He forced them to give up complete creative control, gives me a feeling a retcon is coming. Creative control wouldn’t matter if he was sticking with the BBC’s course. Only reason he’d need creative control is if he was going to do something to make the NPCs would Reeee. Will it work 🤷♂️, I’m 50-50
He ran the only good seasons of nu-Who. Once Moffat got the reins the decline began. Cautiously optimistic is probably the best stance to take, though nu-Who may already be irreparably ruined
Even retconning Timeless Children wouldn't be enough to get me back at this point. Also, I really don't think Davies will do that: he believes in the message. I was never as big a fan of his Who as I was of the older series.
Making the Doctor a young, hot twentysomething instead of the more mature, complex man that he always was before rubbed me the wrong way from the very start. It was done for no reason other than to attract a shallower female audience at the expense of the old fans.
Certainly true but he still had very poor writing at times when the end of season finale would be nothing but a Deus ex machina solving things. He also still has a long history of other woke sperging including Torchwood for a more relevant example where the first season was essentially "Doctor Who but everyone fucks everyone else and we can now say the 'fuck' word".
In October 2005, BBC Three Controller Stuart Murphy invited Davies to create a post-watershed Doctor Who spin-off in the wake of the parent series' popularity. Torchwood—named after an anagrammatic title ruse used to prevent leaks of Doctor Who's first series—incorporated elements from an abandoned Davies project titled Excalibur and featured the pansexual 51st century time-traveler Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and a team of alien hunters in Cardiff.
Literally every cast member fucks each other at some point and none of them have any redeeming qualities.
See subsequent post regarding Gwen because it caused me to rant about how much I detest the character, who to this is the reason I can't stand hearing the actress who played her including her role in DA2 and whatever else.
The show began production in April 2006 and was marketed through foreshadowing in the main story arc of Doctor Who's second series, which portrayed Torchwood as a covert quasi-governmental organization that monitors, exploits, and suppresses the existence of extraterrestrial life and technology. Upon its transmission, Torchwood was one of BBC Three's most popular shows; however, it received criticism for "adolescent" use of sexual and violent themes. This led the production team to alter the format to be subtler in its portrayal of adult themes.
There was also the more woke series years before that 'Queer as Folk' which he made for the following reason:
Although well received, the series' [The Grand] ratings were not high enough to warrant a third series. After its cancellation in September 1997, Davies had an existential crisis after almost dying from an accidental overdose; the experience persuaded him to detoxify and make a name for himself by producing a series which celebrated his homosexuality.
After his near-death experience, Davies started to develop a series for Channel 4 which reflected the "hedonistic lifestyle" of the gay quarter of Manchester he was leaving behind. Encouraged by ex-Granada executives Catriona MacKenzie and Gub Neil to "go gay", the series focused on a group of friends in Manchester's gay scene, tentatively titled The Other End of the Ballroom, and later, Queer as Fuck.
By February 1998, when he completed the first draft for the series première, the series was known under its eventual title Queer as Folk.[38] The series emulates dramas such as Band of Gold in presenting realistic discussion on sexuality, as opposed to "one-sided" gay characters in soap operas such as EastEnders, and eschews "heavy-handed discussion" of issues such as HIV; the show instead focuses on the party scene on Canal Street.
The window to the world character Gwen literally cheats on her everyday-man fiancé and only tells him it's happened AFTER giving him a memory wiping drug called "retcon" to make herself feel better. The character was a massive cunt without any of the warmth or depth that repeatedly fucked up because of how much of a literal Karen she ended up being, such as when telling Jack he was wrong to not tell a mother her lost son had been found.
Premise of the episode was the Torchwood base is in Cardiff because of a previously mentioned rift in space-time that is brought up in one of the Doctor Who episodes, the one with the farting aliens. The rift periodically shits out monsters and other stuff so Torchwood 3 sets up there as a vanguard. Gwen raises the question of "if stuff is coming out, is stuff also going in?" to which point Jack tells her no/drop the subject.
Keep in mind this is the first season so Gwen has only just joined the team while Jack is from the 51th century as mentioned and also over 100 years old at this point because of plot.
He's lived through all of the 1900s because his attempt to get back from the future after Nu-Who season 1 ends fucks up and lands him near the start of the 20th century by mistake. The existing all-women TW3 team finds him and capture and kill him several times over because "raaaaaa-wamen!"
