So great in this age of UA-cam shorts to watch something that is detailed and thorough. I sat through the two hours interested and engaged with your content all the way till the end. Even though I knew all of this information the way you approached this recount was very well considered and also showed humility on your part. Thank you.
@rnw2739 Completely disagree... there is a reason why it got canceled in the first place, and JNT and Bidmead both drove the old guard away as he said and boy did the show suffer. Three hapless companions and a good Doctor in Davison was the decline.
@monsieurdel which old guard? Writers and production teams overlap and leave and come in all the time. Doctor Who changed as early as 1965, long before the first regeneration in 1966. After season 17, when I first saw it in 1981, loved Bidmead's changes as a kid. Loved it more since and yep, I saw Buck Rogers at the time too. Saward's era did see some wavering, but seasons 25 and 26 did have me hooked as I was losing interest with season 24... 24 I appreciate more for the ideas, but the execution was awful...
As I’ve been watching McCoy era Who, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality; as it is a lot more enjoyable than I’d been given the impression it would be by the pop culture at large... However, I don’t know if I’d say if more than 50% of it is really great without my fandom goggles being pulled on too tight... I’ve only watched Battlefield and the the Curse of Fenric out of S26 so far but the quality increase in S26 is glaring in comparison, especially to S24.
@@provisionalhypothesis First why can't you fathom The Rani dressed as Mel? And second try to reference an episode that isn't considered to be a stinker by even hardcore McCoy fans, even in that season there is some good stuff like Dragonfire (though I guess you will find it hard to see past the silly cliffhanger goof). I liked Mel more then most, she was almost a proto Donna at times.
@@chrischibird I would say his first season does trend upward, and the second one is mostly very good save for Silver Nemesis (I am very strongly a Happiness Patrol enjoyer)
I started watching Classic Doctor Who a couple months ago and have watched Seasons 1 through 19 and there is a definitive drop off from Logopolis onwards, which is very sad. Soon you can see what JNT was doing and it was not positive at all. I have gotten to the point to where I question whether or not I will even carry on watching. Davison is REALLY good as the Doctor, but the companions and the stories drag him down into the dirt. I have ZERO historical bias in this as they are all first time watches for me and your video is really explaining why I felt the way I did, a behind the scenes look. Well done!!!
@sadako24 I guess what makes my experience different is I am watching them all for the first time, well what I can watch considering some are animations or reconstructed. You spoke about the loss of the Doctor as a hero and the excessive death, which I could see. It is ironic considering Tom Baker's Doctor questioned violence as a means to an end, while the script writer seemed to embrace violence as an eye for an eye, the antithesis of Baker's Doctor. For JNT to allow Bidmead to throw away Dicks and Holmes for that kind of approach is astounding.
I think the drop in writing quality actually preceded Tom's departure. The Graham Williams era, especially the final season, just wasn't producing the high quality stories which were consistently put out under Hinchcliffe. You had some classics, but it was much more hit and miss. This became more noticeable in Tom's last season, in which the only above average story is The Keeper of Traken. This continued into the davison era with some exceptions. I think the show was on the upswing at the end of Davidson's era (Frontios, Awakening, Androzani) and, despite a rocky start with The Twin Dilemma, the show was producing classic stories as frequently and on par with what we saw in the 60s and the early Tom era. The only lapse in consistent writing quality I see in the original series are with the Barry Letts/Pertwee era (after the Seventh season anyway) and then again in late Tom Baker/early Peter Davidson time frame. These lapses in quality pale in comparison to the train wreck that the new series has become more or less since Tennant's original departure.
I completely agree about Saward, some of the stories we got on his watch were indeed violent and devoid of any warmth or fun. It should have ended when Grade took it off air, yes McCoy era somewhat made ammends, but the damage had already been done. Comparable to the series now, should have ended with Capaldi in my opinion. Thanks 👍
@@michaelwebster8666 I suppose if it had ended on Revelation of the Daleks, I'd maybe miss Remembrance of the Daleks and even bits of Trial, but otherwise it'd be a neat finish, Colin woudl've made his mark and could end on a high, and I certainly wouldn't miss anything in Season 24. Plus the Big Finish stuff with Colin could still follow. In terms of dodging Saward's nihilist excesses, I suppose a perfect end would've been on The Five Doctors, but then I'd be missing Revelation (lol). I must admit I didn't entirely warm to Capaldi at the time, and started to tune out as they seemed to be beginning to push the woke agenda even then. I largely stopped watching after Missy happened, and only recently I decided to give his last season a proper watch, and there was some good stuff there. The Cyberman finale was particularly brilliant. So yes, Capaldi's swansong probably would be the best endpoint. There's very little of Jodie's era I'd miss (save maybe for Sacha's Master and the return of Tegan & Ace). Likewise I think Tennant's comeback was tragically wasted, and Ncuti's era has just been a complete non-starter for me, lol.
Those are all good points. Capaldi's final season with Bill as the companion was a return to form.I'd argue for the show after some pretty meh seasons prior to it. You are right the wokeness was already creeping in at this time, but I liked the chemistry between The Doctor & Bill. Jodie's era has a handful of decent episodes and I agree her final episode is probably her best. I actually started watching Who with Trial o a T'Lord, so I do have a soft spot for that period, I was oblivious at the time of the fan backlash against JNT and the direction the show was taking. I was gutted when it finally was taken off air in December '89.
Thanks for this video. Really enjoyed hearing your opinions on 80s Who. The late 80s was when i first got into Doctor Who as a kid. So i really have fond memories of the McCoy era. I do feel even tho people feel there were some dud stories in this decade, i do feel it returned to form in the late 80s. I think season 25 and 26 were some of the best seasons in years. The writing was brillant. I was a fan of the darker version of the Doctor they brought in. And it was a shame the plug was pulled around that time.
What an enjoyable and thought-provoking video! Thank you for making it. I became a fan around 1989/90 from discovering the Target books in my local library. I had watched the show as a small child but I was so disappointed when I saw Colin Baker wasn't in the BBC trailers for Season 24 that I stopped watching until Survival part two! By reading the Target books all out of order I got a good sense of what classic Doctor Who was about. A good story was a good story whether it had the first or seventh Doctor. I do remember though that some of the fifth Doctor books stood out for being overcomplicated or dull (I remember trying and failing to read Castrovalva at the age of 10). It’s just what you say about the show losing the plot (literally) under JNT and Saward - although in defence of the 80s the visuals are often really outstanding. Having seen all the classic series since then I’d say that the problems set in with Season 16. Douglas Adams and Tom Baker seem less interested in Doctor Who than in the Tom Baker show. After that we get Chris Bidmead and Eric Saward who both didn’t seem to actually like Doctor Who at all and tried to take it in different directions that didn’t suit it. But while I know where you’re coming from about whether the show should have ended in 1985, on a personal level I can’t agree. At the age of 7 I just adored Trial of a Timelord and Colin Baker will always be my Doctor! I can see all it’s legion of faults now, but it will always have a place in my heart.
Cheers :) Glad you liked the video. Like you, a lot of my rediscovery of the show was through the Target books. The Abominable Snowmen, The Five Doctors, Destiny of the Daleks and Day of the Daleks. I do think overall, The Five Doctors was probably one of the rare 'easy-reads' of the Davison era. It did seem like JNT and Bidmead wanted to make the show far too high-concept at that time, when it wasn't really what Doctor Who did best. Castrovalva was very convoluted and cumbersome in what it did (though I do think when they finally get to Castrovalva it begins to get good). The sad irony is that it's such a cumbersome journey to the resolution where the Master's finally vanquished... and then come Time-Flight, even that's undone. I do think you're right about Bidmead. I tend to think these days maybe the only real good he did for the show was that he rejected so many scripts it forced them to go back and dig out State of Decay after all. I don't sense he liked the show as it was at all, and much like Saward I think he had a poor layman's understanding of the Doctor being an ineffectual pacifist who just lets the plot happen, rather than a proactive hero. I suppose I'd say the Tom Baker era was golden up to Season 14, and maybe the beginnings of Season 15 too. Horror of Fang Rock was a great beginning, but Underworld and The Invasion of Time were not a great ending. Season 16 for me was a mixed bag. I do think The Ribos Operation and Androids of Tara were very rich indeed, but Power of Kroll seemed to see the whole momentum of the Key to Time quest leave the room, and The Armageddon Factor was like seven layers of purgatory. I guess I can see what you mean about 'the Tom Baker show' element. I do think The Invasion of Time is where that really began. Season 24 I was shocked to finally rediscover in 2007. It was so bad, and I don't blame you for checking out. I guess I can understand why they had no choice but to go with the daft regeneration of Colin. In hindsight though it is tragic that Colin's Doctor never got to go out with a proper bang. It would be so fitting for a Doctor who'd started so apparently selfish and egotistical had gone out in a heroic self-sacrifice, and it's sad that was denied him (then again the stories in Season 24 were so appalling it's hard to imagine any of them giving him the end he deserved). It's funny, because I think despite my take on my preferred end-point, a lot of the clips I've used probably ended up winning the countercase against me. Trial did have its problems but it was also Robert Holmes' last ride of creativity and imagination and in that sense it probably has to be a keeper after all. I guess if I could change one thing about it, I'd have had Peri sent as witness at the end along with Mel, just to properly clarify what really happened in Mindwarp.
@@sadako24 I like that idea of Peri coming back to be a witness at the end of the Trial. I'm glad she survived Mindwarp but just abandoning her with Yrcanos seems almost as cruel as killing her off.
John Nathan turner started off strong. A great new version of the theme tune, a hard science ethos (we don't talk about Meglos) and then a new, and very relatable, Doctor with some solid stories. And then it all went wrong (pretty much immediatley following The Five Doctors) Peter Davidson's final season saw a tonal shift which even as a teenager I knew wasn't good. The special effects had never been great but suddenly they looked genuinely "bad",. Changing the format to 45 minutes, giving us brave, but failed, new take on the character as actually quite abrasive and unlikebale (wonder if Colin would be remembered more fondly if given more time), and scripts that jumped from comedy to violence to horror and did it jarringly. Comedy and light entertainment guest stars suddenly appearing left right and centre, And to top if all off another new version of the theme tune for Trial which was just awful. Sylvester's first season isn't that great either. It did find it's feet again with his final two seasons which are (for the most part) great. But by then the damage had been done, JNT should have been pulled as producer when Peter Davidson was leaving it would have been interesting to see where that might have gone. At the same time the outright cancellation was a bad move, I'd have kept Cartmel in charge and let him do an extended length episode once a year round christmas time which actually had some effort put into it and would actually get promoted by the BBC. Pipe dreams though. Despite McCoy and Cartmel's best efforts with Season 25 and 26 Seasons 21 - 24 had harmed the show beyond repair and most of that blame lies squarely at JNT's feet
Ben Aaronvitch's point that the BBC hated Sci Fi and there was none for years after Who's demise is partly true - certainly the suits hated Sci fi but despite its comedy chops, Red Dwarf was the biggest Sci-Fi show on BBC2 for many years in the 90s. Technically an independent production beyond its first few years, the Boys from the Dwarf showed what could and arguably SHOULD have been done with Who in the late 80s and early 90s. Who should have been farmed out to independents or become co-production in the McCoy era and given a real shot in the arm by independent money supplying the special effects.
Great video, well done! I grew up during the seventies and eighties Doctor Who. Seeing the shows highs and many lows. But that's nothing compared to what is happening to the show today. In some ways you could say the show was (is) influenced or controlled by the acquiescence of perceived tastes of the public of the time (present), but reality they courting their own wants, desires the need of this is 'how it should be' and making it so. The final outcome more often than not results in the negative. Sad as though it is, I've always thought that classic Who really should of ended with either the Five Doctors or Caves of Androzani
I'm not sure I agree with much of this criticism for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there's no objective standard used to show that Dr Who had declined (e.g. ratings, critical reviews); it's mostly personal opinion on what's liked and not liked. Secondly, it seems inconsistent at times (e.g. claiming Saward couldn't deal with "Resurrection of the Daleks" or that JNT made all these demands that resulted in a bad serial but then saying that Saward put his stamp on these same stories). Lastly, the criticism seems to ignore very questionable periods during the 60s-70s (e.g. JNT over-used the Master with no real direction but it was okay for season 8 to have the Master in every serial). Having said that, I enjoyed the video and appreciate the thought and hard work put into it. Thanks.
