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Sci-Fi Television

Jodie Whittaker and Showrunner Chris Chibnall To Leave 'Doctor Who' (doctorwho.tv) 131

Posted by EditorDavid from the Inspector-Spacetime dept.
Slashdot reader Dave Knott quotes the BBC's Doctor Who site: Having been in charge of the TARDIS since filming for the Thirteenth Doctor began in 2017, Showrunner Chris Chibnall and the Thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, have confirmed they will be moving on from the most famous police box on Earth.

With a six-part Event Serial announced for the autumn, and two Specials already planned for 2022, BBC One has now asked for an additional final feature length adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor, to form a trio of Specials for 2022, before the Doctor regenerates once more.
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Jodie Whittaker and Showrunner Chris Chibnall To Leave 'Doctor Who' More

Jodie Whittaker and Showrunner Chris Chibnall To Leave 'Doctor Who'

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  • Inclusivity! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01, 2021 @10:40AM (#61643871)

    Good. It's past time we had a trans attack helicopter ( pronouns: ze/ver ) Doctor.

    • Re:Inclusivity! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by merky1 ( 83978 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @10:55AM (#61643881) Journal

      I don’t mind her, I think she’s been handed absolute garbage scripts. I welcome the loss of the show runner, just wish Jodi had more of a chance.

      • Re:Inclusivity! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:08AM (#61643911)
        I have the same sentiment; she did the best with what she got. I was concerned when Chibnall became the show runner based on his previous scripts, like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

        • Re:Inclusivity! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:43AM (#61643959) Homepage Journal

          In any long running franchise, if your scripts don't hit it out of the park then your phase of the franchise looks like a failure. That's because fans' memories of the early days of franchise are tainted by survivor bias. People remember Star Trek TNG as if every episode was *Inner Light*, but there were a lot of scripts like *Sub Rosa* -- half baked drek shoveled into the insatiable maw of production then shoved out the door so the airing schedule wouldn't have a hole in it.

          If we watched the first season of TNG with the expectations memories of TNG set for following series, TNG wouldn't have survived it's fourth episdoe, *Code of Honor* (the infamous space negro episode).

          Really the only artistically satisfying way to manage a franchise like Dr. Who would be to run it for a couple years and then let it lie fallow for a couple years while you prepare to hit the next installment out of the park. You can't keep something like that alive by airing an endless stream of more or less adequate shows.

          • What the fuck are you talking about?

            First TNG (or The Love Boat in Space) sucked balls. Everybody knew that at the time. The "I hate Wesley Crusher" fan club should have been the dead give away.

            Second, there's no rose color glasses memories of Doctor Who - you can watch the old shows now. Pluto TV and BritBox and occasionally BBC America show classic Doctor Who. So you can see what shows made in the 60's, 70's and '80s were like. Shows in the '60s and '70s were actually good. Much better script

          • In any long running franchise, if your scripts don't hit it out of the park then your phase of the franchise looks like a failure. That's because fans' memories of the early days of franchise are tainted by survivor bias. People remember Star Trek TNG as if every episode was *Inner Light*, but there were a lot of scripts like *Sub Rosa* -- half baked drek shoveled into the insatiable maw of production then shoved out the door so the airing schedule wouldn't have a hole in it.

            What are you talking about? Chris Chibnall wrote some of my least favorite Doctor Who episodes in terms of structure and plot. When it was announced that he would take over as showrunner and head writer, I was concerned about the quality of the show and scripts.

      • Re:Inclusivity! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by quall ( 1441799 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:20AM (#61643929)

        Don't mind her? She was voted to be the best Dr. Who of all time. Believable right?

        Never mind the fact that the season had the worst ratings and viewership of all time. The writers made the Dr. originally born a female, and then wrote "her" out from even being a real time-lord. The writing was so bad that it destroyed the series, and it's like the writers weren't even fans of the show. They kept eluding to the Dr. becoming female in previous seasons and they could have done so much more with it. Instead, they just made it woke garbage that rehashed previous stories. Wasn't unique, was boring, and was just throw-away.

        As far as I am concerned the show is pretty much dead. It's gonna be hard to come back from this since they not only gave away the Dr.'s mysterious origin, but ruined it by allowing woke politics to take precedence over a good story.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          allowing woke politics to take precedence over a good story.

