All New Who

{{ My only real issue with BF's upcoming line up of tuff is I cant afford it all!!

Legacy of Time will be must have by looks of it. And happy to see Sheridan Smith returning to the role of Lucie Miller as she is probably my favourite non-TV companion (also glad they re slotting the new ones into the gas in the existing, and not ruining her character exit).

Right now the new BF line up is looking more interesting, exciting and a lot more like Who than the tv show!   }}

{{ Its official- Who will no longer be on its traditional Saturday night slot but is being moved to Sunday night, traditionally a higher ratings night than a Saturday but less of a showcase slot. 7pm Sunday is more your Attenborough Blue Planet or worthy costume drama time slot traditionally.

I foresee much piracy for the BBC to combat as a result of this as foreign territories  with big Who audiences like Australia and NZ will no longer get it on a weekend, meaning either it will have to be broadcast on a Monday or a week behind.

New series airs from Sunday 7th October}}

That will give me something to look forward to. I hate Sunday's as it is.

{{Its an interesting one- surprised a bit if only because BBC Worldwide wont like it I wouldn't think as its screws up overseas broadcast times quite a bit. Who was BBC Americas top rated Saturday night show. It turning up  at a weird time on a Sunday, or even on the Monday seems a bit of a gamble with it.
As far as the UK is concerned I can see why Chibnall might want it moved. Moffat complained a lot in the last few series about how it was getting moved about the schedules, sometimes not broadcasting until 8pm or after, which is a problem for a show which has a segment of its audience aged 5-7.
Saturday nights are more variety and live variety shows, your Strictly and X-Factor type shows, and as they often have over runs or special lengthened editions it tended to shove Who about being the non-live one in the schedule and so easiest to move. Combine that with an earlier slot often being disrupted by live sporting events on a Saturday overrunning and the hassles mount.
Its been moved before form its traditional Saturday night slot, but as often to its detriment as its benefit. }}}

{{Bit battering it over the head- smashing the glass ceiling? not exactly subtle- and as a Who trailer? Even the bloody teaser has more to do with making a gender statement than it does promoting a quirky sci-fi show  }}

Yeah, that's pretty ham-handed. You haven't really broken the glass ceiling unless you don't feel the need to mention it.

{{Its terrible. It ays nothing about the upcomng series, it gives nothing about the Doctors personality  (in fact so far all we've seen her do is smile, look enigmatic and say about four words) or any of the companions, sorry friends ( ) who dont even feature, and the entire thing appears to be a statement on gender politics about the show, not a trailer for the show.

Compare that bit of political bullshit to the trailer for Capaldi's last series-




It establishes the new companion, gives us some nice Doctor lines, and hypes up the anticipation with lots of action and a fast pace. Basically it does what a teaser is supposed to do, tease the upcoming series and build hype for it, not make a completely unrelated gender politics promo vid!! }}

{{Love this, really nicely done }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
{{Bit battering it over the head- smashing the glass ceiling? not exactly subtle- and as a Who trailer? Even the bloody teaser has more to do with making a gender statement than it does promoting a quirky sci-fi show  }}

that was shit. any more of this girl-power stuff and I might not bother.

Im wondering if the Beeb is as confident as they are trying to persuade themselves they are ? I can feel a wobble, & I don't mean Timey Wimey either.

{{ My younger brother, who is notably younger than myself- I was in my 30's when he came along, I of course dutifully as a brother should introduced to him to Doctor Who and the wonders of it and of course terrified him witless and so made a new Whovian, and he has been ever since.

I mention ths onlybecuase he sent me his response to having just watched the teaser trailer, it was simply this -




I am inclined to think his generation therefore is no more enamoured of how clumsily the BBC is going about this gender change any more than mine is! }}

Yay verily, here is a taster. Once upon a time we did have a woman Dr, for charity yes but, if I have to put up with this, or something like it, week after week I think IL join the dark side & camp up with the Daleks, & Im scared shitless of them

that reminds me of this great sketch

{{ Moffat and Self and Memory

Series 8

Deep Breath

We begin with a post regen Doctor, however several of his character traits going forward are established here. His first word is "shush" delivered briskly and impatiently to Strax, and being unwilling to indulge anything or anyone he doesn't think important will continue going ahead.
He then goes on to show he has forgotten everyone's names, including Clara, stating, "names, not my area." This will again be a trait going forward and is linked to the previous one.
These set traits are given in an opening scene that is otherwise chaotic post-regen Doctor, swinging moods wildly before collapsing into unconsciousness.

