Russell Two Davies

[Nick R]

Apparently, today there was some news about a change to Doctor Who’s production staff, in some obscure behind-the-scenes role. I don’t know if anyone else heard about it?

Topic

[Nick R]

Is this the first time neither Doctor Who or Star Trek were in production for television? Or have I missed something?

Well there was that brief period between 13.8 billion years ago and 1963…

There are still the upcoming final seasons of Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy in production and yet to get broadcast, and the BBC’s announcement of the Doctor Who Christmas special’s cancellation confirms that the CBeebies cartoon spin-off is still planned. So it depends whether you count those as extending “in production for television” for a little longer.

[Ben Saunders]

I hate how fucked up Doctor lineups are now. Tennant appears twice on all of them which looks ridiculous, even more so to casual observers. And you have to have Jo Martin, which means you have to have John Hurt. It was always going to get crowded, but it’s rather silly.

And Ten now takes up THREE of the Doctor’s regenerations, having already regenerated into himself with the hand bullshit. His vanity was already lampshaded in the 50th, now it’s a total eclipse.

People have joked about Moffat being egotistical by canonising the two-regens thing for Tennant, and the War Doctor stuff, and therefore getting to deal with the regeneration limit himself, but perhaps that was the best possible scenario. I can’t imagine what bullshit Chibnall or RTD2 would have come up with.

[Nick R]

Yeah I’m more interested in watching The Clone Wars, Rebels, Mandalorian, stuff like that. Andor too, apparently. I’m not passionate enough about Star Wars to the level I’ll read its tie-in books. Ask me again later, though idk

I haven’t watched any of the live-action Disney+ stuff, or the CG Clone Wars series (only the older Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars).

The only Star Wars thing I’ve watched on Disney+ is Star Wars: Visions. The anime seasons 1 and 3 are hit and miss, but season 2 contains three absolute standout shorts: Cartoon Saloon’s “Screecher’s Reach”, Aardman’s “I am Your Mother”, and Studio La Cachette’s “The Spy Dancer”. Those three are probably my favourite Star Wars things, in any medium, released since The Empire Strikes Back.

So I recommend those.

[Asclepius]

Rumour going around that they’ve already filmed the special in total secrecy. As nonsensical as it sounds, I almost want it to be true, but then that’d mean we’d get an episode that’s likely just a couple of actors in one set talking. 
And if that bloody UNIT lot are in it, I swear to god…

This sounds *amazing*. I really hope it’s true.

Now, time to read the rest of this thread…

[Asclepius]

If you’ve never listened to Big Finish I can give you a series of good recommendations.

They’ve done some great stuff. Protect and Survive was absolutely chilling. 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men was great fun.
But while they still either refuse to (if Nick Briggs is to be believed) or literally financially can’t provide any visuals for their stories, its still a struggle for me to get into Big Finish as a regular hobby because I struggle to visualise the stories and so much of Doctor Who’s appeal to me is the visual spectacle, even on a budget.

I find the only way I can focus on them is to be doing something like running/jogging. I just can’t sit/drive/walk and focus on them.

Still, it gets me out the ‘ouse.

[Flap Jack]

I can’t exactly be mad when a better performer with bettter writing turns up. 

What do you mean, you can’t? Are you sure you’re a Doctor Who fan?

From my perspective, it’s been well reinforced that Doctor Who is always changing and moving forward (especially when it comes to who the lead actors are), so if they decide to move backwards instead in the hope that gratuitous fanwank is what will keep the audience on board, I’m liable to be cynical about that. Like I can see the hands, those keys aren’t just jingling on their own.

I was more or less OK with David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor on the understanding that gratuitous fanwank is accepted during anniversary celebrations. It’s like The Purge. But beyond his general appearance, the bi-generation ultimately did just rob Gatwa of his proper introduction. And if they do smash the “regenerate into old Doctor/companion” button every time they’re in a jam, that’s bad. It’s bad no matter how good the performances or the other aspects of the writing are.

Of course it doesn’t help that I personally just don’t rate Tennant that highly when it comes to modern Doctors. He’s great, no doubt, but Eccleston, Smith and Capaldi are better, and Whittaker and Gatwa are at least level. It’s more a point of personality than performance, but it’s also a factor that Tennant already had more episodes in his original run than any other revival Doctor. Yet he’s the one who gets to continue living in parallel with his future selves, in multiple universes no less. Hardly seems fair.