          Have you seen that step-free access everywhere? We are so screwed if the Daleks invade.

        • Re:Inclusivity! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @02:17PM (#61644395) Homepage Journal

          Worse ratings that then 80s? Hard to believe.

          Or maybe just because in the 80s there were only 4 TV channels to choose from, but even so the ratings for the last few seasons with McCoy were dire.

          By the way, the Doctor is not just a real Time Lord, they are the original Time Lord. The story was retconned to be that the Doctor was from another dimension, mysteriously arrived on Gallifrey and was adopted by a scientist who learned the secret of regeneration from her. All the other Time Lords were given regeneration artificially.

          Complaining about retcons and continuity and lore in Who is ridiculous though. It's been completely trashed already. Remember that time when Romana casually regenerated into a bunch of different bodies before settling on one, like she was trying on different outfits?

          • Why, do you remember Plant of Spiders were abbot K’anpo Rimpoche created a future version of himself to generate into. Samething happened in Logopolis. Regeneration was forced upon the second Doctor and his appearance was selected not random. So it's not taken out of context for Time Lords to generate intentionally and to chose different bodies.
          • Yes, it is hard to believe, but it's also hard to believe that they would have found and kept a showrunner that would make people miss JNT's time at the helm. I'd rather watch Ace almost turn into a cat a thousand times before watching one more of Chinball's episodes.

            And can't we say that some retconning is just going too far? Hard to avoid some with a sci-fi show that began before we landed on the moon and is still going, but deciding the First Doctor wasn't the first so they could feminize his backst

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Why is it beyond the pale? And why do anything in Who, why is making them originally (maybe) female an issue?

              • Because changing something for the sake of change is fucking stupid. Doctor Who wasn't broken, so why try to "fix" it? Were inconsistencies in the plot resolved or were more created? Did the show benefit? Did the audience experience more or less enjoyment? Was some sort of functional requirement met?

                Was the change driven by the needs of the beloved story, or external and unrelated politics? Because it sure as hell feels like the latter, which would mean the program ceased to be pure entertainment a

        • I sort of want to agree with you, but I gave up on this most recent Doctor after, I think, the second DVD from Netflix; the first was atrocious, I kept opening a book while the shows were playing, and hoped the second DVD would be better. It wasn't. Plot holes, logic holes, and the way-too-woke nonsense (Guns are filthy, it's so much honorable to kill en mass; oh he's just having a bad day and is not really horrible).

          I haven't watched one since. So I sort of feel like I have no right to write down my opi

          • That "new guy" was the reviled Johnathan Nathan-Turner. I suspect he either has or is about to lose the title of, "worst Doctor Who showrunner ever".

            • Thanks for the name. Looked him up on Wikipedia, and ....
              "He strongly felt that people working on the programme (notably Williams, script editor Douglas Adams and star Tom Baker) had stopped taking the show seriously: it was parodying science fiction, rather than presenting serious storylines. He also believed that Williams had allowed Baker too much influence on the show's direction, rather than confronting Baker over his increasingly comedic acting style. Nathan-Turner, together with new script editor Ch

              • It's amazing. To think, he had one of the greatest English-speaking writers of all time on staff, and he wasn't happy about it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by grasshoppa ( 657393 )

        I agree; I don't have a problem with Whittaker's work ( although not my favorite by far ).

        I think they need to get back to the basics; tell good stories and make it fun. Don't preach or lecture.

      • Yeah, I think she could be a good Dr. Who with show runners and writers that had any idea what Dr Who, the show, was about... what a waste of a good actor.

      • She’s just not a good actor. That black woman in the light house was onscreen for 5 minutes and was already a better doctor. Please let her take over.

      • I agree. The problem isn't Whittaker, but the fact that each episode reminds me of Scooby Doo. Granted Doctor Who is targeted towards children, it was a bit too far.

        However my view on Doctor Who, is the same I have with Star Trek, and Star Wars. These were show universes of a different eras. To continue them you play a continuous loosing game of either being too campy, or too Woke. Nostalgia is a cruel emotion, you fondly remember crap and are blind to it seeing it again. But if it is new your adult br

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          If they weren't so much a money grab, I would say they should just put the effort into new shows for the next generation.

          That's what they do, because us older viewers tend not to spend much money on these things. We don't buy the toys or the DVDs or the comics, at least not as often as the younger viewers. These very long running shows have to constantly re-invent themselves.

