As somebody whose favorite doctor, and maybe all time favorite character, is the tenth doctor: rtd PLEASE stop bringing back David Tennant. He’s great, but Doctor Who needs to move on.
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Personally I think Moffat got the balance just right - there was still camp (River Song is pretty camp) but also lots of seriousness, some really dark ideas explored, and there were interesting and engaging series-long arcs that actually provoked discussion and intrigue [1]
I don’t think it’s any surprise that the show really took off abroad during the Moffat era.
What I’m saying basically is let’s bring Moffat back to save the show /hj
(All kidding aside, I’d be happy for them to have more creative control from other people, and a writers’ room. I enjoyed S1 and S2 but think all the reasons it wasn’t a huge success can be down to “RTD didn’t get any feedback”)
I know some people aren’t happy with how they were resolved but you can’t argue that they weren’t watercooler chat material ↩︎
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A shortened season? Every time we take episodes off the episode count, they don’t come back, and we’re already at the point where the arcs feel ridiculously rushed. We need a lengthened season, not, say, Doctor Who being 4 hour long episodes per season…
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Neither do I, but I also don’t like that the sticking point seems to be “maybe we should try appealing to a modern audience” vs “no it’s still 2005”. That’s a point RTD could stand to lose some ground on
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The thing is, RTD’s choosiness about whom to work with has - imo - served the show well. Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Chris Chibnall, Joe Lidster, Kate and Briony, Juno Dawson - that’s a damn good lineup (albeit a very white male one). I think there is real value in that. What we need is for him to open up more of the show to his select group of people, rather than writing two thirds of the season himself and giving three of those people one ep each.
That said, the idea of people with experience from other properties coming to DW is appealing (rather puts one in mind of JJ Abrams coming to Star Trek) - but a foreign, for-profit interest gaining more creative control not so much (rather puts one in mind of Disney taking over Star Wars!).
Funny if it’s true and Disney hasn’t had any substantive creative control while we’ve all been losing our minds over it. I’m still dying to know what the “really good notes” Russell & co. mentioned in their joint DWM interview were.
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The only note I know of is that the Doctor should have appeared sooner in the episode The Church on Ruby Road so they added the snowmanned scene. I think it was a good idea.
I think people who are saying “it’s camp and too childish and WOKE and it’s because Disney wrote it” must never have seen RTD1…
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Yeah, that’s the only one I know of, too, and it was a great scene.
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Honestly, it’d be funny if Disney’s notes on RTD2 were actually pretty much the same complaints the fans have been having, and RTD has just been ignoring them a lot…
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I’m thinking of the interview Russell, Jane, Julie, and Phil did together via Zoom before any of the 60th specials came out (iirc). The writer mentioned that while they were waiting for Jane (iirc), the rest were chatting about Disney’s notes on an episode, and Phil specifically mentioned they’d caught something he couldn’t believe they’d all missed at Bad Wolf and the BBC. It definitely sounded like it was, as Russell said elsewhere in the interview, a “really good” note.
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Sorry, we need to move on from “his select group of people”. He’s a gatekeeper.
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I have a theory that Ms Flood will return in a future season. Basically, she’s bigenerated already and THE Rani was killed, so I predict that she won’t be able to even regenerate in the future. This could lead into a Trial of the Timelord-esqe situation where she’s trying to steal the Doctor’s regenerations for herself.
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Given her biological experimentation on others, I suspect she’ll clone herself, and/or other Time Lords. Maybe she gets hold of the Masters tooth (she was in the same building!) and clones the Master from it?
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“You are the Master and you will obey me!” 
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I hope she does, otherwise what was the point in keeping her and killing the other Rani?
Although I’m with @sircarolyn, I would have preferred we kept Archie’s Rani instead.
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I’d do anything for more Archie… anything…
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I found it. It’s from #586 (p. 30, 32), and they literally said right in the quote what it was. 
Disney 1, Sophie’s memory 0.
While I was at it, I found the crossword clue that pissed me off (35-Across, in #585) because it was so clear they were sucking up:
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Ouch, that crossword puzzle didn’t age well.
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On the one hand, a company having some creative control, there can at least be someone to say no to RTD’s batshit ideas and at the very least getting a sensible plot. RTD is a great writer and he’s still got it (wild blue yonder) but he needs to be reigined in and not go balls to the wall so a company having some creative control would at least solve that problem.
But I see the downsides to whoever this company is having creative control as well but to me, having someone that can reign in RTD’s ideas and say no is what this show needs so RTD can focus on writing, which is what he does best. After that S3 and S4 reddit leak from a bit ago, his ideas do needs to be reigined in so if a company having creative control is the way then I’ll be down for a well written doctor who that plays it safe. I’m down for creative control.
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One Word - Daleks.
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