Dr. Who

[Velorath]

You know, if you'd just listen to Moffat you'd at least be able to make your minds up properly.

He's said it again and again :  Dr Who is a Fairy Tale to him.  A Fairy Tale.  The trees grow because of fucking magic.  He always wins because of fucking magic.  He can recreated universes because of fucking magic and things always work out right on time because of fucking magic.

I'm not interested in that type of Dr Who and won't ever be interested in that type of Dr Who.

It makes it so hard to critique when the guy writing utter shite can say 'A Wizard Did It' with no irony whatsoever.

Yeah it's shocking to see a show that early on used "oh, he can regenerate into new bodies" as a way to justify changing the actor playing the main character just handwave things away.

[HaemishM]

That's an extremely reductionist way to look at it. That was a character with only a few seasons worth of established continuity. This is a character with DECADES worth of established "rules." Almost all of which Moffat either ignores or handwaves away with an almost palpable disdain.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, but Velorath knows that and is just being an utter dickmunch for the fun of it.  Which is fine.

You wanna tell me that an alien that can regenerate is the exact same as someone who rebuilt themselves and the entire universe due to 'THE POWER OF WISHES', you just go right ahead with the delusion.  That's fine too.

[eldaec]

The problem isn't handwaving regeneration limits away, the problem is making it a central point of an episode while also making it completely uninteresting and not making any sense.

A Wizard Did It is fine for the regen limit (though unnecessary), it is not fine as the resolution of the episode I've just wasted an hour watching.

[rattran]

I think Moffat will pull a JNT and stay on, running the series completely into the ground. Then in 20 years, we can have Doctor Who 3.0.

[Simond]

Well, bearing in mind that he said about a year ago that he was closer to the end of his turn as show-runner than to the beginning, I'd say you're talking bollocks.

[rattran]

I don't think running into cancellation will take much more effort from him. I suspect he's closer to the end of his tenure than than the beginning as well.

[Khaldun]

I hope he will step off soon too but come on. The show is not close to cancellation.

[eldaec]

While I agree - I remain nervous that the shitty writing will be even more a problem now that the doctor is older than Doogie Howser.

While cancellation is very unlikely, I could imagine TV people somehow concluding that the problem is Capaldi instead of Moffat, and casting a 12 year old to replace him.

Pessimism is my natural state you see.

[Malakili]

To be fair, Neil Patrick Harris could probably pull off being the Doctor.

[Sir T]

Reminds me of one of the great Matt Smith lines. To "Fear me, I have killed hundreds of Time lords"

"Fear me, I've killed all of them"

Well, knowing he actually hadn't. You see.

Yep, fuck stupid on every level, really.

[Simond]

How did he know it?

[Sir T]

I thought it was retroactively handwaved that he always knew that the time-lords were not killed off. But I admit I wasn't paying too much attention. Sorry.

[eldaec]

Afaik in any multiple doctor situation, the earlier versions of the doctor forget what happened immeadiately after the event because <technobabble>, and otherwise the latest incarnation would know the storyline before they start.

It's narrative causality at its finest, but I'm moderately sure it is a pre Moffat rule.

[Khaldun]

My sense from "Day of the Doctor" is that he didn't know that he'd saved rather than destroyed Gallifrey up until "Day of the Doctor" actually happened--up to that point he still thinks he used the Moment and killed them all. There's a bit where Tennant's Doctor says, "And now I'll forget". And yeah, they've said as much in the other multiple Doctor adventures, and it's not a stretch, really--I'm hard-pressed to think of any time-travel story outside the ones that take paradox really seriously that doesn't have that kind of escape clause about past selves not remembering what a future self does or did during a meeting. (Most of course get around this via something like 'If two versions of the same person meet, the entire space-time continuum will blow up!!!!!')

On the other hand, that line from "The Doctor's Wife" makes the idea that he's so very very ashamed of the War Doctor that he doesn't even acknowledge his existence rather odd, since he's been quite open in all of his nuWho regenerations that he is responsible for killing his own people, and by the time we get to Smith's Doctor, he's almost back to swaggering about it on occasion.

[Signe]

I watched the xmas one last night.  I didn't understand a bit of it.  Not even a smidgeon.  I did, however, smile when Peter Capaldi appeared with that awesome Peter Capaldi face of his!  If anyone here hasn't seen "The Thick of It" series with Peter Capaldi, I totally, completely and utterly recommend it.  Totally.  His face is all over it.

I can't stop saying Peter Capaldi.

[Ironwood]

He's been frequenting our local coffee place where my good friend works.  She's been star struck every time he's latte'd.  I'm told that's NOT a euphemism.

