Will the image and perception of RTD's era being the golden age ever step out the public eye?

If NuWho was axed soon and say, many years later they decided to start a proper sequel series to the original series, do you think the public would shake the perception of the RTD/Tennant years as being the golden age out of it's consciousness or will it forever remain a irremovable mark on the series history?

Yes and no.

No I don't think it will become a standing joke like the Capaldi and Whittaker eras.

Yes however I think it will be possible to do a sequel to the original that is more like a proper updated version of True Who, that ignores New Who.

Jodie has kind of sunk New Who (or rather Chibnall, it's not fair to put the blame on Jodie as bad as the performance was.)

Afterall just because something is popular doesn't mean people will always want to copy it's style. Hell the Tennant era didn't copy the Hinchcliff era that was still seen as a golden age, and fondly remembered by the general public too.

I think that if we get a serious, proper sequel to True Who, then the RTD era might go through a phase where it is looked down on. That often happens. Look at the Nolan, vs Burton films. For a long while the Burton movies were looked down on as worse because they were campier. It's easy to see a gritty, gothic, horror version of DW causing people to do the same to RTD's era.

That actually almost happened during the early 10s. Tanman will attest on the IMDB boards the RTD era was not well regarded at all. The consensus was that Matt, Arthur and Karen had given us proper DW and RTD was populist drivel.

On polls for the best Doctor on IMDB, Tennant frequently lost out to John Hurt! Believe it or not I was one of the few who didn't have an entirely negative view of the RTD era there. I viewed it as not proper DW, but good comic book fun, where as everyone else hated it.

Matt Smith was by far the most popular. Even among the GP, whilst he may not have quite reached Tennant's heights, he was generally more liked at one point, and a lot bigger in America and around the globe.

However it was the Capaldi era that sunk Matt by association as the same guy was behind both. People went from "Moff has saved DW" to "Moff is the bastard behind Cyber Brig and Missy." So RTD seemed like a saint in comparison.

Since then it's been cemented that Tennant was the golden age by sexual braggard Hartnell, the Hybrid and Jodie. It was after all the introduction for so many people, and the last time for old fans that DW was popular but not so far gone.

There probably will always be a bit of nostalgia for it as a result, but I wouldn't say it's shadow has to be cast over the whole franchise.

This is why I say the RTD era did more to fuck up New Who than the current era even though the current era is worse. Nobody likes the current era, which is a good thing, but it's so bad it is making the RTD era look good, which is a bad thing. As long as you have Doctor Who where the Doctor wants to shag the companions, you don't have Doctor Who at all. And I'm worried if they do cancel it and bring it back later that's what we'll get.

The 10/Rose shite completely ruined series 2, I didn't think every episode in the entire series was crap (I kind of liked Impossible Planet), but I've never rewatched it even once because just seeing 10 and Rose together puts me off. It's sort of the opposite effect I get with weaker classic Who stories: I don't particularly like Happiness Patrol, but I rewatch it every now and then because just seeing McCoy and Ace on the screen reminds me of their better stuff and because of that I'll still enjoy their weaker stuff.

In truth, RTD's era was the closest thing there's been to a new golden age since Tom Baker left (at least on TV... for me the true new golden age was 2000-2003 Big Finish, and largely RTD just took a few shrewd cues from that).

And both successive eras after, under Moffat and Chibnall, have been utter disasters, which has highlighted that for all RTD's faults, he was at least better at actual showrunning than Moffat.

I would love it if public perceptions of the show's prime and the character at his best, reverted back to Tom Baker's Doctor. But that's been so long ago, and completely overwhelmed since by the image of Tennant. And truth be told, I think if the public looked back on Tom's time, many would see it as dated, slow and patchy now. At least enough to leave them preferring Tennant.

The one thing that gives me hope is that Night of the Doctor, for a lot of new fans, really did hint at another golden age that never was, in what could've been a full McGann era. And many of them have gone to Big Finish for more of that.

