Series 11

Vulnavia wrote:What's the actual deal with that pregnant bloke thing? Is that seriously something that's going to be in this She-Who series?

Yes. Even I couldn't have predicted what a parody this shitstain had become.

River Song has said she's had a couple of wives, so that's at least not out of nowhere.

burrunjor wrote:

Vulnavia wrote:What's the actual deal with that pregnant bloke thing? Is that seriously something that's going to be in this She-Who series?

Yes. Even I couldn't have predicted what a parody this shitstain had become.

Companion? Monster? What's the chat?

Richayard wrote:

I'm sure it'll look better when it's properly shot and lit but I'm not a fan. It's an ugly, over-designed mess that reminds me of the RTD era sea urchin. When I think of the TARDIS I don't think of the rectum of a Michael Bay Transformer but that seems to be what they've gone with.

As for the pregnancy side of things, it would be following the fine tradition of at least one story in Judge Dredd Megazine andRed Dwarf.

For the record, I don't want to see it, though.

shan164 wrote:As for the pregnancy side of things, it would be following the fine tradition of at least one story in Judge Dredd Megazine andRed Dwarf.

For the record, I don't want to see it, though.

Difference is though Red Dwarf is a parody, so what's good in it might not be good in a serious production. Its the same with Futurama. There are gags in Futurama that I have seen pop up in Dogtor Poo which just look jarring.

Like having the bad guy travel backwards in time and want to fuck himself. Futurama did that with Nudar before Missy and Simm's Master wanted to fuck each other.

Adam Ant Driver wrote:
I'm sure it'll look better when it's properly shot and lit but I'm not a fan. It's an ugly, over-designed mess that reminds me of the RTD era sea urchin. When I think of the TARDIS I don't think of the rectum of a Michael Bay Transformer but that seems to be what they've gone with.

It seems Moffat’s writing style has infiltrated everything else: throw all the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. The problem is you end up with “designs by committee” and those NEVER turn out well.

burrunjor wrote:

shan164 wrote:As for the pregnancy side of things, it would be following the fine tradition of at least one story in Judge Dredd Megazine andRed Dwarf.

For the record, I don't want to see it, though.

Difference is though Red Dwarf is a parody, so what's good in it might not be good in a serious production. Its the same with Futurama. There are gags in Futurama that I have seen pop up in Dogtor Poo which just look jarring.

Like having the bad guy travel backwards in time and want to fuck himself. Futurama did that with Nudar before Missy and Simm's Master wanted to fuck each other.

Robert Heinlein used that device long before everyone (edit: I meant everyone mentioned - wouldn't be surprised if there was someone even earlier). Quite effectively too.

As Shan164 mentioned, a Judge Dredd The Megazine male pregnancy comedy strip from 1991:

tardis wrote:

Adam Ant Driver wrote:
I'm sure it'll look better when it's properly shot and lit but I'm not a fan. It's an ugly, over-designed mess that reminds me of the RTD era sea urchin. When I think of the TARDIS I don't think of the rectum of a Michael Bay Transformer but that seems to be what they've gone with.

It seems Moffat’s writing style has infiltrated everything else: throw all the speghitti against the wall and see what sticks. The problem is you end up with “designs by committee” and those NEVER turn out well.

I did like that Steven Moffat was at least trying new things. One thing about Doctor Who was for a time travel show, for the best part, it seemed very linear. I can only think of Battleground being a case where a Doctor encountered evidence of things he was yet to do.

Maybe not everything worked for me but I tend to like interesting failures on occasion at least over always playing things blandly safe. Also, what doesn't work for me (at what does) will be different to other people and overall, as log as it keeps enough of the viewers on board enough of the time, that's what people at the business end are always aiming for.

Of course, how the audience is going to work out from this season on, well that is the question, isn't it?

Fantastic video from Bowlestrek.

Again this shows how all of this Americans taking over DW paranoia is nonsense. I'd much rather this guy whose a yank run DW than Chinballs, or Mofftwat or RTD.

shan164 wrote:
I did like that Steven Moffat was at least trying new things. One thing about Doctor Who was for a time travel show, for the best part, it seemed very linear. I can only think of Battleground being a case where a Doctor encountered evidence of things he was yet to do.