          It actually killed Who off before in the 80s, when it tried to be down with the youths. It worked very well for Trek though. People were very upset when they put a female councillor on the bridge (although Roddenberry had planned that for the original ser

      • I agree.

        In a way it's a shame that she's going at the same time as the change of show runner. With a better scriptwriter, I believe that she would shine.

        The trouble with the current set up is that the moralising is laid on with a shovel, at the expense of the natural flow. OK, give positive messages now and then, but don't sacrifice the pace, direction and narrative flow.

        I've been watching it since the William Hartnell era -- the effects may not have been that "special" in the 60s/70s/80s but the story lin

        • It's rose-tinted.

          There were some seriously awful storylines back then. Don't get me wrong, there was great stuff too, but there was also a massive amount of cheesy, ridiculous, garbage writing.

      • I agree wholeheartedly. I think she was just fine but I think the scripts have been trash, almost from the beginning. Chibnall seemed more interested in preaching than just telling some fun stories. Don't get me wrong, the whole episode about the partition of India was incredibly fascinating as I hadn't thought about how all that came about but most of the rest were garbage. I can only hope we'll get a "Bobby Ewing" and The Doctor will discover that the previous seasons were actually the Dream Lord's work,

      • I totally agree with you. Whittaker was good. Chibnal was garbage. It's going to take a long time to undo the damage he did to the franchise.

      • While Chibnall and BBC leadership bear the majority of the blame, she was happy playing up being the token gender swap. It's difficult to imagine scripts that would have made her look good given her acting performances in the role.

      • Yeah. Chibnall did an absolutely horrible job. Caripaldi's last season stank something fierce, as did what I saw of Whitaker's first season - which I gave up on a few episodes in on account of it being so horribly f'ing bad.

        I'll never have a good as-in-fair-to-her or good as-in-positive opinion of her as the Doctor thanks to the show having been handed off to some critical-theory twit who shat all over it before flushing it down the tubes.

        Who'd have thought they'd pick a showrunner so bad that people

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by having Chibnall directing the thing

  • Good Riddance... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:09AM (#61643915)

    Horrible Horrible season. There is a difference between fun romps with good acting, intriguing characters, and sympathetic situations, and just being straight lectured to.

    The fact that she didn't prepare for the role really shows. And I hope Chibnall is forced to learn some humility after that. The disrespect he showed to the fanbase should be a cautionary tale taught at all major studios for years to come.

  • The problem I have with today's Who (Score:5, Informative)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @11:52AM (#61643971) Homepage Journal

    As someone who's been watching since the 70s. Here's the problem I have with Doctor who in its current form:

    In the 1970s they had terrible special effects. So they had to spend a lot of extra time on dialog and character building and science.

    Today, the show is 90% special effects, almost no backstory, and the doctor rather than being an intelligent scientist, she's a magical wizard with a magic wand (sonic screwdriver). The Daleks can are basically invincible, can fly, time travel, etc. They turned a science show into Harry Potter.

    • I think it runs deeper than that (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:50PM (#61644093)
      Go look up the names of the writers of the Doctor who episodes. They were a who's who of science fiction authors. People read a lot less now and so there's a lot less writing going on. That inevitably means the quality of the writing is going to go down. Authors can't practice their writing in low-cost book form as much as they could back in the sixties and seventies. They just don't have his large and audience to try out their works on.

      Comedians have the same problem because vaudeville went away and because of cell phones recording their shows. We all love the Groucho Marx movies but a lot of those bits were honed and perfected in live shows. There's a lot fewer live shows and worse if you're trying out new material and it bombs is a good chance somebody's recording it with a cell phone and will post it to YouTube. So when you have a bad night the whole country knows it.

      That's kind of what's happening here. It's like a video game without beta testers.

    • Re:The problem I have with today's Who (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @02:06PM (#61644345) Homepage Journal

      New Who had some moments, some good ideas. The problem is the showrunners.

      First there was Davis, who started out okay but seemed to run out of complete ideas quickly. Eventually everything was just a McGuffin and a big tease that turned out to be BS. There were some decent episodes, mostly written by Moffat... So they made Moffat showrunner.

