I’m looking forward to a Doctor that doesn’t have to deal with any previous baggage. No time war stuff, no Gallifrey stuff, no River stuff. As far as i can tell all that stuff has been solved, and while I don’t doubt they’ll being it up at some point at least it won’t be the whole “arc”.
And she won’t even be dragging Clara around in her baggage anymore, since this special cleared all of that.
As long as the new Dr lands in 2010 and meets a police woman in a mini skirt called Amy, we’re good to go.
/‘something for the dads’
I’d like to see Chibnall write episodes for the Weeping Angels and The Silence. Write a full episode. Don’t just throw them into a scene like Moffat did in the later seasons.
I hope the lesson has been learned that Doctor Who works better with 2 and 3 part stories. That gives them time to fully develop and resolve stories. I hate seeing a good story wasted when they try to introduce it & neatly wrap it up in 42 mins.
I’m concerned that they won’t be able to write good stories for a female lead. My biggest problem with the Tennant and Smith years were the romantic stories. The doctor should be a mentor to the companion but it is inappropriate for them to be a couple, even if it is unrequited. The next most likely condition, in my estimation, is for them to write her as a Mary Poppins character with a child companion, which would also be a loss.
I think the trick will be casting a good companion. Or better yet a couple of companions to avoid the overly intimate stories when there are only two characters.
I want to see a sane and logical episode with the weeping Angels. Scene: The Doctor slips on her sonic sunglasses for eye protection. She addresses her companions: “Keep your eyes on this statue while I take care of it with this sledgehammer.”
They released some info on that a couple of months ago. Click below if you’re interested in the potential spoiler.
Yeah, that one I never got.
Maybe the angels in their statue form were invulnerable, but no one ever even tried.
I wouldn’t mind some sexual tension between the New Doctor and a female companion. 
It’s Doctor Who. They’ll never cross the line into full out romance.
Can’t speak for Dale, but yeah this is gonna kill the franchise.
First episode, the viewership for Who is gonna break records, followed by a downward spiral. The formula has always been that girls want the doctor to take em away, and boys want the Rose/Amy/Clara companion.
Call me on it, in a year if you want.
I didn’t even like the Doctor/Rose love stuff. He’s way too old and intellectually advanced to be able to have anything but a fatherly/grandfatherly like relationship with any human.
Well, yes, the pseudo-romances really are a distraction. And for that matter the companions being some sort of major cosmic destiny figures. Let the companions be fellow adventurers. ( OldWho had male travelmates at times, FWIW.)
Hmm… that’s the kind of solution I would have expected *River *to come up with.
It is said on that show that they are indistinguishable from statues. It reminds me especially of the episode where River had to break her wrist to get free from an Angel. No–break off the Angel’s fingers, idiot.
Danny Baldwin from Coronation Street will be one of the main cast!
I enjoyed the episode. It was good to see Rusty the Dalek again.
I thought the new Doctor should’ve gotten more lines to say, and dumping her out of the TARDIS just felt wrong. My husband (who is Andy L) said he didn’t know the TARDIS had a glass ceiling.
I suspect that this new Doctor, as with every Doctor, there will be resistance, and there will die-hard adherents, and in the end, it will be no big deal. It certainly won’t kill the franchise. If she remains a thorn in the side of the BBC she will be killed off.
Some little girls aren’t content to be the Companion, they want to be the Mad One with the Box.
The BAD:
Well the special itself seemed to have been the usual Moffat stuff: a few big but not well thought out concepts (current Doctor teams up with the original Doctor, the regeneration), and fan-servicey moments (OK, I liked to see Bill and Nardole again, but there was no real reason they HAD to be there), a left-field callback that nobody ever seemed to demand (Rusty the Dalek), and a paper-thin story that doesn’t actually make any sense used to stitch up all the big moments together.
I’m on the fence on this one, but the ‘center of the universe’ planet where Rusty was living looked particularly fake. I am willing to believe however that this was a jokey callback to the unrealistic sets of the original series. It did particularly remind me of first Doctor era planets.
Clara. Even ten seconds of her. (But I was totally expecting that, so oh well.)
THE GOOD:
Bill and Nardole are always welcome presences, even if they are completely gratutitous and unnecessary to the story.
“What do you mean – one???”
The ring falling off the newly regenerated Doctor’s finger was a nice callback to the original regeneration. In episode one of “Power of the Daleks” (Patrick Troughton’s first post-regeneration adventure), companion Ben challenges the ‘new’ Doctor’s authenticity when a ring that Doctor #1 always wore no longer fit on his finger. The new Doctor’s reply: “I should like to see a butterfly fit back into its chrysalis after it spreads its wings!”
While of course the new Doctor will survive the fall, it does set up a great cliffhanger. Will the new Doctor be marooned on Earth in a single time zone again? Wil she be bereft of a TARDIS for a period of time? Considering how doing that the first time (with the third Doctor) revitalized the series, I am hoping that the new Doctor does indeed have to fend without it for at least a little while (one series, then she gets it back.)
I, for one, was glad to see Rusty again. He was like Chekhov’s Gun waiting to be used.
And I’m more than happy to see a Female Doctor- something I’ve been waiting for with anticipation since Moffat’s Curse of Fatal Death.
I hope UNIT shows up soon. I always enjoy seeing how different Doctors work with it.
Absolutely. I’m one of them. Ever since I found the show, I wanted to be the Doctor, not the Companion.
So I really hope they do a good job with Thirteen.