Doctor Who

Yeah...just tried 10 minutes of the lastest episode. The show sucks even worse than when Capaldi was in it.

Ultra bland Doctor? Check. Ultra bland companions? Check. Ultra bland stories? Check.

They blew it. I'd be surprised if it came back at all after this season.

the YT who fanboi channels are starting to question this season, even some transfaggot channel was like WTF why so racist in regards to the Rosa episode. this was week was about brit imperialism? its just ridiculous now.

I think they genuinely have run out of Christmas ideas as the last couple have not involved Christmas at all. Still even with a 2019 New Year's theme I would have liked the episode on Xmas day as it's become tradition in my house to watch it as part of the day's festivities.

I guess 'Demons of the Punjab' was a pretty stiff punch in the gut for some UK folk. My old English roommate from grad school messaged me afterward and said it was well timed for Rememberance Day. He was expecting a World War 1 based story, but felt that actually pointing a light at one of the biggest British fuckups ever was sobering.

I do think things will get better once we dump a companion or two. Three is just too damn many at this point and it's diluting the stories.

Next week seems to be taking Amazon and extreme e-commerce culture to the extreme and could be fun

Fucker said:

Yeah...just tried 10 minutes of the lastest episode. The show sucks even worse than when Capaldi was in it.

Ultra bland Doctor? Check. Ultra bland companions? Check. Ultra bland stories? Check.

They blew it. I'd be surprised if it came back at all after this season.

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I don't think it's worse than Capaldi, it isn't offending me with shitty humour and overt PC messages.

It's bad in a different way, utterly bland in every way like you say. It's boring.

Qhue said:

I guess 'Demons of the Punjab' was a pretty stiff punch in the gut for some UK folk. My old English roommate from grad school messaged me afterward and said it was well timed for Rememberance Day. He was expecting a World War 1 based story, but felt that actually pointing a light at one of the biggest British fuckups ever was sobering.

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I don't think so, your roomate is a moron.

We draw a line on a map and suddenly they all start killing each other and having population transfers? Pretty sure that's THEIR fault.

I had a quick look on wikipedia to find out why they were killing each other and there was nothing, maybe they were just savages we were keeping in check?

Well they even talk about that during the episode, why the line means people should start beating on each other when they have been friendly for generations.

Then again if we were today to say 'this land is for secular liberals and this other land is for Evangelical conservatives' you might see similar results in 2018 America.

I think the lack of an overall story arch is what is hurting it in part. If none of the episodes are connected, then it doesn't matter if you miss episodes. I think ratings could have been easily helped by creating a good hook (some overall mystery) and dropping little tidbits/clues in each episode. Wouldn't fix everything, but it would at least give a good reason to tune in each week.

The new Doctor isn't bad, but like the previous Doctor, the scripts are pretty bleh.

Chris said:

We draw a line on a map and suddenly they all start killing each other and having population transfers? Pretty sure that's THEIR fault.

I had a quick look on wikipedia to find out why they were killing each other and there was nothing, maybe they were just savages we were keeping in check?

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It wasn't just a 'line on a map'. It was "Muslims move here now, your old land is part of India now". Indians felt entitled to 'their' part, and it created fear of 'others'. I mean, look at Israel and the middle east ffs, almost the same thing and it's been a shit show since it started.

As for the show, yes bland is a pretty apt description. There's nothing I hate, but I don't love any of it so far. I knew some people were gonna have a problem with the pregnant man, or find other 'too PC' stuff to blame it on, but that kind of stuff has always been in the show. It's just there's no backstory or reason for me to care much about what is going on. None of the episodes being connected, or a larger storyline happening, is a big part of it. I don't mind 3 companions, it can work, it's just not working with the bottle episodes. In fact, I really like Grahm/Ryan and their relationship, but until these last few episodes, Yaz was practically invisible. Now she's not, but still kinda 'meh'. The Doctor still just feels like another companion, granted a more experienced one, but not 'the Doctor'. Like, what has the Doctor really done that someone like Clara or Nardol didn't start doing by the end of their runs? I think she's goofy and fun, so there's potential for her to be a really good Doctor, but they are trying to make her more human, while making the companions more important to fixing things, which is the opposite of the formula that has worked. It's a shame, because I really didn't want this season to suck, but it kinda does. I think Capaldi's worst season still had me more interested than this one has so far.

