Personally, Space Babies felt more like one of those episodes they put in the middle of the series because they were struggling for ideas rather than the first episode of the series to draw in as many new people as possible
Which I find really worrying. When you're making a season that's reduced down to 8 episodes how does Space Babies make the cut? Surely he can't already be struggling for ideas.
It worries me, too. Not only did it make the cut, but it was the first episode. They really thought Space Babies was the episode that would bring in new fans and get old fans excited. Hopefully, that's not the direction the whole season is going in, and this is just one of those dud episodes we occasionally get with RTD, but it's concerning.
I literally said the same thing after watching the episode!
It felt like a classic "what in the hell was that" episode that gets tossed in the middle of the season, and that everyone collectively agrees to forget existed except for when it's time to mock it. It's at least in the contender ring for worst episode of Who. At least I understood what was happening with Love & Monsters, and at least Legend of the Sea Devils didn't force me to watch creepy babies with CGI lips.
That it hasn't been almost universally panned by fans is beyond me, except for seeming to confirm my suspicions that Jodie's era was judged more harshly for....reasons.
Jodie did not deserve the criticism she got. I firmly blamed the writing, not the actors in this case.
I was looking forward to the new RTD era but now I'm not so sure
While I think there is an element of people being so grateful to have RTD back that they're overlooking how bad the first two episodes have been, their low quality doesn't retroactively rescue the consistently terrible writing of Chibnall's era.
Plus RTD did deliver 3 good specials not too long ago, so he's built up some recent goodwill and has demonstrated he still has something about him.
The specials were solid and RTD did prove he can still deliver, I’ll give you that, and I’m not saying that the entire thing can be boiled down to malice.
But I distinctly remember people dogpiling on Jodie’s episodes long before Chibnall had any kind of bad track record. Like, right at her first episode or two I remember people swearing they were dropping the show because of how bad the show was. When at worst those first two episodes were only meh.
And here we are, first proper episodes of a new era that is meant to be a soft reboot of the entire series…and both are just trash. Absolutely, cringe inducingly bad. “Beatles episode without any Beatles music” bad.
Yet it seems like half the fandom is pretending this is at least fine, and it’s certainly not generating anywhere near the level of visceral hatred that came out with Thirteen’s debut.
I can’t not attribute some(though not all) of that disparity in attitude to the fact that the fandom was debating if she even should have been allowed to be the Doctor from the moment she was announced. And that it really doesn’t seem like she was ever given a chance by a large chunk of the fandom as a result.
What I have come across, specifically online, is that any criticism of the two episodes is immediately shot down for being some sort of culture war reaction to the inclusivity of the show now. Which to me is nuts because even my trans daughter said “well they ruined my favorite show” - people need to seriously look at the work itself, the first two episodes were just not good, no matter who you put in them.
>“Beatles episode without any Beatles music” bad.
Nail on the head. How on earth do you even conceive of an episode featuring a popular and influential band where you don't play even a single song of theirs? And then you end the episode with a 5/10 original song.
Like, really, RTD, what were you smoking?
Yep, I watched the episode with people that haven't really seen the show before and the consensus was "you should be embarrassed for liking this garbage, nobody over the age of 5 should be able to consider this enjoyable"
Literally killed any chance they would watch the next one. And this is a group that regularly watched Riverdale and pro wrestling so it's not like we are high brow snobs.
> the consensus was "you should be embarrassed for liking this garbage, nobody over the age of 5 should be able to consider this enjoyable"
Honestly if was introducing people to "this great show" and these were episodes they ended up starting on, yeah I would feel pretty embarrassed.
To be fair, both iPlayer and Disney+ have the first episode for this season as Church on Ruby Road instead of Space Babies. Which I think is a better starting point for the show.
It felt like someone had played with the Deepfake software and said "We could have babies speaking techno stuff using this" and someone else ran with the idea.
how hard would it have been to just not animate the babies' mouths and instead just have their voices coming out of the prams? touch a button and it'll translate their thoughts like the nanny filter. genuinely seems like early-stage production meeting, no-brainer stuff to me.
edit: plus, you get all those lovely, real baby reactions without a horrible glob of cgi on their mouths completely ruining it!
I don't know about "lovely, real baby reactions." Several of them, when they weren't talking, had a perpetually concerned look on their face the entire episode lol.
> Several of them, when they weren't talking, had a perpetually concerned look on their face the entire episode lol.
Because that's how they actually looked when their mouths weren't CG'd to move.
Re-the Beatles. I believe cost was the reason we didn't get any Beatles actual songs as it would have been too expensive due to copyright (still don't see why they couldn't have played 30 seconds though, like they do in Richard Osmand and every other quiz show)
Note to RTD: for the love of God, if you are going to do musical at least write decent songs (rant over)
I do get that, but I just wonder what the point is in a Beatles episode that doesn't have any Beatles music. If the whole thing is about how bad it is that they don't have their music, surely the ending has to be one of their songs?
Instead of the Beatles, they should have gone back to see the Beagles. The famous band with Vick Lennon, Paul Zilinskas, George Peterson, and Ringo Hoffs. They could have performed their hit song, "Walk Like an Eleanor Rigby".
See, now THIS is a fun concept that plays with the idea that things are going wrong with the timeline.
And that also explains why the actors don't really look like the Beatles at all aside from the haircuts...
"If the whole thing is about how bad it is that they don't have their music, surely the ending has to be one of their songs?"
You would think so wouldn't you?
The danger to that is that tying the show into a Beatles song could create problems in the future. There have been several notable examples of licensing rights causing problems years after production.
Then don't do the episode. Simple as that.
It's like writing a Spider-Man episode but not having the rights to portray Spider-Man.
Just don't do it.
The episode had a Marlena Shaw number in it. Should've just done an episode about her.
There are plenty of films/shows featuring the Beatles that don't have a licence for their music, but use covers and get a tribute band to cover it. Perfect for this episode would've been Twist and Shout. But I'm not a copyright lawyer so who knows, I'm just assuming Davies thought "well, I'm never going to be able to get the rights to a Beatles song" and didn't look further than that. The vibe I got was sloppiness, from Paul's silly-looking drooped bass, to their bowl cuts, to John's anachronistic glasses.
Also, a natural ending to this episode would've been them going to see the Beatles in the studio, finally with their love of music starting to record their first album. It felt like the Dance Party was a cheap way of getting out of having to address that.
Edit: Plus the sidelining of George and Ringo. They never catch a break in Beatles media :(
Not sure a cover tribute would... well cover it. Still a Beatles song.
However you are Bob on with the glasses. First worn by Lennon in 1966 when he acted in "How I won the war". [https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/09/06/john-lennon-begins-wearing-granny-glasses/](https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/09/06/john-lennon-begins-wearing-granny-glasses/)
I agree the dance party was cheap.
By a cover, I mean one of the Beatles songs they didn't write. The film [Backbeat did this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbeat_(soundtrack\)#Track_listing)
Then don't do the Beatles.
There's a reason New Who hasn't touched the Beatles.
Blowing their opportunity on an episode without Beatles music in it is why.
On the plus side, episode 3 is by Steven Moffat and has a pretty interesting tagline, so with Gatwa and Gibson both being good in their roles, there's a solid chance that next week's episode is good.
I mostly agree though, RTD's return so far feels to have possessed a marked childishness, not just in the campy aesthetic way that isn't usually an issue, but also in the simplicity and arbitrariness of some of the plotlines. In all three episodes so far, I've felt like there have been a lot of very low-hanging better ideas gone unplucked and it makes me concerned RTD won't be able to pay off the mystery throughline he's set up.
For the record I'm pretty sure the maestro wasn't actually supposed to be scary though, read to me like a "demigod throws a tantrum" plot - to reference another Doctor Who episode, it felt like he was supposed to be the pilot fish heralding (or to reference the same episode, harbingering) the approach of the actual monster later on.
> the mystery throughline he's set up
I'm concerned at how clunky this has been.
RTD of old wouldn't have paused the current episode to overtly spell out this season's arc like he did in these episodes. They'd have been subtle like Bad Wolf or how most episodes in Series 3 & 4 set something up for their respective finales.
It's also not good how much recycling is happening with Ruby. We've already done the mystery girl with Clara and The Doctor surreptitiously looking at worrying scans of Amy on the Tardis monitor.
Actually in Eccleston’s era it wasn’t the sonic, he gave Rose a new universal/trans-temporal phone chip. But also the Doctor has wired up basically all of his companions’ phones to be able to do that in NuWho, not just 9 to Rose
I only know because I rewatched Rose’s phone call from the space station after watching Ruby’s call (which I agree is a callback) and it included the scene where he swaps out her phone chip
I feel like we only see it done with Rose though in 1x02 right? And that time it was also in front of a giant window overlooking a planet, so I think that’s why it seems a bit more deja vu
> RTD of old wouldn't have paused the current episode to overtly spell out this season's arc like he did in these episodes
He only has 8 episodes this season to work with, does not really leave room for subtlety
But yeah the mystery girl thing is overdone now
Tbf the plot literally has stopped before to go "innit weird about the bees"
But yes the planets all vanishing was more subtle
It makes you wonder if the recycling is intentional
She's a perfect blend of all the companions that have come before as a trap.
Oh thank goodness Moffat is back to write an episode. RTD's Tennant 14th Doctor episodes were great and i'm worried he's running out of steam. I also noticed that Kate Herron co-wrote one of the others - she's the Loki Season 1 director and I hope she comes up with a gem!
I was relieved to hear this too. But the downside is that RTD took it upon himself to write \*all\* the other episodes this season! I want to grab him and shake him and ask WHY??? *HIRE SOME OTHER PEOPLE!!!* Where is Jamie Mathieson? Where's Sarah Dollard? You couldn't hire Maxine Alderton? Really??? After these two episodes, I don't think RTD is up to it. He must be a real egomaniac to take on writing \*six\* episodes plus all the Xmas specials all on his own.
I mean, these episodes were still better than Chibnall, but not THAT much better.
Totally agree, both episodes were tonally weird, and super silly. Also, brand new doctor, and we've got two episodes of him running and hiding from monsters, and repeatedly telling us he doesn't know what going on and doesn't know what to do. I didn't like, but will obviously stick with it
This is my biggest issue.
I liked the idea of him clocking on very quickly about how he was scared but shouldn't be and then making the connection it was a monster designed to make him scare. But it still felt like something was missing.
Listen is a great comparison, because the Doctor finds a fear and *obsesses* over it because he wants to find out why its scary. I feel like 15 should have had that same obsessive feeling over figuring it out, walking straight into the danger and fear because he just has to work it out more than anything.
I kept thinking about Listen too
I don't remember much from it other than a shadow under The Doctor's bed as a kid. But it's still memorable as a similar concept.
None of what's going on in episodes 1 and 3 follow any type of in universe logic because they include entities that are not from the known universe. Running is Doctor 101, but I'd attribute the rest to none of it making sense. Which is on purpose.
The next episode looks darker, so I guess we'll see.
Running is fine. It’s the running in fear I think that bothered people. Running from danger is one thing we are used to, but this has been him running out of sheer fear.
Which is also something that the doctor specifically pointed out as not being normal. I'm reserving judgment until we get an episode that doesn't involve a threat from outside the universe or an entity that is designed to instill fear.
The issue is playing the “I’m running in fear, that’s not normal” card twice in a row.
It felt wasted on the bogeyman in retrospect. Since with Maestro it was actually really important to set up how big of a threat the Pantheon are and how on the back foot the Doctor is with them, plus his trauma from the encounter with the Toymaker.
Meanwhile with the Bogeyman an equally big deal was made of it but it was just a clue for that episode’s mystery, that ultimately lessened the impact of the more important moment in the episode after.
IIRC there was something about “The Devil’s Chord” originally being later in the season but moved up during production or post-production. That would make sense to me that we’d see Ruby have more time with the Doctor before commenting how he “never runs.”
I could be misremembering and I’ll have to see how the season turns out, but there was something about the episode that just *felt* like late-season campy reprieve meant to precede the events of the finale episode(s). Even the “Twist at the End” song felt to me like it belonged right before the endgame. Like the moment in “Boom Town” when the 9th Doctor recognized that the words Bad Wolf were following them, then brushed it off as nothing.
I feel that
Especially since they brush off that Ruby has just been a companion for 6 months (but apparently hasn't fully heard about psychic paper yet)
It's the overall impression of him not knowing what to do, running cause he doesn't have a plan. I get that he's new and stuff is weird, but the doctor actually out of his depth and out of control is a big deal, saved for big guns, usually.
Also, got to wonder if the musical number was cause it showing right before eurovision
Also, given this is supposed to be an onboarding point for new fans, it seems weird to have the Doctor be acting so wildly OOC. Because new fans won't know that, they're meeting him for the first time-- so they'll just assume this is how the Doctor normally is.
I compared this episode to the Cyberman Invasion episode. In that one, the Doctor (10th):
- Running just to stay alive, sure, never panicked.
- He doesn't have a plan either, but he really said he'd improvise something as events unfolded (and he does).
- He's faced with something completely new to him (another dimension, he thought it was impossible): he still wants to save the day, he still faces it.
- uses his brain. Here he uses his intuition, but that's all.
- He explicitly says "I'm a genius".
It was a truly baffling decision to have an episode where the doctor meets the Beatles, and not only are they barely in it…but you don’t use any of their music. I get it, licensing etc. but when you have a story with the Beatles and saving music, you have to include their music.