      Moffat's problem is that when he was no longer constrained by having to wrap a story up in one episode he just stopped wrapping things up. Every big plot point that seemed to be building to something was never resolved, it just lead on to something else and was forgotten about. The writing was very poor by that point too, and Moffat did nothing to stop the decline.

      Finally we had Chibnall who made a decent attempt at getting Who back on track. It still had a lot of problems but with more of an ensemble cast at least there were more opportunities to do something a bit different than "monster of the week gets defeated by Doctor's McGuffin" again. Whittaker is a decent doctor, a bit more emotionally mature now having seen first hand what human friendship and family is about, but still kinda nuts.

      Their series have had lower budgets so less effects, which has actually helped because they had to come up with more interesting plots instead of relying on special effects.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by martinX ( 672498 )

        Russell T Davies was such a Who fanboy that he made a great writer - since he knows Who canon from the very beginning - and the perfect show runner, because he had such a love for it he would be in a position to protect it.

        Moffatt seemed to write well under supervision. He didn't have what it takes to be the show runner. This is how we got Chibnall.

        • The thing is, Moffatt was such a Who fanboy that it made him a worse writer. He was so in love with The Doctor that The Doctor went from being a time-travelling misfit having adventures to being an immortal god literally responsible for the existence of the Universe. It just got silly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      It's like very series now. Look at Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. Are there anything that is still good like the originals? :(

    • Same thing happened with games. When all companies were forced to make games in 320x200 pixels in 16 or 256 colours, with maybe Tandy 3-voices or Ad Lib OPL2 music on a 16MHz computer with only 640KB, the games had to be fun or interesting otherwise nobody would have bought and played them.

      Today, we have extremely powerful consoles and gaming computers powered with things like multi-gigahertz processors with 8 gigabytes of RAM or more, insanely powerful GPUs like the RTX 3000 series, but all games are basic

  • JMS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kmahan ( 80459 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:04PM (#61643979)

    How about considering someone from outside the UK?

    Michael Straczynski - he's expressed interest.

    • I don't really know if now is a good moment for this. You know how his scripts are, 2 years of utter confusion before you finally start to realize what the hell is going on. Yes, in the end it is awesome, but remember how you sat there puzzled the first 2 seasons of B5 going "wtf am I watching here?"

    • Re:JMS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @02:07PM (#61644355) Homepage Journal

      Straczynski would be great, he likes to come up with the whole plot for multiple seasons in advance. One of the things that has really hurt modern Who is the lack of satisfying season long story arcs and proper resolutions to things.

      • They stopped the long/multi story arc thing because people were too stupid to realize what was going on. You hear people going on about Moffat all the time saying "oh but he introduced a bunch of stuff that was never resolved!" -- mostly because they didn't watch the series to realize that yes, they were resolved -- in longer story arcs. And some of those arcs weren't limited to a single season, but managed to span multiple seasons, sometimes multiple doctors.

    • What about RMS? That would be inclusive.

  • I'd vote for Neil Gaiman in two heartbeats. Maybe an occasional John Scalzi, Dennis Taylor, or Earnest Cline.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      I'd vote for Neil Gaiman in two heartbeats.

      I don't know. I liked The Doctor's Wife, but I think Gaiman would be too whimsical if given full control. I can only take so much whimsy.

    • I'm down for Gaiman, if someone's holding his leash. He can get a tad..."strange", which works for his normal audience but I worry about his long term impact on a series like Doctor Who.

  • Bad scripts, bad stories (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:36PM (#61644047)

    Whittaker may or may not have been a good Doctor with better scripts, but there's not much sign of it.

    The scripts were terrible - just stupid, mostly - but that doesn't let her off with anything better than a "maybe", IMO.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by martinX ( 672498 )

      I watched a couple of episodes of Whittaker and then realised that she was acting just like Tennant. Can't hate her acting for that, although Tennant was a better Tennant, but the scripts gave her little to work with. Also, I hate ensemble companions. It didn't work in the past (Adric, anyone?) and it doesn't work now.

  • Write for your audience (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:41PM (#61644071)

    My hope for Hollywood is gone, but maybe, just maybe, there's hope at least for TV.

    I know, I know, you want to appeal to a broader audience and get more people to watch your show. And your train of thought is "Hey, if we retool the show to appeal to that demographic over there, they will watch it too".

