Guitar Hero: Nu-Who Season 9

Trailer? Trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVMUPZm04MA

haa

ps this is going to rule so hard, it will make season 2 of nu-Who retroactively disappear

This looks good! Capaldi lives round the corner from us. When he was still Malcolm Tucker, we'd find him standing in front of our house, grimacing ominously and talking on his cellphone. Now we see him walking down th street with a Tesco plastic bag and have to try really hard not to stalk him home.

Some more stuff, kinda sorta

http://io9.com/peter-capaldi-the-doctor-is-not-a-guy-1716900060

Finding one suggestion I heard today about who Masie is going to turn out to be surprising because i didn't think anything prior had suggested it possible. Somebody said that she thought she was a younger Missy. I think that's pretty fundamentally unlikely since Missy is going to reappear anyway but it did have me asking the question about trappings a timelord takes on when getting a regeneration. There has been no suggestion that there would be a previous history attached that wasn't carried over from the incarnation one is regenerating from has there?
Like the moment of birth of that individual character is that moment of regeneration, it's not like to give a bad example Quantum Leap where one is stepping into a Timeline that has its own past. Or I'm sure there have been other stories where the character manifests in various guises with existing histories instead of just possessing an existing character for a temporary period.
So all past memories & experiences of the new incarnation are taken from the previous existence with nothing added by dint of the reincarnation are they? The only differences are going to be personality quirks not lived experience, or are they?

Also wondering about coexistence of various incarnations in the same timeline. It's not likely is it? There couldn't be a younger Missy growing older on the same planet or in the same galaxy/universe/whatever as a John Simm could there. I thought it had been said by a number of Doctors that they can't cross their own timelines though I think that's also been shown to be false.

Also wondering if the timeline of a timelord and a human being are in any way similar. Does a timelord's run in the same direction even but just for much longer? Like timelord companion between adventures or Tardis time is presumably living the usual 24/7 human existence probably including a 9-5 or similar job to keep oneself together. Whereas not sure what a timelord would be doing. are timelines running parallel, is doctor off gallivanting around the universe for a different time interval than the humans he interacts with part of the time? I assume this mainly means the doctor since he's the one timelord shown interracting with humans.
I was also trying to remember if there was a major isolationist policy for Gallifreyans that he was about the only one disobeying, apart from the Master. I don't remember there being many Timelords chanced upon elsewhere than Gallifrey throughout the history of the show. Unless any of the characters before Gallifrey was introduced would be adopted into being from there, people like the Meddling Monk and the Michael Gough character the Celestial Toymaker. If that is likely.
Really not sure where he has chanced upon evidence of them elsewhere and if they have the same technology for travel as he does you would expect them to do so unless they actually had policy not to. Unless they are just a lot better at tidying up than he is. But I think that was one of the major reasons they intervened at the point that Troughton gave way to Pertwee, that the Doctor had gone around interfering in timestreams he shouldn't have been. Think it was given as the reason he was stranded on his beloved Earth

Initial point being more that Missy came into being as a near middle aged woman not a younger woman who grew older into her. Or stepped into being as a middle aged woman who didn't have a past created where she was younger to fit that incarnation. That's not the way regeneration has ever been seen to work in the series anyway.

Spoilers: the answer to all those questions is "it's not important as long as they can get a good story out of it".

I am hoping that "and I save people" is being used ironically or sarcastically, getting Davies flashbacks otherwise.

Okay okay I'll play along:

Initial point being more that Missy came into being as a near middle aged woman not a younger woman who grew older into her.

Are you basing this on anything at all?

I thought it had been said by a number of Doctors that they can't cross their own timelines though I think that's also been shown to be false.

Time Lords outlawed crossing your own timeline due to the catastrophic paradoxes they can create. All this really means is that the dramatic stakes are elevated every time the Doctor does it because it's indicative of a crisis so severe that the Time Lords/the Doctor is willing to risk imploding the entire universe to overlap incarnations.

Okay okay I'll play along:

Initial point being more that Missy came into being as a near middle aged woman not a younger woman who grew older into her.

Are you basing this on anything at all?

