Doctor Who

[Gazz]

Especially when he calls his companion a 'useless cunt'.

[Your Mom]

Why do people want an older Doctor? Maybe its because I havent watched as long but I prefer Smith and Tennant

[Vamp]

I have the feeling that any feelings of being underwhelmed that someone might have probably weren't helped by the format of the show to be honest. And I suppose some of the hype about it being a "surprising" choice might not have helped, its good that they've broken away from the young and sexy mould but its still, when you think about it, quite a conventional choice. That's not by any means a criticism though, he's a damn good actor who's obviously passionate about the show. Moffat's got this thing about writing all Who's the same (I loved the fact that Capaldi referred to him as Doctor Who) so it'll be interesting to see if he does so with Capaldi.

[GhostMachine]

Thumbs up to Peter Capaldi, considering some of the other names I heard bandied about. Someone at another board posted a top 10 list of possible Doctors that they got from somewhere (think it was the betting list), and the only others on it I'd have approved of were Idris Elba and Damien Molony.

Okay, so now he's the second actor from The Fires of Pompeii to join Doctor Who in a regular role. (Karen Gillan was one of the soothsayers)

They should just say `fuck it, get someone else from The Fires of Pompeii!' when they need to cast a regular role on the show. Phil Davis as The Master? Francesca Fowler as the next companion after Clara?

[Hobo]

Why do people want an older Doctor? Maybe its because I havent watched as long but I prefer Smith and Tennant

I guess because initially the Doctor was portrayed as being much older. Peter Capaldi is the same age now as William Hartnell was in 1963.

[Dr. Rated-R]

I like the switch to an older actor because longterm Who continuity seems to suggest that the physical age of the Doctor's regenerations is sort of random. One of my favorite things about Doctor Who is the way they actually try and keep everything in-continuity, and dialing back the youth movement for a Doctor or two helps to make the new show more consistent with the old show.

That said, I think the biggest plus here is that an older Doctor will hopefully force Moffat away from his usual "pretty much exclusively writing female protagonists as mysterious, sassy one-liner machines who can't stop throwing themselves at the Doctor" shtick. That alone will freshen up the show a lot.

[Skummy]

Yeah, I'm hoping its a move towards the Doctor being a fairly avuncular, if somewhat grumpy, figure in relation to the companion. It's pretty much the one dynamic we've not seen in the Doctor/companion relationship since they brought it back.

[Ant]

Thats a good point. It would be weird to see a 55 year old (904 year old) Doctor flirting with a mid 20s female companion.

From all the reviews i have seen and opinions of him, Capaldi is a proper Thespian actor so i am feeling a lot more at ease with the casting now. It's j ust a shame Jemma Coleman is probably the worst companion (acting wise at least) in a while. It would have been great to have seen two great actors playing off each other.

[apsham]

Seems like they've been slowly pushing away from the Doctor/Companion romantically inclined relationship - or at least, giving him a reason to want to get away from that.

[Benji]

I honestly hope she's gone by the end of the Christmas special. Unlikely, but I can hope.

[King Ellis]

As I don't really watch the show, my reaction is the same as when he popped up in World War Z: I just want to see the resulting fan edits of The Doctor shouting at a bunch of Daleks and calling them cunts.

[Skummy]

How long have the credits listed only Murray Gold as "music composer"? I know that Delia Derbyshire has never been credited - which is bullshit enough in itself - but surely Ron Grainer ordinarily still gets a credit?

[Skummy]

I said this on Facebook, but as much as everyone's banging on about Malcolm Tucker's brilliant sweariness, my first thought was of a scene in In The Loop, in the UN "prayer room", where it seems like Tucker's plans haven't worked out, and that all is lost. In one extreme close-up of his face, just from his eyes you can see desperation slowly turn into focused determination as his mind works through the options available to him. If he can translate even half of that intensity to the Doctor, we're in for a treat.