    The fallacy in your logic is the "too". Because now you not only have to win over an audience that you don't have yet, something everyone who even spent a second in marketing knows is incredibly hard to pull off, you're also endagering retaining an audience you already have. Yes, if everything works out, you can end up with more people watching, retaining your existing audience and gaining a new demographic.

    What you fail to see, and what happens more often than not, is that the other demographic doesn't give a fuck about your product because they don't expect it to appeal to them, so they don't even look, while you're losing your existing audience with storylines, plots and developments they're not interested in at all.

    FUCKING GET A CLUE, DAMMIT!

    I don't watch Transformer movies. Why? Because I'm not interested in mindless action movies where character development doesn't even work as a joke anymore because films don't get developed anymore, so the joke about the only development happening in the dark room falls flat. So what will happen if you try to market that movie franchise to me by toning down the action and creating interesting characters, maybe a new autobot even, that go through story arcs where they have to learn and progress to become "better" characters, who will sacrifice their awesome boom-boom firepower for character development? You will alienate the existing crowd of fans that like over the top action and flashy CGI graphics while still not getting me because I simply and plainly don't expect that from a Transformers movie.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Vrallis ( 33290 )

      TLDR: Get woke, go broke.

    • They won't. The entertainment industry is so insular that they firmly believe they're producing amazing art, and any such criticism must be from those that don't understand it, and thus can be dismissed as irrelevant. Or they believe in their cause to such an extent that any sacrifice is deemed acceptable ( I've met both types ).

      The notion that a show can "just be fun and that's ok" is foreign to the lot of them.

      • Ok, then I won't criticize it.

        But also don't expect me to watch it. I obviously don't get it, so I guess wasting my time on it is futile.

  • The show needs new writers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:42PM (#61644073)

    ... and a break from the navel gazing past.

    The scripts Whittaker had to work with, were worse than even Capaldi endured and to her credit, she tried. God, she tried.
    But, it was near unwatchable - for me at least. It was just one bit groan-fest.

    Doctor Who has always had a theatrical bent, where the action would "pause" for dialogue - that was one of the endearing aspects of the show.
    The Doctor would launch into a minutes worth of dialogue at the most critical point - just as the baddies were on the verge of succeeding, berate them with a "do you know who I am?" and then defeat them - the world/planet/people saved - hoorah!
    All good theatrical stuff... ... unless the script sucks.

    The show wasn't helped by the fairly wooden acting by the Doctors companions - likely suffering more than Jodie for lack of decent scripting.

    For this show to survive, the old guard of writers need to be ... shunted. Given the boot. The navel gazing has to end. The ridiculous plot lines and so many many nods to the past, need to end.

    The show has got itself into so many twists, due to trying to keep a time line of past events somehow relevant.
    This got really bad in Matt Smith's tenure, but the scripts were good enough, for the most part, to hold it together.

    There's SO much possibility with a time lord, an infinite variety of stories - but perhaps it is time to let go of the baggage.

    Right now, Marvel are just killing it in the sci-fi genre, totally smacking the ball out of the park.
    Loki reminded me SO much of the way Doctor Who, in its finer episodes, spun a story.
    It had that theatrical bent, cheesy but funny dialogue, slightly low-fi special effects, moments of monologues and just the feeling you were watching a theatre production.

    That's what always made Doctor Who shine - and I'm pretty sure the directors, producers and writers of Loki were having a little nod toward Doctor Who.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )

      The scripts Whittaker had to work with, were worse than even Capaldi endured

      I thought they completely wasted Capaldi. He seemed like he had the ability to do a great job with the role, but the scripts were just awful, over and over again. I gave up on Doctor Who somewhere around Capaldi moping around the dark ages, playing electric guitar while standing on a battle tank, pretending to be a wizard for a bunch of unwashed numpties.

      I remember when Doctor Who wasn't just running and shouting until they figure o

  • Too much angst (Score:3)

    by g01d4 ( 888748 ) on Sunday August 01, 2021 @04:00PM (#61644775)

    While the special effects, nods to the earlier incarnation, and an occasional good story have been enjoyable there's an increasing angst in the doctors that've made the reboot increasingly hard to watch. The original wit and humor one might expect from a timelord who's seen it all frequently turns into unappealing existential drama.

