They do seem to have made it "bigger" as opposed to the Doctor and chums traveling round fixing all the behind the scenes maguffins like lovable cockney scamps that they are. It takes away from a lot of what made the Doctor the Doctor.
Although, supposedly by faking the death of the Doctor last season, it's a way to set things up to go back to fixing things behind the scenes.
They do seem to have made it "bigger" as opposed to the Doctor and chums traveling round fixing all the behind the scenes maguffins like lovable cockney scamps that they are. It takes away from a lot of what made the Doctor the Doctor.
Although, supposedly by faking the death of the Doctor last season, it's a way to set things up to go back to fixing things behind the scenes.
That fake death was one of the reasons why I did not enjoy The Dark Knight Rises as much as I wanted to.
I liked it too but my friends are all having a nerd rage over it. I think their expectations are too high. They look at canon established in 2005 and say that it all needs to be used. But someone who is 12 today would have been 5 back then so it's not reasonable to expect that person to need all that knowledge for the old Christopher Eccleston stuff.
It was terrible and one of the worst bits of writing I've ever seen. Getting rid of the Pond's in 45mins is really doing them justice isn't it, fucking Donna got a better end and she was crap. The Angles were reduced to the same level of pantomime horror that the darleks are now inhabiting thus rendering what was a cool villan now spent and over used like a cheap Glaswegian whore. Moffat has not learnt that if something is scary you don't brake it out every ten mins when your to lazy to do something different (Also what the fuck happened to that Angle that sent them back? It just smegged off and wasn't dealt with). As for the rest of the series there's braking cannon then theres shitting all over it from a great hight with no care in the world. For instance the Doctor well known for not liking guns and generally doing the right things picks up a gun and condemns someone to death in a piece of piss throw away episode. Sufficed to say it was a bad season.
Edit; Christoper Eccleston's stuff was not old by any means. If you think that is as far as the cannon goes then you are sorely mistake.
I liked it too but my friends are all having a nerd rage over it. I think their expectations are too high. They look at canon established in 2005 and say that it all needs to be used. But someone who is 12 today would have been 5 back then so it's not reasonable to expect that person to need all that knowledge for the old Christopher Eccleston stuff.
OLD Christopher Eccleston stuff. LMAO!!!!!!
Anyway, you don't have to write in a way that REQUIRES knowledge of "antique" canon in order to respect canon.
I think Donna was a better companion than the Ponds, sorry. But then, I can't stand Smith and so he taints everything for me.
The angels have been beaten to death and then beaten some more. Also Smith's insertion of "Timey wimey" all over the place. Blink was a great episode. Let it die with dignity instead of endlessly flogging it for the sake of fan service. Dr. Who may actually have jumped the shark with the Statue of Liberty bullshit, and for a show continuously straddling a laser-beam equipped shark while flying through flaming hoops, that's quite an accomplishment.
Also, I thought that Rory was somehow a plastic robot nowadays who lived 2000 years as a centurion. How could he age and die in the hotel?
Of course I don't consider it old but we're talking more than seven years ago so it must be considered old from the perspective of the non-adult target audience. They can't exclude that audience by requiring all kinds knowledge of stuff that's gone before like the ways my friends were saying they'd have fixed the episode.
Of course I don't consider it old but we're talking more than seven years ago so it must be considered old from the perspective of the non-adult target audience. They can't exclude that audience by requiring all kinds knowledge of stuff that's gone before like the ways my friends were saying they'd have fixed the episode.
Your required to have an idea of the back story if you are to get it. Thats beyond Eccleston,the really old stuff.
Also, I thought that Rory was somehow a plastic robot nowadays who lived 2000 years as a centurion. How could he age and die in the hotel?
That, like anything that happened before The Big Bang, now technically happened in a past that doesn't exist. It's quickly addressed at the end of The Big Bang ("The Doctor! How could we forget the Doctor! ... I was PLASTIC!"), but addressed more fully in The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon.
