Any classic villain that’s basically humanoid & performance based loses something when turned into BCGIM.
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I don’t have anything against cgi per say and if the dinosaure in Deep Breath looked like the dinos in “Invasion of the…” it would be ridiculous but I think cgi should enhance the visual, not replace it.
Also, part of the small number of episodes is the budget and special effects are crazy expensive. I don’t really understand replacing a character that was human shaped by an expensive effect that wasn’t called for.
Star Wars has gone back to using more practical effects, Agatha All Along used mostly practical effects and all that was acclaimed so I’m a little baffled that Doctor Who seems to go in the opposite direction “look, we’re a big show, with big cgi monsters”
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I agree with you.
I also don’t think there would’ve been as much outcry last week had the giant CGI Omega just… been something or someone else. Like, the design itself was pretty good, I think. I’d have loved if it were just some creature from the Underverse. But saying it’s Omega sort of killed it for me.
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Absolutely this. I find CG organic things generally look a bit odd. No matter how high resolution they are, they don’t seem to look quite real. Bring in a practical element to the monster and just use the CG to bring the eyes to life a bit more, make them blink, add the quick movements that are hard to do practically, and you have something that looks and feels real. That said, the mostly CG dinosaurs they do seem to look ok.
CG seems to work well for inorganic things like space ships, although I wonder whether that’s mainly because the background is CG as well. When there’s a mix of real elements even then models often look better. On the whole I think CGI is great for bringing practical props to life more, but when it’s used on its own, no matter how impressive the design is, I tend not to buy the scene fully.
As for BCGIMs. Nah. But then, I quite like the puppets in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, so maybe I’m just weird.
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I think making villians BCGIMs can work well sometimes, I like the sutekh redesign for example, and I don’t think you could make the movement as expressive and fluid if you tried to do him practically
I don’t think the problem with Omega was that the thing that came out was a BCGIM, it was everything else about it (like @Koquillion said), I mean also look at the Bone Beasts, those were beautiful
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Who up provoking they bone beast
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Purely based on how convincing it was visually, I really really hated Sutekh in the last series. This is because he just looked fake?? I genuinely don’t get why they talk about cgi being better than the practical effects in classic who, because when it’s practical it actually looks like there is the monster physically in the scene along with the characters. But for Sutekh in series 14 it looked like he was just a sort of hologram projected there, like if the characters reached out their arms would go right through him. To be honest I found this more unconvincing and distracting than the dinosaurs in Invasion of the Dinosaurs – even if they didn’t look like real dinosaurs they did at least look like they really existed in the scene, which is more than can be said for cgi Sutekh. For other cgi monsters like omega I don’t necessarily find them so unconvincing, but they are still much more boring than the classic who practical effects version.
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The Bone Beasts would be a good example of appropriate CGI, I agree. Much better than poor ol’ Omega. Oh, how very much I was hoping for an upgrade of his iconic, dramatic - the Greek tragedy parody of the mask was beautiful - and rather fantastic 1973 costume.
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I think it depends on the monster. If the villain was originally more humanoid (à la Sutekh and Omega), then the transition to big CGI creature doesn’t work as well for me. It feels like they’re not their original character. But large monsters that have always been more creature-like, I’m fine with it. However, I will never say no to a good practical monster.
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For me it works with Sutekh because it’s representative of his transformation into godhood, and it keeps to the spirit and vibe of the original design
Where Omega was… something
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Absolutely this. They may have been puppets in model settings, but they had physical heft. While the CGI Sutekh was very well designed and probably took up a lot of human hours to achieve, I couldn’t really believe in it in the same way as a pterodactyl operated with rods!
They were, I agree. And, while bone is organic, they weren’t made of flesh, which makes a difference. They were also shown to not quite be really there as part of the fiction where their feet didn’t mack contact with the ground. That somehow made them easier to believe in.
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It really has to reflect the characterisation of the given antagonist. In Omega’s case, I love his suitably boogeymanish design - it evokes what he worries of his reputation on Gallifrey in Nev Fountain’s Omega, exploded to the hyperbole RTD2 has made a hallmark - but on that same line of thought, he should be utterly disgusted at and morbid about the way he looks. Likewise, Sutekh is a charlatan in his first and hitherto only TV appearance, not a gargantuan god; a CGI makeover can work, but it has to track with a villain’s characterisation.