You make good points. I did record this a bit on the fly and probably did leave a few significant gaps in my commentary. The ratings figures I probably could've utilised more for my case. I get the impression with JNT & Saward it was rather confused. That JNT could be too overbearing in some ways, too lax and neglectful in others. I half-get the sense Saward knew something was missing from the Season 20 stories but couldn't identify what, and that he only really found his voice as the Saward we know with Resurrection of the Daleks where he used violence as the placeholder (to excess). Not so much to compliment the tone of the show but to backlash against it. That said, JNT didn't seem to mind the violent direction of Resurrection at all. He defended the story from criticism and probably welcomed any controversy as good publicity. I'd say Saward decided and made his stamp there, but unlike with Holmes, the stamp definitely lacked nuance (although perhaps he had developed that by the time of Revelatrion). I can see your point of the Delgado Master being overused at times in his era, but back then he was something new and unpredicable and presented a new challenge to the Doctor during his exile. I feel with Ainley the use was rather more directionless. I suppose it made sense to have him back to kill the Fourth Doctor and see the trilogy arc to its end in Castrovalva. It made sense for him to return in The Five Doctors, but a lot of his other appearances in Davison's time seemed unneeded and a bit aimless. I do feel by then Davros had already superseded him as the arch villain too.
I take your points and largely agree. I think the tension between JNT and Saward helped creativity, but see JNT's major failing in being too retrospective and continually going back to the continuity well. The ratings suggest this era (at least until the hiatus) was largely successful, with an average 7-7.5 million viewers, which is better than some of Tom Baker's and previous incarnations' seasons. Ultimately, while there were problems with 1980s Dr Who, I don't think they're related to any significant degree to the show's cancellation or the perspective of the general public.
it was good when the show was "put on hiatus" because 90s Who would have been a trainwreck and no one wanted to see Uncle Vernon from Harry Potter play the doctor. I'm glad 7th got to stick around until the tv movie and the new adventures books probably created modern Who, with writers who actually wrote some of the novels becoming showrunners and writing some episodes of the new series. Basically the fans took over the show.
I don't get that at all. The 90s content (books, Paul McGan audios, McCoy audios) were amazing and a TV show would've been awesome. It's been in the teens and 20s that the show has become awful. There might have been a time for the first few seasons of the new series where the show could be said to be owned and operated by fandom, but we are now in a dark time for whoviana in which the program is characterized by absolute contempt for the audience, not to mention a complete lack of any standards with regard to common sense, writing ability or acting.
@@purefoldnz3070 Sorry if I diverged from the point, I just don't understand how a 1990s doctor who program would've been anything other than a resounding success, given the consistent quality of the 8th doctor audio adventures, the new adventures, the missing adventures...
@@DylanRoth1860 Because you would have had Uncle Vernon as the doctor and 90s BBC low budget cheese. You wouldnt have had more complex stories/novels of the 7th that made the show more complex, you wouldnt have had all the fans take up writing novels like Paul Connell or Steven Moffat or Russel T Davis that would later either run the show or write some of the best episodes. Plus sometimes something has to go away so you can really miss it. There would no 8th doctor, no 9th doctor, no time war. The list goes on and on. If the show went on in the 90s it would have eventually just run of steam and being cancelled instead of being put in hiatus.
@@purefoldnz3070 I can accept your argument about the lack of complexity regarding television in the context of today. I don't think it would've necessarily been true back then, before we'd lost as many IQ points. The attempt to reduce a character with a rich and complex history to a diversity bumper sticker (much like reducing him to a corporate logo, just replacing the doctor with pepsi or the macdonalds logo) seems to be the problem. Uncle Vernon's crotchety perspicacity would seem to be a wonderful presentation of the character, and I say this as someone who never really cared for the Harry Potter novels. Maybe this is beside the point but I think Richard Griffiths would've been perfect for the role. With regard to the program's cancellation, you seem to be implying that it was merely the law of gravity. Perhaps what I saw in various BTS documentaries was merely well intentioned wishful thinking from over enthusiastic fans, but I was given the impression that the show was still quite popular and that there were people at the BBC who really wanted the show gone because Doctor Who brought with it an expectation of thought and creativity whereas the drones at the BBC couldn't get past the idea of "product, product, product", a mentality which lends itself much more to routine sap about people in the modern mundane everyday world with all their petty dramas and obsessions. Again, please forgive me if I'm missing the point.
Do I take it that you think they should have stopped production after Tom Baker left in 1981 effectively erasing 3 whole Doctors, 4 if you count Paul McGann, from history? I don’t see how that solves anything, except to condemn Doctor Who to the waste-bin of history. After-all, the people who made Who in the 2000s and 2010s were as much products of the Davison era as anything else. I don’t complain about Graham Williams either, yes, he had a lot to contend with behind the scenes, but I like his willingness to commission stories rooted in known concepts like Greek myths and time paradoxes and still having story ambition despite the cheap production values. I like the attempt to do a single through-arc across a season with Key to Time was innovative and a much needed attempt to reconsider what Who was. Yes, the era is a little bit too comical in tone, but again, I don’t mind a period of experimentation because it tells you what DOESN’T work - and that’s just as important as coming up trumps with what does, which is I think what Jodie’s era is going to end up as - broadly unsuccessful, but useful in what it teaches the BBC going forward and a great starting point for Big Finish, just like Colin. For me, they desperately needed to take a breath and seriously re-examine where the show and the genre was and they didn’t do it at the right time. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ‘Castrovalva’, I like the fact that it shows how regeneration doesn’t always go smoothly and gives time for Tegan and Nyssa to establish themselves as characters and learn to work together whilst forging their friendship under immense pressure. I liked the fact that the serial gave us a fully realised world and the concept of the Master springing a trap for the TARDIS team was still fresh. That first serial is NOT the problem with the Davison era. Ultimately, I agree that JNT wasn’t really suitable for the job he was given. He was an excellent production manager and PR man, if very style over substance in his approach and he should have stayed as the number 2 on the show. His choice to be very hands off with Andrew Cartmel for the last two seasons, the successful seasons 25 and 26 was wise and he finally allowed a Script Editor the space to explore the character and mythos of the show in a way that would not other-wise be possible - perhaps he finally learned the lesson of his previous mistakes? It is a great shame that such a process was successful, but at a point when the show’s fate had already been sealed and running out of time but broadly excellent nevertheless. I certainly wouldn't want to erase 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'Ghost Light' or 'Curse of Fenric' or anything from that era from the timeline as we would have to if we stopped with 'Legopolis' or 'Caves of Androzani'. Yes, there are some weaker stories, but almost everything from 'Twin Dilemma' onwards is at least trying to say something. A similar retooling could have been undertaken either immediately before or straight after Season 18 with much more impact and chance for success before starting fresh with a new Doctor. Judging by what we got in ‘Frontios’, I think a mix of harder sci-fi, heavy on character and using as much location filming as possible could have been compelling. If we are going to be critical of 1980s Who, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room - the show’s use of an out of date serial format which suited the 1960s and 70s but no longer suited the 80s, mixed with a production and acting style was very theatrical and the use of video rather than film which made the show look cheap in a decade that was all about style and high drama. The choice to retain that approach to production was not JNT's, it was the BBC and so they should be assigned some of the responsibility here for artificially aging the show by sticking with an out of date production model. Taking a pause after ‘Legopolis’ to allow time for a meaningful retool under the creative leadership of someone who wasn’t JNT whilst retaining JNT’s talent for delivering a production under tight budgetary and time constraints as an able second-in-command to deliver a show that actually wanted to foreground character development and relationships and was willing to rethink and fight for a revised approach to the dated serial format would have been a definite improvement. This would have moved the dramatic tone shift in Season 22 up a few years early with a more gentle and relatable Doctor in Peter at the helm so it was less jarring for viewers than it was with Colin. The fact that they didn’t do this is NOT JNT’s fault, it’s the BBC’s fault for trying to extract money out of a cash-cow whilst doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to ensure its long-term viability - which is pretty much identical to what they are doing now. I don’t even have a problem with experimenting with Companions - if they had actually wanted to explore character and tell a coherent story. They didn’t need 3 Companions, but I’d be welling to bet that Nyssa and Tegan with their contrasting backstories, perspectives and Odd Couple friendship would have been a better fit than any combination that involved Adric. Nyssa becomes a brilliant young scientist exploring the universe under the guidance of a wise mentor and a young woman coming into maturity with ESP leaning on her more life experienced best friend. Tegan becomes the traveller who is accidentally stranded on the TARDIS, has to adapt quickly and slowly becomes a creative problem-solver improvising solutions and survival hacks drawing on her training as an air stewardess (which emphasises survival training), slowly becoming a hero and a leader. It goes without saying that their grief at losing Tremas and Auntie Vanessa should have been dealt with properly, thank God Chibnall gave us that at least. They could have explored grief in a child-friendly way and shown kids what positive female role models and friendships and what healthy male-female relationships look like whilst perfectly dovetailing with Doctor Who’s original ‘edutainment’ mission statement. Adric is utterly unnecessary to this potential arc. Yes, so they couldn’t do much about the cheap visuals - changing up the lighting would help. But that disadvantage does not give them license to under-perform in the areas they definitely could do something about. The fact they chose other-wise and serious character development had to wait for Ace and Sophie Aldred, by which time its already too late is not exclusively JNT’s fault, it’s the people above him in the BBC’s hierarchy who applied double-standards - they expected quality programming without enforcing a clear set of criterion for the show to work towards to ensure quality in the first place and showed little willingness to change up the format or command structure when necessary. So much the better had the Head of Serials had said to Chris Bidmead as Season 19 began: “keep it to 2 Companions, make sure the kids like them and make sure we learn something about both of them in each serial,” emphasising empathy, likeability and character development. That way at least we wouldn’t feel robbed of what could have been and they would not have squandered the talents of an established child star (Sarah Sutton) and an emerging theatre actor (Janet Fielding). We shouldn’t have to rely on Big Finish to get a feel for what both women could have delivered consistently if given the material. The 1980s aren’t a wasted era, they are quite a few 'close but no cigar' installments filled with squandered potential and an out of date format and lots of short-cuts taken over careful nurturing. That’s why I am glad we got what we did - even if I have to imagine alternate versions of stories that make them better than the ones we got, because virtually every story is salvageable with a rewrite or restructure, better lighting and 1 less episode to keep the plot more tightly focused, yes, even ‘Warriors of the Deep’.