He lives through WW2 for a second time, since his first appearance was in the Nu-Who episode set then with the gas mask child, and eventually ends up in charge of TW3 because the previous leader has such a mental break on New Year's Day 2000 he commits suicide and murders the entire team at the base after a vision of just how bad shit is going to be so spares both himself and everyone else, however Jack can't die so he gets lumped with dealing with what comes next which eventually leads to him in the show as the leader of TW3.
Jack discovers that his boss has murdered everyone else in the Hub because of his fear of the new millennium and the horrors it may hold
The one who knows more than anyone, who's lived [and died] more than anyone else, who should be the authority figure on pretty much everything that happens because;
TIME TRAVELLER FROM THE 51ST CENTURY!
Has literally lived longer than any other human in the show and therefore has so much experience anyone questioning him should be shot into the sun.
Anyway, Gwen being the stronk and indescrimant Karen she is ignores him and investigates for herself. Finds out stuff does get taken sometimes, albeit rarely. Works out the missing son was such a case and throughout the episode works out where he is. In an isolated facility. That Jack actually operates.
Gwen of course takes the huffy child approach to this revelation and again ignores Jack telling her again to BTFO, instead deciding to not only tell the mother the news but also bring her to see her son.
There are just a few problems here.
The son has been missing for 6 months according to the mother.
Except he's experienced 40 years.
So the teenager is now in his 50s, badly scarred because he fell through a space-time rift into a warzone for 40 years, and literally screams for 20 hours a day due to the horrors he's seen. But Gwen decides to bring the mother to him anyway. So he starts screaming in her face. Yay!
Gwen brings Nikki, Jonah's mother, in to see him under the supervision of a facility staff member. At first she is horrified, believing it to be a cruel joke, but Jonah starts telling her things that only he would know. Nikki calms and they hug for a moment, but when Jonah tells the staff member with growing distress that he can feel "it" starting up, she urgently tells Nikki to get away from him. She resists and says that she can take care of him. However Jonah starts screaming, a scream so horrible that everyone flees. Gwen reveals that the scream lasts for 20 hours every day because he looked into the heart of a dark star, which drove him insane.
A week later, Gwen goes to see Nikki, who implores her not to show the island to anyone else. She states that it would have been better for her to have remembered her son as he was, rather than to know of his true fate.
Hate to say it, but I really don’t think this is necessarily something to get excited over/will be necessarily a “good” thing…
When Russell T was at the helm last time, he was kept in check, somewhat, by the other people involved. So it wasn’t fag + tranny central. Also culture in 2005, and even up to when he left, was way, way, way more “normie” and, hell, sane, than it is now…
Davies is a genuinely bad person. He always was. He just used to write decent shit, at least in his NuWho days. Nowadays? He’s fucking unhinged.
The shit he is producing, and the opinions he spouts? It’s pretty much indistinguishable from propaganda at this point, BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, IN CURRENT YEAR.
Just because he’s a better writer than Chibbers, and later-Moffat, does not mean that he will save this show. Especially under THAT sort of arrangement…
Let it die, guys. NuWho needs to die. At least for a few years, until our culture either gets out of this current period of woke “insanity”, or it destroys itself altogether. Don’t give the freaks within the BBC, or those like Davies, and the even freakier freaks he will no doubt “hire” for the show, coerce you into watching it again. 😑
Stick to the Big Finish audio stories, some of the books, the comics and the old(er) eps. Let the show die. It’s had it’s “second life”. Now, much like many, many other franchises, IT NEEDS TO DIE, for a while at least.
And a say that as formerly one of the biggest fans in my entire city, lol. I used to watch it utterly religiously. So if even I want it to die..? Trust me, there’s not a lot of hope there, lololol…
Nothing will ever surpass the Gillian-Coleman era with Smith for me, anyway. Although you might argue that Donna (and more importantly Wilf!) was more fun. But we’re never getting back to how good DW was pre-2014/15 or so. Not in this timeline…
Edit: Just realised I have now seen probably 90% of NuWho at least once, which would be well over a hundred eps by now…
Jesus. 😳
To add to Bamboozler - for Nuwho, I'd not overlook the Ninth Doctor (the first season of it), as it does kind of set up the relationship between Ten and Rose later on, as well as establish the concept of "themed" seasons. Also establishes the beginning of the Companion becoming .. a little too important, imo, but at least, more important than before.
It starts getting really bad about mid-Smith (after the couple is done with), and the gay stuff starts coming out in sly little bullshit things; so once Amy and Rory are gone, it's pretty much done.
