John Barrowman and "The Golden Age"

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-07-25/russell-t-davies-and-john-barrowman-have-discussed-torchwood-movie-starring-david-tennant-and-billie-piper/

Yep, that's Barrowman's pet name for the 2005-2010 Cardiff gang

And this sounds an awful lot like Operation Golden Age

Ugh.

I like John but he needs to give up on Torchwood. It baffles me that he willingly quite the Arrowverse, yet is still trying to resurrect this long dead franchise?

Only thing I like about this is it comes off as an unintentional insult to Chibnall LOL. He's basically saying "everyone would rather that they had the cast from 10 years ago instead of the one now." To be fair everyone would, even people who didn't like the cast from 10 years ago.

Just about anything would seem like a golden age compared to the horrific travesty Moffat and Chibnall have turned it into in recent years. What's become of this show is too ghastly for words. My favoured solution is an alternate sequel true to the spirit of the original series with a new 8th or 9th Doctor, but at this point I honestly think I could live with any option that would enable the invalidation of the Whittaker and Capaldi eras. If someone with an iota of business sense at the BBC were to bring back Tennant and erase the entire Moffat era, even if it meant retconning Series 5 and 6, I'd accept it at this point. While I'm by no means a fan of the RTD era, my problem with the show nowadays is so much more than a matter of artistic disagreement. I'd gladly accept any means by which Doctor Who could once again be something - ANYTHING - other than this.

ClockworkOcean wrote:Just about anything would seem like a golden age compared to the horrific travesty Moffat and Chibnall have turned it into in recent years. What's become of this show is too ghastly for words. My favoured solution is an alternate sequel true to the spirit of the original series with a new 8th or 9th Doctor, but at this point I honestly think I could live with any option that would enable the invalidation of the Whittaker and Capaldi eras. If someone with an iota of business sense at the BBC were to bring back Tennant and erase the entire Moffat era, even if it meant retconning Series 5 and 6, I'd accept it at this point. While I'm by no means a fan of the RTD era, my problem with the show nowadays is so much more than a matter of artistic disagreement. I'd gladly accept any means by which Doctor Who could once again be something - ANYTHING - other than this.

Agreed I'd be more than happy to keep the Eccelston and Tennant era if it meant erasing Moffat's shit. Even though I love Matt Smith, Moffat is the biggest cunt in Who history and deserves to have his era wiped clean.

I still say that Moffat is worse than Chibnalls, and that Missy is far, far, far worse than Jodie.

I can't say I agree. The Smith era shits on Davies era.

iank wrote:I can't say I agree. The Smith era shits on Davies era.

It does, but absolutely nothing justifies Missy. Missy alone I'm sorry does not excuse the Matt Smith era.

And that's just Missy! There's also Cyber Brig, Clara, the Doctor being the President, the legendary BeKind speech that inspired a parody account.

It angers me that Moffat gets away with it just because Chinballs is so bad. To think the cunt recently hailed Missy as his greatest triumph. He should apologise for her, like Joel Schumacher did for Batman and Robin. Until he does he can fuck off. Even if he does that still doesn't excuse her, but it angers me that he gets away with it.

Worse still a lot of Moffat era fanboys in places like reddit are trying to reassess the Capaldi era as a new McCoy era, an intellectual, misunderstood era that only idiots just didn't get. Oh the irony!

burrunjor wrote:Worse still a lot of Moffat era fanboys in places like reddit are trying to reassess the Capaldi era as a new McCoy era, an intellectual, misunderstood era that only idiots just didn't get. Oh the irony!  

What frustrates me is that there were occasional moments where it genuinely could've been that.

Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, and Mummy on the Orient Express really did make it look like the show was undergoing a change and maturing, and that it's attitude was becoming more based on hard-headed acceptance of cold truths about the universe, and that there was no point in New Who's Disney sentimentality, blubbing and empathizing, magic happy endings, or soap opera banalities anymore. It felt like the show was giving us a stark reminder that the universe has never cared.

It actually made me feel like the she was becoming more in touch with the ethos of old Who, and in a sense picking up where Logopolis left off.

Where I think it went wrong is a combination of Moffat being unable to resist being smartarsed again and having the Doctor masterplan to win really trivial shit (Hell Bent), and a pushing of a feminist agenda (possibly by BBC feminist insiders) that determined Clara had to go violent extremes to prove the Doctor wrong and the woman's empathy view right.

