10 Things I Hate About Who. Part Five: Bringing Stuff Back And Cocking It Up

I have made no effort to disguise my growing disdain for NuWho.  I was concerned I was speaking to an empty theater so to speak, but to quote the Face of Boe, "You are not alone".  On one of the Facebook pages I belong to (Classic Doctor Who Fans Who Dislike New Who), I have come across a series of thoughts by Mr. Paul Berry.  We in the group were so genuinely impressed by his series that I urged him to publish them. 

Ethan White of Sixstanger00 has requested permission to upload them on his YouTube page.  I don't know if Mr. Berry has but hope he does.  I for my part asked for permission to reprint them on this site. 

Mr. Berry has graciously allowed me to republish them as he posts them, and here is the fifth of a ten-essay series.  It is reprinted as written with the content exactly as it appears. The only alterations made are for any grammatical/spelling errors, spacing for paragraphs, and perhaps a few afterthoughts which will be noted after the photos. 

For this essay, I also added all the photos save for the last one, which was part of the original essay.

I hope readers enjoy and share them.  I also hope readers will debate these matters, for I believe in a healthy debate.  However, I find Mr. Berry's comments and thoughts quite well-thought out and worthy of a greater audience. 

With that, I present Part Five of this series: 10 Things I Hate About New Who. 

 

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10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT NEW WHO

5) BRINGING STUFF BACK AND COCKING IT UP


When Doctor Who returned in 2005 I was glad it wasn't a reboot. I didn't want the whole of the classic series to be confined to some parallel universe or have 26 years of adventure written off as never having happened. The reboot route could easily have been taken. Indeed it was very nearly taken with the 96 TV movie and a pitch document from none other than Mark Gatiss in the early noughties proposed the series start from Day One.

The fact that new Doctor Who was a continuation of the original meant that old stuff from the original series could be brought back. Obviously it could still have been brought back in a reboot but the fact that this was a continuation created a clear line of succession which linked these new adventures inextricably to the glory days of the past.

Unfortunately my feelings have now changed on the matter. I now wish Doctor Who had been rebooted so it no longer formed part of the same narrative continuity as the original series. One of the reasons for this is that I believe each time they have brought something back from the past they have messed it up in some way.

Okay first the Daleks. I'll take my hats off to them, the BBC design team did a great job on the bronze new series Dalek. It was a masterful update of the Dalek design, close enough to the original as to still be recognisable, but at the same time make the creatures a credible threat for the 21st century. It would have been very easy to pervert the Dalek image and do something like spider Daleks as was mooted for the US revival. Thankfully Russell T Davies knew there was something iconic about the whole Dalek shape and it shouldn't be tampered with.

The area where the Daleks have now lost credibility is not in the design, but in the constant and repetitive idea of Daleks gaining emotions. Once, in the episode Dalek I can forgive, but they have now used this idea five times . We have had Rose infected Dalek, Dalek Sec hybrid, Dalek Caan, Clara Dalek and more recently Rusty. I am really now fed up of having Daleks who see the error of their ways or we are supposed to feel sorry for. We have also had human Daleks and zombie Daleks; the image of the Dalek eyestalk projecting from a human forehead in Asylum of the Daleks was terrible beyond belief.

I must admit to not hating Moffat's technicolour redesign but not quite seeing the point in it either. It should really have been a case of if it ain't broke don't fix it; the RTD design didn't need changing that soon.

Questionable from the word "Go" was the redesign of the Cybermen. The initial Pete's World Cybermen was horribly clunky looking and moved badly on screen. The new stomping Cybermen really took away from what had previously been sleek creatures with an element of stealth. The voice never worked for me either. I could see what they were trying to achieve but the tone always reminded me of the Kandyman. The idea to have the new Cybermen come from a parallel Earth, thus not having to explain a rather convoluted back story to a new audience wasn't a bad one, but it very quickly seemed to be forgotten about with the creatures becoming space faring and using advanced technology with no explanation.

It eventually seemed that we had gone back to having Mondasian Cybermen but still using the Pete's World design. The team never seemed to be able to decide what a Cyberman was either, flitting between being simply brains in a Cyber casing then to entire bodies and then inexplicably being able to convert dead bodies.  I must confess to missing two of the Cybermen's Matt Smith Era adventures as I was boycotting the series at this point, so I could make little judgment on the new design other than to say it was an improvement and much closer to the sleek sophisticated look one associates with the Cybermen. Having now seen them in action in the recent series finale, I must admit to not really being convinced there seems a definite Iron Man thing going on and the stomping and voice still aren't doing it for me.

The third big bad to make a comeback was of course The Master, and probably the biggest screw up so far. Ironically they showed how it could be done properly for all of about 10 minutes when Derek Jacobi briefly got a shot at the part before he regenerated into John Simm. At the time of course Simm was big news due to Life on Mars, but it has to be said it was another example of miscasting. He was just too baby faced and lacking in gravitas to carry the part; furthermore the Russell T Davies take on the character was not to make him a suave scheming criminal genius, but rather more of an evil Jack Sparrow with silly one liners and a lot of mugging.

We were then invited to try and sympathise with the character, and at one point he confesses to the Doctor he is scared. His return for The End of Time was even worse as he suddenly gained Superman-like powers and was attired initially in the manner of someone who had walked off Benefits Street. The awful Master race idea and the character suddenly having an about face and turning to good would be about the worst you think it would get.