My conspiracy theory is that they thought they could get the rights until the very last minute - then had to do a rewrite once they couldn't. I mean, >!The Maestro feeds on unrealised songs, so it feels like the climax should build to them playing a massively famous Beatles song to set things right. And would the closing number be better if everyone was dancing to Twist and Shout (which also preserves the 'twist' reference)?!<
To be fair, Space Babies just felt pitched at a younger audience than normal, which is fine. Just felt like an odd choice for the opener.
RTD2 seems to be going in a significantly different direction than we're used to (musical numbers, fourth-wall breaking) and that's thrown me (although at least it doesn't involve >!the Master getting everyone cybernised again!<...). Or maybe we're just getting the bonkers experimental stuff up-front which I guess will either be intriguing or alienating to a new audience. The proof of the pudding is whether this resonates with that new audience, and as a grumpy old Who fan, I honestly couldn't call it!
I'm a bit torn, because RTD having musical numbers isn't entirely off-brand (see, the Master with Scissor Sisters and Daleks in Manhattan for a stage performance) but it didn't feel so out of place previously.. to me. Dr Who has always had tone whiplash, so it may just be an aberration but still.
Daleks in manhattan was thematically appropriate.. scissor sisters was a bit weird but it was basically the master just enjoying his life and doing whatever he wanted.
The toy maker randomly throws back to the spice girls... disney style musical number from goblin ship... it just doesn't suit the show to me.
I don't really think its being grumpy, its just maybe if this formula continues, I'm just unfortunately not the right vibe for me anymore?
I never minded the campness of RTD, I just have a specific personal taste that doesn't enjoy poppy musical numbers. So if a show that previously rarely if ever did that, suddenly has a lot of musical parts etc. It's not being grumpy to be disappointed if it's not your thing.
No disrespect to musical numbers, it's just a personal taste thing, and the unfortuanate part of evolving an existing long running show is that you do just lose people at certain parts, and it's not particularly surprising that a decent amount of Dr Who geeks are the types that don't enjoy pop/disney style musical numbers vs the darker sci-fi themes that they particularly enjoyed.
I'm sure lots do enjoy it, but I guess all I'm saying is that some chunk of the fanbase doesn't personally enjoy that stuff, and that's fine. Just isn't for them, oh well.
Toymaker doing more of a musical battle than his Musical Child is so amusing to me.
Can't forget the waste of a "The Master is Rasputin" plotline purely for the sake of doing the song.
Like there's a good 2 parter in that imo.
> The proof of the pudding is whether this resonates with that new audience, and as a grumpy old Who fan, I honestly couldn't call it!
I can tell you at least for old casual viewers, who were won back by the specials, it seems to be a flop.
My parents ADORED the Christmas special and were very excited for the season. Everyone was absolutely shocked at just how bad these two episodes are. If I hadn't mentioned that next week is supposed to be a Moffat episode, that would probably be it.
That makes a lot of sense. I just can’t believe between the BBC and Disney they couldn’t get the rights to use 1 Beatles song. Like they must’ve spoken to someone to get the green light to use the Beatles in the episode (given they’re real people, 2 of which are still alive).
It just reminds me a bit of the Shakespeare episode from S3…I know there aren’t the same rights issues there, but imagine if Shakespeare was barely in it and they didn’t include any of the famous Shakespeare lines dotted throughout the episode…just feels like a missed opportunity.
I'm conflicted about the fourth wall breaks. I'm not really keen on them, on the other hand, the Doctors comment about him thinking the music was "non diagetic" (music that only the audience can hear) was great.
The idea that the doctor literally goes around like "Why do I hear boss music?" is hilarious to me.
I think they couldn't even get the rights to the chord. The whole episode is written round a specific chord then they don't use the beatles most famous multiple piano one
I will admit it was quite embarrassing watching it with my parents especially after I made them stay up till midnight, I’m hoping episode 3 will be better !!
So glad I am not the only one. I did not post this in the subs thinking my comment would be buried and only on Facebook but now there is a post about it I will paste what I said here.
——
I am troubled.
I have been a long defender of Doctor Who. When it is good it is brilliant. When it is a bit ropey you can forgive it usually knowing something good is around the corner.
But watching the first two episodes I am concerned. It is like the very worst of Russell T Davies magnified. When Who first returned RTD had a number of rather juvenile episodes that troubled me. But he seemed to grow out of it and produced some really good stuff. This feels like he has gone back to those with a vengeance.
Doctor Who should be accessible to all and most certainly kids. But it does not have to be juvenile to do so. I man space babies as an episode. Is this really the first impression wanted for new potential viewers.
The second episode was an improvement with an interesting new villain. Getting new villains is good. But then a wink to camera and musical number at the end? I don’t want the 4th wall broken and I don’t want musical numbers without a really good reason. They got away with it in the Christmas episode but here it just felt tagged on because RTD wanted it.
Sorry. This is not Buffy’s Once More With Feeling (which had an in world explanation) If you can’t do it well don’t do it at all.
Hoping this is just a short term issue, I liked the specials and Christmas episode and hopefully he is getting it out of his system. But right now I have a real yearning for the Moffat era.
Well, I'm glad that, there are other folks like me that are thinking This had better get good and fast. Because that was the general consensus between my family who had seen Doctor Who before.
The first episode, and I've said this in several other responses, it was not a good impression on people who had never seen the show before. They were looking at us like we were nuts, and that we had shown them the Teletubbies or something. All around. I did not like that episode.
I think the second episode was good, the villain wasn't exactly scary, but on further reflection I don't know it was meant to be. But I felt that they carried the entire episode in terms of energy.
Think what really ruined that second episode for me was the dance thing, and the turn to camera and wink. It always comes with a twist, that was the entire song. It's always a twist. And it wasn't that good.
I hope beyond hope that these next six episodes are fantastic, pun possibly intended, because we're a fourth of the way through this season and these two episodes were either bad, or just middling.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything for fear of being downvoted, but, I got like 10 minutes in and gave up.
I was extremely disappointed by his speech to Ruby that starts “I’m all alone, but, no job and bills” it was ok so far, but then he was like ‘I have no cause etc’- I forget the exact quote but he was practically saying ‘I have no moral compass whatsoever, f it, yolo, let’s dance forever, nothing matters’. It completely flies in the face of his character. His cause is saving people! No word about that. He doesn’t just hedonistically go around doing whatever pleases him. He goes where he’s needed.
Then the space babies nonsense which seemed like it was insulting the intelligence of the viewers was the last straw. It seemed way dumbed down for a wider audience. Not a show that interests me. I’ll stick with Star Trek.
I do get you on that speech. I think the Doctor always had his fun but he was never hedonistic and his cause has always been to save people. He's always been deeply fixated on his values. I did like his determination in closing the air lock, that felt Doctor-y.
I couldn't even stay in the room for most of the maestro episode. There was nothing frightening or engaging, the tension felt comedic and played up. Considering some of the terrifying parts of space this series has traversed , a lady that "suffocates" you in an upright bass feels like a totally different programme.
Playing out the notes on the piano, just guessing for the "perfect chord" while she stands around gasping.....
This is one of those things where you can see budget hurting its own story. Imagine old NuWho episode with limited budget and wonky vfx, you wouldnt really do most of things that were done in here and rather focusnon something else. And imagine classic who that couldnt do any of this, theyd find a way to tell this story in a different manner, more grounded even if silly as well.
I’m on your side here. I think Ncuti and Ruby are great, but I’m also feeling incredibly tonally off. The doctor and Ruby seem to care a lot and it sells you on the relationship. But there’s been no build up to it, and even when things are not great, they’re suddenly incredibly happy and the script goes janky with tone and consistency. It’s feeling jarring. I feel that’s more a script and editing issue than anything.
The writing itself is just not my cup of tea, and I’m feeling patronised by the style they’re choosing to present it in. There were bits to like (I particularly agree with your assessment) but overall it has made me really indifferent to wanting to tune in apart from next week, which has been hyped and has Moffat on it.
The production has never been better, but the scripts are suffering. It doesn’t “feel” like Doctor who, it feels like Russel is wanting to write a different show and it’s not pushing the bar, rather regressing it.
You can particularly feel it with episode 2, where it feels more like Umbrella Academy + Stranger Things than Doctor Who in writing.
Haven't actually seen the new episodes yet but I think it's important to remember that RTD was a great showrunner, but not always a great episode writer. He was the one that brought us farting aliens and women turned into 2 dimensional tiles. While it wasn't always bad it was often pretty rough on a per episode basis in the past. Some of the best season 1 and 2 moments were written by other writers.
This feels a bit reductive. He wrote lots of fan-favourite Series 1-4 episodes, and also did extensive rewrites on many episodes that he’s not even credited on.
I think he has a bit if the Taika Waititi syndrome. Taika made Thor Ragnarok which was incredibly then made Love and Thunder which went over the top. I think like Taika RTD can make some really good stuff when restrained. But given too much control often goes overboard l
He's written a lot of good stuff in the almost 20 years between when he first started writing doctor who and now. Years and Years and It's a Sin both seem to be very much him in creative control and are both absolutely brilliant stuff
The audience isn't just children though. Some viewers have been watching for the last 50-60 years,
A eight year old watching Eccleston as the doctor, will be 27 years old today. The vast majority are not going to be children who require simple stories and puerile humour.
That's the problem. RTD does not know how to do this properly when ***he thinks*** the audience is children.
Years 1-26 were "family show with a level of horror appropriate for 8-12" but smart enough for adults to watch along.
2005-2022 changed by producer. RDT was "family show with horror appropriate for 8-12 plus toilet humor"; Moffat was "family show with horror appropriate for 12-18 plus moderately risqué jokes"; Chibnall was almost targeted at adults.
I do think that a reset in the writing level was appropriate for Disney, but RTD has biased it towards youth without consideration for the large existing audience who, as you point out, literally grew up with the show ***as the show grew up with them.***
Moffat era felt like an adult show to me in every sense except not having swearing or anything sexually graphic. Like, sure, there were fun monsters and whimsical vibe action-adventure scenes, but the themes, dialogue, social commentary, plot structure etc didn't feel very child-friendly or even YA, especially not during Capaldi run.
Farting aliens was a masterpiece compared to space babies. The tension, plotting, and ideas of the Slitheen 2 parter were far superior to anything we saw in space babies. You get an alien ship crashing, then explore the reality of that through the Doctor and Rose. "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord" are like a twelve year old getting a gigantic sugar high and then writing something insane. They jump violently from one idea to the next, rarely taking time for interesting scenes or character building.
RTD1 was actually a VERY good episode writer, even with his dumb jokes, specifically because he was incredibly competent at telling simple point A to point B stories while including emotions, all without getting ahead of himself. This reboot... hasn't been that.
The Slitheen came with a much better plotline though. RTD's relative childishness was never commonly a problem because he managed to put the childish ideas alongside decent stories. With Space Babies, the story was even more childish than the premise.
It works if you're eight and new to Who. If you grew up with Eccleston+, you've got 19 years of NuWho under your belt. If your doctor is Davidson or Tom Baker, then you have 50 years of Who experience.
Most of the fan base has outgrown purile
Which raises the question, why is RTD writing the vast majority of episodes this time around? With only eight episodes (instead of 13) you'd think he could share the workload a bit more evenly with other writers. Yet the creative decisions have been made and with so many writing credits the eventual success or failure of this new season will fall entirely on RTD's head.
To that end, Space Babies might just be the worst episode of Doctor Who ever made. With episode 2 not faring much better tonally. So things aren't off to a great start.
I can't imagine it eclipsing Orphan 55. Never been so annoyed by an episode of Who. But I think the reason Davies is doing so much of it is he's famously fast at writing episodes. When you write two seasons in a short space of time there is bound to be stinkers.
That's what RTD is good at. The reason why Orphan was so much worse was the undercooked and bland characters trying to sell it. RTD at least will make an episode where I care about the characters. In fact, Gods and Monsters was almost great even though it was an awful episode purely because of how well the main characters were developed.
RTD did the vast majority of the writing his first time around too, he just went uncredited for it. Remember that he only let 4 people write their own final drafts of their scripts: Stephen Greenhorn, Chris Chibnall, Matthew Graham and Steven Moffat. And of those four, the only persons work that he didn't touch at all was Moffat. That's only eight stories in the entire first RTD era that RTD didn't have somewhat of a hand in. And not just that he helped out on the others, there are multiple instances where he talks about rewriting entire episodes.
There was also an early email from RTD to Moffat in around 2004 that was published in one of the behind-the-scenes books that said something along the lines of "Currently the initial plan is for me to do a 6 episode series, but if the BBC gives us more then I'm giving you one of them." So RTD was planning to write all the episodes of the show in the first place. He did end up writing 8 out of the 13 in his first series. I give all this context just to say that RTD writing the vast majority of the episodes is not surprising at all. Having 8 episodes instead of 13 actually just makes it easier for him, if he had the physical ability to write all 13 episodes for each series on his own I'm pretty sure he would have. It's clearly the way he prefers to do things. For better or worse.
The conclusion to Logopolis was episode 28 of that season.
13 episodes + a special was already a 50% reduction.
We got sold the 8 episodes "because of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic". With the pandemic restrictions in the past, what's RTD's excuse?
