Doctor Who

[Kaney]

I've never watched the show so I'm not really getting caught up in all the fuss but it's all over the papers lately so it's made me think. Everybody who talks about Capaldi taking over seems to assume he'll automatically be a much gruffer, moodier and meaner doctor as if it's a given he'll just be playing a toned down version of Malcolm Tucker. Surely that's a bit naive?

I loved The Thick Of It and I love Capaldi so it's got me thinking about tuning in, but I just don't see why people seem to assume it'll be the same sort of character. Maybe it's fitting for the show I dunno, I just thought it was a bit silly. And I don't mean the daft Internet memes obviously but supposed proper media all say stuff like that.

[Skummy]

I don't think it's so much the assumption that he's going to be a toned down Malcolm Tucker as that just, as an older and more wizened man, he's probably not going to be the excitable ball of energy that Matt Smith was, and probably will do things at a more deliberate pace.

Even just the way he says "I'm the new Doctor" is pretty chilling and wonderful. Fills me with confidence;

[Benji]

I feel the same about Hartnell and Troughton. I like them both, but I feel like I should like them more. I feel like Ecclestone was almost a necesarry Doctor, one that could go for a season, let the show find out what it wanted to be, and then ride off into the sunset. He did his job, and whilst he's not one of my favourites, he was the perfect "transitional" Doctor.

People are assuming Capaldi will be gruffer because a) he pretty much always portrays that character anyway, and b) that's what the showrunner wanted from the start of his run, someone more grandfatherly and yet willing to be a bit rough around the edges.

[Skummy]

Yeah, I completely understand why Ecclestone was chosen, as at the time it was quite a risky prospect to bring Doctor Who back at all, and someone of his ilk - a fairly known actor, but with no real baggage, and pretty no-nonsense rather than consciously quirky - was the best choice under those circumstances.

I just couldn't stand the show when he was the Doctor, which is probably why I've never really understood the obsessive love that most fans seem to have for Rose as a companion too. I didn't get into "new Who" until a season or so into Tennant's run, when the show had a little more confidence to "be" Doctor Who.

[Benji]

Yeah, that first season was just all over the place. The show didn't know what it wanted to be, and how much of it should be "old" Doctor and how much should be more modern. That combined with farting aliens, a dumb end of series episodes that looks dated (seriously, who the fuck decided to use Weakest Link, Big Brother and Trinny and Susannah) less than a decade later, and the dalek episode where dalek has serious teenage angst didn't make for a great "era" (can one season really be counted as an era?), but I think Ecclestone himself did a good job with what he was given. I can totally understand why people would dislike him by proxy (the same with McCoy, I adored him but some of his stories were stinkers).

[Kaney]

See that's what I was unsure of, if that's what the characters meant to be then that's totally cool. I just assumed the wacky Smith/Tennant stuff was the norm hence why it is bizarre that people would expect Tucker to appear out of nowhere but like I said, I never watched the show and just wondered.

[Vamp]

I'd rate Ecclestone highly because his performance was utterly perfect for the story they were trying to tell which is the most important thing, he was also always completely believable and I don't think many of the other actors to have played the Doctor could have done what he did, which was what was needed. There's a few who could have, but Ecclestone just had an incredible confidence, and quite rightly so, to just *be* the Doctor rather than try and act like the Doctor in his first and only series. To me without Ecclestone's performance you don't get the more adventurous performances of Tennant and Smith.

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.

Its funny you bring up RTD's yearly "the universe in peril" plot because I realised the other day that the new "the universe is in peril" is "the Doctor's going." I hadn't really realised to the reveal show when they started playing clips from Matt's era. He was nearly written out of the history of the universe once, and did a goodbye lap, he was dying, and did a goodbye lap and then he went to the end of his timeline which featured his friends and another goodbye to his wife. It feels like we've always been saying to Matt's Doctor. Makes me wonder where they're going to go with the regeneration. It'd be quite nice, after pretty much endless foreboding about his inevitable (not so inevitable) demise if it was just sudden. If after those times where he's had to prepare himself for his demise he just dies, suddenly and without warning.

[Colly]

Yeah, I completely understand why Ecclestone was chosen, as at the time it was quite a risky prospect to bring Doctor Who back at all, and someone of his ilk - a fairly known actor, but with no real baggage, and pretty no-nonsense rather than consciously quirky - was the best choice under those circumstances.

