered it otherwise. But outside of that, was any of it remotely worth it?

I don't know. Obviously I was around loooooooooooooooooooong before New Poo, but I do wonder if we'd be getting things like the animations if it weren't for New Who, which makes it a bit of a quandary. And I do like most of the Smith era.
I just wish the show had never been cancelled and had carried on properly. That way we would probably have ended up getting most of the good things about New Poo but probably not the shittier aspects.

I wouldn't mind one bit if New Who had never happened. I don't think that Classic Who needed New Who to be remembered. IMO that's a lie spread by the fitzroy cucks.

I myself was born after the original series ended in 1991. I was introduced to True Who on video. It was a part of my childhood as much as anybody else's.

(I actually think it was a better time to be a Who fan in the 90s in some ways. We could watch all of it when we wanted and there was still plenty of toys and merchandise.)

Contrary to popular belief there was a lot of support and love for Classic Who during the 90s and 00s.

Anything Who related on during that time was a big ratings success. Dimensions in Time got 13 million, the 96 movie got over 9 million. Also True Who was regularly a big seller on video and DVD too. Furthermore DW merchandise was still available in shops. I myself was given various toys of the show when I was a young un.

In 2002 the show was also voted the series the British public would most like to see return, above other old perennial faves. So with all of this in mind, if anyone had brought the show back then it would have been big at first.

So no I don't think we needed New Who. The show had endured, that much is true, and sooner or later someone else would have brought it back and lets be honest they ultimately couldn't have made a worse fist of it, could they?

burrunjor wrote:I wouldn't mind one bit if New Who had never happened. I don't think that Classic Who needed New Who to be remembered. IMO that's a lie spread by the fitzroy cucks.

I myself was born after the original series ended in 1991. I was introduced to True Who on video. It was a part of my childhood as much as anybody else's.

(I actually think it was a better time to be a Who fan in the 90s in some ways. We could watch all of it when we wanted and there was still plenty of toys and merchandise.)

Contrary to popular belief there was a lot of support and love for Classic Who during the 90s and 00s.

Anything Who related on during that time was a big ratings success. Dimensions in Time got 13 million, the 96 movie got over 9 million. Also True Who was regularly a big seller on video and DVD too. Furthermore DW merchandise was still available in shops. I myself was given various toys of the show when I was a young un.

In 2002 the show was also voted the series the British public would most like to see return, above other old perennial faves. So with all of this in mind, if anyone had brought the show back then it would have been big at first.

So no I don't think we needed New Who. The show had endured, that much is true, and sooner or later someone else would have brought it back and lets be honest they ultimately couldn't have made a worse fist of it, could they?

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t endorse the Fitzroy notion that Classic Who would have been forgotten were it not for New Who. I think the point I was (poorly) trying to make was that Classic Who had been often ridiculed by the media and by its own stars and producers, as you have alluded to on other threads, which could discourage younger and impressionable viewers from checking it out. It’s bollocks, yes, but it’s sadly taken a toll on many fans, hence why fuckwits on other forums and social media groups related to Doctor Who don’t bother with the original series (I once encountered someone who loved Love and Monsters and Fear Her, yet couldn’t be arsed with the original series due to the lack of Murray Gold’s music and due to its age).

Your point about Classic Who selling lots is interesting- it certainly outsells New Who now (the Amazon Blu Ray sales say it all), and likely amongst my generation as well. I think the tide may be turning to TruWho’s favour today, although the popularity of the RTD era (less so Moffat’s) still ensures that NuWho’s influence will linger in its shadow.  

If you’re wondering why I’m as frustrated with RTD’s era as I am even after Moffat and Chibnall, it’s because the general public still buy into the notion that the RTD era marked a second golden age after Tom Baker’s era, which I frankly don’t understand in the slightest and just seems to represent the popularism of the era distorting the general view of the series. This also plays a major part in why I wish New Who never happened, as those dissatisfied with the current era will likely instead gravitate towards the approach of RTD’s era as opposed to that of TruWho, suggestive that TruWho won’t be able to truly emerge again anytime soon with such a popularist cloud lingering over its legacy.

In some ways yes, in other ways no.

I don't think Doctor Who ended in the most neat state in 1989 or 1996, although they at least tried to.

I just feel that from Genesis of the Daleks onwards, the show was gesturing at some deep imponderables and massive, apocalyptic implications that I think demanded a follow-up resolution one day.

I'm not even sure by Remembrance we finally got that question resolved of whether the Time Lords' feared future of universal extinction under the Daleks might still possibly happen.

Maybe I'd be satisfied if Season 17 was where it had stopped (with Destiny of the Daleks being something of a wrap-up of loose threads), but as the show continued into the 1980's I think it became less and less neat and more full of messy, unresolved loose threads, and more a show to feel exhausted with than satisfied by.