That's my hope that if those new fans are who calls the shots in the future, then they might prefer the Doctor to be some kind of middle ground between McGan and Tennant, and maybe a little bit of Hurt in there too.

If they just brought back McGann and had him do his early Big Finish stuff on video it really would be a new golden age (I'd be into it even if they only animated it). But if they did bring him back, they'd probably write shitty new stories instead...

Fendelman wrote:This is why I say the RTD era did more to fuck up New Who than the current era even though the current era is worse. Nobody likes the current era, which is a good thing, but it's so bad it is making the RTD era look good, which is a bad thing. As long as you have Doctor Who where the Doctor wants to shag the companions, you don't have Doctor Who at all. And I'm worried if they do cancel it and bring it back later that's what we'll get.

The 10/Rose shite completely ruined series 2, I didn't think every episode in the entire series was crap (I kind of liked Impossible Planet), but I've never rewatched it even once because just seeing 10 and Rose together puts me off. It's sort of the opposite effect I get with weaker classic Who stories: I don't particularly like Happiness Patrol, but I rewatch it every now and then because just seeing McCoy and Ace on the screen reminds me of their better stuff and because of that I'll still enjoy their weaker stuff.

I completely agree about The Impossible Planet. To me that's a prime example of how romance ruins DW because it distracts from the actual story.

Pyramids of Mars is basically the same plot as The Impossible Planet. Both involve an ancient alien that's the source of earth's myths, both have a scene where the Doctor confronts the creatures.

However look at the confrontation in Pyramids of Mars and compare it to the confrontation in Impossible Planet.

Bob Holmes wrote: SUTEKH: I can, if I choose, keep you alive for centuries, racked by the most excruciating pain. Since your interference has condemned me for ever to remain a prisoner in the Eye of Horus, it would be a fitting end. You would make an amusing diversion.
(The Doctor is released again.)
SUTEKH: Identify yourself, plaything of Sutekh.
DOCTOR: I'm a traveller.
SUTEKH: From where?
DOCTOR: Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborus.
SUTEKH: Names mean nothing. What is the binary location from galactic zero centre?
DOCTOR: Ten zero eleven, zero zero by zero two.
SUTEKH: I know the planet. Data retrieval.
(A four small panels light up.)
SUTEKH: So, you are a Time Lord.
DOCTOR: I renounced the society of the Time Lords. Now I'm simply a traveller.
SUTEKH: In time and space. In time and space?
(He does the green eyes thing.)
DOCTOR: (screaming) Yes! Yes!
SUTEKH: Ah. Approach closer. What are you called, Time Lord?
DOCTOR: Doctor.
SUTEKH: I offer you an alliance, Doctor. Serve me truly, and an empire can be yours.
DOCTOR: Serve you, Sutekh? Your name is abominated in every civilised world, whether that name be Set, Satan, Sodos
SUTEKH: Serve me, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Never! Argh!
SUTEKH: You pit your puny will against mine? Kneel!
DOCTOR: No!
SUTEKH: Kneel before the might of Sutekh.
(The Doctor is forced to his knees.)
SUTEKH: In my presence, you are an ant, a termite. Abase yourself, you grovelling insect.

RTD wrote:DOCTOR: You're imprisoned, long time ago. Before the universe, after, sideways, in between, doesn't matter. The prison is perfect. It's absolute, it's eternal. Oh, yes! Open the prison, the gravity field collapses. This planet falls into the black hole! You escape, you die. Brilliant! But that's just the body. The body is trapped, that's all. The devil is an idea. In all those civilisations, just an idea. But an idea is hard to kill. An idea could escape. The mind. The mind of the great Beast. The mind can escape! Oh, but that's it! You didn't give me air, your jailers did. They set this up all those years ago! They need me alive, because if you're escaping, then I've got to stop you. If I destroy your prison, your body is destroyed. Your mind with it.
(The Doctor raises a rock to smash an urn, then drops it again.)
DOCTOR: But then you're clever enough to use this whole system against me. If I destroy this planet, I destroy the gravity field. The rocket. The rocket loses protection and falls into the black hole. I have to sacrifice Rose.