And I second that opinion on the season with Donna.
As for Old Who, years ago, I found a torrent of the entire og run, complete with screenshots and images of the recordings made of the lost episodes. Some are made into cartoons (and I think that project has gone ahead a bit more since then). It's a huge file, but great for a completist. And you should check out Hartnell .. and definitely The Tenth Planet and how weird the Cybermen used to be.
I fuckin’ love Smith and Clara, dude! Don’t do this to me, lol…
IMHO the Clara eps are better than the last… Season and a half of The Pond Show…
So we sort of agree, but sort of not.
u/Tobeornotto I think both I and Rat agree to skip Capaldi and beyond, though. Which is a shame, because… Jenna Coleman stays hot AF (again, subjective of course), but yeah, re the show quality… That’s about its nadir, unfortunately…
For me, it's a shame that Capaldi - it was great to have an older gentleman as the Doctor again - got saddled with such shit writing that it looks like he was deliberately sabotaged.
And Clara was just too much for me, as far as the "extra special Companion" stuff goes; it's also where the old-school retconning starts.
Anyway, to answer your question, this is all rather subjective, but...
Old Who? I would start with Season 2, with Patrick Troughton. There's a few missing episodes, but... It's better than Hartnell, IMHO. Though, if you don't want to miss out on lore/stuff that will get referenced later, start right at the beginning with Hartnell and An Unearthly Child, if you can find it, from way back in '63!!
Stop at the end of Peter Davison/Moffat's era, which is 1980-something... It gets really, really bad, after that (hence the original cancellation).
Re NuWho, which I guess is what you were talking about, I would start with Season 2 (Tennant, but written by Russ-T), and stop at about... 2013/14 Christmas Special (Season 12, I think?), when Smith leaves...
Best period of the show? Season 4 with Donna, and then the following seasons with Smith (Moffatt is now writing), with Gillan and then Coleman as companions. Some of it gets a bit shit, towards the end of Smith/Gillan, and I would argue that the "Specials" between 4 and 5... Leave a bit to be desired, but they are important for "lore"...
As for the show's nadir..? I don't think it has ever been worse than it is now, but honestly Capaldi's first season (12, I think. The first after Smith left) is so... Unbearably bad, IMHO, that the only redeeming feature is how hot Jenna Coleman and the actress who plays Jenny (Katrin such and such? Think she's Welsh) are. There is almost nothing else redeeming about it. :-/
Hope that answers at least most of your question! Happy to say more, though!
As someone else said above, don't bother with Torchwood (RTD's spinoff), though I disagree almost entirely about Gwen. Maybe just because the actress is hot, and, uhh, I have slightly different views of women vis a vis "immortal" gay men. Eh, who knows...
But yeah, even The Sarah Jane Chronicles (Sarah Jane being, arguably, the most important "companion" from Old Who) is better than that shite...
I really don't like John Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack in Torchwood, as outlined above, lol... I saw him at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games opening ceremony (yeah yeah). It was truly atrocious, and he's a truly atrocious person, ahaha.
Been a Doctor Who fan forever but stopped watching a few episodes in with this doctor. Anyone see any hope?
He forced them to give up complete creative control, gives me a feeling a retcon is coming. Creative control wouldn’t matter if he was sticking with the BBC’s course. Only reason he’d need creative control is if he was going to do something to make the NPCs would Reeee. Will it work 🤷♂️, I’m 50-50
Erasing the “Timeless Children” would be a good start
Don't put your faith in Davies. He may be a better writer than Chinballs, but he's still woke.
He ran the only good seasons of nu-Who. Once Moffat got the reins the decline began. Cautiously optimistic is probably the best stance to take, though nu-Who may already be irreparably ruined
Even retconning Timeless Children wouldn't be enough to get me back at this point. Also, I really don't think Davies will do that: he believes in the message. I was never as big a fan of his Who as I was of the older series. Making the Doctor a young, hot twentysomething instead of the more mature, complex man that he always was before rubbed me the wrong way from the very start. It was done for no reason other than to attract a shallower female audience at the expense of the old fans.
Certainly true but he still had very poor writing at times when the end of season finale would be nothing but a Deus ex machina solving things. He also still has a long history of other woke sperging including Torchwood for a more relevant example where the first season was essentially "Doctor Who but everyone fucks everyone else and we can now say the 'fuck' word".
Literally every cast member fucks each other at some point and none of them have any redeeming qualities.
