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#126

Doctor Who

I'm mildly discontented with the Moffat era, but that doesn't mean I want RTD back. He mostly wore himself out idea-wise long before his actual run on the show ended. (I think the same about Moffat, actually. Oh, are we having another flirty companion whose existence is a timey-wimey mystery?* Will we also have computers-gone-wrong as villains and an endless series of curtain-pulling gotchas?)

*I think the actress playing Oswin is adorable and I wish Moffat would just let her be, so she can be a character and not a chess piece in his latest poorly plotted "mystery."

HoldThatThought, I wish Moffat Who was as emotionally affecting as SJA was. Or RTD Who at its best. When the episodes I love best are the ones written by guest writers - and I will say that "Vincent and the Doctor" and "The Doctor's Wife" rank among my all-time favorites - there's a problem.
#127

Doctor Who

For my money, some of the best episodes in NuWho are those with RTD as Exec Producer and penned by Moffat:

The Doctor Dances
Empty Chile
Bad Wolf
Girl in the Fireplace
Silence in the Library
Blink

The last three being some of the best TV you can watch. 'Blink' isn't an emotional triumph, but it is an epic example of drama, suspense and--in the best possible way--Timey-Wimey stuff.
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#128

Doctor Who

Well the only companion that's been Timey Wimey is River. Clara doesn't seem Timey Wimey, she legit keeps dying not just jumping around in time.

I'll still watch, but the MoffatSmith era episodes feel more like "The Sarah Jane Chronicles" than modern day Who.

And so goes a new Who era. For a show that's 50 years old you should expect drastic style changes. You're just used to Davies' approach that it's more jarring with it being the first change of the modern show.
#129

Doctor Who

Well the only companion that's been Timey Wimey is River.

Amy was, too. Remember the crack in her wall and her disappearing family? Or Moffat's bizarre fetish for having female companions meet the Doctor and imprint on him as young girls? That's Amy, River, and Madame de Pompadour, for the record. And we don't know what Clara is; she just seems to have been shoved into the same mold yet again, and it's just not that novel the fourth time around.

And I'm tempted to start listing off my favorite episodes but that would be a very long post...

Updated On: 12/29/12 at 02:32 AM

#130

Doctor Who

Madama De Pompadour was basically the Amy prototype. I wouldn't really call that Timey Wimey. No more so than other Time Travel in the show. Blink is Timey Wimey. The Doctor just keeps popping up at specific points in her life, nothing Timey Wimey about that. As for Amy there was nothing Timey Wimey about her as anything that got sucked into the crack would be forgotten, it just happened to crack in her room.

Updated On: 12/29/12 at 02:42 AM

#131

Doctor Who

Wynbish - I agree, but I think the difference is that David Tennant was allowed to use his acting chops to sort of balance things out. Maybe Smith is being held back, or that's all he's got.

Plum - "emotionally affecting" is a good way to put it. By the time the Ponds left, I just didn't really care anymore about them. SJA - you kind of expected it to be goofy because it was a children's show, but some of the episodes did have you feeling something, at least for SJ.

Addison - good choices, off the top of my head I'd also add "Waters of Mars" and "Planet of the Dead."

TF4 - You're right, I was used to that edginess, and I just miss it. But now that I think about it, there were a few episodes in the beginning that had some of it - "The Lodger", "Vincent and the Doctor", "The Vampires of Venice."
#132

Doctor Who

Addison: Torchwood is absolutely worth watching if you love Capt. Jack (as we all do!) Lots more about Jack. Good new characters, especially Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato. Some crossover with Doctor Who here and there, but mostly its own story. Season 1 is good, 2 is great, 3 (Children of Earth) is strong but utterly heartbreaking. I wouldn't bother with Miracle Day- it doesn't even feel like Torchwood. Fair warning, it is considerably more adult in tone than Who, definitely not for a family audience. But it's interesting, funny, more of a workplace-family drama than the Who companion-Doctor format. The relationships among the core 5 range from sibling-like to vaguely antagonistic to one of the first gay sci-fi romances. Hope you enjoy!