This episode essentially has two themes running through it, one for the Doctor and one for Clara that come together in the final third.
For the Doctor the story is very much one about self, about discovering who he is, and who he has been. For Clara its about coming to terms with a very different version of the Doctor she has known and finding a way to come to terms with him. It also marks for Clara the beginning of a new journey as 12 will put her in situations she has never been in before, testing her in ways 11 never did and pushing her more to discover her natural strengths of character.

But the main meat of self in this episode is on the Doctor's side and the question of self is also the driving factor behind the villain, the Half-face Man.

We are deliberately led in this episode to do as the Doctor and Clara are, to question his actions and judge them. So what are his actions?

Well following his waking from unconsciousness he discovers the dinosaur has been destroyed and immediately sets about finding out why, and here we see some more traits that will stay when he picks the window rather than door as his means of exit, it won't be the last time he jumps out a window, and in his response to the death of the dinosaur, which is to lament the human race as 'pudding brains' and leap into action again, quite literally off the bridge. 12 does not hang around or stand on niceties.

But let us first go back to Clara. In a confrontation with Vastra over the Doctors changed, and older appearence Vastra gives her explanation of the Doctor to this point, and his relationship with Clara-

"You thought he was young?....He looked like your dashing young gentlemen friend. Your lover, even...But he is the Doctor. He has walked this universe for centuries untold, he has seen stars fall to dust......He flirted with you. He looked young. Who do you think that was for?...Everyone. I wear a veil as he wore a face and for the same reason...The oldest reason there is for anything. To be accepted....The Doctor regenerated in your presence. The young man disappeared, the veil lifted. He trusted you. Are you judging him?"

Here we are encouraged to think about the Doctors ever changing face, and more so to see it as a veil concealing a truth, one that with his older appearance he is no longer concealing. The viewer is invited going forward to judge this Doctor as Clara is, to see the actions beyond the face and ask the oldest question in the show, Who is he really?

This is driven further home when a post swim Doctor now wet and cold encounters a tramp and proceeds to try to get the tramps coat off him.
The Doctor is also preoccupied with his new face, as he is sure he has seen it before- which he has as it is the face of a Roman he once met as the 10th Doctor, over a thousand years earlier in his own time line.

"Why this one? Why did I choose this face? It's like I'm trying to tell myself something. Like I'm trying to make a point. But what is so important that I can't just tell myself what I'm thinking?"

The entire issue of his face will bubble along in the background for some time, but points to the questions the Doctor will come to ask of himself in this series, and to its eventual answer. But the question 12 will ask most of himself is the same the viewer is being asked, who is the Doctor? What does he really stand for? What is his purpose, if he has one, and why does he do what he does and is what he does for the greater good in the end? And does the universe even care if it is or not?
These are big questions for a family teatime show, but that's Who for you.

We don't get an answer to the face question here, but we do get left with an ambiguous resolution to the matter of the tramps coat. When we next see the Doctor, in the restaurant scene he is wearing the tramps coat and his poor excuses for how he got it leave a question mark. Especially as he had got a little aggressive on the matter with the tramp-

 "I'm cold. There's no point in us both being cold. Give me your coat. Give me your coat!"

As we never saw how he eventually got the coat off the tramp the viewer is left with a inkling of doubt in this Doctor's actions and words.
This is doubled down on when he seemingly leaves Clara to her fate with the Half-face man.

Its also the third time in this episode it will touch on the Doctor's post-regen memory problems across so long a life. He first could not remember names, then where he got his face from, and now he cannot remember where he has seen these robot villains before (again it was as the 10th Doctor over a thousand years ago).

