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Doctor Who Series 11 |OT|- She’s Here, and It’s About Time
- Thread starter Dwebble
- Start date
Absolutely. It has it all. Her wonder over him having two hearts, then her wonder over him saying he is an alien, and then everything about the end sequence is awesome.
"What sort of species are you? Not every day I get to ask that!"
"Time Lord"
AND THE DOCTOR SAYS IT WITH SUCH PRIDE
The very first episode I've watched in full. Previous times I catched glimpses of the show I thought it looked cheap and stupid. I was too tired (and a bit drunk) one night and didn't change the channel when Smith & Jones started. My life changed. I watched all of season 3 and then stopped, bought the DVD set of season one and here I am now, having watched almost all the episodes of the Classic series.
Bless Smith & Jones.
As far as finales go:
The Doctor Falls / Twice Upon a Time
Heaven Sent / Hell Bent
The Name of the Doctor
Parting of the Ways
Dark Water/Death in Heaven
The Big Bang
Doomsday
Journey's End
The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Last of the Time Lords
The Wedding of River Song
Although tbh only the last two I thought were bad. I've enjoyed almost all of the finales to date.
The Doctor Falls / Twice Upon a Time
Heaven Sent / Hell Bent
The Name of the Doctor
Parting of the Ways
Dark Water/Death in Heaven
The Big Bang
Doomsday
Journey's End
The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Last of the Time Lords
The Wedding of River Song
Although tbh only the last two I thought were bad. I've enjoyed almost all of the finales to date.
Low key one of my favorite Tennant episodes.
I guess I'm in the minority on the site. I've watched Doctor Who since I was a little kid and my PBS station ran all the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker reruns ... And, I stuck with it.
Overall, this has been one of my favorite seasons, if not my favorite. I thought it was great. I can't believe it was over so quick ... I'm looking forward to New Year's!
Overall, this has been one of my favorite seasons, if not my favorite. I thought it was great. I can't believe it was over so quick ... I'm looking forward to New Year's!
I finished Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. It's okay. Certain things work, like the Graham stuff, even if "you are the same as him" arguments are spurious, and others needed more fleshing out. Particularly the Ux stuff. I thought it was a very interesting concept, but it needed more time to cook. I have seen way worse season finales from Davies and Moffat, particularly Moffat.
So my overall thought of the season is that it is the third worst one, after series 2 and series 7. That said, I enjoyed my time with it. It was more akin to classic Who in structure, which I didn't mind. I also liked the emphasis on character drama. Unlike others here, I hope Chibnall and 13 get time to grow and get two more series. So my season episode rankings:
Great:
Demons of Punjab, It Takes Me Away
Good:
Tsuranga Conundrum, Rosa, The Witchfinders, The Woman Who Fell to Earth
Mediocre:
Ghost Monument, Kerblam!, Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Poor:
Arachnids in the UK
Great:
Demons of Punjab, It Takes Me Away
Good:
Tsuranga Conundrum, Rosa, The Witchfinders, The Woman Who Fell to Earth
Mediocre:
Ghost Monument, Kerblam!, Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Poor:
Arachnids in the UK
You know what would have been really good for the main cast? Having an episode in which they're pretty much alone, isolated, no side characters, no overbearing BS and a focus on their relationships with each others and their personal dramas. I think you need an episode like that when you have three companions. They realized that in 1964 and we got The Edge of Destruction, the episode where each character shines and the group pretty much comes together. Like, I don't remember the Doc and Ryan interacting much, and Ryan and Yaz didn't do much together except in Rosa. Also, 13 is capable to have some good, honest conversations with everyone, I would have liked an episode with more of that.
Thinking about this has made me realized that it's those small moments that I've enjoyed the most in this season, the moments when you feel the potential of this ragtag family, but they're always fleeting moments and an episode to make it all come together would have been really beneficial. The Edge of Destructrion had to be made as a filler but it was so much worth it in the end. We should have gotten something like that around mid-season.
Thinking about this has made me realized that it's those small moments that I've enjoyed the most in this season, the moments when you feel the potential of this ragtag family, but they're always fleeting moments and an episode to make it all come together would have been really beneficial. The Edge of Destructrion had to be made as a filler but it was so much worth it in the end. We should have gotten something like that around mid-season.
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There's the trouble with fewer episodes a season: less room for experimentation.
I just can't believe people are comparing The Name of the Doctor unfavourably to the Series 11 finale. INTRODUCING JOHN HURT is genuinely my top single Doctor Who moment of all time.
