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

[Ben Saunders]

My thoughts for the last ten minutes of that episode: “I wish I was dead (x32)”

[Dave]

“Let’s Talk About Doctor Who (iPlayer)”

[RainbowGazelle]

Loved Devil’s Chord, apart from the last 5 mins. Space Babies was alright.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

So this pairing might be my favourite pairing ever! They are so fun together. 

Space Babies was a great opener. Really cool concept and monster. Like how RTD really isn’t giving up on the “abandoned” Doctor thing and using it to tell a more interesting story about the Doctor. And Ruby of course.

The abortion/refugee messaging wasn’t at all subtle. I only don’t mind it but I fell RTD has, in the past, been slightly cleverer with the delivery. This was just straight exposition. As was a lot of the episode. 

So much reintroduction. Which is understandable. But then the monster was resolved through exposition dump too.

I really liked the TARDIS in Ruby’s kitchen being too big for the room  something I always felt would be the case whenever we’ve seen that previously  

The Devil’s Chord, not as fussed about. It was a solid mid-season episode. But at episode 2 … meh. For what was essentially a reverse Yesterday we should have seen more of the impact. We spent far too much time with the Toy Makers child. 

And the song and dance routine thrown in randomly at the end was a little pointless. 

It’s really interesting though that RTD is using music very heavily at the moment. 3 of the last 4 episodes of had musical numbers.

This visuals across both episodes have been fantastic. Not that Doctor Who has ever really suffered much on that front in recent years but this felt really strong. You couldn’t see the seems anywhere at all. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Given the last 5mins of Devil’s Chord is just song and dance. And the episode runs to 50mins, I wonder if that’ll be edited out of the broadcast to bring it back down to 45?

[Flap Jack]

I enjoyed these 2 episodes a lot – Devil’s Chord a lot more than Space Babies – but considering these follow The Church on Ruby Road, I really hope the whole series isn’t this relentlessly silly. Like it was obviously naive to expect that Russell T Davies would bring the grittier and more serious storytelling of Years and Years and It’s a Sin to Doctor Who, but it’s still somewhat remarkable that out of these 2 debut episodes, the Baby Geniuses one with a literal snot monster and a farting space station is the more grounded one.

Disparate thoughts:

– They did as good a job with the talking babies as they probably could have, and it kind of worked, but it was still deep in the uncanny valley.

– The recurring bit where The Doctor keeps catching himself every time he says “babies” and corrects it to “space babies” was not funny to me, and doesn’t even make sense as anything other than a fourth wall lean. The guy’s been travelling the cosmos for thousands of years, but this is the first time he’s encountered a spacecraft with babies on it I guess?

– The sudden burst of empathy for the bogeyman was a nice idea, but I think it needed a reveal that it was just scaring and wouldn’t have actually killed anyone on board. Like I’m sorry dude, I’m sure you’re a unique life form and all, but if it’s either you or a bunch of kids, I’m joining Nanny on Team “jettison the motherfucker into the vaccum of space like its a female guest character on Red Dwarf”. And this isn’t me being prejudiced about its physical appearance – the babies were way more horrifying than the bogeyman.

– There were a number of absolute declarations that didn’t really make sense. Like The Doctor thinking it weird that he reacted to a scary monster by running away from it, or Ruby saying “you never hide”, when he obviously does both things literally all of the time. I bet next episode he’ll be earnestly shocked when the TARDIS lands somewhere other than the exact place and time he was aiming for.

– The plan to release the first 2 episodes on the same day must have been decided late, because the Doctor Who Unleashed episode for Space Babies ends with an “exclusive clip from next week’s episode”, The Devil’s Chord.

– The phone upgrade that can let you call the past was a fun thing to bring back (and heightens the Rose Tyler 2.0 vibes), though it felt a bit weird to do that and take Ruby back home at the end of the episode too.

– I still don’t like the sonic screwdriver looking like a TV remote rather than, you know, a screwdriver, but it is funny how The Doctor can easily plug it into both a terminal on a space station and 1960s recording equipment. I bet even R2-D2 is impressed by this level of compatibility.

– Maestro is a fun and well performed villain, and they worked better than the Toymaker did for me, but like with the silliness in general I hope they don’t overuse these beings from beyond the universe that are under no obligation to follow the rules of reality. It can be an engaging novelty, but it makes it hard to grasp the stakes. I do appreciate that the specific silliness in The Devil’s Chord complemented the over the top melodrama of the story though, compared to Space Babies where the silliness arguably undermined what is at its core is a pretty normal Doctor Who story about a monster on a space station.

