Who was more damaging to the series as a whole?

Which of these two showrunners was more fundamentally damaging to the series as a whole, either in their revisionisms or overall style? For me, this is decidedly tricky, as RTD’s dumbed down template is essentially what made NuWho what it was from the outset and dictated its overall course, yet Moffat’s revisions were arguably all the more egregious in the long-term.

I’ve settled with RTD, mainly because even amidst the constant acknowledgement of the failures of the Moffat and Chibnall eras, the RTD era is regarded as some sort of pinnacle for Doctor Who despite initiating the very stale and prosaic formula that essentially resulted in the programme’s downfall in the first place.

The vast popularity of Tennant’s Doctor, as acknowledged by ClockworkOcean on another thread, essentially means that many NuWho fans have a skewed perception of what the character always was (in Tennant’s case, a gurning lothario with distinctly adolescent qualities coupled with an abundant moral hypocrisy) and such a template for the character will likely be the one that lives on going forward.

That, and the over-reliance on soap narratives that celebrate the mundane and the average as opposed to the extraordinary and unique (as with TruWho) ultimately attracted a different audience to that of TruWho in the long term. Granted, there are fans like myself who garnered an interest in the programme thanks to NuWho, but such qualities were down to the central premise and the residing elements that were left over from the classic series. A certain snobby dismissal of the original series now manifests in certain corners of fandom, likely because the new series had adopted a much more frenetic and extroverted style that conformed all the more to the mainstream.

Moffat’s era only really extended RTD’s legacy, albeit with even more awful revisions in the long term, yet there were at least signs of Moffat deviating from such a legacy somewhat initially.

Whilst RTD did a lot of damage to the show's tone and content, and created some kind of ridiculous popular 'utopia' for the show that Nu Who devotees and internet reviewers keep harking back to as being the real golden era, ultimately he mainly just fucked up the 'present' of the show.

Moffat was worse as he seemed to think he had to interfere with its lore & its future too, and the shoehorning-in of the current fad for diversity above all was unforgivable as it's wrecked virtually everything.

Cartmel. He introduced the notion of the Doctor as God, and thus is the ignition source for the dumpster fire we have today.

As bad as the RTD era was, I think the show could've survived and come back from it.

I'd even say that for a brief time during Moffat's first season, it did.

But then everything went wrong. And somehow by the end of Capaldi everything was burnt through and it was almost impossible to care anymore.

The arrival of Chibnall and Jodie was always frankly incidental to the reaching of that low-point, to me.

RTD and damaging. There's two words that NEVER go together!

RTD as he started with the woke BS. He clearly used it as a platform to promote his politics on sexuality, and this likely inspired others to do the same, leading to where we are today.

Also, what he created was never Dr Who.

Davies.
I feel Moffat was all but forced to shove the series back to the Davies style after a promising start, and had other things forced on him too (Missy and the start of the genderbending bollocks). It's only because of Moffat we didn't get a female Doctor in 2014, cause that's what the BBC were after already.
Davies fundamentally warped the nature of the program and its central character, probably beyond all repair now.

Very,Very difficult choice.

RTD built the nuwho template - An incredibly populist, dumbed down soap opera. He introduced Doctor's with working class accents, who were proud to watch bad reality TV, while chasing 19 year old pussy.

Moffat on the other hand bought into the BBC's diversity before everything regime and he laid the ground work for the horror show it is today.
Under his watch we had Time-Lord sex change, Missy; the Mary Poppins Master, River Song, he bastardized the first Doctor in Twice upon a time, and criminally wasted one of The finest actors ever to play the role, by giving Peter Capaldi 3 dreadful series worth of scripts to work with.

Honestly I think all 3 RTD,Moffat & Chibnall have had a hand in murdering Doctor Who, but the show was already a festering shell by the time Chibnall finally cut off what was left of the Doctors bollocks.

There are several perfectly valid arguments for Davies being the more damaging of the two, but I prefer to look at it in terms of who left the series in the less salvageable state, and that's undoubtedly Moffat. The proof of that is Series 5, which kept the basic structure Davies established, but toned down the soap opera bullshit by about 20% and increased the sci-fi, fantasy and horror content to compensate, also giving us a Doctor who bore a much stronger resemblance to the original character.

If Moffat hadn't let his ego get the better of him and had just carried on incrementally phasing out the RTD-isms year-on-year, I reckon the show could eventually have recovered from the Davies era and become a worthy successor to the original, wheras even if someone fairly decent like Toby Whithouse had taken over from Moffat and cast a suitable Doctor in 2018, we'd still have to contend with Missy, gender-swapping regenerations, the bastardisation of Hartnell's legacy in Twice Upon a Time, and two or three series' worth of man-hating dialogue and subtext being canon... all of which I'd say is much more damaging than anything RTD left behind.