I think Donna was a better companion than the Ponds, sorry.
I really liked Rory as a companion for the same reason I liked Donna; rather than being in blind awe of the Doctor and who/what he can do, he challenges The Doctor and stands up to him when need be. Amy was a fawning, lovestruck fangirl at times, and really got annoying (*coughlikemarthajonescough*).
I can't stand Smith
Can you elaborate on this? I've honestly never seen anyone who hates Matt Smith who can articulate a reason beyond "He's not David Tennent".
I'm not saying that's your reason, by the way. I'm just saying I've never seen someone articulate a reason more than that. I honestly think Matt Smith is the best Doctor of the revival, with Tennent a close second.
Couldn't the Doctor just have gone back to the end of the previous year and just chilled there for a little while until the ponds got there, and then just laid low for a year until the Angel's time distortions were gone?
The question you always have to ask with Doctor Who is not "Couldn't he", but "Should he". He knew for a fact that the Ponds would be reletively safe there. Remember, the Doctor has a pretty big guilt complex when it comes to the safety of his companions.
Couldn't the Doctor just have gone back to the end of the previous year and just chilled there for a little while until the ponds got there, and then just laid low for a year until the Angel's time distortions were gone?
The thing is that the Doctor does not like endings and he already know the ending of his best friend, and ending and she decided on her own. I do not know if I could change something like that if I were the Doctor.
Couldn't the Doctor just have gone back to the end of the previous year and just chilled there for a little while until the ponds got there, and then just laid low for a year until the Angel's time distortions were gone?
The thing is that the Doctor does not like endings and he already know the ending of his best friend, and ending and she decided on her own. I do not know if I could change something lioke that if I were the Doctor.
He's also got a thing with messing with the time-stream too much, or causing paradoxes. He's got that whole Time-sense thing going on, with being able to see potential futures and pasts to some degree, as well as being able to tell what's in flux, and what's fixed, concerning points in time.
Also, it's a bit of a narrative conceit to avoid the whole "You have a time machine, why don't you just use it to skip and avoid dangerous events and situations?" dealie.
I'm tired and about to quit for the night, but I'll post briefly and probably find that I've been torn to bits in the morning, because after all, this is all subjective, but here goes:
Tennant's performance is an expert one, in my opinion. It provides my baseline even though I started, more or less, with the 8th doctor (mini-series, I think, is all he got?). Eccleston was OK, but Tennant hit a home run. He lived and breathed the Doctor. He made me laugh and cry, and was super credible in the role despite being paired with terrible writing and rubber suits. He made me believe it.
Smith is a whole other thing. He's dopey, which seems to appeal to the younger audience. He spouts youthful slang and pop culture references and is a bit of a hipster. It's not my thing. Aside from the fact that I dislike the way the Doctor is written for Smith, I dislike Smith's portrayal of the doctor. He's goofy and dopey and not credible. He's odd looking, which is usually a plus for the role, but in Smith's case he looks like some sort of larval android or something. He just doesn't appear to fit the lineage.
He keeps on repeating catch phrases that caught on during Tennant's tenure and sure, he has right to them because he's the Doctor now and all, so it's not like he's trying to be a mimick (not in a bad way, anyway), but he doesn't quite pull it off. It feels forced. "Blink" was a smash hit among the fans, and they are beating it to death, which is not directly Smith's fault, but if I hear him crowbar "Timey wimey" into one more scene I'll scream.
I just don't buy Smith as the doctor. He acts like he's he's in a high school drama club rather than an accomplished stage actor. He just doesn't hook me like Tennant did.
And Tennant is my baseline, because he's my favorite, can't be helped. Still, I'm not sure I'd have gotten into the show nearly as deeply without Ten, because Eleven is just sort of a bland try-hard, to me.
I'd be a bit more thorough and articulate if I wasn't ready to crash for the night, so sorry if I've repeated or haven't quite covered all the bases, but it's not just that I really loved Tennant in the role and feel he's been usurped, it's that his replacement is a bit of an insult to the series generally and more so given the comparison.