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, July 10, 2015 8:15 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Previous onscreen regenerations of the Doctor mainly & possibly the Master himself, though I think the only time that's shown he's taking on an existing character's physical form from that character.
Missy, is played by Michelle Gomez an actress who is nearly 50 hence middle aged , if nothing else has happened in the interim this character was manifest as the Master in John Simm incarnation before that. If she changed from one to the other in some form of real time and hasn't been off doing something else in the interim for a number of years. Hard to tell, if she can travel time and space freely if she would be experiencing things on the same time frame that Earth is, but I thought this was supposed to be the next big project for the character or manifestation of life force or whatever you call something that hasn't got 100% linear continuity.

Has occurred to me that in the recreation of synapses, or whatever takes place in a regeneration, different memories or takes on those memories might be formed.
But the idea that a younger version of this regeneration version of character or lifeforce is not one of the previous incarnations/actors' versions of the character hasn't really been suggested as far as I know. Not to the extent that regeneration alters timeline to give this incarnation an earlier life of its own which would be the alternative.

Not sure who Maisie Williams' character actually is but it is clear that the Doctor recognises her.

Let's try that again. A rephrasing (which I hope doesn't screw up your original meaning):

Initial point being more that Missy didn't come into being as a younger woman who grew older into her.

Are you basing that on anything at all? Bearing in mind she is a Time Lord, with her own TARDIS.

Not sure who Maisie Williams' character actually is but it is clear that the Doctor recognises her.

my money is on "young Clara" still

https://40.media.tumblr.com/0dcf29574292cc3f47cad486fab26c7b/tumblr_nrcpchwcUz1qbypg1o1_1280.jpg

Should've bought this today. :\

Was trying to think yesterday has any non-timelord character that has changed appearance because the actor changed had a story retrofit to explain why. I assume that there must be recurring characters throughout the history that this would apply to but can't think.

As fascinating and relevant to the unaired new series as that is, the interesting bit of Who promo I've seen / not avoided this weekend is an interview with Moffat and Michelle Gomez, with a lot of great stuff on the newer writers:

TMS: I wanted to ask you on the creative end, you brought a couple of women writers on board this season [TheMarySue.com here fails to copy check either, simply typing "names"], what was that like working with them, and can we expect to see more from them? What are their stories like?

Moffat: Well, you’ve grouped them together though they don’t belong in the same category at all. They’re about as opposite as they could be. Catherine is the only person I’ve ever had to persuade to write Doctor Who. Because she didn’t want to do it. I’d been asking her for years, actually. When I first did “Blink” all those years ago, Russell sent me her script for Torchwood, which was great. He said, “This is another message from the past story, you gotta not bump into it.” And I remember saying to him, “She’s brilliant, why don’t we get her?” He said, “She doesn’t really watch Doctor Who…”

[All laugh]

We decided why don’t we try Catherine again, and for the first time in my life in this job, I sat and pitched a story and said, “I want you to write this.” And she got into it. But what was interesting about Catherine —quite different from Sarah— is that she doesn’t really know modern Doctor Who or old Doctor Who. It took her no time at all to get the hang of her Doctor Who work. She wrote a great Doctor, and she understood it perfectly.

And then started watching it, it’s quite funny, she’ll come in and say, “It’s very emotional, Doctor Who, isn’t it?” [Interviewers laugh] It’s the most nakedly emotional show on television, and it has been for ten years.

Sarah comes from a very, very different category, and a very interesting one, because only she and Jamie Mathieson both belong to this category, would both describe themselves as Doctor Who fans, would both describe themselves as long-term Doctor Who fans… haven’t seen the old show. Haven’t seen it. Don’t know anything about it.

Now me, and Russell, and Mark, and Chris, and Toby, we’re all fans of the old show. For us, Doctor Who, in our hearts, is the old show. 4×3, very old. Multicam. That’s what we think Doctor Who is. They think Doctor Who is that modern one. [Chuckles] And there’s a part of me—even though I am so steeped in it—that says, “You realize this isn’t the real one?”

Haha we've all been watching fanfic.

There's this weird story going round, that apparently Moffat definitely ruled out ever having a female doctor, but I read his quote, and I can't see where he says it. He alludes to having put his opinion on the subject in the show, and I don't get where? Didn't he just have a timelord switch gender last season? That seems pro-female-doctor to me. The discourse surrounding this show is so weird to me, sometimes.

Counter arg is that Master switching genders inoculates the Doctor himself from switching.

ok... is that in the show?

No, I mean from a showrunning POV.

