Conquer Club

Yay!

thank you, very cool

I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

I have no idea what Doctor who is, and I was tempted to reply "Doctor Who?" but then I thought it must be something very common, and I ain't no common man.

nietzsche wrote:I have no idea what Doctor who is, and I was tempted to reply "Doctor Who?" but then I thought it must be something very common, and I ain't no common man.

Common.....hmmm......possibly.....man.......no



Looking forward to it, still a month to wait yet , though.

A friend of mine showed me a couple of episodes earlier this summer, as I had never seen the show. I'll probably start watching it all on Netflix Instant sometime.


--Andy

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Reported for trailing and baiting.

AndyDufresne wrote:A friend of mine showed me a couple of episodes earlier this summer, as I had never seen the show. I'll probably start watching it all on Netflix Instant sometime.


--Andy

It's fantastic. Most people like it.

nietzsche is cray.

-rd

Doc_Brown wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Reported for trailing and baiting.

Trailing? I think you have the wrong word there.

I'm being totally serious though. I love New Who under RTD – that's why I hate Moffat's Who so much. He's completely ruined what the show's about, and the character of the Doctor.

He's a terrible showrunner.

InkL0sed wrote:

Doc_Brown wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Reported for trailing and baiting.

Trailing? I think you have the wrong word there.

I'm being totally serious though. I love New Who under RTD – that's why I hate Moffat's Who so much. He's completely ruined what the show's about, and the character of the Doctor.

He's a terrible showrunner.

No.

You're just gay and in love with David Tennant.

The last two seasons were great.

InkL0sed wrote:

Doc_Brown wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Reported for trailing and baiting.

Trailing? I think you have the wrong word there.

I'm being totally serious though. I love New Who under RTD – that's why I hate Moffat's Who so much. He's completely ruined what the show's about, and the character of the Doctor.

He's a terrible showrunner.

Bah. That's what I get for posting on my iphone and not checking the forum again for a few days. Yeah. "Trolling" was the intended word. Anyway, I'm the polar opposite. I couldn't stand RTD's episodes. In fact, all of the season finales he wrote were some of my least favorite episodes. Even before I knew Tennant and RTD were leaving, I'd said that my favorite episodes were The Empty child/Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. All of those episodes have one thing in common, and I swear these were my favorites well before I realized the commonality. They were all written by Steven Moffat (He who is author of all good and true things Doctor Who; bless his name. ).

I can totally understand why last season would really annoy some Doctor Who fans. Stretching so many plot lines over multiple seasons definitely results in a different feel for the show than I think has really ever been present. I've like it, but I can understand why others wouldn't. Moffat has also turned out some bad episodes since he took over (The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe comes to mind). Maybe it's kind of like the difference between Michael Bay films and Guillermo del Toro films.

the best thing about it is that you will never run out of episodes.. you can just keep following the doctor back in time longer and longer.. fitting to the show aswell..
/

Doc_Brown wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:

Doc_Brown wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Reported for trailing and baiting.

Trailing? I think you have the wrong word there.

I'm being totally serious though. I love New Who under RTD – that's why I hate Moffat's Who so much. He's completely ruined what the show's about, and the character of the Doctor.

He's a terrible showrunner.

Bah. That's what I get for posting on my iphone and not checking the forum again for a few days. Yeah. "Trolling" was the intended word. Anyway, I'm the polar opposite. I couldn't stand RTD's episodes. In fact, all of the season finales he wrote were some of my least favorite episodes. Even before I knew Tennant and RTD were leaving, I'd said that my favorite episodes were The Empty child/Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. All of those episodes have one thing in common, and I swear these were my favorites well before I realized the commonality. They were all written by Steven Moffat (He who is author of all good and true things Doctor Who; bless his name. ).

I can totally understand why last season would really annoy some Doctor Who fans. Stretching so many plot lines over multiple seasons definitely results in a different feel for the show than I think has really ever been present. I've like it, but I can understand why others wouldn't. Moffat has also turned out some bad episodes since he took over (The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe comes to mind). Maybe it's kind of like the difference between Michael Bay films and Guillermo del Toro films.