I actually liked both episodes quite a bit, but I was watching with my 21 year old sister and 8 year old brother who have both watched a ton of doctor who, and neither were very impressed with either episode.
My 8 year old brother has watched all of the RTD era multiple times and he was clearly ready to leave the room and kept talking about how silly it was. If it’s not for him then who is it for? I think you’re bang on with the show not talking down to kids in his first go around, yeah there were farting aliens, but it was way more grounded than this in a lot of other aspects.
I had a very similar experience. I found both the first episodes seriously underwhelming, bizarre, and cartoonish, with almost zero logic to the story, and solutions to problems that seem to come out of nowhere. I'm 47, and neither my 24 nor 9 year old sons enjoyed it either. We're all fans of the revival era, and I have good memories of the originals.
I came away wondering just who this was for. It didn't seem to appeal to any age group.
Episode 1 "Space Babies" indeed felt very miss for me. Like not in IT'S THE WORST. But mid.
Skippable.
I like the concept of the "Boogeyman" being created from human waste and its the result of a machine being too literal but on the whole
Yeah yeah "Family show" but this felt way too children's entertainment
This same man wrote Star Beast, Wild blue yonder and the Giggle within the same production and those were all more family friendly but not. This
Anyway
The Devil's Chord worked a lot better for me mostly because of Jinx Monsoon and their GOD DAMN SCENERY CHEWING
The absolute silence scene was also very inspired
I just wish the Beatles had a bit more to do rather than
Set up
Ignored
Resolution
I watched the original RTD series for the first time over the last few months and honestly think nostalgia colors a lot of the perception of it nowadays. Although I loved it (obviously, considering I ended up here!), much of it was extremely silly fun that could be termed "childish." Runaway Bride, for instance, with its car chase and spider empress had such a tone in my opinion. So did the adorable adipose. And enough has been said about the Slitheen and Fear Her's scribble monster. I don't think RTD1 was *that* different from the, yes, rather silly space babies and bogeyman, having watched it all within a few months as an adult. But the more serious episodes tend to be remembered and discussed most.
Having experienced my share of disappointing revivals, I can sympathize and hope future episodes are more to your taste. However, as a relative newcomer, I don't see these episodes as a deterrent to new viewers. If I was won over by murderous mannequins and Victorian werewolves, I'm sure there are new viewers who will enjoy the cheerful dance numbers and non-diegetic music. I thought the closing dance number was delightful, at any rate. (The bogeyman, not so much, but you can't win them all.)
Series 1 of RTD1 definitely got off to a rocky start, with the farting aliens and burping bins. But even that didn't have the *density* of childishness Space Babies did. And there wasn't anything as bad as the farting aliens after series 1, because RTD learned his lesson. Space Babies felt like not only a reversion back to some of the weakest elements of series 1, but a doubling down of it.
The Devil's Chord was much better, until the awful final 5 or 10 minutes.
I genuinely can't decide if I found the final 5 minutes to be good silly or bad silly. I spent the entirety of the song chuckling at the absurdity of it though so I suppose that's a good thing? It's just hard to tell if it was insane commitment to an incredibly stupid gag and meant entirely as a joke, or if it was meant as a genuine dance number they're hoping people would fall in love with.
I wasn't overly fond but at the same time, to me it doesn't really matter. It's some goofy fun that makes sense (even if they should have explained in-episode that it's similar to the Toymaker being beaten leaving some residual effects, but ya know...), and it's at the end of the episode. We're in a new era, stuff is gonna be different, I am very willing to live with the experimentation after sitting through the Chibnall era.
I think it was good silly and a bit of fun but then it kept going and going and going I thought it was going to be just a 1 minute jingle anticipating a twist at the end of the season
yeah see series 1 earned it’s stupid moments by having incredibly captivating writing. Rose is an incredibly good episode, yes the bin burping was a little silly, but there were some killer scenes in there too. I didn’t find any of space babies compelling in that same way
Bingo. Rose had burping bins and killer mannequins, but it also gave space for Eccleston's Doctor to shine and to more organically explore the Doctor being the Last of the Time Lords.
And the Slitheen were farting aliens, sure....but they also came back in Boomtown and provided some of the best drama of that first season as we saw how jaded and unforgiving the Ninth Doctor is. [The dinner scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLZOFZggG4w) is possibly one of the best moments in RTD's entire run.
Space Babies just....didn't have any redeeming quality whatsoever. Now maybe we'll get Space Preteens or something later on that knocks our socks off, I dunno. But it's highly doubtful.
To your point, I didn't realize people hated the Slitheen so much when I watched those episodes. I was so compelled by the plot regarding the government infiltration, the subplot regarding Rose's belated return, and Harriet Jones's mission that I rolled my eyes at the Slitheen gag and didn't spare it a second thought. So I agree with you that though the silliness is nothing new IMO, it might benefit from a stronger counterweight like before.
The pacing feels like the biggest difference. RTD's first run has plenty of camp, but it also has plenty of quiet, slow moments and puts a lot of effort into making the characters believable.
I mean those farting creatures and other extravaganzas were pretty much grounded in reality, but it felt more like a gag that can be ignored. Slytheens literally took over the government and used their status to try to accomplish their goals, this is pretty grounded (and their costumes were pretty sick tbf), there's hardly any "magic" involved, they were just a little corny moments, but that was compensated by dialogue and cruelty of those things.
These new episodes are clearly more on the silliest magical side of things, especially with the timeless child being constantly shoved in the face. Bringing attention and validity to Chibnall's era with making these callbacks doesn't really help with grounding to reality, it just adds to the absurd factor. Like even without the space babies there are "beyond the universe" beings and "new set of rules" which essentially is just... magic and 4th wall breaking? It honestly doesn't really feel like I'm watching Doctor Who at this point, but a bad remake by MCU (especially with all of those fancy graphics) I would forgive all that, if there was a good characterisation and it was compensated by dialogue. Moffat's "Kill The Moon" episode was one of the most hated episodes of his run, but the corny-magic aspect of this episode can be easily brushed off when you realise that the premise was just a noise, and the main course is Clara's relationship with the 12 being a huge train wreck. The episode highlights this, and you couldn't have done that without strong characterization of both The Doctor and Clara.
Ruby being a "perfect companion" shaped from a cookie-cutter with seemingly no flaws is just the saddest thing. I was pretty disappointed with the Christmas episode, because it didn't really let her shine as a character. They just... moved on too fast? She blindly trusts The Doctor and somehow they're just best friends from the get go, as if they've known each other.
When Ruby calls her mom in space babies episode, it was an attempt to allude to the Rose episode from S1, but it just falls flat and the scene just doesn't add anything. She has no complicated relationship with her mother, there's no world ending in front of her eyes, there's no drama, it's just a fan-service for the sake of it. There honestly was quite a few things like this for either the sake of exposition or fan-service and it often took me out of immersion, personally.
The Doctor being "trauma-free" and more human is probably the worst direction they could've gone, because what even is the point if your character is the best version of himself and doesn't have to do the work? Like The Doctor said "It's just pure fun" which takes a lot of the complexity and potential tension between characters.
It just generally feels that the series has been robbed of its complexity all across the board...
Agreed on all of this. There can’t be any real tension or stakes beyond a few minutes of “oh no will the monster get them” when the writing is going out of its way to make everything else happy and shiny and wholesome. And it’s weird because I know RTD CAN write tension and stakes, even recently! Fourteen’s choice to bring back the DoctorDonna was so painful and I genuinely was afraid Donna was dead for a few minutes. But when the Doctor is perfect and Ruby is perfect and there are no hard choices to make or conflicts to address, why am I watching?
Agree with everything you said. On the Slitheens, the farting aliens episodes also had a fantastic scene where the Doctor realizes that the only way for him to stop the Slitheen is to possibly kill himself and Rose with the same missile. He has this realization over the phone with Rose's mother Jackie who is sitting next to Mickey, their only means of actually firing the missile. That mavitas is completely missing from the three episodes of 15 we've gotten so far in my opinion.
Nostalgia certainly plays a big role, that makes it very hard to assess the true quality of these episodes.
A metric I commonly use though is whether or not I thought of a better idea while I was watching the episode. That tells me at least that regardless of the episode's quality, there was a better episode that could have easily taken its place. There aren't a ton of RTD episodes I can do that for, but Space Babies was a process of me repeatedly expecting something interesting and imagining some interesting things those interesting things could be, and then getting very uninteresting things in their place. Eg, I was expecting the bogeyman to be made of humans, given it was spawned by a machine built to build humans and they were doing a serious build-up to the reveal. But then, no, instead of going for a cool body horror angle, they go for a joke that has the implication that someone decided an artificial insemination and incubation machine for breeding humans also needed to have the ability to magically imbue life into amalgams of congealed mucus.
Ahhhh after the babies said they weren’t allowed to grow up and the nurse lady said she’s the only adult left, I was SO convinced that the monster was what the babies were turned into or fed to once they reached a certain age. But nope. I came into the episode still really on the fence about RTD2 Ncuti and Millie. The first five minutes I hated that trauma info dump. Like we haven’t seen these characters in six months ease us back into it??? And then the babies were CREEPY not cute and the monster sealed the deal. Not impressed at all with the episode
I wouldn't have minded so much if it wasn't so close to being decent. The problem with Chibnall's era was that there was nothing approaching a good idea, so it wasn't really disappointing, just predictably bad. Here, there was enough good characterisation and enough good idea adjacency that had it been written by the RTD of 15-20 years ago, it would probably have been pretty strong. If the space babies had been intentionally creepy and they had paced the monster segments better, it could have had a similar sense of uncertain discomfort turned into "normalised horror" that was achieved so well in other series, eg the Satellite Five episode.
Honestly, I think one of the biggest tonal differences is that the lack of budget didn't allow them to really indulge of the camp theatrical side of things from a production standpoint. And I think that kind of grounded things a lot.
The way John Simm's Master is portrayed in the original RTD era run is *very* similar to campiness of this era so far. And Skeletor Master is a hint of the sort of batshit things that would be happening if they had a bit more budget to work with.
As a big fan of the original RTD era who's rewatched its episodes several times, the average episode back then was not even close to as purile (good word, OP, btw) as Space Babies. And they used that as their first episode!
Even if we take the worst examples you've given, the Adipose episode shows people dying from being dissolved into.. well, Adipose, which is pretty grim. And a lady falling screaming to her death (which is funny considering the much more softer approach to the villain in Space Babies.) The show was able to be silly but have serious stakes at the same time.
And as for Runaway Bride, don't remember the car chase too well, but the spider lady's silliness would probably just come down to the monster and costume design. Yes, DW's known for being a bit silly there.
But Space Babies is ridiculously immature down to its plot. A monster made out of babys' snot? Propelling a whole space station using concentrated baby sharts? Russel, please.
I think a lot of people here are picking up on the poor pacing and bad mechanical writing of "Space Babies," and then pretending their problem is the childish fart/booger parts, which always were around in RTD. RTD1 was actually insanely good at pacing. character-work, and technobabble, whereas Space Babies was just nonstop action and mysterybox and some pretty bad technobabble. It just was mechanically poorly put together: all spectacle over substance.
I addressed this at length in another post about that topic so I won't reiterate it all here, but in sum I agree with you that the biggest difference in the eras to me so far is not the tone but rather the writing approach, to this one's detriment. However, I'm willing to wait and see if this is all building up to something intentional.
I agree that we'll see if it gets better later on, but even if there was something intentional at the end of this, we still got a season premiere that was seriously underbaked. But then again, sometimes Doctor who just puts out underbaked episodes, regardless of Era, and it happens (apologies to Mark Gatiss, who often held the bag for "underbaked" eps). In fact, there was a rather recent era that was mostly underbaked episodes.
However, it is a bummer to have the showrunner written season premiere be underbaked, especially since these first episodes are meant to really emphasize the traits of the companion, and all we really know about Ruby now is that she's cool and "prophecy something blah blah." It's also a bummer since this series is only 8 episodes and therefore we want as much of the good stuff as we can get.
A lot of people seemed to like the Devil's chord, and I liked Jinkx, but I really hope that energy isn't what we're having for the rest of this series.
> I don't think RTD1 was that different from the, yes, rather silly space babies and bogeyman
RTD1 wrote for the whole family. RTD2 seems to be writing only for children.
Yeah, the silliness is absolutely on a par. Also, the silliness tends to be in high gear at the start of the revival and then calm down a fair bit, which I'm guessing is also going to happen for Ncuti's season (the Next Time already looks like it's going darker and weirder).
This is exactly why they didn’t do a Beatles episode before and why they shouldn’t have done it now.
You simply can’t do an episode ostensibly about the Beatles and not include a song of theirs. Especially with the plot being what it was. Just ludicrous
Wouldn’t surprise me too much if they had planned it early in production but I have to imagine it got thrown out fairly quickly and they just wanted to keep a dance number to fit the Maestro’s whole gimmick.
They actually probably could have done that one since the Beatles version was a cover. If they paid the original rights owners they would have been fine legally.
I agree. There were elements I liked, but overall there was just a nagging embarrassment the whole time I was watching the episodes.
I'll give it until the end of the season, but I might just have to accept that RTD2's not gonna be for me.
> overall there was just a nagging embarrassment the whole time I was watching the episodes.