The Edge of Destruction is a really weird pair of episodes. Like a play where everyone has forgotten their lines and are trying to figure them out on stage.
I just love that episode. I love the ideas behind it, I love the (admittedly fanservicey) trip through the Doctor's past, I love the music! I can't explain why, but something about that episode just made it come together really well for me. And I've watched it like 4 times.
I just love that episode. I love the ideas behind it, I love the (admittedly fanservicey) trip through the Doctor's past, I love the music! I can't explain why, but something about that episode just made it come together really well for me. And I've watched it like 4 times.
That's about all it has going for it. And since I'd already seen the 50th, didn't matter much to me.
Being on record not loving the s11 finale, I have to say, Name of the Doctor is absolutely horrendous.
Introducing John Hurt and that "Gallifrey... A long time ago" moments were great, but, come on... Barely any of it makes any sense, least of which the War Doctor being the Doctor's "secret" considering everyone involved with the war still called him the Doctor, and the destruction of Gallifrey was always credited, by him and others, to the Doctor.
that's a case of the cast not really being given the direction of what they meant to be doing. I can't remember all the details but because the original order was for 13 episode, so they wrote a quick and cheap 2 parter to round off things in case they didn't go any further. weird, but certainly not a favourite of mine to rewatch
Weird, it was. And a bit scary.
It also had the most ridiculous resolution in the whole history of the show.
I thought that aside from that hype moment, Name of the Doctor was a terrible episode.
Absolutely, that's definitely one of the top moments in Doctor Who
And the timestream tied in well to the 50th anniversary. Haven't watch it in years but it's many times better than the S11 finale.
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Having started with Smith's run and worked my way back through past seasons, I will also agree that Name of the Doctor is a total disaster; nothing worked. The great intelligence came out of nowhere, the Doctor facing his death at Trenzalore for Vastra, Jenny, and Strax of all people felt really forced, and the ultimate resolution of Clara's mystery was totally contrived. Even the war doctor reveal made no sense since everyone, including the doctor, was fully aware of his role in the Galifrey's destruction. Easily the worst Who finale and a total mess.
The War Doctor reveal was meant to be a surprise mainly for the audience and it really was at the time, it was just insane. Even though it seems logical now I don't remember anyone theorizing that there had been a Doctor in between 8 and 9. It kickstarts the whole Day of the Doctor trilogy.
I assumed that the big secret that the Doctor took to his grave was the Time stream unlocked by his name which could destroy him and the universe, not the War Doctor. I'll give you that giving himself in for the Paternoster gang seemed like a stretch, and there could have been a more compelling villain than the Great Intelligience with better motive, but I thought there was definitely enough good and grand ideas in the episode to call it bad. The conclusion to the Clara mystery really didn't seem contrived to me in the context of the season.
I probably need to rewatch it to see if it still holds up for me. I do think that Capaldi's finales were a lot less messy than Smith's.
My bigger problem with the episode isn't in the episode itself but how Time of the Doctor made the Doctor's grave a complete paradox. I assume the explanation is Time Lords.
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I am rewatching the entire moffat run, currently on episode 2 of Series 8. While I like the less gung ho, random traveler gets into random situations attitude of 13, there is no comparison. Capaldi had an amazing run, and even his weak stuff is still in the top. Smith less so, but even his weak stuff is still nowhere near say, the Martha Run. Chinball as lowered the standard back to there and then some.
The Name of the Doctor makes a bit more sense in a real-world context when you hear what Moffat almost had to ass-pull when only JLC was under contract for the 50th anniversary special.
There were too many ideas, and Clara's arc in s7 was terribly mishandled.
The idea behind it was sound : Moffat went on record and said that the purpose of that arc was to criticize the way the Doctor treated people as puzzles, and that Clara was just a normal girl who did something brave - and had he realized that, they would have been better friends sooner.
Except this idea translated very poorly and led to myriads of people criticizing Moffat for exactly the opposite reason of what he was aiming for ; and they're not wrong, because Clara's personality was very understated during those first 8 episodes.
It doesn't help that 2013 was basically writing hell for Moffat, because of the 50th anniversary and the "surprise" departure of Matt Smith, which led to an enormous amount of rewriting of Name of The Doctor which was supposed to be the tie-in for the anniversary.