Unfortunately The Master has recently surfaced again now as a woman. I will address the logic and rights and wrongs of this move in a future article. The question really is, 'Does Michelle Gomez convince as a female Master?', and sadly the answer is no. It's not that she doesn't look the part; it's just that we now have another silly zany Master, except now we can't even call the character that. Missy just doesn't have the same ring to it and The Mistress just opens up a whole world of innuendo which I am sure Moffat will revel in.

What else have they cocked up? Well, we had the jerky Autons from the first episode Rose, which were played a bit for comic relief and didn't have any of the sinister edge of their 70's forebears. Then there were the Sontarans, not a bad redesign but the stories they have been in have stunk and we are now saddled with the comic relief Sontaran Strax. The Silurians took a well designed and memorable 70's race and reduced it to the level of a Babylon 5 or Star Trek alien, while also lumbering us with the pointless Madame Vastra character.

The new Ice Warrior design wasn't bad, but the creatures were ruined by having their appearance revealed not as being a mixture of their own reptillian skin and armoured plates as I had always assumed, but a Cyberman like mechanical suit. We were then treated to a blatant rip of from Alien as we saw a warrior out its suit and rather underwhelming it turned out to be too. Finally we had the Zygons, again not a terrible redesign but having little impact compared to their original appearance and once again used for light hearted relief in some scenes.

We also have a handful of original cast members who have returned and been forced to adapt to the series modern style. Elisabeth Sladen's return in School Reunion worked pretty well but it should have been left at that. I must admit I try to pretend the Sarah Jane Adventures never happened because although Sladen did her best, it was a cheap kids show which unsurprisingly suffered from many of the same problems as the parent show but without the grand vision.

It is unfortunate Nicholas Courtney's last appearance was in this same series, the episode of which was so unmemorable I can't remember a thing about it. Maybe we should be glad the Brig never made in into New Who proper. Oh sorry, he did: the Cyberbrig was crass and beyond tasteless. I can't imagine what Moffat was thinking to believe this was in anyway a tribute to the character. Are we to take it the poor Brig is stuck in this state?

We should also not forget that three Classic Doctors have also returned to the fold. The first was of course Peter Davison in Time Crash with a total reinvention that bore next to no resemblance to the character played by Davison between 82 and 84. Why would the 5th Doctor suddenly be grumpy? Would he really come out with talk of desktop themes and rubbish beards? Tom Baker's cameo was better, brief and a bit more poignant if a little overdone, although I suspect they were indulging Baker to a certain extent. Lastly Paul McGann starred in what I can only describe as the best thing that has come out of BBC Wales in 5 years, namely Night of the Doctor: epic and dramatic and a tantalising glimpse of what Doctor Who should be like more often, but they don't have the balls to do.

For the most part however old returns have been a disaster, nearly everything that has come back has ended up worse than the original. It also often makes the new version the definitive one as it will then generally appear on all the merchandising and in guides etc. over the original. For that reason I now pray they don't bring anything else back but I'm sure they will.

I live in dread at what the next icon will be that gets The Moffat Makeover.

NEXT TIME: 6) TRYING TO BE CLEVER

There is a lot of ground to cover here.

I find that the redesign of the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master, and others (the once-proud Sontarans now reduced to idiotic comic relief, the Brigadier turned into a Zombie Cyberman who, like Danny Pink, conveniently didn't let the lack of emotion the Cybermen have get in the way of a 'touching moment) to be now painful.

I don't mean in terms of actual design (though, unlike Mr. Berry, I did dislike the Skittles Daleks...multi-colored for what purpose), though Flying Cybermen may be the nadir of the series.  I mean in terms of characters.  I hadn't thought much on the idea that we've had Daleks 'feel' so much in the revived series.  I did note that there was a certain repetitiveness between the Ninth Doctor story Dalek and the Twelfth Doctor story Into the Dalek (surprise, surprise...the Doctor would have made a good Dalek).

What Classic Doctor Who managed remarkably well was pretty consistent continuity in the 26 years it ran.  I'm sure it didn't get everything right, but on the whole we didn't have something so wildly different that fans would be puzzled by it.  With NuWho, the production team can't even keep continuity within its eight seasons, let alone the first 26. 

Don't worry.  It's only an egg...

Take a look at the Sontarans.   They started out as fierce warriors (in fact, their debut was in the story The Time Warrior, one of the few Doctor Who stories that escaped the curse of "Time", where a DW story with "Time" in the title ends up a disaster).  Throughout all their appearances in Classic Who they were always about war: there was glory in war, and they even managed to invade Gallifrey itself at one point.

Now, who can seriously believe Strax could invade Walmart, let alone Gallifrey?  The Sontarans are now reduced to a joke in the form of this witless servant who, apparently despite having lived with humans and others for all these years, still doesn't understand the concept of clothes (which he himself wears).  Not having seen The Sontaran Stratagem Parts 1 & 2 I cannot render an opinion as to whether NuWho Sontarans are always this dimwitted and inept, but I can't help think they and their creator (Robert Holmes, the best Doctor Who writer of all time) clearly deserved better. 