DOCTOR: So, that's the trap. Or the test, or the final judgment, I don't know. But if I kill you, I kill her. Except that implies in this big grand scheme of Gods and Devils that she's just a victim. But I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her.

One focuses on the monster at hand, the other at some stupid tween romance.

Fendelman wrote:If they just brought back McGann and had him do his early Big Finish stuff on video it really would be a new golden age (I'd be into it even if they only animated it). But if they did bring him back, they'd probably write shitty new stories instead...

IMO it's quite easy to fix Doctor Who.

We need to have an animated series. That can help bridge the wilderness years and ensure DW isn't a totally dead brand, but it can be more niche and lose the idiotic tumblr crowd.

The animated show can get round any budget problems, focus back on sci fi, monsters, feature a more old school Doctor and be an alternate sequel.

Once that has been established then it won't be so odd for the next live action version to do that and New Who is only one interpretation.

I personally don't think they should use McGann however. If they used him people would be expecting a prequel to New Who and bring in the Claudia Boleyn audience. If you had him regenerate into someone else then it would probably alienate your core audience and finish the show.

If you started with a new Doctor, didn't say which one he was, and built the audience up with him, then you could casually have him mention being on his 9th life and that would be that.

Tanmann wrote:In truth, RTD's era was the closest thing there's been to a new golden age since Tom Baker left (at least on TV... for me the true new golden age was 2000-2003 Big Finish, and largely RTD just took a few shrewd cues from that).

And both successive eras after, under Moffat and Chibnall, have been utter disasters, which has highlighted that for all RTD's faults, he was at least better at actual showrunning than Moffat.

I would love it if public perceptions of the show's prime and the character at his best, reverted back to Tom Baker's Doctor. But that's been so long ago, and completely overwhelmed since by the image of Tennant. And truth be told, I think if the public looked back on Tom's time, many would see it as dated, slow and patchy now. At least enough to leave them preferring Tennant.

The one thing that gives me hope is that Night of the Doctor, for a lot of new fans, really did hint at another golden age that never was, in what could've been a full McGann era. And many of them have gone to Big Finish for more of that.

That's my hope that if those new fans are who calls the shots in the future, then they might prefer the Doctor to be some kind of middle ground between McGan and Tennant, and maybe a little bit of Hurt in there too.

Sorry but that is too pessimistic.

To start with it is not true that Tom is too far in the past for people.

Classic Who smashes New Who on DVD every year.

Check out these two articles.

Classic Who Outsells New Who 2017

Classic Who Outsells New Who 2015

Clearly there is something in True Who that allows it to transcend time. (It's also clearly young people buying it, as all the other top 10 shows are new series. Classic Who is almost like an anomaly.)

If there were something in that style but with updated effects and sensibilities it would be a smash.

Plenty of franchises have gone back the way. Batman started out as dark, then it became campy for decades and achieved it's then biggest success that way via Adam West.

In the 70s however people went back and looked at the original Batman comics and thought (let's go back to that) and then we got the new Golden age, with dark stories like Night of the Stalker.

I can easily see the RTD era and style being relegated to the same fate. We have to keep promoting the old style though. I don't agree with this giving up on the franchise. Now is the time to really promote the identity of DW and crush the "all about change" myth.

Hell the people who come out with that crap are clearly scared, hence why Omie apparently felt the need to come here and put us all in our place.

To those who are depressing themselves by thinking RTD-Who will be used as the template when (if) the show returns, take heart.

RTD-Who was itself an imitation of Buffy, and the "everybody knows" accepted wisdom of what a show "had to be like to be successful" at the time. nuWho overall is extremely dated and it dates itself within months, even weeks, in a way that most of classic (real) Who never has.

So when the show returns (if it ever does, given the cultural, societal and technological changes about to occur) it will be unrecognisable to anyone, not just fans of the classics.

TheTimeTraveller wrote:To those who are depressing themselves by thinking RTD-Who will be used as the template when (if) the show returns, take heart.