I remember reading that the entire plot of the episode (with the John Hurt reveal, since he got cast pretty late) was basically rewritten days before actual filming took place. I can't find the source, but in an earlier rewrite, for example, a Clara echo was supposed to live in a cottage and dream of her other incarnations ? Don't quote me on that, I can't remember exactly. And the ending had Clara surviving going into the timestream but pushing the Doctor away because she'd seen what he had done during the Time War.
All in all, the episode is kind of messy, but considering the constraints Moffat was through it's mesmerizing that it mostly works. Also, the River stuff was really effective to me, but then I'm a sucker for everything River.
Oh yeah, there was that too ! Basically, the poor guy had like 50 different versions planned in case something fell apart. Damn.
The idea behind it was sound : Moffat went on record and said that the purpose of that arc was to criticize the way the Doctor treated people as puzzles, and that Clara was just a normal girl who did something brave - and had he realized that, they would have been better friends sooner.
Except this idea translated very poorly and led to myriads of people criticizing Moffat for exactly the opposite reason of what he was aiming for ; and they're not wrong, because Clara's personality was very understated during those first 8 episodes.
It doesn't help that 2013 was basically writing hell for Moffat, because of the 50th anniversary and the "surprise" departure of Matt Smith, which led to an enormous amount of rewriting of Name of The Doctor which was supposed to be the tie-in for the anniversary.
I remember reading that the entire plot of the episode (with the John Hurt reveal, since he got cast pretty late) was basically rewritten days before actual filming took place. I can't find the source, but in an earlier rewrite, for example, a Clara echo was supposed to live in a cottage and dream of her other incarnations ? Don't quote me on that, I can't remember exactly. And the ending had Clara surviving going into the timestream but pushing the Doctor away because she'd seen what he had done during the Time War.
All in all, the episode is kind of messy, but considering the constraints Moffat was through it's mesmerizing that it mostly works. Also, the River stuff was really effective to me, but then I'm a sucker for everything River.
Oh yeah, there was that too ! Basically, the poor guy had like 50 different versions planned in case something fell apart. Damn.
But yeah, this season was meh. Excellent doctor, companions were well off enough with room for improvement, couple of strong ideas, sentient universe which manifests itself as a frog was bonkers in the good way, but the execution, chinball holding back Jodie from being more GungHo because girly parts, and general lack of cohesion or serialization was god awful. You can do both that and random encounters in a very natural way, but K doubt Chinball has the oomph to do so. More thoughts later when on a computer, but for me its a 4/10, MAYBE a 4.5 because of Graham.
Given those conditions that actually sounds like a great idea for an alternate 50th. Though perhaps too much of a retread of the ending of The Big Bang.
Okay, rewatching Series 11 from episode 1 with one of my grownup kids. Our verdict so far: this is very, very good. Let the moaners moan, Doctor Who is in safe hands.
It was fine.
If anything I was just a little surprised how little has changed from the Moffit to here tone wise. It very much just feels like the next season of Doctor who.
Maybe we are just at that period of diminishing returns of the NuWho reboot where even when its still good its just naturally not going to grab people as much anymore since its been around so long.
If anything I was just a little surprised how little has changed from the Moffit to here tone wise. It very much just feels like the next season of Doctor who.
Maybe we are just at that period of diminishing returns of the NuWho reboot where even when its still good its just naturally not going to grab people as much anymore since its been around so long.
It was a pretty terrible finale, so it's deserved. Luckily the episode before was lights out good.
Just watched the finale and... it wasn't great. In fact this whole season was pretty poor for the majority tbh. Jodie Whittaker and Bradley Walsh were fantastic throughout at least, but some of the stories were kind of... shit.
I didn't hate it... it wasn't like Tennant's last season bad or anything, but it's the first DW season I've watched in a very long time where I thought the bad episodes outnumbered the good.
Hoping the special is decent though.
I didn't hate it... it wasn't like Tennant's last season bad or anything, but it's the first DW season I've watched in a very long time where I thought the bad episodes outnumbered the good.
Hoping the special is decent though.
.... how can you call a season with Turn Left, Silence in the Library, Forest of the Dead, Midnight and The Stolen Earth and Journey's End bad? Like the single greatest run of doctor who episodes ever.
I'll take all that over the most recent one. That was just boring and I might have well have been watching a brick wall.
...I loved Tennant's last season.
I liked this season, but I can see why longtime fans and even new viewers might not like it. A lot of the episodes were excruciatingly mundane, and the plots/characters/ideas were really simple and lacking the trademark Who cleverness. Bluntly, it was safe. Good but safe.
