A mix-up now and then is quite good. I wonder if Capaldi will leave with him.
Capaldi had said elsewhere he doesn’t know yet if he’ll stay beyond season 10. Two Doctors per showrunner seems to be the theme - RTD had Eccleston and Tennant; Moffat has Smith and Capaldi.
I agree. Moffat is a peerless idea-guy–I think his Angels and the Silence are particularly brilliant–but he is not strong on plotting, and the show suffered for it.
I’ve really enjoyed Capaldi as the Doctor and I wouldn’t mind seeing him stay beyond Moffet’s departure… but it’s really up to Capaldi, not us, and if he chooses to leave, well, I wish him well and hope for an equally wonderful successor.
I’m not clamoring for Moffat to stay. But he’s being replaced by Chibnall. Pretty much the only good thing he’s ever written was most of the first series of Broadchurch, and he couldn’t even keep that going for an extra season.
Exhibit B:
Now, maybe he won’t take the Moffat/RTD route and write everything, instead delegating to better writers, but I’m not optimistic.
He’s always been, at best, mediocre. Now, Moffat was known for being excellent, so obviously writing =/= showrunning given how exhausted we got with him, but again, I’m not optimistic.
I strongly suspect Moffatt was pushed after recent awful viewing figures: fans can debate the merits of new Doctors, the treatment of companions and the virtues of individual episodes, but beyond that loyal core, the show has been haemorrhaging casual viewers. People simply haven’t been watching Doctor Who in the numbers they did when Tennant was the Doctor. And I suspect that’s largely due to Moffatt: the show simply hasn’t been that much fun over the past few years: and, with his reliance on convoluted and confusing arcs which are never properly resolved, it hasn’t been particularly accessible to anyone flicking across the channels. Chibnall has probably been given firm instructions to clear away Moffatt’s worst excesses and bring back the punters, and that will probably mean a considerable lightening of the tone.
Yeah, he was pushed so hard that he’s got another year’s worth of episodes to make under his watch.
“strongly suspect” ffs
I’ve seen this discussed on other forums. The overnights are people who watch the show when it airs. The ratings are as good as they’ve always been if you factor in people who watch the show on iPlayer.
Yes. The fact that the BBC trusts that viewers will come back to a Moffatt-produced season of Who after a year’s hiatus suggests that they still trust him to put butts in the seats.
He couldn’t even keep that going for the whole first season. There were a lot of strong, strong moments, but there was also a lot of crap. And the end of the first season was somewhere between “not good” and “incredibly stupid.” It was nearly always beautifully shot - but I don’t think Doctor Who fans watch for interesting camera technique.
Most of Torchwood was also not good.
I don’t know how British ratings work, especially for the BBC which (unlike American networks) doesn’t need to tout high ratings in order to draw advertiser dollars. I’m not sure I that author’s analysis.
Stealing from another forum:
There was also a troubling repetition, in the plotting and character histories, of a theme that could be described as ‘adult-child romantic relationships are truly heartfelt and maybe not so bad’ (as with the older character who had married his child amour when she became old enough for legal marriage).
I can’t see that as being a good underlying theme for Doctor Who (if it should show up, there).
Oh, man, he wrote on Torchwood? That show was ridiculously bad.
He was basically in charge of Torchwood. He had approximately as much responsibility for everything as RTD.
You mean like having the wise really old Doctor take on an incredibly naive but hot young female companion, separate her from her boyfriend, and eventually (kind of sort of) run off with her?
Except that, when Clara first met the Doctor, he appeared to be the same age as she. They traveled together a year before he changed, and for a while after that before she ever met Danny.
Actually, I was referring to Rose. The Clara thing isn’t quite as creepy, but in the same vein. Regardless of how the Doctor looked, he was many, many times older than Clara. All of which is to say that ‘adult-child romantic relationships are truly heartfelt and maybe not so bad’ wouldn’t exactly be a big departure for recent Who. Whether or not that’s a bad thing is an exercise for the reader.
And don’t forgot that the Doctor and Rose actually ended up together in the end (sorta)
I missed this the first time around. What a great video. I am so glad they ended up doing what they said the characters did 7 years ago.
Yeah, but the actors embodying the Doctor and Rose at that point were not a case of ‘adult and young-teenager’ (as was the case with Broadchurch). So I can’t see that as being any support for the argument that seems to be being made in this thread (something like ‘Doctor Who has always promoted youth + adult sexual relationships, so the new showrunner will make no difference.’ I’m not seeing evidence that this claim holds any water; the mere fact that companions are often younger than the Doctor, in and of itself, doesn’t reasonably provide an equivalence to the situations depicted in Broadchurch.)