The Doctor loves JKR

The lockdown messages encapsulated the issue for me.

Ok, I just watched the first one and she strongly reminded me of Marian in Maid Marian & Her Merry Men...

Yeah Torchwood is all on there still as far as I recall. Very much not child-friendly though. Still have a lot of affection for the first series, though I know it's a mixed bag (heck, I even like the Chibnall episodes in the main!) and I know it got a lot of praise for the later, less episodic series. Feels a lot more dangerous than later RTD and Moffat, because people actually suffer horrible fates without cutesy 'not-really!' get out clauses. Really harks back, oddly enough, to that terrifying feeling of seeing a Dalek exterminate someone and watching that x-rayed agony of irreversible death when I was but a babby.

I watched all the Torchwood episodes recently for the first time on BBC Iplayer, as far as I know they're all still on there.

Torchwood sounds good. Is it on BBC IPlayer?

Gwen is wonderful

If you like spin offs, Torchwood's brilliant - definite strong female character there in Gwen Cooper, who's great! (Loved last night's reference to her)
Maybe not watch with kids though as not as child friendly as Dr Who (more violence/emotionally distressing/adult content)

Only available via Amazon prime video that I could find (for truly extortionate amounts per series), or you could buy a DVD of series 1 via Amazon for £2.14. But you'd need also the DVD player.

@BuntingEllacott

If you mean the Sarah Jane Adventures, it's available on Amazon Prime, but it's only available as pay to watch (or rather to own).

What that means is that even if you have an Amazon Prime membership you still have to pay extra to watch it.

It's £5.49 to buy season 1 which is in SD and between £7.99 and £10.99 to buy each of the other seasons which are in HD.

You can stream them but I really would suggest that you download any purchases you make.

Good question. I'll see what I can find.

Pothole is it available anywhere? My kids were talking about it before Christmas, because they were hoping someone might have gone mad and bought the very expensive boxset for them (no one has, because we don't have a DVD player now..)

even, that the strong female characters have existed since Barbara entered the Tardis in 1963? It's interesting to note that the very first Doctor Who story was produced by a woman, and directed by a gay man from a Pakistani background. And that was in the 1960s.

You know, I thought this even as I typed my original post. My own personal heroes were Ace and Sarah (latterly more often Sarah-Jane). It's in the show's DNA, and something to be celebrated. Big respect to Delia Derbyshire too. I might go and watch An Adventure in Space and Time to cheer myself up.

On that subject, why not watch the Sarah Jane Adventures? I know it's officially a CBBC show, but it seems more sophisticated than current Who and Elisabeth Sladen was a fantastic actor. (RIP)

There was fuck all else new on TV over Christmas this year that’s probably why. I kept watching things that I thought were new then realising I'd seen it the week before. Lockdown has a lot to answer for!

Yes we are die hard Dr Who fans in our household. My boys wanted to watch an old Matt Smith episode afterwards to cheer us up. I'm a Christopher Ecclestonfan myself also big lover of John Simm's blonde master. Fabulous.

The ratings are better than they could have been, so that's something. Digital Spy loved it, and had a breathlessly excited article with a few Tweets excited that Captain Jack had said a line of expository dialogue that mentioned Rose. You'll probably find similarly gleeful articles in most of the entertainment websites. I'm literally the only one I know that watched it, it's a very long time since it was the topic of conversation with friends, family or colleagues.

It's not going to get cancelled right now, because it's still a big syndication money maker off the back of long gone glory days. I'm hardcore and a completist from the olden days when it really was fashionable to rip the piss out of being a Doctor Who fan sadly, so I'll probably suffer to the bitter end. I got through Colin Baker and JNT, I can do Chibnall and Whittaker.

PotholeParadies yes the destruction of the other tardis without a second thought was jarring. Unbelievable in the extreme.

However will the BBC listen?

No hopefully, because for all those who don't like her, there's loads who do.
I'm in a FB Dr Who group and there's lots of people who like her on there.
I think the complainers are just the ones who shout the loudest so drown everyone else out maybe

Ah well, the consensus is the same everywhere I've seen this new doctor discussed. However will the BBC listen? I doubt it sadly.

I am extremely hacked off that the quality of the writing being so poor means that the show's falling ratings will be blamed on the fact that the Doctor changed sex.

Same - I went from not seeing the point of a female Doctor as I preferred the idea of bringing back previous Time Ladies to being quite excited about the potential for the Doctor having to deal with people treating her differently because they perceive her to be a woman. But they forgot about that pretty quickly. Except for making her shout about her "fam" constantly. I've really tried to like it but I can rewatch most of the episodes from 9/10 and many from 11/12. Can't see my ever wanting to rewatch 13.

The Scientist When it Suits Her Professor Alice Roberts also picked JKR as an analogy when describing what Elizabeth Gaskell must have felt when getting a fan letter from Dickens.
Another one who sees the way the wind is blowing after her "there are five sexes" nonsense.

The lockdown messages encapsulated the issue for me.

This first one, I believed for the first time that she could be a good Doctor. It's quite funny, it was a clever idea, and I think she balances the reassuring and exciting elements well, and it looks dynamic because she clearly filmed it while hiding on a cupboard.

Then they did another one

...which just repeats the idea, makes it a static lecture without any story, and sucks all the fun out of it.

as did Amy (remember the line about "did you wish really hard" when the spirit of the Tardis is embodied by the extremely attractive Suranne Jones)

Oh, I loved that bit.

That reminds me of another issue.

The destruction of the "spare" Tardis last night. I was not comfortable with the Doctor being happy and cheerful to do that at all.

Jodie Whittaker often sounds more interesting in interviews than she does with a script on DW.

I really like Jodie Whittaker, but the plotting and character development has been rubbish.

DW is at its worst when it’s desperately telling the audience that the companions can reveal some deeper truth to the doctor when nothing in the writing has suggested this.