I wonder if the long break is because they are already considering another show runner, or they've scrapped their plans for the next season to rewrite everything based on feedback so far. I hope they don't fire Whittaker in the process, I do think she has the ability to be a great Doctor, but just like Capaldi, she is hampered by mediocre writing. Give her another season with a season long meta story, make the Doctor a LITTLE more of a badass, and see how people respond to her then.

That's my major gripe - with the Doctor herself. I don't know if it's just over-acting on Whittaker's part, badly written scripts, or a little of both but I just don't like how this Doctor acts in situations. She seems completely clueless as to her surroundings far too often for someone who's supposed to have the entirety of time & space in a basic Wikipedia in their brain. The Doctor has always acted weird at times, but I dunno - shit just still feels off. And I get it, new regeneration, but she's acting more like someone born 40 years ago, and not like an entity that's existed for 2000+ years and has seen just about everything the universe has to offer, given the Doctor's history. (Imagine her staring down an Atraxi and saying the "basically, run" line. I feel like she'd get laughed off that rooftop.)

Take the last episode for example, maybe i'm just having a lapse in memory and maybe previous Doctors HAVE done something similar, but this Doctor seemed way too open to the concept of "hey lets go back in time and see your ancestors Yaz, sure it's risky but fuck it lets go". I feel like any other Doctor would have put their foot down and openly stated how bad of an idea that is, how many insane problems that can cause with timestreams, and fuck you weren't not going just because you wanna see your grandpa, little girl.

I'm glad she finally caught on to what aliens were in this episode, but for a moment there I seriously thought this was going to be ANOTHER episode where the Doctor doesn't seem to know who or what they are up against.

Yea, the best example of these little moments showing the 'nerfing' of the Doctor was the one I gave before, in the Rosa Parks episode. She makes a point of silently nodding her head as she counts out the people on the bus, the way a normal person would, but the Doctor would have counted them the moment they got on the bus, and added/subtracted every time people got in or off. i.e. they would have already KNOWN the number of people on the bus, without needing to count. Based on the lines the companion and her had, it was clearly written that way, so it's not an acting decision by her.
With the recent episode, the Doctor felt totally lost on the aliens until it all clicked, whereas previous versions would have been like 'why do these aliens seem familiar." on first spotting them then "something isn't adding up..' after the first dead body. Instead, it was like she was just a human detective that slowly pieced it all together, but only after the aliens literally spelled it out for her. Tennant/Smith Docs would have realized the 'deadly assassin aliens' didn't kill any of them in either of their first few encounters and realized something wasn't right. You never feel like she's got it all secretly under control, or had a plan all along but couldn't let anybody know, which is part of the appeal of the Doctor.
It really feels more like Scooby Doo in Space, with the gang all equally contributing to solving puzzles through the power of love and friendship. There wouldn't necessarily be anything wrong with that, if it was its own show, but that's not what Doctor Who's formula has been. It's not what made it so successful and popular.

Good observation. People complained about "special companions", but you sort of needed them to be special in some way to not feel like 100% dead weight next to the Doctor. So perhaps this was their solution? Rather than buff the companions, they nerfed the Doctor.

The more and more I think about it, especially as I write out my criticisms, I keep coming back to the idea that maybe Chibnall just isn't as big of a superfan of the series as Moffat/Davies were. Or, someone at BBC told him this season needed to be 'accessible' to casual fans, so they forced him to write everything as bottle episodes and make a character for each demographic. Either one would explain all the problems I have with it. Having each companion and Doctor be on equal footing means there is someone for everyone to subconsciously identify with. Young, old, male, female, white, minority, etc.. you will identify with at least one of the companions, including the Doctor.

It's like it was made by the accounting department, though. It might check all the boxes, but there's nothing engaging about it. Most of the fans don't care if a character is gay, straight, muslim, christian, whatever.. if they are interesting. We'd all love to see Capt. Jack back. No one hates Whittaker herself, most think she could be a very entertaining Doctor, you can certainly see the potential. Much like Capaldi, however, she isn't being given much to work with.

Enzee said:

It wasn't just a 'line on a map'. It was "Muslims move here now, your old land is part of India now". Indians felt entitled to 'their' part, and it created fear of 'others'. I mean, look at Israel and the middle east ffs, almost the same thing and it's been a shit show since it started.

