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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 4, 2015 8:08:05 GMT
Thing is, you're basically complaining, not specifically about how Doctor Who is made now, but about how most serialised TV drama is made now. It's what people are used to, what they seem to like, and most of the audience of series' like Doctor Who, Gotham, Game of Thrones, Arrow or whatever have no problem recalling events from week to week, month to month or even year to year. This is not a problem with the writers. They are simply making serialised drama as serialised drama is now made. You seem to be expecting them to make it as it was made decades ago, instead. If they did that, half the current audience would just switch off because they'd be bored silly by it. For the last couple of generations, people have grown up with incredibly complex and fast moving movies, TV shows and games which require them to take in and retain a lot of information, it's how their brains are wired these days. Basically, if you want to follow these stories, you really need to pay constant attention or there's just no point. There's the rub : I deliberately avoid nonsense like Game of Thrones, One of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows on the planet, consistently beautifully written and incredibly well acted by some of the biggest talents around today...It's not just teenagers (teenagers seem to account for only a small percentage of the show's audience), it's pretty much anyone born since the eighties, the last thirty years or so. You can't seriously expect them to keep Doctor Who mired in the past just because a few middle aged fans can't adapt? But again, that's really your problem, not something BBC Wales should be worrying about.
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Post by andyc on Dec 4, 2015 12:03:56 GMT
It's funny the things you notice if you look and look, maybe too deeply! Take the title of the Series 9 finale wherein the Doctor returns to Gallifrey and aims to misbehave: Hell Bent. Hell Bent. He'll Ben't. It could a reference to his phone. He'll be not texting.
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Post by Richard Marple on Dec 4, 2015 13:14:06 GMT
There's the rub : I deliberately avoid nonsense like Game of Thrones, One of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows on the planet, consistently beautifully written and incredibly well acted by some of the biggest talents around today...It's not just teenagers (teenagers seem to account for only a small percentage of the show's audience), it's pretty much anyone born since the eighties, the last thirty years or so. You can't seriously expect them to keep Doctor Who mired in the past just because a few middle aged fans can't adapt? But again, that's really your problem, not something BBC Wales should be worrying about. Well said, even in the 1980s JNT was fond of referencing things from the show's past, though these days it's a lot easier to look up on line anything out that isn't apparent.
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Post by lousingh on Dec 4, 2015 15:14:56 GMT
There was a discussion about this phenomenon on NPR a few weeks ago. This trend of referencing a throwaway quote from several seasons ago is not going anywhere.
Essentially, TV shows have gone from "view an episode a week" to "binge watch the entire season." The writing and production staffs have taken advantage of this by writing longer story arcs with what they perceive to be more subtle - most episodes are largely self-contained, but there are certain niceties buried within them. In theory, if you follow closely, you are rewarded for your effort with what should be a more satisfying conclusion to the season's story arcs.
Think of this as "The Key to Time" on steroids, except that the constituent stories are 1 or 2 x 45 minute episodes apiece instead of 4 or 6 x 25 minute episodes apiece - but add on that you also have the memory needed to recall throwaway lines from the previous 4 seasons as well.
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 4, 2015 18:21:08 GMT
It's actually a style of storytelling I really like. It allows the viewer to become totally immersed in the generally more complex and therefore satisfying fictional reality being presented to them.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 6, 2015 3:07:12 GMT
How did we travel with Hell Bent? Wish I could have liked it more than I did, but it didn't much work for me. Even with the many laudable elements, and clearly a transdimensional bucket of cash, I felt that overall it was not to my taste. The opening was a nice hook, and the immediate thereafter featuring the showdown at the Shobogan Corral I quite liked too. One wonders whether Rassilon is a catchy name certain Time Lords use on ascendance to the Presidency, as we see with Earth's monarchs and Popes. Nevertheless, I expect it's the same bloke we saw in The End Of Time, albeit with a different face. So he's now out and about? Well, it offers a chance for interesting new stories I guess. Perhaps he'll strike an alliance with the Daleks - or become their prisoner. Sorry to see Ken Bones knocked off, in what to me seemed gratuitous recasting for the sake of it. I'd have minded less if I bought the Doctor was a villain or something but in the scene it looked to me like he had no need to do it, and the response to killing one of the more decent sorts of his own people was to make a flip remark. Yes Clara was a little concerned, but to me it wasn't enough. Hope I don't break your jaw, but who cares if I needlessly shoot you dead? Too much however, was the resurrecting