Hi You've certainly given me a lot to think about. Of late my interest in the show has been very low, but these days if I do think back, I do feel like the 70's was its glory days and toward the end of Tom's era was my cut-off point. Certainly I remember in 2005 having a very strong reaction to seeing the gulf of quality from The Seeds of Doom & Talons of Weng Chiand to Time-Flight & Warriors of the Deep (and not just a downturn in quality, but also in character and spirit), and feeling something had gone terribly wrong. The bullets that should've been dodged, weren't. It certainly struck me that the latter felt like the signs of a show that had carried on too long, and I also felt at the time that the show could've wrapped in some degree of closure around City of Death. The needle for where to mark the cut-off moves with me occasionally. Logopolis is far from the neatest wrap-up point but it strikes as the most obvious point for the BBC to realistically end it when Tom leaves. I do also feel that the show by its own continuity actually became more internalized and less accessible as it went on past then, whereas beforehand it was mostly neat and graspable, and would've added up to a neat and graspable package. I suppose the fairer stance to take would be that the show should have carried on, but the bad stories shouldn't have been made. The problem is sometimes it seems hard to remove them as the bad stories were often made integral to the show's overstory (and quite often gratuitously so when it came to gratuitous sequels like Arc of Infinity, Warriors of the Deep or even Attack of the Cybermen). Twin Dilemma probably could've been skipped to a better first impression, even in Attack of the Cybermen, but they seemed to make all the emphasis on it. It's odd that you say that about RTD and Moffat being informed by the Davison period, because revisiting Davison back in 2005 after Eccleston I couldn't see the eras & Doctors as more poles apart. I suppose I can imagine it being possible to skip from Earthshock to Rose and it being a seamless transition. The Fifth Doctor there is quick-witted and fast acting in a manner very like his New Who inheritors. But in Time-Flight and a lot of Season 20/21, he seems to become lax and negligent and the show seems almost unconcerned about death and misery run amok. Even now it's strange to think Moffat drew his almost Superman-like view of the Doctor (Silence in the Library, A Good Man Goes To War, Time of the Doctor) from the same Doctor defined by failure we saw in Resurrection of the Daleks. Maybe that's what struck me the most. The Fifth Doctor era seemed to present us with a Doctor who for a lot of his run, largely seemed to be giving up the spiritual fight against evil, as if crippled by his own dogma. Which felt wrong right after I'd seen Eccleston affirm the Doctor never should become that. Regarding Castrovalva, if I have issues with it, it's maybe some of the (par for the course) stilted dialogue and that I think they should've reached Castrovalva sooner. I maybe wouldn't say it was a bad starter for Davison, and infact in some ways I think the problem was more that it was a bit of a false dawn. It should've, on paper, been the emotional reckoning from the events of Logopolis for all the characters. The problem is every time the Master comes back that feels undone again. Davison does, again show some quick wits once the fog of renegeration trauma passes, which again sets him up as a formiddable intellect, only for Saward and other guest writers to somehow squander that. The Davison companions I've sadly always viewed in the light of there being a smooth, delightful endearing rapport between the Doctor & Romana beforehand, only for it to be replaced with the four team of awkwardness and often unpleasant antagonism. And to a degree I did wonder, watching the nastiness of Adric in Kinda if the writers were deliberately trying to make the viewer hate him. And again it added to me to a sense of story time being wasted on negative traits. It was my main feeling with Tegan's angry explosion in the beginning of The Visitation. It took me somewhat aback because the Tardis' unreliability had been such a familiar, endearing feature that it was strange and a bit unnerving to see it suddenly provoke such a... well....po-faced... reaction. I also to a degree viewed picking up that many companions at once as being similar to the pursuit of old continuity. Needless clutter. The question of how many companions are really needed, when even the show needs to resort to contriving to write Nyssa out for much of Kinda. Tom and Lalla felt like they fit the stories like a glove. Davison's companions rarely did. Such a rapid cast swelling can feel like a contrivance that demands other contrivances. In that sense maybe Earthshock kind of works because it almost feels there like they really have been brought together by fate in Earth's darkest hour. But then again I suppose it depends. For some fans they found an intrigue and poignance to the backstories of Adric, Nyssa and Turlough that perhaps they didn't feel with Romana or K9. I did read somewhere in The Unfolding Text how JNT felt that the 4th Doctor and Romana adventures seemed to start in the routine 'we've landed, let's go out and explore' fashion. And that what he felt was different with Davison's era was a sense that if an episode started with an argument in the Tardis, and Tegan or someone else storming out (The Visitation, Earthshock), then there was a bit more of an emotional impetus behind getting the audience from the inside to the outside action. And to a degree I get his point. The big missed opportunity I feel with Tegan is they could indeed have done more with her flight training. Maybe even drawn on what she was taught to do in a plane hijacking situation in say Earthshock. I'm very cynically of the view that whislt JNT sometimes had to deal with petty, truculent management, the show was often needlessly hamstrung by his own obstinancy and resistance to using past writers, which was all the more not needed given what the show was up against. I've often pondered what could've been done differently, going back to the issue of 'dodging the bullet'. There's times I think maybe around the Hinchcliffe era could've been the perfect time for Doctor Who to transition to a film series rather than a TV show. Certainly I could imagine Destiny of the Daleks, City of Death or State of Decay being done brilliantly as cinematic films, and being big crowd-pleasers. In terms of the theatrical aspect & limitations of Doctor Who, I don't feel that should necessarily be a problem. Some of the best Doctor Who stories embrace that tradition of stateplay and indeed morality play. The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, Horror of Fang Rock. Even in JNT's time a story like State of Decay or Enlightenment fit that approach. The problem seemed to me that I'm not sure JNT really appreciated that, and the show wasn't recruiting enough of the kind of writers who got how to hit those kinds of peaks and valleys of the art. And Saward certainly just seemed to approach the show as being action fodder with moments of trite moralising and reprimandings. Earthshock kind of worked because it caught lightning in a bottle. I can certainly understand the makers thinking 'more of that'. As you say, there were the raw materials to make a great era, and sometimes we did see them come together. Doctor Who I think can be viewed in the context of the competition on the market (Star Trek, Star Wars, V, etc), and whilst there are moments in the 80's where it feels outdone by its competitors, there are also special moments we just would never get from those other franchises.
@@sadako24 Thank you for your detailed response, I wasn’t expecting you to reply. I certainly understand where you are coming from, I do think there is a conceptual problem with the Davison era they never quite grappled with, perhaps it was because they didn’t have a plan for the characters to balance everything else. I can see Tegan challenging him in a constructive way whilst sharing a more private and confessional-style relationship with Nyssa and I think they could have been written to challenge him to be better and to call him on his s**t when he needed it. Tegan can work well, in ‘Enlightenment’ for example, Janet does a good job with the Mara mini-arc and I think Tegan’s headstrong courage was the most honest thing about ‘Warriors’. I have just re-watched ‘State of Decay’. Tom and Lalla are so effortless, but Adric is a problem. He works fine with Tom, but not so much with Peter and was going to be too much alongside Tegan. I don’t think a Five-Nyssa-Adric combo has as much story potential as a Five relating differently to the two halves of the Nyssa-Tegan Odd Couple and no Adric. I just don’t think JNT had a strong enough vision story-wise to think through how everything would work in-practice. He diminished all three Companions and the Doctor in different ways as a result and realised his error late. It’s not the situations you put the characters in, it’s what you do with them once they are there. There are reasons why Trek fans prefer Deep Space Nine to Voyager after-all, and that’s a big one. I TOTALLY agree about ‘Twin Dilemma’ - that one they CAN lose. There’s a few lost stories that might have been fixable as a Peter-Nicola pairing to debut Peri in a story that doesn’t also have to write out Turlough and deal with the Master and Kamelion and I think that would have been better for the show in the long-run and given them longer to iron out his character, the Doctor-Companion relationship, his look and the new format and for Eric Saward and JNT to decide whether they could actually work together or not. The 1980s Dalek stories are good fun, there’s quite a lot of stories with things to say, ‘Trial’ was a grand experiment that broadly failed but was worth doing anyway, Season 25 and 26 are worth it and there’s some camp fun to be had with some of the less successful stories if you are in the right mindset. The Rani as a concept, the completely amoral scientist pursuing their research no matter the costs to others should be a fascinating Who villain and sadly true to life. Tell Sylvester to tone it down, cut out the spoons, remove the Tetraps and switch the enforcers to other Lakertyans acting as collaborators, choose a location that isn’t a gravel-pit and develop Ikona’s relationship with Mel more and basically you have ‘Casablanca’ on an alien planet - there, I just fixed ‘Time and the Rani’! I’d have built ‘Time-Flight’ around Tegan and her training. Let’s say she was returned to Heathrow after season ender ‘Earthshock’. ‘Arc’ plays out with the Doctor and Nyssa defeating Omega and villainous Time Lords as a shorter Season opener. The second serial could have shown Tegan amongst the passengers and crew of a downed plane lost in the past and she draws on her experience to keep them alive until the Doctor realises something is wrong and comes to investigate. We see her showing courage, leadership, building relationships with the Flight Crew and acting as a bridge between the Doctor and the Crew. Much better…. I think the Davison era did influence later Who because RTD, Moffat and Chibnall all come of age and began creative writing and engaging with the fanbase as the same kind of era - Davison and Baker. They have all commented publicly on episodes - we know for example that Moffat likes the Mara episodes - and they are worth saving. When they announced the TARDIS team for the Jodie era, I immediately thought of the very busy TARDIS of Season 19 and wondered how Chibnall was going to cope with an extra character and who was going to end up being the Adric. He must have recognised the resemblence. RTD certainly has opinions about the exact nature of Tegan and Nyssa’s relationship which he references every time he has the chance - which is telling. Mostly, I have had a long-held suspicion that Donna Noble was an attempt to do Tegan better by making her important to the season arc and giving her character development throughout. I certainly liked her a LOT better by the end of ‘The End of Time’ than I did when we met her and I wish she hadn’t returned. The broken hero who reminds viewers that there are consequences and sacrifices that come with the Doctor’s way of life is worth remembering. For me, that outcome dovetails neatly with what I have come to think of the Tegan trauma arc - if you squint, from the moment that she and Auntie Vanessa encounter the TARDIS to the moment she leaves in ‘Resurrection’, sick of all the destruction and death, likely with PTSD. She didn’t want to travel and face death all the time until ‘Arc’ and she struggled to adjust. I think she was reacting like a lot of normal humans and her moment in ‘The Visitation’ might have been Saward’s attempt to acknowledge how screwed up the whole situation actually was, but because JNT didn’t see the need to sit his writers down to design an arc for her, it comes off worse than it should. Same with Nyssa, she just lost her whole planet and has to face her dead father’s body being puppeted by the Master and we barely get anything about that - and then Adric dies, Tegan leaves for a while, Turlough arrives and Terminus happens. LOADS of character potential for both. I think the problems are more a feature of a poor approach to writing rather than the characters themselves who would have been much better properly handled by a different Showrunner. Sadly, I don’t feel positive about modern Who. I think they ran out of things to say with the older male Doctor-modern early 20s female Companion archetype by the time Clara outlasted her welcome. Flipping that paradigm should have ensured them the thoughtful reset they needed, especially if the male in that situation was a more heroic type, like a modern Harry Sullivan, a can-do man-of-action to balance out 13’s strengths and weaknesses and keep things simple. I stuck with Jodie until the end and I was happy to see Ace and Tegan back - older women being awesome is always welcome. Saying that, there is a very careful line to be tread and a need for bread and butter fundamentals which I don’t think they are right now. I would like to have seen a break between Jodie and 14 to take stock and learn lessons. I certainly DID NOT want to see RTD and David back - their return won’t suddenly going to fix everything whilst admitting the Jodie era did not rejuvenate the show. I also find Ten too human and overrated, David was lucky to have been the Doctor at a good time in the franchise’s history rather than anything extraordinary. Give me some Pat any day, hell give me Colin, this was just a narcissistic victory lap no one really asked for. Nor should I have been thinking, “oh Mel’s coming back, I am actually going to have to watch this then, damn you Russell!” I think Bonnie was criminally misused in the 1980s, her Big Finish work and a few other projects has proven she can act when she has the material to do so. I am also a bit old fashioned, I don’t like the Doctor kissing Companions - its like going out with your teacher, it just isn’t right, is it? There’s a weird power imbalance and its one of the few legacies sadly the TV Movie gave us. There is some potential, I like the idea behind ‘Boom’, the Doctor accidentally stepping on a landmine powered by stress and strong emotion and there’s a fun thought experiment if you put different TARDIS teams through the ages in that same situation…. The Moffat and Chibnall story-arcs tend to be unfinished and so complex that they are unsatisfying but the RTD tend to be ones are a bit basic if you are paying attention. Conceptually, the Timeless Child is bold and daring and yet does not work, was it too bold with the source material? Who can be pretty out there, have you read any of the 1990s era novels? They just couldn’t let go of Clara and then gave her her own TARDIS - sorry, just no. Donna’s was probably the most successful and complete. Damning that I enjoyed The Sarah Jane Adventures more than actual Who at times - at least it didn’t try to be something it wasn’t. The desperate quest for a spin-off didn’t endear me. I do think a return to an older serial-style approach now might work, written for an audience that is more in-tune with serialised storytelling. I could see something like ‘The Key to Time’ being attempted, though with more seriousness and more character development. I’d be fine with that. I am just not sure what RTD wants to say or why he wants to say it. I would rather a fresh pair of eyes take a spin at this paired with an experienced production manager, even if it is just a repeat of the Andrew Cartmel experience - at least go out swinging. At the moment, I think the BBC is going to milk it until it dies and then reboot it about 20 years later because it got too complex to return to but it’s too well remembered to be left alone as an IP. I think Jodie is the new Colin, the failed but brave attempt at a reset, taken at the wrong time in the life-cycle of the franchise and where the actor themselves is probably the best thing about it. Lots of potential, but never quite got there. Her Big Finish stuff is likely to be pretty fabulous, like Colin’s, when we get eventually there.
My partner is a long-time Doctor Who fan and he feels just as you do (at the end of the video, you draw comparisons to the low points of the late 1980s). There's definitely been an attitude change towards sci-fi and comic book characters over the decades. When I was growing up as a DC and Marvel fan (early 1980s) I was either told, comics are juvenile and uncool, or, those comic books are for adults (which they weren't - they were actually very tame and vanilla in those days - unlike later years of barely-there costumes on females and nipples slipping out which put me off - but I digress...). I'm a woman, btw. The BBC realised in the mid-2000s that Doctor Who could make money and they could jump on the sci-fi bandwagon, if they took more time, care and attention over it. Unfortunately, now, current day Doctor Who may be a casualty of its time a second time around - my partner reckons it's 'too woke' and pandering to a minority who shout the loudest and drown out the majority? I found your discussion about behind the scenes politics, management and culture at the BBC in general (particularly during Dr Who's dying throes) very interesting! Thank you for your very astute, thorough and well-researched video.
