All New Who

She's great when she's given the chance.- Amarie

{{Id agree, as I said in the review I'm sold on her at some points (the opening scene in the spaceship for example, or any of her reacting to the TARDIS scenes), but totally not at others when she just isn't acting like the Doctor (letting Ryan run out with the gun shooting, giving up hope at the end where there are still plenty options). She doesn't command the screen, and her Doctor doesn't take command of the scene- she defers to others, she voices her worries and concerns out loud to everyone, at times she feels like sheis guest starring in he rown show, or is just the tech one of a gang. And the few times she does need to be angry or a bit distant she doesn't pull it off for me. Partly this is the writing, but I worry that in part its an aspect of the Doctors character she is simply struggling to portray so far. }}

I did really like some of Jodie's bits this episode. The two guest stars had some nice moments too, especially at first!

The episode went down-hill as it progressed. I was really excited by the set-up, and curious as to where it would go. But once

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For the record, the interior of the Tardis makes me feel claustrophobic. Those bloody rock spider-legs!

{{Synopsis for next weeks Rosa Parks based episode taken from Whats On and TV & Satellite monthly- really not sure this is a good idea at all!! }}

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{{And I'll be shocked if this isn't ham-fisted as fuck given the standard of writing on display so far! }}

Oh... I was hoping they would wait a bit before they did Important Historical Figures like Rosa Parks.

{{At this point my only hope for an episode with that synopsis is that I think its a different writer, or at least only co-written by Chibnal. Hopefully the other writer has heard of show dont tell and subtly!

Also Chibbers lied- he said they were doing pure historicals again- they dont have any threat but contemporary ones- see the Aztecs or Marco Polo from 1st Doctor era- historicals with aliens the show has done since the Time Meddler (also 1st Doctor) so in the end what he was actually saying is we are going to keep doing historicals exactly as they have been with an alien threat introduced, no change there- but I guess that doesn't sound like an announcement!}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Synopsis for next weeks Rosa Parks based episode taken from Whats On and TV & Satellite monthly- really not sure this is a good idea at all!! }}

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{{And I'll be shocked if this isn't ham-fisted as fuck given the standard of writing on display so far! }}

It sounds like a particularly corny episode of Timeless.

{{Some more info regards episodes 3-6. Seems rumours the 'friends' will be used to explore their ethnic roots weren't too far out!
Also perhaps more interestingly only 1 episode out of the first 6 (the 6th one) doesn't have Chibnal name in the writing credits, he has written the first 2 episodes of the series and co-written 3 and wrote episodes 4 and 5 himself. We have to wait till episode 6 to get an episode without Chibnal on the writing! That's way more than either RTD or Moffat (assuming Chibnal also writes the finale he will have done more than half of all the episodes this series) who seem to have restricted themselves to some rewrites here and there for story arcs and making sure characters are consistent across stories, and to writing the first two and last two episodes of a series, with occasionally the odd episode within a series. Co-writing credits are actually pretty rare in RTD and Mofat era (last one I can think of was the Zygon Inversion, which Moffat got a co-credit on for writing the big anti-war speech at the end).

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Looks like every 3 episodes 'whitey' gets it- if they are going to cover Empire hope they remember to be balanced and mention hospitals, postal service, police and army institutions, the railways and infrastructure, roads and bridges, the creation of a salaried middle class and all the other stuff Empire brought which countries like India and Pakistan kept and built on after we left- somehow I doubt it! But there is a reason that despite all the bad shit we did exploiting other countries during Empire, the UK remains on good terms with most former Empire countries (and a lot kept the Union Jack as their flag or incorporated it into their own new flag or even kept the Monarch on as head of State)- it wasn't all one way traffic.

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Pettytyrant101 wrote:if they are going to cover Empire hope they remember to be balanced and mention hospitals, postal service, police and army institutions, the railways and infrastructure, roads and bridges, the creation of a salaried middle class and all the other stuff Empire brought which countries like India and Pakistan kept and built on after we left- somehow I doubt it!

Hopefully they can find some time in between all that to mention the more than 50 million people who starved to death during (mostly man-made) famines in British India. Or maybe the systematic torture of prisoners during pro-independence revolts? Or how they pioneered the use of concentration camps in the Second Boer War?