I sometimes think there's almost the ghost of a great era in there, but sadly it all went horribly wrong.

Tanmann wrote:

burrunjor wrote:Worse still a lot of Moffat era fanboys in places like reddit are trying to reassess the Capaldi era as a new McCoy era, an intellectual, misunderstood era that only idiots just didn't get. Oh the irony!  

What frustrates me is that there were occasional moments where it genuinely could've been that.

Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, and Mummy on the Orient Express really did make it look like the show was undergoing a change and maturing, and that it's attitude was becoming more based on hard-headed acceptance of cold truths about the universe, and that there was no point in New Who's Disney sentimentality, blubbing and empathizing, magic happy endings, or soap opera banalities anymore. It felt like the show was giving us a stark reminder that the universe has never cared.

It actually made me feel like the she was becoming more in touch with the ethos of old Who, and in a sense picking up where Logopolis left off.

Where I think it went wrong is a combination of Moffat being unable to resist being smartarsed again and having the Doctor masterplan to win really trivial shit (Hell Bent), and a pushing of a feminist agenda (possibly by BBC feminist insiders) that determined Clara had to go violent extremes to prove the Doctor wrong and the woman's empathy view right.

I sometimes think there's almost the ghost of a great era in there, but sadly it all went horribly wrong.

I've always said that the Capaldi era could have been great if they had done the following things.

1/ No PC posturing (obvs)

2/ Dumped Clara after season 1. (I actually like Jenna Coleman as an actress, but she didnt go well with Peter. They had 0 chemistry.)

3. Made Osgood and Journey Blue the companions. Yeah okay biased here, but I do have reasons beyond oggling

I think both could have eased us back into DW being a total sci fi show, rather than a soap with a sci fi setting. Modern audiences thanks to RTD had come to expect a focus on the companions home life.

Osgood and Journey's personal lives are rooted in sci fi. Journey comes from a future war with the Daleks, Osgood works for UNIT. If you went back to their home lives then they would have to automatically be sci fi adventures, rather than just "I'M EATING CHIPS WITH ME MUM".

4/ Made the search for Gallifrey more of a thing, and brought Romana back for a spin off instead of Class.

5/ Cast Robert Carlyle as Capaldi's Master and make him a manipulative, power hungry, evil bastard. (Those two would have gone particularly well together. Rumplestiltskin vs Malcolm Tucker!)

6/ Focused on sci fi and horror and had more stories set on other worlds.

All of these things and Capaldi could have been as good as Pertwee. As it stands he was awful.

He never had a single classic (Heaven Sent is wildly overrated. I actually don't like having the bulk of the Doctors life happen when he's being tortured. Its too much.)

He also never had a companion that he meshed with until Bill in S10, and his archenemy Missy aside from being pandering undermined his morality.

He made such excuses for her vicious murder of innocent people to push the friendship crap it made the Doctor hateful.  In s10 when Bill says Missy is a murderer, Capaldi actually says that Missy's crimes are no worse than Bill eating a bacon sandwhich for lunch as both involved murder of lesser creatures.

LOL that's the type of argument that the villains used in the classic era! The Tereliptles, Sutekh both used that argument to slaughter people! I guess the Doctor would agree if he liked them personally?

I would've certainly been happy with Deep Breath being Clara's departure. Her standing up to the android would've been a strong note for her to finish on. And Osgood would certainly have been a nice replacement companion to pair with Capaldi.

I also agree that the way the search for Gallifrey mission statement at the end of Day of the Doctor quickly fell by the wayside by Series 8 was dismaying and made the show feel rather aimless.

There's a part of me that would've been interested in seeing how Moffat would write the Master of old, for a more Delgado-esque actor..... but you know me. For the most part I feel the Master had his time in the 70's and has been far too overused over the years, and really should've gone out strong in The Deadly Assassin or Castrovalva instead of being constantly brought back.

Capaldi's infantile justifications for Missy's actions sound pretty indigestible, as was RTD's hints of the love that dare not speak its name between them..... but to me that's just an inevitable byproduct of having to somehow explain why the Doctor has tolerated the villain thus far and hadn't just offed the fucker decades ago.

Tanmann wrote:What frustrates me is that there were occasional moments where it genuinely could've been that.

Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, and Mummy on the Orient Express really did make it look like the show was undergoing a change and maturing, and that it's attitude was becoming more based on hard-headed acceptance of cold truths about the universe, and that there was no point in New Who's Disney sentimentality, blubbing and empathizing, magic happy endings, or soap opera banalities anymore. It felt like the show was giving us a stark reminder that the universe has never cared.

It actually made me feel like the she was becoming more in touch with the ethos of old Who, and in a sense picking up where Logopolis left off.

Where I think it went wrong is a combination of Moffat being unable to resist being smartarsed again and having the Doctor masterplan to win really trivial shit (Hell Bent), and a pushing of a feminist agenda (possibly by BBC feminist insiders) that determined Clara had to go violent extremes to prove the Doctor wrong and the woman's empathy view right.

I sometimes think there's almost the ghost of a great era in there, but sadly it all went horribly wrong.

For a brief moment, the beginning of Series 8 managed to reignite my hope and enthusiasm for the show after the stale, uninspired dirge of Series 7, but it turned out to be a total false dawn, and a particularly cruel one at that. Something as uniformly horrible as Series 11 can easily be written off because it has absolutely nothing going for it, whereas Series 8 had arguably the finest actor ever cast in the role, exceptional new writing talent in Jamie Mathieson, and ostensibly seemed to be moving in a more mature storytelling direction, all of which made me more inclined to forgive its missteps at the time. Series 9 is what killed my enthusiasm completely. The Magician's Apprentice alone was enough to make me want to give up.

I actually tried watching that again earlier this year. Fuck it's bad.

Tanmann wrote: Capaldi's infantile justifications for Missy's actions sound pretty indigestible, as was RTD's hints of the love that dare not speak its name between them..... but to me that's just an inevitable byproduct of having to somehow explain why the Doctor has tolerated the villain thus far and hadn't just offed the fucker decades ago.

I don't think you need to have the Doctor not want to kill him. In the classic era the Doctor tried to kill the Master all the time, but the Master slipped through the net.

They were like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Neither will ever wipe the other out, but neither will completely triumph over the other.

Yes the Master never takes over the earth, but the Doctor always fails to save hundreds, sometimes millions, sometimes trillions of lives from the Master like in Logopolis. Furthermore he is never even able to bring the Master to justice for his crimes either. The villain is always free to roam the universe.

Neither will ever rub the other out, and the longer their feud goes on, the more hateful it becomes. That's what made it so effective.

(There were a few times where the Doctor wouldn't kill the Master if he was unarmed. He has the same attitude towards all of his enemies however, even Davros in Resurrection. The Master similarly doesn't always kill the Doctor because he wants to prolong his death, so they balance each other out that way too.)

IMO it was a great way of ensuring neither were undermined. Having the Doctor not want to kill him, undermines both however. Now the Master only survives because he up against a useless hero who spares him, whilst the Doctor is a hypocrite who apparently considers Osgood's life and Nyssa's entire home planet as being on a par with a Bacon Sandwhich.

Here.

World Enough and Time wrote:

DOCTOR: She got us home from Mars.
BILL: She's a murderer.
DOCTOR: Enjoying your bacon sandwich?
BILL: Why?
DOCTOR: Because it had a mummy and a daddy. Go tell a pig about your moral high ground.

The Visitation wrote:

DOCTOR: This carnage isn't necessary.
LEADER: It's survival, Doctor. Just as these primitives kill lesser species to protect themselves, so I kill them.
DOCTOR: That's hardly an argument.
LEADER: It's not supposed to be an argument. It's a statement!

I feel sorry for the Tereliptle leader now. He was only doing what Missy did, yet the Doctor let him burn to death whilst she got a big wet snog, a piano and a carry out?

PS is anyone dreading Clever Dick's review of the 12th Doctors era? I like his videos but since he has adopted this "its all about change" crap I shudder to think how he'll defend Missy.

iank wrote:I actually tried watching that again earlier this year. Fuck it's bad.

What? Series 8? Torchwood? Or World Enough and Time?

The only New Who I watched recently (in January this year) was s10 for the second time. Definitely the best of the Capaldi era, but the MIssy stuff lets it down.

Best we can say about it was that it inspired a hilarious parody account.

burrunjor wrote:

iank wrote:I actually tried watching that again earlier this year. Fuck it's bad.

What? Series 8? Torchwood? Or World Enough and Time?

The only New Who I watched recently (in January this year) was s10 for the second time. Definitely the best of the Capaldi era, but the MIssy stuff lets it down.

Best we can say about it was that it inspired a hilarious parody account.

