Has Doctor Who always been this amateur?

[user09876543]

I'm assuming it isn't doing very well since the BBC is plugging it massively but has it always been this poor? I haven't watched since Christopher Eccleston but thought I'd give it a go. It's like watching a bad village Am Dram performance. Am I missing something? Is this intentionally part of it now?

I see your creepy cgi babies and dance routines and raise you the Kandy Man. Sylvester was my doctor as a child and this episode would be totally ludicrous to watch now, but I was terrified of Bertie Bassett for years after.

I do think that this series has started weakly, which is a shame as I like Ncuti a lot. Hopefully the scripts will get better.

Ha I can't remember that one (possibly wiped it from my mind for being too frightening! lol) but I DO remember quarries... lots and lots of quarries...

In the good old glory days of the 60s, 70s, 80s, it was shockingly, gloriously, wonderfully shoddy and didn't pretend to be anything else. Off-earth locations were always either corridors with wobbly walls or disused quarries. Aliens always looked exactly like the men in tin cans/rubber suits that they truly were. Stories and acting were shamelessly, joyfully crap.

Then we had a wonderful brief period where it was truly innovative and high quality. With the fantastic Eccleston. It retained some of this quality during Tennant's tenancy, but then plummeted.

These days it is a brand. A horrible, smug, superficial brand. All of the shoddiness of the original Dr Who but welded with enormous arrogance and overreach.

I could have written all of this. Loved DT, but Matt Smith with Amy and Rory is my favourite combination ever. Great storylines, great characters. It's never been the same since. I found PC to be a little too dark for my tastes, and JW just came across like a bumbling dumb blonde, very disappointing. Not necessarily her acting but more how Chris Chibnall obviously sees women 🙄
I watched the Christmas episodes and thought the David/Donna combination was great, but I'm just not sure about Ncuti. He was great in Sex Education and I think he'll make a great doctor, but the wokeness and panto scripts are just putting me off. My DD is the biggest fan ever and after watching the latest episodes and declaring them "shit" (and she loves Ncuti) I don't think I'll bother.

Moffat has written the next one, which gives me a flicker of hope.

Saw David Tennant years ago in Romeo and Juliet in Stratford. He was the RSC's darling for a few years. I don't think they hire rubbish actors.

Almost every episode ever made is freely available, it might be worth taking a look. This incarnation is a joint venture with Disney, so I'd expect some changes.

David Tennant was the Dr when my son watched it, the episodes were easy to understand for children and my son loved it.
Since then, even I don't understand some of the stories, it's got to outlandish and clever. I found Jodie was always rushing about saying her lines far too quickly. It just doesn't seem a children's programme anymore. The endless plugging of the show just makes me think they've lost their core audience.

It's not for oldies (me included) - they are aiming at a new audience imo.

I had been watching since the Jon Pertwee days, and David Tennant has been far away the best Doctor as far as I'm concerned. It was the slightly unhinged waywardness I think!

Lost interest halfway through the Matt Smith episodes, and that's that.

Given every franchise that has tried this seems to fall flat on their faces you'd think they'd learn...

This brand new audience who will accept shit writing, boring preaching and DEI over talent just doesn't exist.

The overnight viewing figure for Power of the Doctor, October 2022, was 3.71 million. For The Giggle, December 2023, it was 4.62 million.

The overnight figures for the new series so far are 2.6 million viewers for the first episode, Space Babies, and 2.4 million for the second, The Devil's Chord.

It will be interesting to see where the figures go

I gave up during ther Matt Smith era. I actually liked him as The Doctor but I found the plots too convoluted for me and I couldn't follow them or remember what had happened in the past.

This is what you get when Disney get involved. I watched the first couple but the heavy handed woke signalling grated. The song and dance number was the tin lid on it AFAIC.

They loved Eccleston, Tennant,Smith and Capaldi (though they found some of the latter's more boring that the others). They completely lost interest during Jody's era.

Same here. I started watching with Peter Davisson - only later seeing earlier versions -but it did get very ropy with Sylvester McCoy before it was finally cancelled. It was always very British with ropy sets and monster but somehow over came that.

The last re-boot made it much more family orientated viewing with higher production values - something for everyone working on many levels - got my kids liking it.