– Rare instance of The Doctor using the sonic screwdriver as an actual sound weapon when he created silence. Don’t know if it made sense, but it was cool. Probably made for a weird experience for both blind and deaf viewers.

– The sense of time in The Devil’s Chord was pretty confusing. The beginning note of “Oh! If it’s the 60s, shouldn’t we change outfits?” made it sound like it was Ruby’s first ever time visiting human history, but then we later find out that from her perspective it’s been several months. Just an all round odd choice, where neither explanation seems right.

– I’m glad I wasn’t one of the people hyped about a Beatles Doctor Who episode, what a disappointment that would have been. I think they almost did more in The Chase than in this.

– OK, Maestro playing the Doctor Who theme is fair game as they are a deliberately reality-warping, pseudo-magical, pan-dimensional, fourth wall-breaking being, but The Doctor having it on his jukebox and Ruby being the composer of her own theme is TOO FAR. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think it’s right for a good and honest person to score their own life. Only a God has that privilege. This is blasphemy, plain and simple.

– Having said that, The Doctor saying “I thought that was non-diegetic” was funny enough not to bother me. It just about seems plausible that in Maestro’s heightened reality The Doctor wouldn’t flinch at background music being real.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> The sense of time in The Devil’s Chord was pretty confusing. The beginning note of “Oh! If it’s the 60s, shouldn’t we change outfits?” made it sound like it was Ruby’s first ever time visiting human history, but then we later find out that from her perspective it’s been several months. Just an all round odd choice, where neither explanation seems right.

Theres a theory that this episode has been moved from an original mid season airing to try and capitalise on the (weak) Beatles thing 

> – OK, Maestro playing the Doctor Who theme is fair game as they are a deliberately reality-warping, pseudo-magical, pan-dimensional, fourth wall-breaking being, but The Doctor having it on his jukebox and Ruby being the composer of her own theme is TOO FAR. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think it’s right for a good and honest person to score their own life. Only a God has that privilege. This is blasphemy, plain and simple.

RTD seems to be leaning into “whatever is fun” rather than “whatever makes sense”. Especially with all these out of place musical numbers. And like, whatever. Doctor has never been Star Trek. It has lots of space to be silly. The themes and music existing within the show … eh there’s worse things in the world 

[Ridley]

Pretty sure the antagonist(s) being reality-bending entities this series covers most of the far out stuff, man.

[Flap Jack]

“Most” being the operative word.

[Ridley]

Fifteenth Doctor not being able to wink probably isn’t a story element, no.

Not yet anyway.

[Nick R]

– They did as good a job with the talking babies as they probably could have, and it kind of worked, but it was still deep in the uncanny valley.

What did amuse me about that is the fact that just two months ago, Dune: Part 2 judiciously avoided adapting the stuff from the Dune novel involving a super-intelligent talking toddler, and now we get a Doctor Who episode that’s all about putting that effect on screen.

– The recurring bit where The Doctor keeps catching himself every time he says “babies” and corrects it to “space babies” was not funny to me, and doesn’t even make sense as anything other than a fourth wall lean.

I didn’t mind that, but I did think that the swearing filter running joke was repeated once or twice too often.

The butterfly effect bit made me realise: I think I genuinely would like a humanoid insect as the next Doctor Who companion. I predict that in 2044, Big Finish will be releasing a spin-off audio series about the adventures of Rubathon Blue of the 57th Hemisphere Hatchlings.

[Flap Jack]

The butterfly effect bit made me realise: I think I genuinely would like a humanoid insect as the next Doctor Who companion.

Would be cool, but at this stage I’ll settle for literally anyone who isn’t from modern day Britain. Come on, RTD, we’re 19 years into New Who now, I think we’re ready for what the classic series did literally on day 1.

(Adam Mitchell, Jack Harkness, River Song and Nardole do not count.)

[Ben Saunders]

My reaction to the babies was “eww this looks like shit” for about ten minutes until I got over it and then it was only slightly distracting.

Things are happening very quickly in this series, the six-month time jump means Ruby and the Doctor are besties all of a sudden but it’s pretty unearned, the phone upgrade and TARDIS key handover felt like “oh I have to do this at some point so let’s uh stick it here”. The Doctor suddenly being piss terrified of everything is weird, especially how it happens twitce in the first two episodes and they have to say “you don’t normally do this” when all evidence so far points to the contrary.

The Doctor suddenly being terrified by the Maestro and bigeneration suddenly being some massively traumatic thing, the Time Lords are now apparently wiped out across all of space and not just Gallifrey.

