Hello, I am a fellow enjoyer of In the Forest of the Night! Wouldn’t say it’s my favourite, but I love it a lot. Maybe if it had come out when I was a little younger, maybe if I had liked Twelve a bit more when it did come out, then it would have been my perfect episode.
I was honestly not aware that people liked Voyage of the Damned. I also always skip it, I just don’t find it very interesting. Maybe I just don’t Get It™.
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I just watched this episode again today, and this song is just not for me - and that’s ok.
But am I alone in thinking that Gatwa and Gibson’s vocals were way too edited in the dubbing? It was like listening to generic pop vocals from 15 years ago, just way too smooth. All vocal personality just seems lost in the editing process.
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You’re not alone. Just another thing that makes the song feel out of place. Still, you can tell those two can sing, even if the production team felt the need to overcompensate for something.
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That’s what bugged me this time around. Clearly they both can sing, so why apply vocal editing to such a degree?
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I think this more than anything is what bugged me. If I could be convinced that it was actually a mob of 100 goblins singing and braying, then it would have been way more diegetic and actually not jarring. Instead, we got a Meghan Trainor-alike lead goblin vocal, and INCREDIBLY overproduced vox from the two leads which just pulls you clean out of the show. It’s clear that they’ve never DONE musical episodes and just don’t know how to appropriately mix.
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I LOVE Paradise Towers and totally agree!!
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My personal favourite story has always been Under The Lake/Before the flood
It’s just such a Doctor Who story: Base under siege, supernatural element turned science, Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey stuff
I just hope that one day we can see the Fisher King’s race again, such a cool creature design
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I really really enjoyed that story. I much preferred Series 9 to Series 8.
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my most controversial opinion is that the end of chibnall era was actively homophobic. and in general that chibnall era was not actually all that progressive.
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Hi, would you care to elaborate? I’ve never heard that take before 
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on the homophobia front particularly: i feel that thasmin was pretty seriously bait, and the fact that it was only explicitly addressed in specials that were easy to skip/miss if you weren’t paying attention (legend of the sea devils is one of the least-watched episodes in doctor who history) and then not really resolved in those episodes or mentioned in the big exciting finale is really questionable. and then the fact that chibnall brought back tegan and ace, both of whom are widely considered to be wlw-coded, and then had both of them imply relationships with/attraction to men (especially tegan mentioning two ex-husbands when she had already been established to be canonically married to nyssa!) and not mention anything about their relationships with/attraction to women. any one of these things might not have been enough for me to say it’s actually homophobic (although i guess i think thasmin was pretty much bait either way), but all three together feel… pointed, i guess.
and then in general the whole era feels like it’s targeted at being palatable to the greatest number of people–so you have a lot of surface-level “representation,” but it doesn’t go much deeper than that, and some of what we do get is honestly offensive. like the whole thing in the woman who fell to earth about grace and graham trying to get ryan to learn to ride a bike? there’s no reason to introduce your disabled character with the older adults in his life trying to force him to do something he doesn’t want or need to do, and then getting mad at him and leaving him alone when he gets frustrated. there are a ton more examples of stuff like this, but really it’s just that chibnall era puts a veneer of progressivism onto narratives that only serve to reinforce the status quo (the most egregious example of this being kerblam!).
also, for an era so concerned with representation, there are literally no trans people. which i think is a pretty glaring oversight when chibnall was clearly very deliberate with which demographics he included and marketed to.
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Absolutely with you on “not that progressive”. I think Chibnall’s era is the least progressive of the modern era.
Don’t really think he was being deliberately homophobic, though. Ignoring companions EU history is pretty much par for the course, and he may just not have known about their LGBQIA+ history. I personally only know Tegan/Nyssa was a thing because of previous things I’ve seen/read about representation in Doctor Who.
I’ve also heard that he didn’t actually originally plan Thasmin, and heard it was a thing later and decided to add it in. He also didn’t get as many episodes as he’d planned, and dropping ideas in he likes and then not doing much with them is very much a Chibnall thing. The watch fob, for example.