I should talk about the Half-face Man and his droids, the Doctor describes what the robot is doing as -

"This isn't a man turning himself into a robot. This is a robot turning himself into a man, piece by piece."

Again it comes back to ideas of the self. The Half-Face man is harvesting organs to replace worn out automated parts with, but in doing so he is becoming more like people and even believes they will reach the Promised Land. This presents an interesting series of steps from artificial life as they started out, to having to harvest organs out of a necessity to survive, to developing a religious belief in an afterlife (albeit one implanted by Missy).

The Doctor sees one as directly relating to the other, humanity leads to superstition-

"There isn't any promised land. This is just. It's a superstition that you have picked up, from all the humanity you've stuffed inside yourself."

Its opens up the question of what is the Half-face man by this point? Is he robot, or he is he human? You can switch a robot off, but you have to kill a human. The lines are blurred. And those blurred lines are directly mirrored in the Doctor's questions, as revealed in his confrontation with the Half-face Man-

"You are a broom. Question. You take a broom, you replace the handle, and then later you replace the brush, and you do that over and over again. Is it still the same broom? Answer? No, of course it isn't. But you can still sweep the floor. Which is not strictly relevant, skip that last part. You have replaced every piece of yourself, mechanical and organic, time and time again. There's not a trace of the original you left. You probably can't even remember where you got that face from."

To add emphasis to this the Doctor is holding up a polished plate so the robot can see its own face, we the viewer looking from the Doctors side, see his face reflected. Having regenerated 12 times, changed every part of himself over and over, is he still the Doctor?

That question is no better raised than in his ethics, which the viewer has been invited to question, from the tramps coat, to abandoning Clara. And his opening words to confronting the Half-face Man and its presentation are a deliberate contrast to his previous incarnation- where 11 hated the taste of alcohol and would spit it back out into the glass, 12 is sitting at a table calmly drinking a whisky, and his opening words are-

"I've got the horrible feeling I'm going to have to kill you. I thought you might appreciate a drink first. I know I would."

The Doctor does not usually state what he may inevitably have to do quite so starkly, or coldly, but it invites us to think of the fact that, yes, he often does end up killing the villain. He is a killer. And we usually cheer him when he does.

But we also get a balance to this later in the conversation when it turns to the topic of the view, here we get what this Doctor sees as separating him from the robot-

What do you think of the view?

I do not think of it.

I don't think of it. I don't. Droids and apostrophes, I could write a book. Except you are barely a droid any more. There's more human in you than machine. So tell me, what do you think of the view?

It is beautiful.

No, it isn't. It's just far away. Everything looks too small. I prefer it down there. Everything is huge. Everything is so important. Every detail, every moment, every life clung to....Those people down there. They're never small to me. Don't make assumptions about how far I will go to protect them, because I've already come a very long way. And unlike you, I don't expect to reach the promised land."

And the question if the Doctor will commit murder to protect those people comes directly up-

It cannot end.

It has to. You know it does. And there's only one way out.

Self-destruction is against my basic programme.

And murder is against mine.

The fate of the Half-face man is to fall to his death- but did he jump or was he pushed is left delibrately unanswered.

DOCTOR: You realise, of course, one of us is lying about our basic programming.
HALF-FACE MAN: Yes.
DOCTOR: And I think we both know who that is.

The viewer is invited to draw their own conclusions, to judge the Doctor.

The invitation to do so is added to at the very end in the final scene with Missy in her Promised Land-

"Now, did he push you out of that thing, or did you fall? Couldn't really tell. He can be very mean sometimes."

What we learn of 12 in this episode is that he is not good with names, he tends to dive straight into the problem without much in the ways of pleasantries, and that it is very ambiguous about how far he will go to achieve his ends. That he believes there is a reason for his current physical appearance, but he cant remember where he got the face from or what it signifies.

And as viewers we are being invited to ask the very same questions of him- why does he have that face? How far will he go? Did he throw the robot out or did the robot jump? Did he steal the coat off the tramp or bargain for it like he claimed? Did he know Clara would be safe when he abandoned her as a ploy to get information from the robot or did he just risk her life for the sake of some information?