At the end of The Giggle, the bigeneration is depicted as some miraculous thing where everybody is surprised and happy and cocky about it, and Ncuti is all “yeah I went to therapy and now I’m living my life babes”, except in the subsequent episodes it is clear that it affected him more seriously. I hope they’re actually doing something with this and it’s not just inconsistent characterisation, although if it turns out that Ncuti isn’t over all his baggage thanks to the whole Tennant therapy thing then what was the point of it?

There are currently rumours floating around about cut material/deleted scenes, including the seemingly unsubstantiated “they were going to play Push the Button by the Sugababes in Space Babies which is why they keep saying push the button”. The actress playing Cilla mentioned being a victim of the cutting room floor: https://twitter.com/JosieSedgwickD/status/1789568011025654052

On a lighter note, I’m looking forward to Moffat next week. He obviously could crank out one of his rare stinkers, but given his track record I doubt he will. Some people are placing a LOT of pressure on him though, saying ooh Moffat under RTD previously gave us Blink, the Library etc… going into Boom expecting another Blink probably isn’t a great idea.

[Dave]

The actress playing Cilla mentioned being a victim of the cutting room floor:

Surprise, surprise

[Stephen Abootman]

My money is on Cilla being the ‘big bad’ for this series. 

[Dave]

My money is on Cilla being the ‘big bad’ for this series. 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

one of his rare stinkers

I may need to go to the infirmary after posting this from how hard I’m biting my tongue right now.

[Formica]

“Bogeys”, weirdly, is the indicator to me that Disney isn’t micromanaging to make sure everything appeals in the US. Clear what it means in context but nobody would normally recognize you calling them that here. If they were being really tight on catering to the American Audience, they would’ve asked for the boogeyman to be made of boogie and be beaten through another little song and dance number.

Devil’s Chord’s number was good, by the way? Last two were flashier but this one had me squirming at poor lyrics far less.

[Dave]

If they were being really tight on catering to the American Audience, they would’ve asked for the boogeyman to be made of boogie and be beaten through another little song and dance number.

[Flap Jack]

I hear episode 6 features a courgette monster, and they defeat it using the fizziness of lemonade.

[RainbowGazelle]

I’m also absolutely loving the new theme. The boosted bassline is terrific, especially in the Devil’s Chord opening.

[Flap Jack]

[Ben Saunders]

finally, some good fucking Who.

RTD2 is more hits than misses so far

[Dave]

Doctor Who: Boom spoilers without context:

[Dave]

Seriously though, I thought Boom was superb, the best episode of Doctor Who in years.

It somehow manages to take what is effectively a single-location story with minimal guest cast and create one of the most tense, thrilling, emotional Who stories in a long time, giving Gatwa his first great material as well as touching on all manner of themes – war, capitalism, faith, love – with a light touch but a heavy heart. Moffat is brilliant and somehow makes this look easy.

My only complaint is that every other episode of the season is probably going to pale in comparison.

At least we’ve got Moffat back for Christmas though, that will be one to look forward to.

[Flap Jack]

…

Well, I can see why they called it “Boom”, because that was a fucking banger.

I’m also amused by the next time trailer, which is seemingly teasing a Doctor-lite episode in spite of the ruthlessly slashed episode count. Maybe not though.

[cwickham]

…
Well, I can see why they called it “Boom”, because that was a fucking banger.
I’m also amused by the next time trailer, which is seemingly teasing a Doctor-lite episode in spite of the ruthlessly slashed episode count. Maybe not though.

Next week’s was recorded in the first block when Ncuti was still filming Sex Education, hence the need for Doctor-lite(s).

[Flap Jack]

Ah. Well that’s a shame. I liked the way they sometimes dealt with Doctor-lite episodes by having The Doctor trapped away from the rest of the cast and in a single location, so they could still be present throughout the episode.

Although, considering what happens in this episode, that might have been a bit repetitive.

[Ben Saunders]

It’s mad to me that basically everyone is in agreement that this was a really good episode, as far as I can see. You just don’t see such unity these days. And a Moffat script as well, people are always chomping at the bit to attack him for something or other. The future of Who looks bright, I think, and I’m happily riding that high.

[Flap Jack]

[Ben Saunders]

I wondered if I should mention that lot, but honestly I don’t hear much from/about them these days. They’re just yelling fully into their own echo chambers at this point, it seems.

[Ian Symes]

My only complaint about Boom was that some of the guest cast were a bit ropey. It was only afterwards that I realised one of them is going to be the next companion.

[Flap Jack]

Admittedly a couple of them were a bit… robotic.