RTD-Who was itself an imitation of Buffy, and the "everybody knows" accepted wisdom of what a show "had to be like to be successful" at the time. nuWho overall is extremely dated and it dates itself within months, even weeks, in a way that most of classic (real) Who never has.

So when the show returns (if it ever does, given the cultural, societal and technological changes about to occur) it will be unrecognisable to anyone, not just fans of the classics.

Well the fear is that for the foreseeable future, RTD Who has become the new Buffy in terms of being the new go-to success model.

Although to be honest, if it becomes about aping current popular trends I actually wouldn't mind a future new iteration of the show that takes Rick and Morty as its model rather than Buffy. In a way it'd be like picking up where Season 15 left off.

TheTimeTraveller wrote:To those who are depressing themselves by thinking RTD-Who will be used as the template when (if) the show returns, take heart.

RTD-Who was itself an imitation of Buffy, and the "everybody knows" accepted wisdom of what a show "had to be like to be successful" at the time. nuWho overall is extremely dated and it dates itself within months, even weeks, in a way that most of classic (real) Who never has.

So when the show returns (if it ever does, given the cultural, societal and technological changes about to occur) it will be unrecognisable to anyone, not just fans of the classics.

Interesting...  RTD's NuWho was, in part, an imitation of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but Buffy was itself, greatly indebted to the influence of Chris Claremont's X-Men comics (1975 - 1991).

" According to cultural critic Geoff Klock, Claremont’s influence “looms too large for many to see. A lot of folks don’t know that Joss Whedon would not have created Buffy or Angel were it not for Claremont’s X-Men.”

Whenever anyone was comparing RTD Who to BTVS, I couldn't make that connection, because I've never watched  Buffy or Angel*, but back in the '80s, I was a big X-fan.  I remember loving that run of comics, and although I don't read superhero stuff anymore, the X-books were works of genius compared to Davies' soapy, ropey Who tales.  I guess Claremont's brilliance and indirect influence didn't really work in Davies' case.

*Though I'm quite partial to Whedon's Firefly/Serenity.

I think the problem was also Davies taking only the surface level of Buffy - ass-kicking females and clever quipping - without any of its actual depth or quality characterisation and plotting.

iank wrote:I think the problem was also Davies taking only the surface level of Buffy - ass-kicking females and clever quipping - without any of its actual depth or quality characterisation and plotting.

It's true that Buffy was obviously better written than New Who. (It makes me laugh that guys like Shilbee who complain about not enough female heroes, were blown away by the Eccelston era, a cheap, MALE led copy of female led shows like Buffy and Xena that we had already watched.)

Still I'd say the problem was also that Buffy (and Xena for that matter which was just as big an influence on New Who, but never gets the credit. ) were a terrible fit as a template for Doctor Who.

Both are just as good as Classic Who in their own way of course, but are very different types of characters.

Buffy is a young, vulnerable character, at the beginning of her life who is still trying to figure out who she is. She has to put up with everyday problems whilst saving the world. (Not fitting in at school, working a dreary 9-5 shift, relationships going sour etc.) She is forced into a life she hates, and she is also superficially appealing to young boys, and relatable to young girls.

The True Who Doctor meanwhile is an old character. When we first meet him he has already lived a full life and been through it's hardships. He knows exactly who he is. He wants to live the life he is living and hates the thought of a normal life.

The True Who Doctor is also divorced from the real world. He lives in a magic box where everything is provided for him, food, water, somewhere to sleep, entertainment, and he can go anywhere he wants. He is the ultimate escapist character. He is not supposed to be relatable or someone who deals with everyday problems.

Soap opera is a vital ingredient of Buffy as it makes her a relatable hero. In DW it detracts from the point of this is a guy who can go anywhere.

They are polar opposites really, so when Davies tried to make the Doctor young and vulnerable like Buffy it seemed stupid. We were wondering why the Tennant Doctor was so immature compared to his younger counterparts, the soap opera felt like it was tacked on over the adventure etc.

Agreed.