[Threash]

On the other hand, that line from "The Doctor's Wife" makes the idea that he's so very very ashamed of the War Doctor that he doesn't even acknowledge his existence rather odd, since he's been quite open in all of his nuWho regenerations that he is responsible for killing his own people, and by the time we get to Smith's Doctor, he's almost back to swaggering about it on occasion.

Killing his own people is not the entirety of what the war doctor did, he was young when he went to war and very old by the time he thought he destroyed Gallifrey. 

[Surlyboi]

He's been frequenting our local coffee place where my good friend works.  She's been star struck every time he's latte'd.  I'm told that's NOT a euphemism.

It would only be a euphemism if his lattes end with him espressoing on her.

[apocrypha]

I did, however, smile when Peter Capaldi appeared with that awesome Peter Capaldi face of his! 

When he looked at Clara with that face I so, SO wanted him to shout "And who the fuck are you?!".

But he didn't, which like the entire rest of the episode, was a complete disappointment.

[Khaldun]

On the other hand, that line from "The Doctor's Wife" makes the idea that he's so very very ashamed of the War Doctor that he doesn't even acknowledge his existence rather odd, since he's been quite open in all of his nuWho regenerations that he is responsible for killing his own people, and by the time we get to Smith's Doctor, he's almost back to swaggering about it on occasion.

Killing his own people is not the entirety of what the war doctor did, he was young when he went to war and very old by the time he thought he destroyed Gallifrey. 

Yeah. Though again, I really cannot get behind the idea that killing a Dalek in order to stop it from killing everybody is a horrible, terrible thing that the Doctor should feel ashamed of. I guess we have to assume that he'd already done some other stuff in the war that was more morally compromised than driving the Tardis into Daleks. Or using ray guns to make messages on walls.

[Ironwood]

I don't think anyone was saying that really.  The trouble is, as we've seen from various places and made manifest in the episode 'Dalek', you can't really beat them any other way.  The Daleks are a xenocide or nothing because they're utterly, utterly fucking crazy and even one is a nutjob of apocalyptic proportions.

This, however, has been a theme through many of the Dalek episodes, so is kinda humdrum by this stage.

[Threash]

And it wasn't just Daleks, the war was causing destruction in a mayor scale.  There was a reason that lady from night of the doctor hated the time lords as much as the Daleks.

[NowhereMan]

Yeah, I think you need to assume that the War Doctor had a whole lot of collateral damage stuff going on beyond just, 'Oh no I ended a universe threatening war by destroying the two genocidal protagonists'. The Time War generally clearly hit a lot of people and the Time Lords were never overly shy about sacrificing others to save themselves when the need arose so I always took the guilt to be indicative of the Doctor having played his part in sacrificing planets to lure Dalek fleets into traps or sending people to their deaths to help win. I think it's really more that that incarnation accepted that people die and stopped trying to save everyone, instead started doing what was necessary to win. Hence the whole 'make a warrior' moment.

[Ironwood]

Yes, one gets the impression, putting everything together, that both The Doctor and the Timelords were forced into being very, very, very bad bastards.

[Khaldun]

Yes. Which by the way leaves some room for the Doctor to still be haunted by his own capacity for destruction, which is one of the best elements of nuWho, that the character's "dark side" is much more dynamically present as a source of dramatic tension.

[palmer_eldritch]

Even now I guess he knows that he was ready and willing to press that button, and would have done it if another option hadn't unexpectedly come along at the last moment.

[Ironwood]

I don't think he was ever under any illusions about what a bad bastard he could be.

[Tebonas]

He knew it at least since the Valeyard, although who knows if that is still canon or if Moffat threw that out as not Fairy Tale enough.

[HaemishM]

Yes, one gets the impression, putting everything together, that both The Doctor and the Timelords were forced into being very, very, very bad bastards.

I always got the impression that the Timelords themselves kind of lost the plot and started sacrificing people out of expediency rather than necessity. As such, the Doctor took them out with the Daleks to save more people - i.e. what he always does, just harder, more brutally and to his own people. That's one of the reasons I hated them giving him that out in Day of the Doctor. Nothing he did in the Time War was out of character - just out of the normal scale of things he's used to. I think of things like what he did to the Family as an example.

[Ironwood]

Yes.  One also got the impression that they were such bad bastards he used them and his home planet as bait in the trap.

[eldaec]

I get the impression that no one currently involved feels bound by anything so prosaic as established continuity and so they just make it up as they go along.

[Ironwood]

HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?

[Soulflame]

Yes, but he's a wizard with a magical blue box that can violate causality (except for when it can't.  Plus the times where it shouldn't be able to, but suddenly is, because reasons.  Also, SHUT UP.)

[01101010]

Yes, but he's a wizard with a magical blue box that can violate causality (except for when it can't.  Plus the times where it shouldn't be able to, but suddenly is, because reasons.  Also, SHUT UP.)

You forgot about his magic, erm sonic, wand.