Watched the latest two parter with the kids (6&9) and what a load of rubbish.
They need to go back to simpler storylines, written by new blood.
Good versus evil, and they need to remember it is for kids.
Bloody hell it was awful. Always thought Jodie Whittaker was a good actress, but sorry, she's a crap Doctor Who. Seems to lack any presence or charisma and is indistinguishable from her companions. Doesn't help that they are all Northern - I felt like I was trapped in an advert for Plusnet
Chibnall seems to have relented from his infantile uber-woke sledgehammer moralising agenda of s11. He's still the worst thing bar none to have been inflicted on Dr Who in its 50+ years. And I'm including Michael Grade's prattish cancelling of the series in 1989. Chibnall doesn't understand the distinction between telly for children and childish telly. There's no discernible plot nor any actual direction he relies exclusively on lengthy exposition - the final resort of the utterly talentless. Exposition = character 1 mansplaining the "story" to character 2 - might as well be Jackanory. Drama of any quality at all requires "show, not tell". Spyfall initially showed a feint glimmer of promise but ep2 descended back into exposition and a shameless rewrite of Gallifrey's history. I'm no Whovian canon saddo but Tenant, Smith, Hurt and Capaldi all told the same story of the Time Wars, the demise of Gallifrey and the Time Lords and Dr's role therein. Chibnall the clot just cut that out and clumsily replaced it in 2 minutes of expedience to vainly attempt to flesh out his Master's mania. Chibnall is the biggest problem by far. This crop of companions are blatantly tokenistic and embarrassingly thinly drawn. Graham and Ryan are gossamer thin and utterly redundant. Bradley Walsh can't act his way out of a wet paper bag. No idea if Tosin Cole can act at all, he's not had a single line of dialogue that doesn't make him sound catastrophically dim. Yasmin Khan is the best of the three but that is no compliment. Whitaker's talent is criminally under used. I'm astonished she stuck it out after S11's horrible bilge. Maybe she was too close to it to realise what dreadful sewage in which she'd been cast adrift. The rest of s12 will have to be unrecognisable for her to stay and the series to survive. Chibnall's Dr Who is career suicide for all concerned. If Chibnall had an atom of self-awareness or self-respect he'd have bailed after s11.
Watched the latest two parter with the kids (6&9) and what a load of rubbish.
They need to go back to simpler storylines, written by new blood.
Good versus evil, and they need to remember it is for kids.
Point of order. It's for families. Kids can watch it and be scared, adults can enjoy it too because there's grown up stuff in there as well. At least that's how it used to be. Granted, that's a difficult balance to achieve but it's clearly beyond Chibnall's meagre talents.
I have absolutely no idea who the current Dr Who is for. Maybe just those annoying woke types that bang on about inclusion, representation and never mind the story.
For those complaining about a female Doctor, this is the BBC of course and how many recognised genders are we up to at the moment? Beware of what you wish for.
I started to watch the last episode having suffered the previous series. I won't waste any more time on the current nonsense that claims to be Doctor Who. An utter shambles of writing and casting.
For those complaining about a female Doctor, this is the BBC of course and how many recognised genders are we up to at the moment? Beware of what you wish for.
As it's the BBC she probably gets paid about half what Capaldi got.
Chibnall seems to have relented from his infantile uber-woke sledgehammer moralising agenda of s11. He's still the worst thing bar none to have been inflicted on Dr Who in its 50+ years. And I'm including Michael Grade's prattish cancelling of the series in 1989. Chibnall doesn't understand the distinction between telly for children and childish telly. There's no discernible plot nor any actual direction he relies exclusively on lengthy exposition - the final resort of the utterly talentless. Exposition = character 1 mansplaining the "story" to character 2 - might as well be Jackanory. Drama of any quality at all requires "show, not tell". Spyfall initially showed a feint glimmer of promise but ep2 descended back into exposition and a shameless rewrite of Gallifrey's history. I'm no Whovian canon saddo but Tenant, Smith, Hurt and Capaldi all told the same story of the Time Wars, the demise of Gallifrey and the Time Lords and Dr's role therein. Chibnall the clot just cut that out and clumsily replaced it in 2 minutes of expedience to vainly attempt to flesh out his Master's mania. Chibnall is the biggest problem by far. This crop of companions are blatantly tokenistic and embarrassingly thinly drawn. Graham and Ryan are gossamer thin and utterly redundant. Bradley Walsh can't act his way out of a wet paper bag. No idea if Tosin Cole can act at all, he's not had a single line of dialogue that doesn't make him sound catastrophically dim. Yasmin Khan is the best of the three but that is no compliment. Whitaker's talent is criminally under used. I'm astonished she stuck it out after S11's horrible bilge. Maybe she was too close to it to realise what dreadful sewage in which she'd been cast adrift. The rest of s12 will have to be unrecognisable for her to stay and the series to survive. Chibnall's Dr Who is career suicide for all concerned. If Chibnall had an atom of self-awareness or self-respect he'd have bailed after s11.