How many times do I need to say that Missy and the genderbending regenerations were the result of the BBC? It would have happened no matter who was in charge, so it's pointless blaming Moffat for it. At the very least he resisted the BBC wanting a female Doctor to replace Smithy.

iank wrote:How many times do I need to say that Missy and the genderbending regenerations were the result of the BBC? It would have happened no matter who was in charge, so it's pointless blaming Moffat for it. At the very least he resisted the BBC wanting a female Doctor to replace Smithy.

Conjecture.

None of us know how Moffat thinks or how much input the BBC had into the creation of Missy. I'm willing to believe although the BBC definitely were the catalyst behind latter nuwho's obsession with developing a matriarchy, Moffat was the creator of River Song, Mels, Tasha Lem, Sally Sparrow and other emasculating characters.

It wouldn't surprise me if Moffat and the BBC shared very similar views. Especially when looking at his remarks concerning the original show and it's characters in the 1990s.

Until a lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges and the 2040's version of Andrew Pixley has the full facts, IMO Moffat is guilty as charged.

ClockworkOcean wrote:There are several perfectly valid arguments for Davies being the more damaging of the two, but I prefer to look at it in terms of who left the series in the less salvageable state, and that's undoubtedly Moffat.

This.

Nuwho was still savable in 2010.
Despite what Fathead and Tenich had done to it.

By 2017 it was a burned out shell.
Yes, the woke culture at the BBC had a hand in that, but Moffat could easily have quit at any time if he didn't agree with BBC policy.

He wasn't just Doctor Who showrunner (which in itself is a big deal) But the creator and showrunner of Sherlock. If anyone had the power to tell the BBC to fuck off it was Moffat.
He chose not to. (and neither did Gatiss) they chose to stay and toe the party line.
Even if (and it's a big IF) Moffat disagreed with the direction Doctor Who was going in, he is still guilty of collaboration.

It's not conjecture. Moore is very proud of it.

iank wrote:It's not conjecture. Moore is very proud of it.

Charlotte Moore is a well known cunt. It's just that I can picture Moffat slurping from it.

iank wrote:How many times do I need to say that Missy and the genderbending regenerations were the result of the BBC? It would have happened no matter who was in charge, so it's pointless blaming Moffat for it. At the very least he resisted the BBC wanting a female Doctor to replace Smithy.

As The Brigade Leader said there is no definite proof of that.

Also allow me to play devil's advocate for a bit here. We all know I don't like gender bending Time Lord's. I think it destroys the illusion of all the Doctors being the same character, and is an ill fit.

However Missy's gender change is actually not the worst thing about her character.

The fact that she has 0 characteristics with the Master is. She throws everything about his character in the bin, and worse she is in love with the Doctor.

THAT is actually what makes a total mockery of the character.

Other villains have changed sex in the past and no one has noticed.

Take a look at Smallville. The male villain Brainiac's body is destroyed and he is forced to take over the body of a woman, Chloe in order to survive.

Now obviously Allison Mack is a horrible, horrible person. I'd much rather know Michelle Gomez personally, but if we separate art from the artist, Allison and the writers of Smallville did a much better job of changing a villains sex than Moffhack.

The female Brainiac has the same motives, plans, and relationship with the hero that the male one does. She doesn't suddenly think "hey that Clark Kent is a big hunk, never noticed that before." Or call herself Brainiacina, and get jealous of Clark's attractive female friends!

See for yourself.





That's how professional writers handled changing a villains sex. They came up with a proper story justification, made sure it wasn't a gimmick, and kept the male villain's persona. They didn't use it as an excuse to live out their stupid little jokes down the pub of Roger Delgado wanting to fuck Jon Pertwee.

Added to that Mofftwat's era really saw the its all about change crap become dominant. RTD at least made out that some things should never be touched like when he refused to do a spin off about a young Doctor Who, because it would ruin the template of the character.

Moffhack however created the idea that everything should be changed. The Masters relationship with the Doctor, when the Doctor first met Davros, why the Doctor ran away etc.

Also as Tanman says, after RTD there was a way back, but after Missy, and the gender bending crap and the vandalisation fo Hartnell that was pretty much it.

All of them to a varying degree. RTD established Remake Who's style and made sure that it's what the public would remember in many years time but other than that, the odd moment of Series 5 showed that all that could be forgotten and the series could be retooled into a more appropriate sequel to the original series. Sadly by the Capaldi era, he'd given into the SJW mob and sold out the biggest way. And Chibnall is the only one left dancing on the original series grave.