The same with the Silurians.  Unlike others I thought well of Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2 and wasn't too up in arms about their redesign, but now they too are now basically there to be one thing: a lesbian.  I dislike the Madam Vastra character not because she favors sex with women but because she's something deadly to any show...smarter and more important than the main character.  She is the Silurian River Song: the person who knows more than The Doctor about almost everything and who whenever she steps in becomes the de facto star of the show.

That in itself is bad enough: the show is not called Vastra & Company (or to use my own name, The Lizard & The Lady), but Doctor Who.  However, what purpose do they really serve?  I know that in The Snowmen, Vastra referred to herself & her crew as "the Doctor's friends".  Far be it for me to make pronouncements on what makes friendships, but they don't have the history with the Doctor that say, the Brigadier or Sarah Jane have.  Just a thought.

I know many NuWho fans want a Paternoster Gang spinoff, but they, unthinking as always, don't think on just how limited the idea is.  First, does one really want to see a sex scene between a lizard and a human?  Are Blue Peter fans ready for same-sex bestiality to invade their screens?

Well, perhaps given that nowadays we have five-year-olds fully aware that they are transgender versus my youth when such concepts were not even within the realm of fantasy, let alone reality...

In any case, The Lizard & The Lady face other problems.  They are stuck in a particular time frame and have to deal with that in a more real manner (I can't say realistic since that ship sailed long ago).  Could you introduce Who villains to Victorian London?  How would Vastra's appearance, if unveiled, be received?  Sorry, no civil servant or religious organization (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, what have you) would ever consent to "marry" Vastra & Jenny.  Even the Quakers might be aghast at marrying a reptile to a human.

What stories could you really get, and how to get Strax into this?  He isn't a warrior.  He's a buffoon. 

I won't even get into the Master/Missy business save to say...it serves no purpose. 

Doctor Who, I've long argued, is schizophrenic.  On the one hand, it celebrates its long history (The Day of The Doctor, need one remember, was touted as the 50th Anniversary Special).  On the other, it constantly ignores or dismisses said history (for all intents and purpose, The Day of The Doctor was an Eighth Anniversary Special given that the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors were the show, and their Companions were the show.  No mention of Susan Foreman, the Doctor's granddaughter, or of any pre-Rose Companion, and very little to suggest that anything came before the Ninth Doctor).

I think we need to carefully look at the fact that perhaps, despite what we've been told, the Doctor Who of 1963-1989 and the Doctor Who from 2005 onwards are really two different shows altogether, sharing a name and some connections but really not being part of the other in a cohesive whole. 

10 Things I Hate About Who. Part Four: Sickly Sentimentality

I have made no effort to disguise my growing disdain for NuWho.  I was concerned I was speaking to an empty theater so to speak, but to quote the Face of Boe, "You are not alone".  On one of the Facebook pages I belong to (Classic Doctor Who Fans Who Dislike New Who), I have come across a series of thoughts by Mr. Paul Berry.  We in the group were so genuinely impressed by his series that I urged him to publish them. 

Ethan White of Sixstanger00 has requested permission to upload them on his YouTube page.  I don't know if Mr. Berry has but hope he does.  I for my part asked for permission to reprint them on this site. 

Mr. Berry has graciously allowed me to republish them as he posts them, and here is the fourth of a ten-essay series.  It is reprinted as written with the content exactly as it appears.  The only alterations made are for any grammatical/spelling errors, spacing for paragraphs, and perhaps a few afterthoughts which will be noted after the photos. 

I hope readers enjoy and share them.  I also hope readers will debate these matters, for I believe in a healthy debate.  However, I find Mr. Berry's comments and thoughts quite well-thought out and worthy of a greater audience. 

With that, I present Part Four of this series: 10 Things I Hate About New Who. 

 

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10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT NEW WHO

4) SICKLY SENTIMENTALITY

To many, classic Doctor Who may seem emotionally sterile, a stiff upper lip world where falling in love, snogging or any sort of touch feely stuff was mostly glossed over. That is not to say emotion wasn't there, more that it was understated, and those moments when they came, such as Susan's departure in The Dalek Invasion of Earth or the tragic fate of the 2nd Doctor/Jamie and Zoe triumvirate in The War Games packed all the more punch because they were rare. Doctor Who could pull the heartstrings but that wasn't its main prerequisite; it would be there if and when the story required it.

When the show came back in 2005, one of Russell T Davies' aims was to invest the show with more emotion; he was trying to bring in a wider audience as well as give the Companion's journey a greater focus, which meant the series could move further into an area of emotional depth only just beginning to emerge in the McCoy era of the show. Emotion is one of Davies' fortes and I must admit there were a few scenes in that first series that worked: a Dalek committing suicide because it was impure, the heroism of Pete Tyler, Rose's heartbreak after the Doctor sent her back to Earth in Parting of the Ways. It was good honest stuff which added immeasurably to the power of the story. Never one for restraint, Davies soon let this emotion get out of hand and it began to infect every story.

Soon Rose seemed to be moved to tears over the slightest things. Villains such as Margaret Slitheen and Cassandra were dispatched not in the usual off the cuff manner, but in a hugely sentimental fashion. As time went on the Doctor was soon dragged into this state of affairs with the production team finally feeling like they could break that old taboo of the Doctor not having romantic inclinations towards the Companion.