of Ms Oswald then letting her fly off into the great beyond with a TARDIS. Okay fine, the Doctor's influenced her a little too much, hence her death, I get it. But this seemed more like the kind of thing I wearied of in the latter years of the Davies run. Clara had a noble, memorable death. Why cheapen it? It seemed a flinch and a mistake, a la Peri's reprieve. Now it's possible to say she had all kinds of kooky adventures in time and space in her own stolen time machine, and then she went back to being dead. Wasn't what she already had pretty wonderful? It seemed just a little too much. So Gallifrey's no longer lost and no longer destroyed, just moved on a bit in time. And the Doctor is still on the run. We'll see how long that goes before things get tweaked a bit further. I'd be surprised if there's no Rassilon or Gallifrey element or Sisterhood in Series 10. Who knows, perhaps Missy will mix things up to further her own ends and once more, attract the Doctor's attention. We keep seeing what the powerful want and do on Gallifrey, in contrast to other planets, where there's often more of a balance. It's about time there was a greater focus on the opposite I think. If you want less group think in the Capitol, talk to and assign more diverse folks! The day trippers from Tombstone that took the Doctor in are a start, and I would hope there's more to come of seeing ordinary Gallifreyans getting a voice in the affairs and fate of their world. For all I know, the greater populace might still think the Doctor is a bit of a menace, for different and more tangible reasons than the one we saw this ep. If so, show it, could be interesting! I'm hopeful that The Husbands Of River Song will be a little less "important" and a lot more fun. Now that Capaldi is clicking his fingers to close the doors, she'll have the memory of it to mention to Tennant's Doctor. Of course, several of his predecessors have done as much, at various times. So I guess one has to be in the mood to forgo the key or door lever!
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 6, 2015 10:02:44 GMT
I actually thought the ending was a very clever piece of writing, Moffat pretty much inverting what Davies did back in 2008, with the Doctor now cast in the role that Donna Noble took last time. I also love the way he finally raised that thorny "half human" question again after all these years, only to not only duck out of answering it but also state that the answer doesn't matter!
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Post by Simon Smith on Dec 6, 2015 11:03:06 GMT
It was rubbish.
Sorry, but there's no other way to say it, without using swear words.
Everything about this episode was just Moffat trying to rewrite Doctor Who in his own image. Gallifrey/Time Lords/regeneration/the Doctor/the half-human concept/the end of the universe(anyone remember Utopia, the GOOD end-of-the-universe episode?), just a thoroughly bad, nasty piece of infantile fan fiction.
There has been bad Doctor Who before. As early as the very first season we had The Sensorites. And all the way through to Davies we still had stuff like Fear Her. But Hell Bent wasn't just bad. It actually offended the viewers. it was Moffat giving two fingers to everyone who isn't part of his Cult. It's funny that i've seen reviews where Moffat's followers actually say that it doesn't matter if others don't like it, because the show is better off without people who don't like what Moffat is doing.Well, I don't like what Moffat is doing to what was once my favourite show. In fact I despise it. I loathe it. So, maybe the ever-decreasing number of Moffatites feel they'd be better off without people like me who DON'T just sing the prsises of anything and everything that Moffat produces, regardless of its actual quality. Well, THEY would feel happier, but there are millions and millions of people who still love what Doctor Who was, and what Doctor Who COULD BE again, but who feel that what Moffat is serving up is not worthy of the name 'Doctor Who'.
Sorry, but as someone who has loved Doctor Who for some decades, I can't in any way shape or form say anything other than that Hell Bent was an insult to the memories of people like Verity Lambert, Barry Letts, William Hartnell, and all the rest of them, and an insult to everyone who has ever watched and loved Doctor Who, from the people in November 1963 right through to young fans just coming to the show in the David Tennant years.
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 6, 2015 13:02:10 GMT
It didn't offend anyone (except you, which is hardly a great loss), it didn't insult anyone, and it didn't rewrite anything. You're like a stuck record, Simon. Why don't you just stop watching if it upsets you so much? It would save you having to type out the same tedious, meaningless complaints every week, which would be a merciful release for everyone, really...
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Post by Simon Smith on Dec 6, 2015 13:44:37 GMT
It didn't offend anyone (except you, which is hardly a great loss), Clearly you don't go onto fan websites. As per above. So the Doctor left Gallifrey because of the Hybrid, did he? And does anyone remember that episode Utopia(which I already mentioned)? To name just two. So are you, but at least I'm being honest about me feelings, and not just trying to blend in with the trendies. I may do so. But in time someone will replace Moffat and the show can only improve. I'll stop posting my stuff every week if you stop posting the same vapid, hollow, gushing cheerleader comments. It does get irksome when someone fawns and goes gaga over episodes like Sleep No More and The Witch's Familiar.