{{Well the final consolidated viewing figures are in for 13th Doctor- officially its the highest viewed opening episode for any Doctor- but there is a caveat, this is the first year the figures have included those watching on phones, pc and tablets- so the comparison is not entirely fair.

Anyhow The Woman Who Fell To Earth consolidated at 10.9 million.

Here's how it stands against the other Doctor top debuts-

1. The Woman Who Fell to Earth - 10.90m (Jodie Whittaker)
2. Rose - 10.81m (Christopher Eccleston)
3. Robot - 10.80m (Tom Baker)
4. The Eleventh Hour - 10.09m (Matt Smith)
5. The Christmas Invasion - 9.74m (David Tennant)
6. Deep Breath - 9.17m (Peter Capaldi)

The overnight for Jodies debut was 8.2 million so it attracted a bigger overnight than usual, but less catch-up viewers than usual (and that's with the new additions of phones, tablets and pcs).

Overall it seems to show that the new series has attracted back about 1 and half million viewers- but that might be as much curiosity at the female Doctor- the trick will be holding onto them once that novelty wears off.
And I'd love to know what Jodies numbers were minus the new additions to have a fairer comparison ( I reckon you can add half million to everyone else from 11th Hour onwards as a rough estimate- before that wasn't really any catch-up, it wasn't a big thing yet).  }}

the more than 50 million people who starved to death during (mostly man-made) famines in British India. Or maybe the systematic torture of prisoners during pro-independence revolts? Or how they pioneered the use of concentration camps in the Second Boer War? -Eldy

{{I think you'll find Eldy I covered that! Under - "all the bad shit we did exploiting other countries".

Doesn't change the fact it wasn't all bad, and some of the good fundamentally altered those countries for their  long term good and the institutions created and much of the infrastructure still in use in those places to this day.
My point being if your going to go on about the bad, you have to mention some of the good, and if you want to talk about the good, you have to mention the bad.
Nothing is black and white, everything is a shade of grey, and on the strength of the writing so far this series shading is not a strong point!}}

It seems a little strange to me to pat oneself on the back for building infrastructure and civil society in someone else's country after systematically dismantling their society beforehand.

I mean, even if we ignore cases like India and focus only on countries with lower levels of development even before colonialism, being conquered is not the only path towards modernization. It's actually--unsurprisingly--far less efficient when so much of the machinery of the state is dedicated to keeping the majority of the population oppressed. Not to mention that, even when those postal services and middle class salaries benefitted non-Europeans, there were almost always disparities by design, with smaller ethnic groups being privileged over larger ones as a divide and conquer tactic, to keep different "tribes" at each other's throats. You don't have to look any further than Northern Ireland to see that in action, though it's effects have been exacerbated to even greater extents by the largely artificial borders that were drawn throughout much of the post-colonial world (not that partitions that tried to take local demographics into account had a great track record either).

All that said--while it's true that war and colonialism and international relations in general are very complex and you can't make generalizations about morality that are true in every case, I think some crimes are severe enough that deflecting attention away from them is disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst, because it normalizes the attitude that stomping on people is okay if you can make up excuses for it. The Catholic Church is a topical example: it does lots of charity work and runs lots of schools and universities and whatnot, but it's also dedicated at every level of organization to covering up and enabling the sexual abuse of children, and I think the world would be a better place if the church were dissolved despite the fact that it also does good. Or, like, the US invasion of Iraq brought some improvements to the country, at least in the short term. It absolutely brought improvements for the Shiites (the majority of the country) and the Kurds. But, y'know, it was still an illegal invasion justified by lies and marred by extensive use of torture directed from the highest levels, so I don't give Bush, Blair, and co. plaudits for it.

{{You are assuming some assigning of good or bad on my part which isn't there- to take your example of the Catholic Church- I would not support the Churches position, but if you were to make a drama about the history of the Church to deny it has done any good at all and make every aspect of it out to be bad would be false. My case on Empire is that to solely focus on it as all bad in every way because of atrocities which were all bad in every way, and ignore or not acknowledge any good is as equally false.