Maybe not everything worked for me but I tend to like interesting failures on occasion at least over always playing things blandly safe. Also, what doesn't work for me (at what does) will be different to other people and overall, as log as it keeps enough of the viewers on board enough of the time, that's what people at the business end are always aiming for.

Of course, how the audience is going to work out from this season on, well that is the question, isn't it?

For me the problem with Moffat's style is that he had to include EVERY IDEA EVER at the same time. Take the Hybrid, for instance, first it was Me/Ashildr, then it was the Doctor (similar to the Other, only executed badly), then it was the Doctor and Clara. I think it's pretty bad writing to not just pick one and stick with it. But no, he has to throw everything out there and see what sticks.

Or his interview for "Knock, Knock", he admitted to telling the writer to put 'every haunted house cliche' into the script. No. More isn't always more, sometimes it's stupid overkill, and wasted time, effort, money, and scripting that could be used in other ways.

I'll be honest and say I've watched most of the things Moffat has done: DW, Sherlock, Coupling, etc. He has this problem no matter the genre, so I've just learned to hate his writing. He has some fantastic ideas, and he did experiment, I appreciated that, but the other areas of lacking makes it hard for me to properly recognise the good qualities, if that makes sense?

From this point forward, it will be interesting. But given how they silence the nay-sayers, I don't think it's going to matter as much as I wish it would matter.

I agree. There were a lot of times when things seemed to get too crowded for me with Steven Moffat's ongoing plots. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what the Hybrid was supposed to be. Was it the resulting effects of the actions of the Doctor and Clara working in tandem? It was something along those lines, wasn't it?

shan164 wrote:I agree. There were a lot of times when things seemed to get too crowded for me with Steven Moffat's ongoing plots. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what the Hybrid was supposed to be. Was it the resulting effects of the actions of the Doctor and Clara working in tandem? It was something along those lines, wasn't it?

The Hybrid was the reason the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey in the first place.  (He also after reading about the hybrid had a breakdown and went mad for a while, which is why the first Doctor was so callous, and why the Doctor is eccentric and funny in general.)

As to what the Hybrid actually was, well it was said to be a creature made from two warrior races, who would destroy a billion hearts to heal its own, and bring about the end of the universe. The Time Lords and the Daleks assumed it would be a hybrid of their races, the Doctor later thought it might be the Zygon/Osgood, and Ashildir but it later was conformed to be the Doctor and Clara.

A Time Lord and a human who love each other so much they will destroy all of creation for each other. Its quite possibly the biggest pile of soppy, Mills and Boone shit I've ever seen, and completely fucks up old who. Now the Doctor was on the run from this stupid prophecy (that he did nothing about for 10000000 years?) Added to that he now knew about the Daleks before leaving Gallifrey too?

Oh and I forgot Missy, the lover of chaos, who wants the Doctor to love it too, brought Clara and the Doctor together, knowing that they would fall in love with each other and be willing to destroy the universe for each other. I suppose that's a slightly better explanation than Missy's reason in series 8 that Clara was a nag who would drive him crazy. Clearly Moff was making it up as he went along. Both reasons are shit though.

I got as far as getting it was the Doctor and Clara in some fashion but I could never quite wrap my head around exactly what they were getting at.

One thing I hope we see going forwards is a return to companions being people who arrive and eventually leave without having the entire universe both revolving around them and the universe depending on them for their survival.

It seems like just about everyone saved the universe (or at least a planet) at some point on average and I think I was finding it a bit much at the end when I looked back on the show as a whole.

shan164 wrote:I got as far as getting it was the Doctor and Clara in some fashion but I could never quite wrap my head around exactly what they were getting at.

One thing I hope we see going forwards is a return to companions being people who arrive and eventually leave without having the entire universe both revolving around them and the universe depending on them for their survival.

It seems like just about everyone saved the universe (or at least a planet) at some point on average and I think I was finding it a bit much at the end when I looked back on the show as a whole.

Yeah, I didn't get it either, but then it was so convoluted and over the top by then (especially with saving Clara, seriously, why can't Moffat let companions just DIE??), that I stopped caring.