Moffat has repeatedly pointed out in response to hysterical accusations that he's blocking us from our rightful female Doctor that he was the first person to put in the regular show that Time Lords *could* change gender (in 2010) and the first and only to then put the actuality on screen, still just months ago. (Obv JNT used to say it was possible every three years in the '80s, to tabloids.) This is without even bringing up that he previously had the Doctor change gender on-screen in 1997. He's not required to debunk new accusations every two months, just because tumblr exists.

Shot of Wookey Hole at 00:40

Was trying to think yesterday has any non-timelord character that has changed appearance because the actor changed had a story retrofit to explain why. I assume that there must be recurring characters throughout the history that this would apply to but can't think.

This happened with Jamie for one episode of The Mind Robber

I think he went back to Fraser Hines straight after though. Was thinking more fo character changes from having face A to face B because actor changes permanently . Then the difference gets explained. Assume that with a history as long as Dr Who's there must be at least one instance of this but can't think of one.
& assumed that there must be recurring characters like that.

Only one i could think of was the last human being who is shown both as stretched out skin and an embodied actress but that isn't quite the same thing.

Was set off by the apparent recognition of Maisie by the Doctor in the trailer, but that might get longer explanation anyway.
I've watched the series through and can't think of instances but thought that might be down to me having a head full of flu/cold whatever.
& been told taht a timelord is going to recognise another timelord was something that had come up during the 10 era. So assume that means timelordd recognises the personality outside of the change. Except where it crosses gender divides apparently though that is 2 doctors later.

In the same vein, I don't think they actually got John Barrowman in to play the Face of Bo.

Same face different characters is more of a problem with Doctor Who.

Oh and of course there's the recasting of the First Doctor post-Hartnell, though that's obviously not explained.

Just watched the trailer, who's the kid in the end of it supposed to be? River? The Doctor's daughter from that one episode? I can't think of anyone else to whom he'd react in that way...

Also, when the heck are they going to go back to the Doctor trying to find Gallifrey, which was teased at the end of the 50th anniversary episode? I thought they would've done something with that subplot during the last season, but it was only addressed a bit in the finale, when the Master gave the Doctor the wrong cordinates. Since the Doctor knows Gallifrey is out there, you'd think he'd put a bit more effort into trying to locate it?

I don't think the Face of Bo is necessarily Harkness anyway, could just have been an ironic joke where people were expected to read that into it and it not actually be true. Sounded like it was a competition that might have had more than one winner over time so young Harkness was a Face of Bo not necessarily the same one that's infinitely old. Could never work out how a fixed point in time could lose its limbs in that way anyway.

& Tuomas the girl at the end of the trailer is the Maisie Williams who I was talking about earlier. Suggestions for who she is have been Susan (Doctor''s grandaughter) Jenny (Doctor's daughter), a younger Missy, another incarnation of the Master (unlikely since Missy is back in this season), another humanoid manifestation of the Tardis and possibly a couple of others.

I don't think the Face of Bo revelation was supposed to be taken as a joke, it certainly wasn't framed as one... And since it fit some of the earlier clues (Captain Jack's immortality, Bo calling the Doctor "old friend"), and Bo's identity hasn't been brought up ever since, I think it's canon that Bo = Jack.

Sorry about not reading the earlier posts properly, I had no idea who Maisie Williams is, so I didn't know who you're talking about. I doubt she's yet another manifestation of the Tardis (do they really want to do that plot again?) or a younger Missy (would it make sense that she reincarnated as a teen, then waited for 30+ years before putting her masterplan in the S8 finale motion?). I'm really hoping it's Jenny, because that was a subplot that was left totally open, and she seemed like a cool character... I guess it'd be weird for them not to get the original actress though, unless she's unavailable?

Not sure Jenny actually had the power of regeneration. When she apparently died she came back as the same actress. That that actress is Mrs David Tennant may be the reason behind that though.

She's also Peter Davison, Jr

That Face of Bo thing does seem to be open to interpretation I would have thought. It's certainly not been the older face of Bo saying that he is the later part of the younger Harkness's life . & the younger Harkness does say that he had this role in incidental fashion. Not sure what is said that leads to him saying it but what the doctor says after it makes it look like it may or may not be.