Updated On: 12/29/12 at 10:47 AM

#133

Doctor Who

Oh wow do I have to disagree with the Torchwood love. I was hugely looking forward to that show when it was announced, but it turned out to be 90% crap* in its first two seasons, turned Jack into a first-grade asshole, and led me to use the standard of "well, that was good for Torchwood" as a measuring device to keep myself from thinking too hard about the fact that I was watching objectively terrible television. The third season is completely different and very good. I didn't bother with "Miracle Day."

*I did like the A-plot of "Captain Jack Harkness." And, IIRC, the S2 premiere. Series 2 in general was still bad but in a more polished way than S1.
#134

Doctor Who

"Torchwood" was broadcast after the watershed (9:00pm) so it was able to have more adult-oriented material. "Doctor Who" has always been considered a family show and is broadcast earlier in the evening.
#136

Doctor Who

Well, now, TF4--perhaps 'Planet of the Dead' is "pure ****" ("Gold"?) to YOU. But we're all allowed to have our own opinion.

Frankly, (in MY opinion) Diamonda Hagan's tone is way too supercilious and snarky for me to take seriously before I even hit "play". After less than 3 minutes of unpleasantly-expressed criticism--much of it the kind of pedantic nit-picking that I expect from 15-year-olds: "Yeah, you know there's NO SUCH GALLERY AS 'THE INTERNATIONAL GALLERY' IN LONDON!!--I switched her/him off.

What are your actual issues with 'Planet of the Dead'?


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Updated On: 12/29/12 at 04:30 PM

#137

Doctor Who

@Plum: "Captain Jack Harkness" is one of my favorite episodes too. You know the music that plays when they dance? Best score ever. I actually liked the character development of Jack in the show; it was interesting to see the troubled but charming good man, more than just the enormous flirt. I'll admit, I thought Children of Earth was the best-written season, but I just couldn't get past what happened in Days Four and Five (trying to avoid spoilers for those here who haven't seen it).
#138

Doctor Who

Wasters of Mars was absolutely worthless. It made me so glad 10 was on his way out.
#139

Doctor Who

Heh, I appreciated "Waters of Mars" for finally straightforwardly showing Ten as he was. Dark as hell, and not something I'd show to a small child, but it was very, very true.
#140

Doctor Who

I am a big Torchwood fan, but I'll grant you that a lot of it hasn't been good, in hindsigh. Season 1 took a while to find its tone and not just be a more raunchy Who-but I thought Season 2 was great. (Chris Chibnell--I prob got hisname wrong--was head writer for both seasons but then I think left to do Law and Order UK--but I thought his self penned episodes were great). Yes the third series, which RTD wrote was great though it pissed off a lot of fans. I think Miracle Day actually wasn't bad--but it should have been about half as many episodes. Some good stuff, but... (Lauren Ambrose was great though). It was co-headwritten by RTD and Buffy writer Jane Espenson.
#141

Doctor Who

Re actors--I don't blame some of my issues with Smith's Doctor on him, I think he's a more than capable actor (mind you the only other things I've seen him in was a young lawyers type legal series from the UK, blanking on the name, and him playing Isherwood in the BBC adaptation of Christopher and his Kind which I think is well worth seeking out). Tennant actually got a bit too goofy for me near the end of his run--there are only so many times he can say "Allons-y" and wink at the camera.