See subsequent post regarding Gwen because it caused me to rant about how much I detest the character, who to this is the reason I can't stand hearing the actress who played her including her role in DA2 and whatever else.
There was also the more woke series years before that 'Queer as Folk' which he made for the following reason:
MFW talking about Gwen from Torchwood.
tl;dr
The window to the world character Gwen literally cheats on her everyday-man fiancé and only tells him it's happened AFTER giving him a memory wiping drug called "retcon" to make herself feel better. The character was a massive cunt without any of the warmth or depth that repeatedly fucked up because of how much of a literal Karen she ended up being, such as when telling Jack he was wrong to not tell a mother her lost son had been found.
Premise of the episode was the Torchwood base is in Cardiff because of a previously mentioned rift in space-time that is brought up in one of the Doctor Who episodes, the one with the farting aliens. The rift periodically shits out monsters and other stuff so Torchwood 3 sets up there as a vanguard. Gwen raises the question of "if stuff is coming out, is stuff also going in?" to which point Jack tells her no/drop the subject.
He's lived through all of the 1900s because his attempt to get back from the future after Nu-Who season 1 ends fucks up and lands him near the start of the 20th century by mistake. The existing all-women TW3 team finds him and capture and kill him several times over because "raaaaaa-wamen!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5571Dmc5FiI
He lives through WW2 for a second time, since his first appearance was in the Nu-Who episode set then with the gas mask child, and eventually ends up in charge of TW3 because the previous leader has such a mental break on New Year's Day 2000 he commits suicide and murders the entire team at the base after a vision of just how bad shit is going to be so spares both himself and everyone else, however Jack can't die so he gets lumped with dealing with what comes next which eventually leads to him in the show as the leader of TW3.
The one who knows more than anyone, who's lived [and died] more than anyone else, who should be the authority figure on pretty much everything that happens because;
TIME TRAVELLER FROM THE 51ST CENTURY!
Has literally lived longer than any other human in the show and therefore has so much experience anyone questioning him should be shot into the sun.
Anyway, Gwen being the stronk and indescrimant Karen she is ignores him and investigates for herself. Finds out stuff does get taken sometimes, albeit rarely. Works out the missing son was such a case and throughout the episode works out where he is. In an isolated facility. That Jack actually operates.
Gwen of course takes the huffy child approach to this revelation and again ignores Jack telling her again to BTFO, instead deciding to not only tell the mother the news but also bring her to see her son.
There are just a few problems here.
The son has been missing for 6 months according to the mother.
Except he's experienced 40 years.
So the teenager is now in his 50s, badly scarred because he fell through a space-time rift into a warzone for 40 years, and literally screams for 20 hours a day due to the horrors he's seen. But Gwen decides to bring the mother to him anyway. So he starts screaming in her face. Yay!
reeeeeeeeeee
Fucking Merrill 🙄 wanted to take wasp nests to my ears every time she spoke in that game.
I am willing to give it a chance once he is in charge. I couldn’t believe when I heard how they butchered the lore
Hate to say it, but I really don’t think this is necessarily something to get excited over/will be necessarily a “good” thing…
When Russell T was at the helm last time, he was kept in check, somewhat, by the other people involved. So it wasn’t fag + tranny central. Also culture in 2005, and even up to when he left, was way, way, way more “normie” and, hell, sane, than it is now…
Davies is a genuinely bad person. He always was. He just used to write decent shit, at least in his NuWho days. Nowadays? He’s fucking unhinged.
The shit he is producing, and the opinions he spouts? It’s pretty much indistinguishable from propaganda at this point, BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, IN CURRENT YEAR.
Just because he’s a better writer than Chibbers, and later-Moffat, does not mean that he will save this show. Especially under THAT sort of arrangement…
Let it die, guys. NuWho needs to die. At least for a few years, until our culture either gets out of this current period of woke “insanity”, or it destroys itself altogether. Don’t give the freaks within the BBC, or those like Davies, and the even freakier freaks he will no doubt “hire” for the show, coerce you into watching it again. 😑
Stick to the Big Finish audio stories, some of the books, the comics and the old(er) eps. Let the show die. It’s had it’s “second life”. Now, much like many, many other franchises, IT NEEDS TO DIE, for a while at least.
