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Thedelldays

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Clearly some people do watch it otherwise the Beeb wouldn't be flogging it to death like they are. Fair play to them really - they have taken what used to be a cult sci-fi show and successfully turned it into a prime-time family entertainment show.

 

I'll watch it if there's nowt else on. I thought David Tennant was very good, and I will tune in to see what it's like with the new Dr and new writers now that RTD has left. Not expecting great things TBH, but I'll check it out anyway.

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does anyone really watch thus tripe..?

 

anyone over the age of 15 that is....

 

I used to love Dr Who back in the Pertwee/Baker era, and I tried really hard to like the newer stuff, but it just left me feeling let-down every time.

 

Obviously the show has quite a big budget, but every episode I've seen has over-reached by trying to be a mini-Hollywood-blockbuster and as a result has ended up being swamped in really cheap cgi. Some of the best 'human drama' I've seen recently has been in sci-fi's or horror films, and from what I saw, Dr Who really missed a trick by going for the bland bombast.

 

My nephews love it though.

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Here's a different angle, the series has become really popular world wide, it's on down here with Arabic sub-titles and locals now recognise my Doctor Who ringtone and laugh.

 

Also, when I was first dating my current GF who's Polish, I was looking for some easy watching Brit TV type stuff to get the whole culture thing across. Dr Who Sooooo worked.

 

Although personally it's not been the same since the days of wanting to do bad things with Rose Tyler.

 

(Her words, not mine)

 

The Doc's bus that got smashed up on it's way to the desert here for that special earlier in the year was parked close to my pad for weeks all bent and buckled before it was towed away to be scrapped, amazing how many locals stopped to have their photos taken with a tv star....

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I'm 18, and I love it. The show is only going to get better now that they've got shot of Russell T Davies, who just wrote his episodes around regurgitating old monsters. Steven Moffat is now writing the new episodes, and i'm looking forward to them. 'Blink' was genuinely one of the scariest things i've seen prior to the watershed on TV before, and this is supposed to be a kids show!

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I watched it as a wee lad, first when William Hartnell was The Doctor, and then Patrick Troughton. It kind of fizzled out even then, for me. All that, hiding behind the sofa and being frightened, codswallop never happened as far as I was concerned, and I've never really taken to it since. A shame really, because I like the idea of Time-Travel, but the Dr Who scenario uses the idea just to have someone new to defeat each episode/series/whatever. Whereas I'd like them to explore the well discussed time paradoxes.

 

Daleks, Cybermen, and people running around in latex suits with tentacles leaves me laughing at best, and at worst, totally bored. Sorry. :(

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I'm 18, and I love it. The show is only going to get better now that they've got shot of Russell T Davies, who just wrote his episodes around regurgitating old monsters. Steven Moffat is now writing the new episodes, and i'm looking forward to them. 'Blink' was genuinely one of the scariest things i've seen prior to the watershed on TV before, and this is supposed to be a kids show!

 

I agree, Moffat has done the best episodes (Blink, Library,Fireplace) so looking forward to the new series, although can't see the new Doctor being as much of a success...but time will tell.

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does anyone really watch thus tripe..?

 

anyone over the age of 15 that is....

 

Yes. 45 years old.

 

Wouldn't miss an episode. It's an institution with me and my two boys and I love every episode. I also think Torchwood was superb.

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Russell T Davies, who just wrote his episodes around regurgitating old monsters.

 

im going to sound like a right nerd now, but what you said just there is you talking ballbags.

Midnight and Turn Left are both fantastic episodes, and neither use old monsters.

 

obviously the series ends are very old monster heavy, but those are his "throw everything at the wall" episodes anyway.

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im going to sound like a right nerd now, but what you said just there is you talking ballbags.

Midnight and Turn Left are both fantastic episodes, and neither use old monsters.

 

obviously the series ends are very old monster heavy, but those are his "throw everything at the wall" episodes anyway.

 

[geek] I admit, Midnight was a very good episode as well, but I never really liked Turn Left. Although the storyline itself was well written, I didn't really like the execution of it. I suppose that's mainly the director's fault though, and not RTD's.

 

But these good episodes are drowned out by episode upon episode of 'oh look, it's a dalek' or 'oh look, it's a cyberman'. These monsters are supposed to be scary, but they just aren't. The psychological aspects of Blink and others like The Doctor Dances and The Empty Child were quite scary and frightening, and that's what the show should be aiming for nowadays. With a nation of desensitised kids, it's gonna take a skillfull writer to scare them once again, but I think Moffat is more than talented to do that. I hear Steven Spielberg is actually after him to write a few scripts for him, but he wants to concentrate on Dr Who. Who would turn down Hollywood for Cardiff!? :D [/geek]

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Midnight wasn't written by RTD, it was written by Moffat (who is taking over in the new series).

