50th opinions

Just watched it again last night.

Sad to say I'm almost done with Matt on my rewatch. Overall his era was good. One poor season and some clunkers, but nothing really, really terrible. At the very least when Matt's era was bad it still felt like a proper version of the series, unlike the RTD era. The likes of Love and Monsters, the Slitheen and the Anne Droid all feel like piss takes of the show.

Of course its about to get worse. I'm not sure I'll last the Capaldi era. I'm a completest but dear god Death in Heaven will most likely finish me off.

Anyway overall I still enjoy the 50th. I do think it would have been better to use Paul than the War Doctor, but its an enjoyable enough celebration. Its marred by what came after of course. They set up this great search for Gallifrey story arc and it just goes nowhere.

IMO rather than make Matt 13, they should have made him 12, and have Peter be the last Doctor and ended the show with a final showdown between the Doctor and the Daleks, where he finally rescues Gallifrey, but dies in the process. That would have brought New Who to a brilliant end, wrapped up all its loose ends, and allowed a potential alternate sequel in the future.

I still can't believe the way they went in the Capaldi era. Its such a shame, up until the end of Matt's time it was still salvagable, but I'm about to hit the point of no return with the dickless Master.

PS Ingrid Oliver suits the nerdy look, though she can pull off any look.

Looking back...it was shit.

The only decent things about it were John Hurt and Tom Baker.

Day of the Doctor should have ended the show (rumour is that was the original plan anyway) with the franchise being given the Sherlock treatment every two or three years.

I'll never forget that great cinematic experiance of watching it, and then going back to my brother's house to catch the trailers for both "Time of the Doctor" and Sherlock season three...among people who still thought DW was cool and who never thought that way again shortly afterward.

Well I was outraged peter davison did not make a appearance nor Sylvester McCoy

Old footage is still not the same.

I found it disappointing at the time and it has not aged well already. The simplest reason is... it's not a 50th. It's a New Who smug celebratory circlejerk with barely a smattering of anything relating to the classic series.
The Moment is a thing that can look like anyone. Instead of using this to allow for past Doctor and companions within the narrative, it's Billie fucking Piper. Again. Even though she's appearing to someone who doesn't even recognise her and thus to whom her appearance has no impact at all.
And making the Time War the crux of the entire plot is a disaster anyway. It's such a New Who centric plot point.
Where is this a celebration of the 50th? A brief black and white opening. A few photos at UNIT. Old footage for ten seconds. And Tom wedged in at the end for about as long .
Then there's the tone of the whole thing. Pure bombast. Pure New Who. As tonally far removed from any era of classic that you can get.









Plus it's just shit.

Well I finished Time of the Doctor. That's me done with Matt. I have to say his last story whilst I enjoyed it at the time really doesn't hold up well. Its too drawn out, oversentimental, and Tasha Lame is as cringey as River Song.

I watched Deep Breath and TBH I think I'm going to stop now. I don't think I can sit through the Capaldi era.

I might have thought Eccelston was terrible, there might have been things I didn't like about the Tennant era, but the Capaldi era actually angers me.

Missy's very presence alone pisses me off more than anything in the RTD era, as she represents a classic character being destroyed by a talentless, balless, spineless twerp, simply to pander to the most toxic "fans".

I'll probably call it a day now with New Who.

All I can say is that Matt Smith was the only Doctor worthwhile in the entire series. Eccelstons was woeful, Tennant was miscast but enjoyable from time to time, but Matt though still suffering from Moffats cringey crap, at least made a decent stab at it. Its such a shame he didn't get a producer like Letts, Williams, Hinchcliff, Lambert or even JNT who could have steered him in the right direction.

Zarius wrote:Day of the Doctor should have ended the show (rumour is that was the original plan anyway) with the franchise being given the Sherlock treatment every two or three years.

I largely feel the same way about The Five Doctors.

Anyhow, I did find quite a bit to enjoy in Day of the Doctor (the Gallifrey Falls painting set-piece, the Moment itself I thought was a beautiful idea, John Hurt lifting many of the scenes he was in), but it was definitely a shitty way of Moffat to marginalize the classic era.

At the very least the Gallifreyan Time War setting should've provided excuse enough to bring back McGann, Susan and Romana if nothing else, and yet he seemed to go out of his way to exclude them. I even thought of a way that the Moment could show John Hurt's Doctor instances from his past lives too, or when contemplating the moral decision, he could've been reading his own diary on past encounters with Daleks, with voice overs from the past actors.

