My controversial opinion is that the Doctor’s tour at the End of Time part 2 isn’t too long. I think it’s a great way to say goodbye to all the characters we’ve met and loved during RTD’s run. It’s a nice sendoff before the soft reboot of series 5. It always makes me a little emotional. I just love it.
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As @Koquillion said, situations change. But I agree with you - RTD has made the show alien to me now. It’s a million-dollar Disney cartoon, displaying none of the elements that made Doctor Who my favourite show. It doesn’t need to compete: it’s a completely unique concept, a classic concept. To tamper with and sideline that concept as much as RTD has chosen to do, has eroded people’s interest in it. Sad to say, even I, a fan for most of my life, don’t get any enjoyment or excitement out of it any more. The louder it is, the more I clamour for days gone by. Maybe that’s more to do with age than anything else.
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I don’t mind the overly long farewell tour the Tenth Doctor had. I think what niggles is that we literally only just had a big reunion/farewell a few stories prior, in Journey’s End. So it ends up making the farewell tour feel like a bit of a retread. I’m glad we had moments with Jack and Verity, etc though.
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While it might only be four stories later, it was an entire year and a half in real time. For someone watching it live, with very little Doctor Who in the middle, it still would have been a great moment. I understand if it doesn’t hold up for most people, though.
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Whilst I think Series 1 is still the modern era’s best series, I do love the event that was Series 4. As you say, the Avengers before Avengers. It felt like a huge coming together of the entire RTD1 empire, spin-offs and all. Like with the 50th, I feel as though you really had to be there to appreciate the moment it was, watching that finale. The buzz was unreal.
At the time, I was so ready for RTD to leave (Tennant too), but this was a huge punch-the-air finale that brought everyone together for a massive party. Tag in the return of Davros, and it felt like a natural culmination of RTD’s era. We’d built up across 4 years - each series bringing something from the past back, each finale increasing the stakes, and this was the big crescendo.
Good times.
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I like that everything 10 does solo is stuck in the farewell tour gap, that’s literally where everything is put
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Is it? I thought most BF stuff is like during the specials. I know of one BF release specifically during the farewell tour though!
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Oh, for sure. But I do also think there was a feeling of ‘the excesses of this era back again’, if that makes sense. Throughout 2009, we’d also seen photos of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan filming, so there was a hunger for the new era too. The farewell tour worked, and I enjoyed it, but I can also understand why some didn’t care for it. There’s an alternative timeline out there where Journey’s End was the finale of the Tenth Doctor, and I can’t say I’d be too mad about that (although losing Mars would be gutting).
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The events of the series 4 finale are great and I love how all of the companions get together and fly the TARDIS. It’s not my favorite finale but it’s still enjoyable.
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What do you think is suddenly missing?
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Yeah, most of his stuff is in and around TEoT
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Any sort of charm, much in the way of gravitas for the Doctor, the Doctor as an alien eccentric, a companion with a character the audience can invest in. Stories that are well told, that treat the audience with much in the way of intelligence. Monsters that we are invited to be afraid of.
I wouldn’t say these things have suddenly disappeared, but they’ve gradually been whittled down over the last two or three years, in my view. I know that Disney have primarily co-financed and distributed the show rather than actively become involved in its approach, but there’s no denying that Doctor Who’s style has been ‘influenced’ by the wacky juvenile antics of Disney’s recent output.
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There is still bucket loads of charm throughout the show, IMO.
I always see this word ‘gravitas’ bandied around (particularly in relation to Whitaker lacking it) and I just don’t get a) why it’s so important and b) what it is supposed to look like. The Doctor, in all their incarnations has moments of levity and sincerity and I don’t think this has ever changed.
I think this was very much part of Whitaker’s characterisation but the ‘alien eccentric’ element of the Doctor has waxed and waned over the years anyway. Davison is markedly less an ‘alien eccentric’ than Baker was and the contrast between Pertwee and Troughton is similar too.
I think lots of viewers were invested in Ruby and it’s quite obvious many were invested in Yaz.
Well, this is purely subjective, obviously, but I think there were some very well told stories in Gatwa’s first season - 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble, Boom. And if we’re extending back into Whitaker’s time (which your three years comment seems to imply) then there are plenty of well told stories there too.
You’ll have to explain this to me because I think the stories always credit the audience with intelligence.
This, of course, varies from person to person but I’ve never been particularly scared of any Doctor Who monster.
There is absolutely denying it because I really don’t see what has changed in terms of the style which reflects ‘Disney’s recent output’. Are we talking about Andor, or Daredevil? Are we talking about Skeleton Crew or Moon Knight or Agatha All Along? Are we talking about Mufasa or Moana 2 or What If? What ‘wacky juvenile antics’ are you referring to?
I’m a bit fed up with ‘Disney’ being used as a dirty word as well as a catch all term as if all their output is exactly the same and also aimed at a less intelligent, less discerning viewership.
I know we all get different things from the show and we will all prefer some eras to others - that’s the nature of the beast of a 60+ year old show that’s had numerous different production teams behind it. But it has never strayed so far from the course that it has become a shadow of its former self - and it still hasn’t.
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Stuff like this is always a catch-22, having stories that provoke thought and require you to think through it critically is great as long as the audience is actually willing to do that, otherwise it backfires terribly.
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Aside from the getting the band together thing, which is cool, I’ll give it that, I don’t know what people honestly see in Journey’s End. The bulk of the episode is standing around, talking about what they’re going to do with very little happening, waiting for Donna and the metacrisis Doctor to show up, where they defeat the Daleks in an instant, wrapped up way too fast so they can spend 15 minutes saying goodbye to everyone and redoing the beach scene for some reason. It’s all just so self-indulgent, pacing is way off, and the story lacks much in the way of substance. And it’s a shame because its first part I think was fairly good.
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I’ve got to admit, I see the RTD2 era as very similar to the RTD1 era. Both strike me as equally wacky and silly, with equal opportunity for darkness as well. I understand if you don’t like the new era, but to me the two are very close.
The only real difference for me is that Ruby hasn’t made as much of an impression as Rose; but that’s a sad effect of the 8-episode series (still my least favourite thing about this new era).
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I stress this not a dig but I just want to make a point - not sure what point, but it was something that struck me…
I don’t know what people honestly see in Heaven Sent. The bulk of the episode is walking around, talking about what he’s going to do with very little happening, waiting for the Veil to show up, where they defeat the wall in an instant, …
(and yeah it falls apart from here but hopefully people see what I’m saying).
Story beats all hit us in different ways and the way they hit us can change as we change. This is why I never write off a story or question in anything more of a jokey way, why other people may love or hate something.
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I know that’s your take on Heaven Sent, and I still find it so disingenuous as if you intentionally are missing the context, bigger picture that’s there and everything that led up to that episode and how it’s a piece on grief, which I’ve explained before, and I think the two aren’t remotely comparable, but I see your point. I can back off a bit on Journey’s End.
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I am not being disingenuous at all, and actually that upsets me a little. I have tried to see what people admire in that episode and I just can’t vibe with it.
I know what it builds on - I’ve watched the same episodes as you. It just doesn’t resonate with me. And that’s okay. Journey’s End doesn’t resonate with you.
As for it being a piece of grief, I’ve seen and appreciated many examinations of that over the years. Heaven Sent doesn’t chime with me at all on those points (not least because Clara doesn’t actually die in the end so that, for me, undermines anything being examined in this story).
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I think part of why I love TSE/JE so much is because I was 9 when it came out, had been watching Who since I was 5 with S1 and it was this epic culmination of S1-4 so it hit so hard, and still does for that reason.
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