Even just his "I'm Peter Capaldi, and I'm the new Doctor" video is quite exciting - a lot of brooding menace, quite sinister. I'm looking forward to an older Doctor who's a little more manipulative and machiavellian again, rather than just being consciously wacky and carefree.

[Benji]

Video? I didn't even know there was one >_>

Also, people talking about him swearing has got me hoping they'll bring in the old sci-fi trope of having some ridiculous fake f (Frelling, fracking etc.) word as a swear word for him

[therockbox]

[Skummy]

Armando Iannucci has said he wants to write an episode.

Also, Neil Gaiman's comments on the 13 regeneration limit;

Well, that was the rule when we had Time Lords running the show. (And they were the ones who gave the Master his extra regenerations.) There aren’t any Time Lords any more…

MY OPINION (which is not Canon) is that the regeneration limit is a lot like the speed limit. You can break it, but things get a lot more dangerous if you do. The Time Lords were the traffic cops: they enforced the limit. With them gone, the Doctor can keep regenerating beyond 13, but with consequences.

I like that idea a lot. I always assumed that, if it were to be acknowledged at all, it would be a hand-wave "oh, Time War" fashion - and at least there's a precedent for that, as the Time Lords gave The Master more regenerations when he was enlisted to fight for Gallifrey in the Time War, so I had just always assumed that the Doctor would have perhaps got a similar deal.

But I like the idea that he can regenerate more, it's just a question of whether he should. It takes what was a restriction, and turns it into a potential narrative goldmine.

Neil also says that he knows at least one black actor who was offered the role and turned it down.

And his thoughts in general;

I think Peter’s a brilliant actor (the best conversation I ever had with an actor was a phone call with Peter about Islington, and about how Islington always believes itself to be in the right). I can’t wait to see what he does. I’m glad that we’re getting an older Doctor — we’ve had two puppies, it’s time to see someone older. It’ll change the nature of the relationship with Clara in interesting ways, for a start.

(And here, for what it’s worth, are my other thoughts: Do I think it’s time to cast a woman as the Doctor? Not yet. Not quite. And lord, if and when they ever do that, I want them to keep it the biggest secret in the world until we see it happen on our screens during the regeneration. Would I like a person of colour as the Doctor? Absolutely. Paterson Joseph was the Marquis de Carabas in Neverwhere, because he aced the auditions, and beat all the other actors, mostly white, who tried out for the role. I’d want that kind of performance at the audition for the Doctor. And there are certainly actors good enough out there that it feels like a missed opportunity. Does that mean I’m disappointed by Peter? No, just excited to see what kind of Doctor he makes. He’s an Academy- Award winning director, an amazing actor and I really liked him when I worked with him before.)

Could you further explain what you mean by “not yet, not quite" time to cast a woman as the Doctor? Please and thank you :-)

Not really. Other than, if I were show-running (I’m not) I wouldn’t cast a woman as the Doctor yet, and it would absolutely be on my list of things to do in the following regeneration. (I was the one who wrote the line about the Corsair changing gender on regeneration, in “The Doctor’s Wife" after all, and made it canon that Time Lords can absolutely change gender when they regenerate.)

Some of that is stuff I’d find hard to articulate, mostly having to do with what kind of Doctor you follow Matt Smith’s Doctor with: someone harder and much older and more dangerous and, yes, male feels right to me, as a storyteller. Where you go after that, ah, that’s a whole new game…

It doesn’t have to feel like that to you, nor am I telling you what to think. We’re talking stories here, and opinions after all, and your opinions are, obviously, as valid as mine.

Someone afterwards accused him of saying that a woman couldn't be "older and harder and more dangerous", and he clarified that he feels that a male embodying all of those would be the right step for the story to take from Matt Smith's Doctor, but that a woman might be the right step from whatever Capaldi's Doctor is.

People do seem to enjoy accusing Gaiman of being a very white male author, to the extent that I once saw someone ask him why he never writes women, people of colour or LGBT figures as central characters - to which he carefully pointed out the various times he has done exactly that.