Also, calling your dad character “Vater”? Bit on the nose, Moffat. Might as well have called him Pop Withakid Daddingsby.

[Ben Saunders]

Just watched 73 Yards.

RTD seems to have lost it, I’m afraid.

[Dave]

I thought it was really good up until it didn’t make any sense and nothing was explained. Other than that, great!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I thought it was bloody fantastic. It didn’t need to make total sense at the end, any explanations would have ruined it IMO.

Tonally it was really different and interesting. It kept surprising you with at first, having the guys in pub messing with Ruby, setting us up for a different episode then laughing it off. Then have the companion bugger off home and do time jumps through their life with this weird old woman constantly following her around.

It was just weird and fantastical and kept intrigue all the way through. 

[si]

Okay, just wrote a loooong post, pressed submit and lost the fucking thing. Took me about 10 minutes to write (I’m on the bus).

So: I liked it.

[Ben Saunders]

The political stuff was really bland for something by Russell T Davies. Oh he like really, really wants to use nukes for some reason. Why exactly? We don’t really get much of anything about how the public view this man or why they vote for him or anything other than he possibly assaulted someone (which they don’t really make a point with since nobody other than Ruby knows) and he really likes missiles.

I seem to have misunderstood the ending because I thought the old woman was Ruby’s mum (some supernatural creature) and not what everybody else is saying, that it was old Ruby. I guess she does say “I was so young”. 

I don’t like how it’s another one of those stories where really important character stuff happens but then it’s all erased and the characters don’t remember anything. I didn’t like when they did it in the Pokémon movie, and honestly even as a young boy it felt strange that White Hole ended like that. Oh, so that story didn’t actually happen? Alright. 

I really liked the middle of the episode just as things were starting to become more intriguing and emotional, but it didn’t stick the landing because it refused to really dig into the Welsh horror stuff that was advertised – it’s thrown away for a horribly signposted rugpull.

What did this episode have to say? What was the point of it? 

I’m all for not explaining things, but I want to feel like what I just watched, I watched for a reason. 

I liked the 60th specials, Space Babies and Boom but I’m left feeling a wee bit wobbly after that episode.

[Ben Saunders]

Addendum to “that story didn’t happen” — The Girl Who Waited from series 6 did a similar idea much better, largely because what happens actually has an impact on our characters even if it’s ultimately undone.

And something more light-hearted: people are ragging on the age makeup/lack thereof, but I think anyone trying to make Millie Gibson look 40 is fighting an uphill battle. I think I’m just starting to get old because she looks like she should still be in school to me, even with big glasses and a glass of wine in her hand

[Ben Saunders]

Apologies for multiposting but one thing I did like in 73 Yards was Ruby’s old lady neighbour, the one from Corrie or whatever, coming out and saying “nothing to do with me” and going back inside, as if to explicitly tell the audience “I know this episode is about a mysterious woman always following Ruby, but it’s not her. Or her.”

I also liked how Ruby dealt with Nukeboy McMissiles, that was very clever. 

[Ridley]

It’s all fey magick and perception filters, I think?

But the Doctor walking off camera to film Sex Education stretches credulity.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It was Russel doing Years and Years in a 45mins DW episode. But also it wasn’t about the prime minister. He was just a global threat you have to accept, and that Ruby is aware of him. 

And of lady was Ruby, however that came about.

It was some weird splinter timeline and she lived her life to finally merge them back together. 

The episode was about the forever unending creepy nature of this old woman constantly being an unwavering 73 yards aware and that that somehow feeds into Ruby’s character. 

Russell said in last weeks Unleashed he isn’t looking to make DW hard sci-fi but to adventurous fantasy and it’s just a world to have fun in and explore different types of story telling.

[Ben Saunders]

Moffat was straight up writing a fairy tale in series 5 but he managed to do it without sacrificing things actually having emotional impact and a sense of purpose and finality. Amy remembering the Doctor into existence is arguably more bullshit than anything in 73 Yards, but we believe it because we feel it. It’s the emotions of it all and the connection we have to the characters that grounds that story and stops it from being trite rubbish. 

“It’s magic, this show isn’t supposed to be hard sci fi” isn’t something I can get behind, unfortunately. It’s too easy a get-out-of-jail free card, from the writer who actually introduced me to the concept of deus ex machina back in ~2008.

I still think having paper thin villains is bad, regardless of if it’s “not what the episode is about”. At least give us something to chew on!

(Not turning this into a who’s the better showrunner argument, just using that episode as an example, and not implying 73 Yards was deus ex machina, just that RtD is famously a bit of an ending-arse-puller. This is the same man who gave us IT’S A PARADOX MACHINE to justify why the Master was able to get away with his shit. Like oh, we can build those?)