Thanks for the kind words of praise. I'm glad you liked the video. I never got too into comic book fandom myself, though I did tend to like the movies that came out of the comics ranges. Particularly Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Dredd, Green Lantern and Watchmen. I also really liked Scott Pilgrim. I also do like some anime, like Evangelion and Dirty Pair (and not just for the babes, lol). I get the sense a lot of these geek followings took a similar direction in the 2000s where they suddenly became big and lucrative, and we were now in a time where 'the geeks shall inherit the Earth'. But sadly as they got big and attracted popular attention and the big conventions, they also attracted the interest groups, lobbying groups and professional activist types that wanted to start changing the property to reflect their own ideology and agenda, and basically take out all the fun and heart of the thing. I gather it's what happened in gaming culture, and comics. It certainly seemed to happen to Star Wars., and I think by the time it started creeping into Doctor Who, everyone could already see where it was going to go again. I did lose interest once they started changing Doctor Who. Making the Master female, and then the Doctor too. It just didn't feel the same show anymore. But even so I was surprised how much it seemed to deaden the franchise. In the mid to late 2000's Doctor Who had been huge here in the UK, and was about to become huge in America too once Matt Smith took the role. Yet nowadays if I go to my local Forbidden Planet, the Doctor Who stuff barely fills a shelf. I never believed interest in it could shrink that much. Fans I talk to still seem majorly interested in the old stuff but they've largely decided that Peter Capaldi's last story is their cut-off point. I did even try building my own Doctor Who forum during the lockdown but I began to realize the interest was pretty much dead. The ratings have been shockingly bad during Jodie's run as the Doctor. Even Tennant's return couldn't seem to really save it, which is a shame. I think some of it is history repeating. Executive micromanagement spoiling things, the best talents moving onto greener pastures, leaving the BBC stuck with the only available showrunner being not the best. There were times I thought writers with a political axe to grind spoilt the 1980s serials too, but nowadays that exception has become the rule. The fear of course is that the show has been here before, been cancelled, then revived and made it back on top before, but the genie's wishes can run out eventually.
@@sadako24 Sad to read that Doctor Who may be on the decline and history sounds like its repeating itself. Stores like Forbidden Planet taking off were an early sign that there was a much bigger audience and fandom for sci-fi and fantasy than people realised a few decades ago! I remember when they opened in Glasgow :) My first exposure to Dr Who was Tom Baker (who I still adore) as a kid...I was gifted a 1970s "Children's TV Favourites" vinyl which had Doctor Who's theme tune as one of the tracks (...that 'kids' TV' label again). In the early 1980s UK artists would lump in Doctor Who with superheroes so there could be a blurring of the lines. Russell T Davies has done some amazing work but as time has gone on he's 'drunk the Kool Aid' as far as blinkered woke-dom goes. People don't like being preached to or condescended. Or continuity tweaked to a point where you don't recognise a character any more! Even Mr Baker suggested decades ago when Dr Who could be a woman when he left... I'll admit I haven't seen the Jodie Whittaker-Who but I know it was very negatively-received. My response to these things is, Let's See What Happens... *Wonder Woman was my fascination as a kid - she suffered from men writing about a woman's experience (I'm not suggesting males can't write about female characters, but DC weren't choosy and the writers mirrored their own poor or limited opinions about women in their output): turning her into either a meek, dopey love starved romantic, or a bombastic borderline-man-hating-feminist. It's quite hilarious when I look back - and young me was reading some of this stuff! WW also had DC staff reluctant to work on her comic because of dwindling numbers - also neglected and badly-served. Her origin story / continuity is also a mess. Though I checked out a few decades ago from comics, I still buy figurines, art and books. I've been on a Who-related video jag lately, the backstory is fascinating :) I'll look at your other videos :)
@@louise_8546 The Tom Baker stuff is still the best, yes :) And certainly I think fan content on youtube will keep going & will outlast what happens to the main show. I think RTD was always pushing a certain 'right-on' trendy lefty politics in his stories. Some say he was subtle about it back then, I'd say he was more flippant. But I think at that time everyone went along with it because it's what was trendy. I think now people are more disillusioned in that kind of trendy leftism. I think since 2015 we've started to see that the champagne socialist approach to the world just doesn't work. Nowadays he is more woke, definitely. Or at least he's not hiding it anymore. Which might have something to do with the Disney influence. The recent Tennant specials definitely had their moments of devolving into woke berating of the Doctor's masculinity. Which is a shame because Tennant still is still really good in the role and I think it was a disservice to his brief comeback to make it about pushing that. I think when it comes to a female Doctor/Master, what bothers me is knowing that the makers only decided on it to appease a petty political demand for it. So it kind of feels like politics intruding on the fiction to me. That it didn't happen naturally from the story but because the showrunner wishes it. Also after the Doctor had been male all through his TV live, through an unbroken chain of 12 regenerations, it just seemed a bit silly for the show to now make out every one of those male regenerations had been a lucky fluke all along. Certainly for it to work I think they'd have needed to be very careful to get it right and cast it right, and instead I think they were just flippant about it. They just slapped the idea on and decided to milk a media storm about how 'retrograde' the fan backlash was. I think Jodie is a good actress in other things (Broadchurch, Attack the Block) but I think she was a miscast here. She'd probably have been good as one of the Doctor's companions though. I've only looked in on some of her era, and I didn't find it all that compelling. There were definitely glaring writing problems and it all felt too twee and insincere. Fortunately I chose to miss the worst retcons her era did to mess up the Doctor's origins, that really devastated the fandom most. I've seen a few episodes of the Wonder Woman TV show, and I really liked the two Gal Gadot films. I've not read the comics, but I can believe you on the whole iffy characterization. Certainly I can believe beloved heroines developing a sudden nasty misandrist streak aren't as new a problem as gets made out.
@@sadako24 Wonder if the BBC consults with fans like yourself - I know Ian Levine had the ear of John Nathan-Turner way back but we have the internet now. I'm sure Mr Levine is well-meaning but debate rather than just one perspective is always better. Dr Who is from Gallifrey so human concepts don't really count! but if he were to regenerate going by human birthrate ratios female is more likely than male anyway XD
There was clearly more, time, attention & care put into Terror of the Vervoids than End of the World (those aren't random choices, they are both whodunnits). And I've stepped in things that would have made for better DW scripts than the dumbed-down version of Spearhead that the series 1 opener "Rose" was. The fact that audiences lose interest in Nu-hu every three series, which requires them to change the Dr to garner renewed interest, coupled with the fact that Nu-hu can't survive without bringing back old monsters EVERY season, reveals just how dependent Nu-hu is on gimmicks & plagiarism.
Here’s how I’d rank Doctor Who 1. 70’s 2. 60’s 3. 80’s but yeah the 80’s was a real mixed bag, last season of Tom Baker was good (asides the leisure hive which is awful) Davison’s era was a very mixed bag half of it was good half of it was bad or mediocre. Colin’s era was absolutely awful and the first half of McCoy’s era was awful.
Have to say that what I have just watched was pretty spot on .Dr.Who became painful with Tom Baker leaving. He was a pretty hard act to follow. Next guy had big shoe's (and scarf and hair and teeth) to fill.Hartnell , great acting chops ,consumate professional. Troughton, dark,mysterious,lovable, old soul. Pertwee, gentleman,genius, action man, grandfather figure. Poor old Peter Davidson had all that to live up to and then the stories got crappy. And it looked cheap arse too. Colin baker was on a hiding to nothing . Sylvester Mcoy was thrown under a Tardis with its engine out of oil.................................................... Then came a cosmic miracle . Who was back . Good scripting, money spent on upting the effects . And Chis Eccelleston . So damn powertful . Then, in my humble opinion , best Dr. since Tom Baker, David Tennant. Even my young kids got into the show at this point. Blink!. weeping angels! Now I fear the show will die again. Matt Smith was also very good, but the stories started to get silly. . Peter Capaldi was really fun. He had that nutty edge to him that was endearing .Sorry but after the pc stuff started and the Dr became a female and now im lead to believe he's a male again but is a west indian im thinking what's next? A bi-sexual chineese midget? Wonder if the new Jane Bond film will work if it gets enough support? Maybe it has actually met its match. Not the idea Verity Lambert first came up with and is just plain old worn out by time itself? like the dreary Marvel movies they turn out like sausages.( sorry , that's vegan. don't want to offend anyone) Perhaps a ten or fifteen year rest may indeed be a healthy sleep? A new bunch of kid's coming along might also mean new mind's writing the stuff too. Was the best show on tv. Had Ron Grainers haunting techno music that was so unique ,. And visual titles to send you on trip through a land of shadow and substance. Let's hope they don't stuff up Mr. Spock
It's interesting that Season 22 was practically the beginning of Classic Doctor Who's downfall. Because it was the most modern who esque of the whole classic era. Like The Doctor only having 1 companion, who is female. The Doctor wearing a long coat, the 13 45 minute episodes format and general new who cliches.
I would agree, but S22 did have vengeance on varos, which, was admittedly, quite good. And it had the two doctors, which wasn't but it did have. you know, Jamie and 2
There was no decline in the 80s. The last season in many ways is the best the show ever produced. This narrative that you are repeating verbatim, like the parrot that you are, that there was a decline in the quality of the programme itself was a lie started by the BBC & is kept alive by dedicated "fans" like yourself. Thank for for your tireless commitment to the continued humiliation of DW & for no payment at all, other than the very coveted conformity-points every SQW needs. Thank you for making the very same video that countless others before you have already. Perhaps one day you can work for the BBC & add to the garbage pile of DVD documentaries banging on & on about just how awful the show is that the buyer of the DVD foolishly paid an exorbitant amount for. Then you could possibly graduate from that & go on to figuratively & even literally fellate RTD et al.
This is just one person's opinion, and I don't think there is a shared fan narrative about the last few series of Dr Who and the mindset behind the scenes at all. You don't need to be rude to the uploader. Whether the BBC knowingly let it falter in an underhand fashion is up for debate but I suspect that's what did happen. There's lots of supporting evidence to back up many claims made on here. Unfortunately I don't have a TARDIS and can't relive the late 1980s again ( don't think I'd want to X) )
@@louise_8546 I've been a Whovian for as long as the uploader has, so plz don't gaslight me. There are innumerable videos identical to this one, articulating exactly the same adopted-opinion, just as there is on every 80s DVD. Whovians are a broken record & don't seem to acknowledge how low the standards have been made by Nu-hu. Want to see a decline? Compare Paul McGann to Eccleston, compare Ace to Rose, compare Survival to Spearhead-from-Space rip-off: "Rose".
@@somethingsomething7205 @somethingsomething7205 Nobody is 'gaslighting' you? Coming out of nowhere to leave inflammatory and sexual terms to bring down a person is just crass. I'm not on board with the 'I know more than you' mindset either...my thoughts are as valid as anybody's. I made it clear I'm a casual viewer, however, I have binge watched lots of videos about classic Who's demise and there are many fans who appreciate and even praise the latter series'. It's not all doom and gloom and we all perceive and resonate with stories and characters differently. Vive la difference! New Who or Nu-hu wasn't even discussed quite as much in this video. Maybe you have an axe to grind with the uploader and I'm missing the point here. Differences of opinion are healthy, attacks on character say more about the person sharing them. I won't reply to you any further as you seem keen to make out you're suddenly the victim, somehow.
@@louise_8546 TLDR, what I said still stands undisputed. The uploader is repeating the consensus of the Whovian hivemind that hasn't changed for 30 years.
@@somethingsomething7205 You're perfectly in your rights to disagree with my video and I can tell you have a lot of passion for this era. All I'll say is that frankly I have never conformed to fan hive opinion, and I don't really see how my opinion points are any empty rehash of things said before. If my video didn't say something different to the chaff frankly I wouldn't have seen the point making it. If you watch my other recent videos on Doctor Who (particularly my one on Davros-gate) you should know I am no sycophant of RTD's approach. In regards to the 80's versus the RTD era, I would say on reflection it's like when JNT first took over from Graham Williams. There were some steps forward, and some wrong turns corrected, but for each one, there were also several steps back. I broadly would agree that the ratings fall panic of the 80's is what made RTD decide to 'overcorrect' by making the revival far more philistine than it needed to be. Especially when it came to the Doctor's dialogue. Yes I did start the video with the RTD documentary clips but that's because I thought it would be best to start with the most current framing device to start the retrospective on.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
So great in this age of UA-cam shorts to watch something that is detailed and thorough. I sat through the two hours interested and engaged with your content all the way till the end. Even though I knew all of this information the way you approached this recount was very well considered and also showed humility on your part. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Glad you enjoyed my video.
0:00 sack Russell T. Davies
Very good points made, personally the 80s are my favourite era of Doctor Who, thought it was brimming with imagination
Thanks.
Glad you liked the video :)
It was. Todays feeble 'attempt' at making 'Doctor Who' is the decline.
@rnw2739 Completely disagree... there is a reason why it got canceled in the first place, and JNT and Bidmead both drove the old guard away as he said and boy did the show suffer. Three hapless companions and a good Doctor in Davison was the decline.
@monsieurdel which old guard? Writers and production teams overlap and leave and come in all the time. Doctor Who changed as early as 1965, long before the first regeneration in 1966. After season 17, when I first saw it in 1981, loved Bidmead's changes as a kid. Loved it more since and yep, I saw Buck Rogers at the time too. Saward's era did see some wavering, but seasons 25 and 26 did have me hooked as I was losing interest with season 24... 24 I appreciate more for the ideas, but the execution was awful...
