/who/ Doctor Who General

Failed the Class edition.

mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-who-spin-class-axed-9906600

What went wrong /who/? Did the show have enough potential to deserve a 2nd series? Reminder Torchwood season 1 wasn't great but later improved.

Failed the exams

...

>What went wrong /who/?
It wasn't Divided Loyalties.

never watched Class and completely forgot it existed until I just saw this thread. Looked like shit from the very first trailer

To be fair, I liked the trailers. But I thing most DW fans wanted another Torchwood season, so boycotted this spin off.

*think

>I thing most DW fans wanted another Torchwood season

Torchwood is so dated. It was entertaining, though very flawed, when it came out, but there's not reason to revive it. The fact they killed half of the cast doesn't help either.

I really doubt anybody "boycotted" Class because it wasn't Torchwood, except for Barrowman himself.

Having only three visible elements that connected it to Doctor Who (Doctor, Coal Hill, Weeping Angel), not any continuity carrying over (save for The Doctor trying to remember Clara) and it's scheduling was erratic and an inaccessible demographic (that sort of audience is not going to spend a school night watching escapist nonsense when they should be watching Newsnight for media studies)

What a waste of a year 2016 proved to be for Who, really.

The only reason Class existed was because the Beeb couldn't get any Who out last year except a fucking Christmas special. This is probably aprt of the reason why Capaldi left. A whole year with only 1 episode to show? fuck off. Id be pissed to.

>Having only three visible elements that connected it to Doctor Who (Doctor, Coal Hill, Weeping Angel)

Exactly this. Would have enticed more viewers if one of the main cast had been in DW before, as was the case with Torchwood and The SJAs.

But, even then I have doubts whether it would've succeeded. BBC3 viewer numbers have fallen significantly since it went online only. Plus the target audience (16-34 yr olds) have better sci fi shows with much higher budgets on Netflix etc to watch (eg Stranger Things, Sense8, Jessica Jones, Orphan Black, Black Mirror). As well as Doctor Who itself, of course.

>What a waste of a year 2016 proved to be for Who, really.

Yup. I really cant wait to read a book on what went down during the final few years of Moffat's renure. Why did matt smith really leave. Why did Capaldi leave. Was it because of the mismanagement he previously spoke about. the whole 2016 hiatus. I really hope Moffat does a book.

Shame, I actually liked Class.

>I really hope Moffat does a book.
>wanting 345 pages of Moffat masturbating about his ideas

I hope Gatiss old and bitter write a book.

I never finished watching Class.

i always feel as that P Ness just wanted to do Buffy with aliens that had nothing to do with doctor who. it was only when they asked him to write an episode he quickly changed it to be in doctor who so he could get it made

They'll be a book written about the gap years as well probably...about the only time anyone will care enough for Class to provide it a signficant portion of the book for the 2016 section

Yeah, I feel like the BBC forced the Doctor Who thing on him because they weren't confident enough in an original show. There's no reason why it should've been connected to Doctor Who

>The only reason Class existed was because the Beeb couldn't get any Who out last year except a fucking Christmas special.

Possibly. But I'm of the opinion filming for series 10 was delayed because 1. Capaldi was recovering from knee surgery, 2. Moffat had believed s9 was his last so hadn't planned for a s10, 3. Chibnall busy with Broadchurch 3.

So yeah, makes sense that the Beeb may have thought "hey, let's make a cheap as chips spin off filler series to placate the fans."

Something definitely went wrong during s7, would also be interested to know what and why.

So do I. It needs more promotion.

It's pretty good, although feels a bit 'rushed'. My favorite episodes were the last 3.

>Something definitely went wrong during s7, would also be interested to know what and why.
Moffat took on too much work.

Same thing RTD did every year after S1. The difference is, whenever RTD realised he had two weeks left to finish six scripts, he just snorted a mountain of coke and wrote and rewrote until he had something that almost makes sense if you're also on coke when you watch it, while Moffat just decided, fuck it, we'll film the first draft.

Maybe being producer and lead writer and writing 5 episodes and doing PR along with the actors and trying to run another show or two at the same time isn't actually a good idea. Maybe that's why no other show does things that way except shows that do 6-8 episodes every couple years. Just a thought.

I don't think the BBC want Doctor Who anymore ... again.

Episodes 7 was good, and 6 wasn't bad, but 8 was crap.

Has anyone read the Class novels? I don't mean anyone on /who/, I mean, have even the authors' parents read them?

mistakes of the past

Why would the BBC not want the show that makes up a sizable chunk of their overseas licensing and merch licensing?

