This new RTD series only goes to show how good RTD 1 was... Dr. Who is a shadow of its former self. There was such a maturity - thematically - about "End of the World" and the development of Rose. Great breakdown as usual!!
Thanks for the kind words about our content. Agreed about the shadow of its former self. Even with the cheese that was in RTD 1, a lot of good stuff was in most of his run -- Old Man
I can answer the ‘Eurovision’ question. Although the Disney Who episodes were released on Disney+ on midnight, the BBC were showing Disney Who before they joined Eurovision. Another channel was discussing this in terms of viewing figures. And they thought Disney Who’s viewing figures (where you just have to watch for a few minuets on BBC) would be pushed up by people already having BBC1 on in the UK waiting for Eurovision.
Thanks for the info. However, given the content of the past few years and specifically this year, I'm not sure I'd want to have the ESC on tv w/ my kids around waiting for Doctor Who. Most of the contest this year was.....errr....interesting...even for ESC :D -- Old Man
Steven Moffat wrote the brilliant (and creepy!) episode Silence in the Library. It was told to the audience years later, that the 12th Doctor told River Song, his true name. (When they had 30 or so years before she was gong to die in the past. And he knew that he had to give her something that only his past self would know. So he would trust her.) Long story short, River tells 10 his true name, and that's why he knew that they were connected to each other somehow. The fact that RTD would completely ignore what Steven Moffat wrote in the episode, just so he could write such stupidity is beyond me. I loved this series, I didn't watch it religiously after 10, but I kept up with it. I tried to watch 13, and it wasn't great. I was excited to see that David Tennant was coming back as the 14th Doctor, but after what he said online about the fans. I don't think I'm a fan anymore. And if Good Omens receives a third season, I doubt that I'll give that a chance either. 🙁
I really liked the first season of Godd Omens, but the second wasn’t up to the level of writing the first was imho. So wish it hadn’t such an ideological bent and just focused on being entertaining.
I still think about Doctor Who every time I have a fish supper (fish n chips). It's my version of Proust and the Madeleines from Remembrance of Things Past. Anyways, this was the John Pertwee era and this five-year-old boy loved it despite that fact it probably wasn't aimed at my age group. Much like Star Trek, another show which never required dumbing down to acquire an audience. This new Doctor Who appears to be aimed at pre-schoolers much like Discovery.
Pertwee was the first Doctor that I was introduced to as well and yeah, I'll take those stories any day of the week over this brand new stuff. They have all this technology to help telling stories now for VFX yet one needs good stories first in order to take advantage of this ** sigh ** -- Old Man
Definitely don't let the kiddos sit there by themselves watching this. Usually we can find something to say - "at least they did this" in our reviews. There is nothing in episode 1 here that we can find to compliment. The best that we can do is to say that it did have pieces that reminded us of better RTD episodes from 2005 -- Old Man
I've been kinda off YT for a while, and I'm back to see you both talk about Doctor Who again. Belated congrats on the 1K. Now for this episode. Sigh, my parents and I thought this was ridiculous. I even thought it was all over the place for a simple premise. One or two little jokes got a small chuckle out of me [such as Nan-E's voice filter], but come on! The running joke of the Doctor saying 'Babies, oh I mean, space babies' got old fast. I know we had farting Slitheen and stuff in the past, but if this season mostly doesn't do the equivalent of having a quality episode like 'Dalek' as a follow-up to 'Aliens of London/WW3', you're going to lose me and other viewers. Doctor Who for much of its history was good at being a family show that adults and kids alike could watch. Not with 'Space Babies'! See you in Part 2 I guess.
Not surprised the abortion allegory was hopeless. Abortion is almost a consensus issue in Britain. We never had a Roe v. Wade. We have an Act of Parliament of 1969 which few oppose. Doctor Who should not have tackled this - it is too much like interfering in US politics. It is also part of making Doctor Who less British by globalising the politics of the show.
This is labelled as a new series, so maybe it now has a 6-12 target demographic? This was definitely on the extreme end of silly Dr Who stories and a really weird choice for a first episode unless it's an indication of things to come. Personally if I'd written this, it would be Ep03 and maybe the monsters would be goblins come to eat the babies but getting more than they bargained for. I know that doesn't sound like the best idea but I really don't understand how this level of writing gets a multi-million dollar production budget either! Another great synopsis and review 🖖
That's the thing with stuff like Disney/Bad Wolf Doctor Who or Secret Hideout Star Trek - even if limited by what the current runners set up as a premise, many fans out there can come up with better ideas than what the supposed professionals did do. That's not how this is supposed to work -- Old Man
Yes! I watched this with my partner who's not a whovian and I kept telling him how things were done in the earlier seasons, and then they would just do THE SAME THIING here. But worse.
