thedivinegoat | (no subject)

I'm a third generation Doctor Who fan, (my son is now fourth generation) the first Doctor I can remember watching is the fourth Doctor. During my teens, I loved the Seventh Doctor and idolised Ace. Had posters of both on my walls.

Then the Ninth Doctor came along and I adored him, mourned him and came to love the Tenth Doctor as well, whilst becoming more critical of the show.

Because despite the occasionally clunky dialogue, plot holes you could drive a TARDIS through, gender and race fail, I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Only, last Easter, for what a reason I've forgotten now, we didn't watch The Planet of the Dead when it aired. And then we kept on not finding the time to watch it, or weren't in the mood. And the same with the Water of Mars and End of Time.

But now Eleven's starting tomorrow, so last week we started to catch up. I loved Planet of the Dead and want to know where all the Christine de Souza fic is. (Especially the Amanda/Parker/Christine capers). But Water of Mars, I hated it. I didn't finish watching it because it was actually an effort to watch it, and instead sat behind the sofa, (I know, but it's one of the few comfortable places to sit in our sitting room where you're not in sight of the telly), reading fic whilst Doug finished watching it.

And then came the End of Time. And yet again I got about fifteen, twenty minutes in and couldn't watch any more. I wasn't watching the Doctor, I was watching someone run around in his clothes. So Doug finished watching it on his own. And told me about it. And then made me watch the regeneration scene.

...

WTF?

...

Just really, WTF?

You know how in fics fans have really run with the whole Doctor getting slapped meme? That's what that whole end bit needed. Only the with writers getting slapped as well. (And WTF was the Mickey & Martha bit? Not that I'm necessarily opposed to the ship, but when Martha was last known to have been happily engaged to Tom, where did it come from? I'm pretending I misheard the no place for a married woman line.) Because that whole stare-at-people-moodily whilst refusing to talk to them came across as ridiculous rather than the intense, I'm-dying-and-I-don't-want-to that I think they were going for. Bah.

I've been disappointed in Doctor Who, I've hated choices they've made, been angered by the stories they've chosen to tell. But never on this level before. It just didn't feel like Doctor Who. Which when you consider how varied in tone it's been over the years is quite a feat.

I'm giving Eleven a chance. I have to, but I feel now that the show is now going to have to work to keep me, rather than before where it would to have to work to drive me away.

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It was so disappointing at the end. I'm glad to see Eleven coming along, just to wipe the slate clean of Ten's terrible, horrible suffering. (All credit to David Tennant for doing what he could with such turgid material.) There have been such heart-breaking, stark and sad regeneration stories, Ten's could have been done so much better.

A new Doctor is always exciting though. *waits patiently*

I tried to finish "End of Time," I did, but it was like a root canal for the brain and I gave up about ten minutes into part two with no regrets. Never saw any but the last ten minutes of "Waters of Mars," never saw any of "Planet of the Dead." I should rightly feel like I missed something, but...I don't.

"You know how in fics fans have really run with the whole Doctor getting slapped meme? That's what that whole end bit needed. Only the with writers getting slapped as well."

The hardest-core Ten fans on my list were all going, "OH, CHRIST, TEN, JUST FREAKING DIE ALREADY!"

Honestly? That was ALL Rusty. That was his big goodbye. I heard somewhere that Tennant had to actually talk him down from making the Doctor cry.

Rusty's gone now. :D

I'm glad that RTD has left - it's a clean start, hopefully with less telling us "The Doctor is SO OMG SPECIAL" and more of the Doctor actually being awesome.

hopefully with less telling us "The Doctor is SO OMG SPECIAL

I think that's a pretty safe bet. The Moff has a thing for letting his OCs mock the Doctor. *g*

I really liked The Waters of Mars, actually. Really creepy, footsteps-of-doom stuff; Adelaide was awesome. Obviously there can't be any Adelaide fics because she's dead, but talk about the Doctor's hubris, talk about the Doctor really needing someone to stop him...

I liked Adelaide better than Lady Christina, actually. Lady Christina was too smug. Mind you, she and Amanda-the-immortal-thief would make a good team. Or probably not, they'd be too busy double-crossing each other. But it would be fun to watch.

As for "The End of Time"...
Remember "The Last of the Time Lords"? Remember "Journey's End"? After those clunkers, I was really expecting "The End of Time" to be just as much of a clunker, and then I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't.

I don't think the regeneration scene has the same impact if one hasn't seen the whole episode, if one hasn't been waiting, the whole time, for the "he will knock four times" moment, and then be completely bowled over when the real "he will knock four times" moment happens, just after the Doctor had been expecting to die, was surprised that he was still alive, and then realizes that he's going to have to die after all... because he doesn't want to be the kind of person who would let someone else die when he could save them.

I adored Nine - I thought they did the mixture of humour and melancholy really well with him. But with Ten it just became a slog for me. I didn't watch the second half of End of Time because I found the first half dragged so much. Ten was acting so self-indulgently it was painful.

I'll save you a long epic rant about my issues with The End of Time, Torchwood: Children of Earth, Planet of the Dead, etc. But suffice it to say I've grown more disenchanted with the series. And End of Time was about the worst. Too many things I didn't like/made no sense/etc.

It just didn't feel like Doctor Who.

This has been one of my biggest issues with New Who. Maybe it's because I was brought up on old Who, but the new series (mostly Ten's) lacked... a certain spark/charm that the old series had. And it just got worse over time until we got to The End Of Time. It's like it got so caught up in trying to out-do the last series/special/regeneration/episode, it lost track of what made old Who good. And I wonder if they'll ever find it again. Because I want to love it, but I don't know if I'll be able to. :/

Me too.

I'm dreading it. Which means I'll probably forget when it's on.

I'm the opposite way round to you, I think - I didn't like Planet of the Dead at all, but there was a lot I liked about Waters Of Mars (the setting, Adelaide and her team, and the old-school monster).

I hated the Doctor's characterisation in both, though, it felt like I was reading fic by someone with a progressively more annoying axe to grind. (You know when someone gets the idée fixe that actually, Gwen's problem is that she was brought up a Jehovah's Witness, or that Mickey's parents are upper-class hippies, and no amount of 'Actually, I don't see that in the script...' will shift them? Like that). I think RTD was probably trying to show that the Doctor was going off the rails a bit without a permanent companion, but it felt more like the whole universe was going off the rails, and I really didn't like it.

I didn't want Matt Smith as Eleven: I'd confidently expected Paterson Joseph and was much more distressed than I'd expected to be to hear that he hadn't got it, and it didn't help that some non-UK fans were declaring that UK fans hadn't wanted Paterson Joseph in the first place for racist reasons. I did think Eleven was unexpectedly charming at the very end of End Of Time (which I watched pretty much solely because I've had a crush on Timothy Dalton since I was about fourteen) so I'm going to give him a chance, but I agree, he's got a lot of ground to make up.