Just watched both episodes of Spyfall ... and you have it exactly right.
Today's episode really annoyed me and I'm in favour of inclusivity. What I'm not in favour of is taking the premise of the show (timelord travels through time and space and these are fixed points) and changing it to make a hamfisted point about how we are trashing the planet but "we can change our ways". No, we can't if we've been shown the future: that's kind of the whole grandfather paradox with time travel. Really annoyed with it over and above the clunky scripts and production. I get that they needed to move on from "Save the Universe every week" under the previous regime, but this is not working.
Today's episode really annoyed me and I'm in favour of inclusivity. What I'm not in favour of is taking the premise of the show (timelord travels through time and space and these are fixed points) and changing it to make a hamfisted point about how we are trashing the planet but "we can change our ways". No, we can't if we've been shown the future: that's kind of the whole grandfather paradox with time travel. Really annoyed with it over and above the clunky scripts and production. I get that they needed to move on from "Save the Universe every week" under the previous regime, but this is not working.
Blimey that's a generous appraisal! that was 50 minutes of infantile ranting bullshit "climate change message" my arse that's the sort of hysterical drivel that the climate change deniers point to when ridiculing the issue. Ep 3 was attributed to Ed Hime who was responsible for one of S12's lowest moments and that's saying something Interesting that this one was 10 minutes shorter than most of the Ch!bn@ll era, lots of overdubbed dialogue, many cuts and post production required?? Elastoplast on an axewound. If that's appropriate viewing for 7:10pm kid's TV, what the actual eff? Those dregs were proper nasty - blatant ripoff Alien obv, plus the POTA ripoff finding old Earth writing on a wall proving they're on planet earth after all!! BBC lawyers looking at royalty suits shortly as well as the death of one of their bigger revenue generators. That's it for me, I doubt I'll see any more of this preposterous insulting horse shit, which after nearly 50 years is heartbreaking. Take a bow Chibnall, you're the final nail.
As an aside, with Spyfall part filmed in South Africa, and this story part filmed in Tenerife, this series of Doctor Who itself has a rather high carbon footprint...
As an aside, with Spyfall part filmed in South Africa, and this story part filmed in Tenerife, this series of Doctor Who itself has a rather high carbon footprint...
There is one way to save Dr Who - have a spin off show about the Daleks - there are some great stories out there that don't involve the Doctor that could be adapted. Hopefully that would keep the plates spinning until the scriptwriters can get their house in order.
Well as far as I can tell, the professional critics love the new series of Dr Who. I reckon that they all need to find new jobs as they are shit at their current ones.
TBH, most plays on R4 and just about any new drama produced by the BBC I've seen, all fit in with the current writing of Dr Who. I've come around to the idea that the BBC has outlived it's special status and needs to find it's own way in the world.
That Metro review was particularly nauseating. They can't defend how Dr Who has been turned into a humourless hectoring lecture, so they try to sell the wokeness as a virtue. Jokeshop writing.
The thing that does my head in is that science fiction has always addressed society's big issues, through allegory, extrapolation and imagination. The subtlety and intelligence that the best sci-fi addresses the issues of today with is entirely absent. It's so on the nose and blatant. Dr Who used to have writers of the quality of Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman. Now it's just a parade of hacks who's TV writing credits are for cack like Emmerdale and Doctors.
The fall in ratings and viewers is down to Misogyny, sexism, racism, Brexit voters and climate change deniers, couldn’t possibly be anything to do with poor writing, political hectoring and BBC left wing ideology being shoehorned into a kids TV show, the mere thought
Comments
Always thought Jodie Whittaker was a good actress, but sorry, she's a crap Doctor Who.
