Does NuWho’s awfulness damage your enjoyment of TruWho?

Here’s a question that I thought would be interesting for a thread: Has the state of NuWho, and its desecrations of the original series, blighted your enjoyment of TruWho? For me, it varies: At times, NuWho’s sheer shiteness often makes me appreciate TruWho all the more, but at other times (presumably when in a bad mood), it can blight my enjoyment of the original series considerably, albeit only for a short time. What do other members here think?

Nah. As I've said probably too many times on this forum I just don't connect the two at all.

I don't really see why you would, none of the same people are involved and they even gave us the benefit of a 'hiatus', a massive format change, and a series count restart.

It isn't the same vision. It doesn't give you any insight into the Classic Series, negative or otherwise.

Kind of.

To be honest, it is one out of many problems that cause me to struggle not just with the original series but with other media as well that has gone uber PC.

As you said as well, I tend to lurch from enjoying it and appreciating it to just feeling sad that it is in this state today....

TiberiusDidNothingWrong wrote:Nah. As I've said probably too many times on this forum I just don't connect the two at all.

I don't really see why you would, none of the same people are involved and they even gave us the benefit of a 'hiatus', a massive format change, and a series count restart.

It isn't the same vision. It doesn't give you any insight into the Classic Series, negative or otherwise.

I think it’s less to do with seeing it as the same entity (which I most certainly do not) and more to do with it reminding me of the tragic state the brand is now in, and how the general public generally perceive TruWho and NuWho to be the same thing. Like you, I don’t see them as the same fundamental entity in any way (they have nothing in common beyond the core premise, iconography and other superficial traits), but the general public and production team do. NuWho constantly tries to sell itself as a continuation with the frequent callbacks, nostalgia baiting, idiotic retcons etc, hence why I sometimes can’t help but associate them.

No, it never blights my enjoyment of the classic series. I don’t very often think about NuWho at all. When I think of Dr Who I always automatically think of the era that I grew up with.
I suppose if you grew up with NuWho and came to classic Who later, it might be more difficult? I don’t know.

Ronnie wrote:No, it never blights my enjoyment of the classic series. I don’t very often think about NuWho at all. When I think of Dr Who I always automatically think of the era that I grew up with.
I suppose if you grew up with NuWho and came to classic Who later, it might be more difficult? I don’t know.

I grew up with both at the same time, and still see them as very separate entities. To be honest, I think I’ve made this thread purely as a reaction after re-watching the unbelievably shite ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ two parter yesterday evening after not seeing it for a rather long time, and the bad taste it left in the mouth still persists.

I can't deny it has.

It was just about possible to treat Classic and New Who as separate entities under RTD, because the latter was so far removed. New Who felt more loosely based on Classic Who than a serious continuation of it, and in that sense it didn't seem to affect the old canon or the old character of the Doctor.

Infact I would say it was the JNT era that for me did the more retroactive damage to the rest of Classic Who and to who the Doctor was. It actually became sometimes horrible to watch, say Planet of the Daleks and feel that old beloved hero who was so protective of Jo, had been tainted by his association with the petty, mean-spirited, criminally negligent, victim-blaming, misanthropic Doctor of Warriors of the Deep and Twin Dilemma.

But it was easy to still put the Doctor of The Long Game, Love & Monsters and Last of the Time Lords out of mind and feel they weren't even meant to be the same person.

That changed with Moffat however. Whereas RTD for the most part treated Classic Who like a closed book. Moffat changed that however to make more of the past canon linked with his era. And at first I welcomed that. But then finally when Missy happened, it was like it had gutted the old Master of meaning if he could be so fundamentally changed to the core, and with it their whole feud could be.

And it almost felt like the whole series was being retroactively turned into serving the purposes of a Moffat joke, and that the entire point of the series was being reimagined as a string of utterly hollow, manic flippancy that was never meant to mean anything. And indeed that having that attitude was what being a fan now meant (and I couldn't be more embarrassed now).

And I have to tell you that did rock my connection with all of the show to its very foundations and make the series seem utterly pointless and removed of meaning. I'd been heavily awaiting the final part of Babelcolour's the Ten Doctors, up until then and keen to see how he'd edit something impressive together. When it was finally published, it all just looked like superficial hysterical fanwank to me. And I realized not only had the show's content been tainted, but I even felt like I was sick of the bloody theme tune now.

So it definitely did feel like it had tainted the old show for me, and made it all seem suddenly vulnerable and fragile to Moffat's assault on our nostalgia. And it really did feel like an assault.

Alas, it used to.
I hated NuWho so much, that for an awfully long time, I didn't watch or buy anything Who-related (I even considered flogging my entire DW collection on eBay). I think I finally relented when I bought The Seeds of Doom DVD.   Since then, I've calmed down a bit - I still loathe the post-2005 stuff but I no longer consider Classic and Nu to be the same show, so in my own way have come to terms with the existence of the reboot series and its tenuous relationship with the original show.

Oscillates like Bernard for me. I refuse to allow these shameless cunts to poison the well for me, but there are times when that "perception" that Bernard mentions does make you despair.
But I increasingly just place the classic series as a part of a wider appreciation for pre-90s retro TV (though I guess 90s TV qualifies as retro for some people now!), which makes it easier to further distance it from the current nonsense.
That oscillation doesn't include Nurse Who, by the way. I've found that ridiculously easy to just ignore entirely just as it's so laughable and I don't watch it anyway. It's the stuff before that I did watch that can sometimes be hard to dissociate from (no wonder Ronnie doesn't have that problem if he didn't watch most of it lol!).

I still have half a plan to catch up on everything I’ve missed at some point. I decided to back track to the start of the Matt Smith era so that it would all make a bit more sense. But even with the relatively good S5, I struggle to get really into it, and a bit like Ian, I think a lot of why I originally carried on was because I liked to imagine Karen Gillan sitting on my face.

I wouldn't even bother past series 6, tbh.

Series 6 is a bit woobly in itself, but still looks slick and is packed with high concept ideas that make it feel like DW was trying to actually accomplish something..then Wenger left and, with Sherlock's rise, Moffat's creative priorities went elsewhere

iank wrote:I wouldn't even bother past series 6, tbh.

I think I got just into S7 at the time. I deffo remember Asylum of the Daleks and vaguely remember Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, and that western one. I think there might've been one more, but I can't remember. That's when I bailed.

Zarius wrote:Moffat's creative priorities went elsewhere

I consider that a plus.

Quite the opposite for me. The frustration and annoyance I felt watching RTD, moffats and chinnuts efforts has simply encouraged me to rewatch the old show and enjoy it more. Even eras of the show I previously disliked look better to me now, e.g., the Graham Williams period.