Initially it was done a bit subtly with the Doctor never quite confirming his feelings. He is prevented from saying 'I love you' back to Rose in Doomsday which still lends an air of ambiguity to the situation. With the introduction of Martha however the emotion began to get more and more invasive; the whole season was spent with the Doctor harping on about Rose and getting all dewy eyed at the merest mention of her name. The hugely misconceived idea of Martha having an unrequited infatuation with the Doctor also led to many cringe-worthy scenes of her looking forlorn or misty eyed.

The worst excess of emotion came in the same season with the death of the Master, where we saw the Doctor hysterically blubbing over the corpse of his old enemy. It was another step too far which as I mentioned in my previous post diminished the idea of the Doctor as an alien. I am not saying the Doctor should be emotionally sterile, but more that we should get little hints of these things. Look for instance at McCoy's line in Delta and the Bannermen about 'love not being known for its rationality' and his little faraway look as to how it can be done subtly. It is perhaps fitting that David Tennant is so far the only Doctor to regenerate virtually in tears.

I don't think Steven Moffat has quite the same grip on emotion as RTD but it hasn't stopped him trying. The series continues to be filled with huge doses of misguided and unnecessary sentiment. The interminable Amy and Rory romance brought forth many more examples, as well as the similarly yawn worthy River Song storyline. This season saw the focus being moved onto the Clara and Danny Pink charisma-free pairing. With subtlety thrown out the window we are told pretty much straight away that Danny has killed someone while in service with the army and this is illustrated with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer by having a tear rolling down his cheek at the first mention of it. It then transpires that it was a child he killed and in the most twee nonsensical eulogy the child is returned to life as Danny sacrifices himself.

It's a potentially serious subject matter that is fatally undermined by such sugar coated handling. The only thing to take from this latest season is that Capaldi's Doctor has not been dragged into this emotional free-for-all, and his line about the hugging just hiding your face was the sort of subtlety that has been missing for a while, just a hint that there may be more to the Doctor but nothing more.
The emotional side of the series has now got hugely out of control, it now no longer aids the story but is so overblown and pretentious that it moves the programme towards unintentional comedy. My reaction to the fate of Cyber Danny Pink was not to sympathise but laugh, and Doctor Who to me has never been a comedy.

NEXT TIME: 5) BRINGING STUFF BACK & COCKING IT UP

Well, we have hit the nail on the head.  THIS was the essay that convinced me Mr. Berry's thoughts needed to be shared with the world at large.  THIS was the essay that motivated me to plead to have them appear on my site and give them the promotion they so desperately need. 

I have noted with disdain, even anger, about how often NuWhovians blabber on about how this episode or that episode "made them cry".  I haven't finished all of the Tennant Era, but I do know that he commented that the ending of Harry Potter made him cry.  Seriously?  The ending of Deathly Hallows made him cry?  It didn't move me at all, but then I have never been big on Harry Potter myself (sorry Jo.  You ain't no C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien...not even close to their league.  Call us in 50 years to see if anyone still reads your stuff).

WHY does Doctor Who have to be so emotional?  Why do we have to cry at every turn?  Is there something in our society that compels us to be weepy at every episode?  It isn't as if I'm locked emotionally.  Even the Duke, John Wayne, admitted that he cried.  Crying is a perfectly normal, rational reaction to pain or loss.  However, was there this much crying at Star Trek?  At Supernatural?  At The X-Files? At Firefly?  At Smallville?  At Gotham? 

This penchant for tears did turn into a joke (Rose Tyler in particular being the weepy woman that turned a Great Companion into a sob sister par excellence).  Tennant soon joined in the games, with his weepy "I don't want to go" and big Farewell Tour turning a simple regeneration into the death of Mother Teresa.   At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I think there were less tears at the Crucifixion than in The End of Time. 

In all the time I have seen Doctor Who, I think I can remember crying (or perhaps being emotionally moved to that level) perhaps once, and that is in the following...

I admit the 'yellowface' isn't a good thing, but product of its time.  Note that in Planet of the Spiders there is no big bombastic score, no overblown theatrics.  Just two actors (Jon Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen, both terribly missed), doing their job and doing it damn well.  Despite all the tears NuWhovians have shed (and I agree w/Mr. Berry...Pete Tyler's farewell to his daughter in Father's Day WAS extremely moving), for my money THIS is a true 'crying moment'.  I think it's effective because, as Berry wrote, it was rare.

Now it's gotten to a point where Tennant and Smith's Doctors would cry at a kitty video on YouTube.  Speaking of crying on YouTube... 

Now, leaving aside my longstanding view that it is remarkably narcissistic to videotape oneself reacting to something one is watching, nothing will convince me that these people are rational, let alone intelligent.  Yet here they are, PROUD to be weeping and wailing at a simple cast change, a cast change that, if they followed the series since 2005 has occurred three times already and which has been established within the series since 1966!  THESE are touted as the 'typical' Doctor Who fan, sobbing uncontrollably because some actor took off a bow tie.  A BOW TIE! I don't know why they were in hysterics...they'd already seen Matt Smith naked in The Time of The Doctor.  What's so special about him removing his bow tie?

Yes, I KNOW it was SYMBOLIC of HIS Doctor, but even Tom Baker's departure in Logopolis didn't have this amount of lunacy, and he was (and is still) the LONGEST-serving Doctor so far. 

