Doctor Who - Discussions on Season 5 onwards

Actually it's a version of the Doctor that has the potential to exist between the twelfth and thirteenth incarnations.

Because you don't want to face the truth.

<michael winner emoticon>

I wonder if fans of Star Trek had this much argy bargy when TNG decided to bring back the Klingons, the Romulans and the Vulcans, as well as introducing the Borg, the Ferengi, the Q and the rest....

I'm all in favour of old faces and enemies coming back as long as they're not over-used. In a 13-part series with two, perhaps three major two-part stories, inevitably there's going to be some clogging. However, when you consider it, the Daleks have only been in four stories in the new series, in a total of 7 episodes. 7 out of 39. Not a lot to be honest.

The biggest problem I have with the new series is MacGuffins... quick and easy solutions to massive problems. Ten million Daleks and Cybermen invade London through Torchwood Tower, the Doctor sticks himself to the wall and turns on a big trans-dimensional hoover and sucks them all out. Similarly, Rose's completely mad and weird "heart of the Tardis" disintegration of the Daleks at the end of Season 1.

I had the same problem with Buffy Season Seven - Spike saving the world from the apocalypse due to a chain he was given the day before, delivered out of the blue by Angel, and slayers all over the world awoken by invoking the power of a mythical axe that somehow the First Evil was extracting, rather than leaving it hidden....

Contrived is the word....or maybe...I guess it's lazy writing. 40 minutes of build up, characterisation and tension, 5 minutes of quick thinking, ready-to-roll answers and a flick of the sonic screwdriver and it's done and dusted, home for tea.

Even my favourite story, The Empty Child / Doctor Dances, had a massive "we're supposed to believe that" moment when the Doctor threw nanogenes at the gas mask people because they were learning the "parent" DNA...it's all talk talk talk, no actual action.


OK if anyone knows what the hell I'm going on about, please tell me otherwise I'll shut up now and let someone else speak.

I agree with you on MacGuffin thing, or "deus ex machina" aspect. It's the one thing that ruined the finale of series 3, a simple reset button to bring everyone back. I saw it coming, because there's no way RTD would leave the Earth decimated.

But the last comment about The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is a bit unfair. It was perfectly explained, and I think it made the most uplifting ending of a Who story I've ever seen, which was, in the Ninth Doctor's words, fantastic.

I thought this for a long time - the world looks like the world's about to be blown up, the Doctor's helpless to do anything, and everything looks hopeless - and yet, you know it's not, because that couldn't happen. You know it won't. But you can forgive that, because it has a brilliant twist, something really clever and unexpected. Or does it? I thought the ending from Blink, Satan Pit, and similar ones were clever, because they were just that, exciting, unexpected and clever. But so many aren't. That last episode had a pants ending. What, you somehow get the world to say the word 'Doctor' and the man himself starts floating out of a cage, losing age and being untouchable? Any praise I gave for that episode was for the majority of the story, not the ending. [/rant]

Point.

Missed.

Completely.

The Master had managed to bring about his rule by his hypnotic suggestion through the Archangel system, by causing them to believe in him without really knowing why.
The Doctor subverted this system. Martha was his agent, travelling the world and generating belief in a saviour, the Doctor. At the appropriate moment, that tidal wave of belief, linked to by the Doctor who used his own telepathic skills to access the Archangel system, overrode the beliefs the Master had implanted, overturned his psychic control and generated enough energy for the Doctor to be able to repair the damage to his body and, for a brief while, literally float on that wave of belief.

And if anyone says 'reset button', I refute it. It was clearly signposted fromthe previous episode.The TARDIS Paradox Machine made perfect sense. As long as it could function it could create the paradoxical situation where the Toclafane were able to interfere with and destroy their own past. The second it was destroyed, the tremendous pressure of the time continuum pushed the paradox out of existence.

I believe that sums it up perfectly there. Always makes me laugh when people say that "x can't happen because of y..." especially when it's a science FICTION show

Regarding something that had been talked about on previous pages and not in anyway trying to annoy Ronnie Rowlands at all (seriously) I think if, IF, they did bring back one of the old Doctors the only ones they could would be either Tennant (won't do it again as "doesn't like being typecast"), McGann (propbably wouldn't want to do it again) or Davison (who probably would do it but will probably have too many other filiming commitments).

However that been said I do kind of agree with Ronnie Rowlands, as nice as it would be to see some classic Doctors/enemies/alliances in the current series it's just best to come up with something new. I agree they haven't really found a decent new baddie but perhaps they may do by the fourth series?

there have been plenty of decent monsters in the new series. as I've said time and time again. why are so many people here blinded with their own nostalgia.

I agree. I'm a big fan of "Old Who" (even though I was only just about 9 years old when it ended in Dec 1989), and am very protective of it when people try to dismiss the whole 26-years of it out-of-hand as "cheap and wobbly" etc.

However, conversely, I absolutely love "New Who" too. And therefore wouldn't want that dismissed out-of-hand by nostalgists and their rose-tinted spectacles, either.

Okay, some new monsters have been a little disappointing, e.g. the CGI versions of the Slitheen left a lot to be desired, and therefore felt like they were just as crap "by 2005 standards" as the Invasion of the Dinosaurs dinosaurs were "by 1974 standards".

But, for example, how great did the Judoon or the Ood look? They're brilliant. And I won't be told otherwise.

And, just like in Old Who, the new series can often create a lot of fear with something that doesn't look "monster-ey" as such - the "Empty Child" was just a boy wearing a gasmask! Chloe's dad descending the staircase was just red light! (etc etc).

It's makes me think that even if New Who had as crap a budget as Old Who did, they'd still probably be able to make something really decent, as they have so much imagination . And that's the really key factor.

I can genuinely say, as a life-long Whovian, that I have absolutely no "preference" in terms of New Who versus Old Who, it's all just "One Who" to me, and I love it!

at last, someone who is right.

Just goes to show that sometimes 'old-fashioned' protestics (AFAIK the Ood were just people in masks) are better than fancy CGI

They need to hurry up and do the Seven Doctors because of Tom Baker.