Who is /who/'s favourite Who character?

You can't seriously expect anyone to choose between Zoe and Jamie, can you?

Lon

It's time.

The Master. All his iterations.

Bob

Adam Orford

Why the fuck did they kill everyone on torchwood?

Damage Control.

Nuclear clean-up.

Pure dickery.

In hopes that killing everyone would distract people from complaining that they killed Ianto.

The baby Ice Warrior

Poor Ianto. saveiantojones.com is down, the Coffee Boy charity fundaraiser hasn't had a donation in over five years, even the LiveJournal site hasn't been updated since 2011.

I guess everyone forgot that they would never forget their coffee boy.

I tried to watch Dr. Who but this TV show is not for me, tried 3-4 times with 3 different doctors. one from 2005 or 7 idk which one, but this show is shit, utterly unwatchable.

I'm just curious why do people like it? I'm sure people like it for different reasons and it's a great show, it's just not for me. but i feel like i'm missing out since i love sci-fi and apparently Dr. Who is holy grail of sci fi.

Is Marco Polo worth watching. 7 recon episodes in a row.

Torchwood S3 is pure kino

Classic era is better but I just watch it cause its doctor who and I've been watching it since 05'. Might as well watch it even though it's been butchered.

But lanto died last

Doctor Who isn't really sci-fi, it's fantasy. Much more so than most supposedly sci-fi shows. While the show does advocate for a scientific mindset, it's very rare that the solution to the problem of the week is anything to do with the technobabble pseudoscience that gets spouted along the way (much less actual science, as found in hard SF books but not so often on TV).

So, if you love sci-fi TV, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Doctor Who.

>EDITOR: Kindly desist from interfering with my systems
>SCHANDEL: Told you, editor controls the entire ship, none of us could fly it even if we wanted to, which of course I don't
>OLLISTRA:What sort of stupid idea is that, a ship with no control access
>EDITOR: You've clearly never worked with writers. Transport on delivery. Once Shandel uploads his footage for this assignment and only then we shall depart
>OLLISTRA: Which is?
>EDITOR: None of your business, yet
Kek I can already tell this War Doctor Volume is going to be kino.

Thanks. I was asked by so many people to watch it and finally I did.

I ask that question to everyone who suggests me that show and none have a good answer.

desu i love fantasy too. I just said 'sci-fi' because that's what people keep talking about it.

I guess it looked more dated, and also the premises just not be the right setting for me.

Some of the episodes' recons are pretty rough, too; there really was very little to go on (not even telesnaps for most of them).

But it's a great story, and it's actually a lot less padded than most of the other ridiculously long early serials, and there's more character development for the original regulars here than anywhere else.

>Doctor Who isn't really sci-fi, it's fantasy.
Now it is. The show and the creeps in control has lost base with the natural feeling of the show and it's character. While a by product of the Sci-Fi genre may include fantasy aspects, Doctor Who these days has an major element of drama, more than any of the other two.

Just stick with the good episodes like:
Twelfth Doctor: Heaven Sent
Eleventh: The Beast Below, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
Tenth: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, Midnight
Ninth: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Eighth: (Audio only) The Chimes of Midnight, The Natural History of Fear

*it needed

I lost my waifu, I'm not ok.

Am I a cuck for liking Mrs Quill

>I guess it looked more dated
Well, you might like some of the more recent seasons better than 2005, but to be honest, Doctor Who has never looked up-to-date with any American sci-fi or fantasy show. and if that's important to you, you're probably not going to like it.

>also the premises just not be the right setting for me
Sure, that's possible. The basic format of one guy who travels through time with one or three usually-present-day-human assistants getting involved in events by fast-talking his way through everything… either you love that, or you don't. Sometimes the show does other things on top of that (complicated time-travel plots, or big-explody alien invasion stories, or whatever), but if you don't like the core of the show, at best you'll kind of like a few of the episodes, and it's probably not worth it to watch just for those.

Nah she's hot

but I have a weird thing for women with prominent noses

Well I do enjoy recons and I am just starting The Faceless Ones so I may have to give it a go next.

Thank you guys, I will check specific episodes and see how it goes from there.

thank the various gods you didn't say Girl in the fireplace or blink.

Report back one day

>Now it is.
When was it ever a scientifically-grounded show? Maybe for one year, during season 18. Otherwise, it's always been fantasy.