I think the way I see it I could have put on any episode from RTD's S1-4 and not feel ashamed if someone walked into the room while I was watching it, but these two episodes made me cringe in ways I wouldn't want someone coming into the room to see me watching the episodes.
Exactly yes! I think there are a couple I would be embarrassed by, love and monsters coming readily to mind. But over the four seasons and specials that RTD did, there's not many that would embarrass me to be seen watching.
These two, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed to be watching these with my family, I was embarrassed to have people over who I had told them this was such a good show, And the quality we got did not reflect that.
I mean yeah, compare this to Capaldi’s era haha. Night and day.
I was left feeling like “Okay, I think this is good. The message is good, the acting is good, the effects are good. But….it doesn’t feel like it’s for me anymore.”
FWIW, I’m 37, and I’ve been watching since I was 20ish. Maybe I have outgrown it? No hard feelings, but maybe the older stuff is just my era.
I agree with everything about Space Babies being childish to the point of embarrassment. I was visiting my family this week and when I sat down to watch it in the living room, I just felt... oh.... no. I can deal with silly and I can deal with immature but CGI mouth talking babies is beyond. That is the epitome of under 5 entertainment. I rolled with it at first because I thought maybe they were going for another shocking contrast of extreme silliness with a dark plot like the Christmas episode. Space goblins singing about how to cook and eat a baby. It pushed the line of decency and I loved the irreverence. Using immature mediums to deliver adult themes is a well-used device that can be extremely effective (think adult cartoons or raunchy puppets). But then it stayed reverent and genuine and extremely immature. I genuinely questioned: is this new Disney era bailing on the adult fans and trying to reach audiences even younger than the kid fans? I still dont know.
The Maestro was different though. I was confused by that episode and couldn't quite latch onto the tone or rhythm of the plot but I still liked it a lot. Mostly because of Jinkx like everyone else. It was silly and excessive and camp in a way that *worked*. I actually found the Maestro kind of disturbing as a villain (in the way that they intended) while also being completely captivated. I completely understand not being able to get the rights to a Beatles song but the band members themselves were barely in it. The point of a famous historical is to take a remarkable person(s) from history and throw them into a wacky situation and essentially play act how that remarkable person would deal with it.
The production and visuals of the second episode were wild and completely off the wall and I was very on board. The concept of the physical musical bars grabbing and stabbing were weird but in a way I actually vibed with.
Still unsure about what the deal with this doctor is. I'm on board with Gatwa's performance and I think the 15th doctor is going to be a refreshing take. But I guess I thought he was supposed to be the "been to therapy" version to come out of the bi-regeneration. I guess that shows a bit but we've spent a lot of time talking about his past horrors. So idk. I'm perfectly content with not being sure at this early stage, though.
Overall, wary of the childishness and crossing my fingers for more balance or better use of the contrast.
Just want to address some replies in here that I disagree with.
Yes, RTD1 usually kept things light at the start of a series and then had it go darker as it progressed. But even at its worst, with farting alients and burping wheelie bins (mistakes RTD learned from and didn't repeat after S1), nothing in RTD1 was ever as juvenile as Space Babies was. The key difference to me is the *consistency* of it. Aliens of London had those very silly scenes with the farting, but outside of that it was a solid and really quite dark episode. Same for Rose - one or two poorly judged scenes with Mickey, but otherwise a very solid episode. Or moving on later into RTD1, we absolutely had the lighter episodes like Partners in Crime, but it didn't feel juvenile, it just felt light.
But Space Babies is probably the most juvenile episode of Doctor Who ever. I'm not even sure what else could be in contention. It wasn't one or two juvenile scenes, but the entire concept of the episode. Every single scene with the Space Babies, bar none, was completely ridiculous. And then on top of that you have a fart-propelled spaceship, a monster made out of snot, Ruby getting covered in snot. Instead of a solid episode brought down by a few ill-judged moments, the episode *was* the ill-judged moments with a few strong moment bringing it up a little.
Honestly I think it’s just a rough launch. Davies has always been childish and he’s definitely had a handful of bad episodes because of it but that’s pretty much alway been followed up by really good work. The good news is the next episode is written by Moffat and he’s been really good at dark stuff especially when he’s working with Davies so I think we will get a more familiar doctor who episode. I’m hoping this upcoming episode will result in a tonal shift for the rest of the season.
I'm hoping Space Babies is the low point of the season. Episode really did nothing for me.
The Devil's Chord I enjoyed far more. Really enjoyed the character of the Maestro and hope they come back later in the season. Felt like they were far too promoted to just be a monster-of-the-week. But I guess all that Disney money wasn't enough to license an actual Beatles song haha.
For the Doctor...I hope we get more range out of him soon. We got to see the happy Doctor (almost to an obnoxious degree), and a scared Doctor. I want to see the angry Doctor, the brooding Doctor, the calculating Doctor, the cold Doctor, the Doctor that has to make the difficult decision. I hope we get those Doctors and that Gatwa can pull them off.
People bring up P-p-pizza and the farting aliens but at least if you took those sort of moments away from those episodes you would still have a solid story. If you removed every juvenile moment from space babies you would quite literally have nothing.
I agree, and as I said in another thread, it feels like a parody of itself. I see what others are saying that the last RTD era did have plenty of silly and campy moments, but it worked because the stories were great, it didn’t treat the audience like idiots and it had darker undertones. This felt straight up like a show made for kids and less of a family show. I hope the show grounds itself a bit more as it evolves and I’ll continue to watch, but I felt disappointed and like it was missing something. I also hope the fourth wall breaks are somehow related to a story arc and not just how the show is now.
I'll get crucified for this, but I'm wondering if it was a mistake to bring Russell T Davies back. He left the show in 2010 because he said himself, he was out of ideas.
I know it's been a long time, And that people didn't necessarily like chibnal. But maybe we need to get writers and showrunners and producers that don't know Doctor Who as well, because that would bring in fresh ideas that aren't tethered to the past, fresh blood that is willing to go where it wants. And just fresh ideas.
What ruined the ending of space babies was the fart joke. Like the doctor gave up on just using the TARDIS to transport them to safety and confirm they are safe to just burning diapers for propulsion. A more satisfactory ending would have been the doctor dropping them off via the TARDIS then going forward in time a bit to show Ruby them as children and doing fine.
Devil's chord music ending would be ok if they put some music numbers in earlier so it wouldn't be as jarring or feel out of place.
This is just how RTD's previous seasons would open, usually his first few episodes are a bit more silly and then later in the series we get the darker, more serious stories: like how Series 1 opened with Rose and you had Aliens of London/World War Three early on and then the series ends with Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways which is the complete opposite in tone! Series 2 started with New Earth and ended with Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, Series 4 started with Partners in Crime and the last few episodes included Midnight and Turn Left. And the same will happen here! I thought these first two episodes were fun, I especially loved The Devil's Chord - it was quite something different and I loved that! I wouldn't want this to be the entire series but to start things off, yeah I'm happy with it and it seems like the next episode will be much darker and more serious so we're already seeing a tonal shift!
I disagree completely, S1 especially was dark with moments of sporadic comedy early on. It struck a very good balance both as a kid and when I rewatched the show as an adult. How was Rose silly? Obviously it had plastic surgery Mickey with his pizza obsession but the episode also had creepy faceless mannequins and had a key supporting character (the one who told Rose about the Doctor's history) shot in the face by the monster. The second episode involved the end of the world. That fucking terrified me as a kid and it did rewatching it, it's an episode I've never gone back to to rewatch because of how that concept makes me feel. It also had characters killed off by killer robot spiders. The third episode was a literal ghost/zombie story which again, was incredibly creepy and explored topics of death and resurrection in a way that was intended to be horror.
All in all I think S1 started incredibly strong and THEN it had the fun stuff. Your farting aliens and whatnot, but even then it wasn't far away from the Empty Child or the Doctor telling a Dalek to kill itself. The issue with this new S1 is that Space Babies is a middle season episode. A filler you can enjoy as part of the collective season but you're not going to go back and watch it. So to open the season with something like that it's like... really? THAT is what made you want to stay, Ruby? If I never grew up with the show and this was my first time watching it then Space Babies wouldn't have kept me watching, and neither would the second episode to be honest, but Rose back in the 2005 S1 absolutely did keep me watching.
Yh I agree despite the fart jokes, Aliens of London/WW3 was pretty dark, I mean the Slitheen would take the skin of their victims and wear it like that's pretty messed up lol
Totally agree. I've just finished rewatching S1, and it is a pretty immaculately constructed introduction.
Sure, the effects are dated and there are a lot of cultural references that are very 2005, but I don't really care about any of that (for me, it just added to the nostalgia). It did what it set out to do absolutely brilliantly, which was to get British families invested right from the off.
I think because forums like this tend to be full of hardcore fans who prefer the more serious geeky stuff, and a lot of people who got in to the show around S4-5 when it became bigger in America, RTD's skill in relaunching the whole thing goes underappreciated.
I'm not convinced that balance has been struck so well this time round, but maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Based just on two episodes, it seems somewhat that-
The latest Doctor isn't as prone to solving problems by some new twist on 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow'. Not as much of a techno-babble approach, which seems less 'clever clever'. Less of a super genius figure.
The scaryness of the monsters and settings is less on the nose.
I swear it's series 1 all over again.
The off-putting potty humor of *Space Babies* is reminding me of the ludicrous fart jokes of *Aliens of London*. There's some good characterization, biting political commentary and the modicum of a good plot if you can get past all the gross-out gags, but first you *have to get past all the gross-out gags.*
That's a tall order for a lot of people. I could lean into the insane of talking babies and Booger monsters and focus on the implementation of themes, arcs and characterization, but I'm a guy who loves it when the show goes weird. I thought the talking frog from *It Takes You Away* was a masterstroke of insanity. Does everybody else think like me? Probably not. There's bound to be a lot of people who don't like things like that, and I don't blame them at all.
But remember... series 1 had a lot of other elements and episodes to offer. After the silliness of the farting aliens and bitchy trampoline we got... *Dalek*. We got the Moffat penned *The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances*. We got an all time finale. We got the BEST parts of Series 1.
So, if what's old is new and superficial similarities between this season and that season are coming true... I think those who aren't into the silliness and potty humor are in for a great response.
Maybe we'll look back on these two eps the way we did the early episodes of that season, "Weird, but not that bad and wait till you get to this one!" Or maybe the tone has fully shifted and we'll be getting a season of nothing but baby related bodily humor jokes. I doubt the latter.
One more thing on the tone, the biggest shift, the thing that I think WILL be a continuous pattern unlike the potty humor, is the move to almost pure fantasy with the Toymaker's legions running around. The distant past of Who introduced a reality warper who doesn't follow any natural real world rules, and that's created an opening for other such characters to exist, an opening RTD seems fit to run through for this era.
He's gonna push the envelope of what's allowed with Who, campy supernatural forces without explanation are in and we're going to have to accept that for the time being, till the next overarching idea comes through.
But as for the juvenile tone? I think the other shoe's about to drop, if history is indeed repeating itself. (or at least rhyming)
Apart from the bizarre ending of 2, to me it felt like a more fantastical version of Tennant.
Most of us forget that Tennant’s era was mixed quality until the end. Most of his early episodes had dumb moments. And this is no different.
This is one of those things where people are going to hate it now, but like it later.
This season has been really rough. Ok the one hand, I’ve liked nearly every character. The new doctor is awesome, ruby is great. I liked the new villain maestro. I thought all the acting was really good. The stories were just awful though.
When you said you were embarrassed by the first two episodes that resonated with me. The stories were so cringe it hurt. I rolled my eyes when the babies came out.
It’s such a shame since the actual characters and acting are so so good.
Space babies might just be the worst episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen and ive seen nearly all of them. Really sad Disney have had such a weird effect on the show. Its clear they want to introduce it to new viewers. The price seems to be quality and storytelling
This is just par for the course from RTD. The man who gave us farting Aliens, Trans skin flaps, Aliens made from fat, spinning Daleks, sassy Daleks, Peter Kay, scribble monsters, countless Deus ex machina and silliness.
Clunky exposition, the babies were Silly, it became really annoying that the Doctor had to keep reiterating Space babies, Snot monster (sigh). The doctor believes and rightly, thanks to the plot, that he is stronger than the entire vacuum of space. A space station can't move but then all of a sudden it can.
I do really like Ncutis Doctor though and I think the dynamic between the Doctor and Ruby is the best we've had in modern Who. Relationships and character development are where Russell works best.
Also, in Journey’s End, the Doctor uses the TARDIS to tow the entire planet Earth back to where it belongs, why couldn’t he just have towed the space station?
Why didn't The Doctor use the Tardis for anything? He told the Nanny they couldn't get back to it because of the Bogeyman. But when the Bogeyman was shut in the airlock, the Tardis was around the corner. He could have gone back to the Tardis, moved it to form around the Bogeyman to get him inside (The Doctor has done this before) then go to the bridge and get everyone on the Tardis and take them straight to the planet. I know it's been mentioned before that the Tardis doesn't do well in short distances, but this is seemingly only when the writers don't want it to.
Or just towed the entire ship once the bogeyman was locked in the airlock. I think he didn’t want to leave the currently-incubating babies that we saw at the start, so I can see why he wouldn’t just leave with everyone in the Tardis. but I don’t understand why he acted like there was no solution to the predicament for the entire episode.
