RTD Vs. Moffat

Who is worse/better as showrunner?

Tough question, it's like asking if it's better to have severe constipation or diarrhea so bad you can't even make it to the toilet.

Both showrunners have a long list of cons and a couple of pros.

Davies
- Idiotic writing
- Inconsistent 10th Doctor, he was either broody or a hyper child
- Couldn't resolve stories in a satisfying way
- Cheap and nasty visual style and inconsistent production values
- Smug
- Terrible romance and companions
- Didn't write any standout episodes in my opinion
- Imposed his own agenda on the show
+ Could restrain himself to at least keep the stories simple
+ Better balance between normal dialogue and jokes for the most part

Moffat
- Idiotic writing
- Can't resolve stories in a satisfying way
- Smug
- Can't resist trying to show off by convoluting the story until it's almost incoherent
- Imposes his own agenda on the show
- Quips out the arse
- Forces his own creations to be a returning thing (Weeping angels, River Song)
- Missy and the CyberBrig
+ More cinematic visual style and better production values
+ Better companions
+ Wrote some decent episodes under Davies and on his own

I'll pick RTD for the simple reason I can watch any episodes from his run more than once.
Moffat doesn't quite have the same value for me. Yes, even the burping wheelie bin. I'll take that over anything from the past few years!
Given that I'd pick anything else to watch over the show anyway. Worse, my dissatisfaction has also extended to the Classic Series. Maybe I need a good long break from it all.
It clearly isn't my show now. I've either been left behind or I'm just not that into it.

Burping Wheelie>>>>>>Cyber-Brig.

It pains me to say it, but Davies. Even his last season still has some gems amidst the drivel, but go passed Moffat's 2nd and it's naught but shite.

RTD knew how to draw in the plebs. Moffat tried to make geeks out of Joe Public with his approach and it just does'nt work like that. I prefer more bits of Moffat over RTD as far as ambition goes, but ambition also needs to have some semblence of direction. With Davies, as much as you want to frown upon the populist approach, it did have direction, and it did have success.

If I had to choose it'd be RTD - grudgingly, as his idea simply doesn't fit Dr Who in my opinion but you consistently felt he was 100% excited and giving it his all.

Davies' vision is enthusiastic rather than intelligent, and perhaps his history with kids' shows like Why Don't You and bawdy romps like Casanova comes through in his Nu Who, often to a cringeworthy degree. However the enthusiasm kind of carries you along, not least when Tennant is in it: unless you can't stand him as an actor he always seems comfy with RTD's material, as did Barrowman. And it had heart - characters like Rose, Wilf, Jackie etc certainly had that, even if you wouldn't really want to hang out with them for very long.

Moffat on the other hand probably has more intelligence (Coupling being an often witty sitcom), but after a while it just seems like he's just in a rush to get it out there and half-arsed. So many of his shows display good ideas & original approaches before crashing & burning- Nu Who, Sherlock, the last episode of Jekyll. And whereas with RTD you got the feeling he really wanted you to like his show Moffat just seems to be trying to impress by cheating on plots or firing soundbites at you: take the s9 Dalek two-parter where Capaldi says to the stunned Davros, "I'm the Doctor - just accept it!" upon escaping being killed.

Ultimately Moffat's version of the show lacks heart - Capaldi & Clara being a good example of characters who I find it difficult to care about because of how they're written.

Rawkuss wrote:https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/25-reasons-why-steven-moffat-is-the-biggest-troll-in-televis?utm_term=.aqXejDmlq#.kervkopP4

Funnier than any of the jokes in his scripts.

Back in 2013 I'd have said Moffat over Davies. Moffat seemed to at least care about plot mechanics and being truer to the spirit of the old show. And that's what I'd probably think to this day had he left with Matt.

Then from Dark Water onwards, Moffat achieved something even RTD's worst couldn't, and actually destroyed my ability to care about the show anymore, in an almost retroactive way. As though the classic show had suddenly only ever existed for him to deconstruct and poke fun at and draw hollow fanservice and shock-value storytelling from.

Suddenly there was a gulf between Moffat's hysterical true-believer fans and embarrassed onlookers like me who just felt completely alienated.

It wasn't quite the same as RTD's hyper audience he was going for. RTD was aiming at the soap audience, the kids, and the ‘anything can happen’ late night chat show audience, as seen in TFI Friday or The Sunday Night Project. Which meant the Doctor’s character had to unfortunately be distorted and lobotomized into being like one of its unbearable, loud, narcissistic, shallow gossip-minded hosts, whether Chris Evans or Justin Lee Collins.