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Yeah. I agree a lot with this. It was mentioned earlier in the thread about how the Mara wouldn’t be too distracting because the design would lend itself to being a giant CGI creature. Whereas Omega was previously a bloke in a costume, so it’s really strange to see him suddenly becoming a giant CGI skelefreak. (Maybe if they’d shown us part of a transition in some way, I’d buy it more. But I struggle to buy it as being Omega because it looks nothing like the Omega of old – irrespective of dialogue trying to sell it).
As I say, I don’t mind the design. I’d have bought it if they’d said it was just another Underverse creature, but alas.
(Also a sidenote to say what a missed opportunity to call the sea creature in Legend of the Bobblehead Devils a “Myrka”.)
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Bruh I remember watching LOTSD on first air and crashing out over it not being the Myrka as the big monster
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Worst part about the CGI-ness of them is that the way the BCGIMS have been done didn’t need CGI to be done that way. And the originals were misunderstood too. So it could have been something original.
I think the Ravenous would make sense as one.
And for a show option, the scientists that brought dinosaurs to London. Or the dinosaurs, which weren’t monsters but can be done well with CGI. the Vervoids. They look good already, but plant animation has improved massively on TV budgets. (they don’t need it but doing it would still end up with something fitting maybe, if we believe)
And for a New Series, Absorbaloff, I guess.
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I think this raises a point about mixing practical costume with visual effects and CGI. I think there’s a healthy in between. A good example in recent years is Beep the Meep. Practical mixed with VFX. I think something like the Vervoids would lend itself well to a good balance of both.
One thing I don’t really like is when the CGI monsters are made huge just for the sake of ‘epic’. You could bring back the Axons or the Krynoids in pure VFX/CGI form, but I think there’s a worry that they could go over the top and make them unnecessarily huge. They lend themselves to being larger than normal – we’ve even seen a Krynoid take over a manor house – but there’s the temptation to always go ‘bigger and better’ and I think that’s where it should be more a case of less is more.
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So I really, really like the new Omega design, but I don’t like it as Omega.
Does that make sense?
Anyway, I’m now worrying if we’re going to get a big CGI Master when they eventually return…
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Absolutely - the issue isn’t so much the design but the use of it for something completely unlike it.
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It makes perfect sense. There’s a disconnect for me – there’s nothing to visually flag him as Omega, to me. His seal is on the door but that’s it. Had they incorporated something from a previous design into this one, it might’ve sold the illusion more, but as it stands it’s a pure disconnect.
It’d be like bringing Rassilon back but he’s a huge CGI dinosaur-looking thing… sure, you can tell me it’s a disfigured Rassilon who has been exposed to terrifying time winds or whatever the heck, but you’re gunna have a hard time selling it to me visually. If they incorporated something from Rassilon’s past into it, I might buy it more, but it’d still just be a huge CGI dinosaur.
Or if they’d somehow shown a transition from one design to another, maybe that’d help sell it. Imagine if there’d been a small scene of Omega in a void, falling into the Underverse, and we begin to see his old form morph and warp and regenerate (for want of a better term) into the creature we saw last week – I’d still struggle with it, but at least there’d be something visual to latch on to as a viewer, to help sell the massive change in design.
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I’m always on the side of substance over style (give me Harryhausen every day of the week). If you can manage both in a way that fits narratively, then I’ll likely be onboard. In terms of the finale we just received, I’ll echo what others have said and add this: I’ve been visiting my parents, who are in their mid-70s and have never seen a single minute of Doctor Who, all week; however, for the first time, they sat in the living room with me for part of the episode, remarking that the show was weird (which I expected), but still watching as the UNIT tower fired on the bone beasts (which my dad thought was pretty cool), and the characters ran around doing their thing. Then we arrived at the big Omega scene, and my dad said, “Okay, what is that thing supposed to be?,” after which he arose and left the room, my mother having departed a couple of minutes earlier. Take from that what you will. 
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