The more I think on it, this crying fit in Doctor Who to me shows that Doctor Who from 2005 onwards is really a separate series from the one that came from 1963 to 1989.  It may insist it's the same, but given what I've seen, any similarity between Classic Doctor Who and Revived or NuWho is purely coincidental. 

For Heaven's Sake STOP CRYING!

 

10 Things I Hate About Who. Part Three: Is There A Doctor In the House?

I have made no effort to disguise my growing disdain for NuWho.  I was concerned I was speaking to an empty theater so to speak, but to quote the Face of Boe, "You are not alone".  On one of the Facebook pages I belong to (Classic Doctor Who Fans Who Dislike New Who), I have come across a series of thoughts by Mr. Paul Berry.  We in the group were so genuinely impressed by his series that I urged him to publish them. 

Ethan White of Sixstanger00 has requested permission to upload them on his YouTube page.  I don't know if Mr. Berry has but hope he does.  I for my part asked for permission to reprint them on this site. 

Mr. Berry has graciously allowed me to republish them as he posts them, and here is the third of a ten-essay series.  It is reprinted as written with the content exactly as it appears. The only alterations made are for any grammatical/spelling errors, spacing for paragraphs, and perhaps a few afterthoughts which will be noted after the photos. 

For this essay, I also added all the photos save for the last one, which was part of the original essay.

I hope readers enjoy and share them.  I also hope readers will debate these matters, for I believe in a healthy debate.  However, I find Mr. Berry's comments and thoughts quite well-thought out and worthy of a greater audience. 

With that, I present Part Three of this series: 10 Things I Hate About New Who. 

 

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10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT NEW WHO

3) IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?

Everyone has their favourite Doctor. Mine is probably Tom Baker, but really I like them all, that is the Classic series Doctors; each one convinces me that they are an ancient alien from outer space with deep unknowable depths. Even that controversial TV movie had one element just about everyone agrees they got right: Paul McGann nailed the character of the Doctor instantly and his return for last year's Night of the Doctor saw him delivering an even more impressive performance.

Unfortunately for me I would argue that for the best part of 9 years Doctor Who has been mostly missing its title character. Basically put and leaving Capaldi out the equation for the minute, neither Eccleston, Tennant or Smith have actually convinced me they are the Doctor. I've given each one a chance and waited for that defining moment where I would be convinced I was watching that ancient time traveller from Gallifrey, only for it never to come. I am not saying that Eccleston, Tennant and Smith are bad actors; the problem more lies in the writing and the direction their characters were taken in.

I was an admirer of Eccleston's before Doctor Who and remember him being particularly good in several downtrodden gritty working class parts. It is unclear how much of the character was Eccleston's idea and how much came from Davies' script. I suspect it was a case of 50/50. The result unfortunately was a character that rarely felt or looked anything like the Doctor we knew. As the series went on Eccleston seemed to look more and more uncomfortable in the part and his initial energy and enthusiasm seemed to peter out quickly. He also seemed to approach the part of the Doctor in an odd method fashion; what would seem at home in a gritty drama out of place in the fantasy world of Doctor Who. I remember his faceoff with the Dalek in the episode of the same name played in the fashion of a confrontation in Eastenders. I think Eccleston was trying. The problem was that he was miscast or at least approaching the part in the wrong way; nothing about his portrayal felt natural and combined with his plain skinheaded Everyman look it was hard to believe he was the same character as that played by Hartnell through McGann. At the time I felt cheated he left early, but as I wasn't enjoying his performance quickly came round to the idea that a new guy in a more traditional Doctor mode would be a good move.

Initially I thought David Tennant was an improvement; his costume instantly restored a recognizable iconic silhouette to the character and he seemed more in tune with the offbeat nature of the character. Unfortunately it wasn't long before I started having issues with his performance. There was something about Tennant that was never quite commanding enough so when he had one of those awful 'I am the Doctor and you should just run' speeches, I never believed in him. As the series went on they started to take the character into previously uncharted waters. The Doctor started to become human.

It became impossible to believe Tennant was actually an alien from another planet because all his character traits were human: the love stories, the overly emotional performance Tennant gave, the Doctor's silly knowledge of 21st century pop culture; all took away from the mysterious and enigmatic quality of the character. Occasionally they'd stick in a line which hinted at the Doctor's mysterious nature but it was too little (too late): the damage was done. By the end of Tennant's era I was praying Matt Smith would restore some integrity back to the character.

Again initially I thought Smith was an improvement; anything would have been better at this stage I guess. He seemed to handle the quirkiness better and the emotionalism was dialled down. It wasn't long though before it all started to go wrong again.

They took Smith's quirkiness and decided to play it up. The Doctor began to act more and more like a buffoon. Bursting out of wedding cakes, appearing naked on more than one occasion, shaving his head for no particularly good reason, doing silly dances, threatening Daleks with jammy dodgers. They were trying to make the Doctor Mr. Funny but it just made him look like a bloody idiot.

Admittedly my experience of the Matt Smith era is limited as I tuned out for the most part half way through his second season. I don't think he's a bad actor or was miscast, simply that the material he was given was god awful and didn't play to his strengths. There is the odd scene where he nailed things and gave a sincere performance, but those moments never lasted very long and as with much of the new series we are left with a few diamonds stuck in a lump of dung which is never going to be very aesthetically satisfying.