Not sure what does constitute canon or whether something like taht would be further explored if characters aren't going to be used in depth through later stories. Did Face of bo reappear during Smith's doctor, not sure if Harkness was fighting to save Amy Pond's stolen baby or not.

I would tend to find something said in passing not to be absolutely concrete in terms of canon. & would personally want something more definite to think of it as an absolute.
But not sure what is down in writing anywhere and still think it might be something that was a writer's in-joke or knowing wink something.

I had no idea who Maisie Williams is

Huh, you don't watch Game of Thrones, Tuomas?

Since the Doctor knows Gallifrey is out there, you'd think he'd put a bit more effort into trying to locate it?

a) because he was always so desperate to get to Gallifrey during the parts of the 38 years pre-nu-Who that didn't have I4n L3vine suggesting content

b) because every time he got involved with Gallifrey during Saward / L3vine it made for fascinating stories that really enriched the show and the character, not impossibly stupid and tedious nonsense, + collars

(obv Invasion Of Time was the damaging trendsetter there, but I grew up on the novelisation of it, so I can't hate it)

Pertinent to the thread title:

https://twitter.com/pigeonspotting/status/644658270448295936

NO SPOILERS

I'm inclined to think the Doctor recognising Maisie in the trailer is misdirection. She's in two episodes, the first being called 'The Girl Who Died', so we're obviously being set up to think she comes back from the dead. That's why the Doctor recognises her and looks dumbfounded. It could well mean she's a Timelord, but who knows. The usual Missy/Clara/Susan/Rani speculation is always good fun, but I'd be inclined to think they introduce a new character, albeit one who ties into Who-lore in a significant way.

Blimey, this starts tonight.

That was bobbins. (I'm aware that no Who show discussion can start until someone has proffered this opinion, so I'm willing to take the hit (but no, it was bobbins))

Tho I did wonder how many other people tuned in a few minutes earlier, stared confusedly at the upper middle aged portly gay couple on Celebrity Pointless, and then shouted "Fucking Hell, it's Hale and Pace!". I'd be a happier man if any part of Doctor Who was as surprising.

You're correct, it was bobbins.

http://38.media.tumblr.com/7ade0d67ac8ac4a3bdbb7716cbfffb91/tumblr_myv7siJVXv1rmwez8o5_r2_400.gif

RTD tribute ep, like The Power Of Three.

Power of Three was much better. Don't remember many RTD episodes this incoherent, which is saying something. Some good moments, sure, but a lot that was hectic, forced and embarrassing, and definitely too much old continuity bollocks for a first episode (speaking as someone who enjoys old continuity bollocks). Unusually for Doctor Who (even for bad episodes) I felt relieved when it was over.

Hey ho though - glad it's back. Looking back, Eleventh Hour and Impossible Astronaut have been the only good season openers, so dodgy starts don't necessarily herald a bad season. But can we skip to episode three next week?

Also, Brig's daughter reliably dull.

And guitar scene probably most cringeworthy thing since Tennant's marathon run.

Cluttered as fuck, but totally coherent.

I love Michelle Gomez.

sic otm.

it was like a yard sale for the first 2/3 but i dug the last part on (spoiler) with (spoiler)

i was ~almost~ ok with guitar cheese but the pretty woman riff made me want to kick in the tv

also i thought the whole medieval part was supposed to be a Vegas Excalibur/Medieval Times theme restaurant, i didnt realize it was *actually* meant to be medieval times, lol

i dont care how crap it gets though, i fuckin love capaldi-who

no, all she did was whiine and scream on broadchurch

charlotte rampling for old racist companion!

Chibnall is the second-worst writer in Dr Who history.

Well, at least it wasn't ... Harness or Neil Cross.

Phew, lucky we didn't get an idiosyncratic, imaginative writer when we could have the author of Cyberwoman instead!

And the first worst is...?

The team that teenaged Chibnall once tried to battle to their faces on TV.

william emms. geoffrey orme. haisman/lincoln. eric saward. anthony steven. glen mccoy. kevin clarke. frank cottrell boyce.

I don't write anyone off on a single script, as it's impossible to judge their breadth from that (but the one ep of Galaxy 4 I've seen was interesting enough, and Forest Of The Night works well on its explicitly being-a-fairytale level).

Haisman & Lincoln wrote one that was standard for its season, then one that was a huge improvement and long regarded as an all-time classic, then one they took their names off & refused to write for the series again when it got dicked about with.