On the notion of the Doctor, and the Doctor as a woman, I agree with him entirely, and it's pretty much in line with what I was arguing here earlier - it's not necessarily the time for a female Doctor, though that's not to say it never will be. The narrative, as it stands, wouldn't benefit from that.

Also Topless Robot have done a fairly nothing article on ten reasons he "is and isn't" a good choice;

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2013/08/peter_capaldi_12th_doctor_on_doctor_who.php

Especially cringeworthy for them taking Helen Mirren's "I think a gay, black female Doctor Who would be the best of all" at face value, and not as the largely tongue-in-cheek comment it was intended as.

[Vamp]

I love Gaiman but there has been some prior examples of how he thinks in terms of gender, notably admitting that he believes books have genders. I'm not in the Gaiman is sexist camp, just pointing out that he does distinguish things in terms of male and female. Which, really, I think its quite hard not to as a writer, at least on an instinctive level. Perhaps its not a progressive thing to think but stories and characters do just feel male or female, due to the way our society is. Its difficult to get away from that.

I'm not sure I buy the whole "it wouldn't work as a woman narratively" argument. Moffat's on record as saying he thinks you shoudl write all characters the same and that the difference between them comes out in the performance anyway. And given this current doctor has been strongly affected by the women in his life, Amy leaving (I don't buy that he gave a jot about Rory) really knocked him through a loop and he stopped beign the Doctor he was. He's fallen in love and married River, and she's clearly had a great impact on his life in terms of opening himself up to another person both sexually and romantically. And because of the impact these strong women have had on his life I think it'd actually make sense narratively for him to regenerate into a woman. Just as it does for him to regenerate older.

[Benji]

There's one argument about the whole female/coloured Doctor that I'm surprised hasn't come up, and it's a pretty big one - time travel.

If The Doctor were a woman or coloured, then nearly every time they went into the past he/she would have to deal with racism, sexism, and generally being looked down on (because unlike most of his companions, The Doctor is pretty directly confrontational, and you couldn't just write him as ignoring passive sexism/racism). Whilst that is in no way an issue they should shy away from, it would be tiresome to see a show that's largely quirky and fun have to deal with it nearly every single time they wanted to visit pre-60s earth.

[Benji]

So now we're coming to the end of Smith's run, where does he rank for people as The Doctor? I've liked him, but never really grown attached to him as The Doctor, and I can't say I'm that sad to see him leave. He's probably middling in my list, below Tom Baker, David Tennant, Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy, somewhere around Troughton, Hartnell and Ecclestone.

[Skummy]

I absolutely loved Matt Smith, and I've never understood why a lot of people have disliked him. I've also not really had an issue with Moffat's writing and series direction for the most part - it's patchy, but I'll take bait-and-switch storytelling and constant mysteries over "everybody clap your hands" and "THE UNIVERSE IS IN PERIL!" RTD bollocks and the amount of blatant heartstrings pulling he played at.

I'd put Smith somewhere around four or five on my list.

Roughly, I'd say I go Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Jon Pertwee, Matt Smith, Paul McGann, David Tennant, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Christopher Ecclestone.

Though that's fairly changeable - Pertwee and Davison are interchangeable, and sometimes I feel Hartnell and Troughton should be higher. McGann, I feel, was one of the strongest actors in the role, but unfortunately had a shit movie to work with - given a longer run, he'd be in the top three. McCoy I'm warming to a little bit more over time as I appreciate the way he interpreted the character more, though again, he was really hampered by poor writing.

I feel the same for Tennant, in a way - he was a great actor in the part, and responsible for some of my favourite moments; his scene with Wilf in the café where he explains that when he dies, even though he'll regenerate, "it won't really be him" was immensely powerful, and one of the only times I can remember the Doctor justifying why dying is still a big deal to him even though he survives it - but he's so tied up with so much ham-handed fuckery under RTD that I can't consider him as good as people who had better material to work with.

And I can't fucking stand Ecclestone.