Or a bigger example would be the Fugitive Doctor. She wasn’t even originally intended to be the Doctor! And then it clearly caught him offguard that she was popular. If she’d been planned properly, I’m sure we’d have gotten far more of her.
Could be wrong, of course, but I don’t see him so much as homophobic as the sort of person who just assumes everyone is cis unless it’s specifically pointed out to him…
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i didn’t say it was deliberately homophobic! i think chibnall genuinely thinks he respects gay people. but that doesn’t mean he/his writing can’t be homophobic.
also, assuming everyone is cis is transphobia (important to differentiate because many people behave/feel differently towards trans people than they do towards gay/bi people), and again i do feel that the fact that chibnall prioritized “representation” but did not cast a single trans person is indicative of transphobia whether intentional or not. like, the fact that the person writing a character who has very recently undergone a gender transformation also comes across as the sort of person who assumes everyone is cis is a big part of my problem with chibnall era doctor who. and it is transphobic. like, he might not have ill intentions, but that doesn’t make him someone lgbtq+ people want to hear from.
but anyway i do agree that it’s the least progressive era, it’s frustrating to me that it bills itself as the most progressive era to the point that many fans see it that way too.
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definitely agree with you on most of the representation being very surface level… ryan is a big example of that imo. i dont know that his introduction is necessarily ableist so much as it is a slightly clumsy way to introduce his disability. but the fact that they introduce his disability as something that has a big effect on his life, and then repeatedly have moments where hes scared to do something because his disability makes it difficult, and then never show him actually having any difficulty with anything (other than the bike) as a result of it, while other characters are like “no you can do it dont worry ryan 
”… its just sticking a label on a character and then pretending that that label wouldnt effect their life, because if it did it would complicate how you write the story too much (which is an unadventurous way to write at best). it all feels very indicative of this eras approach to this stuff.
sometimes they do a good job! im not gonna say its all fumbled cuz thats not true. but there is a distinct pattern of what feels like a bunch of people sitting around the table and saying “we need to have this list of things be brought up this season” and then not giving the chance and/or caring about it being done with any sort of grace. i could honestly go down a list of all the things that feel like they were written in an attempt to check boxes, and ive only seen the first 2 seasons yet lol.
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@felix You bring up some points that I wouldn’t necessarily pick up on - and while I might not agree with everything you wrote I find it really interesting to gain insight into the viewpoints of others as none of us have exactly the same experiences in life or cultural backgrounds to form our opinions and viewpoints from.
When was Nyssa and Tegan married? That’s something I haven’t come across before other than fan-made content
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I for sure agree with you on this one, and indeed your whole general point - as has been said, I don’t at all believe any of it was written without the best of intents, but unfortunately intent does not something good make, and certainly a lot of the Chibnall era feels like it’s a lot of hot air, like they wanted to say something but had a different idea halfway through that attracted their attention instead.
I don’t dislike the Chibnall era, but I do find it waffles on a lot, and I do totally agree with your point about homophobia. Again, I don’t believe it was in any way malicious, but do you remember when Praxeus happened and we were genuinely surprised the gay characters didn’t get killed off? That pretty much is Chibnall era in a nutshell to me, alas
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yeah, i think i’m at a point where i don’t really care about intention, just because all i know is what’s onscreen and what’s onscreen does not encourage me. but yeah, broadly speaking i agree with you on the problems.
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i believe the nyssa and tegan marriage was mentioned in the webisode with sarah jane’s funeral! it’s also mentioned in tales of the tardis which is after potd… in my head i imagine a tug-of-war between rtd and chibnall but in reality it’s probably not like that.
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This is interesting! I’ve always loved the childlike elements, that early bit with the Doctor showing the children around the house is definitely my favorite part of the episode.
The only reason I was aware of for why this story wasn’t widely liked was because of how badly Moffat bungled the attempt at a feminist message—he already starts out from a false premise of “feminism means women are better than men” (something he seems to do a lot) and then made it worse by making the message “the ability to bear a child is what defines women and gives them value”.
I don’t think he meant to imply such a bad message, but it’s very much there in the story and that, combined with the “stalking is romantic” thing with the start of Madge and her husband’s relationship, are the things I usually hear criticized about the story.
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