I'm on a re-watch at the moment (while following the new stuff). Capaldi is briliant compared to the flimsy but nice Smith. Cinematography is step ahead well.
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Doctor Who Series 11 |OT|- She’s Here, and It’s About Time
- Thread starter Dwebble
- Start date
Here's a lovely piece from The Observer in 1966 about the ever-popular Daleks. There are contemporary photographs.
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2018/dec/15/observer-archive-the-daleks-18-december-1966
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2018/dec/15/observer-archive-the-daleks-18-december-1966
That's great. I was ten years old and feeling a bit grumpy about William Hartnell leaving the role. I grew to love the changing faces, but the first change seemed a big thing to accept. How could he be the same and yet different?
I hated both season 5 and 8 with a passion, so I can't agree. I rank season 5 and 6 as the worst of all Doctor Who. I also really hated Matt Smith (until his final 3 episodes where it seemed they finally figured out his character).
I will agree that all the first seasons had great episodes except for this season. I keep forgetting Girl in the Fireplace was season 2. That episode is what sold me on Who.
I started watching Who with the modern series so I was used to young Doctors and thought they were all fantastic, Capaldi is just the quintessential Doctor to me. In my view, he didn't just regenerate into the twelfth version of the Doctor, he regenerated into his true self, if that makes sense. Without all the gimmicks , youthfulness, "bow ties are cool", and the silliness that accompanied his predecessors. This idea is even brought up in his opening episode, when Vastra tells Clara that the young man was simply a veil that has now been lifted, that he trusted Clara to see his true self. Capaldi conveyed the weight of being a centuries old being like no other actor who's played him. It's said that the Doctor chose his face to tell himself to save people, but I think it was also telling himself to get serious and stop being Peter Pan running away from his problems.
Also unlike 13 so far, he had a clear dark side. This isn't just there to be edgy, the darker side is an essential part of his character. Having travelled for two thousand years, the Doctor is going to have seen both the best and the worst that the universe has to offer. There's hatred and fury but there's also absolute enthusiasm and admiration of life, just as we see in Into the Dalek. His sense of justice flows from his anger, and he's often at the brink of that anger taking over. Capaldi is able to convey that inner darkness like no other in scenes like this. I'm assumed you've watched Series 9.
Nine was the Doctor healing from the Time War. Ten was a reaction to Rose. Eleven was Peter Pan, running from the end of his life. Twelve is simply the Doctor. There may be great takes on the Doctor in the future, like Eleven, but I don't expect any of them will surpass Capaldi as the Doctor. And yeah, the cinematography is fantastic too.
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For the record, I love your "I was there when it happened" perspective.
Strangely enough, I had no problem at all with even the first changeover (I was 9). I'm wondering if it is maybe to do with being in a staunch Catholic family and being accustomed to weird things like transubstantiation.
Hi phisheep! Was recently wondering if you had made it over here.
I wish I grew up with this show. There's an alternate reality where I found the 5th Doctor on PBS at age 4 and was a fan for life instead of finding it on Netflix at age 32. Instead I got to be formed by the Greatest American Hero, Knight Rider, and Inspector Gadget.
Yeah, I was in about the third lifeboat I think, thanks to a bunch of BritGaffers. Posting a lot less these days (both here and in the Other Place), as the changeover and outages made me realise I had rather too much of myself invested in this community and maybe I ought to do some other stuff as well.
Interesting question. We were also churchgoing Catholics at the time, and at my Catholic school I was made clear on the doctrine of transubstantiation. I really loved Hartnell, and this new guy seemed to be clueless. But that was Patrick Troughton's approach to the role, and I continued to watch.
"Okay, so you stand there and concentrate on being a fixed point, and I'll nip out to the garage and use my TARDIS to make the Earth rotate around you."
"Okay. I borrowed your TARDIS yesterday to go down to the corner shop. You'll find your keys in the door."
"I remember watching you, watch me do this".
Or "what are you doing?"
"I'll explain later".
I'm with you. I started with Eccleston, but Tennant was the first Doctor who really clicked with me (long story).
Capaldi is the Doctor to me, though. In the grandest sense of the word, he encapsulates every element of the character's persona and feels the least performative. Nine, Ten and Eleven were all guises that the Doctor tried out in different ways to either help himself or help others deal with him, and Twelve was essentially the character with no mask. If Thirteen's arc actually develops, we could see her as an evolution of that, but it's hard to really see much of an arc to the character in this current season so far.
Good to see Davison back in action. I bet Collin Baker is hiding behind the couch hoping to replace him should Peter fall and get knocked out. Just keep Tom Baker away from this. He is prone to falling.