Magician's Apprentice. Awful on every level.

ClockworkOcean wrote:For a brief moment, the beginning of Series 8 managed to reignite my hope and enthusiasm for the show after the stale, uninspired dirge of Series 7, but it turned out to be a total false dawn, and a particularly cruel one at that. Something as uniformly horrible as Series 11 can easily be written off because it has absolutely nothing going for it, whereas Series 8 had arguably the finest actor ever cast in the role, exceptional new writing talent in Jamie Mathieson, and ostensibly seemed to be moving in a more mature storytelling direction, all of which made me more inclined to forgive its missteps at the time. Series 9 is what killed my enthusiasm completely. The Magician's Apprentice alone was enough to make me want to give up.

I thought Series 7 had some good moments in there (certainly I would've welcomed seeing more from Neil Cross), but I know what you mean.

There were bits of promise in Series 8, and ideas that could've blossomed into being worthy of their own spin-off, like Flatline and Mummy on the Orient Express. I would've loved to see a Dalek Wars series based off the premise of Into the Dalek.

The stark difference with Series 9 is that it seems less about that new ground, and more about disappearing up its own arse, and Moffat turning Doctor Who history into his plaything to retcon as he pleases for reasons I still don't understand.

Even MrTardis said The Magician's Apprentice was a nadir for Capaldi and probably did more to kill the show's ratings than anything else.

burrunjor wrote:I don't think you need to have the Doctor not want to kill him. In the classic era the Doctor tried to kill the Master all the time, but the Master slipped through the net.

Well let's be honest. Far from 'all the time', it was a very rare occurrence that the Doctor proved willing to destroy the Master for good. I can think of 4 or 5 examples (The Mind of Evil, The Deadly Assassin, Planet of Fire, Mark of the Rani and Survival) and really by the length of time the Master's been in the show, that's barely a drop in the ocean, nevermind an exception to the rule.

More often than not that intention seems to never cross the Doctor's mind, and long before New Who he seems content to put up with the Master's menace forever, with The Time Monster and The King's Demons being particular examples of the Doctor trying to save the Master from someone else's retribution (and arguably being partly responsible for the Master's future victims).

If the show indulges him too much, it begins to look like the Doctor does.

There was actually a brief moment in Utopia where the Doctor says "Master, I'm sorry" before taking his screwdriver to the Tardis where I honestly thought Tennant's Doctor *was* going to condemn the Master to death to stop him killing any more innocents. And I thought that would be a good way to set the terms of that antagonism from now on.

But that proved a bit of a wild misread.

Yes the Master never takes over the earth, but the Doctor always fails to save hundreds, sometimes millions, sometimes trillions of lives from the Master like in Logopolis. Furthermore he is never even able to bring the Master to justice for his crimes either. The villain is always free to roam the universe.

The problem is I think that approach (particularly after the massive collateral of Logopolis) raises too many questions of why the Doctor doesn't have more of a problem with that fact, and remains content to carry on his usual adventures? Why doesn't the Doctor instead do more to proactively hunt him down to make up for past blunders? In a sense it questions the entire premise of the show.

I mean it made sense why not in the Pertwee era, because the Doctor was marooned on Earth and had no means to pursue the Master or have much effect on the injustices of the wider universe in general, and in any case had a huge caseload of other potential Earth invaders to deal with.

But then I think that's partly why the Master was never really designed to survive the Pertwee era.

I think now Logopolis should only have been done if the stories after were going to take it seriously as a game changer, and by and large they never did.

Neither will ever rub the other out, and the longer their feud goes on, the more hateful it becomes. That's what made it so effective.

That is case and point to me of why the last we should've seen of their feud was The Deadly Assassin though. It all largely went backwards and apathetic after that.

There were a few times where the Doctor wouldn't kill the Master if he was unarmed. He has the same attitude towards all of his enemies however, even Davros in Resurrection.

There were suggestions in The Five Doctors and Mark of the Rani, that the Master genuinely was indestructible, or was even a remnant of the all-powerful ancient Time Lords of old who created the Death Zone, which was why he was so powerful, untouchable and so sadistic, and able to return unmarked from being burnt to death.

For me that might've mitigated the Doctor's failure to destroy him had they gone with it. Hell, even Last of the Time Lords toys with the idea that only a particular advanced, one of its kind gun can kill the Master. But then that gets revealed as a lie anyway.

