New Doctor Who

Like maybe we never see the "worker" Daleks? Good enough answer for me.

I'm halfway through Season 25, Remembrance of the Daleks and The Happiness Patrol, and what a difference from one season to the next. Less annoying tics, less buffoonery and more cold-bloodedness makes for a far more interesting Doctor. What he did to the Daleks was stunning.

 

It really is a shame that the show was taken off the air after season 26, because it just hit its stride in McCoy's 3rd season. I liked Battlefield and Ghost List just fine, and The Curse of Fenric is a classic, easily the best 7th Doctor story.

 

So, I'm finally up to S3 of New Who, watching Daleks in Manhattan. It's really, really, really terrible, nearly unwatchable.

 

So, the Doctor has a state of the art genetics lab at the end of Evolution of the Daleks to save Laszlo. But, he can't save him from looking like a pig? It was a genetic mutation that nearly killed him, so the Doctor can certainly save him, but that same genetic mutation couldn't be used so he can go through life like a normal human being?

Congratulations, Laszlo, you're alive. Sucks to be you on looking like a pig.

Congratulations, Ursula, you're alive. Sucks to be you to be consigned to life as pavement.

So, for those of you who want to complain about Doctor Who with Moffat as show runner (and some of those are valid), remember some of the suck things that happened with RTD as show runner.

 

Question.

I'm about to watch the following episodes in order.

Human Nature
The Family of Blood
Blink
Utopia
The Sound of Drums
Last of the Time Lords

With the qualification that I'm arbitrarily choosing the beginning and endpoint, is this the best 6 hour stretch of Doctor Who episodes in the history of the show? I think Human Nature/Family of Blood is the best story of the Tennant era.

I think the final 6 of Eccleston's season, which begins with Father's Day, is fantastic. And, the final 6 of Tennant's 3rd season, which begins with Silence in the Library, is fantastic also.


Also, we have a title for the 50th, The Day of the Doctor.

 

It really is and I'm not really sure what RTD could have done differently.


Incidentally, I think it was a travesty that there was no 2009 season. We needed more Donna Noble and a bit of River Song story and maybe even another Jenny story?

Every so often, I go to Sylvester McCoy's website to see what sort of things he's come up with. Some of them are right, such as when he said season 5's Companions would be male and female. He just didn't say they would be a couple. Borrowing some of the story ideas from his site that weren't made, here's a made up 2009 Season 5.

2008 Christmas Special - The Next Doctor
Nothing really different except Donna's involved.


501 - Planet of the Dead
Donna instead of Christina whats-her-face. The Doctor and Donna discover that The Swarm comes from a different reality. Donna starts slowly and subtly unraveling.


502 - Scherzo
Inexplicably, time splinters throughout the universe and the Doctor and Donna fall through a crack into another universe with different rules.


503 - Time of the Zygons
The Zygons have taken control of a black hole in the centre of the galaxy. They have been experimenting with time travel and discover how to grow almost anything in a fraction of the time. In minutes they have a Zygon army, ready to take over the galaxy with the help of a zetronic beam. No, I don't know what that is.


504/505 - Fractured Time/Merlin
This one follows on the heels of the Zygon story where the unstable black hole causes ruptures in space time, allowing other universes to bleed through with a risk of the Doctor being sucked into one permanently.


506 - Camelot
There has to be a story about Camelot on a British science fiction/fantasy show, right? Maybe my made up season is getting too much alternate reality stuff going on, but that's where this story is set.


507/508 - Family Reunion/Planet of the Time Lords
The Doctor and Donna join up with Jenny and they all find a world shifted out of phase with the rest of the universe. This world is home to Time Lords who hid there from the Time War and are threatened to be pulled back into "normal" space, where they desperately don't want to go. But, what's causing them to be pulled back into normal space?


509/510 - Medusa Cascade/The Dust of Stars
The ruptures in space time, and the Time Lord planet being pulled into normal space are originating from the Medusa Cascade, where Davros and the remaining few Daleks are trying to escape. The Doctor stabilizes it, trapping the Daleks there once more and putting the Time Lord planet back into its out of phase existence. But, in the process, he loses Donna like what happened at the end of Journey's End. Incidentally, I like this title for some reason. It feels apropos to me that he would lose a star, Donna, and be left with nothing but dust.

I've always thought the Doctor should be in a place, like where Captain Jack is when he meets Alphonso, where he's feeling sad and lonely and meets up with River Song. It's where he tells her about Donna and finding out that she's 2 months away from the expedition to the library, he takes her to Darillium to see the Singing Towers and gives her the sonic. Maybe it's too forced, but I wanted to see that.

511 - The Waters of Mars

This is where there is the break from June to December. This is the time where the Doctor avoids going to the planet of the Ood.


512 - The End of Time Part 1

513 - The End of Time Part 2
I hate the Mickey Smith/Martha Jones pairing. Too forced. They don't belong together.


Anyway, there's my made up 2009 Season 5 that I actually made up just tonight. Probably too much alternate universe/reality stuff in here, but oh well.

 

I'm watching Silence in the Library, which is, of course, brilliant in every way.

When Professor River Song and her team discovered the Doctor and Donna, one of the Daves asks if they're androids and River says they're not. When asked how she knows, she says, "I've dated androids, they're rubbish." When would she have dated androids? One assumes that she wouldn't have dated anybody while married to the Doctor, right? So, when would she have dated androids? Or, did Moffat screw up the continuity?

Speaking of River, instead of having the TARDIS change her from a psychopath in "Let's Kill Hitler", wouldn't it have been a better idea to have her be the psychopath for an episode or 2 and her interactions with the Doctor change her and she falls in love with him? This way, we could still have the fixed point in time, she dates an android or 2 while she's a psychopath, and they still marry. Rather than rushing things, let the events of Season 6 and 7 breathe a little bit.

 

The Doctor Who fans have mostly come and gone on this site.

Watched Forest of the Dead this morning. At the end, when River is talking to him while he's cuffed, she says, "The last time I saw you, the real you, the future you, I mean..." which means I've been wrong ever since it aired. I missed that line before, but it seems that 11 is the one who gives her the sonic.

 

Hoping there's a lot of 2nd Doctor episodes that are recovered. That's who we're missing the most.


Did I ever mention how wretched The End of Time is? We talk about how Fear Her is so bad, but The End of Time is the worse 10 story there is.

 

The Day of the Doctor trailer.