Seriously. I loved Bill early on because it was back to being just the normal old 'companion just has a normal life then BOOM, Doctor.' But she was utterly ruined by pretty much everything in "World Enough and Time/Doctor Falls". But this is how both Moffat and RTD wrote: their companions were so Mary Sue it wasn't even funny. Even Martha and Donna were ruined in the end.

Having watched Broadchurch, I expect the same but worse from Chibnall. Sadly, S11 seems insistent on proving me right rather than wrong.

Steven Moffat had this general concept idea I quite liked the sound of, he said in this era of streaming whole series at once, maybe a future season of Doctor Who should try that.

I think someone putting together a story where the Tardis lands somewhere and they leave it at the very start of Episode One and don't return to it until the end of the season could be very interesting, something like travelling across the one world which varies radically through various different means, kind of like The Keys of Marinus could turn out to be quite good if done right.

That's similar to some of the things Capaldi has said. He didn't like that he couldn't tell how much time had passed for the Doctor from one adventure to the next in the series he was involved. (As a writer, I like that because it gives me a lot of options for where and how to set my stories when I dabble in the Whoniverse.)

Classic Who was similar to both Capaldi and Moffat's wishes. They left the TARDIS for the entire time of the serial and then went off on the next adventure immediately. The scenes in the TARDIS served as the transition points from one Serial to the next rather than a place where things happened.

The Doctor being stuck somewhere doesn't tend to work well with either classic or nuWho in my opinion. It's why even with 3rd Doctor being stranded on Earth, they found ways around it.

The only way you might be able to make it work is if the location was not Earth. But, you'd need fantastic writers to make that work: ones willing to explore social and cultural contexts of the planet. And they'd need the head writer to plan out all of that for the planet so that the other writers would have a framework in which to function. The speed at which Doctor Who as a production is done would prohibit this level of planning.

Honestly, timing was one of the reasons I was disappointed in "Doctor Mysterio" specifically and most of Series 10 in general. They took a year off (granted because Moff was doing SHERLOCK, but still) and could have/should have been able to develop something like that, but they didn't.

Actually, with the Vault and the Doctor guarding it, they could have easily done what Moffat suggested for Series 10. He didn't even do what he's suggesting everyone else do? Well, that should tell you everything you need to know about that suggestion...

What did he suggest for Season 10?

Idk beyond what we were shown. My point was, with the plot line of the Vault and the Doctor stranded watching it, Moffat could have carried out his “leave the TARDIS at the start of the series and don’t return until the end.” Series 10 didn’t have to be set on Earth.

The fact that Moffat didn’t use his own idea for his own series tells me he’s either not that serious about it, or knows it actually wouldn’t work in reality.

"The Doctor being stuck somewhere doesn't tend to work well with either classic or nuWho in my opinion. It's why even with 3rd Doctor being stranded on Earth, they found ways around it."

Keep the different locations on the one world/city varied enough and it's less of an issue, for all intents and purposes it would be like planet (and time) hopping.

shan164 wrote:"The Doctor being stuck somewhere doesn't tend to work well with either classic or nuWho in my opinion. It's why even with 3rd Doctor being stranded on Earth, they found ways around it."

Keep the location varied enough and it's less of an issue, for all intents and purposes it would be like planet (and time) hopping.

I think its okay if the audience knows it's not going to last long.

burrunjor wrote:

shan164 wrote:"The Doctor being stuck somewhere doesn't tend to work well with either classic or nuWho in my opinion. It's why even with 3rd Doctor being stranded on Earth, they found ways around it."

Keep the location varied enough and it's less of an issue, for all intents and purposes it would be like planet (and time) hopping.

I think its okay if the audience knows it's not going to last long.

I think one interconnected story with a series of smaller vignettes as a one season thing could really work well.

Logan's Run (the book) is an excellent example of this. Overall, it's a race to get away to safety but they visit many wildly different locales along the way through the mazecar system (underwater cities, abandoned ones, ruins of D.C, the Arctic Circle and so on).

Again, it COULD work, but they would basically have to start planning now for S13 for there to be enough planning to implement it in a way the works well.

I just don't see that ever happening. It's something that works better on paper than in reality.

Richayard wrote:

My god, that shit looks like Eccleston's TARDIS interior re-dressed with left overs from Frontios.

Can't believe you guys are still waffling about this abortion.