@@ShamrockParticle I like Doctor Who in all of its forms, just have a particular affinity for the 80's period as thats the first era I watched.
I would say that the majority of the McCoy era is great and can’t help but feel resentment towards the 'it was objectively bad' crowd.
As I’ve been watching McCoy era Who, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality; as it is a lot more enjoyable than I’d been given the impression it would be by the pop culture at large... However, I don’t know if I’d say if more than 50% of it is really great without my fandom goggles being pulled on too tight... I’ve only watched Battlefield and the the Curse of Fenric out of S26 so far but the quality increase in S26 is glaring in comparison, especially to S24.
it was awful lol. Okay, so the last season was a bit better, but come on, first season was AWFUL. The Rani dressed up as Mel. Hell, Mel ??? come on
@@provisionalhypothesis First why can't you fathom The Rani dressed as Mel? And second try to reference an episode that isn't considered to be a stinker by even hardcore McCoy fans, even in that season there is some good stuff like Dragonfire (though I guess you will find it hard to see past the silly cliffhanger goof). I liked Mel more then most, she was almost a proto Donna at times.
His first season sucks ass
His second season is a mixed bag
His third season is peak
@@chrischibird I would say his first season does trend upward, and the second one is mostly very good save for Silver Nemesis (I am very strongly a Happiness Patrol enjoyer)
I started watching Classic Doctor Who a couple months ago and have watched Seasons 1 through 19 and there is a definitive drop off from Logopolis onwards, which is very sad. Soon you can see what JNT was doing and it was not positive at all. I have gotten to the point to where I question whether or not I will even carry on watching. Davison is REALLY good as the Doctor, but the companions and the stories drag him down into the dirt. I have ZERO historical bias in this as they are all first time watches for me and your video is really explaining why I felt the way I did, a behind the scenes look. Well done!!!
Cheers.
And I indeed had similar feelings when discovering S19. It is a real culture shock to revisit the era.
@sadako24 I guess what makes my experience different is I am watching them all for the first time, well what I can watch considering some are animations or reconstructed. You spoke about the loss of the Doctor as a hero and the excessive death, which I could see. It is ironic considering Tom Baker's Doctor questioned violence as a means to an end, while the script writer seemed to embrace violence as an eye for an eye, the antithesis of Baker's Doctor. For JNT to allow Bidmead to throw away Dicks and Holmes for that kind of approach is astounding.
I think the drop in writing quality actually preceded Tom's departure. The Graham Williams era, especially the final season, just wasn't producing the high quality stories which were consistently put out under Hinchcliffe. You had some classics, but it was much more hit and miss. This became more noticeable in Tom's last season, in which the only above average story is The Keeper of Traken.
This continued into the davison era with some exceptions. I think the show was on the upswing at the end of Davidson's era (Frontios, Awakening, Androzani) and, despite a rocky start with The Twin Dilemma, the show was producing classic stories as frequently and on par with what we saw in the 60s and the early Tom era. The only lapse in consistent writing quality I see in the original series are with the Barry Letts/Pertwee era (after the Seventh season anyway) and then again in late Tom Baker/early Peter Davidson time frame. These lapses in quality pale in comparison to the train wreck that the new series has become more or less since Tennant's original departure.
Thank you for this in-depth analysis, enjoyed it very much 👍
Cheers bud.
I completely agree about Saward, some of the stories we got on his watch were indeed violent and devoid of any warmth or fun. It should have ended when Grade took it off air, yes McCoy era somewhat made ammends, but the damage had already been done. Comparable to the series now, should have ended with Capaldi in my opinion. Thanks 👍
@@michaelwebster8666 I suppose if it had ended on Revelation of the Daleks, I'd maybe miss Remembrance of the Daleks and even bits of Trial, but otherwise it'd be a neat finish, Colin woudl've made his mark and could end on a high, and I certainly wouldn't miss anything in Season 24. Plus the Big Finish stuff with Colin could still follow.
In terms of dodging Saward's nihilist excesses, I suppose a perfect end would've been on The Five Doctors, but then I'd be missing Revelation (lol).
I must admit I didn't entirely warm to Capaldi at the time, and started to tune out as they seemed to be beginning to push the woke agenda even then. I largely stopped watching after Missy happened, and only recently I decided to give his last season a proper watch, and there was some good stuff there. The Cyberman finale was particularly brilliant. So yes, Capaldi's swansong probably would be the best endpoint.
There's very little of Jodie's era I'd miss (save maybe for Sacha's Master and the return of Tegan & Ace). Likewise I think Tennant's comeback was tragically wasted, and Ncuti's era has just been a complete non-starter for me, lol.
Those are all good points. Capaldi's final season with Bill as the companion was a return to form.I'd argue for the show after some pretty meh seasons prior to it. You are right the wokeness was already creeping in at this time, but I liked the chemistry between The Doctor & Bill. Jodie's era has a handful of decent episodes and I agree her final episode is probably her best.
I actually started watching Who with Trial o a T'Lord, so I do have a soft spot for that period, I was oblivious at the time of the fan backlash against JNT and the direction the show was taking. I was gutted when it finally was taken off air in December '89.
It should have ended with Trial of a Timelord. @@michaelwebster8666
Thanks for this video. Really enjoyed hearing your opinions on 80s Who.
The late 80s was when i first got into Doctor Who as a kid. So i really have fond memories of the McCoy era.
I do feel even tho people feel there were some dud stories in this decade, i do feel it returned to form in the late 80s. I think season 25 and 26 were some of the best seasons in years. The writing was brillant. I was a fan of the darker version of the Doctor they brought in. And it was a shame the plug was pulled around that time.
Thanks. :)
Glad you liked the video.
Great analysis, thank you.
Cheers. Glad you liked it :)
What an enjoyable and thought-provoking video! Thank you for making it. I became a fan around 1989/90 from discovering the Target books in my local library. I had watched the show as a small child but I was so disappointed when I saw Colin Baker wasn't in the BBC trailers for Season 24 that I stopped watching until Survival part two!
By reading the Target books all out of order I got a good sense of what classic Doctor Who was about. A good story was a good story whether it had the first or seventh Doctor. I do remember though that some of the fifth Doctor books stood out for being overcomplicated or dull (I remember trying and failing to read Castrovalva at the age of 10). It’s just what you say about the show losing the plot (literally) under JNT and Saward - although in defence of the 80s the visuals are often really outstanding.
Having seen all the classic series since then I’d say that the problems set in with Season 16. Douglas Adams and Tom Baker seem less interested in Doctor Who than in the Tom Baker show. After that we get Chris Bidmead and Eric Saward who both didn’t seem to actually like Doctor Who at all and tried to take it in different directions that didn’t suit it.
But while I know where you’re coming from about whether the show should have ended in 1985, on a personal level I can’t agree. At the age of 7 I just adored Trial of a Timelord and Colin Baker will always be my Doctor! I can see all it’s legion of faults now, but it will always have a place in my heart.
Cheers :) Glad you liked the video.
Like you, a lot of my rediscovery of the show was through the Target books. The Abominable Snowmen, The Five Doctors, Destiny of the Daleks and Day of the Daleks.
I do think overall, The Five Doctors was probably one of the rare 'easy-reads' of the Davison era. It did seem like JNT and Bidmead wanted to make the show far too high-concept at that time, when it wasn't really what Doctor Who did best. Castrovalva was very convoluted and cumbersome in what it did (though I do think when they finally get to Castrovalva it begins to get good). The sad irony is that it's such a cumbersome journey to the resolution where the Master's finally vanquished... and then come Time-Flight, even that's undone.
I do think you're right about Bidmead. I tend to think these days maybe the only real good he did for the show was that he rejected so many scripts it forced them to go back and dig out State of Decay after all. I don't sense he liked the show as it was at all, and much like Saward I think he had a poor layman's understanding of the Doctor being an ineffectual pacifist who just lets the plot happen, rather than a proactive hero.
I suppose I'd say the Tom Baker era was golden up to Season 14, and maybe the beginnings of Season 15 too. Horror of Fang Rock was a great beginning, but Underworld and The Invasion of Time were not a great ending.
Season 16 for me was a mixed bag. I do think The Ribos Operation and Androids of Tara were very rich indeed, but Power of Kroll seemed to see the whole momentum of the Key to Time quest leave the room, and The Armageddon Factor was like seven layers of purgatory. I guess I can see what you mean about 'the Tom Baker show' element. I do think The Invasion of Time is where that really began.
Season 24 I was shocked to finally rediscover in 2007. It was so bad, and I don't blame you for checking out. I guess I can understand why they had no choice but to go with the daft regeneration of Colin. In hindsight though it is tragic that Colin's Doctor never got to go out with a proper bang. It would be so fitting for a Doctor who'd started so apparently selfish and egotistical had gone out in a heroic self-sacrifice, and it's sad that was denied him (then again the stories in Season 24 were so appalling it's hard to imagine any of them giving him the end he deserved).
It's funny, because I think despite my take on my preferred end-point, a lot of the clips I've used probably ended up winning the countercase against me. Trial did have its problems but it was also Robert Holmes' last ride of creativity and imagination and in that sense it probably has to be a keeper after all.
I guess if I could change one thing about it, I'd have had Peri sent as witness at the end along with Mel, just to properly clarify what really happened in Mindwarp.
@@sadako24 I like that idea of Peri coming back to be a witness at the end of the Trial. I'm glad she survived Mindwarp but just abandoning her with Yrcanos seems almost as cruel as killing her off.
John Nathan turner started off strong. A great new version of the theme tune, a hard science ethos (we don't talk about Meglos) and then a new, and very relatable, Doctor with some solid stories. And then it all went wrong (pretty much immediatley following The Five Doctors) Peter Davidson's final season saw a tonal shift which even as a teenager I knew wasn't good. The special effects had never been great but suddenly they looked genuinely "bad",. Changing the format to 45 minutes, giving us brave, but failed, new take on the character as actually quite abrasive and unlikebale (wonder if Colin would be remembered more fondly if given more time), and scripts that jumped from comedy to violence to horror and did it jarringly. Comedy and light entertainment guest stars suddenly appearing left right and centre, And to top if all off another new version of the theme tune for Trial which was just awful. Sylvester's first season isn't that great either. It did find it's feet again with his final two seasons which are (for the most part) great. But by then the damage had been done, JNT should have been pulled as producer when Peter Davidson was leaving it would have been interesting to see where that might have gone. At the same time the outright cancellation was a bad move, I'd have kept Cartmel in charge and let him do an extended length episode once a year round christmas time which actually had some effort put into it and would actually get promoted by the BBC. Pipe dreams though. Despite McCoy and Cartmel's best efforts with Season 25 and 26 Seasons 21 - 24 had harmed the show beyond repair and most of that blame lies squarely at JNT's feet
Ben Aaronvitch's point that the BBC hated Sci Fi and there was none for years after Who's demise is partly true - certainly the suits hated Sci fi but despite its comedy chops, Red Dwarf was the biggest Sci-Fi show on BBC2 for many years in the 90s.
Technically an independent production beyond its first few years, the Boys from the Dwarf showed what could and arguably SHOULD have been done with Who in the late 80s and early 90s.
Who should have been farmed out to independents or become co-production in the McCoy era and given a real shot in the arm by independent money supplying the special effects.
Excellent piece. Spot on.
Cheers :)
Such a great commentary. 👍👍👍
Thanks :)
Great video, well done! I grew up during the seventies and eighties Doctor Who. Seeing the shows highs and many lows. But that's nothing compared to what is happening to the show today. In some ways you could say the show was (is) influenced or controlled by the acquiescence of perceived tastes of the public of the time (present), but reality they courting their own wants, desires the need of this is 'how it should be' and making it so. The final outcome more often than not results in the negative. Sad as though it is, I've always thought that classic Who really should of ended with either the Five Doctors or Caves of Androzani
I'm not sure I agree with much of this criticism for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there's no objective standard used to show that Dr Who had declined (e.g. ratings, critical reviews); it's mostly personal opinion on what's liked and not liked. Secondly, it seems inconsistent at times (e.g. claiming Saward couldn't deal with "Resurrection of the Daleks" or that JNT made all these demands that resulted in a bad serial but then saying that Saward put his stamp on these same stories). Lastly, the criticism seems to ignore very questionable periods during the 60s-70s (e.g. JNT over-used the Master with no real direction but it was okay for season 8 to have the Master in every serial).
Having said that, I enjoyed the video and appreciate the thought and hard work put into it. Thanks.
You make good points. I did record this a bit on the fly and probably did leave a few significant gaps in my commentary. The ratings figures I probably could've utilised more for my case.
I get the impression with JNT & Saward it was rather confused. That JNT could be too overbearing in some ways, too lax and neglectful in others.