Addison said: "One of the great strengths/debilitating weaknesses of 'Doctor Who' is that there is no head writer and principal director of the series--every episode is its own creation. There is the all-important Executive Producer, who is credited with assembling the body of shows for which he was responsible, but each show has its own creative team. As you watch, you will begin to recognize the enormous variety of voices and styles. "

Interesting. I always got the impression that Davies and Moffat were essentially the showrunners/head writers, and it was only some random episodes (like Neil Gaiman's) that they had no real creative control with. I guess I'm wrong? Isn't this the same as, say, Buffy having Joss Whedon as headwriter (co-headwriter in Season 6 when Marti Noxon did muchof the heavy lifting), or Greenwalt being the headwriter (with input from Whedon) on the first two years of Angel? IE I thought it followed the usual US tv model in terms of how it was written (which is quite different from the standard UK model where usually one or two writers actually pens every episode).
#142

Doctor Who

"I always got the impression that Davies and Moffat were essentially the showrunners/head writers, and it was only some random episodes (like Neil Gaiman's) that they had no real creative control with."

I pretty much had the same impression. I just figured Moffat was one of his primary writers. So did Moffat follow what Davies did in terms of letting each show have it's own creative team? I think it would be a trip to see what someone like Terry Gilliam would do with a Who episode.
#143

Doctor Who

Addison, I just plain think you're incorrect. The UK is the realm of the writer-auteur in TV, even moreso than the US with its showrunners. Fewer episodes mean the head writer/producer has the energy and time to exercise more control over each one. RTD could unilaterally overwrite anyone on his writing staff when he was running the show unless he had a pre-existing agreement with them not to, as he did with Moffat. Same goes for Moffat now, except with Gaiman and Curtis. Both showrunners had a very high level of creative control; that's why you can see different consistent tropes in each of their runs.

Updated On: 12/30/12 at 03:33 PM

#144

Doctor Who

Hold on, folks. I'm not in the Television industry. I have no particular insights/knowledge of the actual assignation of 'control' within the chain of command over at 'Doctor Who'.

My comment was based simply on the credits as they are given at IMDb, the comments that I read in the Who Blogoshpere and my own perceptions. My strongly-felt observation is that--during the RTD years--you could tell a Moffat-penned episode from a mile away. The complexity of the structure, the emotional themes, the all-important Timey-Wimey. I read other people make similar comments about other writers and/or directors of whom they had some knowledge/experience. This is how I arrived at my Theory of Responsibility for Doctor Who. Certainly, anyone with any first-hand knowledge of how the production team actually works should feel free to contradict me.

I DO know that in sit-com credits, the 'Written By' credit can be mis-leading/meaningless. I have an ex who was a writer on a popular sit-com and it was perplexing which shows were credited as "written by Addison's BF"--sometimes they were eps for which he contributed little. Often they were eps which he particularly disliked. The consistency of quality/style of episode on Doctor Who relative to the "written by" credit makes me think that is is more indicative of the person actually responsible for the writing.
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#145

Doctor Who

A US writer's room - which is way bigger than a UK one - is generally more about achieving consistency of tone, usually under the auspices of the head writer. DW, depending on the status of the writer, sometimes allows more individual autonomy - in the RTD years Moffat was at the high end of the scale because his writing wasn't subject to RTD overwriting it. And generally it has fewer writers than US shows, and less of a writing-by-committee system.

But saying that each episode "has its own creative team" is ludicrous. All of the production people except the head director stay the same from episode to episode, and the arcs and episode premises are dictated by the showrunners. Moffat was allowed to do his own thing, yes, but his plots had to accomplish certain things within the larger framework of the show, and those things were dictated by RTD.

I don't think we're disagreeing in principle so much as on...scale? Yes, DW has a more varied voice than a typical US show. But not to the level of disunity you seem to have been implying.
#146

Doctor Who

In my defense--I made my implications out of ignorance, not malice...
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#147

Doctor Who

Moffat came up with the brilliant writing that revealed the connection between Amy Pond and River Song. That was genius. I often wonder if that was Moffat's idea alone or if he and Davies discussed it before Davies left the show.
#148

Doctor Who

Addi, no worries at all. I was just curious if you had read or heard something I hadn't.

As has been better explained already here, than I could, Dr Who does follow a more standard US writing system than the traditional UK television format does (I'm not sure if this was because it had more episodes than the average UK show does, if RTD didn't want to have to write each episode the way he did for the much shorter Queer as Folk, if his admitted love for Buffy/Angel caused him to want to try that model, or *what*, but...) though I think it still has a smaller writing team.