But I could still believe there was an element of the heroic Doctor in there somewhere, believing in a righteous cause. With Moffat's era I had no incentive to because nothing in his version of the show seemed to matter anymore. There was nothing substantial for the Doctor to be energized to crusade against. Just shadows, smoke and mirrors and shock tactics.

Watching some of Moffat's earlier stuff: the Curse of Fatal Death, the Empty Child, the Woman in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library etc.

Gods he was strong then

At least comparatively.

Why do all writers seem to completely lack self-awareness?

He was strong when he had set limits.

When he only had a single or two-parter runtime to tell his story, it made him focus a lot more on telling a complete story that added up.

When he only got a portion of the season's budget with which to tell his story, he had to use it well, for a purpose. He couldn't just burn money on recreating Nazi Germany for no reason.

Likewise when it looked like Silence in the Library might be the only appearance of River Song, and the only chance to explore her character, her story was told in a satisfying way in which she didn't outstay her welcome.

But once he's allowed to be showrunner, he's allowed to be indulgent for too long. He's allowed to lose his focus, he's allowed to get more ambitious and fail more spectacularly at following it up, he's allowed to blow the budget on pointless romps and overuse River Song until she became unbearable.

The other problem is his fannish insecurities about the show's previous nerdy stigma ran wild once he was in charge. Previously he could trust RTD to handle what he saw as that image problem of the show, and make it a non-issue. But for whatever reason those insecurities came back once handling the show's image became his lot.

Which is why so much of Moffat's era was so fannish, flippant and seemed desperate to make out that Doctor Who was the 'bad boy' of children's TV, hence crap like Lets Kill Hitler and the Missy episodes. And why ultimately none of it really added up in the end except as a series of cinematic moments that proved hollow in the end.

The other problem is his fannish insecurities about the show's previous nerdy stigma ran wild once he was in charge. Previously he could trust RTD to handle what he saw as that image problem of the show, and make it a non-issue. But for whatever reason those insecurities came back once handling the show's image became his lot.

Which is why so much of Moffat's era was so fannish, flippant and seemed desperate to make out that Doctor Who was the 'bad boy' of children's TV, hence crap like Lets Kill Hitler and the Missy episodes. And why ultimately none of it really added up in the end except as a series of cinematic moments that proved hollow in the end.

The self loathing fanboyism was always Moff's downfall. IMO in order to escape its nerdy stigma Who should have become a hardcore horror series. Up the violence to Hinchcliff levels, make it scary, make it a show that if you say you watch it, people think you're brave because its scary as fuck.

That's how I feel it overcame the sci fi stigma before. The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Yeti's in the underground were terrifying to kids in the 60s, whilst in the 70s when they kind of became domesticated by being too familiar, then things like the Autons killing people, Seeds of Doom etc helped it overcome the stigma.

Sadly RTD and Moff thought in order to overcome the stigma they had to make it sexy and a soap opera which utterly betrayed the series.

Both were pretty awful.

Moffat picked the best Doctors and had more of an inkling of what the character was about than Fathead, however his re-envisioning of the Classic Series was unbelievably worse than RTD's moroniverse.

Moffat when on form was a better writer than RTD but unbelievably also served up dreck even more shite than the turd-master.

They were both pretty crap at the end of the day because rather than embrace the rich history of the show and build upon it, they were both self-loathing fanboys embarrassed by the 80's (and the 60's too in Moffats case) and either denied or re-envisaged important key moments or principles within the Classic Series.

However, as loathsome and hateful as both Moffat and Fathead are, they are like proud 80's fanboys with echoes of Hinchcliffe compared to dullard moron-meister Chinballs.

Give me Pip and Jane Baker over that talentless cunt any day of the week.

They were both pretty crap at the end of the day because rather than embrace the rich history of the show and build upon it, they were both self-loathing fanboys embarrassed by the 80's (and the 60's too in Moffats case) and either denied or re-envisaged important key moments or principles within the Classic Series.

However, as loathsome and hateful as both Moffat and Fathead are, they are like proud 80's fanboys with echoes of Hinchcliffe compared to dullard moron-meister Chinballs.

I disagree. I still think Moffat is the worst of them all. What he did to the Master is the single worst thing in Who history.

