Mr. Happy wrote: Rob Filth wrote:Like three years retconning can wipe out a 50 year established history.
No Timelord ever saying that it couldn't happen and the fact it didn't happen onscreen isn't quite the same as it having been established for fifty years previously but let's say you are right.
Time Lord society had always been presented as a binary-gender one rather than completely gender-neutral, every single regeneration presented or referenced had retained gender-control, even the projected future ones of Romana or ones presented by the Time Lords to the Doctor at the end of "The War Games" - all of Morbius's (presented to make us think they were The Doctors) were all male too.
NuWho first started revising the concept of regeneration as early back as when Eccleston changed, "I could come back with two heads or no head at all, how about that?"
Mr. Happy wrote:But ignoring narrative reasons, should the casting of a 21st century TV show be governed by the dominant ideology of the sixties, seventies and eighties?
No one is suggesting it should, I have no problem with transgender or gay couple/relationships being presented within the programme, just with the retconning of what was once a main event - cheapened into a victorian freak-show curiosity and cynical grab at an audience via stunt casting.
Mr. Happy wrote:Moffat has driven away a fair few fans and Capaldi (who I like) has not been for everybody. DW is no longer the commercial juggernaut it once was under RTD. The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff is closing which further emphasises that. It's because of the ground work that RTD laid that DW took off in America and Moffat got to reap the rewards but I don't credit it to him.
The circulation of DWM has halved since about 2014. The audience share is down 5% from the Matt Smith era and the number of people watching on catch up is down 5%. The AIs have been falling from series 8 onwards. The ratings aren't bad and these drops may not be problematic but the BBC would want one of their best performing shows to be as successful as possible, especially with the battering they get from the papers and the government. The show does need rejuvenating.
I agree, but cheap stunt casting and deliberate repeated kicking of sacred cows is not the way to effectively do it, the scripting will still be third rate hack for the most part.
Mr. Happy wrote:JW's casting could have a positive effect.
Much as I dislike the casting, initially I believe it will return the audience levels to 8-9m for the first few episodes purely down to the curiosity factor - however I doubt this will sustain given who is running riot with all of this, and once the audience realise it's the same old same old badly scripted rubbish and tunes into the next shallow hype to hijack their interest, all it leaves behind is a bitterly divided fandom.