[Ridley]

The prime minister should be stopped cause he’s a sex pest that wants to launch nukes for fun was enough for me in that regard, and Gatwa’s run thus far is encountering the science-bending fantastical for the most part.

I just don’t get whether the Doctor literally disappeared or he ran off cause old lady like everyone else Cause the exit from the shot was a bit poo (in my opinion).

[Warbodog]

 people are ragging on the age makeup/lack thereof, but I think anyone trying to make Millie Gibson look 40 is fighting an uphill battle. I think I’m just starting to get old because she looks like she should still be in school to me, even with big glasses and a glass of wine in her hand

I’ve been reading the Eleventh Doctor books, and some of the cover shots of my contemporaries look like Space Harry Potter to me now.

[Ben Saunders]

Narratively it would make sense for the Doctor to have ran away, but is there really anything you could possibly say to him to make him abandon his companion like that? Seems to me like it was just because he broke the circle that he got whisked away. If he ran away we would have seen/heard him. That I’m fine with. Spooky old lady fucks with you because you invoked some curse and then fucks off when everything is put right.

It feels to me like there must be some sort of supernatural mind control thing going on with what the old woman says to people to make them run away, but RTD in the behind the scenes stuff seems to state that no, they just said something really horrible. “That’s where the horror is, what could possibly cause you to react like that?”. But honestly… I’m not sure anything would cause Ruby’s mum to speak to her like that, calling her not her real daughter when she has previously adopted like 100 children or something. What could the entity have POSSIBLY said to her? Without a supernatural/mind control element to it, you just make Carla and especially Kate and Unit look kind of stupid. Like you are just going to believe this random spooky lady, you’re not even going to confront Ruby?

But that’s just me nitpicking what RTD said behind the scenes, which isn’t fair. As the episode stands I simply choose to believe it was some mesmeric shit and it plays fine. Like the Toymaker making Kate racist, which makes me think maybe there’s some grander significance to it, but until proven otherwise that’s just wishful thinking.

[Flap Jack]

I liked 73 Yards a lot, it was incredibly engrossing. Although I do think it could have used some more explanation. Not even direct explanation necessarily, just more details that would allow us to join the dots ourselves. Like, OK, so them accidentally breaking the fairy circle causes Ruby to be cursed to be stalked by the figure of her future self, but… why does The Doctor disappear? Why does the TARDIS shut down and become impossible to open? And what was future-Ruby even trying to do? By the end I’d no idea; the whole plot was running on vibes. But the episode still worked for me, because it was more about character than plot.

Otherwise,

– The previous 4 or 5 RTD-written episodes may have been fanciful, but this is the first one where he goes “magic just literally exists in the Doctor Who universe now. Deal with it.” It’s probably better for impact than episodes like ‘Hide’ which reveal the sci-fi explanation way too early, but there must be a happy medium.

– I don’t think Roger ap Gwilliam needed further explanation. Nationalist strongmen like him exist all over the place. We don’t need to hear a backstory for him to make sense. It’s kind of depressing that with the timeline reset there’s nothing to stop him though.

– I got a bit confused when “#Election46” appeared, because I misheard The Doctor and thought he said Roger ap Gwilliam was 2026. That’s my bad, but it would have helped if they had actually made Millie Gibson look the age she was meant to be, instead of 22 at most.

– Quite convenient for Ruby that she would be curse-stricken and separated from The Doctor in her home time period and in her home country.

– I like how Mrs. Flood appears pretty much just to make it clear that the 73 Yards Woman isn’t her.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

On the subject of aging Millie. There would have been absolutely no convincing way of doing it. She is only 18 (at time of filming). She basically is only just out of school. No make up would have had her looking convincingly like a 40 year old.

old Clara works because she is really really old.

old Amy just about works as its age mixed with a withered, weariness. It’s not brilliant but it looks like she’s been fighting and alone for years.

Making an 18 year old look like she’s just held down a job for 20 years would be difficult. They’d need to basically make her look like Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler) as she was 39 in Rose.

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah, the ageing thing is just something silly to poke fun at, it doesn’t break anything really. Age makeup is hard in general (Back to the Future 2), young people just look, act and feel different to old people.

We are shown 25th and 40th birthday cards in establishing shots for the timeskips which I thought were obvious enough, but other people seem to have missed. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> young people just look, act and feel different to old people.

and yet I totally buy Matt Smith’s aged Doctor in Time of the Doctor. But then Matt had been playing well beyond his years from the start in a lot of ways. 

[Author]

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