    Ms. Whittaker is disappointing as the first female doctor and the least interesting female timelord the series has produced. Instead of the wise adult in the room Mary Tamm [wikipedia.org] that I was hoping for we're left with a nerdy female teenager with more enthusiasm than wit who's barely able to override emotions with intelligence.

    Hopefully the next crew can reverse this slide.

    • Missy and the Ruth doctor showed what a female timelord could be.

      Problem is, they cranked up her zany too high. After Capaldi's crotchety old man shtick, Jodie had to fall back to playing to the youth audience - it worked for Matt Smith because he was a kid in his 20s but her doctor just seems high on caffeine every episode.

      That and her companions have been just plain wooden. Was I the only one who liked Bill Potts? She had far more spunk and personality than daggy grandad Graham and Ryan. Yaz might be salv

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by martinX ( 672498 )

        Graham was the only good thing there.

        • Dragged down by his dopey step-grandson and the ghost of his dead wife.

          If they're going to cast Afro-English actors, the BBC need to stop with the tokenism.

          Mickey Smith gets written out to a parallel universe, Martha Jones lasts only a season before being replaced by Donna. And conveniently those 2 fall in love because reasons. Bill Potts gets turned into a cyberwoman after only 1 series. Ruth is an alternate timeline doctor but lasts only a couple of cameo episodes.

      • You might be. I certainly couldn't find anything to enjoy about the character. They seemed to think it was really important that, every other scene or so, she remind the audience that the character is a lesbian. And that was it. That's her character. The black lesbian who tells everyone she meets that she likes girls.

        Wait, you do have a point though - the 'spunky' black lesbian. The following season's excessively large cast of companions were as painfully 1-dimensional as Bill, but far less enthusi

  • This is the first Time Lord killed by falling ratings.

    • Um, Colin Baker's short term as the Sixth Doctor? Sylvester McCoy's ending the franchise for *how* many years? Though McCoy's last season was a definite improvement with elements of the 'Cartmel Masterplan' coming into play, Come to think of it, the whole Timeless Child plotline rings back to the idea of the Doctor as "The Other" from said backstory.

      • Are you fucking kidding me? Sylvester McCoy's episodes were unwatchable. Kandyman?

        The 'Cartmel Masterplan' was the biggest piece of bullshit. That turned Doctor Who into god. It was giant fuck fest that turned a traveler into some kind of supreme being with a master plan. For fucks sake.

        Doctor Who is just some guy with a box that travels in time. Good grief, leave it alone.
    • Yes because when Doctor Who stopped making TV episodes for 12 years or so, the series was just "pining for the fjords"?
  • Quite possibly the worst season of doctor who I have ever watched and I have been watching since the 70's. I don't mind the Doctor being female, but the story and character have been so incredibly badly done that it is almost painful to watch. Similar to Capaldi she suffered from terrible writing that didn't seem to understand the character, but at least in Capaldi I could see some glimmer of possibilities, this season had no redeeming qualities. First season ever that I haven't been looking forward to the
  • A glorified stage manager? A script-writer hirer-firer?

    I compared the Dr Who of about a decade ago to Torchwood, and gave up on the Doctor.

    Did America ever get Torchwood, or was it a bit too much for them?

    • To my knowledge, "showrunner" is an unofficial title for a show's creative lead. Could be the head writer, could be the lead producer, director, or someone with some combination of those roles. They "run the show", being above other writers, producers and the director. They set the direction, tone and overall story of the show, or maintain it if they didn't create the show.

      I'm pretty sure Torchwood aired on some channel here in the US, though I mostly had to download it at the time. By "a bit too muc

  • I know not to come to Slashdot to read any kind words about any show or movie that I enjoy, but I'm here to say at least one more positive thing about Doctor Who and Whittaker. Despite having some annoying political elements pop up recently, I thought the newest Doctor to be very likeable. And all of her companion actors were also endearing and many times had their moments. It's too bad they got so political and let that cloud people's perceptions. Stick to solid stories, good character development, and fun

  • It seems to be a trend.

    After idiot showrunners ruined Game of Thrones, different idiots ruined Doctor Who.

    In both cases, what's needed is that they declare the last season a terrible mistake, apologize to all the fans, hang the people responsible from a tall tree, and redo it all, retconning that terrible season out of existence.

    I don't know what's going on there, but within a short timespan, I've lost all my favorite TV shows (Big Bang Theory at least had a fairly good finale).

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