And Doctor Who, in a 50 minute format, with adventure and aliens doesn't seem the place to me to be trying to cover a subject as complex, nuanced, and on the scale of Empire (I feel similarly about the show tackling Rosa Parks- in the past the excuse of certain event being 'fixed points in time' and unalterable has allowed it to avoid dealing with anything too big or too sensitive- its why the Doctor has never stopped Hitler or went back and prevented Hiroshima or 9/11- big, sensitive historical event shave always been avoided that way, well until now) }}

I'm not really inclined to think that an adventure show about aliens and magic phone booths is a great medium for addressing historical wrongs of any sort, but since I'm not a Who fan I didn't want to shit up this thread by whining about the basic premise of the show. :V

Apologies if I was overly aggressive, but "colonialism was good for the colonized" is regularly trotted out as a defense of literal genocide (not just talking about the British--many of the worst examples occurred under other empires) so I'm profoundly uncomfortable with the sentiment, in addition to disagreeing with it just on an assessment of facts. Not trying to suggest that's what you were saying here, though.

Anyway, I'll see myself out.

I'm not really inclined to think thatan adventure show about aliens and magic phone booths is a great medium for addressing historical wrongs of any sort- Eldy

{{I would agree- and it hasn't in the past- when it comes to politics and social commentary the show has done what sci-fi as always done best, through allegory. Whether that's the Happiness Patrol about an alien planet where Happiness is enforceable by law and not being happy enough can get you killed being a critique of Thatcherism, or the recent Empress of Mars commenting on Brexit- its always been under the hood and by inference. Sometimes well done, sometimes clumsily- but just going head on into the subject of racism and civil rights like this, I am very unsure if it will work. }}

Eldy wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:if they are going to cover Empire hope they remember to be balanced and mention hospitals, postal service, police and army institutions, the railways and infrastructure, roads and bridges, the creation of a salaried middle class and all the other stuff Empire brought which countries like India and Pakistan kept and built on after we left- somehow I doubt it!

Hopefully they can find some time in between all that to mention the more than 50 million people who starved to death during (mostly man-made) famines in British India. Or maybe the systematic torture of prisoners during pro-independence revolts? Or how they pioneered the use of concentration camps in the Second Boer War?

may I remind you.

Switching lanes, for purely sci-fi stories Lost in Space tv series falls into that category for me. Dare I say the stories were better because no one thought going back to save Kennedy being shot was a great idea ( me being hypothetical as this was an American show ) It dealt with the weirdest of Aliens doing weirdy Alien stuff mostly with Dr Smith involved. I still haven't watched the new lady Who, Im going by what Ive read here but, if Dr Who goes too far down the political track I feel this is a bad move by Aunty Beeb. Why cant Chibnail & whoever just keep it fresh by being outrageous, silly, stupid, improbable but not impossible ? Give me something to think that there are Aliens out there, I want the creeps too. Don't give me "what if we changed this or did that" shit ! feck, don't we all do that in our minds anyway ? The past Drs of so many moons ago look so much more enticing than the super doper, clever whizz kid with all the gadgets of today ! God give me strength !

I'm glad that you guys are solving everything wrong throughout history, but maybe take it to the Big Bad Serious thread, eh?

{{ Problem is Forest, Who seems to be heading off into the BBST! Taking on Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement and the end of Empire and the creation of Pakistan head on- those are some pretty contentious subjects to tackle in a 50 minute sci-fi adventure story about a mad woman in a box! Who is making itself political by choice under Chibnal. }}

Life of Brian would have been banned if it had been made today. Too many 'offended' people.

Ireland too*

Anyway, I understand what you're saying Petty. But I think we should wait for the episode to come out before we get into it too much.

{{Well not long till we find out Forest- the writer is Who's first black female writer- which I only mention because the BBC did, quite loudly- lucky she got the black people story then! (I dislike strongly this modern notion black people should write the black people stuff, only gay people should write gay people stuff, straight actors cant play trans characters ect- humans should be able through research, empathy, understanding  and by putting themselves in other peoples shoes be able to write about or act other humans!! After all if I write a novel about Jack the Ripper I dont have to have murdered a bunch of prostitutes to do so! )
She also prior to this wrote children's books, which should be an interesting meeting of tones! }}

I didn't watch the 1st episode of Dr Who so I really made a point of watching this weeks episode...……

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