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LOL, dude. You realize before the British showed up, the Mughal (Sunni Islam) and Maratha (Hindu) were pretty much constantly at war? The two battles of Delhi, before Anglo one in the 1800's, and the battle of Bhopal saw 100k slaughtered in just a few years. These were some of the largest engagements of that century, bigger than what most of Europe was engaged in. The war lasted 27 years until the fall of the Mughal Empire (Its called the 27 year war).

But they weren't done. Then all the Islamic states which had been buffered by the Mughal than began attacking. And it was a terrible conflict. At the third battle of Panipat the Muslims literally set their soldiers loose on the city and massacred 40 thousand civilians, and took the rest as slaves (Many accounts of women and children raped to death in front of the enemy soldiers before the soldiers were beheaded. Using Wikipedia but I have sources at home if you want the long history.)

The Afghan cavalry and pikemen ran wild through the streets of Panipat, killing tens of thousands of Maratha soldiers and civilians. The women and children seeking refuge in streets of Panipat were hounded back in Afghan camps as slaves. Children over 14 were beheaded before their own mothers and sisters. Afghan officers who had lost their kin in battle were permitted to carry out massacres of 'infidel' Hindus the next day also, in Panipat and the surrounding area. They arranged victory mounds of severed heads outside their camps.

This was in 1761. After this, the Maratha Empire began in-fighting, and the British just took over the whole region over the next 50 years. Which actually brought with it a time of relative peace and prosperity, compared to what they had before.

This idea that the fear of "other" was created is nonsense. The fear of other was from GENERATIONS of conflict. It was always there. The British were just strong enough to make both sides feel safe enough NOT to continually arm and prepare for conflict. The moment the Indians went to grab independence, the Muslims began their nationalist movement in order to counter it. The line on the map didn't do shit, it was just a last ditch effort by the British to prevent genocide the moment they left, because the British UNDERSTOOD the history of the region and precisely what they had suppressed since their arrival.

Westerners always have this odd mixture of hubris and guilt--believing they are the source of all conflict and couldn't possibly have been a positive in anyway. This is such a ridiculous and cult like view of history though. Chris is absolutely right, these people were massacring each other well before the British showed up--the only reason there is any stability and peace now is due to the British.

BTW, that said Enzee , I agree with you about the show. Its just...bland. I could only get through a couple episodes.

So I did massive training on this new device called PALM. Yes, the palm pilot from the 2000's era was purchased and re-branded as PALM. Nobody asked for this; a phone to escape your phone, as they say. We watched countless minutes of video about the sleek redesign of the logo (seriously almost 8 minutes) and a short 2 minutes about Steph Curry being an investor who liked the concept of a phone you can pair like an Apple watch, as a escape for your regular phone. You'd have thought the tectonic plates shifted everyone had a huge hard on for this sudden reinvented PALM with the iconic logo, sleek design; Except, it's still a phone, and it's not revolutionary. At all. It's just reinvented for the sake of reinvention.

This season of Dr Who really echoes my thoughts on shit being reinvented for the sake of reinvention. I don't mind a message being delivered in Dr Who if its integrated as part of the natural story arch. The Doctor is a woman? Great! You want diversity? Great! You want to introduce the Doctor to a new generation of viewers? Great! Yes, you redid the iconic theme and upgraded the aesthetic of the show, congratulations all around. Unfortunately, you're trying to sell a phone for a phone. I don't want a woman playing the Doctor for the sake of being a woman. I don't want companions or SJW pandering for the sake of diversity or equilibrium in my Doctor Who just because we're so used to HIM/HER being the savior at the very end...

I tried to watch the space episode and I just turned off the show midway through. I wasn't a major fan of Capaldi - at first - but I remember when they introduced Bill Potts during one of the pre-season teasers with her and meeting the Doctor on a ship with Dalek's. I thought, "wow, this will be, different? Let's go!" Granted, the initial start of his last season jarred a wee because she just kinda came out of nowhere, and Capaldi's guarding this prison for the Master....why, exactly? However, by the end of this run I settled on the concept - albeit the climax with meeting the 1st Doctor did seem a tad shoehorned, I laughed, and despite the heavy-handed SJW shit, still enjoyed the typical Christmas episode.

