Doctor Who

[Deborah54]

This will be my 12th Doctor. I’m a big Doctor Who fan. Happy memories of Sat with my dad watching cyber men and darleks.
But what the hell has happened? I’ve just finished, well I managed 25 mins, before I couldn’t take it anymore the 1st episode with the new Doctor and sidekick. Awful acting with a ludicrous plot (yes I know it’s fantasy) but it’s never been this stupid. Can’t help but think the BBC aren’t bothered and think they can put out anything and we’ll watch. Russell T Davies should have his pens taken off him and spare us anymore pain.

I can’t be the only Doctor Who fan who thinks like this. Absolutely Gutted 😞

IMDb has Susan Twist as Mrs Merridew in The Church on Ruby Road, and as Tea Lady in The Devil's Chord, but she's not in Space Babies so there isn't always a Twist at the end.

Ncuti Gatwa is also in Sex Education and is by far the best thing in it. Although not the most gorgeous, that's Kedar Williams-Stirling.

My kids (11 to 16) loved the first episode but DH and I thought it was ridiculous. Enjoyed the second episode (including the Strictly Stars!). We're liking Ncuti and Millie together. It does seemed more aimed at kids.

I'm not sure about a reappearance of the River/Amy/Rory storyline, that was all Steven Moffat. Althought River Song first appeared in the RTD era, it was known at the time that the story was going to be mainly in the SM era and he cast Alex Kingston and already had the story all mapped out, famously the blue diary River Song carried in The Library episodes had her entire storyline written in it.

I think there's something going on about them having an impact on history. There's the renaming of gravity as mavity, the use of salt to keep monsters away. I think the stepping on the butterfly will tie in somehow.

Yes I thought it was an incarnation of the Master

Was she one of the crew in their video speeches? Looked like her to me.

I like the new doctor. But the 2nd episode was dire

@Rummikub not listed in IMDb

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28289436/

Ahh damn. I thought I’d spotted her.

When Ruby was playing the piano and the old lady closed her eyes 😢

She has been kept on for the second series

Doctor Who star Millie Gibson will reprise her role as Ruby Sunday in Season Two, despite previous rumours she'd left the science-fiction series. The BBC confirmed the news, as well as the casting of new companion Varada Sethu

Sorry if it has already been mentioned, but the boy who said that the Maestro was his father, Harry Arbinger, reappeared at the end, coming out of one of the doors while they were singing and dancing down the corridors. I feel that it might be significant?

I found the terrible violin miming distracting. I can't play the violin but even I know if the music sounds twiddly the bow jiggles and fingers are crabbed on the strings.
There was a stunt pianist and there should have either been a stunt violinist or the relevant shots cropped to not show the violin much.

I watching episode two now (skipped one on the advice of the disgruntled teens). Teens annoyed at me for rolling my eyes at they/them.
Hate episodes where recent historical figures play a part just find it really cringey.
This is just boring. Why would the Dr care about seeing the Beatles. I feel like the dr is just a weird human now and so far from the alien he was.

Yes, that was not at all good. I hand-waved it by saying that Maestro was only holding the violin for appearances' sake, and that actually the music was just emanating - either from Maestro or from the instrument, doesn't really matter - without actually physically being produced.

Which would fit with Maestro's desire for the aeolian tones

Each to their own but I thought both episodes were fabulous. Topical, witty and intelligent. And the music is so clever and beautifully scored.
So pleased Russell T Davies is back.

DD (11yo) just burst out laughing art the ludicrous ending to E2.

Yes he was meant to be unearthly and aloof

Thinking about the butterfly.

I originally assumed it was just Russell playing around and, realising nobody ever really addresses the Butterfly Effect, deciding that the TARDIS (which we already know can be used as a Paradox machine) deals with that normally without anyone noticing. Russell being Russell went a bit cheeky with it.

However, I've since moved on. The Doctor is now intrigued about Ruby's origin and has set up a DNA scan. This might just be a fancy Ancestry test to Find Her Mum And Dad... but it also could be something else. If a slightly altered timeline can make her something totally Not Human, maybe she's actually Not Human to start with. Remember George, the frightened child with the dolls' house that Amy and Rory got trapped in?