Leaving aside all the usual things I post about Missy being unfaithful, Mofftwat begun the process that would lead to Jodie with that abomination. He's MORE responsible than Chinballs, as I will say as much as I hate Chinballs, Moffat dragged it to a point where you really couldn't have not have had a 13th female Doctor without being slandered in the press as a misogynist.

What's worse is that the cunt only did it because he was spineless. As awful as Chinballs is at least he does believe that crap. Mofftwat was just being a coward and giving into pressure. I also think that Dark Water/Death in Heaven is still the single worst DW story ever made. Its just so sloppily done it must anger all of the surviving Classic Who writers who turned out great episodes in less time and with less money.

I dislike them both but at least they shit all over Chibnall's pathetic attempts.

burrunjor wrote:IMO in order to escape its nerdy stigma Who should have become a hardcore horror series. Up the violence to Hinchcliff levels, make it scary, make it a show that if you say you watch it, people think you're brave because its scary as fuck.

Trouble is, that seems to be exactly what Moffat attempted. He tried to make it all about the scares. All about contriving and creating the "next" Weeping Angels (the Silence, the Smilers, the Snowmen). And it ended up showing how unfulfilling that approach is when made an ends in itself.

Yes it wasn't until Death in Heaven that he seemed to start racking up the bodycount, but frankly the effect was as hollow as Resurrection's shock-value storytelling.

The Hinchcliffe approach worked I think because it had a human dimension that was missing from the Moffat era. The Android Invasion (probably the most Moffaty story of Classic Who) isn't just about the Kraals and the doppleganger androids, but also about how Reagan was brainwashed by them.

Likewise in Genesis, the Daleks weren't just scary monsters, but an avatar for real evil Middle Eastern dictators and the suffering they cause, and we see human characters either collude with them and see an opportunity for victory in them, or are rightly terrified not just at the thought of dying before the Daleks but actually having their species *replaced* by them.

Pyramids of Mars likewise shows the tragedy of Scarman losing his brother and being unable to accept he's gone.

Robot (okay, not a Hinchcliffe production but falls under Tom's early era) actually confounds the Moffat childish, trite approach of "be scared of the scary monster" by actually showing the Robot as a deeper, complex and confused character and ultimately demonstrating that often 'the biggest monsters of all' are humans.

In Moffat's era, nothing seems to confound the Doctor. When the stories confound us, it's by their sheer incoherence and love of random contrived set-pieces. There isn't really any human dimension. Amy just gets over losing her baby and spends the rest of the season as a hollow cipher as a result.

He tried to keep making it scary for kids and just came off as cynical and patronising about it. I think kids like to be challenged as much as scared, and Moffat's era.... well just seemed to just pander to them and assume they were just predictably frightful bags of nerves who weren't interested in watching anything that might make them think.

His approach made RTD's writing look more challenging.

burrunjor wrote:I disagree. I still think Moffat is the worst of them all. What he did to the Master is the single worst thing in Who history.

Re-envisioning regeneration to regenderation was hatefully shit, but I think a female Master could've worked had it been done via alientech/chameleon arch etc, after all the original Master was also the Master of disguise and it would've fitted the character right had it been narrated in a convincing and less brainless Murdoch-supporting Time Lord mythos destroying manner.

burrunjor wrote:Leaving aside all the usual things I post about Missy being unfaithful, Mofftwat begun the process that would lead to Jodie with that abomination. He's MORE responsible than Chinballs, as I will say as much as I hate Chinballs, Moffat dragged it to a point where you really couldn't have not have had a 13th female Doctor without being slandered in the press as a misogynist.

Possibly, but I think a lot of it is to do with the programme getting dragged back into BBC internal politics again like it did after Grades hiatus in the mid-80's, the BBC is fucking obsessed with identity-politics to the point of all absurdity - why the fuck anyone thinks this is "left-wing" or in any way or manner "politically correct" fuck only knows, are we really a nation of Sun reading morons or Daily Mail subscribing knee-jerks?

burrunjor wrote: I also think that Dark Water/Death in Heaven is still the single worst DW story ever made. Its just so sloppily done it must anger all of the surviving Classic Who writers who turned out great episodes in less time and with less money.

I agree that Dark Water/Death In Heaven is gob-smackingly bad, at the time I thought the series could stoop no lower than Fatheads "Last of the Time Turds" for hack-writing, but Moffat managed it with ease and made RTD's first draft scrawled on the back of a beer mat fucking rubbish look like Shakespeare.