Plus I'd still say the fundamental damage to the show's brand and its intelligence really started on the likes of Time-Flight and Warriors of the Deep, long before New Who.

A strong part of me would've just wanted the 2005 season just to be the last word on the classic show's unfinished business and unanswered questions.

That said, I do remember online fandom being a much more pleasant place before the revivial, so had the show stayed off-air, I think I would've had much more peace of mind about the show and my relationship with it.

Having said all that, I think the nagging issue with New Who that left us unsatisfied was that we could put the weaker moments of Classic Who down to its limitations of the kind of show it was, and accept it was the way it was.

With the return of New Who, I think that acceptance was spoiled, because now we had a revived big-budget show actually showing us what was now newly capable with the show. And yet it did little else but squander and literally fart away that potential, which really left us pining for what might've been, then and now, in a way the show didn't back int the Wilderness years.

I got into the classic series through new who so I guess it holds some value to me because of that. The new series should have stopped with the 50th anniversary special in my opinion. NuWho completely capitulated during the Capaldi era. Pretty much everything from Deep Breath to Resolution is  worthless barring a few decent Capaldi episodes and I'd rather not entire period of the show not exist.

burrunjor wrote:

So no I don't think we needed New Who. The show had endured, that much is true, and sooner or later someone else would have brought it back and lets be honest they ultimately couldn't have made a worse fist of it, could they?

Absolutely, 100% agree.  I sometimes think it's very selfish of me to wish that NuWho had never happened -many youngsters became fans of Classic Who via exposure to the post-2005 series.  Well, I was much happier calling myself a Doctor Who fan during the Wilderness Years. It was a kind of Golden Age for me- not a wilderness at all (I hate that term, it conjures up the idea of something barren, empty, dead - when in fact, it felt like the opposite).  DWM was great fun back then and so very different from what it is now - cheeky, irreverent and clever - the 8th Dr strip, for instance, is one of my all-time favourite bits of Who-related graphic fiction. I devoured all the BBC PDA/EDA's, the Big Finish releases, not to mention the numerous Videos, (BBC, Reeltime, BBV) Recons, 'Scream of The Shalka, and then the DVDs. There were signings, conventions and Who-related events and above all, endless speculation and anticipation about the show's return.

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” Oscar Wilde

I think in terms of what I wanted, I think the ideal eventuality would've been if at some point the classic series had made the transition from a TV show to a movie series (much like the original Star Trek). It'd be one way maybe the show could've fulfilled its potential to do big epic Dalek wars and the like, and also escape many of its worst pitfalls and embarrassments as a TV show.

Whether they'd managed to do the Scratchman or Adams' Krikkitmen movie in 1980, or if they'd even done State of Decay, The Five Doctors or Remembrance of the Daleks as big cinema movies.

I think that is probably most fans' dream, and a large part of why many fans went so mad in love with the New Series is that it seemed in many ways the closest thing to getting that Who cinema experience.

I'm sure most of us wanted a revival, so much as we underestimated the BBC's incompetence toward handling it.

I'm probably more satisfied that it happened so that we can cap it off in 1989 - 'Well, they tried to revive it but it was a bit shit wasn't it? Let's forget it happened. I guess we didn't need one.' All resolved.

The sad thing is, I never predicted that the BBC would be so incompetent at reviving it. For some naive reason I always had it in mind that if the 90's BBC could still pull off the atmospheric set-pieces in 30 Years in the Tardis, then they could probably still do a great new Doctor Who season like that.

I even remember thinking RTD sounded on paper like he had the right credentials as a fan who 'got' it.

I had no idea how much 15 years of BBC disdain and shame about the show had left both RTD and Moffat with such crippling complexes about the old show that they felt they had to turn it into a tarted-up, brainless, desperate, pop-culture worshipping parasite of a show.

Thinking on the 30 Years documentary again, you might be right, Tibs that a revival was an itch we had to scratch before we realized the thing was never going to live up to our hopes, and that we were better off where the show was left (on a complete enough note) in 1989.

By the early 2000s I had accepted it was never coming back and was happy with it as it was.
Now I really wish it had stayed that way.

I still like parts of the Smith era and think of Series 5 as being the closest to a proper sequel to the original series, but most of the other stuff hasn't aged well....

Yeah, I've gone back to the Smith era and I ended up enjoying a lot more than I used to. Series 5 is still great, but I actually really enjoyed Series 6, even if I think that the main story arc starts to go downhill, but I could still see the imagination and potential in it. If it wasn't for Series 7, I would have easily put Smith as the true 9th Doctor.