It's been like that for ages though. Agatha Christie! I bet she's brilliant. Are we in Scotland? I always seem to miss Easter - well, except for the first one... Charles Dickens! And I just snogged Madame de Pompadour!

merryhouse yeah I know , getting worse though. The odd fleeting appearance. It's just my slow, sad falling out of love with it.

Oh dear god just got to the dance scene.

I liked the storyline of E2. Except the notes manifesting. That ruined it.

Overall I like Ncuti and Millie. But the silliness is ruining it.

It was dire.

Oh and another thought I had

Before the Doctor plays the sequence of notes, he plays one note over and over

which is not only how the Theme music starts

but is also the first (very nearly entirely) two lines of The Lost Chord

I've just watched both on iPlayer. I actually enjoyed them; but they didn't seem like Dr Who. Felt like much lighter entertainment. I feel it's a shame that Disney has kind of taken over. Disney and Dr Who feel like a weird fit.
I liked the cast. I think the new Doctor is great.
Really puzzled by the dance sequence at the end! What was that?!

A lot of the messages on this thread are interesting - but only to Whovians because they're like in-jokes to those in the know. I've watched on and off but don't really care about these Easter eggs re Miss Flood or River Song and all that. It's like you can't come to it new, and many scenes are full of busy music to convey what isn't being carried in the actual filming. It's like no one can stay still. It reminds me of many Bond films now, they have to refer back to previous movies, they can't just do a confident standalone story.

It seems like instead of RTD's return creating a return to something really improved, it's doubled down on all the things I've found I really disliked about the show in the last few years. The list being:

1. I've never liked the addition of the doctor having human like sexual relationships as part of the plot. This has been a feature I guess of all NuWho, but I always felt a mistake. Though at least with Rose, I felt it could be ready by the viewer as a very deep and intense platonic relationship, and frankly I thought that reading made for a much stronger story. The River song relationship imo was always completely unbelievable and cringe. I think that it's mainly that it humanizes him too much - it really cuts into the sense of him as being deeply alien. Now, the sense that he's a gay man of the type that is a thing here among humans adds to that sense for me - why would we think Time Lords had the same types of sexual tropes?

2. Relatedly, I am a little surprised that RTD is pushing the LGTBQ+ ="flamboyant thing so hard. It's like we're going backwards. Maybe among the TimeLord LGBTQ+ community, members are known for boring wardrobe choices and an aversion to musical numbers? (And if we wanted to get thoughtful about it, if we were going to imagine that sexuality among Time Lords was so very fluid, I would suspect that a general effect of it might be that there would be no such thing as "gay culture" at all in their society, and we wouldn't see any kind of noticeable cultural/social markers associated with Time Lord sexuality like we do with humans.)

3. This thing you note with the outsized amount of attention to making obscure puzzles for the viewer to solve, spotting Easter eggs, etc. Is this really what good writing has come to? Or what passes for clever and intelligent writing? I really wonder if the amount of time spent on this shit, and what's required to shoehorn it all in, isn't a significant reason for the shit plots.

4. What the fuck is this obsession that now exists with reconning the shit out of established stories and deliberately removing or undermining many basic elements of the story? As if the viewers weren't watching because, actually, they like the story and story elements.

(This is not at all the same thing as creating new narrative and lore in a natural way as the story continues to develop - although in my experience super-fans will disingenuously claim it is.) I don't think this is confined to Dr Who, btw - it seems to be a major trend in television and film now, and Disney is one of the worst offenders.

5. They don't seem to have dialed back the "wokeness" element that many viewer have complained about. Which is again, I think, a failure of good writing - people feel that the show is taking a morally superior tone and imagining that it will "educate" them on various topics, or that perhaps it's some sort of virtue signalling exercise. Again - it's just bad writing. Good writing can and often will include some kinds of social commentary, but it has to feel organic, like it respects the viewer, and the viewer shouldn't feel like they are seeing the mechanics of writing underlying the story - they should just get caught up in the story. It's like the worst kind of preachy Victorian morality story. It's like when you see actors working at acting. Bad bad bad.

What I find very odd about it all is that I think that at one time, RTD was a good solid writer. I don't really think it's just him, it's like a huge number of people in the creative sector have lost the ability to produce any good content over the past 10 years. What the hell happened?