I half-get the sense Saward knew something was missing from the Season 20 stories but couldn't identify what, and that he only really found his voice as the Saward we know with Resurrection of the Daleks where he used violence as the placeholder (to excess). Not so much to compliment the tone of the show but to backlash against it.
That said, JNT didn't seem to mind the violent direction of Resurrection at all. He defended the story from criticism and probably welcomed any controversy as good publicity. I'd say Saward decided and made his stamp there, but unlike with Holmes, the stamp definitely lacked nuance (although perhaps he had developed that by the time of Revelatrion).
I can see your point of the Delgado Master being overused at times in his era, but back then he was something new and unpredicable and presented a new challenge to the Doctor during his exile. I feel with Ainley the use was rather more directionless.
I suppose it made sense to have him back to kill the Fourth Doctor and see the trilogy arc to its end in Castrovalva. It made sense for him to return in The Five Doctors, but a lot of his other appearances in Davison's time seemed unneeded and a bit aimless. I do feel by then Davros had already superseded him as the arch villain too.
I take your points and largely agree. I think the tension between JNT and Saward helped creativity, but see JNT's major failing in being too retrospective and continually going back to the continuity well.
The ratings suggest this era (at least until the hiatus) was largely successful, with an average 7-7.5 million viewers, which is better than some of Tom Baker's and previous incarnations' seasons.
Ultimately, while there were problems with 1980s Dr Who, I don't think they're related to any significant degree to the show's cancellation or the perspective of the general public.
Turner destroyed it. He turned it into a kiddie show with no direction.
it was good when the show was "put on hiatus" because 90s Who would have been a trainwreck and no one wanted to see Uncle Vernon from Harry Potter play the doctor. I'm glad 7th got to stick around until the tv movie and the new adventures books probably created modern Who, with writers who actually wrote some of the novels becoming showrunners and writing some episodes of the new series. Basically the fans took over the show.
I don't get that at all. The 90s content (books, Paul McGan audios, McCoy audios) were amazing and a TV show would've been awesome. It's been in the teens and 20s that the show has become awful. There might have been a time for the first few seasons of the new series where the show could be said to be owned and operated by fandom, but we are now in a dark time for whoviana in which the program is characterized by absolute contempt for the audience, not to mention a complete lack of any standards with regard to common sense, writing ability or acting.
@@DylanRoth1860 the chibnall years were dark indeed but that has nothing to do with my comment.
@@purefoldnz3070 Sorry if I diverged from the point, I just don't understand how a 1990s doctor who program would've been anything other than a resounding success, given the consistent quality of the 8th doctor audio adventures, the new adventures, the missing adventures...
@@DylanRoth1860 Because you would have had Uncle Vernon as the doctor and 90s BBC low budget cheese. You wouldnt have had more complex stories/novels of the 7th that made the show more complex, you wouldnt have had all the fans take up writing novels like Paul Connell or Steven Moffat or Russel T Davis that would later either run the show or write some of the best episodes. Plus sometimes something has to go away so you can really miss it. There would no 8th doctor, no 9th doctor, no time war. The list goes on and on.
If the show went on in the 90s it would have eventually just run of steam and being cancelled instead of being put in hiatus.
@@purefoldnz3070 I can accept your argument about the lack of complexity regarding television in the context of today. I don't think it would've necessarily been true back then, before we'd lost as many IQ points. The attempt to reduce a character with a rich and complex history to a diversity bumper sticker (much like reducing him to a corporate logo, just replacing the doctor with pepsi or the macdonalds logo) seems to be the problem. Uncle Vernon's crotchety perspicacity would seem to be a wonderful presentation of the character, and I say this as someone who never really cared for the Harry Potter novels. Maybe this is beside the point but I think Richard Griffiths would've been perfect for the role.
With regard to the program's cancellation, you seem to be implying that it was merely the law of gravity. Perhaps what I saw in various BTS documentaries was merely well intentioned wishful thinking from over enthusiastic fans, but I was given the impression that the show was still quite popular and that there were people at the BBC who really wanted the show gone because Doctor Who brought with it an expectation of thought and creativity whereas the drones at the BBC couldn't get past the idea of "product, product, product", a mentality which lends itself much more to routine sap about people in the modern mundane everyday world with all their petty dramas and obsessions. Again, please forgive me if I'm missing the point.
Do I take it that you think they should have stopped production after Tom Baker left in 1981 effectively erasing 3 whole Doctors, 4 if you count Paul McGann, from history? I don’t see how that solves anything, except to condemn Doctor Who to the waste-bin of history. After-all, the people who made Who in the 2000s and 2010s were as much products of the Davison era as anything else.
I don’t complain about Graham Williams either, yes, he had a lot to contend with behind the scenes, but I like his willingness to commission stories rooted in known concepts like Greek myths and time paradoxes and still having story ambition despite the cheap production values. I like the attempt to do a single through-arc across a season with Key to Time was innovative and a much needed attempt to reconsider what Who was. Yes, the era is a little bit too comical in tone, but again, I don’t mind a period of experimentation because it tells you what DOESN’T work - and that’s just as important as coming up trumps with what does, which is I think what Jodie’s era is going to end up as - broadly unsuccessful, but useful in what it teaches the BBC going forward and a great starting point for Big Finish, just like Colin.
For me, they desperately needed to take a breath and seriously re-examine where the show and the genre was and they didn’t do it at the right time. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ‘Castrovalva’, I like the fact that it shows how regeneration doesn’t always go smoothly and gives time for Tegan and Nyssa to establish themselves as characters and learn to work together whilst forging their friendship under immense pressure. I liked the fact that the serial gave us a fully realised world and the concept of the Master springing a trap for the TARDIS team was still fresh. That first serial is NOT the problem with the Davison era.
Ultimately, I agree that JNT wasn’t really suitable for the job he was given. He was an excellent production manager and PR man, if very style over substance in his approach and he should have stayed as the number 2 on the show. His choice to be very hands off with Andrew Cartmel for the last two seasons, the successful seasons 25 and 26 was wise and he finally allowed a Script Editor the space to explore the character and mythos of the show in a way that would not other-wise be possible - perhaps he finally learned the lesson of his previous mistakes? It is a great shame that such a process was successful, but at a point when the show’s fate had already been sealed and running out of time but broadly excellent nevertheless. I certainly wouldn't want to erase 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'Ghost Light' or 'Curse of Fenric' or anything from that era from the timeline as we would have to if we stopped with 'Legopolis' or 'Caves of Androzani'. Yes, there are some weaker stories, but almost everything from 'Twin Dilemma' onwards is at least trying to say something.
A similar retooling could have been undertaken either immediately before or straight after Season 18 with much more impact and chance for success before starting fresh with a new Doctor. Judging by what we got in ‘Frontios’, I think a mix of harder sci-fi, heavy on character and using as much location filming as possible could have been compelling.
If we are going to be critical of 1980s Who, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room - the show’s use of an out of date serial format which suited the 1960s and 70s but no longer suited the 80s, mixed with a production and acting style was very theatrical and the use of video rather than film which made the show look cheap in a decade that was all about style and high drama. The choice to retain that approach to production was not JNT's, it was the BBC and so they should be assigned some of the responsibility here for artificially aging the show by sticking with an out of date production model. Taking a pause after ‘Legopolis’ to allow time for a meaningful retool under the creative leadership of someone who wasn’t JNT whilst retaining JNT’s talent for delivering a production under tight budgetary and time constraints as an able second-in-command to deliver a show that actually wanted to foreground character development and relationships and was willing to rethink and fight for a revised approach to the dated serial format would have been a definite improvement. This would have moved the dramatic tone shift in Season 22 up a few years early with a more gentle and relatable Doctor in Peter at the helm so it was less jarring for viewers than it was with Colin. The fact that they didn’t do this is NOT JNT’s fault, it’s the BBC’s fault for trying to extract money out of a cash-cow whilst doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to ensure its long-term viability - which is pretty much identical to what they are doing now.
I don’t even have a problem with experimenting with Companions - if they had actually wanted to explore character and tell a coherent story. They didn’t need 3 Companions, but I’d be welling to bet that Nyssa and Tegan with their contrasting backstories, perspectives and Odd Couple friendship would have been a better fit than any combination that involved Adric. Nyssa becomes a brilliant young scientist exploring the universe under the guidance of a wise mentor and a young woman coming into maturity with ESP leaning on her more life experienced best friend. Tegan becomes the traveller who is accidentally stranded on the TARDIS, has to adapt quickly and slowly becomes a creative problem-solver improvising solutions and survival hacks drawing on her training as an air stewardess (which emphasises survival training), slowly becoming a hero and a leader. It goes without saying that their grief at losing Tremas and Auntie Vanessa should have been dealt with properly, thank God Chibnall gave us that at least. They could have explored grief in a child-friendly way and shown kids what positive female role models and friendships and what healthy male-female relationships look like whilst perfectly dovetailing with Doctor Who’s original ‘edutainment’ mission statement. Adric is utterly unnecessary to this potential arc.
Yes, so they couldn’t do much about the cheap visuals - changing up the lighting would help. But that disadvantage does not give them license to under-perform in the areas they definitely could do something about. The fact they chose other-wise and serious character development had to wait for Ace and Sophie Aldred, by which time its already too late is not exclusively JNT’s fault, it’s the people above him in the BBC’s hierarchy who applied double-standards - they expected quality programming without enforcing a clear set of criterion for the show to work towards to ensure quality in the first place and showed little willingness to change up the format or command structure when necessary. So much the better had the Head of Serials had said to Chris Bidmead as Season 19 began: “keep it to 2 Companions, make sure the kids like them and make sure we learn something about both of them in each serial,” emphasising empathy, likeability and character development. That way at least we wouldn’t feel robbed of what could have been and they would not have squandered the talents of an established child star (Sarah Sutton) and an emerging theatre actor (Janet Fielding). We shouldn’t have to rely on Big Finish to get a feel for what both women could have delivered consistently if given the material.
The 1980s aren’t a wasted era, they are quite a few 'close but no cigar' installments filled with squandered potential and an out of date format and lots of short-cuts taken over careful nurturing. That’s why I am glad we got what we did - even if I have to imagine alternate versions of stories that make them better than the ones we got, because virtually every story is salvageable with a rewrite or restructure, better lighting and 1 less episode to keep the plot more tightly focused, yes, even ‘Warriors of the Deep’.
Hi
You've certainly given me a lot to think about.
Of late my interest in the show has been very low, but these days if I do think back, I do feel like the 70's was its glory days and toward the end of Tom's era was my cut-off point. Certainly I remember in 2005 having a very strong reaction to seeing the gulf of quality from The Seeds of Doom & Talons of Weng Chiand to Time-Flight & Warriors of the Deep (and not just a downturn in quality, but also in character and spirit), and feeling something had gone terribly wrong. The bullets that should've been dodged, weren't.
It certainly struck me that the latter felt like the signs of a show that had carried on too long, and I also felt at the time that the show could've wrapped in some degree of closure around City of Death. The needle for where to mark the cut-off moves with me occasionally. Logopolis is far from the neatest wrap-up point but it strikes as the most obvious point for the BBC to realistically end it when Tom leaves.
I do also feel that the show by its own continuity actually became more internalized and less accessible as it went on past then, whereas beforehand it was mostly neat and graspable, and would've added up to a neat and graspable package.
I suppose the fairer stance to take would be that the show should have carried on, but the bad stories shouldn't have been made. The problem is sometimes it seems hard to remove them as the bad stories were often made integral to the show's overstory (and quite often gratuitously so when it came to gratuitous sequels like Arc of Infinity, Warriors of the Deep or even Attack of the Cybermen). Twin Dilemma probably could've been skipped to a better first impression, even in Attack of the Cybermen, but they seemed to make all the emphasis on it.
It's odd that you say that about RTD and Moffat being informed by the Davison period, because revisiting Davison back in 2005 after Eccleston I couldn't see the eras & Doctors as more poles apart. I suppose I can imagine it being possible to skip from Earthshock to Rose and it being a seamless transition. The Fifth Doctor there is quick-witted and fast acting in a manner very like his New Who inheritors. But in Time-Flight and a lot of Season 20/21, he seems to become lax and negligent and the show seems almost unconcerned about death and misery run amok.
Even now it's strange to think Moffat drew his almost Superman-like view of the Doctor (Silence in the Library, A Good Man Goes To War, Time of the Doctor) from the same Doctor defined by failure we saw in Resurrection of the Daleks.
Maybe that's what struck me the most. The Fifth Doctor era seemed to present us with a Doctor who for a lot of his run, largely seemed to be giving up the spiritual fight against evil, as if crippled by his own dogma. Which felt wrong right after I'd seen Eccleston affirm the Doctor never should become that.
