Doctor Who 2018 S11*

It's spacey-wacy stuff to go with the timey-wimey stuff.

 

It’s gotten to the point where certain people have devolved into trolls and therefore have been placed on my ignore list. I don’t mind honest criticism but when they offer nothing but negative criticism all of the time then their opinions become worthless white noise, in my opinion.

 

Doctor Who has jumped the frog!

 

Daniel Day Lewis is going to play the Sonic Screwdriver in the film version. He said it was the only role that could get him out of retirement. Lots of screen time as well.

 

I was watching the latest episode of Have I Got News For You and even they are making fun of the current run, the host said 'Dr Who will be delivering its lecture on colonialism and the collapse of the British Empire'.

 

I get what you mean and I purposely stayed out of this thread for a long time to avoid the constant negativity. Even I posted awhile back that I thought some of the complaints were just nitpicking and sure there's an element of that.

But in all fairness, there are some very valid criticisms being made. I'm pretty lenient when it comes to Dr Who as I love(d) the reboot. It was a big thing when it happened and I was living in England at the time and I have a soft spot for the new series. But even I've got to draw the line somewhere.

The stories are not great, the moral lecturing isn't being handled very well and it feels like they're writing for the under 16s. It's not very good. Yes there are some good moments. For example, I enjoyed Kerblam and I thought the witch episode was decent and the last episode wasn't too bad until they decided to flush down the toilet any good they developed before hand with that idiotic frog. That was just dumb.

Unlike others I don't mind Jodie as the Doctor and I think she can do a better job, but they've given her a crap version of the Doctor IMO. It's just clowning around and that outfit is just nonsense. She and the franchise deserve better.

Does the BBC publish viewing figures? I'd love to see how the reboot series have done over the years. My guess is viewership is on the decline. But I could be wrong.

 

Every episode in the new series has seen viewing figures dropping as people stop watching. It started very high on nearly 11m but has dropped each week to around 7.2m now.

That actually compares very well with the 'best' of the reboot series, the Ecclestone and Tennant runs, as some of those were as low as 6m, others around 9m.

Capaldi's run was pretty bad, dropping to an average of 5.5m for his final season.

Overall it was pretty consistent for the first two Doctors, dropped a little with Smith and then dropped considerably with Capaldi. The current figures then do seem pretty good, although it probably has a better slot. The BBC will no doubt be worried how the figures are falling every week though.

 

I read that this year is the first year that they are including iplayer and other online viewings into the overall ratings.

 

It's been a terrible mess this season in my view- by far the worst since the show re-launched .

 

That's correct. They're published, usually, 7 days after the overnights as the official BARB viewing figures. The viewing figures overall are very good even though they're dropped with every episode. The move to Sunday nights has worked very well as there is little competition in that time slot.

 

The majority of the victims in witch hunts were women. The Doctor is now a woman. Her taking charge of situations, displaying knowledge of arcane subjects, and waving a “magic wand” around would be likely to attract negative attention . Hard to think how a Witch Trials-themed episode could be written without addressing this. The series has actually made comparatively little of the gender switch, beyond the Doctor enjoying some henna make-up time in the partition episode and lamenting the fact she can’t do her “taking charge of the situation unchallenged” thing in the 17th c.

 

The girl’s blindness wasn’t the focus of the episode; it made sense in plot terms because the father was able to use the audio to keep her intimidated (I suppose it was also implied that he was worried she would be more vulnerable traveling through the Interzone and that’s why he hadn’t taken her). I suppose on a symbolic level the father was blind to the fact his “resurrected” wife was fake while his blind daughter saw this more clearly.

Re: every episode allegedly focusing on a different minority:

Ep 1 - Tim Shaw?
Ep 2 - ?
Ep 3 - African Americans
Ep 4 - Giant Mutant Spiders?
Ep 5 - Nibbler from Futurama
Ep 6 - Muslims in pre-partition India, perhaps (though the focus is just as much on Yaz’s grandfather, who was part of the Hindu majority).
Ep 7 - future organic - sorry, human - workers.
Ep 8 - imprisoned aliens?
Ep 9 - a sentient universe

Is this markedly different from any previous series?

 

I loved the frog, and knew immediately it would infuriate the incessantly negative posters here, and elsewhere.

And, hey ho - the ratings always drop as each season progresses. It means little r nothing.