So what of Capaldi? Well I'm on the fence. He hasn't gone too wrong so far and lost credibility, but he also hasn't fully convinced me either. Once again he has had to contend with some pretty bad material but thankfully the Doctor is maintaining his dignity even though it does feel like he's on a sinking ship. The character has to a certain extent returned to his roots even though you do feel like a lot of the dialogue could have been written for Matt Smith. There are elements about Capaldi that hint at that dangerous unknowable quality that we haven't seen in a long time. I think if the series were straightened out and approached in a more serious fashion Capaldi would really come into his element. Sadly I don't think that's going to happen and I think he's going to continue battling with some god awful scripts.

I've already decided I'm tuning out now at least till Moffat goes. (Capaldi) has at least restored some integrity to the Doctor's character I'll give him that, but there are still so many issues with the series; it's just not enough to keep me on board. The question is will a decent showrunner arrive in time before Capaldi's characterization is slowly dumbed down to the level of his predecessors?

NEXT TIME: 4) SICKLY SENTIMENTALITY

On this point I'm going to take a slightly different viewpoint.

I think Christopher Eccleston did a fine job as a 'darker' Doctor (ironically showing up the current 'dark' Doctor).  This is because he plays a survivor of the Time War, one driven by guilt about his actions. There were moments when Eccleston played it light-hearted, but on the whole his era wasn't all that bad. 

As for the 'working-class' bit, I think that was one of the things he was asked to do: be less posh than his predecessors.  I have nothing against that on the whole.

With Tennant, again I think he did well and he's certainly one of the most popular Doctors around.  However, while I too have not finished a particular Doctor's era (I have not seen anything past Army of Ghosts/Doomsday), I too think by the end it was getting TOO emotional and weepy.  "I don't want to go".  His big farewell tour.  He was playing a part, not bidding goodbye to his subjects.  It was a bit drawn out in my view.  However, I have no problem accepting Tennant as The Doctor (though not as the definitive Doctor). 

I do agree he was becoming too human.  All the Doctors prior to Tennant had an alien quality when they played the part, as if they were humanoid but not fully human (or even half-human).  Tennant was simply too 'of Earth' to be really an alien.

As for Smith, I thought he too started out well, then descended into total idiocy.  Laying down backing vocals on a rap song?  Not realizing 'the parking brake was on'?  He soon became an idiot, and I know a few fans LOVED this dimwitted take on the Doctor, but the Doctor was never an idiot.  He was the smartest person in the room.  He could play idiot (the Second and perhaps the Seventh Doctor being adept at it) but this was all a rouse to fool his enemies and be triumphant.  The Eleventh, on the other hand, was a total nitwit who couldn't find his way out of a room if all the doors and windows were open.  I grew to detest Matt Smith's interpretation.

Finally, it is far too early to give a firm opinion on Capaldi.  I think he's better than his material, and I think he's doing the best he can with what he gets.  Both in Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline he was excellent, but in others, like The Caretaker, Time Heist, and Robot of Sherwood, it looked like he was given a Matt Smith-era script and told to do his best Eleventh Doctor impersonation. 

Of course, this is what I also think of the Colin Baker years: a good actor in lousy scripts trying to do the best he can with them and then getting blamed for the failure of the show.  Will we see a repeat of the situation that brought about Doctor Who's downfall? 

 

10 Things I Hate About Who. Part Two: Stupid Publicity Gimmicks

I have made no effort to disguise my growing disdain for NuWho.  I was concerned I was speaking to an empty theater so to speak, but to quote the Face of Boe, "You are not alone".  On one of the Facebook pages I belong to (Classic Doctor Who Fans Who Dislike New Who), I have come across a series of thoughts by Mr. Paul Berry.  We in the group were so genuinely impressed by his series that I urged him to publish them. 

Ethan White of Sixstanger00 has requested permission to upload them on his YouTube page.  I don't know if Mr. Berry has but hope he does.  I for my part asked for permission to reprint them on this site. 

Mr. Berry has graciously allowed me to republish them as he posts them, and here is the second of a ten-essay series.  It is reprinted as written with the content exactly as it appears.  The only alterations made are for any grammatical/spelling errors, spacing for paragraphs, and perhaps a few afterthoughts which will be noted after the photos. 

I hope readers enjoy and share them.  I also hope readers will debate these matters, for I believe in a healthy debate.  However, I find Mr. Berry's comments and thoughts quite well-thought out and worthy of a greater audience. 

With that, I present Part Two of this series: 10 Things I Hate About New Who. 

 

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10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT NEW WHO

2) STUPID PUBLICITY GIMMICKS


Okay every series needs publicity; you can't blame the BBC for actually pushing the series, but it crosses the line when it actually starts to effect the drama of the show. Various elements in the new series have been introduced purely to get people talking and gain inches in the tabloids, not because they were good ideas.

The first one that springs to mind was the Tenth Doctor's supposed regeneration at the end of The Stolen Earth; anyone with any sense would have known that David Tennant hadn't really left the series, but it was enough to get speculation going and people in a frenzy, all free publicity for the series. This wouldn't have been so bad if the idea had been followed through in some interesting way, but it was quickly copped out as the 10th Doctor unsurprisingly regenerated into himself. It cheapened regeneration all for the sake of generating a bit of chatter.