Interesting. When I'm more awake, I'll see what I think.
Also, just curious: How many episodes do you think the Weeping Angels have been in? Would it surprise you to know the answer is three?
I think that's two too many. ;-)
And seriously, throwing the Statue of Liberty in as an angel was just insultingly bad writing. She wasn't a plot point. She wasn't even relevant to the drama or the story or the atmosphere at all. If anything, her big ludicrous green-screened head was just sort of dopey and laughable and looked like a big blinking sign which read "FAN SERVICE".
I didn't really have a problem with the Statue of Liberty being an angel as much as I had a problem with the way it was done. It would have worked better if it was closer to the end and was like "oh shit even that is an angel!" rather than more of a "heh, look at that" kind of way.
Get what? What the show is about? What everyone's getting angry over?
That there are decades worth of history that are ignored for the sake of "timmy wimmy" bollocks (that single phrase and the ethos that it bring with it stands as the obelisk of my hatred). Or as a cheap way of making him seem like a reble and troubled, such as when he picks up a gun for no good reason.
Muppet fairly hit most of my points save for how badly the Ponds were written and some of the more glaring moments.
I'm tired and about to quit for the night, but I'll post briefly and probably find that I've been torn to bits in the morning, because after all, this is all subjective, but here goes:
Tennant's performance is an expert one, in my opinion. It provides my baseline even though I started, more or less, with the 8th doctor (mini-series, I think, is all he got?). Eccleston was OK, but Tennant hit a home run. He lived and breathed the Doctor. He made me laugh and cry, and was super credible in the role despite being paired with terrible writing and rubber suits. He made me believe it.
Honestly, I thought Tennent was a little melodramatic and campy toward the end. I mean, seriously. This is an expert performance? Don't get me wrong, Tennent was a good Doctor, but you can't just say "Oh, ignore the fact that he literally almost turned in to God at the end of The Year That Never Was". He acted that out, and it was hammy and trite.
Smith is a whole other thing. He's dopey, which seems to appeal to the younger audience. He spouts youthful slang and pop culture references and is a bit of a hipster. It's not my thing. Aside from the fact that I dislike the way the Doctor is written for Smith, I dislike Smith's portrayal of the doctor. He's goofy and dopey and not credible. He's odd looking, which is usually a plus for the role, but in Smith's case he looks like some sort of larval android or something. He just doesn't appear to fit the lineage.
He keeps on repeating catch phrases that caught on during Tennant's tenure and sure, he has right to them because he's the Doctor now and all, so it's not like he's trying to be a mimick (not in a bad way, anyway), but he doesn't quite pull it off. It feels forced. "Blink" was a smash hit among the fans, and they are beating it to death, which is not directly Smith's fault, but if I hear him crowbar "Timey wimey" into one more scene I'll scream.
Name one, other than Timey Wimey, which must be from the new episode, because I've never heard him say it. Seriously, Tennant had two catchphrases, and I've never seen Smith use either. Also, you were saying above, effectively, "Ignore the writing to an extent and just go on the performance", and now you're saying writing counts. If you're pissed off about catchphrases, that's all Moffat, man.
I just don't buy Smith as the doctor. He acts like he's he's in a high school drama club rather than an accomplished stage actor. He just doesn't hook me like Tennant did.
And Tennant is my baseline, because he's my favorite, can't be helped. Still, I'm not sure I'd have gotten into the show nearly as deeply without Ten, because Eleven is just sort of a bland try-hard, to me.
So, literally, your reason is some fairly unconvincing, barely true things, and the thing that all Tennant fanboys fall back on, this idea that Smith doesn't "Capture" the Doctor, when really, he's closer to the Classic Doctor than Tennant ever was.
Don't get me wrong, Tennant was a good Doctor, and he had some amazing episodes, but he wasn't the alpha and omega, the end-all-be-all, and it really pisses me off when people try to act like he is.