Next season is hopefully more ambitious.
The season had some really good episodes for sure, but I really hated Stolen Earth and Journey's End and honestly... I just can't stand Catherine Tate.
Ah fair enough, I loved Donna so I have some bias towards it. But if you don't like her that does make sense.
This season has not been good, but I think we need to grade it a bit on a curve. No doctor had a good first season (in regards to good vs bad episode ratio). This season had 2 very good episodes (last weeks and the factor (Kablam I think?) and that was basically it. Overal I like the doctor but hate the story telling so far, just no good story threads yet.
Also my controversial opinion: Rosa was the worst episode of the season. I despise that so many people liked it. It was poorly acted, horribly shot (easily the ugliest episode of the season) badly edited, had a horrible soundtrack (the new composer sucks, pay Murray Gold a royal ransom to return please!) and the overall story, while educational for anyone who knew nothing about it, lacked any punch or entertainment (using entertainment as a world to describe drama that produces emotion responses, not as a "it wasn't a fun episode" as it shouldn't have been). I hated it, it felt so forced and unnatural also. Like "and now for your special educational message of the week stating Doctor Who!" Blah.
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If you have amazon prime streaming app get Britbox and they are there. I think it's $7-10 a month.
I'm in the UK so I don't think I can use that unfortunately
If you have a Roku or fire stick, you can use an amazon prime account to watch the show. I'm in America though so I don't know if it will work for you
For context:
Series 1 : Bad Wolf (89) / Parting of the Ways (85)
Series 2: Army of Ghosts (86) / Doomsday (89)
Series 3: Utopia (87) / Sound of Drums (87) / Last of the Time Lords (88)
Series 4: The Stolen Earth (91) / Journey's End (91)
Series 5: The Pandorica Opens (88) / The Big Bang (89)
Series 6: The Wedding of River Song (86)
Series 7: The Name of the Doctor (88)
Series 8: Dark Water (85) / Death in Heaven (83)
Series 9: Heaven Sent (80) / Hell Bent (82)
Series 10: World Enough and Time (85) / The Doctor Falls (83)
On the one hand, AI always tends to be more reflective of a casual audience who seem to rate the bigger, lets say pulpier episodes more highly than anything a bit deeper. (See: Heaven Sent's 80).
On the other, I'm pretty sure this season's AI is on average the lowest of all of the new series, it has the lowest rated finale and is the first season to drop below 80 twice with Tsuranga and now Battle.
There's no denying how massively the series started but that's definitely dropped away and I'm not necessarily getting a sense of 'cultural pervasiveness' (as in people talking about elements outside of the nerd culture. ie Rose/Missy or the 11th Doctor's fez/bow tie) to any elements.
Thanks for pulling the previous ones out. I feel like it's worth highlighting that Heaven Sent got trashed by babyboomers and the score for the target audience of young people was something like 89.
I haven't seen any demographic breakdown for Series 11 but they'd be useful because it's hard to tell if the AI is being dragged down by people being huffy about the Doctor being a woman/bonkers accusations of political correctness or if there's just a general sense that it isn't great.
I haven't seen any demographic breakdown for Series 11 but they'd be useful because it's hard to tell if the AI is being dragged down by people being huffy about the Doctor being a woman/bonkers accusations of political correctness or if there's just a general sense that it isn't great.
Those AI figures for that particular finale are quite high, perhaps among the highest seen in the revival. I greatly enjoyed this finale in the sense of taking a childish delight in the liberties taken with suspension of disbelief. The sequence featuring the TARDIS towing Earth back to its orbit is as lovely as it's absurd.
Never be afraid to be audacious, Doctor Who.
Disagreed, the majority of S5 and especially S8 were good IMO and all the previous Doctors had great episode, unlike 13 who had none. The Doctor Dances, Girl in the Fireplace, Satan Pit, Eleventh Hour, Vincent and the Doctor, Listen, Deep Breath, Mummy on the Orient Express, just to name a few.
I enjoyed Journey's End but the Sontaran episodes and of course The Doctor's Daughter were really bad
I love how the Doctor wouldn't let Rose's mum anywhere near the Tardis's controls in that scene.
That's the only finale to actually have increased ratings since the premiere. The plot is absurd, but yeah it's a really nice moment having Ten with all his companions back in the TARRIS, and Davros is pretty good in it.
You know, I'd love a future series to touch more upon the dalek civil war from Remembrace of the daleks, and the novel War of the daleks.