Saward, tragically for him, would probably have been a better writer if he hadn't been given the staff job - for all the faults of his credited scripts on the side, they do tend to have a clear or interesting motivating premise, some well-drawn character moments, and do generally improve year-on-year, culminating in one that's actually kinda good, and certainly one of the only two Colin TV stories worth watching.

(Haven't seen the existing eps of Underwater Menace. Concur with your judgment on the single scripts of Steven, McCoy and Clarke. Although I also suspect it's unfair to wholly blame the writers of stories that were edited by Saward...)

What's the story on Capaldi, hope no new series this year doesn't mean he's more likely to leave earlier. I've been enjoying him.
Seemed to be some more rumours since Xmas of him leaving.

There is no change to the plans for Series 10.

i'm sure capaldi will see it out through season 10. I'd love it if he stuck around for another few years but 3 years seems to be the running max these days

There is no change to the p1ans for Series 10.

i too will not write someone off on a single script- even if that script is "cyberwoman"- because bob holmes' first two "who" scripts were flat-out garbage- but if a single script is all i have to judge by, i'm going to assume that their other ideas for writing for the show were even worse.

case in point: emms kept submitting scripts to the show, but the show were wise enough not to take him up on any of them. the only other who work i've read of his is a "choose your own adventure" book he wrote in the '80s, which was not up to the sterling literary standards of pip & jane baker's book for the line.

haisman/lincoln are probably my most controversial pick. they wrote a script that was a very good ripoff of "zulu" and then wrote "the dominators", with a premise straight out of jack webb's fever dreams that was simply grossly offensive on every level (though at least it wasn't "the prison in space"). then one of them went on to write "holy blood, holy grail". they get the gas face from me.

saward's dogged insistence on attempting to adopt the 2000AD ethos to doctor who, while a good idea on paper, was just completely inappropriate. sure, he got better (as has chibnall, incidentally), but he never got _good_, and while he was hamstrung by his script editor position, so was douglas adams.

agree that it's not fair to wholly blame the writers of episodes during the show's prolonged attempted suicide, and accordingly i will strike glen mccoy from the list, as it's wholly possible that "timelash" could have been a good story in theory. on the other hand, even if one attributes the doctor's domestic-violence fugue to editorial, "the twin dilemma" is simply an irredeemably terrible story, and saward's major mistake on it was green-lighting it in the first place. everything about the story was a bullet in the face for who.

cottrell boyce is there for two reasons. first is that he doesn't know how to write for television, so that whatever else his episode may have been, it was a bad television program. second is that i found his suggestion that mental illness is actually a magical power slightly problematic, particularly for a show that had already gotten it right in "vincent and the doctor".

Holmes is indeed the object lesson in not dismissing someone. And anyone who never wrote again could have not done so because they didn't like the show, or because they hated what was done to theor script in editing or rewriting or production, or because of a clash of personalities, or because they got another job elsewhere, or they died, or they simply never existed in the first place, like both great and terrible writers of single stories for the show. You're not a "Doctor Who writer" until you've written more than one Doctor Who story imo.

great zing on the CYOA. I had Pip & Jane's one.

I'll reiterate that you can't condemn Haisman & Lincoln for a script that they took their name off and quit the show over, and especially not over a book that one of the pair wrote a third of 14 years later.

Saward/JNT is by far my most unliked era of Who, and I still reckon his dual role makes it too complicated to judge him just as a scriptwriter (nb: I do think he was shit), but here's why he's better than Pip & Jane: he knew enough to know that Pip & Jane were so bad that lawyers should be engaged to stop them from even being allowed to look at his scripts.

he got better (as has chibnall, incidentally)

I mean, it's been nine years since Cyberwoman, and he's ascended to the dizzying heights of people saying that the first quarter of Broadchurch was kind of all right even if the last two quarters were terrible and racist and pointless, but his last Who script proper was Power Of Three, which had about four minutes of cute domestic conflict between Eleven and the Ponds, and 40 minutes of completely fucking senseless bullshit that failed to connect anything to anything else in a way that had any narrative or thematic coherency. Plus a little RTD news montage pastiche.

first is that he doesn't know how to write for television, so that whatever else his episode may have been, it was a bad television program.