Regarding Castrovalva, if I have issues with it, it's maybe some of the (par for the course) stilted dialogue and that I think they should've reached Castrovalva sooner. I maybe wouldn't say it was a bad starter for Davison, and infact in some ways I think the problem was more that it was a bit of a false dawn. It should've, on paper, been the emotional reckoning from the events of Logopolis for all the characters. The problem is every time the Master comes back that feels undone again. Davison does, again show some quick wits once the fog of renegeration trauma passes, which again sets him up as a formiddable intellect, only for Saward and other guest writers to somehow squander that.
The Davison companions I've sadly always viewed in the light of there being a smooth, delightful endearing rapport between the Doctor & Romana beforehand, only for it to be replaced with the four team of awkwardness and often unpleasant antagonism. And to a degree I did wonder, watching the nastiness of Adric in Kinda if the writers were deliberately trying to make the viewer hate him. And again it added to me to a sense of story time being wasted on negative traits. It was my main feeling with Tegan's angry explosion in the beginning of The Visitation. It took me somewhat aback because the Tardis' unreliability had been such a familiar, endearing feature that it was strange and a bit unnerving to see it suddenly provoke such a... well....po-faced... reaction.
I also to a degree viewed picking up that many companions at once as being similar to the pursuit of old continuity. Needless clutter. The question of how many companions are really needed, when even the show needs to resort to contriving to write Nyssa out for much of Kinda. Tom and Lalla felt like they fit the stories like a glove. Davison's companions rarely did. Such a rapid cast swelling can feel like a contrivance that demands other contrivances. In that sense maybe Earthshock kind of works because it almost feels there like they really have been brought together by fate in Earth's darkest hour.
But then again I suppose it depends. For some fans they found an intrigue and poignance to the backstories of Adric, Nyssa and Turlough that perhaps they didn't feel with Romana or K9. I did read somewhere in The Unfolding Text how JNT felt that the 4th Doctor and Romana adventures seemed to start in the routine 'we've landed, let's go out and explore' fashion. And that what he felt was different with Davison's era was a sense that if an episode started with an argument in the Tardis, and Tegan or someone else storming out (The Visitation, Earthshock), then there was a bit more of an emotional impetus behind getting the audience from the inside to the outside action. And to a degree I get his point.
The big missed opportunity I feel with Tegan is they could indeed have done more with her flight training. Maybe even drawn on what she was taught to do in a plane hijacking situation in say Earthshock.
I'm very cynically of the view that whislt JNT sometimes had to deal with petty, truculent management, the show was often needlessly hamstrung by his own obstinancy and resistance to using past writers, which was all the more not needed given what the show was up against.
I've often pondered what could've been done differently, going back to the issue of 'dodging the bullet'. There's times I think maybe around the Hinchcliffe era could've been the perfect time for Doctor Who to transition to a film series rather than a TV show. Certainly I could imagine Destiny of the Daleks, City of Death or State of Decay being done brilliantly as cinematic films, and being big crowd-pleasers.
In terms of the theatrical aspect & limitations of Doctor Who, I don't feel that should necessarily be a problem. Some of the best Doctor Who stories embrace that tradition of stateplay and indeed morality play. The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, Horror of Fang Rock. Even in JNT's time a story like State of Decay or Enlightenment fit that approach. The problem seemed to me that I'm not sure JNT really appreciated that, and the show wasn't recruiting enough of the kind of writers who got how to hit those kinds of peaks and valleys of the art. And Saward certainly just seemed to approach the show as being action fodder with moments of trite moralising and reprimandings.
Earthshock kind of worked because it caught lightning in a bottle. I can certainly understand the makers thinking 'more of that'. As you say, there were the raw materials to make a great era, and sometimes we did see them come together. Doctor Who I think can be viewed in the context of the competition on the market (Star Trek, Star Wars, V, etc), and whilst there are moments in the 80's where it feels outdone by its competitors, there are also special moments we just would never get from those other franchises.
@@sadako24 Thank you for your detailed response, I wasn’t expecting you to reply.
I certainly understand where you are coming from, I do think there is a conceptual problem with the Davison era they never quite grappled with, perhaps it was because they didn’t have a plan for the characters to balance everything else. I can see Tegan challenging him in a constructive way whilst sharing a more private and confessional-style relationship with Nyssa and I think they could have been written to challenge him to be better and to call him on his s**t when he needed it. Tegan can work well, in ‘Enlightenment’ for example, Janet does a good job with the Mara mini-arc and I think Tegan’s headstrong courage was the most honest thing about ‘Warriors’.
I have just re-watched ‘State of Decay’. Tom and Lalla are so effortless, but Adric is a problem. He works fine with Tom, but not so much with Peter and was going to be too much alongside Tegan. I don’t think a Five-Nyssa-Adric combo has as much story potential as a Five relating differently to the two halves of the Nyssa-Tegan Odd Couple and no Adric. I just don’t think JNT had a strong enough vision story-wise to think through how everything would work in-practice. He diminished all three Companions and the Doctor in different ways as a result and realised his error late. It’s not the situations you put the characters in, it’s what you do with them once they are there. There are reasons why Trek fans prefer Deep Space Nine to Voyager after-all, and that’s a big one.
I TOTALLY agree about ‘Twin Dilemma’ - that one they CAN lose. There’s a few lost stories that might have been fixable as a Peter-Nicola pairing to debut Peri in a story that doesn’t also have to write out Turlough and deal with the Master and Kamelion and I think that would have been better for the show in the long-run and given them longer to iron out his character, the Doctor-Companion relationship, his look and the new format and for Eric Saward and JNT to decide whether they could actually work together or not.
The 1980s Dalek stories are good fun, there’s quite a lot of stories with things to say, ‘Trial’ was a grand experiment that broadly failed but was worth doing anyway, Season 25 and 26 are worth it and there’s some camp fun to be had with some of the less successful stories if you are in the right mindset. The Rani as a concept, the completely amoral scientist pursuing their research no matter the costs to others should be a fascinating Who villain and sadly true to life. Tell Sylvester to tone it down, cut out the spoons, remove the Tetraps and switch the enforcers to other Lakertyans acting as collaborators, choose a location that isn’t a gravel-pit and develop Ikona’s relationship with Mel more and basically you have ‘Casablanca’ on an alien planet - there, I just fixed ‘Time and the Rani’! I’d have built ‘Time-Flight’ around Tegan and her training. Let’s say she was returned to Heathrow after season ender ‘Earthshock’. ‘Arc’ plays out with the Doctor and Nyssa defeating Omega and villainous Time Lords as a shorter Season opener. The second serial could have shown Tegan amongst the passengers and crew of a downed plane lost in the past and she draws on her experience to keep them alive until the Doctor realises something is wrong and comes to investigate. We see her showing courage, leadership, building relationships with the Flight Crew and acting as a bridge between the Doctor and the Crew. Much better….
I think the Davison era did influence later Who because RTD, Moffat and Chibnall all come of age and began creative writing and engaging with the fanbase as the same kind of era - Davison and Baker. They have all commented publicly on episodes - we know for example that Moffat likes the Mara episodes - and they are worth saving. When they announced the TARDIS team for the Jodie era, I immediately thought of the very busy TARDIS of Season 19 and wondered how Chibnall was going to cope with an extra character and who was going to end up being the Adric. He must have recognised the resemblence. RTD certainly has opinions about the exact nature of Tegan and Nyssa’s relationship which he references every time he has the chance - which is telling.
Mostly, I have had a long-held suspicion that Donna Noble was an attempt to do Tegan better by making her important to the season arc and giving her character development throughout. I certainly liked her a LOT better by the end of ‘The End of Time’ than I did when we met her and I wish she hadn’t returned. The broken hero who reminds viewers that there are consequences and sacrifices that come with the Doctor’s way of life is worth remembering. For me, that outcome dovetails neatly with what I have come to think of the Tegan trauma arc - if you squint, from the moment that she and Auntie Vanessa encounter the TARDIS to the moment she leaves in ‘Resurrection’, sick of all the destruction and death, likely with PTSD. She didn’t want to travel and face death all the time until ‘Arc’ and she struggled to adjust. I think she was reacting like a lot of normal humans and her moment in ‘The Visitation’ might have been Saward’s attempt to acknowledge how screwed up the whole situation actually was, but because JNT didn’t see the need to sit his writers down to design an arc for her, it comes off worse than it should. Same with Nyssa, she just lost her whole planet and has to face her dead father’s body being puppeted by the Master and we barely get anything about that - and then Adric dies, Tegan leaves for a while, Turlough arrives and Terminus happens. LOADS of character potential for both. I think the problems are more a feature of a poor approach to writing rather than the characters themselves who would have been much better properly handled by a different Showrunner.
Sadly, I don’t feel positive about modern Who. I think they ran out of things to say with the older male Doctor-modern early 20s female Companion archetype by the time Clara outlasted her welcome. Flipping that paradigm should have ensured them the thoughtful reset they needed, especially if the male in that situation was a more heroic type, like a modern Harry Sullivan, a can-do man-of-action to balance out 13’s strengths and weaknesses and keep things simple. I stuck with Jodie until the end and I was happy to see Ace and Tegan back - older women being awesome is always welcome. Saying that, there is a very careful line to be tread and a need for bread and butter fundamentals which I don’t think they are right now. I would like to have seen a break between Jodie and 14 to take stock and learn lessons.
I certainly DID NOT want to see RTD and David back - their return won’t suddenly going to fix everything whilst admitting the Jodie era did not rejuvenate the show. I also find Ten too human and overrated, David was lucky to have been the Doctor at a good time in the franchise’s history rather than anything extraordinary. Give me some Pat any day, hell give me Colin, this was just a narcissistic victory lap no one really asked for. Nor should I have been thinking, “oh Mel’s coming back, I am actually going to have to watch this then, damn you Russell!” I think Bonnie was criminally misused in the 1980s, her Big Finish work and a few other projects has proven she can act when she has the material to do so. I am also a bit old fashioned, I don’t like the Doctor kissing Companions - its like going out with your teacher, it just isn’t right, is it? There’s a weird power imbalance and its one of the few legacies sadly the TV Movie gave us. There is some potential, I like the idea behind ‘Boom’, the Doctor accidentally stepping on a landmine powered by stress and strong emotion and there’s a fun thought experiment if you put different TARDIS teams through the ages in that same situation….
The Moffat and Chibnall story-arcs tend to be unfinished and so complex that they are unsatisfying but the RTD tend to be ones are a bit basic if you are paying attention. Conceptually, the Timeless Child is bold and daring and yet does not work, was it too bold with the source material? Who can be pretty out there, have you read any of the 1990s era novels? They just couldn’t let go of Clara and then gave her her own TARDIS - sorry, just no. Donna’s was probably the most successful and complete. Damning that I enjoyed The Sarah Jane Adventures more than actual Who at times - at least it didn’t try to be something it wasn’t. The desperate quest for a spin-off didn’t endear me.
I do think a return to an older serial-style approach now might work, written for an audience that is more in-tune with serialised storytelling. I could see something like ‘The Key to Time’ being attempted, though with more seriousness and more character development. I’d be fine with that. I am just not sure what RTD wants to say or why he wants to say it. I would rather a fresh pair of eyes take a spin at this paired with an experienced production manager, even if it is just a repeat of the Andrew Cartmel experience - at least go out swinging. At the moment, I think the BBC is going to milk it until it dies and then reboot it about 20 years later because it got too complex to return to but it’s too well remembered to be left alone as an IP.
I think Jodie is the new Colin, the failed but brave attempt at a reset, taken at the wrong time in the life-cycle of the franchise and where the actor themselves is probably the best thing about it. Lots of potential, but never quite got there. Her Big Finish stuff is likely to be pretty fabulous, like Colin’s, when we get eventually there.
Awesome vid
Great vid
How did he have a slitheen prop in 2003 before series 1 was a thing?
I think that bit must've been filmed sometime in 2005 or after.
My partner is a long-time Doctor Who fan and he feels just as you do (at the end of the video, you draw comparisons to the low points of the late 1980s).
There's definitely been an attitude change towards sci-fi and comic book characters over the decades. When I was growing up as a DC and Marvel fan (early 1980s) I was either told, comics are juvenile and uncool, or, those comic books are for adults (which they weren't - they were actually very tame and vanilla in those days - unlike later years of barely-there costumes on females and nipples slipping out which put me off - but I digress...). I'm a woman, btw.
The BBC realised in the mid-2000s that Doctor Who could make money and they could jump on the sci-fi bandwagon, if they took more time, care and attention over it.
Unfortunately, now, current day Doctor Who may be a casualty of its time a second time around - my partner reckons it's 'too woke' and pandering to a minority who shout the loudest and drown out the majority?
I found your discussion about behind the scenes politics, management and culture at the BBC in general (particularly during Dr Who's dying throes) very interesting!
Thank you for your very astute, thorough and well-researched video.