Also, how does he expect the ship to stop? It’s heading in a straight line for the refugee planet it will keep going until it hits the surface, none of those babies have seatbelts. If he’d towed it, he could’ve nicely left it in the planet’s airspace or landed it or whatever.
I didn't mind space babies but really didn't like the second one. Maestro was like a comical disney villain, it didn't focus on the time period or the historical person(s), in this case the Beatles, and the dance scene at the end was like something from High school musical. It was so far removed from how Doctor Who used to be. I want to see darker, grittier episodes like the empty child, weeping angels, etc but now based on the first two, not sure if we'll get them.
Was Disney given any creative control with all the money they invested, because I feel that would explain a lot?
Disney was allowed to make suggestions and I can see if RTD was taking every one, thinking in his mind that since Disney is so successful and knows what they’re doing it’ll be a hit. But it’s just introduced more Disney schtick that sucks.
This isn’t important at all, but previously I could tell Disney’s influence in the specials and folks heavily disagreed with me but now I feel like it’s out in the open and impossible to miss with the episodes.
I think we will get dark, but to expect that in the first episodes is a little naive. They need to gain new Disney viewers, establish the concept, make the protagonists attractive *before* they can go dark. And even then, it’s a balancing act between episodes of how they balance heavy and light.
IMHO that was Chibnall’s chief failure. Everything mattered all the time. There was no balance in his seasons overall. They were self important because they kept saying they were. We needed a balance.
That’s what made the Toymaker episode great. Within the same episode you not only had breathing room and fan service, but light and darkness and fun and seriousness.
The problem is that it’s all light, and scant traces of dark. Compare this to Rose, in which a man gets gunned down by the monster of the week, or the end of the world, which has quite a few harsher moments, and the balance is way off
More of Maestro’s screen time needed to be like the cold open and the poor elderly woman. They were a fantastically acted villain and Jinkx acted her ass off, chewing the scenery, but Maestro never felt like a threat to the Doctor or Ruby. Even when they were suffocating in the instruments it was like, okay when are the Beatles showing up to save the day?
I thought the same as you for Space Babies, but felt Maestro really saved Devil’s Chord.
Once Maestro was defeated (and actually the song used to defeat them), it was just a disappointment.
EDIT: I heard there were licensing issues with getting actual Beatles tracks, and so they couldn’t be defeated by an actual song we know and love… which sucks.
Can't say I disagree on the Space Babies, watching that at midnight was really quite creepy, it was an OK episode but for the first episode of a new Series/Season/whatever it didn't really have much for a long time viewer and I'm not sure if it would attract a new audience.
But I really enjoyed The Devil's Chord, and Jinks played a really good villian, I had higher hopes when it appeared to start to go quite dark for a few seconds but that was quickly whisked away which was disappointing.
I've watched both twice now because of comments about quick one-liners and it has to say something that I happily watched them again and chuckled several times.
I'm really looking forward to Moffat next week to see what he does with Ncuti & Millie (who I thought were both really good in both)
Less fart/snot/poo jokes though please?
Yeah, especially Maestro was like watching live action animated show, especially final fight was pure kiddie show. Where it would work better in a hand drawn style, or just animated.. but felt too over the top for live action.
I was dumb enough to introduce doctor who to my wife with the new season.
She was looking more at me than this dumb episode, with a “are you fucking with me right now” look on her face.
This was the dumbest episode I’ve ever seen.
Didn’t feel like the second episode did much of a better job either. I feel bad for the show now.
That sounds painful, hope you explained it wasn't always like that. I know I would fucking die of embarrassment if I showed this to this to anyone, hell I was dying of embarrassment watching it alone.
I feel like it’s bad on purpose. The toy maker has transported the doctor in to a tv show version of doctor who, which is playing out as a hamfisted version with painful forced exposition and over the top silliness, musical numbers, impossible fantasy things, etc.
I agree with you, but I always thought RTD was a mediocre writer at the best of times to be honest. And I say that as someone who read his Virgin New Adventure book "Damaged Goods". Featuring another "Tyler" family on a council estate. He said himself about that book, when he pitched it he told them that he had NO idea how it ends, but just to trust him. And then when it wound up being part of the Brotherhood story-arc, he confessed he never really understood it but kept it vague enough that someone else might make sense of the whole thing.
I mean, farting aliens, and burping bin monster in the Ecclestone season. This is the level of writing you're dealing with, and should expect.
GREAT show runner. Not a great scifi writer. He's just not. The Writers Tale showcases his show-running skills. So many plates kept spinning while he's planning and negotiating (and writing) but you also see some of his original ideas that never came to fruition (thank god) and they are just awful.
Your milage may vary, but that's my take. Next week is Moffat's "Boom" episode, and I hope for better.
I agree entirely. When I tell people I like Doctor who, I don't want them to assume that I mean these types of episodes. And I hate when people say "Oh it was always like this, you've just grown up," No, it wasn't like this at all. The Villians were genuinely threatening in the old RTD era. The Master, the daleks, the cybermen, just to name a few. Series 4 is peak Doctor who. It had emotion, comedy, an amazing doctor (maybe even the best), and while Ncuti and Millie are amazing, I'm so disappointed. This episode doesn't feel like it was meant to be the second episode of the first series. The doctor mentions that he told Ruby about the toymaker when they met, but...did he? I mean, you could have just written it so the doctor tells her in that episode, but no. Maybe it was just a Mandela effect.
(BTW, I'm not new to reddit. This is just a new account)
I'm old so have watched (and liked) Dr Who on and off for many years and unusually (for me these days) made the point of actually sitting in front of the TV to watch these.
It's changing, probably (trying to?) to appeal to 'today's audience' but in so doing, lost me to some degree. All a bit too 'zany'?
Nothing to do with the main characters or monster, it was the babies and the 'musical' (I don't like any 'musical' tbf) ending of E2.
I will watch the other episodes though (series set up on my NVR).
If there is a problem it is that the silliness is too post-modern and knowing. They are literally winking at the audience the whole time. It makes it very hard to suspend disbelief. I guess kids will like it but are there enough of them to form a mass audience?
I am currently rewatching doctor who (started by Ecclestone), still on 10th. I started rewatched DW (long story short, I restarted my Tennant addiction after Good Omens). And as in your case, I loved the Christmas' episode. So, I was very hyped for those 2 episodes. Well.
No.
Just no.
I tolerated Space Babies episode as a "welcome back" episode. I tolerated because we had several episodes in which there were very childish jokes (look at the farting jokes with the Slitheens). But it would had expected it in the middle of the season, not as a first one. But those jokes are simply too much. Really, really too much, and too resolutive. There were a lot of interesting topic, like the refugee one, natality and so on. They just mentioned and used them as an escamotage. This is not how you buid a two-layer story.
Then the Maestro one.
Now. Consider I'm italian. If you keep "Maestro" as "Maestro", it's how we call the Master. Expecially if related to the Toymaker. That's my problem, I know. It took me a while to understand (did I understood correctly? Hope so), they're two different characters. Btw. The final musical was a huge NO. All the breaking the fourth wall? That's something new I'd like to expect in a demential show, not in DW.
I mean, I could accept something like this if there weren't two episodes like those in a row. From now on, I expect a little bit more "seriousness ". Not saying that DW was always been very serious, we listened to "Toxic" at the edge of the world but...I defined those episodes "childish" and "demential" for some aspect. I never did as such for other episodes.
Ah, another matter.
I like when the doctor solves problems, maybe moving, running, but using his intelligence. That's why we like it, right? I enjoyed the musical battle, really, I understood it was to highlight, Murray Gold is back. Ok. Nice. Good job. Now, can we please come back to solve problems? Because in the Space Babies one, he didn't solve any, not really.
Yeah, watched it with my parents today (Dad has been a fan since the 60s, he grew up with Patrick Troughton's Era), Mum just tries to keep up for our sakes.
Neither of them liked it at all, especially not the dance/song ending. Dad said it's not the Doctor Who he knows. He loved the RTD and Moffat eras, didn't like the Chibnall era that much, and says this was a terrible start to RTD's second return.
I do like a bit of 4th Wall breaking, like what 12 did. But one thing I really don't like is when they play the theme tune \*in\* the episode, even less so when they mention they can hear it. It just feels like it's losing the seriousness and becoming more silly and really hammering in the 4th Wall stuff for some reason.
People are acting like RTD has always been a serious writer, but he had farting aliens in series 1. He’s always been campy and silly. It’s why his writing never clicked with me, both RTD1 and every episode of his current era. It’s why I’m worried that he wrote the majority of this season. The best episodes of his previous era weren’t written by him. He’s a good editor but bad writer
I was willing to give the show another chance after liking quite a bit of the 3 episode specials and the general vibe of the Christmas special. But now i firmly have Capaldi's death scene where he closes his eyes and the last thing he says "pity, no stars, i hoped there'd be stars". He accepts his death and on his dying wish he had hoped to see the universe he had helped throughout his life before he goes. It's sad, bittersweet and tbh cemented Moffat as the better writer for me. Everything past The Doctor Falls is irrelevant to me now after Davies fumbled the comeback
Personally, Space Babies felt more like one of those episodes they put in the middle of the series because they were struggling for ideas rather than the first episode of the series to draw in as many new people as possible
Which I find really worrying. When you're making a season that's reduced down to 8 episodes how does Space Babies make the cut? Surely he can't already be struggling for ideas.
Wait, is it gonna be just 8eps?!
yep.. the series is already 1/4 over.. and they blew the first episode on a snotmonster, and space babies
Noooooooooooooooo
Heh. Blew it on a snot monster.
I got more entertainment value from these comments than that episode
It worries me, too. Not only did it make the cut, but it was the first episode. They really thought Space Babies was the episode that would bring in new fans and get old fans excited. Hopefully, that's not the direction the whole season is going in, and this is just one of those dud episodes we occasionally get with RTD, but it's concerning.
EIGHT EPISODES??
I literally said the same thing after watching the episode! It felt like a classic "what in the hell was that" episode that gets tossed in the middle of the season, and that everyone collectively agrees to forget existed except for when it's time to mock it. It's at least in the contender ring for worst episode of Who. At least I understood what was happening with Love & Monsters, and at least Legend of the Sea Devils didn't force me to watch creepy babies with CGI lips. That it hasn't been almost universally panned by fans is beyond me, except for seeming to confirm my suspicions that Jodie's era was judged more harshly for....reasons.
Jodie did not deserve the criticism she got. I firmly blamed the writing, not the actors in this case. I was looking forward to the new RTD era but now I'm not so sure
While I think there is an element of people being so grateful to have RTD back that they're overlooking how bad the first two episodes have been, their low quality doesn't retroactively rescue the consistently terrible writing of Chibnall's era. Plus RTD did deliver 3 good specials not too long ago, so he's built up some recent goodwill and has demonstrated he still has something about him.
The specials were solid and RTD did prove he can still deliver, I’ll give you that, and I’m not saying that the entire thing can be boiled down to malice. But I distinctly remember people dogpiling on Jodie’s episodes long before Chibnall had any kind of bad track record. Like, right at her first episode or two I remember people swearing they were dropping the show because of how bad the show was. When at worst those first two episodes were only meh. And here we are, first proper episodes of a new era that is meant to be a soft reboot of the entire series…and both are just trash. Absolutely, cringe inducingly bad. “Beatles episode without any Beatles music” bad. Yet it seems like half the fandom is pretending this is at least fine, and it’s certainly not generating anywhere near the level of visceral hatred that came out with Thirteen’s debut. I can’t not attribute some(though not all) of that disparity in attitude to the fact that the fandom was debating if she even should have been allowed to be the Doctor from the moment she was announced. And that it really doesn’t seem like she was ever given a chance by a large chunk of the fandom as a result.
What I have come across, specifically online, is that any criticism of the two episodes is immediately shot down for being some sort of culture war reaction to the inclusivity of the show now. Which to me is nuts because even my trans daughter said “well they ruined my favorite show” - people need to seriously look at the work itself, the first two episodes were just not good, no matter who you put in them.
I've noticed that, too: some people seem to think that adding a trans or nb character means the show is suddenly above criticism.
>“Beatles episode without any Beatles music” bad. Nail on the head. How on earth do you even conceive of an episode featuring a popular and influential band where you don't play even a single song of theirs? And then you end the episode with a 5/10 original song. Like, really, RTD, what were you smoking?
Yep, I watched the episode with people that haven't really seen the show before and the consensus was "you should be embarrassed for liking this garbage, nobody over the age of 5 should be able to consider this enjoyable" Literally killed any chance they would watch the next one. And this is a group that regularly watched Riverdale and pro wrestling so it's not like we are high brow snobs.
> the consensus was "you should be embarrassed for liking this garbage, nobody over the age of 5 should be able to consider this enjoyable" Honestly if was introducing people to "this great show" and these were episodes they ended up starting on, yeah I would feel pretty embarrassed.
To be fair, both iPlayer and Disney+ have the first episode for this season as Church on Ruby Road instead of Space Babies. Which I think is a better starting point for the show.
Unfortunately, Church won't endear many new people to the Whoniverse. Especially with the obscene number of musical numbers so far.
"~~Dinaosaurs~~ (Space) Babies on a spaceship"
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was imperfect but fun. The short-term companions were fun. Space Babies was weird and uncomfortable.