I'm not familiar enough with Jodi to know if she is up to something like this, but until I get *that* defining speech from her, it is hard to see her as the Doctor. Matt did it so many times it became a meme, David did it spectacularly, and Christoper was fabulous, I need to see the fire that burns inside 13.
This is the problem, CC doesn't know how to write the Doctor. The Doctor has always had that quality, from the First Doctor, until the Twelfth. There is so much missing from CC's writing, that did exist previously, all the way back to 1963. For example, companions that really challenge the Doctor and his/her views or decisions, memorable enemies, and the Doctor driving the story, rather than a backseat driver. A lot more too...
13 has been pretty samey and bland from episode to episode IMO, Jodie can definitely do 'fire' but it doesn't seem to be what they were going for this series.
I'd love to see a really passionate speech from her in the New Year's special - fingers crossed!
I'd love to see a really passionate speech from her in the New Year's special - fingers crossed!
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I couldn't agree more. The latest season had its moments, but not once did it have me feel the rage, fury, and defiance of who the Doctor is. Silly little speeches, simplified and boiled down to their most basic moral core of "thou shall not kill" do not make Jodi the Doctor. It is a start, but CC really needs to up his game. At this point I'd welcome back Gatiss. At least he knew the character and what it meant. God damn do I want to see Jodi standing in the middle of a no win situation, back to the wall, and deliver a moment that makes us all go "YES! A female Doctor is still the Doctor." But under CC, I really wonder if that is possible.
Yep. I remember the speech in the Family of Blood, about the Doctor being the fire and ice that burns at the centre of the galaxy (or gist of). The Thirteenth has shown none of that. I would argue that every previous doctor has personified that description.
Yeah, absolutely.
I just realized rewatching that Face the Raven really parallels Mummy on the Orient Express. Both feature a countdown with the "monster" killing its victim once it's up. The death can be transferred to another person but not stopped. The Doctor stops the mummy killing someone by having it go after him.
Clara tries to be like the Doctor and transfers the mark from Rigsy to herself, but unlike the mummy it's impossible to stop the Raven.
That's in addition to those stories kind of bookending each other, as it became apparent in Mummy that only death was going to stop Clara living this life.
I just rewatched this episode tonight. The scene is so much better than it has any right to be, especially given the length, which isn't all included in this particular clip. It could have lasted just a couple of minutes and it would have been excellent, but it's a whopping ten minutes and remains engrossing and impacting throughout.
And no, I don't think that Jodie is capable of delivering a speech like that. Although I'm not sure any of his predecessors could have either.
Perhaps more importantly Chibnall isn't capable of writing anything close to a speech like that. 13 talks a ton too but it's always boring exposition.
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I thought we had a "Doctor Moment" when she told Tim Shaw to leave Earth while he still had a choice.
It was close, but it was kind of overshadowed by Other Guy throwing Tim Shaw off the crane.
It was OK, but it was kind of marred by her putting bombs inside him and then getting mad at the guy for kicking him off the crane saying he "had no right".
edit: yeah, basically as above
I kind of view it like, if...in the Eleventh Hour, the "basically, run" line was followed immediately by the Doctor being punched in the face.
It didn't happen. I'm saying Thirteen's Doctor Moment being undercut the way it was made me feel the way it would've felt if Eleven's was undercut by a comedy gag.
I had to wait for Davison's last serials to feel that from him but damn did he deliver.
Definitely. I agree with the sentiment that your first doctor will be "Your" Doctor, and I still hold Tennant to a high regard. But Capaldi broke that first Doctor spell for me in so many ways. From his first season where he was a bitter cynical high morality low sympathy Time Immortal watcher, to the second season rock star IDGAF I'M the Doctor rebellion phase, and finally to the sympathetic regretful and lonely old man he was in the final season, it just works so well. Jodie is fine as a Doctor, but she really needs a Director who will also give her the chance to shine, a script to truly empower her, and the stakes to brush em off with the ease and finesse of her male predecessors. With chinball I certainly don't see her getting moments like in Kill the Moon, where after the Doctor pulls a fast one to just be an obvserver, Clara in a fit of rage tells Capaldi, "If you don't tell me I will slap you so hard you'll regenerate". There is just so much that happened in this one non consiquental episode, room for character development, a lesson to be told, energy and passion, that its ridiculous. Hate moffat all you want, but with one throwaway episode he delivered more than Chinball did in an entire season.