It is being confronted with this much changed, much starker,less hidden by the veil of youth, exburence and pretence Doctor that Clara decides she can no longer travel with.
This final scene between the Doctor and Clara gives the Doctor's opinion of himself to this point-

"I'm the Doctor. I've lived for over two thousand years, and not all of them were good. I've made many mistakes, and it's about time that I did something about that."

What is particualry interesting here is he immediately follows that statement up with this exchange with Clara-

Clara, I'm not your boyfriend.

I never thought you were.

I never said it was your mistake.

It is interesting that of all the 'many mistakes' he mentions, flirting with Clara in his previous incarnation is top of his list right now to get straight. He no longer has that need for that type of distraction or comfort, as he no longer is living in the shadow of believing he killed all his own people.

And in the final coming back together after the phone call from 11 on Trenzalore scene we get a glimpse at his pain of no longer being accepted as who he is because he has changed-

"You can't see me, can you? You look at me, and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like? I'm not on the phone, I'm right here, standing in front of you. Please, just, just see me."

As Vastra said, the oldest reason -to be accepted. Not for who you were, not for what you've done, but just simply accepted for who you are in the now.

The entire premise of this episode spins around ideas of the self, memory, or inability to recall memories, acceptance of self, and coming to terms with oneself, whether that's 12 with what it means to be the Doctor, Clara and if she can accept this new Doctor, or the Half-face Man and his struggle to survive- and understanding himself is a struggle the 12th Doctor is only just embarking on.
As that is one aspect of series 8 that is markedly different from all other post regen stories- it normally only takes to the end of the first episode for the new Doctor to have fully emerged and be the Doctor- with 12 that is a long exploration of what it means to be the Doctor, of rediscovery, and arguably it lasts till 12's final scene in his run when he finally states what he has relearned about what it means to be the Doctor and what it comes down to.

11's last words were that it was alright to change so long as you remembered all the other people you had been along the way, 12 is the first incarnation since the time war to have allowed himself access to all those memories of what he did in the War, he is the first to truly remember all the people he has ever been in that sense. But those memories, combined with ending his time as 11 in a thousand year war also leave him questioning, what was it all for? Was it for any sort of good in the end?
Moffat is far from leaving the Doctors mental health issues alone! }}}

why are there so many man-babies on Youtube that think the BBC has a feminist agenda to destroy men? they love siting the soldier who regenerated into a Black woman who goes on to insult testosterone a bit. They seem to have conveniently forgotten that it was Moffat who was responsible for that, not the 'feminists'. its all a bit sad.

{{{ There is a belief Figg that Moffat was following the BBC agenda- hence his occasionally digs at maleness, promoting of strong important female characters like River and Clara, and the inclusion of openly lesbian characters like Vastra and Jenny and of course Bill.
These things are seen as him carrying out the BBC's agenda against men.

Most of it stems from a misunderstanding of Moffats body of work- and I dont mean in Who- he was writing this way when he started with Press Gang with its strong female lead, Linda Day.* And that was twenty years ago and for ITV- so hardly pushing a BBC agenda then!
Also most of the 'digs' stem from the fact Moffat was, and still is at heart, a sitcom writer- he likes gags, always has. Press Gang is often very funny, so is his Who.
You only need to see Coupling to see how Moffat delights in jokes made around the sexes and relationships- that's what Coupling was basically all about.
Also it presumes Moffat is not mocking the very pcness they accuse him off. It seems to me he occasionally, especially when his accusers are at their noisiest- throws in an 'extreme' version of a sexist gag- something that you would not get away with if it were in reverse- such as in the Husbands of River Song where River tells the Doctor to stop thinking as it looks wrong on a man. That's a gag you couldn't get away with in reverse these days- but its typical of Moffat to provoke a reaction by using it this way.
The Clara thing is a good example of this- for the vocal critics of her being too much like the Doctor Moffat just doubled down on that then taunted those accusers by having the Doctor actually use the line- "Clara Who?" and putting Clara's eyes in place of the Doctor's in the title sequence for an episode.
I can quite easily imagine Moffat grinning over his keyboard as he writes a line like that knowing the reaction it will provoke in the section of viewers most resistant to the idea of a female lead.