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 6, 2015 14:20:03 GMT
I don't give a damn whether it's "irksome" to you, and for the record, I don't give a damn about being trendy, either: I am being "honest about my feelings". Unlike you, I genuinely love this show-not just as it once was, but as it is now. And so do the majority of the longtime fans I've known for years. If you can't appreciate it, that's your problem. And your loss.
As for fan sites, I still visit quite a few-but I also now avoid quite a few like the plague, because they are inevitably full of the same kind of unrelenting negativity you seem determined to inflict on the world, most of it from "fans" in their forties and fifties who cannot accept the simple fact that the show cannot continue to be made in the exact same way that it was when they were ten, because times have changed.
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Post by Simon Smith on Dec 6, 2015 14:49:04 GMT
I don't give a damn whether it's "irksome" to you, and for the record, I don't give a damn about being trendy, either: I am being "honest about my feelings". Unlike you, I genuinely love this show-not just as it once was, but as it is now. And so do the majority of the longtime fans I've known for years. If you can't appreciate it, that's your problem. And your loss. As for fan sites, I still visit quite a few-but I also now avoid quite a few like the plague, because they are inevitably full of the same kind of unrelenting negativity you seem determined to inflict on the world, most of it from "fans" in their forties and fifties who cannot accept the simple fact that the show cannot continue to be made in the exact same way that it was when they were ten, because times have changed. People are only negative about something when it is poorly done. It is also odd that everyone you know seems to love the show, yet fan sites are inevitably full of people whoa re negative about the show. And yet you still claim that "the majority of longtime fans" love it. It seems more likely that YOU love it, and you just don't want to hear anything negative about it. Which is fair enough, but you still have to claim that you are somehow both in the majority, and of course that you somehow have the high ground. And I never for one moment said, or even implied, that I wanted the show to be made like it was in the 70's. I fully understand that television made in 2015 will be totally different from television made 40 years ago. But what I DO want is a good show, well-written, well-made, well-acted. Which Hell Bent most certainly was not. What I don't want is some man in his 50's producing very badly written fan fiction, and expecting me to gobble it up, and proclaim it as The Greatest Doctor Who Of All Time! I understand that you don't give a damn about my feelings, and the feeling is more than mutual, but I would like to think that the Showrunner who is supposedly such a longtime fan and such a great writer could come up with something with more substance than Hell Bent. And that he wouldn't go out of his way to give two fingers to both the fans and previous people who worked on the show. Hey Moffat, is Hell Bent the best YOU could come up with?
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 6, 2015 15:10:18 GMT
I don't give a damn whether it's "irksome" to you, and for the record, I don't give a damn about being trendy, either: I am being "honest about my feelings". Unlike you, I genuinely love this show-not just as it once was, but as it is now. And so do the majority of the longtime fans I've known for years. If you can't appreciate it, that's your problem. And your loss. As for fan sites, I still visit quite a few-but I also now avoid quite a few like the plague, because they are inevitably full of the same kind of unrelenting negativity you seem determined to inflict on the world, most of it from "fans" in their forties and fifties who cannot accept the simple fact that the show cannot continue to be made in the exact same way that it was when they were ten, because times have changed. People are only negative about something when it is poorly done. It is also odd that everyone you know seems to love the show, yet fan sites are inevitably full of people whoa re negative about the show. And yet you still claim that "the majority of longtime fans" love it. It seems more likely that YOU love it, and you just don't want to hear anything negative about it. Which is fair enough, but you still have to claim that you are somehow both in the majority, and of course that you somehow have the high ground. No, a handful of fan sites largely inhabited by middle aged moaners are full of people who are negative about the show: a lot more are full of people who are generally positive about it, but unsurprisingly, the moaners don't gravitate to those sites. Misery loves company. It most certainly was, which is why the majority of the critics have given it glowing reviews. Something written by a professional writer, on commission, for broadcast on BBC1, for money, cannot be described as "fan fiction". That's just ludicrous. He hasn't done any such thing, except in your paranoid imaginings.
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Post by andyc on Dec 7, 2015 8:29:35 GMT
How did we travel with Hell Bent? Wish I could have liked it more than I did, but it didn't much work for me. Even with the many laudable elements, and clearly a transdimensional bucket of cash, I felt that overall it was not to my taste. I'm in agreement here, it was something of an anti-climax. And will they please stop killing characters only for them to immediately appear in the next episode(s).
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 7, 2015 10:34:03 GMT
Since the episode was actually about the Doctor trying to prevent her from having died, it's hard to see how they could have done that...
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