[Rushy]

Yeah, the bi-generation concept was BS, but to me Tennant has significantly more gravitas than Gatwa and Whittaker, and I thought the idea of exploring a version of his character who has had the experiences of the later Doctors was very interesting. 

The fact that he was earnest and open already made him very distinct from the Tenth Doctor, I thought. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> But beyond his general appearance, the bi-generation ultimately did just rob Gatwa of his proper introduction

the bi-generation stuff is such an unnecessary excuse to piss about with stuff isn’t it. 

Oh we want the doctor to live happily ever after? Let’s no effectively kill this one then and split him in two like an ameoba instead. It’s serves no purpose. 

Regeneration was introduced to solve a problem. Hartnell was going and they wanted the show to continue. 

That gave us this beautiful thing where it can exist it many forms over many decades with many actors and still at its heart be the same show. 

We’d just had the horribly executed reveal that the Doctor is the Timeless child, which I don’t hate but is a bit nonsense and opens up a whole heap of unnecessary questions. And that was also seemingly done “just because” and not for any necessary reason. The to follow it up almost immediately with another lore shattering revelation that regeneration (which comes from the Doctor now) isn’t all there is, just because, is a bit bloody tiring to keep up

As fans of the show were open to change but for the last few years it’s just been re-writing the show and the character just to make headlines and not actually giving anything enjoyable or satisfying 

[Doomitron]

I hate how fucked up Doctor lineups are now. Tennant appears twice on all of them which looks ridiculous, even more so to casual observers. And you have to have Jo Martin, which means you have to have John Hurt. It was always going to get crowded, but it’s rather silly.

People gnash their teeth about Jodie Whittaker til the cows come home but I still feel she was the last true Doctor or the last one that felt like all the others that came before her. After that you got 14 which reeks of cynicism to me, 15 who got delegitimized out of the gate with the equally cynical bigeneration nonsense, and Fugitive who never got anything to do besides appear randomly on the odd occasion whereas War at least had proper buildup and an entire special to build his myths with. We still don’t know where she is in the lineup because Chibnall ducked out of making her pre-Hartnell when everyone took up arms over it. And now we have a Doctor who may or may not be the Doctor. Just a travesty.

[Warbodog]

We still don’t know where she is in the lineup because Chibnall ducked out of making her pre-Hartnell when everyone took up arms over it. And now we have a Doctor who may or may not be the Doctor. Just a travesty.

I haven’t seen the later Chibnall era, but this doesn’t sound much different from Tom Baker’s museum curator Doctor or the “Merlin” Doctor referenced in Battlefield.

[Dave]

People have joked about Moffat being egotistical by canonising the two-regens thing for Tennant, and the War Doctor stuff, and therefore getting to deal with the regeneration limit himself, but perhaps that was the best possible scenario. I can’t imagine what bullshit Chibnall or RTD2 would have come up with.

Arguably the best way to handle it would have been to ignore the limit completely. You could say the limit was either made up, or simply wasn’t a hard stop but more like a law that you can choose to break.

Making a relatively niche plot point callback like this central to a climactic story feels like the blueprint RTD chose to follow with his Gatwa finales.

[Doomitron]

I haven’t seen the later Chibnall era, but this doesn’t sound much different from Tom Baker’s museum curator Doctor or the “Merlin” Doctor referenced in Battlefield.

Merlin was a one-off mention and hardly comparable to Fugitive who pops up recurringly in several episodes, while the curator Doctor is intentionally an end-of-life thing you can presume happens after the Doctor “retires”.

[Flap Jack]

You don’t need to imagine what bullshit RTD would have come up with. He wrote a Sarah Jane Adventures story called “Death of the Doctor” in which The Eleventh Doctor appears, and one of the kids asks him how many times he can regenerate, and he says 507 (without explaining why the answer isn’t 12 or elaborating in any way).

So there’s your answer – RTD would kick the can so far down the road that nobody currently alive would have to deal with it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said in the past that Fourteen should never have been – and still isn’t, in my mind – a main incarnation. A main incarnation should be the lead of the show for the foreseeable future, not someone whose successor has already been picked long before their first episode has gone out. And having David Tennant appear twice in lineups just looks stupid. I feel like the choice was only made because Davies enjoys breaking conventions for the sake of it, and knew that not being able to cleanly divide eras of the show by Doctor would annoy nerds.