And a say that as formerly one of the biggest fans in my entire city, lol. I used to watch it utterly religiously. So if even I want it to die..? Trust me, there’s not a lot of hope there, lololol…
Nothing will ever surpass the Gillian-Coleman era with Smith for me, anyway. Although you might argue that Donna (and more importantly Wilf!) was more fun. But we’re never getting back to how good DW was pre-2014/15 or so. Not in this timeline…
Edit: Just realised I have now seen probably 90% of NuWho at least once, which would be well over a hundred eps by now… Jesus. 😳
As someone who has never watched a single episode, is it worth going to the old series?
Where should I start?
To add to Bamboozler - for Nuwho, I'd not overlook the Ninth Doctor (the first season of it), as it does kind of set up the relationship between Ten and Rose later on, as well as establish the concept of "themed" seasons. Also establishes the beginning of the Companion becoming .. a little too important, imo, but at least, more important than before.
It starts getting really bad about mid-Smith (after the couple is done with), and the gay stuff starts coming out in sly little bullshit things; so once Amy and Rory are gone, it's pretty much done.
And I second that opinion on the season with Donna.
As for Old Who, years ago, I found a torrent of the entire og run, complete with screenshots and images of the recordings made of the lost episodes. Some are made into cartoons (and I think that project has gone ahead a bit more since then). It's a huge file, but great for a completist. And you should check out Hartnell .. and definitely The Tenth Planet and how weird the Cybermen used to be.
But but but Clara… 😞
I fuckin’ love Smith and Clara, dude! Don’t do this to me, lol…
IMHO the Clara eps are better than the last… Season and a half of The Pond Show…
So we sort of agree, but sort of not.
u/Tobeornotto I think both I and Rat agree to skip Capaldi and beyond, though. Which is a shame, because… Jenna Coleman stays hot AF (again, subjective of course), but yeah, re the show quality… That’s about its nadir, unfortunately…
For me, it's a shame that Capaldi - it was great to have an older gentleman as the Doctor again - got saddled with such shit writing that it looks like he was deliberately sabotaged.
And Clara was just too much for me, as far as the "extra special Companion" stuff goes; it's also where the old-school retconning starts.
I love that your response pretty much boils down to “Watch it all”… 😛
I could have said that, too, and I did think about it, but I was trying not to, ahaha…
You are right, though. Except re Smith + Clara. I’m not giving you that one, lol. Jenna is just too good, ha.
Are we talking old Doctor Who (pre-1989) here, or the post-2005 revival..?
Because both are... Good, at times. Just in very different ways.
Depends what you're into, and how much, uhh, "campy 60s/70s sci fi" you can handle!
But more than happy to go more in-depth, lol.
Anyway, to answer your question, this is all rather subjective, but...
Old Who? I would start with Season 2, with Patrick Troughton. There's a few missing episodes, but... It's better than Hartnell, IMHO. Though, if you don't want to miss out on lore/stuff that will get referenced later, start right at the beginning with Hartnell and An Unearthly Child, if you can find it, from way back in '63!!
Stop at the end of Peter Davison/Moffat's era, which is 1980-something... It gets really, really bad, after that (hence the original cancellation).
Re NuWho, which I guess is what you were talking about, I would start with Season 2 (Tennant, but written by Russ-T), and stop at about... 2013/14 Christmas Special (Season 12, I think?), when Smith leaves...
Best period of the show? Season 4 with Donna, and then the following seasons with Smith (Moffatt is now writing), with Gillan and then Coleman as companions. Some of it gets a bit shit, towards the end of Smith/Gillan, and I would argue that the "Specials" between 4 and 5... Leave a bit to be desired, but they are important for "lore"...
As for the show's nadir..? I don't think it has ever been worse than it is now, but honestly Capaldi's first season (12, I think. The first after Smith left) is so... Unbearably bad, IMHO, that the only redeeming feature is how hot Jenna Coleman and the actress who plays Jenny (Katrin such and such? Think she's Welsh) are. There is almost nothing else redeeming about it. :-/
Hope that answers at least most of your question! Happy to say more, though!
As someone else said above, don't bother with Torchwood (RTD's spinoff), though I disagree almost entirely about Gwen. Maybe just because the actress is hot, and, uhh, I have slightly different views of women vis a vis "immortal" gay men. Eh, who knows... But yeah, even The Sarah Jane Chronicles (Sarah Jane being, arguably, the most important "companion" from Old Who) is better than that shite...
I really don't like John Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack in Torchwood, as outlined above, lol... I saw him at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games opening ceremony (yeah yeah). It was truly atrocious, and he's a truly atrocious person, ahaha.
Thank you!