...NEW DR WHO TONIGHT, 05/04/08, 6.20pm, Partners in Crime...

[Peter Wolf]

 Just to clarify i am only criticising RTD Dr Who not the rest of the new Who.

 There is a lot i havent seen like all the Sylvester McCoy and Peter Davison DRs.

 I dont like saying that what someone else likes is rubbish.Its like saying all my music i listen to or you listen to is crap or someone saying that all the 2000ad strips i like are crap.

 

[House of Usher]

I don't distinguish between Russell T Davies stories and those by other writers. The whole thing is pretty soft in the head, if you ask me. But it's still fun, and some stories are definitely better than others. If they're by writers other than RTD: fine, but I'm not that interested.

I'll be thinking "I enjoyed that, it was a bit less shit than usual", not "I enjoyed that; I wonder who wrote it?"

[Leigh S]

For me, its not so much style over substance as trying to add substance at the expense of other substance.

I'd say it's like a house thats been renovated; a lot of the old rooms have been restored, but the kitchen is gone and been replaced with a tone room where we can explore our emotions - all well and good, but I want a f***ing sarnie!  

I think the two key areas that Who falls down for are shortness - you can do a 45 minute Who story, but as the norm?  Partners in Crime, plotwise we see the Doctor break in, go up to teh roof, come down from the roof, go up to the roof, come down, use his screwdriver on a computer, back to the roof, the end.  

Now I can see theres a lot more going on than that, but essentially, it feels very threadbare plotwise.  add into that the fact that a lot fo the plot seems superfluous in the harsh light of day (those pendants were for what again? massively obvious and tortouusly deviced plot devices that RTD seems to rely on - the Deus Ex Machinas of legend if you will).

Then secondly, you have left the gags and the characters.  The gags work as often as not - there was a good one near the start but I cant for the life of me remember it now.  The characters - I like the idea behind it, but its increasingly unsubtle and more 2D for my money than old Who.  The relationship between Sarah Jane and Tom seemed more believable than the one Tennants struck up here - "you can come aboard because you dont fancy me".  And I'd argue Pertwees relationship with Jo Grant is much more affecting than Tennant and Piper for what's not said.  When the doctor talks about who fancies him just who is the Doctor in relation to the character we have in the old series?  Of course the Doctors character changed each time he regenerated, and over the seasons, but it all seems a bit parochially minded.  What would an alien being who travelled in time and space for a 1000 years be like?  He'd be a bit liek Russell T Davies.... which is a stroke of luck given he's writing the thing. to be honest, i qwould ahve thought these things would ahve been fannish concerns - the focus on "Doctor Who is great and we all love him/ Doctor Who is the fire that burns at the centre of time and is a fearful God" angles I'd have thought would have been a show strangler but RTD has proven me wrong!  i just want to see the universe really, and I dont care too much about who fancies who.

As you say, the new show couldnt be the old show, but I do think that the new show does itself disservices in an effort to distance itself from its old "adventures in time and space" and in order to chase a wider audience who if exposed to something a bit more thoughtful would still lap it up.   weither that, or the fans you lost cos billy Piper isnt snogging Tennant would be replaced by people who want to see something different. To be fair, there's thoughtful stories in there, but there'd be no harm in making that the norm - people didnt switch off for Blink or human Nature or The Empty Child - nor did the audience appreciations drop.  RTDs scripts could go from frustrating to great with a few more versions i suspect - Gridlock has a lot going for it, but just doesnt add up.   Partners in Crime could be said to be the same - some nice ideas in there, but swamped by the writers focus being elsewhere, the music and a lack of sense being applied to the basics.  Indeed, you could argue that the 'plot' of Partners needed streamlining, not bulking up.  But it just seems its the tone that counts.  

Of course, RTD has been proved right - theres a big audience for this brand of Who thats not going away - whether thats the only audience the show could attract is another matter. But why would they change a winning formula?  Conversely, a winning formula isn't necessarily a thing of unalloyed genius.

[House of Usher]

So very true. A funny thing, by your second to last paragraph I kept forgetting we were talking about Doctor Who, and all I could think of was New Labour!

"...I do think that the new show does itself disservices in an effort to distance itself from its old adventures in time and space"

Like abandoning core beliefs about redistribution being fundamental to the pursuit of social justice, like the welfare state seeing that the elderly have enough money to live on, like the Labour party being the party of the workers.

"theres a big audience for this brand of Who thats not going away - whether thats the only audience the show could attract is another matter."

And so it is with Labour. They wanted Tory voters because they didn't think they could win enough votes just by appealing to their core constituency. So they decided they had to abandon core Labour values because they had lost four general elections pushing that agenda and presumed it wouldn't ever win them an election again. "It's more important to win the election than it is to retain those core socialist values", as the member of the Labour Students Society told me at Leicester University.

