Series 9 vs. Series 10

NuWho had already fallen irredeemably down the SJW rabbit hole by this point, but which of Capaldi's last two series do you find more tolerable?

Haven't seen either of them with the exception of the Dalek tale from Series 9 which was so dire, I felt that I wasn't missing much not watching it.

Series 10 was fun in places and I quite liked Bill and Nardole. There was a lot of boring shite in the middle and too many SJW moments, though. Series 9 had a few decent episodes and the scrumptious Jenna Coleman for me to drool over, but it really did seem like the show was beyond repair after The Witch's Familiar.

Series 10 by a country fucking mile. I know that Series 9 has Heaven Sent, but most of the other stuff is so unbelievably shite that the whole Series as a whole is not worth it. But Series 10 I actually enjoy more and more. The only truly bad episodes are Thin Ice and Eaters of Light, the latter just because I barely remember any of it every time I try to watch it. Bill and Nardole are so much more refreshing and enjoyable than the smugness of Clara, and 12's characterisation with him being a professor is so much better than the 'down to be hip with the Cool Kids' personality from Series 9.

Series 10 i think. A more likeable companion in the form of both Bill and Nardol and, on the whole, better stories. The wokeness bothered me less.

I felt Pearl Mackie was a better actress than Jenna although Jenna was good.

Series 9 only has Heaven Sent in terms of what I’d consider to be decent Doctor Who- the rest is unspeakably awful (bar perhaps Under the Lake).

Although series 10 had its moments of patronising wokeness and moronic populism, I much prefer the dynamic of Capaldi and Mackie to that of Capaldi and Coleman (due to Clara’s character more than anything else- Coleman is a fine actress outside of NuWho), and although the season itself certainly isn’t very good on the whole, Capaldi’s characterisation is certainly more assured, and I still rather like the finale in spite of its issues (largely due to how much better the Cybermen were when compared to any other NuWho appearance).

Although if we included Twice Upon a Time as part of series 10, it’d probably be even lower than series 9 for me. Christ, this era was so bloody awful that it hurts to think back on. Even the RTD era and the worst excesses of the Smith era didn’t reach the lows of Capaldi’s tenure. The man deserved so much better.

They were both Dogshit, so it's like choosing between series 9's white hard old-fashioned odourless turd and series 10's wet stinking diarrhea.
So I voted for 9.

10. It certainly wasn't perfect but it was Moffat's best effort since series 6 and Bill and Nardole were certainly less annoying than Clara. At the time I thought there might be some hope for the show.
Ha!

Series 10 undoubtedly, I only really liked the Gatiss script in Series 9(which no one else seems to like for some reason) "Sleep No More" because of the downbeat ending and FPS gimmick with ClassicWho type monsters, the rest of them were fucking rubbish. Even the Zygons were fucking shit.

In Series 10 Missy was for most part less annoying & I liked the Doctor grounded type theme. I liked the Mondas Cybermen too. There were the usual annoying NuWho fucktarded dropping the ball as usual, but generally it was less annoying than Series 9 where Capaldi was playing grampa hipster to Missy acting a cunt.

Rob Filth wrote:Even the Zygons were fucking shit.

It is truly bizarre how the Zygons were somehow much more poorly realised in 2015 than they were in 1975. For a series that seems to propagate progress in the most unearned and half-arsed possible way, there is a very pertinent irony to just how much more impressive they looked in Terror of the Zygons. An astute summary for the patronising attitude of the production team (who have prominently traduced TruWho for special effects defects over the years) and failure of NuWho’s faux aspirations of progress.

Decent Series 9 episodes:

Under The Lake/Beneath The Flood
The Woman Who Lived
Face The Raven (From what I can remember)
Heaven Sent

-

Decent Series 10 episodes:

The Pilot
Extremis
Lie of the Land
World Enough and Time

In light of the horror that bookends it, Series 10 is surprisingly decent. Not great, but better than anything since Series 6. Capaldi was finally being written as he always should have been, his dynamic with Bill and Nardole is second only to that of Smith and the Ponds, and the series brought some interesting sci-fi concepts to the table. The SJW bullshit was there, but not to the extent of Series 9. Here, the SJW elements felt like an unwelcome intrusion on a series that was otherwise fairly decent, whereas those of Series 9 - aside from being much more offensive in their own right - were just the faecal icing on an already rancid cake.