Well that too. Also helps that Missy is what a Female Time Lord who was previously male should be. Takes the role of The Master, and turns it asexual. Doesn't try to be a Female Master, or a Female Time Lord, Michelle Gomez just IS the master. She took a male dominant role, all their character traits and development, and continued and evolved it without missing a beat. That's what should have happened with Jodie, but instead of evolving the role of the Doctor into something asexual instead of gender dominant, they treated it as some quirky gender bender romp.
Jodie is exactly what I thought she was going to be, which is 5's blandness with 10/11's energy.
Thing about Missy, she's basically just Michelle Gomez doing what she's always been best at. There is a delicious continuity between her roles in Green Wing and Doctor Who. The former could have been an audition.
Newsweek has an article about the improved audience figures. I know some readers will be disdainful that the article refers to the main role as Doctor Who throughout instead of using her in-universe name, but remember that even used to be her name in the end credits.
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-who-ratings-surge-first-female-lead-after-notmydoctor-protests-1251278
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-who-ratings-surge-first-female-lead-after-notmydoctor-protests-1251278
See the thing js though, before Doctor Who I haven't seen her in anything else. I realized this afterwards with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but that still hasn't broken the spell she put me under as The Master. Even if she has a typecast, that still doesn't mean that she wonderfully pulled off a Female Master far better than what is happening with Jodie. Unlike Michelle I have seen some of her other works, and I expected far more. She deserves better and its a shame we are not going to get that out of Chinball.
I think the Doctor's gender swap was handled well in TWWFTE and it was only really mentioned when relevant during the rest of the series. And Missy is sexy AF.
Right. But what constitutes relevant? Because the only times its mentioned afterwards is when she is in a jam, and bemoans of how she had it so cushy just being a man and using brute Force. And not just once, but several times. As if that is something the Doctor can't do despite being a Time Lord. Like I understan the character isn't a superhero, but for a several thousand year old time traveler, you'd think theh would have the physical abilities to do what needs to be done. I was fine with the fact that she isn't as tall as some of the previous doctors, but some of the other stuff is just plain dull.
Oh I don't remember that at all. It was relevant when men patronised her. She noted that ManDoc was taken seriously by default.
Right, however that still all fits as the Master being the master doesn't it? I mean even its very feminine in its nature, her actions still were completely in line with the character. Asexual in the sense that female or male the master will use every method ti screw with the doctor, and it just happened to be seduction when they were given the chance.
Final numbers and stuff. Tom Spilsbury (previous DWM editor) has a great summary on twitter. Here's his account, but here's the tweets in a local format too: https://twitter.com/TomSpilsbury/
- Ratings: The Doctor Who finale had a consolidated rating of 6.65 million, after seven days of catch-up viewers were added. (That's 6.48m on televisions alone and 0.17m on other devices.) It was Number 18 on the weekly TV chart.
- The 2018 series of Doctor Who averaged 7.96 million viewers per week, per episode (the average is 7.7m on TVs alone). That puts in on a par with Eccleston (avg 7.95m), Tennant's first run (avg 7.71m), Smith's (avg 7.7m) and Capaldi's first (avg 7.26m). Those figures are TV only.
- The highest average for any Doctor Who series this century remains the 2008 series, David Tennant's last (8.05m per episode, per week). The 2018 series had an average that's roughly similar to every series from 2005 to 2014, and noticeably higher than the 2015 and 2017 runs.
- The 2018 series average was very good. However there was a noticeable downward trend across the run, which is surprising and unusual for the winter. Previous new Doctors saw some good rises for their first finale (which, with the exception of Capaldi, aired in the summer months).
- The series finales for each new Doctor this century rated as follows: Chistopher Eccleston, 2005 – 6.91m David Tennant, 2006 – 8.22m Matt Smith, 2010 – 6.70m Peter Capaldi, 2014 – 7.60m Jodie Whittaker, 2018 – 6.48m (TV only, and 6.65m with other devices included)
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OP
OP
They're still not complete figures, though, and won't be until the finale +28 figures come out in three weeks.
For instance, Kerblam's figure came out today, and we can see that the constant decline stat isn't actually true- over the course of a month, it was watched by more people than Demons of the Punjab was.
For instance, Kerblam's figure came out today, and we can see that the constant decline stat isn't actually true- over the course of a month, it was watched by more people than Demons of the Punjab was.
We'll see where it lands, of course, but if you assume around the same percentage checking in every week, there will be a relatively 'consistent' decline across the series (though not every week) which is an outlier vs other series', but the figures are still better than Smith, Tennant and Capaldi.
The overnight figures were always higher for Kerblam than Demons. Also I'm pretty sure we only had "consolidated" figures as finals for the previous ten series.
The ratings from the finale seem to show an audience hold from the premiere of 61%, worse than any other series. Capaldi's first series had a 83% hold.
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