It's like Chibnall said "I am going to redo Doctor Who BECAUSE I CAN" instead of "BECAUSE IT MAKES SENSE" --

Case in point, they had this massive build up with regards to the Stenza in episode 1 then turn around and said "WE ARE NOT DOING ANY MAJOR STORY ARCS" - yet the Stenza get teased again in the second episode and I shake my head like, why not just come out and admit you're making a subtle turn at a overarching plot? Nobody is going to care, just do it with style. Nope, "EVERY EPISODE IS STAND-A-LONE" and by episode 3 I tuned out the show, not because I dislike Jodie Whittaker, or the companions but because they took a brand that was great, maybe just needed a bit of tweakage but they took my show, rebuilt everything we didn't ask for just because they could, and at six episodes into the series? What's the hook?

There's no direction, except that they're actively trying to avoid call backs or anything remotely 'original' about the series which makes us enjoy it. I like that they're attempting to stray away from conventional Whovian villians but at the same time these are staples that keep us engaged and wondering "oh man NOW what will they do meeting up with the Daleks this time?" We never got closure on why, as an example, in Matt Smith's time line everyone forgot about the massive Christmas invasion (was that a result of the crack? I can't recall) but there's so much opportunity to revisit little plot holes or skipped moments in the previous shows, and that's what I loved about Smith and Capaldi's series, they took advantage of that!

They made it a point to have her brag bout her accomplishments in the spaceship episode only to let me wonder WTF the Book of Celebrants was. And I don't mind the companions, I really don't. It's just...boring. I've never thought I'd say that about Dr Who but it's just...boring. And I don't blame Jodie Whittaker, this is a case of people just writing Dr Who, doing what the dudes who relaunched PALM did. They put a lot of time and effort into the aesthetic of the show, but the actual concept when launched was just boring and not what we asked for.

Inque said:

We never got closure on why, as an example, in Matt Smith's time line everyone forgot about the massive Christmas invasion (was that a result of the crack? I can't recall)

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Agree with pretty much your whole post, just quoting this part to say, yes, it was due to the universe reboot he does at the end of the season resulting from the crack. It's why Amelia doesn't recognize Daleks or even know aliens exist at first, despite them showing up on a large scale to earth, multiple times, in previous series (every christmas, for instance). I don't blame you for not remembering/realizing it, it's all summed up quickly with a few lines at the wedding party after Amy remembers the Doctor back into existence. Other than that, it was not overtly stated, just hinted at.

Chris said:

I don't think it's worse than Capaldi, it isn't offending me with shitty humour and overt PC messages.

It's bad in a different way, utterly bland in every way like you say. It's boring.


I don't think so, your roomate is a moron.

We draw a line on a map and suddenly they all start killing each other and having population transfers? Pretty sure that's THEIR fault.

I had a quick look on wikipedia to find out why they were killing each other and there was nothing, maybe they were just savages we were keeping in check?

Click to expand...

Africans gonna Africa I guess.

Enzee said:

Agree with pretty much your whole post, just quoting this part to say, yes, it was due to the universe reboot he does at the end of the season resulting from the crack. It's why Amelia doesn't recognize Daleks or even know aliens exist at first, despite them showing up on a large scale to earth, multiple times, in previous series (every christmas, for instance). I don't blame you for not remembering/realizing it, it's all summed up quickly with a few lines at the wedding party after Amy remembers the Doctor back into existence. Other than that, it was not overtly stated, just hinted at.

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Makes sense, I missed the hand waving for it and it's very easy to during that particular episode. I went back and looked at my post about the time they introduced Bill Potts too. My reaction was positive and I was looking ahead to good things...sigh

Inque said:

Makes sense, I missed the hand waving for it and it's very easy to during that particular episode.

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It might have been hand waving, and while I was writing 'Amelia remembers the Doctor into existence" it sounded lame, but that episode/moment was super powerful to me and I WISH we had episodes like that right now. That whole resolution was a little complex, and unclear, with all the backwards time traveling the Doctor does before disappearing. But, seriously, the worst Smith/Pond episodes are still better than 90% of the stories since Capaldi started, and 100% of the ones this year.

I'll clarify, I didn't mean to come off as the episode itself didn't do a good job justifying the explanation more that I missed it because it was so subtle and quick. You're right though, Matt Smith was MY doctor (as someone who grew up in the Tom Baker era) and as much as I liked Capaldi only about 50% of his episodes were decent and I can't think of a single Smith episode (or Tennant, for that matter) that I disliked, yet here I am dogging on this entire season right with you.