As Iank says, it was more of a tribute to New Who than anything, and I suspect in the casting of John Hurt's retconned past Doctor, also a tribute to the imagined version of classic Who that Moffat *wished* existed and wasn't anything to do with the one he was so embarrassed by.

Certainly Mark Gatiss' docudrama at the time was the far truer Anniversary special.

At the time I reconciled myself to liking Day of the Doctor despite my grumbles, but as the show went on, I realized the show did feel a lot emptier with the Doctor's destruction of Gallifrey backstory now retconned as having never happened. It just took away a lot of the substance and meaning of the character and what he does, both retroactively and going forward, and left me just not caring as much anymore.

I think now it was definitely a mistake.

Apart from Tom's brief appearance at the end, I found the whole thing to be overblown, self-congratulatory NuWho shite. I couldn't possibly bring myself to watch it again.

Still not seen it/them.
This is NuWho. It doesn't matter how they try to dress it up with cameos, they're only interested in promoting their own shit.

I've not seen it since 2013. 2013 was the greatest year for me as a fan. Everything I did revolved around the classic series. I barely had any resentment for fans back then. I was running my fanpage, beating off to companions without any guilt or shame and just generally enjoying the show. I remember feeling so excited for the show's future after watching DOTD and having so much faith in Capaldi. Six years later and I'm all but drained. The magic surrounding the show has disappeared. I even find it difficult to get excited for the classic series these days which depresses me immensely.

Pepsi Maxil wrote:I've not seen it since 2013. 2013 was the greatest year for me as a fan. Everything I did revolved around the classic series. I barely had any resentment for fans back then. I was running my fanpage, beating off to companions without any guilt or shame and just generally enjoying the show. I remember feeling so excited for the show's future after watching DOTD and having so much faith in Capaldi. Six years later and I'm all but drained. The magic surrounding the show has disappeared. I even find it difficult to get excited for the classic series these days which depresses me immensely.

To be honest, we should've known to have a bad feeling about where the show was heading, post-anniversary, just from watching that bloody horrific afterparty the same night.

Pepsi Maxil wrote:I've not seen it since 2013. 2013 was the greatest year for me as a fan. Everything I did revolved around the classic series. I barely had any resentment for fans back then. I was running my fanpage, beating off to companions without any guilt or shame and just generally enjoying the show. I remember feeling so excited for the show's future after watching DOTD and having so much faith in Capaldi. Six years later and I'm all but drained. The magic surrounding the show has disappeared. I even find it difficult to get excited for the classic series these days which depresses me immensely.

Same here. I remember at the time being hyped about the Capaldi era and how it could have been on par with the original series and that Moffat would inject some of his Series 5 magic back into it.

Sadly, it was a big lie....

Tanmann wrote:To be honest, we should've known to have a bad feeling about where the show was heading, post-anniversary, just from watching that bloody horrific afterparty the same night.

I never actually saw the afterparty. Care to explain?

Indrid Mercury wrote:I never actually saw the afterparty. Care to explain?

This is marvellous television. Enjoy.

Well that was....interesting. Just give me a moment....

Tanmann wrote:

Pepsi Maxil wrote:I've not seen it since 2013. 2013 was the greatest year for me as a fan. Everything I did revolved around the classic series. I barely had any resentment for fans back then. I was running my fanpage, beating off to companions without any guilt or shame and just generally enjoying the show. I remember feeling so excited for the show's future after watching DOTD and having so much faith in Capaldi. Six years later and I'm all but drained. The magic surrounding the show has disappeared. I even find it difficult to get excited for the classic series these days which depresses me immensely.

To be honest, we should've known to have a bad feeling about where the show was heading, post-anniversary, just from watching that bloody horrific afterparty the same night.

Yeah, that was a bloody shambles.

Indrid Mercury wrote:

Tanmann wrote:To be honest, we should've known to have a bad feeling about where the show was heading, post-anniversary, just from watching that bloody horrific afterparty the same night.

I never actually saw the afterparty. Care to explain?

It was broadcast live, right after Day of the Doctor, and it was basically a lot of rush, gaudily overenthusiastic interviews with the entire cast at the party asking them how great they thought the special was. Interspersed with two live Doctor Who-themed fan weddings that looked like really sad, miserable affairs (I hate to judge but I think that's taking the interest in the show a bit too far).

It was just a ghastly watch really.

Also, what the hell were One Direction meant to have with the previous 50 years of Doctor Who anyway?

I thought it was pretty bad at the time. This and Time of the Doctor were the last I saw of NuWho live, or regularly at all - and it left a poor aftertaste.

I haven't rewatched it.

It was clearly a NuWho anniversary with the Classic parts feeling like an after-thought, if a tribute at all.