His cyber-brig/regenderation/immortal unlimitless regenerations/re-envisaged origins/First Doctor sexual braggart/80's Doctors snub for the 50th anniversary really reveals his inner-most self-loathing fanboy hatred, I hope the fucking cunt cried himself to sleep as a child when girls took the fucking piss out of the twat by mocking "I'm Duck-ter Whooooo - that's what he calls himself, Ducktor Whooooo" as he self-biographies through Missy in "World Enough and Time", the fucking arsehole.

RTD's era, whilst being silly and inconsistent at times, still felt sort of enjoyable as entertainment, kind of like FanFiction, its a guilty pleasure and it did give us some good stories.

Moffat on the other hand was more crushing as with S5, it showed that NuWho had potential to be as great as Classic Who, yet sadly, that never came to be.

Both were miles ahead of Chibnall though...

TheWatcher wrote:RTD's era, whilst being silly and inconsistent at times, still felt sort of enjoyable as entertainment, kind of like FanFiction, its a guilty pleasure and it did give us some good stories.

I'd agree that probably is the best way to view RTD's time. In a strange way I think that appeal was ruined by the hysterical way the pro-RTD cheerleaders would treat him and his work as some kind of deity or religious text that's beyond criticism.

Moffat on the other hand was more crushing as with S5, it showed that NuWho had potential to be as great as Classic Who, yet sadly, that never came to be.

Moffat definitely entered a hero and left a villain for me. And it's sad because for quite a while I kept hoping he'd come right again, thinking "He gave us Series 5, maybe given time he can be that good again". But time and time again my hopes were dashed.

Possibly, but I think a lot of it is to do with the programme getting dragged back into BBC internal politics again like it did after Grades hiatus in the mid-80's, the BBC is fucking obsessed with identity-politics to the point of all absurdity - why the fuck anyone thinks this is "left-wing" or in any way or manner "politically correct" fuck only knows, are we really a nation of Sun reading morons or Daily Mail subscribing knee-jerks?

In short yes. Its as I'm always saying. Identity politics is politics for idiots. So many people want to be political in order to seem smart. However they are too stupid or too lazy to offer up an actual Marxist analysis of the current political climate, so they go for "everything is racist, everything is sexist" because that's a simplistic analysis. (Even then race relations and gender equality are of course very complicated issues, but these people can with a little media manipulation boil it down to a simplistic thing of "white men bad" and make themselves look like a modern day Rosa Parks to their equally stupid friends.)

Just look at Trump. They hate him for stupid reasons. They think he's Hitler which is laughable. Not one of them hates him for things they should like his actions in Venezula. Do you think Claudia Boleyn or Trilbee knows anything about that? That would require actual political analysis.

Similarly look at Tulsi (yeah okay my big obsession right now as I'm in love with her LOL.) Still why don't they all support Tulsi? She's the first non white, female candidate, so all of the Obama/Hillary lovers who supported them for those reasons should be for her for that alone.

On top of that she is the most left wing Presidential candidate there has been for decades. She's against all foreign intervention, supports universal healthcare, welfare, increasing the minimum wage etc.

They don't support her however because again they don't know who she is! You'd have to be interested in politics to know her name, and they're not. They'll just jump on the bandwagon they are told to, hence why Hillary, the most hawkish candidate there has been for decades was their progressive champion.

Sadly however that's what left wing politics is these days. Much like Labour, much like Doctor Who, its been taken over by our shallow, celeb obsessed culture and is supported by morons who can't think for themselves.

I still say Rik from the Young Ones was the best satire on these people. Unlike modern day critics of identity politics like Sargon who call them cultural Marxists, Rik made a point of having Rick not actually know what he's talking about (like when he's fallen asleep when reading Das Kapital.) Or when he claims to be a Lennist and Anarchist. He also made him an upper middle class, conservative at heart (like in the last episode when he says that Thatcher did bloody well get the country back on its feet. So many of these leftists are ironically right wing. Like Mr Tardis supporting Julian Assange being arrested, or all of their anti Russia crap.)

Sadly however the difference between then and now is that the entire left are Rick. So the only people who call them out most of the time are right wing cunts (who are every bit as disgusting) which just keeps the cycle going as any reasonable person isn't going to side with either and eventually just opt out when they know no one is going to listen to them

I agree that Dark Water/Death In Heaven is gob-smackingly bad, at the time I thought the series could stoop no lower than Fatheads "Last of the Time Turds" for hack-writing, but Moffat managed it with ease and made RTD's first draft scrawled on the back of a beer mat fucking rubbish look like Shakespeare.

