That might be one of my pariah opinions then when it suddenly seems like I’m severely at odds with most actual fans, like how I prefer 6 to 1 despite being generally in the “Capaldi’s era was miles ahead of Smith’s” camp
5 is wildly overrated though and 7 is wretched
5 is unwatchable, 7 is great except for the first season of 7
1 and 6 are equally shit though except 6 never had any good episodes whereas 1 had german expressionist bug theater
I think we’re doing series versus incarnations here.
The back half of series 7 has the two Neil Cross episodes, though, which I quite like.
I am perplexed with how often people speak of series 5 as this flawless masterpiece, when, uh, half the episodes are kind of not good at all? I do honestly like the Angel two-parter better than Blink, though.
I also really like season 24. Paradise Towers is just great, and Delta and the Bannermen is bewildering in all the best ways. Dragonfire does little for me, but T&tR is kind of a self-aware camp masterpiece, with some of the best special effects the show had until it hit Vancouver.
Hugh Grant?!
I watched the first ep of nu Who last night and it didn’t actually suck that much??!!?!
I didn’t at first understand the connection between those two statements, and I was puzzled because… yeah, Hugh Grant turned it down. That’s why we got Chris Eccleston…
You mean first-first? Like, 2005? Or last-week first?
From the synopsis for next week’s episode:
“If she can live here her whole life, a couple of hours ain’t gonna kill me. They ain’t gonna kill me, right?”
Montgomery, Alabama. 1955. The Doctor and her friends find themselves in the Deep South of America.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e02790b5-fd4d-46b9-9b85-b4c2d737faa0
Presumably that’s Ryan speaking?
The latest series yeah
It seems okay
oh yep, I always get confused whenever people talk about the seasons individually
He was the Twelfth Doctor in that.
OK yeah very happy with this week
they’ve got a lovely basic cable vibe going
at the same time it’s hard to see how they get viewership numbers up like this if that’s in fact what they’re after; it feels just as confidently niche as Capaldi’s show while being even less grand
Chibnall, for his faults, is one of the only Who writers who can do the whole “ragtag band of survivors in harsh dark tunnels” bit without making it feel too grim or too much of a departure from the usual tenor
Whittaker is also really nice in ensembles
I feel like there’s been a bit of an unspoken requirement the past few years to establish early on in the series that the show is still going to be just cheap enough and they’re doing admirably there
I liked the lady racer. She’s got super personality for a guest actor.
i watched the two episodes back to back. i reeeeally really dig this newfangled version of Doctor Who! maybe my favorite thing is how… humble, it feels. Neither of these episodes was trying to blow my mind, they were just trying to tell well-sketched character dramas in a sci-fi adventure setting. It felt more like the classic series than it has in a long time as a result, especially the second episode. (i mean, it was pretty much a Terry Nation episode in structure, honestly – some kind of gamey setup, a series of arbitrarily deadly dangers, and in between are scenes of people talking. Just, y’know, with modern effects and better dialogue)
i always appreciate a callback to Venusian aikido. and that shot of the tent in the middle of the desert had to be partly a visual reference to The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, right? right??
Jodie is really terrific. She reminds me a bit of Tennant, but without the swagger. i’m glad that the dark Doctor stuff has apparently run its course, i appreciate that the Doctor repeatedly emphasized she’s just a friendly wanderer who likes to help people in need. The big myth arc stuff is probably not off the stovetop (judging by what those… evil curtains?? were saying) but they’ve at least explicitly put it on the backburner for now.
i like that the music is no longer loudly yelling at me “ISN’T ALL THIS REALLY EXCITING?!?” over everyone’s dialogue. bye Murray Gold
This is probably one of the biggest reasons I don’t have so many cynical reservations about this. The music stays in the background more often
Murray Gold contributed some pretty great leitmotifs, but he also did it over the course of 12 years. And… yes, it’s a relief to have a different perspective in play. I’m not not gonna turn up my nose to minimalist 1980s synth.
The instincts are also more… artful, I guess? The decision to pull back, rather than ramp up, during the Doctor’s self-declaration in that final encounter. After this really great, tense beat during the chase…
Which is a wonderful way to undercut the “I’m hard, me” swagger (stealin’ the word!) that’s snuck into the show especially since 2010.
That lack of swagger is also part of why I keep thinking McGann. These have to be the two most sincere versions of the Doctor to date.
my actual biggest problem with Murray Gold’s music a lot of the time was how loudly mixed it was! Like, right away from Ninesie’s season it was absolutely blaring, i had to watch the show with subtitles
i actually really liked things like Rose’s theme and I AM THE DOCTOR DUH DUH DUH, DUH DUH DUH DUH DUM but they were way over recycled in a way that was extra noticeable because of how fucking loud they were
the gold standard for Doctor Who music (besides the original Derbia Derbyshire theme) is, of course
Worth noting also how much of Gold’s music during Moffat’s tenure stayed on the floor. After he wrote “I Am the Doctor,” the directors basically kept throwing out everything else Gold wrote and just mixing that back in again, to his growing frustration. There’s probably a whole album of original music he wrote for the show that the production team chose not to use, in favor of recycling a couple of things he’d written years earlier.
He wrote an original theme for Tom Baker’s Doctor – okay, Curator – that they tossed in favor of music he’d written for River Song two years earlier.