I didn't say ignore the writing, I said that Tennant saved the bad writing in a way that Smith doesn't/cannot.
You asked for my opinion and I gave it to you half asleep. If you want to flame me for it, that's your prerogative. I think that Tennant is the superior actor by leaps and bounds. Were there corny moments in the Tennant seasons? Naturally! Doctor Who is a self-referential, irreverent show. The trick is the balance. Tennant habs it. Smith does not. Still, there's groaners among Tennant episodes, but I believe far fewer of them.
Trying to cite specifics or examples is merely trying to treat a totally subjective argument as if it can be objectively debated, and it can't. It's down to preference and personal aesthetic sense.
So, call me a fanboy, tell me my arguments are stupid, and then ramble about your own preference with links and "citations" and pretend it's objective, and I'll just chuckle and be done with the conversation. I wasn't attacking you or your preference, I was giving my personal, subjective opinions about Matt Smith, which you CLEARLY took VERY personally. Who's the fanboy/girl here? :-)
Good Smith episodes:
The one with the hotel and the beast, don't recall the name. I think the rooms had people's fears in them? That one was good.
The one(s) with Nixon, in the oval office. Uncharacteristically well acted for Smith.
The entire astronaut arc as a whole, though: groan.
I'm not flaming you. It's called an argument. Not everyone who disagrees with you is flaming.
Also, there is some fairly objective things we can debate here, and trying to cast this as "my opinion! Subjective! Can't debate it!" is just a little untrue.
Also, I don't think it's unfair to call you a fanboy when you basically said as much yourself.
So, literally, your reason is some fairly unconvincing, barely true things, and the thing that all Tennant fanboys fall back on, this idea that Smith doesn't "Capture" the Doctor, when really, he's closer to the Classic Doctor than Tennant ever was.
I'm sorry I must have missed the polite, reasoned part of this. ;-)
I'm not a fanboy. I think Tennant is an excellent actor. A fanboy is obsessed to the exclusion of all else. I just happen to think that Smith is a poor Doctor. I've got no problems with the others. I think Eccleston should have gotten another season.
And of COURSE it's subjective, and almost entirely. About all you can argue would be ratings, and even then you have a problem because the show is older and has had more time to spread and become popular since Tennant started. You can't even argue technical theatrical points as they're largely irrelevant once you're talking about a commercial broadcast. Who cares if the makeup is bad or there's a technical fault in the lighting or if Smith is midly off cue? That's all minutae and has very little or nothing to do with the fans' enjoyment of the series.
Obviously Smith isn't abominable because viewership has been stable, and has even increased a bit in the US. He's doing a good enough job that he hasn't killed the show, so he must be OK. I just personally don't care for him. There's no objectively arguing that. You think he's great and Tennant is not so great. Fine.
But calling people who prefer Tennant bad fans or sycophants is just a smidgen immature and comes off like projecting, big time.
So, literally, your reason is some fairly unconvincing, barely true things, and the thing that all Tennant fanboys fall back on, this idea that Smith doesn't "Capture" the Doctor, when really, he's closer to the Classic Doctor than Tennant ever was.
I'm sorry I must have missed the polite, reasoned part of this. ;-)
Just pretend I'm David Tennant and blame it on Davies instead of me.
I'm kidding, of course. It's perhaps not the nicest way to phrase what I was saying, but is it really that untrue? Most of your argument boils down to either "I think Smith is kinda ugly" (which, honestly, I think is untrue) or that he doesn't "Capture the spirit" of the Doctor, to which I say, Matt Smith's Doctor is much closer to some of the classic portrayals of the Doctor than Tennant was (And please don't mistake this for me saying that Tennant's performance was bad).