After having lived through what now seems the golden age of sci-fi from the late 90s through the mid 2000s, it’s sad to see the state of the genre now. I thought it would keep getting better. While I did get a lot of enjoyment from The Expanse, that seems to be a rare occurrence these days. I get more entertainment from channels like yours discussing why everything sucks. Has done wonders to get me back into reading.
My husband and i love your content , especially tearing into nuwho, we only watch classic who 63-89 and the chris Eccleston and Peter Capaldi era with the odd matt smith series 5 episodes, nu who is crap and we stopped watching when Peter Capaldi said the immortal words "doctor,i let you go" we both had tears in our eyes that night and turned the tv off before jodi showed up, those 4 words by the great Pater Capaldi ended nu who for us
Great discussion of this and E02. It really highlights that aside from all the hype, promotion and backlash, this new show just does not have a defined audience. The original show was actually aimed at young teenagers (at least in the 70s) but smart enough to appeal to adults and longer-term fans too. Even as the traditional family audience of the 60s dispersed, we were left with serious sci-fi on a shoestring budget that didn't always work, but often aspired to more. See stories like Warriors Gate, Logopolis and Ghost Light. Now we just have simplistic messaging with no depth, heavily plagarised and extremely shallow.
I'm currently reading The Doctor Who Production Diary: Hartnell Years. A terrific read! What's interesting is that the Toymaker story was a real struggle to adapt, with a general feeling of dissatisfaction from the outgoing Producer at the finished product who felt the final script was much less a battle of wits. Interesting to compare this to the recent episodes where we have a 'catch the ball' and 'musical play-off'! Also interesting is that in December 1965 the BBC Audience Research Dept compiled a report covering audiences for Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Myth Makers. The composition started at 46% children (5-14) and 56% adults (15+). A year later, the show was attracting 37% children and 63% adults, attracting more men over 30 with a slight drop-off in younger audiences (mainly girls). It seems to debunk the myth that Dr Who was mainly just a children's show, even if it was initially designed for families and was allocated a relatively low budget. It's wonderful that the series now has broader appeal, although I wonder how the new production team track its audience, as I'm truly perplexed. Adult audiences are generally more discerning when it comes to suspension of disbelief (at least before all the superhero franchises went nuts). Longer-term fans are currently reviewing this series like it's proper sci-fi,/fantasy but I wonder how long this will last given the fantastical elements in this series (which seems like a lazy excuse to have fun without requiring any internal logic). For example, if the Timeless Child is acknowledged lore, why is the Doctor scared of everything this series, as that episode established that he was virtually indestructible?
Pain Pain, Just yesterday I came across a clip from the Old Who in which The Doctor has a choice to wipe out the Dalek race just by crossing two wires, And i just through how did we come from that to this,
I saw tons of Tom Baker and some Peter Davidson when I was very young, but because I was a child, I honestly don't remember it that well. My knowledge of Doctor Who basically comes from NuWho from 2005 onwards. (Someone renamed NuTrek to NuDrek and I liked that, lol.) I could be wrong, but I got the impression that because the Doctor was from an advanced alien race with an extremely complex physiology, he could choose the form he takes when he regenerates. So even though the Who fanbase had heart attacks when Peter Capaldi changed into a woman, (because he should always be a British White male) I was fine with it. Although the stories she was given weren't that great. But the main reason that I have an issue with this incarnation is that while the Doctor can change his form, he can't change a sexuality that he never had in the first place. When I'm consuming media, I'm not interested in representation. I don't want to see myself in a series or film and I absolutely don't want to see you either. I want to see the original character before political ideologies destroyed them. Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings and now Doctor Who are all dead because of politics and it hurts my soul. Anyway, sorry to spoil the mood. Despite everything I've said, your videos are very entertaining, so thank you for taking the time to make them.
