All posts by Bookslover19
I don't know why people like Utopia so much. It was 40 minutes of filler, just a boring run around, before picking up pace in the last five minutes with the reveal of the Master. Jacobi delivered the most chilling performance as the Master in years before promptly being killed off three minutes later. The only bit worth remembering is over before it's really begun so I don't see why it's remembered so favourably.
The whole S3 finale was pure nonsense. The only respite from the drivel was the three minutes Derek Jacobi spent as the Master.
I think Moffat's companions were good but they suffered from staying too long just to be eventually killed off. RTD's companions had better story arcs and left at just the right times.
@Master P Koon River was never a proper companion though, she only popped up in episodes every now and again. I just think New Who is too short and snappy for three companions to work. Sure, they could have had it with perhaps Graham and someone else as the main companions (I'm saying Graham because he was the only half-decent one) and have the other one as a recurring character, but the New Who TARDIS just doesn't have enough runtime for four regulars.
@Master P Koon But when Ian, Susan and Barbara were in it, the show had 40+ half hour episodes to play with. The stories were much bigger and much longer. In the 80s, when they had Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, they had half the runtime that the 60s had and they visibly struggled to cram all the companions in, there's countless documentaries and interviews filled with people of the time complaining about the size of the TARDIS crew. When you consider that Series 11/12 had half the runtime of the 80s, you can see how it would struggle to work regardless of how talented the writing team are.
Don't get me wrong, your point about the writing team is vaild. Graham, Ryan and Yaz don't have a single shred of personality between them and that is down to the writers failing to make them in any way interesting. They were basically one character made into three. But I think three companions was always doomed to fail, regardless of who wrote it.
Most importantly, it was cheaper. Reuse the same sets and same actors for 4-6 weeks - you end up with at least a month's worth of episodes made with much less money than if they'd gone a different place every week. Secondly, they didn't set out to make an international franchise that Doctor Who was today, they were just testing the water with a new program. If they'd commissioned 13 separate episodes for Doctor Who's original 13 episode run, again, not very cost effective if it was a failure. So, by sticking to a very limited amount of locations, they were able to reduce cost and trial a new show, so if it didn't work out they wouldn't lose too much money. Not like now, where shows have enormous budgets but will last one season.
Power of the Daleks and Fury from the Deep. I'd gladly exchange the Whittaker era for them back.
Excellently put.
5 from the classic series, and 13 from the new series. I think they are the only two I actually dislike; I like all the others to some degree.
Dalek
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Father's Day
The Unquiet Dead
Rose
The End of the World
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
Aliens of London/WW3
The Long Game
Boom Town
Angels, the Foretold, the Fisher King, the Empty Child were all good.
Quite enjoying Holding the Fort at the moment. But Miranda is a highlight.
Probably controlling and murdering Nyssa's stepmother, taking over her father's body (murdering him and wearing his face) and then erasing her planet from existence.
Classic, 5, New, 13
I'd love ones like TSJA where we see adventures of different companions after the Doctor. Maybe Nyssa, Tegan, Leela, Romana, Ian, Polly, Mel or Ace for old companions and Amy and Rory for new ones.
Hard. Smith was a better doctor but Tennant had a better overall run.
Martha, Adric, Sarah, Victoria, Jo, Tegan
I thought it was worse than S11. The best bits of S11 (the historical episodes) were cut out.
It would be a good experiment. I suppose its cost though, they'd have to stake up the money to go on a location shoot in another country. Its probably a lot harder now....but I still think a companion from, say, South America, would be great
At least Moffat had glory days once on Doctor Who, wish the same could be said for Chibnall