So they abandoned those old values like council housing, free and universal healthcare, the state pension, progressive taxation and workers' rights and adopted instead the free market, privilege, inequality, and war for oil.

At the same time, they abandoned those old Labour values like internal consistency, any awareness of real science, any pretence at slotting their fantasy elements in to a world that resembles our own, and instead looked at what the rival Buffy The Vampire Slayer party was doing, because they had won the last four elections after all, and try to be a bit like them and base everything on magic instead of science, but be a bit more like Rentaghost because Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a class act and set the bar a bit too high to live up to.

"a winning formula isn't necessarily a thing of unalloyed genius."

Amen to that! Wait - are we talking about Doctor Who or Labour here?

;-)

[johnnystress]

I saw this on another forum;


To coincide with the start of the new series of Doctor Who and to reflect the previous series, the band I play in (The Red List ) have written and recorded an indie track based on the Doctor.

The lyrics and premise of the track is based around his loneliness; both from the perspective of being the last timelord and also from losing someone he cared about (ie. Rose).

There's also a Kylie link in there too.

I would appreciate all your comments / feedback, whether good, bad or indifferent.

So if you are interested then click the link below:

Link: http://www.myspace.com/theredlist" target="_blank">Blue Box

[Jim_Campbell]

"As we established. As you possited. Different. Different. Different. "

Massive, incontrovertible holes in the plot were cited, and you said that it didn't matter.

"Pip gets off a crime that should jail him and Fagin gets hung without legal reason"

Pip is not a thieving Jew like Fagin. In the conext of Dickens' world, I suspect that might be quite plausible.

I remain both astonished and disappointed that this:

"I met my nephew after school today and he excitedly told me all the bits he liked. That's enough for me."

... is justification enough for the flaws in New Who. Why is it so hard for you to concede that everything you find admirable could be retained whilst adding consistent characterisation, credible plotting and decent dialogue? That your nephew might like it even more if the show actually adhered to the standards of drama to which it really only pays lip-service?

Actually, forget it, DXB. I fear this is only going to re-tread the same ground as the Christmas Special thread.

You like it. I don't. I'm not watching the new series, which you feel is the appropriate thing for me to do.

Ho hum ...

Jim

[satchmo]

I don't watch any other drama on the BBC, including any of the four series set in fucking Holby. Or Eastenders, which I think has quite a sinister influence. I stopped watching Ashes To Ashes because I thought it was rubbish. But I still love Doctor Who! Yeah it's daft, eccentric and a little bit crap, but isn't that what being British is all about?!
 

[TordelBack]

Hmm, having sworn off New Who after the ghastly Christmas Special, I was bludgeoned into watching the repeat of the Season 4 opener tonight.  And I enjoyed it.  Apart from the lashings of schmaltz at the end, and being a retread of the Season 3 opener, it was a pretty good tale, and the Adipose were cool.  Donna was surprisingly okay.

But that bloody sonic screwdriver is now beyond a joke.  I couldn't help but mutter  'Wingardium leviosa!' and 'Expelliarmus!' to myself at appropriate moments.

[Grant Goggans]

You know, it wouldn't have killed RTD to just have Tennant just run in and untie her.  It'd stop people asking how a sonic screwdriver snaps rope.

[DavidXBrunt]

Why is it so hard for you to concede that everything you find admirable could be retained whilst adding consistent characterisation, credible plotting and decent dialogue?

---

Becasue I don't think those areas are weak. I don't have a problem with the characterisation, with the plotting or the dialogue.

[Bongo Jack]

If it comes down to them making more Who or more Holby, I vote Who, even if RTD has to write, direct, and star in every episode as every character like William Shatner when he did Julius Ceaser.

If you want to criticise Nu-Who for its dramatic and narrative shortcomings (and the criticisms so far have been perfectly valid), then as a licence payer, you have that right - but if you're spitting blood at the thought of another episode, then giving it a miss might really be in your best interest.

[JamesC]

They need to kick RTD out and shake things up a bit.
I'll take over if they like.
I'd have George Foreman as the Doctor and Jimmy Krankie as his assistant.

[mogzilla]

for those of us "who"do like it heres a sneaky peek at a baddy from saturday...

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/videos/" target="_blank">hot stuff!

[Mardroid]

I quite liked the look of that monster. You can pretty much see it's CGI but it was an interesting design. That rock fire-monster look with a suggestion of a centurion helmet shape to the head. Centurion in the roman officer sense I mean, not the BSG tank sense, although I like those too. ;)

Kind of wished I hadn't peeked though and waited to see the episode. Darn my curiosity.

[House of Usher]

Now that this thread has got to 5 pages in length, I'm glad there's another one on tonight so that we can move on/start all over again.