I'd say the Van Hoof couple. The Teeth Doctor saved Minogue because she was a guest appearance for later she suicide. The Van Hoof and based Bannakaffalatta had more potencial than that episode, maybe future references along the season.

Being the most honest possible; their deaths were more touching than Heaven Sent.

Doctor Who episodes are generally quite self contained so you can essentially pick and choose what you want to watch although it does assume that you know it's a time travelling show and the Doctor has a TARDIS (blue box).

There are many different writers and different plots for Doctor Who, so the quality of episodes vary wildly from GOAT to SHIT across every medium.

I started doctor who 2 days ago and I'm on ep 8 of the 2005 season.

Is he the best doctah? what am I in for, I'm loving it but I heard the show's fanbase is pretty much autistic.

If you're going to try a bunch of episodes, I'd try at least on classic-Who story.

It's pretty hard to pick a single story to represent the whole range of what Doctor Who did for 26 years to someone who may not even like the concept. Maybe Genesis of the Daleks?

Oh yeah, that's another thing you may love or hate—there's a huge range in the tone and style of the show. Not quite as much in the new series, but still quite a bit. It can go all the way from philosophizing to over-the-top comedy or to doing Hammer horror seriously or whatever the next week.

I watched blink as my first episode after hearing it was the best of the series, was it a meme? I still liked it. Never understood why the time travelers didnt become rich or important people.

>Is he the best doctah?
Yes, the fanbase is as bad as you've heard, so that's a great way to start a flame war. People will argue about whether 9 (the one you're watching) or 12 is best.

But of course they're all wrong because 2 is best.

Best doctor by a huge margin

Of the thousands of Who stories across all of the mediums Blink is a good episode but it isn't the best.

It is about an alien with a time machine. The Time machine part is a Science -Fiction device. I personally have always classed Doctor who from year dot as Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Now as a genre it is Drama.

>But of course they're all wrong because 2 is best.
Fuck yes.

Nah Eight is the best.

I loved 2 desu, it's what got me hooked into the series, ep 1 was weak but still entertained me. I was expecting some casual time travel until shit actually went down and then bam, 5b years into the future to watch the sun explode on episode 2. Yeah that was great.

>I watched blink as my first episode after hearing it was the best of the series, was it a meme?
Picking the one episode to recommend to potential newbies isn't just about picking the best one, it also has to be as accessible as possible, but not so disconnected that it doesn't hook you into the show if you liked it.

I personally like plenty of stories more than Blink, but I'd never recommend The Mind Robber (black&white 60s, and weird), Heaven Sent (heavily about the Doctor), Holy Terror (audio-only, and you have to already be comfortable with audio plays to appreciate what it does with them), or Camera Obscura (a novel that doesn't make sense without at least two previous novels).

I meant the Second Doctor, not the second episode of the Ninth Doctor…but yeah, that second episode was a brilliant way to keep people hooked after the NuWho opener.

Oh you talk that way about doctors, sorry I'm new to this show and it looks like it has a big cult behind it, it's not very popular on my country so I'm picking up now.

So the first doctor on the 2005 show is the 9th total?

>but I'd never recommend The Mind Robber
Do you like The Mind Robber though? Thats all that matters to me.

yes

Not him but Camera Obscura was fucking BASED

>So the first doctor on the 2005 show is the 9th total?
If only it were that simple. :)

He's the Ninth Doctor overall.

But there's actually another one crammed in between Eight and Nine.

Not to mention that there are some weird in-between sort-of-Doctor characters. And a previous Ninth Doctor who got on animated story before being written out for the new TV series, plus another one who was mostly a joke, but does get referenced in a couple novels. And there may even have been other incarnations before the first, or maybe a whole other guy called the Other (or a different one called Soul) who was him before that, if you want to dive really deep into the lore and get silly.

But just call him the Ninth Doctor.

Is it worth to watch the old show? sometimes those shows dont age well

Oh yeah, I love the Mind Robber. I'd never recommend it to anyone as their first Doctor Who story, but anyone who gets into the series (and who doesn't hate the black&white era) should definitely watch it. And similar for the other three stories I mentioned, and countless more I could mention.

Another question I have, when the doctor blows up Rose's store to kill the plastic memers at the start of the ep, he goes to rose's house and starts looking at a mirror and says "well, not bad, nice ears" or smt like that.

Did he die and regenerated there? I can only think of that or the doctor becoming a new incarnation just seconds before the episode starts so he still hasn't looked at himself on a mirror

Depends on your taste. I got into them easily when I was about 6 or 7 back in 05 and I still enjoy them. Believe it or not my favorite era is the black and white 60's episodes.