I do agree they are in search of a new audience it seem very much more a CBBC show - though Am Dram performances in second one is a good description - only really the villain got away with it.

I mostly enjoyed the Tenant/Donna episodes and the Christmas one was fine but the space babies one was over burdened with a huge wedge of exposition for new Disney viewers which surely could have been drip fed over a season, and, more fatally, read like a first draft. It needed two more drafts and a script doctor.

I've been a fan since the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker days (loved those quarries! Also loved Blake's Seven) and this is just awful. Dr Who has always been woke but in the context of some good old dalek invasions and interesting twists and turns (no, not to music) but this is just preachy junk with the preaching valued over the storyline.

I agree, it's written like an inadequate GCSE candidate trying to convert the world to their beliefs.

I am a Doctor Who fan and, having been with my DH in hospital, have only just got around to starting the new series - I am gutted! Babies in fricking space??? WTF did I just watch. I think that has got to be the WORST episode I have ever seen, and that's off the back of having just re-watched the entire 2005-2022 boxset. What an appalling, Cbeebies style sanitised woke-fest that was. An absolute simpering cringe-fest shower of shit! Designed to appeal to key-stage 2s and nobody else?

My absolute favourite doctor of all time is Capaldi, he was absolutely brilliant, he was the epitome of what the Doctor should be and having just watched the latest episode I miss him more than ever! He did some of my favourite episodes - the mummy on the orient express, the one with the 2D aliens where the Tardis shrinks to the size of a rubix cube (anyone remember him grumpily dragging the Tardis out of the path of a train by sticking his finger out of the open door? Brilliant!) The puzzle castle one - amazing. The episodes with Missy going bananas. The underwater ghosty one. Daleks, cybermen, hurrah! All so great. And going further back to Tennant and Smith - bring back the Weeping Angels! My suspicion is that because the BBC have now sold the streaming rights to Doctor Who to Disney, that they now have a say in how it's made - did anybody notice how amazing the special effects suddenly are? And so, you have this trade off of big budget special effects but at the cost of the quality of the storyline, where everything must now be appealing to 5 year olds and they are shoe-horning despicable crap like musical routines into the show - song and dance routines in Doctor Who, I could actually cry. And all the hugging has got out of control. Heads should roll.

Loved the Eccleston/Tennant/Smith eras, Capaldi was tolerable (hampered by some shit writing imo) but Whittaker was just awful - it's like they took away the Dr's intelligence along with his penis. JW deserved better!

I liked Clara. I do have a question though for you knowledgeable fans - I'm sure I remember an episode where Clara met her and Danny Pink's descendants but then in a later episode Danny Pink died, before he and Clara had kids. Did I imagine that or was it explained?

I guess the real question ❓ ⁉️ ⁉️ is: what do THE KIDS make of Children's Programme Doctor Who

David Tennant is our favourite in this house.

I didn't realise Disney was now involved with Dr Who that will explain it all. My sixteen year old DD & her friend were so excited for the Tennant/ Donna episode and so disappointed with DEI agenda they have all stopped watching it & they are teens with multiple friends who ID as XYZ. If the woke teens are finding it too preachy then it definitely has gone too far.

It's such a shame when a good series is messed with.

He may well be a great stage actor but he’s not a great TV actor. Other than Dr Who, his only big hit has been Broadchurch, in which he played essentially the same character (albeit with just the one heart…) in a different setting.

But I wasn’t making the point to slag off DT, but as a comment on how the scripts make or break a Dr Who.

I loved the second episode, could not get on board with the first one, but I felt, they were just setting up the characters.

Also agree Jodie got fucked over by bad writing. I have a feeling why that happened.

Also have assumed this series is going to be filled with pronouns, various genders, etc etc but I am fine with all of this if my theory about the companion turns out to be true.

That's interesting. I have always wondered what the hype about Dr. Who is because I have always found them so amateurish and boring. I haven't bothered seeing the new one as Tenant put me off it for life (he's a good actor because I've seen him in a movie or two that I liked, so obviously the problem isn't him per se, but maybe the script or supporting cast?).

Tennant wore reading specs. Think Smith did as well? Maybe Peter Davison too?