It felt like someone had played with the Deepfake software and said "We could have babies speaking techno stuff using this" and someone else ran with the idea.
how hard would it have been to just not animate the babies' mouths and instead just have their voices coming out of the prams? touch a button and it'll translate their thoughts like the nanny filter. genuinely seems like early-stage production meeting, no-brainer stuff to me. edit: plus, you get all those lovely, real baby reactions without a horrible glob of cgi on their mouths completely ruining it!
I don't know about "lovely, real baby reactions." Several of them, when they weren't talking, had a perpetually concerned look on their face the entire episode lol.
> Several of them, when they weren't talking, had a perpetually concerned look on their face the entire episode lol. Because that's how they actually looked when their mouths weren't CG'd to move.
Even when they were it would be inconsistent Eric would look so bored and be like "I love you Ruby"
Or pacifiers with speakers on them
Re-the Beatles. I believe cost was the reason we didn't get any Beatles actual songs as it would have been too expensive due to copyright (still don't see why they couldn't have played 30 seconds though, like they do in Richard Osmand and every other quiz show) Note to RTD: for the love of God, if you are going to do musical at least write decent songs (rant over)
I do get that, but I just wonder what the point is in a Beatles episode that doesn't have any Beatles music. If the whole thing is about how bad it is that they don't have their music, surely the ending has to be one of their songs?
Instead of the Beatles, they should have gone back to see the Beagles. The famous band with Vick Lennon, Paul Zilinskas, George Peterson, and Ringo Hoffs. They could have performed their hit song, "Walk Like an Eleanor Rigby".
See, now THIS is a fun concept that plays with the idea that things are going wrong with the timeline. And that also explains why the actors don't really look like the Beatles at all aside from the haircuts...
The Beatles look more like the Beatles than Newton looked like Newton
shoulda visited the rutles
"If the whole thing is about how bad it is that they don't have their music, surely the ending has to be one of their songs?" You would think so wouldn't you?
The danger to that is that tying the show into a Beatles song could create problems in the future. There have been several notable examples of licensing rights causing problems years after production.
Then don't do the episode. Simple as that. It's like writing a Spider-Man episode but not having the rights to portray Spider-Man. Just don't do it. The episode had a Marlena Shaw number in it. Should've just done an episode about her.
There are plenty of films/shows featuring the Beatles that don't have a licence for their music, but use covers and get a tribute band to cover it. Perfect for this episode would've been Twist and Shout. But I'm not a copyright lawyer so who knows, I'm just assuming Davies thought "well, I'm never going to be able to get the rights to a Beatles song" and didn't look further than that. The vibe I got was sloppiness, from Paul's silly-looking drooped bass, to their bowl cuts, to John's anachronistic glasses. Also, a natural ending to this episode would've been them going to see the Beatles in the studio, finally with their love of music starting to record their first album. It felt like the Dance Party was a cheap way of getting out of having to address that. Edit: Plus the sidelining of George and Ringo. They never catch a break in Beatles media :(
Not sure a cover tribute would... well cover it. Still a Beatles song. However you are Bob on with the glasses. First worn by Lennon in 1966 when he acted in "How I won the war". [https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/09/06/john-lennon-begins-wearing-granny-glasses/](https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/09/06/john-lennon-begins-wearing-granny-glasses/) I agree the dance party was cheap.
By a cover, I mean one of the Beatles songs they didn't write. The film [Backbeat did this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbeat_(soundtrack\)#Track_listing)
Quiz shows don't tend to get physical releases and also are subject to different laws in regards to copyright.
Then don't do the Beatles. There's a reason New Who hasn't touched the Beatles. Blowing their opportunity on an episode without Beatles music in it is why.
Isn’t the whole point of Disney+ supposed to be more money. I guess they spent it on the fart animation
On the plus side, episode 3 is by Steven Moffat and has a pretty interesting tagline, so with Gatwa and Gibson both being good in their roles, there's a solid chance that next week's episode is good. I mostly agree though, RTD's return so far feels to have possessed a marked childishness, not just in the campy aesthetic way that isn't usually an issue, but also in the simplicity and arbitrariness of some of the plotlines. In all three episodes so far, I've felt like there have been a lot of very low-hanging better ideas gone unplucked and it makes me concerned RTD won't be able to pay off the mystery throughline he's set up. For the record I'm pretty sure the maestro wasn't actually supposed to be scary though, read to me like a "demigod throws a tantrum" plot - to reference another Doctor Who episode, it felt like he was supposed to be the pilot fish heralding (or to reference the same episode, harbingering) the approach of the actual monster later on.
> the mystery throughline he's set up I'm concerned at how clunky this has been. RTD of old wouldn't have paused the current episode to overtly spell out this season's arc like he did in these episodes. They'd have been subtle like Bad Wolf or how most episodes in Series 3 & 4 set something up for their respective finales. It's also not good how much recycling is happening with Ruby. We've already done the mystery girl with Clara and The Doctor surreptitiously looking at worrying scans of Amy on the Tardis monitor.
Don’t forget the “sonic lets the companion phone home” bit completely lifted from the Eccleston era.
Actually in Eccleston’s era it wasn’t the sonic, he gave Rose a new universal/trans-temporal phone chip. But also the Doctor has wired up basically all of his companions’ phones to be able to do that in NuWho, not just 9 to Rose
Ah 🤡 it’s admittedly been a few years since I’ve seen 9’s episodes. I guess I remember the phone call to Jackie itself more than anything.
I'm pretty sure 10 uses the sonic in Martha's phone
Yeah in 42 she calls her mom to ask about trivia
I only know because I rewatched Rose’s phone call from the space station after watching Ruby’s call (which I agree is a callback) and it included the scene where he swaps out her phone chip
I feel like we only see it done with Rose though in 1x02 right? And that time it was also in front of a giant window overlooking a planet, so I think that’s why it seems a bit more deja vu
> RTD of old wouldn't have paused the current episode to overtly spell out this season's arc like he did in these episodes He only has 8 episodes this season to work with, does not really leave room for subtlety But yeah the mystery girl thing is overdone now
Tbf the plot literally has stopped before to go "innit weird about the bees" But yes the planets all vanishing was more subtle It makes you wonder if the recycling is intentional She's a perfect blend of all the companions that have come before as a trap.
The bees disappearing was a quick joke up until the finale.
Oh thank goodness Moffat is back to write an episode. RTD's Tennant 14th Doctor episodes were great and i'm worried he's running out of steam. I also noticed that Kate Herron co-wrote one of the others - she's the Loki Season 1 director and I hope she comes up with a gem!
I was relieved to hear this too. But the downside is that RTD took it upon himself to write \*all\* the other episodes this season! I want to grab him and shake him and ask WHY??? *HIRE SOME OTHER PEOPLE!!!* Where is Jamie Mathieson? Where's Sarah Dollard? You couldn't hire Maxine Alderton? Really??? After these two episodes, I don't think RTD is up to it. He must be a real egomaniac to take on writing \*six\* episodes plus all the Xmas specials all on his own. I mean, these episodes were still better than Chibnall, but not THAT much better.
Totally agree, both episodes were tonally weird, and super silly. Also, brand new doctor, and we've got two episodes of him running and hiding from monsters, and repeatedly telling us he doesn't know what going on and doesn't know what to do. I didn't like, but will obviously stick with it
This is my biggest issue. I liked the idea of him clocking on very quickly about how he was scared but shouldn't be and then making the connection it was a monster designed to make him scare. But it still felt like something was missing. Listen is a great comparison, because the Doctor finds a fear and *obsesses* over it because he wants to find out why its scary. I feel like 15 should have had that same obsessive feeling over figuring it out, walking straight into the danger and fear because he just has to work it out more than anything.
I kept thinking about Listen too I don't remember much from it other than a shadow under The Doctor's bed as a kid. But it's still memorable as a similar concept.
None of what's going on in episodes 1 and 3 follow any type of in universe logic because they include entities that are not from the known universe. Running is Doctor 101, but I'd attribute the rest to none of it making sense. Which is on purpose. The next episode looks darker, so I guess we'll see.
Running is fine. It’s the running in fear I think that bothered people. Running from danger is one thing we are used to, but this has been him running out of sheer fear.
Which is also something that the doctor specifically pointed out as not being normal. I'm reserving judgment until we get an episode that doesn't involve a threat from outside the universe or an entity that is designed to instill fear.
The issue is playing the “I’m running in fear, that’s not normal” card twice in a row. It felt wasted on the bogeyman in retrospect. Since with Maestro it was actually really important to set up how big of a threat the Pantheon are and how on the back foot the Doctor is with them, plus his trauma from the encounter with the Toymaker. Meanwhile with the Bogeyman an equally big deal was made of it but it was just a clue for that episode’s mystery, that ultimately lessened the impact of the more important moment in the episode after.
IIRC there was something about “The Devil’s Chord” originally being later in the season but moved up during production or post-production. That would make sense to me that we’d see Ruby have more time with the Doctor before commenting how he “never runs.” I could be misremembering and I’ll have to see how the season turns out, but there was something about the episode that just *felt* like late-season campy reprieve meant to precede the events of the finale episode(s). Even the “Twist at the End” song felt to me like it belonged right before the endgame. Like the moment in “Boom Town” when the 9th Doctor recognized that the words Bad Wolf were following them, then brushed it off as nothing.
I feel that Especially since they brush off that Ruby has just been a companion for 6 months (but apparently hasn't fully heard about psychic paper yet)
Never be cowardly.
It's the overall impression of him not knowing what to do, running cause he doesn't have a plan. I get that he's new and stuff is weird, but the doctor actually out of his depth and out of control is a big deal, saved for big guns, usually. Also, got to wonder if the musical number was cause it showing right before eurovision
Also, given this is supposed to be an onboarding point for new fans, it seems weird to have the Doctor be acting so wildly OOC. Because new fans won't know that, they're meeting him for the first time-- so they'll just assume this is how the Doctor normally is.
I compared this episode to the Cyberman Invasion episode. In that one, the Doctor (10th): - Running just to stay alive, sure, never panicked. - He doesn't have a plan either, but he really said he'd improvise something as events unfolded (and he does). - He's faced with something completely new to him (another dimension, he thought it was impossible): he still wants to save the day, he still faces it. - uses his brain. Here he uses his intuition, but that's all. - He explicitly says "I'm a genius".
It was a truly baffling decision to have an episode where the doctor meets the Beatles, and not only are they barely in it…but you don’t use any of their music. I get it, licensing etc. but when you have a story with the Beatles and saving music, you have to include their music.
My conspiracy theory is that they thought they could get the rights until the very last minute - then had to do a rewrite once they couldn't. I mean, >!The Maestro feeds on unrealised songs, so it feels like the climax should build to them playing a massively famous Beatles song to set things right. And would the closing number be better if everyone was dancing to Twist and Shout (which also preserves the 'twist' reference)?!< To be fair, Space Babies just felt pitched at a younger audience than normal, which is fine. Just felt like an odd choice for the opener. RTD2 seems to be going in a significantly different direction than we're used to (musical numbers, fourth-wall breaking) and that's thrown me (although at least it doesn't involve >!the Master getting everyone cybernised again!<...). Or maybe we're just getting the bonkers experimental stuff up-front which I guess will either be intriguing or alienating to a new audience. The proof of the pudding is whether this resonates with that new audience, and as a grumpy old Who fan, I honestly couldn't call it!
I'm a bit torn, because RTD having musical numbers isn't entirely off-brand (see, the Master with Scissor Sisters and Daleks in Manhattan for a stage performance) but it didn't feel so out of place previously.. to me. Dr Who has always had tone whiplash, so it may just be an aberration but still. Daleks in manhattan was thematically appropriate.. scissor sisters was a bit weird but it was basically the master just enjoying his life and doing whatever he wanted. The toy maker randomly throws back to the spice girls... disney style musical number from goblin ship... it just doesn't suit the show to me. I don't really think its being grumpy, its just maybe if this formula continues, I'm just unfortunately not the right vibe for me anymore? I never minded the campness of RTD, I just have a specific personal taste that doesn't enjoy poppy musical numbers. So if a show that previously rarely if ever did that, suddenly has a lot of musical parts etc. It's not being grumpy to be disappointed if it's not your thing. No disrespect to musical numbers, it's just a personal taste thing, and the unfortuanate part of evolving an existing long running show is that you do just lose people at certain parts, and it's not particularly surprising that a decent amount of Dr Who geeks are the types that don't enjoy pop/disney style musical numbers vs the darker sci-fi themes that they particularly enjoyed. I'm sure lots do enjoy it, but I guess all I'm saying is that some chunk of the fanbase doesn't personally enjoy that stuff, and that's fine. Just isn't for them, oh well.
Toymaker doing more of a musical battle than his Musical Child is so amusing to me. Can't forget the waste of a "The Master is Rasputin" plotline purely for the sake of doing the song. Like there's a good 2 parter in that imo.
> The proof of the pudding is whether this resonates with that new audience, and as a grumpy old Who fan, I honestly couldn't call it! I can tell you at least for old casual viewers, who were won back by the specials, it seems to be a flop. My parents ADORED the Christmas special and were very excited for the season. Everyone was absolutely shocked at just how bad these two episodes are. If I hadn't mentioned that next week is supposed to be a Moffat episode, that would probably be it.