You severely underestimate Twitterinas.

WE DON'T GO ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON

>Is it worth to watch the old show? sometimes those shows dont age well
The special effects are really, really bad. In the early days, it's clear they're going for a more "theatre caught on film" look than a naturalistic movie-like look, so a lot of us don't mind at all, but by the mid-80s…it can get painful even for a fan.

Also, standards for pacing have changed a lot since the 1960s, so you do have to get used to that. A lot of them are much better if you watch one part at a time than if you bingewatch the whole story, but even then, if you grew up on 21st century TV and movies, you may struggle.

But there are a lot of great characters, great stories, and great ideas if you can get past those problems.

The Doctor in that Rose episode is the Ninth.

Unlike Disney which threw all the old canon in the bin, Russell T Davies rebooted the show by considering all the Doctors from 1 to 8 canon but stated/initially implied that there was a 'war' and didn't elaborate too much initially so all the new viewers could begin with the Ninth Doctor.

I liked 2001: space odyssey, can't be much worse than that

>Unlike Disney which threw all the old canon in the bin
With this statement I am referring to Star Wars' canon.

Doctor Who's writers had a different way of dealing with canon.

>Did he die and regenerated there
Actually, they left that open to decide later…and then never really decided.

At the time, they were planning on having Eight regenerate into Nine in the comics, but then they didn't want to show any of Nine's adventures without Rose, and they didn't want the comics to end, so it just sat there for years until finally they confused things even further by adding another Doctor between Eight and Nine.

Oh good. I've watched every year since I bought it back on 2007. Brilliant and spooky episode.

You aren't crazy. Doctor Who is genuinely shit. People only watch it because they watched it as kids so they have a nostalgic attachment. Not since American Horror Story have I seen a long running show that has consistently shit episodes on a regular basis. One or two episodes every season can be very good, but they're few and far between (Blink, Midnight, Empty Child, Girl in Fireplace, Mummy on Orient Express). The fans who think this show is any good are normally fucked in the head, never mentally matured / have a low IQ, etc etc. I watch this show for completionist sake (and nostalgic value) but I'm not a fucking retard, it's absolute garbage, I at least recognize that.

>Doctor Who's writers had a different way of dealing with canon.
Which (other than during the early JNT era) generally consists of laughing at anyone who asks them what is and isn't canon.

The new series was designed to be fully compatible with treating everything that came before it as canon, or just the TV show and the 1996 movie, or just the TV show, or nothing at all.

Which was pretty clever, because who'd want to watch 26 seasons of old TV just to jump on a new show?

>. A lot of them are much better if you watch one part at a time than if you bingewatch the whole story
Somehow as a kid I watched the whole episode in one sitting and enjoyed it. Now days my attention span isn't as good so I watch one episode at a time, kinda sad for me desu

>spewing all this spaghetti on a new fan instead of just answering "yes"

kek, true

I stopped watching but dropped in because of the Torchwood OP image.

I stopped because while there had always been shit episodes, at least it didn't pretend it was good. Now with Moffat every episode is trying too hard. Sorry if it sounds vague, I can't really explain how it's "try-hard" but it's how I feel.

>Somehow as a kid I watched the whole episode in one sitting and enjoyed it.
Well, if you grew up in America in the 70s or 80s, on most PBS stations you didn't have a choice. But that's probably only relevant to Cloister…

>Now with Moffat every episode is trying too hard.
Yes, like you sit down and watch something like Listen it's so far up it's own ass with how clever and deep it think it is. Then you come onto /who/ and see all these children lapping up Moffat's shit like it's the greatest thing in the world.

All popular culture is genuinely shit.

Some of it is shit I like.

I don't have a problem with that.

Great argument.
>typical intelligence level of a doctor who fan

Wouldn't Mummy on the Orient Express be a GOAT regeneration story? Say the Mummy has chosen Clara as the next victim, there's no way out. Except if someone's willing to die quicker. The Doctor shoots himself and starts regenerating: the mummy senses his sickness and targets him. While dying and slowly regenerating in 66 seconds, the Doctor saves Clara by finding out what the mummy is and stopping it. Everyone is safe, except the Doctor who's now in the final stage of regeneration. A quick goodbye to Clara and... the new one comes springing.

Open up, we're going in. We'll stick to the perimeter, no more than three paces from the lift. Do not enter Cloister.