Doctor Who - Discussion Thread III (no untagged future spoilers)

Rory was a everyman thats what made him great,he wasnt a Gary Stu or something, Mickey was good too in fact I prefer both to most female companions.

Doc should travel with a male only companion for a while, that will get the fangirls to watch it(I will hate it however if its just a pretty boy, needs to be a normal looker)

While I've generally enjoyed this series, talking in the pub on Wednesday with a friend made me realise some of the problems with this series. At the end of Day of The Doctor, we were teased with this finding Gallifrey plot arc. Time of... set it up further, and then it just appears to have been forgotten about. Then there was the talk in Deep Breath of why this [Capaldis] face, and Moffatt saying it wasn't random and would be expanded on. And that's just been ignored. Instead we've had the somewhat same-y "woman companion on TARDIS is conflicted about the Doctor and her boyfriend" - For Clara, see Amy & Rose, for Danny see Rory & Mickey. I wasn't expecting them to just bring back Gallifrey in one season, but I'd have liked to at least see something more about that.

Doc should travel with a male only companion for a while, that will get the fangirls to watch it(I will hate it however if its just a pretty boy, needs to be a normal looker)

Nope, I think also think that series 8 is the best Doctor Who has been in years, and I'm constantly baffled by the bad reception its been getting from some people.

I struggled with the slightly contrived series 6, and thought that series 7 was such a mess to the point where I'd given up by The Crimson Horror, and missed the 50th anniversary without really caring that much.

I gave the new series a go though hoping the arrival of Capaldi would pick things up, but my expectations have been massively exceeded. It just feels like the effort's being put in again, with a straight focus on original stories (see Flatline, Listen and Time Heist) and thoughtful characterisation for both leads that I didn't think was possible for Doctor Who.

My issue with some of the complaints leveled at the series is that they seem to be very nitpicky, driven by some blind, irrational dislike of Steven Moffat, or that they are often applicable to previous series as well. For example, I really don't understand the mass hatred for Danny Pink - at best I find him to be pretty intriguing and a warm, quirky character in episodes like Listen, Into The Dalek and Dark Water, and simply bland but inoffensive in some other episodes at worst. I've seen people moaning about the cheesy heroic backflip at the end of The Caretaker, seeming to forget the time when the Doctor once used the energy of a supernova to declare his love for Rose, or how Rory was suddenly rewritten as a badass action hero whenever it suited the plot after series 5. Likewise, I don't understand why people suddenly have an issue with Clara taking a prominent role in some stories, when the entire arc revolved around her in series 7B and her character is actually being written as realistic and layered (if still overly witty) person.

The bitching about the scientific inaccuracy in Kill The Moon is also ridiculous in my opinion - this is a show where magical orbs have terraformed unhabitable planets in a blink of an eye, a hospital has been shifted on and off the moon intact, and a giant Titanic shaped starship has been metres away from hitting Buckingham Palace before making a sharp U-turn upwards into the sky in seconds. People have never complained about how scientifically implausible the show is before, and it seems like people just want an excuse to moan about how Steven Moffat's running the show into the ground.

This series hasn't been perfect (I agree that Deep Breath was an rubbish, confused misfire, and think that In the Forest of the Night was with good intentions, but pretty dull), but I do think this has been a considered and consistent series that's been good enough to restore my faith in the show and Moffat as a showrunner (on that subject, who could realistically replace him anyway?).

Doctor Who should be a serious Sci-Fi show based around complicated hard core Physics concepts that may sometimes be slightly improbable but ridiculous things like a creature giving birth to an egg the same size as it or plants growing to save the Earth and being conscious(which we know to be false on Earth in both the real world and the Doctor Who world) so the writers are just writing rubbish.Concepts like the Tardis being bigger in the inside makes sense with Physics of the 5th dimension.

What you are forgetting is that the whole plot revolved around the scenario being realistic with the assumption that the creature hatching would destroy the earth so a plausible explanation of humanity surviving was needed to make the whole episode meaningful.I still think it was a good episode in general let down by the conclusion.If something improbably just happened people wouldn't be that angry but the plot revolved around the scenario being taken with a realistic view of the world and Kill the Moon's creature giving birth to an egg as big as it is beyond the usual unrealistic nature of the show and a lot of the show's concepts aren't that unrealistic because people have pulled off lucky escapes and constructing a titantic replica is plausible.

I will add onto this that the most improbable thing that happened this series when Earth trees were revealed to be conscious and able to grow as much as was needed to save the Earth, not only does this contradict basic plant science but it also contradicted the shows history because in The End of the World trees did not grow to try and save the Earth from the Sun- that episode has to be the worst episode ever wrote of Doctor Who I can't understand how Moffat could have deemed the show unacceptable, I think that was when I fully started to decide that the BBC need to get Moffat out ASAP because obviously something is wrong in the production team when an episode designed for 3 or 4 year olds was aired.

Doctor Who should be a serious Sci-Fi show based around complicated hard core Physics concepts that may sometimes be slightly improbable but ridiculous things like a creature giving birth to an egg the same size as it or plants growing to save the Earth and being conscious(which we know to be false on Earth in both the real world and the Doctor Who world) so the writers are just writing rubbish.Concepts like the Tardis being bigger in the inside makes sense with Physics of the 5th dimension.

The brigadier killed the master? Did I go back to pertwees era?

Still, absolutely loved the episode. Gomez was a great master, just a shame that looks over.


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Contrary for me. As always, Capaldi was fantastic. Gomez was fantastic. The plot was a great concept, but I thought everything else was terrible. Everything that could've possibly been interesting was just not explored (Gallifrey; Clara Oswald (how was the Oswin Oswald thing resolved again?? Surely that wasn't Clara permeating His timeline?) not ordinary; Master/Doctor relationship). Too much "power of love" for the resolution. Danny's heroic send-off uber cheesy. Quite possibly the most interesting motivation for a villain just completely snuffed out like that...

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Wow, fair play to Michelle Gomez, absolutely excellent as The Master.

Yeah I thought she was great, hope we see more of her in the future.



The trailer for the christmas episode just looked...bizarre though...