He's not a bad writer. Not matter how much he pisses the shit out of me, I grant him that much. He wrote some of the best episodes in the RTD era (though I wouldn't call Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead one of them, and Blink has lost some of its luster to me, now that I'm aware of Moffat's faults).

But like I said, he's a terrible showrunner. I've had this discussion with friends a million times now, so I'm kind of sick of it. I could go on forever listing the reasons why I hate him. But why do that when there's a guy writing reviews of Doctor Who who I agree with entirely?

http://www.assignmentx.com/2011/tv-revi ... ll-hitler/

Matt Smith is wonderful as always and I love his new coat. And there ends the positive part of this review.

The glib title is the kind of cynical attempt at headline-grabbing that it sounded like when it flashed on the screen back in June. It has no real bearing on the story, nor does Hitler’s brief appearance or the period Berlin setting. This episode could be set anywhere at any time because it isn’t a story about anyplace or anything. It’s a series of set pieces that claims to answer questions, spitefully throws out a few more, and does all this with no sense of warmth or humanity whatsoever. We have entered an era that not only eschews character for plot, it now eschews plot for “game-changers” that change no games, “shocking twists” that offer no shocks, and random visuals that are dumped on the audience as if to say, “Here, you make something out of this.” That used to be the production team’s job.

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Have you tried not being wrong?

If you like Moffat (which I do), you should check out his other big BBC show- Sherlock, if you haven't already. I don't think Moffat is perfect, but he's one of the better writers on Dr. Who. Mark Gatiss (also a Sherlock writer) is good on Dr Who too.

Sherlock is brilliant - they plan to film the third series during 2013 and it should be on our TV in 2014 (and to anyone who thinks "how, given the ending of series 2?") I'll leave that for you to wonder about

Iliad wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Have you tried not being wrong?

I know you're emotionally attached to the show. I am too. It took me a full season to admit to myself that the show had become much worse. I loved the show so much that I couldn't NOT be enthusiastic about it.

And the thing about Moffat is, he's so flashy, it's easy to be distracted from his faults. His Doctor is so crazy and manic and witty, it's easy to overlook that he's a condescending douchebag. Not that he can't be a condescending douchebag – at times 10 was, too – but you CAN'T have him be pretty much only that, and then unambiguously have the show be just hero-worship. RTD actually had other characters call out the Doctor. That's why the companions were there – to call out his bullshit, to bring the Doctor down to Earth, and make him a better person.

And Amy Pond is so gorgeous, and sometimes she shoots things and is involved in weird time travel stories, so it's easy to overlook that she has no character.

And the weird thing about season 6 (other than it utterly abandoning such things as characterization, character development, coherent plotting, and basically everything except wacky story lines and good jokes – "put Hitler in the cupboard") is that every time a companion was about to get interesting – Moffat took it away and restored them to their normal selves.

The best episode of Season 6 was written by Neil Gaiman. That's because everything about it was Gaiman-esque – NOT Moffat-esque.

InkL0sed wrote:

Iliad wrote:

InkL0sed wrote:I hate everything that is Doctor Who under Stephen Moffat. He has completely ruined the show.

So... no "yay" from me.

Have you tried not being wrong?

I know you're emotionally attached to the show. I am too. It took me a full season to admit to myself that the show had become much worse. I loved the show so much that I couldn't NOT be enthusiastic about it.

And the thing about Moffat is, he's so flashy, it's easy to be distracted from his faults. His Doctor is so crazy and manic and witty, it's easy to overlook that he's a condescending douchebag. Not that he can't be a condescending douchebag – at times 10 was, too – but you CAN'T have him be pretty much only that, and then unambiguously have the show be just hero-worship. RTD actually had other characters call out the Doctor. That's why the companions were there – to call out his bullshit, to bring the Doctor down to Earth, and make him a better person.

And Amy Pond is so gorgeous, and sometimes she shoots things and is involved in weird time travel stories, so it's easy to overlook that she has no character.

And the weird thing about season 6 (other than it utterly abandoning such things as characterization, character development, coherent plotting, and basically everything except wacky story lines and good jokes – "put Hitler in the cupboard") is that every time a companion was about to get interesting – Moffat took it away and restored them to their normal selves.