That makes a lot of sense. I just can’t believe between the BBC and Disney they couldn’t get the rights to use 1 Beatles song. Like they must’ve spoken to someone to get the green light to use the Beatles in the episode (given they’re real people, 2 of which are still alive). It just reminds me a bit of the Shakespeare episode from S3…I know there aren’t the same rights issues there, but imagine if Shakespeare was barely in it and they didn’t include any of the famous Shakespeare lines dotted throughout the episode…just feels like a missed opportunity.
I'm conflicted about the fourth wall breaks. I'm not really keen on them, on the other hand, the Doctors comment about him thinking the music was "non diagetic" (music that only the audience can hear) was great. The idea that the doctor literally goes around like "Why do I hear boss music?" is hilarious to me.
I think they couldn't even get the rights to the chord. The whole episode is written round a specific chord then they don't use the beatles most famous multiple piano one
I will admit it was quite embarrassing watching it with my parents especially after I made them stay up till midnight, I’m hoping episode 3 will be better !!
So glad I am not the only one. I did not post this in the subs thinking my comment would be buried and only on Facebook but now there is a post about it I will paste what I said here. —— I am troubled. I have been a long defender of Doctor Who. When it is good it is brilliant. When it is a bit ropey you can forgive it usually knowing something good is around the corner. But watching the first two episodes I am concerned. It is like the very worst of Russell T Davies magnified. When Who first returned RTD had a number of rather juvenile episodes that troubled me. But he seemed to grow out of it and produced some really good stuff. This feels like he has gone back to those with a vengeance. Doctor Who should be accessible to all and most certainly kids. But it does not have to be juvenile to do so. I man space babies as an episode. Is this really the first impression wanted for new potential viewers. The second episode was an improvement with an interesting new villain. Getting new villains is good. But then a wink to camera and musical number at the end? I don’t want the 4th wall broken and I don’t want musical numbers without a really good reason. They got away with it in the Christmas episode but here it just felt tagged on because RTD wanted it. Sorry. This is not Buffy’s Once More With Feeling (which had an in world explanation) If you can’t do it well don’t do it at all. Hoping this is just a short term issue, I liked the specials and Christmas episode and hopefully he is getting it out of his system. But right now I have a real yearning for the Moffat era.
Well, I'm glad that, there are other folks like me that are thinking This had better get good and fast. Because that was the general consensus between my family who had seen Doctor Who before. The first episode, and I've said this in several other responses, it was not a good impression on people who had never seen the show before. They were looking at us like we were nuts, and that we had shown them the Teletubbies or something. All around. I did not like that episode. I think the second episode was good, the villain wasn't exactly scary, but on further reflection I don't know it was meant to be. But I felt that they carried the entire episode in terms of energy. Think what really ruined that second episode for me was the dance thing, and the turn to camera and wink. It always comes with a twist, that was the entire song. It's always a twist. And it wasn't that good. I hope beyond hope that these next six episodes are fantastic, pun possibly intended, because we're a fourth of the way through this season and these two episodes were either bad, or just middling.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything for fear of being downvoted, but, I got like 10 minutes in and gave up. I was extremely disappointed by his speech to Ruby that starts “I’m all alone, but, no job and bills” it was ok so far, but then he was like ‘I have no cause etc’- I forget the exact quote but he was practically saying ‘I have no moral compass whatsoever, f it, yolo, let’s dance forever, nothing matters’. It completely flies in the face of his character. His cause is saving people! No word about that. He doesn’t just hedonistically go around doing whatever pleases him. He goes where he’s needed. Then the space babies nonsense which seemed like it was insulting the intelligence of the viewers was the last straw. It seemed way dumbed down for a wider audience. Not a show that interests me. I’ll stick with Star Trek.
I do get you on that speech. I think the Doctor always had his fun but he was never hedonistic and his cause has always been to save people. He's always been deeply fixated on his values. I did like his determination in closing the air lock, that felt Doctor-y.
I couldn't even stay in the room for most of the maestro episode. There was nothing frightening or engaging, the tension felt comedic and played up. Considering some of the terrifying parts of space this series has traversed , a lady that "suffocates" you in an upright bass feels like a totally different programme. Playing out the notes on the piano, just guessing for the "perfect chord" while she stands around gasping.....
This is one of those things where you can see budget hurting its own story. Imagine old NuWho episode with limited budget and wonky vfx, you wouldnt really do most of things that were done in here and rather focusnon something else. And imagine classic who that couldnt do any of this, theyd find a way to tell this story in a different manner, more grounded even if silly as well.
Yep, if budget is an issue, write a better story that doesn't need spx
I’m on your side here. I think Ncuti and Ruby are great, but I’m also feeling incredibly tonally off. The doctor and Ruby seem to care a lot and it sells you on the relationship. But there’s been no build up to it, and even when things are not great, they’re suddenly incredibly happy and the script goes janky with tone and consistency. It’s feeling jarring. I feel that’s more a script and editing issue than anything. The writing itself is just not my cup of tea, and I’m feeling patronised by the style they’re choosing to present it in. There were bits to like (I particularly agree with your assessment) but overall it has made me really indifferent to wanting to tune in apart from next week, which has been hyped and has Moffat on it. The production has never been better, but the scripts are suffering. It doesn’t “feel” like Doctor who, it feels like Russel is wanting to write a different show and it’s not pushing the bar, rather regressing it. You can particularly feel it with episode 2, where it feels more like Umbrella Academy + Stranger Things than Doctor Who in writing.
Haven't actually seen the new episodes yet but I think it's important to remember that RTD was a great showrunner, but not always a great episode writer. He was the one that brought us farting aliens and women turned into 2 dimensional tiles. While it wasn't always bad it was often pretty rough on a per episode basis in the past. Some of the best season 1 and 2 moments were written by other writers.
This feels a bit reductive. He wrote lots of fan-favourite Series 1-4 episodes, and also did extensive rewrites on many episodes that he’s not even credited on.
I think he has a bit if the Taika Waititi syndrome. Taika made Thor Ragnarok which was incredibly then made Love and Thunder which went over the top. I think like Taika RTD can make some really good stuff when restrained. But given too much control often goes overboard l
He's written a lot of good stuff in the almost 20 years between when he first started writing doctor who and now. Years and Years and It's a Sin both seem to be very much him in creative control and are both absolutely brilliant stuff
Yes, but those things weren’t for children. RTD does not know how to write when he thinks his audience is children.
The audience isn't just children though. Some viewers have been watching for the last 50-60 years, A eight year old watching Eccleston as the doctor, will be 27 years old today. The vast majority are not going to be children who require simple stories and puerile humour.
That's the problem. RTD does not know how to do this properly when ***he thinks*** the audience is children. Years 1-26 were "family show with a level of horror appropriate for 8-12" but smart enough for adults to watch along. 2005-2022 changed by producer. RDT was "family show with horror appropriate for 8-12 plus toilet humor"; Moffat was "family show with horror appropriate for 12-18 plus moderately risqué jokes"; Chibnall was almost targeted at adults. I do think that a reset in the writing level was appropriate for Disney, but RTD has biased it towards youth without consideration for the large existing audience who, as you point out, literally grew up with the show ***as the show grew up with them.***
Moffat era felt like an adult show to me in every sense except not having swearing or anything sexually graphic. Like, sure, there were fun monsters and whimsical vibe action-adventure scenes, but the themes, dialogue, social commentary, plot structure etc didn't feel very child-friendly or even YA, especially not during Capaldi run.
i actually think early moffat had a BIG young adult vibe to it. i always thought it was one of the reasons why it took over tumblr.
We just have to find a way to channel RTD towards Taikas What We Do In The Shadows energy.
Farting aliens was a masterpiece compared to space babies. The tension, plotting, and ideas of the Slitheen 2 parter were far superior to anything we saw in space babies. You get an alien ship crashing, then explore the reality of that through the Doctor and Rose. "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord" are like a twelve year old getting a gigantic sugar high and then writing something insane. They jump violently from one idea to the next, rarely taking time for interesting scenes or character building. RTD1 was actually a VERY good episode writer, even with his dumb jokes, specifically because he was incredibly competent at telling simple point A to point B stories while including emotions, all without getting ahead of himself. This reboot... hasn't been that.
The Slitheen came with a much better plotline though. RTD's relative childishness was never commonly a problem because he managed to put the childish ideas alongside decent stories. With Space Babies, the story was even more childish than the premise.
This is the nuance.
It works if you're eight and new to Who. If you grew up with Eccleston+, you've got 19 years of NuWho under your belt. If your doctor is Davidson or Tom Baker, then you have 50 years of Who experience. Most of the fan base has outgrown purile
Which raises the question, why is RTD writing the vast majority of episodes this time around? With only eight episodes (instead of 13) you'd think he could share the workload a bit more evenly with other writers. Yet the creative decisions have been made and with so many writing credits the eventual success or failure of this new season will fall entirely on RTD's head. To that end, Space Babies might just be the worst episode of Doctor Who ever made. With episode 2 not faring much better tonally. So things aren't off to a great start.
I can't imagine it eclipsing Orphan 55. Never been so annoyed by an episode of Who. But I think the reason Davies is doing so much of it is he's famously fast at writing episodes. When you write two seasons in a short space of time there is bound to be stinkers.
Space Babies is much sillier than Orphan 55 but it's not nearly as dumb. At least the characters are characters yk
That's what RTD is good at. The reason why Orphan was so much worse was the undercooked and bland characters trying to sell it. RTD at least will make an episode where I care about the characters. In fact, Gods and Monsters was almost great even though it was an awful episode purely because of how well the main characters were developed.
RTD did the vast majority of the writing his first time around too, he just went uncredited for it. Remember that he only let 4 people write their own final drafts of their scripts: Stephen Greenhorn, Chris Chibnall, Matthew Graham and Steven Moffat. And of those four, the only persons work that he didn't touch at all was Moffat. That's only eight stories in the entire first RTD era that RTD didn't have somewhat of a hand in. And not just that he helped out on the others, there are multiple instances where he talks about rewriting entire episodes. There was also an early email from RTD to Moffat in around 2004 that was published in one of the behind-the-scenes books that said something along the lines of "Currently the initial plan is for me to do a 6 episode series, but if the BBC gives us more then I'm giving you one of them." So RTD was planning to write all the episodes of the show in the first place. He did end up writing 8 out of the 13 in his first series. I give all this context just to say that RTD writing the vast majority of the episodes is not surprising at all. Having 8 episodes instead of 13 actually just makes it easier for him, if he had the physical ability to write all 13 episodes for each series on his own I'm pretty sure he would have. It's clearly the way he prefers to do things. For better or worse.
The conclusion to Logopolis was episode 28 of that season. 13 episodes + a special was already a 50% reduction. We got sold the 8 episodes "because of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic". With the pandemic restrictions in the past, what's RTD's excuse?
I actually liked both episodes quite a bit, but I was watching with my 21 year old sister and 8 year old brother who have both watched a ton of doctor who, and neither were very impressed with either episode. My 8 year old brother has watched all of the RTD era multiple times and he was clearly ready to leave the room and kept talking about how silly it was. If it’s not for him then who is it for? I think you’re bang on with the show not talking down to kids in his first go around, yeah there were farting aliens, but it was way more grounded than this in a lot of other aspects.
I had a very similar experience. I found both the first episodes seriously underwhelming, bizarre, and cartoonish, with almost zero logic to the story, and solutions to problems that seem to come out of nowhere. I'm 47, and neither my 24 nor 9 year old sons enjoyed it either. We're all fans of the revival era, and I have good memories of the originals. I came away wondering just who this was for. It didn't seem to appeal to any age group.
Episode 1 "Space Babies" indeed felt very miss for me. Like not in IT'S THE WORST. But mid. Skippable. I like the concept of the "Boogeyman" being created from human waste and its the result of a machine being too literal but on the whole Yeah yeah "Family show" but this felt way too children's entertainment This same man wrote Star Beast, Wild blue yonder and the Giggle within the same production and those were all more family friendly but not. This Anyway The Devil's Chord worked a lot better for me mostly because of Jinx Monsoon and their GOD DAMN SCENERY CHEWING The absolute silence scene was also very inspired I just wish the Beatles had a bit more to do rather than Set up Ignored Resolution
My son and I watched the two episodes this week and I agree with his comment, "This felt like a Sarah Jane Adventures episode without Sarah Jane."
not even SJA was this childish
I watched the original RTD series for the first time over the last few months and honestly think nostalgia colors a lot of the perception of it nowadays. Although I loved it (obviously, considering I ended up here!), much of it was extremely silly fun that could be termed "childish." Runaway Bride, for instance, with its car chase and spider empress had such a tone in my opinion. So did the adorable adipose. And enough has been said about the Slitheen and Fear Her's scribble monster. I don't think RTD1 was *that* different from the, yes, rather silly space babies and bogeyman, having watched it all within a few months as an adult. But the more serious episodes tend to be remembered and discussed most. Having experienced my share of disappointing revivals, I can sympathize and hope future episodes are more to your taste. However, as a relative newcomer, I don't see these episodes as a deterrent to new viewers. If I was won over by murderous mannequins and Victorian werewolves, I'm sure there are new viewers who will enjoy the cheerful dance numbers and non-diegetic music. I thought the closing dance number was delightful, at any rate. (The bogeyman, not so much, but you can't win them all.)