I just couldn't stand the show when he was the Doctor, which is probably why I've never really understood the obsessive love that most fans seem to have for Rose as a companion too. I didn't get into "new Who" until a season or so into Tennant's run, when the show had a little more confidence to "be" Doctor Who.

Apologies if this sounds flippant, but I'm curious how McGann gets rated highly for being good in a shit film, but Ecclestone gets rated last for being good in a middling series? I love Eccles cake...

[Skummy]

Honestly, I don't think he was that good anyway. It wasn't a bad performance per-sé, but it's not what I want from a Doctor Who performance. But, at the same time, I understand why he was that way, I'm just not a fan.

Ecclestone was one of a number of terrible things in a terrible series, whereas McGann was the one good thing in a terrible movie.

Actually, thinking about it, one of the other things I like from the movie is McCoy's death scene. I want Matt's Doctor to die in a way similar to that - like Vamp said, something drastic and out of the blue. Would be a nice change of pace. Really, all of McCoy's part of the movie is pretty solid, come to think of it.

[GhostMachine]

Tom Baker, David Tennant, Jon Pertwee, Matt Smith, Peter Davison, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Christopher Eccleston, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy. Paul McGann isn't on the list because it wouldn't really be fair to judge him since he only did one movie and the only audio I've listened to with him is "Shada".

[Vamp]

But McCoy's in Happiness Patrol! Anybody involved with that mental genius can't be the worst of anything.

[Lint]

So I guess Series 2 and 3 spoilers...

Rose's last episode

and Donna is 100% less hot then Rose

[Dr. Rated-R]

Is there a reason you guys keep adding an e to the end of "Eccleston"?

As for the question about where Matt ranks, I think he's great in the role. I don't much care for the direction Moffat's taken the series in but I stick around because Matt is just so good at being the Doctor. He's not my favorite or anything but, considering the material he's had to work with, I think he's done a wonderful job and I'll definitely miss him when he leaves. I'm excited for the change but Matt's grown on me quite a lot since taking over and it'll take some time for Capaldi's Doctor to fill those shoes for me. I'd probably put Matt in my top five somewhere.

[Vamp]

There have been points where Matt's had to deliver the most overlywritten dialogue and done it masterfully and with great conviction. I'm thinking of that singing episode mainly, people talk about it being a great speech but without a great delivery I think it'd have fallen really, really flat.

[Skummy]

Something I like about Matt smith's approach to the Doctor, in the way he delivers dialogue, is that he does a lot of the rapid-fire pseudo-science babble talk that previous Doctors have, but makes it pretty clear that he doesn't really understand what he's saying either, he's just speaking out loud while he thinks a problem through. It's kind of a neat twist on the "Sherlock Holmes in space" formula that Doctor Who can fall into too often.

[Lint]

Ya know what...screw you The End Of Time....screw you! There's very few times I've cried during a season finale...and this has been one of them...

[Vamp]

I know a lot of Doctor Who fans dislike it for being bombastic and overly sentimental but I liked End of Time and still do. There's some nuggets of gold in there. Wilf, the Doctor's consideration of regeneration, Wilf, RTD having the audacity to criticise gluttony on Christmas fucking Day, cynicism over 'feel good' political campaigns, cactus like aliens, Wilf, that goodbye sequence, Wilf, the "fuck it let's blow up the TARDIS" ending, the music, the church at the start. Some real good stuff there. Sometimes RTD's stories, especially this one, remind me a bit of the Happiness Patrol where there's all this glorious and wonderful campness, which is pretty much Who at its best, but with a real darkness and cynicism underneath.

[Noah]

Is matt smith really disliked? Granted it was a poll taken while smith was the current doctor but it had him ranked as the third best doctor in all of whos history. For me it'd be Baker/Pertwee and then.....actually I honestly can't think of who I'd put at 3. I like most of the rest but I honestly couldn't split them.

[Benji]

I don't think he's disliked, I think he's just not as popular as others. I find him to be a middling Doctor. I liked Amy and Rory more than I liked him, which I feel wasn't quite so obvious until they left.

[Vamp]

You tend to find in these polls that Tennant, Baker and Troughton have large fan bases on account of Tennant being around at the start of the international explosion of New Who, Baker having such a long run and Troughton not having as many surviving episodes which cuts out a lot of the crap he might have done and giving him a better hit rate.