Aside from Heaven Sent and the Whithouse two-parter, Series 9 was abysmal. For my money, it's the single worst series in the entire pre-Chibnall history of the franchise, outdoing any of RTD's efforts. I don't even know where to begin. There's the desecration of Davros and the Daleks, the retroactive undermining of Genesis, the horrible mishandling of the Zygons, the squandering of Gallifrey's return, the retcon of the Doctor's motivation for leaving Gallifrey, Capaldi's disastrous personality transplant, Clara's ridiculous exit, the introduction of explicit man-hatred... this was the series that signed NuWho's death warrant.

Of course, Series 10 becomes much worse if we count Twice Upon a Turd...

ClockworkOcean wrote:Of course, Series 10 becomes much worse if we count Twice Upon a Turd...

Really I count the Doctors "death" at the hands of the Mondas cybermen having failed to save Bill as the series end.

They could maybe dub over some end Capaldi dialogue where he discovers as he lays dying, "So there IS only 13 lives after all, those Time Lord charlatans!"

There should be a fan edit where the credits silently roll by(a la Adric RIP style) at this point to mark the series final end.

I voted for 10 because 9, other than Sleep No More, was an abomination - which led to me missing much of its successor.

By contrast, series 8 was so bad I not only didn't watch the last episode, I didn't watch series 9 for nearly 2 years until just prior to 10.

Series 10 - Capaldi's most tolerable set of episodes.  It's far from perfect though, - there's a fair share of stinkers here, including Thin Ice, Knock, Knock, The Empress Of Mars and The Eaters of Light, and probably more if I could be bothered to rewatch.
The Pilot, though is smashing  - I like the idea of the Doctor as a university professor and Capaldi plays the part very well. I also enjoyed the academic setting and that kind of 'Educating Rita' vibe going on between Bill and The Doctor ( although that didn't really go anywhere, did it?). Pearl Mackie is really impressive in the first episode - funny, quirky, oddball and above all, likable (a refreshing change after the annoyingly smug and sarky Clara) but sadly, doesn't continue like that, and as Series 10 progresses, she becomes another irritating Tardis girl.  Sad.  Nardole was better than I thought.

I also quite like the story arc that dealt with the rehabilitation of Missy - quite well handled, but they messed it up at the end.

Series 9 was mostly awful, but all three Capaldi series now look like works of televisual genius compared to the Chibnall stuff.  Oh dear.

I agree with the majority and say series 10.

If you take out Missy then series 10 would be great. There would still be the odd lacklustre episode, but that's the same with every season (except maybe 7 of True Who.)

Series 10 has a great Doctor/Companion set up, the Cybermen at their best since the 80s, a great Ice Warriors story, a focus back on sci fi, and Capaldi as an old, grumpy but lovable, grandfatherly professor, rather than an aging rocker fawning over his 20 something companion.

Series 9 however as incredible as it may seem, if you were to take Missy out it would still be utter shit.

You'd still have the ghastly hybrid story arc that goes nowhere, undermines the Time Lords and completely rewrites the Doctors motivation and character to be less interesting.

You'd still have the Daleks and Davros' history being fucked over, the ridiculous loose end of there being 20 million Zygons just left on earth, that's never commented on again (gee what happened to them when UNIT shut down? Or what about the Dalek Invasion in the 22nd Century?)

Series 9 is Mofftwat at his worst in every conceivable way. Its his pathetic "SORRY I'M WHITE, SORRY I'M A MALE" writing at the forefront, mixed with his "I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT BECAUSE THERE IS NO CANON."

It manages to drive both casual viewers and die hard fans away, as the constant rewriting of the past means Mofftwat has to revel in continuity references which bores new viewers, whilst those who get the references are driven away by how Mofftwat rewrites and fucks up the lore.