[Dave]

I think Tennant coming back was just another stupid stunt of a twist that was designed to make headlines and confound viewers who thought they would be getting a Whittaker-Gatwa regeneration.

It’s very similar to the cliffhanger with Rose really, but it’s excused somewhat because the 60th specials were actually pretty good. Well, in comparison to most of what came after, anyway. 

[Renegade Rob]

I didn’t actually mind the bigeneration because I appreciate that the Doctor as a character needed a detox. I know it didn’t work out in hindsight, but in theory it would help with the reboot because of all the collected trauma from the Time War and the Confession Dial and the Flux, etc. Not just as a jumping on point, but just from a character point of view, you can’t have a show with stakes that high for 13+ years and have it not take a collective toll, so the idea that an incarnation could just stop for a while felt like a decent character choice, and the main way to do that was to not have the character die in conflict. So I respect that choice. I also don’t actually mind Chibnall or whoever really finally clarifying that 12 regenerations was an arbitrarily imposed limit, since it was sort of implied already by past stories (the Time Lords can give or take regenerations on a whim). As much as I liked that Moffat gave the Doctor a new cycle to conclude the 50th anniversary year, it would be kind of silly to keep hoping that the Doctor would find another cycle of regenerations under the couch at the 100th anniversary mark and so on without eventually admitting that yeah, 12 is a soft number. 

[Nick R]

@Doomitron

and Fugitive who never got anything to do besides appear randomly on the odd occasion whereas War at least had proper buildup and an entire special to build his myths with. We still don’t know where she is in the lineup because Chibnall ducked out of making her pre-Hartnell when everyone took up arms over it.

What did Chibnall do that went back on when the Fugitive Doctor fits in the Doctor’s timeline? From what I remember, she was introduced, then we got the Timeless Child revelation that seemed to neatly explain that she fits in pre-Hartnell. (Well, except for the minor inconvenient detail that her TARDIS was already a police box.)

After that, what did Chibnall do to change about her placement?

[Ben Saunders]

You could say the limit was either made up, or simply wasn’t a hard stop but more like a law that you can choose to break

I know Dr Who plays fast and loose with canon, but this point is so methodically ingrained into the show over and over again that just saying it was a lie/not a limit would be some of the biggest bullshit yet. It would mean the Master was crispy for no reason (The Deadly Assassin, The Keeper of Traken), then a blob of goop for no reason (The TV Movie). Then the Time Lords gave him an extra set of regenerations for no reason (Last of the Time Lords I think). 

and he says 507

Obvious joke

[Ben Saunders]

I actually don’t think Gatwa was overshadowed by the Bigeneration, because he came right out of there like an arse on fire and stole the show in my eyes. Tennant got his soppy farewell but Gatwa was firmly the Doctor from the second he shimmied away from him. It does open a whole can of bullshit generally, though and is overall a pretty stupid idea, especially when they reiterate it with the Rani (and possibly all Time Lords for the foreseeable?)

edit: except it doesn’t happen when Gatwa regenerates into Piper so WHO BLOODY KNOWS or cares really

[Professor Flibble]

I’m pretty sure I’ve said in the past that Fourteen should never have been – and still isn’t, in my mind – a main incarnation. A main incarnation should be the lead of the show for the foreseeable future, not someone whose successor has already been picked long before their first episode has gone out. And having David Tennant appear twice in lineups just looks stupid. I feel like the choice was only made because Davies enjoys breaking conventions for the sake of it, and knew that not being able to cleanly divide eras of the show by Doctor would annoy nerds.

Idk why he didn’t make it a literal degeneration back into the Tenth Doctor rather than a new numbered incarnation. Would also be simpler and less confusing to explain to the public. 

It was also such a wonderful idea for him to break conventions in an era that was supposed to make the show a global hit. Try setting up bigeneration for a bunch of people who don’t even know what regeneration is.

[Dave]

edit: except it doesn’t happen when Gatwa regenerates into Piper so WHO BLOODY KNOWS or cares really

Unless another Tennant plopped out the back that we didn’t see yet

[Renegade Rob]

Admittedly, the softening of the 12-regeneration limit and the existence of each new doctor beyond the 13th make the Master’s explanation that the Valeyard is an “aspect of the Doctor between his 12th and final incarnation” increasingly and amusingly unhelpful. 