We're not tied to the Doctor HAVING to be a white male. But so far all they have delivered w/ Whittaker and now Gatwa is all that they present on screen, are those identity things. It'd be nice if they gave good, memorable performances and stories outside of the glass ceiling breaking "the first __ Doctor" -- Old Man
We never completed the Torchwood series, but I can't remember where we quit. If I recall correctly, there was cheating in personal relationships within the group, and that was the last straw for me. I don't get into that kind of drama, and I completely understand if Torchwood isn't your cup of tea either. -Mollie
Hi. I’ve been actively avoiding reports on Disney who, because I find the hole thing just plane depressing. Checked your review and yee gods! It’s worse than I thought. Heck, before watching your review I read the synopses on tardis datacore and even reading that I thought? “what the photon is this!” Heck, I thought the change from the 10th to the 11th doctor’s era had made the show more kiddy, fish custard and little Amy writing letters to Santa about mysterious cracks in the wall, but compared to that we get this? Several specific things. First, as the old man said, in Britain what comes out of your nose is bogies, not boogers, it’s nearly impossible to even say the word “boogers”, in an English accent, without it sounding a bit like buggers! So the idea of a bogeyman in an English show is just incorrect. Furthermore, even in Britain, the bogyman isn’t a common childhood idea; Terry Pratchett mentions one in disk world, but honestly when I was growing up I barely knew what they were. so to make them an “essential childhood monster”, really is a bit off. Speaking of monsters the hole “the monsters aren’t always evil”, plot has been done to death in Doctor who at this point. Yes, it worked in the unquiet dead, and Vincent and the doctor, but it’s such a recycled idea! Especially when we add in heavy handed moralistic lessons about “monsters being friends you haven’t met yet!” (I wonder how well that would’ve worked with the classic Daleks or cybermen). Theoretically, going right out on a limb here, I could say the idea of a parthenogenesis machine malfunctioning that couldn’t’ be legally turned off is a potentially interesting idea, albeit it does remind me of the Lintilla clones mentioned in the second series of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy radio play, where the cloning machine started making each new clone before it finished the old one, so couldn’t be turned off without killing someone. However, to go from that idea to a spaceship crewed by babies? Much less to try and say anything meaningful about recession, refugees, or some sort of abortion or contraception malarky? I just don’t get this at all! As regards a few specific things. While pointing out continuity errors is a bit superfluous at this point since the entire bloody series is a continuity error, but we’ve actually met far more named timelords than unnamed ones! And heck, the bishop wasn’t even a timelord (if at least they’re referring to the one from that hole crazy galactic church who created riversong). Then again, since the doctor obviously doesn’t give a crap about the timelords, clearly neither we nor the writers do. As for timelords, and history. The old man is correct on fixed points in time; why the doctor couldn’t actually just go back and kill a certain German leader whose name I cannot use in a RU-vid comment! However, other media have expanded this idea. One idea I thought was great, was in the 40th anniversary audio special Zagreus, in which it’s revealed the timelords specifically locked the universe into a set pattern of timelines; the web of time, wherein they were the dominant life forms, and shunted the race who would surpass them; the divergents, into another universe. They also insured that most races in the universe tended to be humanoid. This not only created some great story telling ideas, EG the axis, a place where the timelords cut off timelines that lead to chaos, but also ties in really well to the time war and father’s day. With the timelords gone and the web of time in flux following the time war, altering history is much more dangerous, since the universe is less stable and less able to heal. But why should we actually deal with metaphysics when we can have funny visuals and a butterfly compensation switch! Lastly, as to character, I don’t mind Russel, or indeed any long running series, reusing character beats, as opposed to plot points, if you can say something different about the character in question. Rose was all gung-ho to leave everything behind, so her being bought up short at seeing the end of the world told us something new about her, that she wasn’t as confident, or as eager to leave everything behind as she thought. Contrast this to Amy Pond who runs out the night before her wedding and is all ready to go, which tells us she’s a selfish bitch who takes her husband for granted; I don’t like Amy but the contrast of her reaction to Roses did tell us something. I I strongly disliked the way that through the later Mophat and Chibnal series, people would just be so blasé about the idea of travelling in time and space, so theoretically the idea of a companion who it actually has an impact on makes sense. However, my question would be, What does Ruby’s reaction tell us about her? The answer is, apparently not very much. There were easy fixes here, for example, maybe she laughs everything off and is stoical right to the point everything hits her, maybe she pretends everything is fine but it’s clear she’s just putting up a front; a reaction which could show the doctor’s empathy. Maybe she initially is overwhelmed until she finds something she can deal with, for example taking care of a baby, at which point she just gets on with things. But here it seems the emotion was just there with no way to go to show Russel had added it in: “Look! We have character development First she was homesick, now she isn’t!” As to everything else, the fart powered spaceship, the snot monster, ---- I just have no words!
this show won't last. there is a reason moffat split the doctor in half. THIS half you see now is an "anomaly" and just a precurser for the timeless child story which unfortuately is still happening. i suspect the reason they split him is do they can write this shite off as non cannon and have tenent take over when the show needs saving! how many tuned in for he and doctor donna? LOADS of people. hes a fail safe
He not the Disney Doctor you don't understand how much Disney is involved in the production wise Disney is only financing it and distribution outside of UK and Island the control of the show is still controlled by the original creation team Disney only made light notes nothing that changes the stories he is still the same doctor as before this is not a children's show
If this was aimed at 6-year-olds, the idea that this Doctor must be the gayest with a drag-queen villain just feels... wrong. So wrong... Why sexuality (any sexuality) is explicitly made the center point of a children's series?