I know that with the US it very much depends on the showrunner/headwriter as well. Some are notorious for doing a final rewrite, often uncredited of every script (Weiner at Mad Men usually takes co-writing credit because, as he has freely admits he thinks he deserves it). I believe Sorkin tends to actually write out every final script himself, but he still bounes ideas with a writing team.

And it gets more fuzzy--Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse were all considered Joss Whedon shows, and for obvious reason as his control and stamp is all over them and he created, or co-created them. But I think Whedon fans (and I'm one) tend to sometimes not realize that for the majority of them he wasn't actually the showrunner, taking a more overseeing/consulting role partly out of being so busy (in fact when he scripted the occasional episode of Angel in its final years himself, I found them to oddly feel kinda out of tone with the show).

(GQ did an interesting, but brief, discussion with Weiner about Mad Men, Milch about Dead Wood, etc, and Vince Gilligan about Breaking Bad and their individual writer's room experiences. Of course, as Plum said about UK shows, the same is true about US Cable shows--due to less network interference, and a smaller number of episodes to focus on, the showrunner/headwriter of a US cable show has more overall control and, for lack of a real word "auteurship" over their show than one would have on network US tv. http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201206/roundtable-discussion-matthew-weiner-vince-gilligan-david-milch )

I admit I find the whole process interesting--and the differences in the process (in the UK traditionally sitcoms were written, as well, by one writer--the creator--though he or she might have others on their staff, probably another reason for much lower episode counts. ie Coupling was basically Steven Moffat's Coupling.)

When there are different writers, like with Who and Torchwood and the majority of American shows (network especially but also cable), geeky fans like myself do start to notice which writer (who, in a way, is maybe more of a scripter taking ideas from the headwriter, and writing room discussions, and implementing them) writes episodes we prefer, which may write ones where people feel out of character, etc. I believe there's some odd union law in the US too where for each season of tv they have to hire an outside writer for one or two episodes--for some reason--sometimes these people then join the writing staff in later seasons, or not...

But as Plum said, even when they do special episodes with an invited guest 'star' writer (older examples would be Stephen King on X-Files), the headwriter still has to make sure that certainly plot points are made (if the show is in any way serialized, especially), oversee that nothing grossly out of character is done, etc.

While it's a different process again writing a daytime soap opera, when I was at my most fanatical watching All My Children, even there fans would notice which names would pop up when an episode would have better or more clever dialogue, etc (in that case, because they have to churn out so much product, the writing room has even more structure with breakdown writers taking the headwriter's story plans and shaping them into weekly and then daily episodes and then different teams being sent out those breakdowns to write the actual script--some of the better headwriters would then oversea and change aspects of each script, but honestly with daytime soaps I think most simply didn't have the time or patience).

Bobs, I suspect, but I have no way of knowing that the Pond/Song connection is all Moffat. It just *feels* more like Moffat's style more to me--if that's a good reason at all... (and honestly I liked the reveal, but I find that Moffat's handling of the major story arcs can often get unruly and too messy--even if he has been more adventurous with them than RTD was, IMHO).

#149

Doctor Who

*edit* I have a friend who for a long time thought the headwriter was only truly responsible for the episodes with his/her name on the script (which in some ways makes sense--usually, especially when a show is finding its tone in early seasons, the creator/showrunner will script the key episodes in a season--the first few, maybe a climactic one and the finale). But really, with most of these shows we discuss, with a few "special episode" exceptions, the headwriter's voice should be heard with the basic structure and tone of every episode. Some writers give their team more leeway to try their own thing within those episodes than others, but...
#150

Doctor Who

In case anyone hasn't heard, the rest of Series 7 begins Saturday, March 30 with eight new episodes. Every couple weeks, they're also doing retrospectives on each Doctor called "The Doctors Revisited"; the one for the First Doctor aired last week.

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