RTD was a great writer and was especially good at leaving us with huge cliffhangers in the penultimate episodes, but the best ones for me (Silence in the Library, Midnight etc) were all written by Moffat.

I think this thread should be moved to lounge tbh, as Delldays seems to have failed in his quest to take the p*ss.

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[geek] I admit, Midnight was a very good episode as well, but I never really liked Turn Left. Although the storyline itself was well written, I didn't really like the execution of it. I suppose that's mainly the director's fault though, and not RTD's.

 

But these good episodes are drowned out by episode upon episode of 'oh look, it's a dalek' or 'oh look, it's a cyberman'. These monsters are supposed to be scary, but they just aren't. The psychological aspects of Blink and others like The Doctor Dances and The Empty Child were quite scary and frightening, and that's what the show should be aiming for nowadays. With a nation of desensitised kids, it's gonna take a skillfull writer to scare them once again, but I think Moffat is more than talented to do that. I hear Steven Spielberg is actually after him to write a few scripts for him, but he wants to concentrate on Dr Who. Who would turn down Hollywood for Cardiff!? :D [/geek]

 

As you say young culture has moved on so people aren't really gonna be scared by a pepper pot with a plunger and a whisk for weapons, but that is not the fault of anyone to do with the show.

From Ecclestones series, the episode "Dalek" was the last one where they were shown as the hard-as-nails creatures they were designed to be. After that they were always portrayed as slightly mad comic relief (making them spin round and be slid along the floor like bowling balls was a massive mistake in Journeys End.

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As you say young culture has moved on so people aren't really gonna be scared by a pepper pot with a plunger and a whisk for weapons, but that is not the fault of anyone to do with the show.

From Ecclestones series, the episode "Dalek" was the last one where they were shown as the hard-as-nails creatures they were designed to be. After that they were always portrayed as slightly mad comic relief (making them spin round and be slid along the floor like bowling balls was a massive mistake in Journeys End.

 

Dalek was a true watershed episode. It had the twist where the Doctor was shown to be guilty of "Genocide" which knocked a whoole set of belief systems about Good & Evil, but also brought out a momentary return of the old "terror" that they Daleks induced back in the early days when we suddenly realised that running out from behnd the sofa and sprinting upstairs to hide wouldn't work as the Dalek levitated.

 

The point is that the Doc is LIGHT entertainment. Torchwood made the effort to be a post watershed more "serious" product, but while really enjoyable got hung up on blokes snogging and dead men walking, and it was never possible to truly believe that so much stuff was happening in Cardiff. (I mean Cardiff IS a weird place at night, but..)

 

As to the new Doctor? Well, when Eccelstone went, everyone who enjoyed the series said who the feck is David Tennant? And, to be fair, as long as the new bloke isn't another Sylvester McCoy, then Saturday night TV and my trips to the DVD shop will be fine.

 

Let's face it, what is better, 40 minutes of light entertainment with the Doc or 3 hours of Jedward (and their future clones) dancing with stars or on Ice or in the Jungle or a in Big House on a Saturday night?

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Midnight wasn't written by RTD, it was written by Moffat (who is taking over in the new series).

RTD was a great writer and was especially good at leaving us with huge cliffhangers in the penultimate episodes, but the best ones for me (Silence in the Library, Midnight etc) were all written by Moffat.

I think this thread should be moved to lounge tbh, as Delldays seems to have failed in his quest to take the p*ss.

 

It was btw........ :cool: Great episode though

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Midnight wasn't written by RTD, it was written by Moffat (who is taking over in the new series).

RTD was a great writer and was especially good at leaving us with huge cliffhangers in the penultimate episodes, but the best ones for me (Silence in the Library, Midnight etc) were all written by Moffat.

I think this thread should be moved to lounge tbh, as Delldays seems to have failed in his quest to take the p*ss.

 

Hate to do this to you bro, but it was.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1208128/

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Let's face it, what is better, 40 minutes of light entertainment with the Doc or 3 hours of Jedward (and their future clones) dancing with stars or on Ice or in the Jungle or a in Big House on a Saturday night?

 

This is so very , very true .

 

I have no problem exposing my inner nerd on here yet again , indeed I've learnt to embrace my nerdhood over the years . Both Doctor Who and yours truly were born in 1963 so I've grown up with this and hold it close to my heart , although I'm more of a Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker man myself I still find the better episodes of the modern Doctor Who (but not OTT end of season nonsense) to some of the best drama the BBC has made in recent years . I challenge anyone to offer a convincing argument as to why stories such as Blink or The Satan Pit for instance aren't family entertain of the very highest order .