* "Its possible, not to dramatically to change the world necessarily, but to do our bit here and there and Steven is a marvellously non-sexist writer"- the female producer of Press Gang

"I happen to like comedy, and I happen to like drama. I dont see why humour has to be isolated. I think its perfectly acceptable that humour plays a part of drama, its a part of life you know.....because I've never been a 17 yea rold girl it's rather interesting to think like one, or to consider the world from that perspective. And it actually started to make me a bit angry from time to time, because I never really thought about it before, but you know when you consider the world from the viewpoint of this dynamic, highly talented seventeen year old girl, and thinking what's going to happen to her? Thinking how much harder its going to be for her than if she had been a boy, it used to make me very angry."- Steven Moffat when writing Press Gang

Ive always said its fair to criticise if Moffat succeeds in these matters,or if its clumsy or not, but I dont think there is any argument that his intentions are not good. But mainly the fact he was talking this way, 20 years ago making a show for a differnt company, rather undermines the argument that he is has been writing Who to conform to a BBC agenda of the last few years}}}

Decent enough trailer I suppose (awful choice of music aside), I'm digging the Doctor's Northern accent and the cinematography/SFX look more cinematic than ever before. Visually we are in for a treat...but based purely on this quick glimpse it looks a bit...generic and throwaway to me, Jodie Whitaker is a fine actress with great comic timing and I was never opposed to a female doctor per se...but I'm still a bit uneasy with how on the nose some of the marketing has been...

I dunno...I loved how dark, introspective and smaller scale the Capaldi years were, and I can't help but feel Chibnall is going to move too far in the opposite direction, the RTD years were good fun at the time, but looking back on them I find many of those episodes to be dated, melodramatic and generic and I'm not so sure the casting of a female Doctor will be sufficiently interesting to me if they are seeking to ape the Tennant years again...

Then again I feel I've already had my ideal Who with the 60's Black and White era, Capaldi and the ongoing McGann audios so if I don't enjoy the 13th Doctor stuff then I'll just stick with the stories I do and move on. Pretty embarrassing and disgusting how vitriolic and entitled some of the supposed fans are about Whitaker's casting...it's a kid's TV show about a shapeshifting alien who flies around in a magic phonebox for god's sake...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ My only real issue with BF's upcoming line up of tuff is I cant afford it all!!

Legacy of Time will be must have by looks of it. And happy to see Sheridan Smith returning to the role of Lucie Miller as she is probably my favourite non-TV companion (also glad they re slotting the new ones into the gas in the existing, and not ruining her character exit).

Right now the new BF line up is looking more interesting, exciting and a lot more like Who than the tv show!   }}

Another recent announcement, Michelle Gomez is returning as Missy in an upcoming audio set (that was quick!):

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/missy-returns

She's probably my favourite Master and I'm sure I'll be tempted to get this somewhen down the line if my finances ever allow, but I feel some of her madcap eccentric energy will be lost when relying soley on her voice and I can't help but wonder if BF is producing too much content too quickly, I mean did we really need to get a spinoff about Lady Christina from Planet of The Dead or a boxset about New New Earth?

That trailer kind of confirmed by worst fears. Its all about her gender. ffs. The damsel in distress needs a posse of 'friends' to protect her and legitimate her. wowzer.

enh.  If they gave her a good line, but "sometimes I see things that need fixing, I do what I can."  That's the best they could do?  "When people need help, I never say no."     Was this written by a sweet little 9 year old?

{{Well the new cameras make it look nice!

Halfy I feel those lines are a really bad version of the sentiment of this 12 speech- but this was part of 12's culmination of character lines, the idea he does what he can, even if it might not even help, but because helping is the right thing to do.




But yeah reducing it to those lines is a bit poor. }}

so basically we go from Malcolm Tucker to Alice in Wonderland, how is this supposed to be the same person?

I thought that, no matter how many times the Doctor regenerated, he was, essentially, the same person under the skin. I hope to see some continuance of this even tho, IL be honest, I still am NOT sold on a woman Dr Who !