Holy fuck - I’m older than the Doctor now! I agree that at this stage he looks and sounds like a strange choice, but I remember all the vitriol that was directed against Tennant (some of it my own) and he’s done good. Remember how everyone hated hated HATED that Catherine Tate was going to be the companion, and how by the time she left everyone was shedding a tear?
The people running the Who franchise know what they’re doing. I’m firmly with Charlie Tan on this one. (although I seriously hope they do something with his hair before they start filming…)
I saw this guy in “The Ruby in the Smoke” and its sequel. I’m therefore a bit amused by all this “He’s too young!” talk; in “Ruby” he was so much too old for the part he was playing it was almost creepy–he made Jim seem like an arrested-development case. (Though at least he made Billie Piper look better by comparison; she was also too old for her part, but not unnervingly so.) Maybe someday he’ll get to play a character closer to his own age.
I agree - the promo photos belie his ability to be ageless. The clips I saw of his other shows, and I’ve seen the Sally Lockhart movies too, show he has a lot more to him than messy hair.
Well, I’m gonna make an effort to remain unbiased, but to me, this kinda looks like they’re trying to appeal to the ‘young adult’-demographic, which I’m afraid might be a bad turn to take – the way Doctor Who is now, as a sort-of-kids’ show, means it can be played fast and lose, take the form of a fairy tale as well as a drama, it can be fun and flashy and colourful and all over the place; with a YA show, you need identifiability for the audience, themes that relate to their everyday life, which means we might get a lot of thinly-disguised ‘symbolic’ tales about trying to fit in, finding one’s lot in life, being different, and writing bad poetry, which would be disastrous.
But well, I’m obviously talking out of my ass here, but it’s just easier to be worried only to be relieved, than to remain hopeful and be disappointed.
I would be worried about that, Half Man, but it’s Steven Moffat who’s taking over and who cast Smith. Moffat’s consistently written episodes that are among the most sophisticated, adult, and science-fictiony. He knows the Doctor is 900+ years old, in fact he probably has the best grasp on time travel of any of the writers. I’m worried that he thought Smith had the right hair for the role, but not that he’s going to turn Who into Melrose Tardis.
I really wouldn’t worry about it. The BBC know exactly who the audience for Doctor Who are, and they couldn’t be happier with it. All the stats show that it appeals to both sexes, across all socio-economic groups, and all ages: the perfect Saturday evening family audience, in fact – which is what they hoped for when they commissioned the programme, despite the received wisdom being that it was unachievable in a modern multi-channel environment.
The 16–24-year-old young adult group is the least well-represented sector in the audience for the Saturday broadcast, but that’s largely because they’re out having fun. They catch up with the Sunday repeat on BBC3, or on i-Player.
It cannot be overstated enough that the traditional model of programme scheduling (particularly on the BBC with the iplayer, but on other channels due to things like C4 on demand and Sky +) is breaking down and when a program is initially broadcast is becoming irrelevant.
Am I the only one who is disappointed that we’ll probably not see a grumpy grandpa type Doctor again, like the first? It feels like each year the Doctor loses little of his alien-ness, which is in all likelihood what the Beeb is going for, but I like the thought of someone so different from us.
I’ll give Eleven a shot, because I love the show and I like Moffat, but I’m cautiously optimistic. (And a little disappointed that he looks so much like Ten…grumble grumble)
Well… I think you probably can overstate it a bit. VoD certainly seems to be the way things are going, but the lion’s share of the audience still watches that first broadcast.
Take “The Unicorn and the Wasp” from last series: including the two BBC3 repeats and iPlayer streams and downloads, it had a total reach of 10.29 million – but 8.41 million of those watched the Saturday evening broadcast.
That’s Doctor Who, of course, which is a mainstream hit with a broad appeal – it’s possible that programmes with more of a niche audience are seeing a bigger effect.
I liked the older Doctors, but Matt Smith looks sufficiently unusual that I think he will work well in the role.
Let’s give him a chance and hope he works out, Lots of people said Eccleston couldn’t be replaced, then we got Tennant and of course now they’re saying the same about him. It happens with each new Doctor, but the producers (so far) have always pulled it off.
I’ve got to disagree with you there. McCoy was a good Doctor, he was however hampered by dodgy storylines and monsters (the Kandyman, Delta and the Bannermen) and bad scripting.
But when it was good there were some very good episodes, Remembrance of the Daleks was one of the best Davros era Dalek stories. Curse of Fenric, Survival and Ghost Light all had strong stories. McCoy was the first to add the slight aura of darkness to the Doctor, being willing to commit genocide unlike the Tom Baker Doctor.
Good stories for a bad doctor. It is true that the BBC were trying to kill the show then. I always figured he was chosen as the Final Nail. Worked for me. I grew up with the show, from the very first episode but McCoy killed it for me.
I always thought Pip and Jane Baker (writers) were the final nail. I know McCoy came from an eclectic background (mime etc) but he did have his moments, for me anyway. I recently read that Ken Campbell was also considered for the role, now that would have been interesting, especially as he worked with McCoy in the 70s (I think).
As someone on a comic related website said recently “there’s no such thing as bad characters, only bad writers”. It may even have been Stan Lee who said it.
Conversely, Andrew Cartmell and Marc Platt had some good ideas, which were explored in the New Adventures Novels, shame we never saw them on screen.