Also, while I did in my second post, I didn't really call you a fanboy at first. I said you were using arguments fanboys use, which is different. I will cop to thinking you are a bit of a fanboy, but not nearly to the point of some other people I've dealt with. For example, you're not screaming about how Ten and Rose's romance was the greatest thing that ever happened in Doctor Who. Therefore, you're automatically about ten (or eleven. :P) pegs above 90% of Doctor Who fans I've ever talked to who weren't my friends.
Rose and Ten's romance was horribly overwrought and felt forced as hell, but then so does the sexual tension between Pond and Eleven (although admittedly they got it more right than the Rose thing.)
Rose and Ten's romance was horribly overwrought and felt forced as hell, but then so does the sexual tension between Pond and Eleven (although admittedly they got it more right than the Rose thing.)
THANK YOU.
(I agree perfectly with both of the preceding sentences)
Meh, Tennent actually turned me off on the new Doctor Who. I really didn't like him that much and greatly preferred Eccleston. Smith got me back into it.
Comments
#epicorgohome
Edit; Christoper Eccleston's stuff was not old by any means. If you think that is as far as the cannon goes then you are sorely mistake.
Anyway, you don't have to write in a way that REQUIRES knowledge of "antique" canon in order to respect canon.
I think Donna was a better companion than the Ponds, sorry. But then, I can't stand Smith and so he taints everything for me.
The angels have been beaten to death and then beaten some more. Also Smith's insertion of "Timey wimey" all over the place. Blink was a great episode. Let it die with dignity instead of endlessly flogging it for the sake of fan service. Dr. Who may actually have jumped the shark with the Statue of Liberty bullshit, and for a show continuously straddling a laser-beam equipped shark while flying through flaming hoops, that's quite an accomplishment.
Also, I thought that Rory was somehow a plastic robot nowadays who lived 2000 years as a centurion. How could he age and die in the hotel?
I'm not saying that's your reason, by the way. I'm just saying I've never seen someone articulate a reason more than that. I honestly think Matt Smith is the best Doctor of the revival, with Tennent a close second.
Also, it's a bit of a narrative conceit to avoid the whole "You have a time machine, why don't you just use it to skip and avoid dangerous events and situations?" dealie.
Tennant's performance is an expert one, in my opinion. It provides my baseline even though I started, more or less, with the 8th doctor (mini-series, I think, is all he got?). Eccleston was OK, but Tennant hit a home run. He lived and breathed the Doctor. He made me laugh and cry, and was super credible in the role despite being paired with terrible writing and rubber suits. He made me believe it.
Smith is a whole other thing. He's dopey, which seems to appeal to the younger audience. He spouts youthful slang and pop culture references and is a bit of a hipster. It's not my thing. Aside from the fact that I dislike the way the Doctor is written for Smith, I dislike Smith's portrayal of the doctor. He's goofy and dopey and not credible. He's odd looking, which is usually a plus for the role, but in Smith's case he looks like some sort of larval android or something. He just doesn't appear to fit the lineage.
He keeps on repeating catch phrases that caught on during Tennant's tenure and sure, he has right to them because he's the Doctor now and all, so it's not like he's trying to be a mimick (not in a bad way, anyway), but he doesn't quite pull it off. It feels forced. "Blink" was a smash hit among the fans, and they are beating it to death, which is not directly Smith's fault, but if I hear him crowbar "Timey wimey" into one more scene I'll scream.
I just don't buy Smith as the doctor. He acts like he's he's in a high school drama club rather than an accomplished stage actor. He just doesn't hook me like Tennant did.
And Tennant is my baseline, because he's my favorite, can't be helped. Still, I'm not sure I'd have gotten into the show nearly as deeply without Ten, because Eleven is just sort of a bland try-hard, to me.
I'd be a bit more thorough and articulate if I wasn't ready to crash for the night, so sorry if I've repeated or haven't quite covered all the bases, but it's not just that I really loved Tennant in the role and feel he's been usurped, it's that his replacement is a bit of an insult to the series generally and more so given the comparison.