A few months later Davies was at it again, this time by revealing that the year's Christmas episode would be called The Next Doctor. I think David Tennant had announced he was leaving at this point. Davies was deliberately trying to get people to believe that the next Doctor would show up in the Christmas episode; once again plenty of free publicity and tabloid inches. Fast forward a few months and again massive copout when David Morrisey's Doctor is revealed to be just an ordinary human.

We then have the recurring gimmick of making us believe a character is going to die. I think Rose was the first when the end of Fear Her had her revealing that we were going to hear the story about the day she died, and of course she didn't and that was no bad thing. But why mention it at all? Why not let the story stand on its own merits?

A few years later they were at it again, making a big thing about Donna Noble dying; once again she didn't. In 2011 the 6th series launched with the gimmick that one of the main characters was about to die, and Moffat of course pretended to kill the Doctor off. Only he was about the only character no one would actually believe could be dead. Lo and behold he wasn't dead after all; it was a robot duplicate.

We also now seem to have a recurring gimmick of making you think Clara has left the Doctor once and for all, only for her to pop up again in the next story; again BBC Wales are just playing with Jenna Coleman's probably imminent departure and trying to generate speculation. All this would be fine if it weren't interfering with the drama of the show, but Clara's coming and goings are now just getting irritating.

Then of course there are the titles used purely for effect and to get people talking, not because they are good titles. I've already mentioned The Next Doctor, but add to that The Doctor's Daughter, The Doctor's Wife, Let's Kill Hitler, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and probably a few more as well.

The fact is good drama should sell itself; if a show is good and is popular with its audience it shouldn't need to rely on cheap tactics like BBC Wales constantly do. To me that displays a lack of confidence in the product they are putting out.

NEXT TIME: 3) IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?

 

 

I do know that the term "The Doctor" has been used far too much in the revived series.  Take a look at the titles post-Rose:  The Doctor's Wife, The Doctor's Daughter, The Next Doctor, The Name/Day/Time of The Doctor, The Doctor Dances, Vincent & The Doctor, The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.  Compare this to the original series, where "The Doctor" or "Doctor Who" appeared exactly three times in twenty-six years.  With the First Doctor it appeared twice: Episode Five of The Chase (The Death of Doctor Who), Episode One of The Gunfighters (A Holiday for The Doctor), and the Third Doctor story Doctor Who & The Silurians. 

 

It got to be a point of parody.  NuWhovians insist that the Name/Day/Time of The Doctor make up some sort of trilogy which justifies the use of The (Blank) of The Doctor, but if one watches the three episodes back-to-back, they don't even match what came before.  It became so idiotic that for the Twelfth Doctor, I decided to mock this trend by calling every review The (Blank) of The Doctor. 

 

I think a lot of these gimmicks appeal only to NuWho fans, who don't know the history of Doctor Who (but pretend that they do) and thus are genuinely unaware. Take Tenth's supposed Regeneration Part One.  When David Tennant appeared to begin regeneration, we got a 'handy' solution to the problem, and we're left with the idea that the Doctor can basically regenerate to his prior self.  That's never happened before, but for those who know little to nothing of regenerations, it makes sense...sort of.  I'm sure it made for a fantastic cliffhanger, but we're left with a lot of nonsense.  The HAND absorbed his regeneration energy?  Why didn't he do this before to stop himself from fully regenerating?

 

That now lead to a more complicated situation.  At first we were assured it was NOT, repeat NOT a regeneration.  Now it is.  So long as it gets a Twitter trend I guess...

 

It was a silly publicity stunt, as was the entire "The Doctor will die by the shores of Gichee-Gumee...I mean, Lake Silencio".  No matter how much NuWho tries to make me worry, I know that you can't kill off the main character.  Apparently, Moffat can't kill anyone off.  I've written about his bizarre phobia of death, but no matter how often Doctor Who WANTS me to get excited about something with these 'shocking' plot twists, the only things I feel are disgust, anger, and now genuine disinterest.     

10 Things I Hate About Who. Part One: Lack of Believability

I have made no effort to disguise my growing disdain for NuWho.  I was concerned I was speaking to an empty theater so to speak, but to quote the Face of Boe, "You are not alone".  On one of the Facebook pages I belong to (Classic Doctor Who Fans Who Dislike New Who), I have come across a series of thoughts by Mr. Paul Berry.  We in the group were so genuinely impressed by his series that I urged him to publish them. 

Ethan White of Sixstanger00 has requested permission to upload them on his YouTube page.  I don't know if Mr. Berry has but hope he does.  I for my part asked for permission to reprint them on this site. 

Mr. Berry has graciously allowed me to republish them as he posts them, and here is the first of a ten-essay series.  It is reprinted as written with the content exactly as it appears.  The only alterations made are for any grammatical/spelling errors, spacing for paragraphs, and perhaps a few afterthoughts which will be noted after the photos. 

I hope readers enjoy and share them.  I also hope readers will debate these matters, for I believe in a healthy debate.  However, I find Mr. Berry's comments and thoughts quite well-thought out and worthy of a greater audience. 

With that, I present Part One of this series: 10 Things I Hate About Who. 

 

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I've just had an idea for a series of posts. I'm calling it

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT NEW WHO

There's probably more than 10 I can think of but the title had a ring to it.  It's good to be able to air these views to a sympathetic audience without being shouted down. Of course feel free to agree or disagree.

