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I've come to think that the central "character" in Classic Who was the story. The individual Doctor was not the central point of each story, the story itself was the star.
In NuWho this was ignored in favour of fetishizing the Doctor character himself, and in the process ignoring the rules of good story telling and drama, leading to a succession of increasingly awful debacles.
When people, even those who dislike NuWho, talk about which NuWho stories are "the best", in every case it's ones where, accidentally, the story has become the central "character" again.
It's very jarring to see the Doctor turned into a comic book superhero, as has happened since 2006. It was a bad decision and the bombastic shouting speeches, space jesus, power of love and the rest are all side effects of sacrificing story to obsess over a character who worked best when he was more or less a cipher. The name dropping historical figures, the inhuman abilities aside, Classic Who had plenty of time to dwell on things other than the Doctor. Now the Doctor has become The Show in its entirety. That can't end well even if the show was written properly and well made.
In NuWho this was ignored in favour of fetishizing the Doctor character himself, and in the process ignoring the rules of good story telling and drama, leading to a succession of increasingly awful debacles.
When people, even those who dislike NuWho, talk about which NuWho stories are "the best", in every case it's ones where, accidentally, the story has become the central "character" again.
It's very jarring to see the Doctor turned into a comic book superhero, as has happened since 2006. It was a bad decision and the bombastic shouting speeches, space jesus, power of love and the rest are all side effects of sacrificing story to obsess over a character who worked best when he was more or less a cipher. The name dropping historical figures, the inhuman abilities aside, Classic Who had plenty of time to dwell on things other than the Doctor. Now the Doctor has become The Show in its entirety. That can't end well even if the show was written properly and well made.