Beyond that though I always felt Resurrection exposed the problem with the Master by the 1980's. Namely that he'd already been superseded as the Doctor's main arch foe by Davros (who was frankly a much more complex character), and was a redundant foe now.

The Master similarly doesn't always kill the Doctor because he wants to prolong his death, so they balance each other out that way too.

I always got the sense the Master was like the Doctor's stalker. Not motivated by any romantic infatuations, but more of deep psychotic personal jealousy at his intellectual better, and a desire to ruin the Doctor's life and his good work. Killing the Doctor would almost defeat the point as there'd be no way of the Master rubbing victory in the Doctor's face then.

Iank wrote:Magician's Apprentice. Awful on every level.

Oh yes almost a check list of awful things about the later Capaldi era.

1/ Missy doing horrible things like murdering a man, and gloating about widowing his wife, and the Doctor chatting with her like NOTHING happened. (He also doesn't bring up Osgood's death or Chang's death when he meets her again, and worst of all lied to UNIT that she died to protect Missy! Hurrah for our hero, lying to the friends and relatives of a mass murderer to protect them.)

2/ Continuity porn to win the old fans round, except they'll never be won round again after Death in Heaven, and these pointless references instead just end up driving new people away.

3/ Pointless rewriting of the shows past and its lore, like the Dalek casing's bit, Daleks always having had a concept of mercy, Davros actually having a recording of every Dalek defeat, the reason he ran away being revealed etc.

4/ Classic villains doing NOTHING. What the fuck does Missy actually do? Similarly what do the Daleks accomplish? They don't even kill anyone!

5/ Pandering to SJW fuckwits. Aside from the ultimate abomination Missy herself, we are also introduced to the idea that the Doctor was once a little girl (later revealed to be true in the finale.)

Its the perfect story to show people as to why the show lost its way.

Tanman wrote:Well let's be honest. Far from 'all the time', it was a very rare occurrence that the Doctor proved willing to destroy the Master for good. I can think of 4 or 5 examples (The Mind of Evil, The Deadly Assassin, Planet of Fire, Mark of the Rani and Survival) and really by the length of time the Master's been in the show, that's barely a drop in the ocean, nevermind an exception to the rule.

More often than not that intention seems to never cross the Doctor's mind, and long before New Who he seems content to put up with the Master's menace forever, with The Time Monster and The King's Demons being particular examples of the Doctor trying to save the Master from someone else's retribution (and arguably being partly responsible for the Master's future victims).

Not true at all.

Most of the time he tries to kill him, or doesn't care if he does die.

Terror of the Autons, he is happy for UNIT to shoot him.

The Mind of Evil he tries to blow him up.

Claws of Axos he tries to trap him in a time loop.

The Sea Devils he is happy to blow the base up with him inside.

The Deadly Assassin he boots him into a bottomless pit.

The Keeper of Traken he blows up his TARDIS with him in it.

Castrovalva he leaves him to be torn apart by his own creations, whilst the Master begs for mercy and says he hopes he's gone for good.

The Five Doctors, Jon Pertwee leaves him to die, and Peter Davison leaves him at the mercy of the Cybermen. "Well if he survived I'll say sorry."

Planet of Fire he leaves him to burn to death.

The Mark of the Rani he traps him in a TARDIS with a giant Dinosaur!

The Ultimate Foe, he tells the Time Lords (who he knows have a death sentence) "Do what you want with the Master" and only makes a case for Glitz.

Survival he tries to smash his skull in, and only relents when he realises the Cheetah virus will take him over. He also tells Ace that sooner or later one of them will kill the other.

There are only a few instances where he spares him, and as I said its only because he won't kill unless its in self defence, which is the same attitude he's shown to ALL of his enemies.

In The Time Monster meanwhile he makes it clear to Jo that he couldn't condem anyone to an eternity of torture.

JO: But, why? I mean, why did you even ask?
DOCTOR: Jo, would you condemn anybody to an eternity of torment? Even the Master?
JO: No. No, I guess I wouldn't.

To be fair this is a valid argument, and why Human Nature/Family of Blood fucks up the characters morality.

Beyond that though I always felt Resurrection exposed the problem with the Master by the 1980's. Namely that he'd already been superseded as the Doctor's main arch foe by Davros (who was frankly a much more complex character), and was a redundant foe now.

TBH there's more you can do with the Master. As much as I love Davros, the Master has more to his personality if used right.