Thanks for the kind words of praise. I'm glad you liked the video.
I never got too into comic book fandom myself, though I did tend to like the movies that came out of the comics ranges. Particularly Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Dredd, Green Lantern and Watchmen. I also really liked Scott Pilgrim. I also do like some anime, like Evangelion and Dirty Pair (and not just for the babes, lol).
I get the sense a lot of these geek followings took a similar direction in the 2000s where they suddenly became big and lucrative, and we were now in a time where 'the geeks shall inherit the Earth'. But sadly as they got big and attracted popular attention and the big conventions, they also attracted the interest groups, lobbying groups and professional activist types that wanted to start changing the property to reflect their own ideology and agenda, and basically take out all the fun and heart of the thing.
I gather it's what happened in gaming culture, and comics. It certainly seemed to happen to Star Wars., and I think by the time it started creeping into Doctor Who, everyone could already see where it was going to go again.
I did lose interest once they started changing Doctor Who. Making the Master female, and then the Doctor too. It just didn't feel the same show anymore. But even so I was surprised how much it seemed to deaden the franchise.
In the mid to late 2000's Doctor Who had been huge here in the UK, and was about to become huge in America too once Matt Smith took the role. Yet nowadays if I go to my local Forbidden Planet, the Doctor Who stuff barely fills a shelf. I never believed interest in it could shrink that much. Fans I talk to still seem majorly interested in the old stuff but they've largely decided that Peter Capaldi's last story is their cut-off point. I did even try building my own Doctor Who forum during the lockdown but I began to realize the interest was pretty much dead.
The ratings have been shockingly bad during Jodie's run as the Doctor. Even Tennant's return couldn't seem to really save it, which is a shame.
I think some of it is history repeating. Executive micromanagement spoiling things, the best talents moving onto greener pastures, leaving the BBC stuck with the only available showrunner being not the best. There were times I thought writers with a political axe to grind spoilt the 1980s serials too, but nowadays that exception has become the rule.
The fear of course is that the show has been here before, been cancelled, then revived and made it back on top before, but the genie's wishes can run out eventually.
@@sadako24 Sad to read that Doctor Who may be on the decline and history sounds like its repeating itself.
Stores like Forbidden Planet taking off were an early sign that there was a much bigger audience and fandom for sci-fi and fantasy than people realised a few decades ago! I remember when they opened in Glasgow :)
My first exposure to Dr Who was Tom Baker (who I still adore) as a kid...I was gifted a 1970s "Children's TV Favourites" vinyl which had Doctor Who's theme tune as one of the tracks (...that 'kids' TV' label again).
In the early 1980s UK artists would lump in Doctor Who with superheroes so there could be a blurring of the lines.
Russell T Davies has done some amazing work but as time has gone on he's 'drunk the Kool Aid' as far as blinkered woke-dom goes.
People don't like being preached to or condescended. Or continuity tweaked to a point where you don't recognise a character any more!
Even Mr Baker suggested decades ago when Dr Who could be a woman when he left...
I'll admit I haven't seen the Jodie Whittaker-Who but I know it was very negatively-received. My response to these things is, Let's See What Happens...
*Wonder Woman was my fascination as a kid - she suffered from men writing about a woman's experience (I'm not suggesting males can't write about female characters, but DC weren't choosy and the writers mirrored their own poor or limited opinions about women in their output): turning her into either a meek, dopey love starved romantic, or a bombastic borderline-man-hating-feminist. It's quite hilarious when I look back - and young me was reading some of this stuff!
WW also had DC staff reluctant to work on her comic because of dwindling numbers - also neglected and badly-served.
Her origin story / continuity is also a mess. Though I checked out a few decades ago from comics, I still buy figurines, art and books.
I've been on a Who-related video jag lately, the backstory is fascinating :)
I'll look at your other videos :)
@@louise_8546 The Tom Baker stuff is still the best, yes :)
And certainly I think fan content on youtube will keep going & will outlast what happens to the main show.
I think RTD was always pushing a certain 'right-on' trendy lefty politics in his stories. Some say he was subtle about it back then, I'd say he was more flippant. But I think at that time everyone went along with it because it's what was trendy. I think now people are more disillusioned in that kind of trendy leftism. I think since 2015 we've started to see that the champagne socialist approach to the world just doesn't work.
Nowadays he is more woke, definitely. Or at least he's not hiding it anymore. Which might have something to do with the Disney influence. The recent Tennant specials definitely had their moments of devolving into woke berating of the Doctor's masculinity. Which is a shame because Tennant still is still really good in the role and I think it was a disservice to his brief comeback to make it about pushing that.
I think when it comes to a female Doctor/Master, what bothers me is knowing that the makers only decided on it to appease a petty political demand for it. So it kind of feels like politics intruding on the fiction to me. That it didn't happen naturally from the story but because the showrunner wishes it. Also after the Doctor had been male all through his TV live, through an unbroken chain of 12 regenerations, it just seemed a bit silly for the show to now make out every one of those male regenerations had been a lucky fluke all along.
Certainly for it to work I think they'd have needed to be very careful to get it right and cast it right, and instead I think they were just flippant about it. They just slapped the idea on and decided to milk a media storm about how 'retrograde' the fan backlash was.
I think Jodie is a good actress in other things (Broadchurch, Attack the Block) but I think she was a miscast here. She'd probably have been good as one of the Doctor's companions though.
I've only looked in on some of her era, and I didn't find it all that compelling. There were definitely glaring writing problems and it all felt too twee and insincere. Fortunately I chose to miss the worst retcons her era did to mess up the Doctor's origins, that really devastated the fandom most.
I've seen a few episodes of the Wonder Woman TV show, and I really liked the two Gal Gadot films. I've not read the comics, but I can believe you on the whole iffy characterization. Certainly I can believe beloved heroines developing a sudden nasty misandrist streak aren't as new a problem as gets made out.
@@sadako24 Wonder if the BBC consults with fans like yourself - I know Ian Levine had the ear of John Nathan-Turner way back but we have the internet now. I'm sure Mr Levine is well-meaning but debate rather than just one perspective is always better.
Dr Who is from Gallifrey so human concepts don't really count! but if he were to regenerate going by human birthrate ratios female is more likely than male anyway XD
There was clearly more, time, attention & care put into Terror of the Vervoids than End of the World (those aren't random choices, they are both whodunnits). And I've stepped in things that would have made for better DW scripts than the dumbed-down version of Spearhead that the series 1 opener "Rose" was. The fact that audiences lose interest in Nu-hu every three series, which requires them to change the Dr to garner renewed interest, coupled with the fact that Nu-hu can't survive without bringing back old monsters EVERY season, reveals just how dependent Nu-hu is on gimmicks & plagiarism.
Here’s how I’d rank Doctor Who
1. 70’s
2. 60’s
3. 80’s
but yeah the 80’s was a real mixed bag, last season of Tom Baker was good (asides the leisure hive which is awful) Davison’s era was a very mixed bag half of it was good half of it was bad or mediocre.
Colin’s era was absolutely awful and the first half of McCoy’s era was awful.
Have to say that what I have just watched was pretty spot on .Dr.Who became painful with Tom Baker leaving. He was a pretty hard act to follow. Next guy had big shoe's (and scarf and hair and teeth) to fill.Hartnell , great acting chops ,consumate professional. Troughton, dark,mysterious,lovable, old soul. Pertwee, gentleman,genius, action man, grandfather figure. Poor old Peter Davidson had all that to live up to and then the stories got crappy. And it looked cheap arse too. Colin baker was on a hiding to nothing . Sylvester Mcoy was thrown under a Tardis with its engine out of oil.................................................... Then came a cosmic miracle . Who was back . Good scripting, money spent on upting the effects . And Chis Eccelleston . So damn powertful . Then, in my humble opinion , best Dr. since Tom Baker, David Tennant. Even my young kids got into the show at this point. Blink!. weeping angels!
Now I fear the show will die again. Matt Smith was also very good, but the stories started to get silly. . Peter Capaldi was really fun. He had that nutty edge to him that was endearing .Sorry but after the pc stuff started and the Dr became a female and now im lead to believe he's a male again but is a west indian im thinking what's next? A bi-sexual chineese midget? Wonder if the new Jane Bond film will work if it gets enough support?
Maybe it has actually met its match. Not the idea Verity Lambert first came up with and is just plain old worn out by time itself? like the dreary Marvel movies they turn out like sausages.( sorry , that's vegan. don't want to offend anyone) Perhaps a ten or fifteen year rest may indeed be a healthy sleep? A new bunch of kid's coming along might also mean new mind's writing the stuff too.
Was the best show on tv. Had Ron Grainers haunting techno music that was so unique ,. And visual titles to send you on trip through a land of shadow and substance.
Let's hope they don't stuff up Mr. Spock
Thanks bud. Glad you liked the video.
What? The Matt Smith stories are the more darker in the new series.
The pc stuff exist since 2005.
First line rehash;
Today doctor who is bad. So bad
80s who better the modern who
It's interesting that Season 22 was practically the beginning of Classic Doctor Who's downfall. Because it was the most modern who esque of the whole classic era. Like The Doctor only having 1 companion, who is female. The Doctor wearing a long coat, the 13 45 minute episodes format and general new who cliches.
It's a bit rich listing episode length as a cliche, and one could say "2-3" companions is a "cliche"
I would agree, but S22 did have vengeance on varos, which, was admittedly, quite good. And it had the two doctors, which wasn't but it did have. you know, Jamie and 2
There was no decline in the 80s. The last season in many ways is the best the show ever produced. This narrative that you are repeating verbatim, like the parrot that you are, that there was a decline in the quality of the programme itself was a lie started by the BBC & is kept alive by dedicated "fans" like yourself. Thank for for your tireless commitment to the continued humiliation of DW & for no payment at all, other than the very coveted conformity-points every SQW needs. Thank you for making the very same video that countless others before you have already. Perhaps one day you can work for the BBC & add to the garbage pile of DVD documentaries banging on & on about just how awful the show is that the buyer of the DVD foolishly paid an exorbitant amount for. Then you could possibly graduate from that & go on to figuratively & even literally fellate RTD et al.
This is just one person's opinion, and I don't think there is a shared fan narrative about the last few series of Dr Who and the mindset behind the scenes at all.
You don't need to be rude to the uploader.
Whether the BBC knowingly let it falter in an underhand fashion is up for debate but I suspect that's what did happen. There's lots of supporting evidence to back up many claims made on here.
Unfortunately I don't have a TARDIS and can't relive the late 1980s again ( don't think I'd want to X) )
@@louise_8546 I've been a Whovian for as long as the uploader has, so plz don't gaslight me. There are innumerable videos identical to this one, articulating exactly the same adopted-opinion, just as there is on every 80s DVD. Whovians are a broken record & don't seem to acknowledge how low the standards have been made by Nu-hu. Want to see a decline? Compare Paul McGann to Eccleston, compare Ace to Rose, compare Survival to Spearhead-from-Space rip-off: "Rose".
@@somethingsomething7205 @somethingsomething7205 Nobody is 'gaslighting' you? Coming out of nowhere to leave inflammatory and sexual terms to bring down a person is just crass.
I'm not on board with the 'I know more than you' mindset either...my thoughts are as valid as anybody's.
I made it clear I'm a casual viewer, however, I have binge watched lots of videos about classic Who's demise and there are many fans who appreciate and even praise the latter series'. It's not all doom and gloom and we all perceive and resonate with stories and characters differently. Vive la difference!
New Who or Nu-hu wasn't even discussed quite as much in this video.
Maybe you have an axe to grind with the uploader and I'm missing the point here. Differences of opinion are healthy, attacks on character say more about the person sharing them.
I won't reply to you any further as you seem keen to make out you're suddenly the victim, somehow.
@@louise_8546 TLDR, what I said still stands undisputed. The uploader is repeating the consensus of the Whovian hivemind that hasn't changed for 30 years.
@@somethingsomething7205 You're perfectly in your rights to disagree with my video and I can tell you have a lot of passion for this era.
All I'll say is that frankly I have never conformed to fan hive opinion, and I don't really see how my opinion points are any empty rehash of things said before. If my video didn't say something different to the chaff frankly I wouldn't have seen the point making it.
If you watch my other recent videos on Doctor Who (particularly my one on Davros-gate) you should know I am no sycophant of RTD's approach. In regards to the 80's versus the RTD era, I would say on reflection it's like when JNT first took over from Graham Williams. There were some steps forward, and some wrong turns corrected, but for each one, there were also several steps back. I broadly would agree that the ratings fall panic of the 80's is what made RTD decide to 'overcorrect' by making the revival far more philistine than it needed to be. Especially when it came to the Doctor's dialogue.
Yes I did start the video with the RTD documentary clips but that's because I thought it would be best to start with the most current framing device to start the retrospective on.
'Promo sm' 🔥