Ah.... Home Alone

(or as I prefer to call it, Saw: The Early Years)

Tanmann wrote:Ah.... Home Alone

(or as I prefer to call it, Saw: The Early Years)

And blighted with just as many shitty sequels....

burrunjor wrote:

iank wrote:I think the problem was also Davies taking only the surface level of Buffy - ass-kicking females and clever quipping - without any of its actual depth or quality characterisation and plotting.

It's true that Buffy was obviously better written than New Who. (It makes me laugh that guys like Shilbee who complain about not enough female heroes, were blown away by the Eccelston era, a cheap, MALE led copy of female led shows like Buffy and Xena that we had already watched.)

Still I'd say the problem was also that Buffy (and Xena for that matter which was just as big an influence on New Who, but never gets the credit. ) were a terrible fit as a template for Doctor Who.

Both are just as good as Classic Who in their own way of course, but are very different types of characters.

Buffy is a young, vulnerable character, at the beginning of her life who is still trying to figure out who she is. She has to put up with everyday problems whilst saving the world. (Not fitting in at school, working a dreary 9-5 shift, relationships going sour etc.) She is forced into a life she hates, and she is also superficially appealing to young boys, and relatable to young girls.

The True Who Doctor meanwhile is an old character. When we first meet him he has already lived a full life and been through it's hardships. He knows exactly who he is. He wants to live the life he is living and hates the thought of a normal life.

The True Who Doctor is also divorced from the real world. He lives in a magic box where everything is provided for him, food, water, somewhere to sleep, entertainment, and he can go anywhere he wants. He is the ultimate escapist character. He is not supposed to be relatable or someone who deals with everyday problems.

Soap opera is a vital ingredient of Buffy as it makes her a relatable hero. In DW it detracts from the point of this is a guy who can go anywhere.  

They are polar opposites really, so when Davies tried to make the Doctor young and vulnerable like Buffy it seemed stupid. We were wondering why the Tennant Doctor was so immature compared to his younger counterparts, the soap opera felt like it was tacked on over the adventure etc.  

I actually think in theory using Buffy as a model for a Doctor Who revival *could've* worked. It could even have marked a return to form, considering that Talons of Weng Chiang, State of Decay and Curse of Fenric are probably the closest thing we had to Buffy on TV in a pre-Buffy age.

The trick is, so long as the makers remember that the Doctor is meant to be the *Giles* of the series, and maybe reinterpret it as what a more Giles-centric Buffy would've been like.

But even if not, and it meant the ass-kicking female companion gets more focus, that wouldn't be much of an aberration of what we got with Leela or Romana or Ace becoming protagonists and story engines in their own right.

The problem, as I see it is two-fold.

First of all, RTD honestly seemed to have such a phobia of the Doctor appearing posh, nerdish or bookish that he couldn't even bring himself to use the Giles model for him. So he just became, well a bit like an adolescent Snyder in Band Candy who was desperate to fit in with the gang, only inexplicably popular and desired.

Secondly, it made something of a sense that Buffy's family and personal life sometimes intruded on the adventure, and we were kind of with Buffy in that she clearly wished they wouldn't, but it made sense that they were somewhat inescapeable.

In New Who, the companion has the choice to leave the domestic petty crap behind and just immerse themselves in the adventure. Which means we're never behind their choice to go back and chinwag with their mum or boyfriend-but-its-complicated, and it almost defies belief that they'd even want to keep returning to that tedium. But the show is made for a soap audience who is assumed to only give a shit about that over the adventure.

So when it happens it just feels like a chore, but one that's being forced on us by the companions, rather than a chore that's forced on the companion character as in Buffy.

Indrid Mercury wrote:

Tanmann wrote:Ah.... Home Alone

(or as I prefer to call it, Saw: The Early Years)

And blighted with just as many shitty sequels....

None of the Saw sequels were worthwhile. They were just grotty, pretentious garbage.

Home Alone II: Lost in New York at least had a bit of charm about it. I've not seen any of them after that and have no interest in doing so.