The best episode of Season 6 was written by Neil Gaiman. That's because everything about it was Gaiman-esque – NOT Moffat-esque.

I agree on the Gaiman front, but I think that maybe you're looking at the show through the wrong lenses. Or, more likely, I'm looking at it through a different set of lenses. My brother is much younger than me, and I like having a smart show that I can sit down with an 11 year old and watch. The more complicated stuff passes him by, and the sillier stuff he likes. I like the complicate bits, and the darker elements.

Development is a difficult thing in Dr Who. It has to be interesting for the new generation, and interesting for those who're watching for the new regeneration.

But yeah- my big wish for the series is that they get some more British writing talent on board for special episodes. An Alan Moore episode, Terry Pratchett, Warren Ellis, and of course Gaiman would be fantastic.

But... you didn't actually respond to anything I said. Other than to say that character development is hard? Yeah, Doctor Who is a hard show to write. Writing is hard. Trust me, I'm a writer. So what? Steven Moffat is still a terrible showrunner.

And it's not just me. All of my friends at school are Whovians, and my friends' friends, and most of them agree with me. Some of them I hadn't even talked to about it before they said so, or don't like to analyze pop culture because they're engineers so they think it's beneath them or something – but they still express discouragement, or diminished enthusiasm, about Doctor Who. Sometimes in an almost embarrassed way, like they're ashamed to admit it.

It's hard to admit, especially to yourself. But trust me, it gets easier. Say it with me: Steven Moffat is a terrible showrunner.
Steven Moffat is a terrible showrunner.
Steven Moffat is a terrible showrunner.

I don't agree.
The last two seasons were great (even if I hate river song), some episodes are amongst my favourite ones (first to come to my mind is The Girl Who Waited), and Matt Smith is as good as (if not better than) David Tennant.

I have the opposite opinion (to InkL0sed). What you said about Moffat I would say about RTD. None of his episodes made any sense. Every one of them required some sort of Deus Ex Machina to end the episode:
- Daleks are about to destroy everything? Just have the companion become a god and wipe them out.
- Daleks and Cybermen are about to destroy everything? Oh, see, the daleks that weren't supposed to survive did by going through the void, and the void wants to suck them back in, so we just have to open the void but not get sucked in ourselves. We can avoid that by holding on to the walls while the daleks will get sucked through them and ... yeah. It doesn't make sense, but ... daleks are defeated, so rah! (but at least we got rid of Rose, so that's a plus!)
- The Master is back, has taken over the world, and has turned the doctor into a 100-year-old midget (wasn't the doctor already 1000 years old?)? Just have everyone in the world clap and say I believe in the doctor. Oh wait, that's Peter Pan. Ok, they just need to think about the doctor. Then everything works out!
- Daleks have taken over again (am I sensing a theme here? Since when was the show supposed to be the Doctor vs. the Daleks?) and transported the world into a combination with others (in what was definitely a cool concept) into a machine to destroy life, and they've just killed the doctor? Just have the doctor avoid regeneration by producing a clone of himself (huh?) that can then take the blame for turning the Dalek genocide machine against them. But at least we get rid of Rose... wait. Didn't I say that already?
- The Master is back again (wait, 5 end-of-season shows, two with the Master and three with Daleks? Can we get some creativity please?) and has now turned everyone in the world into a copy of himself? Let's just go bat-shit crazy with twisting up the timelord race, make them the bad guys, and decide to make the events at the end of the time war totally to blame for making the master an epic villain of the series (I'm leaving the show now so I don't care if I've completely destroyed everything that made a classic epic villain a good enemy). Oh, and while I'm at it, I'll destroy all credibility the 10th doctor had with his whiny regeneration scene and make sure to bias the shows fans against the 11th doctor.