Seems to lack any presence or charisma and is indistinguishable from her companions.
Doesn't help that they are all Northern - I felt like I was trapped in an advert for Plusnet
Uninspiring writing doesn't help, but Jodie doesn't dominate the screen, to me she's a character actor, not a lead role actor.
He's still the worst thing bar none to have been inflicted on Dr Who in its 50+ years. And I'm including Michael Grade's prattish cancelling of the series in 1989.
Chibnall doesn't understand the distinction between telly for children and childish telly.
There's no discernible plot nor any actual direction he relies exclusively on lengthy exposition - the final resort of the utterly talentless.
Exposition = character 1 mansplaining the "story" to character 2 - might as well be Jackanory. Drama of any quality at all requires "show, not tell".
Spyfall initially showed a feint glimmer of promise but ep2 descended back into exposition and a shameless rewrite of Gallifrey's history.
I'm no Whovian canon saddo but Tenant, Smith, Hurt and Capaldi all told the same story of the Time Wars, the demise of Gallifrey and the Time Lords and Dr's role therein. Chibnall the clot just cut that out and clumsily replaced it in 2 minutes of expedience to vainly attempt to flesh out his Master's mania.
Chibnall is the biggest problem by far. This crop of companions are blatantly tokenistic and embarrassingly thinly drawn. Graham and Ryan are gossamer thin and utterly redundant. Bradley Walsh can't act his way out of a wet paper bag. No idea if Tosin Cole can act at all, he's not had a single line of dialogue that doesn't make him sound catastrophically dim. Yasmin Khan is the best of the three but that is no compliment. Whitaker's talent is criminally under used. I'm astonished she stuck it out after S11's horrible bilge. Maybe she was too close to it to realise what dreadful sewage in which she'd been cast adrift. The rest of s12 will have to be unrecognisable for her to stay and the series to survive. Chibnall's Dr Who is career suicide for all concerned.
If Chibnall had an atom of self-awareness or self-respect he'd have bailed after s11.
Point of order. It's for families. Kids can watch it and be scared, adults can enjoy it too because there's grown up stuff in there as well. At least that's how it used to be. Granted, that's a difficult balance to achieve but it's clearly beyond Chibnall's meagre talents.
I have absolutely no idea who the current Dr Who is for. Maybe just those annoying woke types that bang on about inclusion, representation and never mind the story.
that was 50 minutes of infantile ranting bullshit
"climate change message" my arse
that's the sort of hysterical drivel that the climate change deniers point to when ridiculing the issue.
Ep 3 was attributed to Ed Hime who was responsible for one of S12's lowest moments and that's saying something
Interesting that this one was 10 minutes shorter than most of the Ch!bn@ll era, lots of overdubbed dialogue, many cuts and post production required?? Elastoplast on an axewound.
If that's appropriate viewing for 7:10pm kid's TV, what the actual eff? Those dregs were proper nasty - blatant ripoff Alien obv, plus the POTA ripoff finding old Earth writing on a wall proving they're on planet earth after all!! BBC lawyers looking at royalty suits shortly as well as the death of one of their bigger revenue generators.
That's it for me, I doubt I'll see any more of this preposterous insulting horse shit, which after nearly 50 years is heartbreaking.
Take a bow Chibnall, you're the final nail.
http://alteredvistas.co.uk/html/doctorless.html
https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/12/doctor-who-series-12-episode-3-review-orphan-55-is-a-brilliantly-woke-sci-fi-tale-where-jodie-whittaker-shines-12044879/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/doctor_who/s12/e01
It appears that CL is more in tune with the great British unwashed than the critics.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/10659956/doctor-who-ratings-fall-worst-ever/
TBH, most plays on R4 and just about any new drama produced by the BBC I've seen, all fit in with the current writing of Dr Who. I've come around to the idea that the BBC has outlived it's special status and needs to find it's own way in the world.
The thing that does my head in is that science fiction has always addressed society's big issues, through allegory, extrapolation and imagination. The subtlety and intelligence that the best sci-fi addresses the issues of today with is entirely absent. It's so on the nose and blatant. Dr Who used to have writers of the quality of Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman. Now it's just a parade of hacks who's TV writing credits are for cack like Emmerdale and Doctors.