It wasn't one of the best of the year, but it functionally told a story shot with cameras in 45 minutes.

second is that i found his suggestion that mental illness is actually a magical power slightly problematic, particularly for a show that had already gotten it right in "vincent and the doctor".

You say "got it right," I say "depression represented as an invasion from a giant invisible alien chickenbear."

(Vincent is telling a story about mental illness and creativity, chickenbear aside; Forest Of The Night is telling a fairytale to kids. I don't think it's intentionally saying parents should treat bipolar offspring as an early warning system for ecological space-attacks.)

None of Chibnall's episodes are even particularly memorable, they're virtually all mid-season filler. And that's accepting that being a showrunner is completely different to submitting one amazing script per year.

I'm actually vaguely relieved it's not Gatiss.

Gatiss seems to have lately been torn between being peeved that the Beeb didn't think him capable of the job, and not actually wanting to give up his entire life and endure years of virulent abuse to do the job.

I remember 42, but I remember it for the pub quiz airlocks.

I don't mind Gatiss writing the occasional episode, but he is a sort of ironic comedic caretaker/curator to the m.r. james/hammer horror/dr who tradition, obvs worked well with league of gentleman (local shop for local people ho ho ho) but that was a comedy ... did not at all like what he did with the m r james xmas special

At the same time there's that he gives a fuck about dr who

I don't mind Gatiss writing the occasional episode, but he is a sort of ironic comedic caretaker/curator to the m.r. james/hammer horror/dr who tradition, obvs worked well with league of gentleman (local shop for local people ho ho ho) but that was a comedy ... did not at all like what he did with the m r james xmas special

this is otm. i see him more as someone who has genuine affection so might dial down the "comedic" bit but yes, his execution in no way matches his appreciation, and that in itself suggests his appreciation is deficient in some way. that poor adaptation of the tractate middoth lacked fear and shade. he can play very well with the method but struggles to allow the darkness into his framework.

I'm sure chibnall is competent, but nothing he's done inspires confidence - i though both series of broadchurch were laughable. however he isn't victim to gattis's fatal frivolity.

gatiss' biggest flaw, as far as i'm concerned, is his tendency to lapse into "talons of weng-chiang" levels of offensiveness. which is a very serious problem, but i'd still pick him over someone whose greatest strength is his ability to put together a theoretically watchable episode of television wherein nothing of note actually happens. i'm worried that he's going to start adapting old "law & order" scripts as doctor who episodes mid-season and nobody will actually notice.

I gave Gatiss a pass for a long while because his first season episode, the Dickens one, was a so great (at least in my memory), and I remember getting really excited thinking, "ah, this new series might not suck after all".

And then everything's he's done since then has been the total pits - that larky Victorian episode with Diana Rigg being the absolute bottom, and then the Baskerville episode of Sherlock somewhere below that.

On the plus side - I thought the ending of the (otherwise horrible) Sleep No More, with the narrator's face disintegrating into sand - that was as memorable an image as nu-Who has delivered since it began.

(I presume it was nicked from something else.)

his first season episode, the Dickens one, was a so great (at least in my memory),

I think that's the sort of thing that rusho's referring to as "weng-chiang levels of offensiveness" - the way white middle-class writer man doesn't think there's anything wrong with a story where immigrants seeking refuge turn out to ACTUALLY be bloodthirsty marauders bent on stealing our jobs and destroying our way of life.

His last five scripts have been at least decent meat & potatoes Who imo*, and generally getting better or more interesting. Sleep No More was the worst ep of last year, but it was trying to do things that neither the programme nor Gatiss have attempted before, which - over two decades into his career as an occasional Who writer - is pretty admirable.

Working so closely on Sherlock seems to have made Moffat better at commissioning Gatiss to a brief, too - giving him an outline that caters to one of his strengths/obsessions, rather than letting all his weaknesses blurt out.

*the arrow resolution to Sherwood aside.

one of the things i like about moffat is, even though he overthinks things, he does go back and try and fix his mistakes. the zygon two-parter was fascinating to me because it's addressing serious flaws in the anniversary zygon plot i hadn't even seen mentioned on the net. of course other people would take "kill the moon" as equivalently offensive to "the unquiet dead", but my take on "kill the moon" is that all sufficiently complex texts generate problematic readings. gatiss doesn't get that deep into things, but he can take a one-line concept like "ice warriors on red october during able archer" and execute it well, and that's really all you need. compare to something like "mummy on the orient express", which in gatiss' hands would be about a mummy on the orient express.