 So okay heres' the first one.
 

1) LACK OF BELIEVABILITY

Okay let's get this straight; on paper Doctor Who is a ridiculous premise: a man flies around the galaxy in a phone box thats bigger on the inside than out. We've had 50 years to assimilate the idea and it stands as one of the true icons of sci fi, but compared to the Enterprise or the Millenium Falcon the Tardis is a bit out there. Imagine in 1963 the various BBC departments being pitched this premise, they could be forgiven for thinking it was some kind of spoof sci fi idea or a silly children's hour skit.

But Verity Lambert, Anthony Coburn, Waris Hussein and Co. took this off the wall idea and made us believe in it. We believed in this utterly bizarre idea because it was grounded in everyday reality, the reactions of our everyman characters of Ian and Barbara were what our reactions would have been if we had stumbled across this impossibility.

There is nothing about this first episode which is trying to be clever or funny; it is just good honest drama and immediately sells Doctor Who as a believable sci fi concept. But it could have been done differently, the producers could have decided to make everything wacky which is pretty much what Moffat does today and then the credibility is gone.

So for the first few seasons Doctor Who goes backwards and forwards in history and out into space, any viewer with a bit of imagination can believe these things are going on, and outside our normal everyday world is a whole universe of adventure.  Later things get a bit more complicated because Doctor Who starts to visit contemporary Earth a bit more and aliens start to invade. The problem is that any viewer knows that there hasn't been a worldwide alien invasion so Doctor Who could lose that connection to reality.  The producers therefore do the sensible thing and most of the alien invasions occur in the future or in isolated areas. With a stretch of imagination we can still believe in the reality of Doctor Who and that everything occurs just out of view. Okay a lot of the UNIT stuff is now contradicted, but at least at the time they tried to make their ideas palatable.

The new series has ceased to be believable since probably the first episode Rose back in 2005. In the old days we were slowly edged into the mythology of the series; in RTD's version it comes in one fell swoop: invasions, TARDIS time travel, there is no time for a viewer to be slowly drawn in like there was in An Unearthly Child so it's all chucked in in the space of 45 minutes.

 

The result is that Doctor Who's version of reality comes over as a bit cartoonish and at odds with the everyday world we live in. As the series goes on the show loses its grip on reality more and more. Worldwide present-day alien invasions every series, Daleks on every street. In each series it got more ridiculous: Earth towed across space, everyone turned into The Master, every dead body becomes a Cyberman.

It's now so ridiculously big and overblown that disbelief can no longer be suspended; we can no longer believe these things are happening just out of the corner of the eye, so it places New Who in some weird contradictory parallel universe where alien invasions are common knowledge or not depending on the requirements of the story.

Not content with having the whole of Earth constantly at threat, the makers have to go one bigger and have the whole of existence constantly at threat as well, hence the hugely nonsensical idea from a few years ago. I forget the exact details where the Doctor somehow rebooted the entire universe. It's just that one step too far, where disbelief can no longer be suspended and the series lapses into farce.

There are many other examples where credulity is strained; take the last episode where we are supposed to believe that dead bodies are transformed into fully mechanized Cybermen by drops of nano rain. I could believe a dead body became some sort of biological looking parody of a Cyberman through such means, but a fully functioning robot with working parts lights and such is just too much of strain. It's like asking someone to believe you've just grown an iPhone. The moon suddenly being revealed as an egg is another example that springs to mind from this year

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There are many more examples too numerous to list which constantly prevent Doctor Who from being taken seriously as proper science fiction.

The upshot is the current makers have taken a far fetched idea and instead of taking the care that they did in 1963 to make it credible, have just continued to stretch it and make it more far fetched. I just cannot engage with a series I cannot suspend disbelief in.
 

Next time: 2) STUPID PUBLICITY STUNTS

 

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Here are my own thoughts. 

The NuWho fan has to ask him/herself, is Doctor Who science fiction or is it fantasy? The whole of Classic Who, from An Unearthly Child to Survival (and perhaps The Movie: The Enemy Within) was clearly science fiction.  Time travel, visits to other planets...that is from sci-fi.   When you can say that the Moon is an egg, can you still hold Doctor Who to be science-fiction?

My personal experience has been that too many NuWho fans explain things away on Doctor Who with one of two responses: timey-wimey or 'the show isn't suppose to make sense!'  That second one really bothers me, because it says that one television show is excused from all logic, even internal.  All shows HAVE to make sense, if not in our world, at least in the world of the show.  You cannot excuse plot holes or continuity errors merely because the premise is fantastical or outlandish.  As a viewer, you accept the outlandish premise but in return, you should keep things logical within the confines of the show.  Changing things at will is a disservice to fans. 

The first photo is from the Third Doctor story Spearhead From Space, an 'alien-invasion' story.  The second I believe is from the Tenth Doctor story The Sound of Drums.  Mr. Berry argues that an alien invasion is more believable than the Master cloning himself because the premise of the show allows one but is too ridiculous on the other.  Not having seen Vengeance of The Master (my umbrella title for Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords) I'm in no position to take one.  

I will say this.  A show has to have some grounds of believability and rationality to work.  If it doesn't, then it's a bad show, no matter how often a fanbase may argue that its lack of logic is what makes it good.