Bernard Marx wrote:

Rob Filth wrote:Even the Zygons were fucking shit.

It is truly bizarre how the Zygons were somehow much more poorly realised in 2015 than they were in 1975. For a series that seems to propagate progress in the most unearned and half-arsed possible way, there is a very pertinent irony to just how much more impressive they looked in Terror of the Zygons. An astute summary for the patronising attitude of the production team (who have prominently traduced TruWho for special effects defects over the years) and failure of NuWho’s faux aspirations of progress.

Yes I agree. The Zygons in old who had a great, organic, slimy looking appearance.

In contrast not only did the new Zygons have rubbery skin, but the expressions on their faces were really goofy.





Still one of the Zygons human forms as Osgood looked better than any other Zygon human form before. It would be ironic if both Osgood's were Zygons. That would mean the two best looking humans on earth were aliens.

That is if one of the Osgood's was a Zygon. That's another shit thing about series 9. I've never known one series to have so many ridiculous loose ends that were just never tied up.

1/ What happened to the Dalek/Time Lord hybrids that the Doctor created? Okay the city of the Daleks was overrun by the slime, but still surely some of them must have escaped, and since every Dalek on Skaro was infected with the Time Lord energy, as was Davros, then shouldn't some of them have the power of the Time Lords? Also even if they all died, what about the aging Daleks that were rejuvinated?

2/ What the hell was the Minister of War? Remember the cute, Scottish fan girl with the big nose in the future mentioned him as being as big a deal as the Saxon Master? I remember so many DW fans thinking that it was Rassilon after he fled. Nope turns out it was nothing.

3/ What about the Zygons. The revelation that there was 20 million of them trapped on earth is a pretty huge fucking deal. How are these aliens going to cope with everyday life? If the planet earth is invaded again surely they would want to help defend it.

Zygons vs Silurians could have been interesting. The original inhabitents of the earth vs the immigrants. Imagine a Kaiju battle between the Silurians giant mutant Tyrannosaurus from Deep Breath and the Skarassan. Or imagine a Kaiju battle between the Skarasan and the Cyber King. That would be baddass.

Also can Zygons mate with humans in their human form and produce offspring? Will this result in the birth of a whole new species of human, Zygon hybrids that are shunned by both species?

Are there groups of humans who know about the Zygons and try and either kill them, or worship them?

Are there Zygons who don't want to destroy humanity, but maybe want to help it progress to the next stage and take positions as scientists, world leaders etc to accomplish that? Do these Zygons as a result subsequently begin to damage the timeline by introducing new things at an earlier stage.

(Maybe one of the Zygons knows the Dalek invasion of earth is coming and wants to try and change it so that the humans are better prepared, which leads to all kinds of shit changing in the timeline.)

Hell maybe in the future one of the Zygons could become the Doctors companion. Would be quite a twist that at first we think she is just an ordinary human girl, and then somewhere down the line she morphs into a Zygon.

Ultimately however all of this is just quietly swept under the rug. When the Monks show up next year, not once are the Zygons mentioned. Furthermore UNIT whose whole thing was to stop a war between earth and the Zygons is shut down! So what are these 20 million aliens just left on the earth then with no one monitoring them?

4/ We don't know which Osgood is real and which one was the Zygon.

5/ Just what the fuck is the hybrid anyway, and where was Rassilon banished too? None of these things are either mentioned or at least conformed.

Series 10. Nice Bill, entertaining Nardole and my favourite New Who episode "Oxygen".

burrunjor wrote:4/ We don't know which Osgood is real and which one was the Zygon.

I let this one slide, it's fun ambiguity

I always felt Twelve was the best pairing for Twelve, more than she was Eleven.

TheCuomoDoctor wrote:I always felt Twelve was the best pairing for Twelve, more than she was Eleven.

I'm sure that sentence made sense in your head.

iank wrote:

TheCuomoDoctor wrote:I always felt Twelve was the best pairing for Twelve, more than she was Eleven.

I'm sure that sentence made sense in your head.

Twelve is definitely the best pairing for Twelve, Heaven Sent is proof of that