Also, just curious: How many episodes do you think the Weeping Angels have been in? Would it surprise you to know the answer is three?
And seriously, throwing the Statue of Liberty in as an angel was just insultingly bad writing. She wasn't a plot point. She wasn't even relevant to the drama or the story or the atmosphere at all. If anything, her big ludicrous green-screened head was just sort of dopey and laughable and looked like a big blinking sign which read "FAN SERVICE".
Muppet fairly hit most of my points save for how badly the Ponds were written and some of the more glaring moments.
Don't get me wrong, Tennent was a good Doctor, but you can't just say "Oh, ignore the fact that he literally almost turned in to God at the end of The Year That Never Was". He acted that out, and it was hammy and trite.
Don't get me wrong, Tennant was a good Doctor, and he had some amazing episodes, but he wasn't the alpha and omega, the end-all-be-all, and it really pisses me off when people try to act like he is.
You asked for my opinion and I gave it to you half asleep. If you want to flame me for it, that's your prerogative. I think that Tennant is the superior actor by leaps and bounds. Were there corny moments in the Tennant seasons? Naturally! Doctor Who is a self-referential, irreverent show. The trick is the balance. Tennant habs it. Smith does not. Still, there's groaners among Tennant episodes, but I believe far fewer of them.
Trying to cite specifics or examples is merely trying to treat a totally subjective argument as if it can be objectively debated, and it can't. It's down to preference and personal aesthetic sense.
So, call me a fanboy, tell me my arguments are stupid, and then ramble about your own preference with links and "citations" and pretend it's objective, and I'll just chuckle and be done with the conversation. I wasn't attacking you or your preference, I was giving my personal, subjective opinions about Matt Smith, which you CLEARLY took VERY personally. Who's the fanboy/girl here? :-)
Good Smith episodes:
The one with the hotel and the beast, don't recall the name. I think the rooms had people's fears in them? That one was good.
The one(s) with Nixon, in the oval office. Uncharacteristically well acted for Smith.
The entire astronaut arc as a whole, though: groan.
Also, there is some fairly objective things we can debate here, and trying to cast this as "my opinion! Subjective! Can't debate it!" is just a little untrue.
Also, I don't think it's unfair to call you a fanboy when you basically said as much yourself.
And of COURSE it's subjective, and almost entirely. About all you can argue would be ratings, and even then you have a problem because the show is older and has had more time to spread and become popular since Tennant started. You can't even argue technical theatrical points as they're largely irrelevant once you're talking about a commercial broadcast. Who cares if the makeup is bad or there's a technical fault in the lighting or if Smith is midly off cue? That's all minutae and has very little or nothing to do with the fans' enjoyment of the series.
Obviously Smith isn't abominable because viewership has been stable, and has even increased a bit in the US. He's doing a good enough job that he hasn't killed the show, so he must be OK. I just personally don't care for him. There's no objectively arguing that. You think he's great and Tennant is not so great. Fine.
But calling people who prefer Tennant bad fans or sycophants is just a smidgen immature and comes off like projecting, big time.
I'm kidding, of course. It's perhaps not the nicest way to phrase what I was saying, but is it really that untrue? Most of your argument boils down to either "I think Smith is kinda ugly" (which, honestly, I think is untrue) or that he doesn't "Capture the spirit" of the Doctor, to which I say, Matt Smith's Doctor is much closer to some of the classic portrayals of the Doctor than Tennant was (And please don't mistake this for me saying that Tennant's performance was bad).
Also, while I did in my second post, I didn't really call you a fanboy at first. I said you were using arguments fanboys use, which is different. I will cop to thinking you are a bit of a fanboy, but not nearly to the point of some other people I've dealt with. For example, you're not screaming about how Ten and Rose's romance was the greatest thing that ever happened in Doctor Who. Therefore, you're automatically about ten (or eleven. :P) pegs above 90% of Doctor Who fans I've ever talked to who weren't my friends.
(I agree perfectly with both of the preceding sentences)