Hey guys, I just finished watching all nu-Who this week. What Who should I watch next? I've tried starting at the beginning with Hartnell but I find it too slow paced, and not well-written or well-filmed either. Is Torchwood worth watching?

I only watched the first two seasons of Torchwood which were patchy at best, but a lot of people say it gets better.

Some Hartnells are very well written fwiw, but the pace remains old-fashioned, shall we say.

Torchwood is pretty good.

I like Tom Baker era Who which is a bit closer to current than Hartnell was. it's 10 years later and I think the difference in culture shows.
I think several of the recent Whos have cited Patrick Troughton as n influence. Unfortunately there's less of them than one would really like thanks to the BBC wiping old episodes. A couple of complete stories appeared in Africa a couple of years ago, though one episode of Web Of Fear the Yetis on the London Underground system story was nicked before it made it to the West.

Pertwee is also really good.

I don't really like the Davison era overmuch. I never really connected with the doctor and weird things happen with aliens costumes tahnks to lack of budget etc though i guess that might be a constant to the series, 2 people in a horse costume playing an alien seems to be an absolute nadir. having Linda Bellingham karate chopping the main alien in the same story seems about as bad.
Colin Baker was a decent actor who had some pretty naff scripts.
I like Sylvester Mccoy as an actor but again he had some decidedly naff stories though he did have a couple of semi decent ones.

I think Hartnell did have some pretty interesting stories, may have loosened up as he went along too.

There are a number of other British Science fiction series from the era too. Sapphire and Steel, Doomwatch, UFO to name a couple.

Torchwood: Children of Earth is the best Who-related program of the nu-Who era.

It's Ingrid Pitt that karate chops the Myrka.

Back end of Children of Earth is a bit of a mess imo, I think S2 is about as good as it got. Just never go near Torchwood: Giant Space Vagina.

oh man THAT one is the one where IMO the end just spectacularly falls apart

I might re-read that thread just to see us all say Giant Space Vagina repeatedly.

Torchwood is almost all terrible.

If you'd like a list of recommended stories from each Doctor for a newbie, that's been done a few times on the Who threads. Or I can just give you a correct list.

lol sic

Which Hartnell serials are interesting? I'm at The Sensorites (#7), and so far the only one I'd say was decent all the way through would be The Aztecs (although I have problems with its theme).

Sensorites is mostly pretty boring. Try The Time Meddler, or The Ark.

I have just read the Torchwood thread, which about 20% people going Giant Earth Vagina (mainly me), and have just lost my shit when Tuomas claims a paving slab can engage in consensual sex.

Wait, that's your problem with the scene? I thought that it was 'jokey'?

Great Hartnells:

The Daleks
The Time Meddler
The Aztecs
DIoE
The Romans

YMMV but I love:

Reign of Terror
Planet Of Giants
The Ark

My Love is inexplicable:

The Web Planet

I love Planet Of Giants so much

The Daleks isn't not meandering in fairness - there's an episode which is just hiking through caves, and another which is Ian trying to convince the Thals to punch him in the face (and Ian is very punchable).

It also suffers in modern viewing from the fact that it's called The Daleks and the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode is OMG it's a Dalek - a defect passed on in its DNA to every other Dalek story.

Dalek Invasion of Earth >>>> The Daleks

Glad you liked The Aztecs already. Sensorites would make a good four-parter.

Dalek Invasion is good (but the movie is paced better), first ep of Space Museum is great but bail out if you get bored during later eps, Time Meddler is fantastic, I love The Gunfighters and you might too if you don't break down crying with frustration if your children's TV show has the temerity to do a comedy story occasionally, instead of spacemen shooting laser guns. Never read or seen The Rescue and The Romans but they're probably good given the writers. The Tenth Planet is worth watching when you get there.

(if you can handle a recon or a narrated soundtrack, carry on into Troughton's Power Of The Daleks. There are no complete stories at all from his first season, though.)

You might want to move to the C or D thread.

Yeah, that's a better thread for this.

https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/838803941458608128

Stoked for Automated Bessie.

I hope they ignore "Attack of the Cybermen" and come up with an understandable explanation.

everybody should ignore "attack of the cybermen"