 

Feedback, as we all know, should be constructive, not destructive.
That said, it’s become very clear that the new creative team don’t understand the Doc Who concept. I’m feeling that they’re trying to distance themselves in many ways from previous series simply in an effort to be ‘different’ - whatever that may mean on a family-based sci-fi program. There has certainly been good episodes to welcome in Jody’s reign - but not enough of them. I would hope that when the production team reads reviews and summing-ups at the end of the current run, they take on board the many helpful suggestions on how a much-loved show can be put back on the rails, rather than take the my-way-or-the-highway stance. If it gets cancelled again, as it was during McCoy’s stint, I doubt I’ll live long enough to see it return.
It needs tweaking, nothing more. And Daleks, naturally.

 

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That witch hunter vs. the Doctor was the decent part of the episode. The thetans in the tree and the King James were the problem. Several episodes have had too many subplots that add nothing to the story and seem shoehorned in for ulterior reasons. If we didn't have King James there would have been time for better exposition on who the aliens were, and a more plausible manor of how they took over Becka Savage.

 

Yeah. I thought my daughter was enjoying the new season, but prior to this last story she told me it did't "feel" right. Didn't seem like Dr. Who. She did like Sunday's episode and the Rosa Parks one.

 

I didn’t mind the King chewing the scenery. Imprisoned aliens bit was terribly rushed and didn’t make much sense (so, an ancient alien lock was indistinguishable from a tree because...?), but ultimately I was cool with that, too. Witchfinder ep and Neglectful Norwegian Dad ep reminded me of classic pre-revival Who in their curate’s egg quality, some jarring and perhaps supefluous plot elements mashed together in a fun way. The cardinal crime the show can commit is being dull (which all the Chibnall episodes have been).

 

Where are the fans of the new season actively spouting their praises? I get lots of Dr. Who stuff in my YouTube "suggestions", and every season 11 video I've seen has been hostile.

I take that back, one just did a rating score for every episode, and had the most favorable opinion of the cast (but he went ape about the frog). Two seem to mostly blame the writers, but are ok with Whitaker. And a couple were admittedly so hateful that I didn't finish their videos. But I haven't seen the counterpoint of fans really loving this season.

 

I suppose the King was there as representative of the patriarchy / head of the Church, eg: the forces historically behind the witch hunts. Without that, the episode might have given kids the impression that it was a self-serving woman who was the Big Bad, whereas she was just taking advantage of the pre-existing “crusade”.

 

I've noticed that the blind, uncritical praise for the series tends to come from 'access' media that need to play nice with the BBC. But, if you read user comments on sites like say Den Of Geek (UK), which usually has hundreds of comments per episode, you will see a near universal panning of the show. Some commenters might point out one or two scenes that were good, here and there, but overall it's not at all positive.

 

My five year old quite likes it
Having said that, she got hooked with the Capaldi Doctor and that 3 parter in the middle of last season and I don't think anything this season has held her attention like that, although she did like the mud monster. Wouldn't watch the one with spiders.

 

Check out this examination by Nerdrotic of the current writing staff for Doctor Who and their resumes.



It all makes sense now.

 

Did you really mean to say all the episodes were dull, I thought you liked it?

The last episode was a complete mess though. I do think it was a good set-up and I was intrigued where it was going but it just fell apart quite quickly. Many have said above the writers lack experience writing these type of stories, and the last episode was the perfect example. Nothing tied together. You can’t just have random things happening and either not explain them or explain them in a way that seems implausible to the internal logic of the show. The plot starts falling apart then. There were so many wtf moments in that episode.

Why would a father abandon a blind daughter?

Why was there this ‘buffer zone’ that somehow had an ecosystem that supported killer moths and some alien creature? That made no sense.

If it was so dangerous in the buffer zone, as we saw when they tried to cross it, how come the father seemed to be coming and going at will without anything happening to him?

If the ‘mirror’ universe created those people how did they have the memories of the real people?

I mean I could go on but you get my point. They just throw ideas at us but no-one has thought it through and said ‘no, that makes no sense’.

 

Or perhaps last week's episode was a tribute to Mark E Smith:

"We are the Fall

In the neighborhood of infinity



It was the time of the Giant Moths


It happens... It happens... Instincts lost... It happens...
Lost through purple blossoms... It happens...
The desire will turn rotten


We are the Fall

In the neighbourhood"