[Jenuall]

Gatwa has been superb in my opinion, just a shame he’s been shackled to a very wonky era for the show.

Assuming this isn’t the actual death of the show (which I can’t believe they will allow to happen, pretty sure Doctor Who is still far and away their most commercially lucrative show worldwide) I think it will ultimately be a good thing.

The show needs a break and a reset. Come back with new teams and new ideas, stop tying everything in continuity knots and constantly backreferencing and retconning things, just give us some good stories and performances, with a decent arc and I’ll be happy

 

[Professor Flibble]

If it’s 5 years though, what the hell am I going to do? I might be in my 30s by the time the show comes back. 

I need to get a start on making my fan series, that’s the only thing I have any control over. I’d hope it’d gain some traction.

[Flap Jack]

Obvious joke

Was it though?

It may be a joke in a meta sense, that RTD took this bit of lore that fans take seriously and contradicted it in such an offhand and pointless manner, but serious worldbuilding and joke worldbuilding all count for the same in the end.

Unless 507 is a designated Funny Number that I just haven’t heard of, then it’s clearly not a joke within the episode itself, because it doesn’t have a punchline. The Sarah Jane kids don’t have a clue, so 12 is no less funny an answer than 507.

Like if he had said “420! Because I always go up in smoke yeaaaaahhhhh boiiiiiiiiiiiiii” then that would have technically been a joke. 507 is either what he believed to be the correct answer or a lie told for no reason.

I actually don’t think Gatwa was overshadowed by the Bigeneration, because he came right out of there like an arse on fire and stole the show in my eyes. Tennant got his soppy farewell but Gatwa was firmly the Doctor from the second he shimmied away from him.

He definitely still made a big first impression, but it’s just so off-kilter for the new guy to show up when half the focus is still on the old guy, and the audience never even have to properly say goodbye to the old guy. If the characters have to have a conversation just to stress to the audience that yes, the new guy is the “main” Doctor and the old guy isn’t, something has gone wrong.

Plus the choice sort of inadvertently appeals to the racist fans by making it so the first Black Doctor (after Jo Martin) is also the first one not to actually replace their predecessor. “Don’t worry guys, the proper, white Doctor is still around! He has his own TARDIS and everything! They will not replace us, am I right? God, I’m so progressive.”

And then you throw in the objectification aspect of Fifteen being the one who has to run around in his pants. I guess that’s fine, but David wearing Jodie’s outfit would have been too much, obviously.

[Jonathan Capps]

If it’s 5 years though, what the hell am I going to do? I might be in my 30s by the time the show comes back.

You’re only young, you’ve got about three or four whole cycles of Who coming back, going to shit and being canned to look forward to. It’s part of the fun.

[Doomitron]

What did Chibnall do that went back on when the Fugitive Doctor fits in the Doctor’s timeline? From what I remember, she was introduced, then we got the Timeless Child revelation that seemed to neatly explain that she fits in pre-Hartnell. (Well, except for the minor inconvenient detail that her TARDIS was already a police box.)
After that, what did Chibnall do to change about her placement?

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-jo-martine-timeline-newsupdate/
Its less in the show and more outside of it mudding the waters due to the backlash where Chibnall says “well maybe she is maybe she isn’t”. Within the show itself its also unclear I don’t *think* they definitively say within The Timeless Children itself where she is (I’m going to be honest with you, I haven’t watched it in years because I don’t want to) and you later have the Fugitive popping up between, iirc, Tennant and Gatwa for no logical reason in the seemingly chronological Doctors list that pops up in The Reality War. There’s also the dumb Shalka Doctor cameo we had in whatever episode that was.

[Doomitron]

Gatwa has been superb in my opinion, just a shame he’s been shackled to a very wonky era for the show.

Gatwa himself I actually like a lot, he’s great in episodes that let him be great its just there hasn’t been a Doctor who consistently was handed dreadful episodes in successive order in NuWho (I’d argue the entire show but that’s probably more debatable). Series 2 is almost completely bad imo, Series 1 had good ones like Dot and Bubble and Rogue but otherwise he was given dirt and asked to make a diamond out of it. Its really unfortunate because Wild Blue Wonder is the only episode I’d say was a bonified classic of RTD2 and they gave that one to Tennant instead which is just insulting to me.

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