Don't get me wrong. I came back to the show during the RTD era and was thrilled by it. There were plenty of good episodes, and I like the doctors. Tennant isn't my favorite, but he's probably top three (I've got T. Baker and Smith as my top two and Davidson and Troughton right behind Tennant). I didn't like the season finales of the RTD era nor most of the episodes he wrote. I also really didn't like the companions until we got Donna.
- Rose was sadistic. She never cared about any other person. She treated her long-time boyfriend like garbage, ran off with different men, and then got annoyed when she found out he was dating someone else. She was a bitch when she met Sarah Jane and then had zero empathy for the possibility of destroying multiple galaxies if it meant she could have her love interest. She never developed as a character.
- Martha was boring. She was just doe-eyed about the doctor. Not much to say.
- Donna was well-developed. She went from being a self-centered ditz in her first appearance and was affected by her travels with the doctor, developing a sense of empathy and nobility (basically what Rose never did). Too bad she had to have all of her development taken away from her at the end of season 4.

I agree that Amy Pond has had limited character development, though she at least wasn't a witch like Rose. Rory, on the other hand, has been very well developed. He started off not unlike Mickey, but he learned loyalty, courage, and honor. He also stood up to the doctor, especially where Amy was concerned.

From reading your comments, it sounds like you stopped at "Let's Kill Hitler." That season as a whole was excellent in terms of developing the nature of the doctor. Moffat picked up where RTD left off, with a victorious doctor that could make his enemies tremble and was maybe even willing to forget his own morality, and he ramped that up for the first season and a half at the helm. That all starts to crash down in "A Good Man Goes to War." The doctor has gotten so big, that now he's feared rather than loved. He's a force of power rather than one of good. He was the cause for his friends losing their baby and the chance to raise her. He was the cause of Amy getting left by herself for 36 years (that had to be one of the best episodes of the new series). You could see on his face over the last few episodes of the season how much he had been torn down.

I'm not getting where you see Matt Smith as someone wanting to be worshiped. That's what I saw in Tennant. Smith has been more of the quirky bumbling type in the Patrick Troughton mindset. He's never quite sure of himself and is as surprised as everyone else when something actually works. Tennant was the dashing hero that would sweep in, tell everyone what was wrong and why they were wrong, and then fix it. They tried to tell us that Tennant developed over the show. At least, he told Rose that she changed him. Maybe if RTD had known how to show it to us rather than tell us it happened we'd be more inclined to believe him! The only hint I saw of a developing character was at the end of the Waters of Mars. Too bad they only spent 5 minutes with that and promptly forgot it.

And since I've compared so many aspects already, how about the new villain invented by the two show runners? Moffat gave us the Weeping Angels - one of the creepiest villains ever presented in the show and consistently ranked immediately ahead or behind the daleks in polls of the best Doctor Who monsters. Who did RTD give us? The idiotic farting Slitheen.

Ink:
Did you watch the classic series? I get a sense that those that are familiar with and big fans of classic Who really like Moffat's take, and people that started with New Who and haven't followed Classic Who are much more stuck on Tennant and RTD.

New season starts in two days...
I can't wait.

Doc_Brown wrote:Ink:
Did you watch the classic series? I get a sense that those that are familiar with and big fans of classic Who really like Moffat's take, and people that started with New Who and haven't followed Classic Who are much more stuck on Tennant and RTD.

(Sorry for not being Ink) I loved the old series growing up. I like the modern take too. Part of being a Dr Who fan is always going to be disliking the latest regeneration/ style/ companion/ script writers...

Classic Who wasn't even classic Who when it was aired.

Anyway, I'll post an oldie but a goodie as, let's face it, we're all fans here:

Symmetry wrote:

Doc_Brown wrote:Ink:
Did you watch the classic series? I get a sense that those that are familiar with and big fans of classic Who really like Moffat's take, and people that started with New Who and haven't followed Classic Who are much more stuck on Tennant and RTD.

(Sorry for not being Ink) I loved the old series growing up. I like the modern take too. Part of being a Dr Who any fan is always going to be disliking the latest regeneration/ style/ companion/ script writers...

Classic Who wasn't even classic Who when it was aired.

Anyway, I'll post an oldie but a goodie as, let's face it, we're all fans here:

Truth! I've never watched the old Dr. Who episodes, maybe I'll check them out on Netflix.

-rd