His cyber-brig/regenderation/immortal unlimitless regenerations/re-envisaged origins/First Doctor sexual braggart/80's Doctors snub for the 50th anniversary really reveals his inner-most self-loathing fanboy hatred, I hope the fucking cunt cried himself to sleep as a child when girls took the fucking piss out of the twat by mocking "I'm Duck-ter Whooooo - that's what he calls himself, Ducktor Whooooo" as he self-biographies through Missy in "World Enough and Time", the fucking arsehole.

The Ducktor Huuuuuu bit is so toe curlingly bad, but it kind of disappears into a sea of shit that is Missy's entire history. We also have the Master wanting to fuck himself, the snog between her and Capaldi (which is literally BeKind's drawing of Hartnell and the burned Master.) Her switching accents, her misandristic lines, her attacking the Doctors young and pretty companions out of jealousy, and her whole Mary Poppins idea. Seriously? You get these New Who sycophants praising her and saying Eric Roberts was too OTT. He wasn't an oversexed Disney character!

I never got why the Fitzroy crowd were so desperate to make Doctor Who to the point where they've stopped generations of others from having a go (and probably will for decades to come. Seriously, we'll have to pry it from their cold dead hands) when they hate it so much?

Also why doesn't Moff ever choose to adapt a female led character. Its all fucking male led characters like DW, Sherlock and Dracula who he then has to emasculate out of guilty. Its pathetic.

I see the Hive has split the Tru Who section into the different decades. Does the Nu Who section therefore not need to be split into the 'shitty 2000s' section, the 'even shittier 2010s' section etc?

Mott1 wrote:I see the Hive has split the Tru Who section into the different decades. Does the Nu Who section therefore not need to be split into the 'shitty 2000s' section, the 'even shittier 2010s' section etc?

It is all one big pile of horse dung to me.

burrunjor wrote:Just look at Trump. They hate him for stupid reasons. They think he's Hitler which is laughable. Not one of them hates him for things they should like his actions in Venezula. Do you think Claudia Boleyn or Trilbee knows anything about that? That would require actual political analysis.

Similarly look at Tulsi (yeah okay my big obsession right now as I'm in love with her LOL.) Still why don't they all support Tulsi? She's the first non white, female candidate, so all of the Obama/Hillary lovers who supported them for those reasons should be for her for that alone.

On top of that she is the most left wing Presidential candidate there has been for decades. She's against all foreign intervention, supports universal healthcare, welfare, increasing the minimum wage etc.

They don't support her however because again they don't know who she is! You'd have to be interested in politics to know her name, and they're not. They'll just jump on the bandwagon they are told to, hence why Hillary, the most hawkish candidate there has been for decades was their progressive champion.

I don't blame you for being in love with Tulsi. She kinda gives me nice fuzzy feelings too, and a sense of hope too (which I have a horrible feeling will be stupidly dashed by her own party's moneyed interests and Joe Biden-sycophants).

As for the tribalistic retardation of the modern SJW left and the problems with the signal to noise ratio, I have to say the best book I ever read on SJW culture and why it ran out of control, was Angela Nagle's "Kill All Normies"

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kill-All-Normies-culture-alt-right/dp/1785355430

To summarize, it describes how in the online sphere of these activists, virtue-signalling became a kind of social currency, and in order to increase the value of their own virtue currency, it became the drive of them to create scarcity by finding absurd ways to denounce the less holy in their own circles with new rules and new outrages.

Ben Cobley's "The Tribe" is another good one, which I'm in the middle of currently, and I'd say he's a bit clued up as he was previously part of the Labour Party and knows how these people work and think, and goes into things like Rotherham and how it was allowed to happen.

Tanmann wrote:Ben Cobley's "The Tribe" is another good one, which I'm in the middle of currently, and I'd say he's a bit clued up as he was previously part of the Labour Party and knows how these people work and think, and goes into things like Rotherham and how it was allowed to happen.

Rotherham happened because the Police were still sulking and smarting over the MacPherson report which identified "institutional racism" in the force. All of the right-wing previous BNP-supporting pigs took that judgement as meaning, "Oh right, that means we'd better not nick any black or asian people any more even if they are commiting mass fucking murder because we'll get called "racist""

It was pure and utter bloody-minded and deliberate negligence.