 

As my 3 year old Godson is currently obsessed with Daleks to a unhealthy degree (my fault :() I can assure you all from personal experience the programme still retains its power to capture a new audience . Put simply DW represents the battle between good and evil - the eternal story .

 

The runaway critical success of Russell T Davis's (bless his cotton socks) recreation of Doctor Who and the substantial audience it's built both in the UK and internationally surely prove that its creators must be doing something right .

Edited by CHAPEL END CHARLIE
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I watch it. Well, I skipped the series with that awful woman in (just like I avoided it when Bonnie Langford was in it). It'll be better once Russell T De Mille leaves the writing alone. His episodes are usually riddled with crap jokes and campery. Apart from The Wire, it's the only 'drama' in recent years that I've made any effort to watch regularly.

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does anyone really watch thus tripe..?

 

anyone over the age of 15 that is....

 

Would help if you spelled "this" to hammer your point home.

Yes I love Dr Who, it's light hearted and much better than the X-Factor/Strictly stuff that comes on in my opinion because it's so unrealistic and the storyline arcs are fun to speculate on.

Even the most cynical cynic Charlie Brooker loves Dr Who, it's a huge hit, especually amongst older audiences who watched it when they were little back in the days of Jon Pertrew and Tom Baker.

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First of all I'll repeat that I speak as a massive and long standing Doctor Who fan but I felt last night's story was poor frankly , and sadly typical of the ridiculous overblown story-lines that occur when Russell T Davis takes over the writing and no one else has the authority to tell him that this king has no clothes . Last nights episode is an object lesson of the perils of combining the roles of Executive Producer and Screenwriter , too much power vested in one man and not enough detached oversight . Using the prime time Christmas night slot to air an episode that was little more than a confusing set up for the real climax of David Tennant's Doctor next week was an indulgence that surely no other BBC series could/should have been allowed to get away with .

 

Jon Simm is a fine television actor but I can't be alone in finding him badly miscast as The Master . A character that is supposed to be the very embodiment of evil needs a actor that can convey that to the audience - sorry Jon but Rodger Delgardo you ain't I'm afraid . This role needs a performer with the gravitas to carry of that sense of profound menace the Master must possess , a modern Christopher Lee type for instance rather than a personable and (too) likable Leading Man .

 

The programme had deeper problems than its casting however , foremost among them being what the hell was the plot about ? It is accepted that Sci Fi has by its very nature to stretch the boundaries of fiction but how plausibly does the Master turn all humanity into copies of himself - and why should he bother in the first place ? It was all nonsense really I'm sorry to say .

 

We still have the second half of this two-parter to come and lets hope its more successful than the first , David Tennent (and more importantly the audience) deserve much better than this . :(

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The whole family like Dr Who, but weren't too impressed with it last night. Can only assume that they are trying to make David Tennants final bow a little more complicated than it needed to be. I started watching in the Pertwee/Baker days, when it seemed very special until Star Wars came out. However, I like it as the whole family can watch and we aren't required to vote for someone at the end of it. Also, my kids are early teens and this generation are being truly bombarded with some ****e to watch. Go see Avatar 3d.

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First of all I'll repeat that I speak as a massive and long standing Doctor Who fan but I felt last night's story was poor frankly , and sadly typical of the ridiculous overblown story-lines that occur when Russell T Davis takes over the writing and no one else has the authority to tell him that this king has no clothes . Last nights episode is an object lesson of the perils of combining the roles of Executive Producer and Screenwriter , too much power vested in one man and not enough detached oversight . Using the prime time Christmas night slot to air an episode that was little more than a confusing set up for the real climax of David Tennant's Doctor next week was an indulgence that surely no other BBC series could/should have been allowed to get away with .

 

Jon Simm is a fine television actor but I can't be alone in finding him badly miscast as The Master . A character that is supposed to be the very embodiment of evil needs a actor that can convey that to the audience - sorry Jon but Rodger Delgardo you ain't I'm afraid . This role needs a performer with the gravitas to carry of that sense of profound menace the Master must possess , a modern Christopher Lee type for instance rather than a personable and (too) likable Leading Man .

 

The programme had deeper problems than its casting however , foremost among them being what the hell was the plot about ? It is accepted that Sci Fi has by its very nature to stretch the boundaries of fiction but how plausibly does the Master turn all humanity into copies of himself - and why should he bother in the first place ? It was all nonsense really I'm sorry to say .

 

We still have the second half of this two-parter to come and lets hope its more successful than the first , David Tennent (and more importantly the audience) deserve much better than this . :(

 

Excellent review.

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