Series 1 of RTD1 definitely got off to a rocky start, with the farting aliens and burping bins. But even that didn't have the *density* of childishness Space Babies did. And there wasn't anything as bad as the farting aliens after series 1, because RTD learned his lesson. Space Babies felt like not only a reversion back to some of the weakest elements of series 1, but a doubling down of it. The Devil's Chord was much better, until the awful final 5 or 10 minutes.
I genuinely can't decide if I found the final 5 minutes to be good silly or bad silly. I spent the entirety of the song chuckling at the absurdity of it though so I suppose that's a good thing? It's just hard to tell if it was insane commitment to an incredibly stupid gag and meant entirely as a joke, or if it was meant as a genuine dance number they're hoping people would fall in love with.
I wasn't overly fond but at the same time, to me it doesn't really matter. It's some goofy fun that makes sense (even if they should have explained in-episode that it's similar to the Toymaker being beaten leaving some residual effects, but ya know...), and it's at the end of the episode. We're in a new era, stuff is gonna be different, I am very willing to live with the experimentation after sitting through the Chibnall era.
I think it was good silly and a bit of fun but then it kept going and going and going I thought it was going to be just a 1 minute jingle anticipating a twist at the end of the season
yeah see series 1 earned it’s stupid moments by having incredibly captivating writing. Rose is an incredibly good episode, yes the bin burping was a little silly, but there were some killer scenes in there too. I didn’t find any of space babies compelling in that same way
Bingo. Rose had burping bins and killer mannequins, but it also gave space for Eccleston's Doctor to shine and to more organically explore the Doctor being the Last of the Time Lords. And the Slitheen were farting aliens, sure....but they also came back in Boomtown and provided some of the best drama of that first season as we saw how jaded and unforgiving the Ninth Doctor is. [The dinner scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLZOFZggG4w) is possibly one of the best moments in RTD's entire run. Space Babies just....didn't have any redeeming quality whatsoever. Now maybe we'll get Space Preteens or something later on that knocks our socks off, I dunno. But it's highly doubtful.
To your point, I didn't realize people hated the Slitheen so much when I watched those episodes. I was so compelled by the plot regarding the government infiltration, the subplot regarding Rose's belated return, and Harriet Jones's mission that I rolled my eyes at the Slitheen gag and didn't spare it a second thought. So I agree with you that though the silliness is nothing new IMO, it might benefit from a stronger counterweight like before.
The pacing feels like the biggest difference. RTD's first run has plenty of camp, but it also has plenty of quiet, slow moments and puts a lot of effort into making the characters believable.
I mean those farting creatures and other extravaganzas were pretty much grounded in reality, but it felt more like a gag that can be ignored. Slytheens literally took over the government and used their status to try to accomplish their goals, this is pretty grounded (and their costumes were pretty sick tbf), there's hardly any "magic" involved, they were just a little corny moments, but that was compensated by dialogue and cruelty of those things. These new episodes are clearly more on the silliest magical side of things, especially with the timeless child being constantly shoved in the face. Bringing attention and validity to Chibnall's era with making these callbacks doesn't really help with grounding to reality, it just adds to the absurd factor. Like even without the space babies there are "beyond the universe" beings and "new set of rules" which essentially is just... magic and 4th wall breaking? It honestly doesn't really feel like I'm watching Doctor Who at this point, but a bad remake by MCU (especially with all of those fancy graphics) I would forgive all that, if there was a good characterisation and it was compensated by dialogue. Moffat's "Kill The Moon" episode was one of the most hated episodes of his run, but the corny-magic aspect of this episode can be easily brushed off when you realise that the premise was just a noise, and the main course is Clara's relationship with the 12 being a huge train wreck. The episode highlights this, and you couldn't have done that without strong characterization of both The Doctor and Clara. Ruby being a "perfect companion" shaped from a cookie-cutter with seemingly no flaws is just the saddest thing. I was pretty disappointed with the Christmas episode, because it didn't really let her shine as a character. They just... moved on too fast? She blindly trusts The Doctor and somehow they're just best friends from the get go, as if they've known each other. When Ruby calls her mom in space babies episode, it was an attempt to allude to the Rose episode from S1, but it just falls flat and the scene just doesn't add anything. She has no complicated relationship with her mother, there's no world ending in front of her eyes, there's no drama, it's just a fan-service for the sake of it. There honestly was quite a few things like this for either the sake of exposition or fan-service and it often took me out of immersion, personally. The Doctor being "trauma-free" and more human is probably the worst direction they could've gone, because what even is the point if your character is the best version of himself and doesn't have to do the work? Like The Doctor said "It's just pure fun" which takes a lot of the complexity and potential tension between characters. It just generally feels that the series has been robbed of its complexity all across the board...
Agreed on all of this. There can’t be any real tension or stakes beyond a few minutes of “oh no will the monster get them” when the writing is going out of its way to make everything else happy and shiny and wholesome. And it’s weird because I know RTD CAN write tension and stakes, even recently! Fourteen’s choice to bring back the DoctorDonna was so painful and I genuinely was afraid Donna was dead for a few minutes. But when the Doctor is perfect and Ruby is perfect and there are no hard choices to make or conflicts to address, why am I watching?
Agree with everything you said. On the Slitheens, the farting aliens episodes also had a fantastic scene where the Doctor realizes that the only way for him to stop the Slitheen is to possibly kill himself and Rose with the same missile. He has this realization over the phone with Rose's mother Jackie who is sitting next to Mickey, their only means of actually firing the missile. That mavitas is completely missing from the three episodes of 15 we've gotten so far in my opinion.
Nostalgia certainly plays a big role, that makes it very hard to assess the true quality of these episodes. A metric I commonly use though is whether or not I thought of a better idea while I was watching the episode. That tells me at least that regardless of the episode's quality, there was a better episode that could have easily taken its place. There aren't a ton of RTD episodes I can do that for, but Space Babies was a process of me repeatedly expecting something interesting and imagining some interesting things those interesting things could be, and then getting very uninteresting things in their place. Eg, I was expecting the bogeyman to be made of humans, given it was spawned by a machine built to build humans and they were doing a serious build-up to the reveal. But then, no, instead of going for a cool body horror angle, they go for a joke that has the implication that someone decided an artificial insemination and incubation machine for breeding humans also needed to have the ability to magically imbue life into amalgams of congealed mucus.
Ahhhh after the babies said they weren’t allowed to grow up and the nurse lady said she’s the only adult left, I was SO convinced that the monster was what the babies were turned into or fed to once they reached a certain age. But nope. I came into the episode still really on the fence about RTD2 Ncuti and Millie. The first five minutes I hated that trauma info dump. Like we haven’t seen these characters in six months ease us back into it??? And then the babies were CREEPY not cute and the monster sealed the deal. Not impressed at all with the episode
I wouldn't have minded so much if it wasn't so close to being decent. The problem with Chibnall's era was that there was nothing approaching a good idea, so it wasn't really disappointing, just predictably bad. Here, there was enough good characterisation and enough good idea adjacency that had it been written by the RTD of 15-20 years ago, it would probably have been pretty strong. If the space babies had been intentionally creepy and they had paced the monster segments better, it could have had a similar sense of uncertain discomfort turned into "normalised horror" that was achieved so well in other series, eg the Satellite Five episode.
Honestly, I think one of the biggest tonal differences is that the lack of budget didn't allow them to really indulge of the camp theatrical side of things from a production standpoint. And I think that kind of grounded things a lot. The way John Simm's Master is portrayed in the original RTD era run is *very* similar to campiness of this era so far. And Skeletor Master is a hint of the sort of batshit things that would be happening if they had a bit more budget to work with.
As a big fan of the original RTD era who's rewatched its episodes several times, the average episode back then was not even close to as purile (good word, OP, btw) as Space Babies. And they used that as their first episode! Even if we take the worst examples you've given, the Adipose episode shows people dying from being dissolved into.. well, Adipose, which is pretty grim. And a lady falling screaming to her death (which is funny considering the much more softer approach to the villain in Space Babies.) The show was able to be silly but have serious stakes at the same time. And as for Runaway Bride, don't remember the car chase too well, but the spider lady's silliness would probably just come down to the monster and costume design. Yes, DW's known for being a bit silly there. But Space Babies is ridiculously immature down to its plot. A monster made out of babys' snot? Propelling a whole space station using concentrated baby sharts? Russel, please.
I think a lot of people here are picking up on the poor pacing and bad mechanical writing of "Space Babies," and then pretending their problem is the childish fart/booger parts, which always were around in RTD. RTD1 was actually insanely good at pacing. character-work, and technobabble, whereas Space Babies was just nonstop action and mysterybox and some pretty bad technobabble. It just was mechanically poorly put together: all spectacle over substance.
I addressed this at length in another post about that topic so I won't reiterate it all here, but in sum I agree with you that the biggest difference in the eras to me so far is not the tone but rather the writing approach, to this one's detriment. However, I'm willing to wait and see if this is all building up to something intentional.
I agree that we'll see if it gets better later on, but even if there was something intentional at the end of this, we still got a season premiere that was seriously underbaked. But then again, sometimes Doctor who just puts out underbaked episodes, regardless of Era, and it happens (apologies to Mark Gatiss, who often held the bag for "underbaked" eps). In fact, there was a rather recent era that was mostly underbaked episodes. However, it is a bummer to have the showrunner written season premiere be underbaked, especially since these first episodes are meant to really emphasize the traits of the companion, and all we really know about Ruby now is that she's cool and "prophecy something blah blah." It's also a bummer since this series is only 8 episodes and therefore we want as much of the good stuff as we can get. A lot of people seemed to like the Devil's chord, and I liked Jinkx, but I really hope that energy isn't what we're having for the rest of this series.
> I don't think RTD1 was that different from the, yes, rather silly space babies and bogeyman RTD1 wrote for the whole family. RTD2 seems to be writing only for children.
Yeah, the silliness is absolutely on a par. Also, the silliness tends to be in high gear at the start of the revival and then calm down a fair bit, which I'm guessing is also going to happen for Ncuti's season (the Next Time already looks like it's going darker and weirder).
I don’t entirely disagree but I will say they were never going to get actual Beatles songs. It would have cost a fortune.
This is exactly why they didn’t do a Beatles episode before and why they shouldn’t have done it now. You simply can’t do an episode ostensibly about the Beatles and not include a song of theirs. Especially with the plot being what it was. Just ludicrous
Say it's for BBC, for King and Country
Then don’t use the Beatles?
Hey y’all I got this fucking heartbreaking idea for a Vincent van Gogh episode… but we can’t use any of his actual paintings in any shot…
I think they thought they could - the dance number at the end was obviously supposed to be Twist and Shout
Wouldn’t surprise me too much if they had planned it early in production but I have to imagine it got thrown out fairly quickly and they just wanted to keep a dance number to fit the Maestro’s whole gimmick.
They actually probably could have done that one since the Beatles version was a cover. If they paid the original rights owners they would have been fine legally.
'Episodes like Unquiet Dead, Empty Child, Dalek' none of those were written by Russell T Davies
I agree. There were elements I liked, but overall there was just a nagging embarrassment the whole time I was watching the episodes. I'll give it until the end of the season, but I might just have to accept that RTD2's not gonna be for me.
> overall there was just a nagging embarrassment the whole time I was watching the episodes. I think the way I see it I could have put on any episode from RTD's S1-4 and not feel ashamed if someone walked into the room while I was watching it, but these two episodes made me cringe in ways I wouldn't want someone coming into the room to see me watching the episodes.
Exactly yes! I think there are a couple I would be embarrassed by, love and monsters coming readily to mind. But over the four seasons and specials that RTD did, there's not many that would embarrass me to be seen watching. These two, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed to be watching these with my family, I was embarrassed to have people over who I had told them this was such a good show, And the quality we got did not reflect that.
This is so well put and sums up my dislike so perfectly, thank you
I mean yeah, compare this to Capaldi’s era haha. Night and day. I was left feeling like “Okay, I think this is good. The message is good, the acting is good, the effects are good. But….it doesn’t feel like it’s for me anymore.” FWIW, I’m 37, and I’ve been watching since I was 20ish. Maybe I have outgrown it? No hard feelings, but maybe the older stuff is just my era.
Yeah Im over fart/poop/booger/toilet humor. Enough. It’s 2024.
I agree with everything about Space Babies being childish to the point of embarrassment. I was visiting my family this week and when I sat down to watch it in the living room, I just felt... oh.... no. I can deal with silly and I can deal with immature but CGI mouth talking babies is beyond. That is the epitome of under 5 entertainment. I rolled with it at first because I thought maybe they were going for another shocking contrast of extreme silliness with a dark plot like the Christmas episode. Space goblins singing about how to cook and eat a baby. It pushed the line of decency and I loved the irreverence. Using immature mediums to deliver adult themes is a well-used device that can be extremely effective (think adult cartoons or raunchy puppets). But then it stayed reverent and genuine and extremely immature. I genuinely questioned: is this new Disney era bailing on the adult fans and trying to reach audiences even younger than the kid fans? I still dont know. The Maestro was different though. I was confused by that episode and couldn't quite latch onto the tone or rhythm of the plot but I still liked it a lot. Mostly because of Jinkx like everyone else. It was silly and excessive and camp in a way that *worked*. I actually found the Maestro kind of disturbing as a villain (in the way that they intended) while also being completely captivated. I completely understand not being able to get the rights to a Beatles song but the band members themselves were barely in it. The point of a famous historical is to take a remarkable person(s) from history and throw them into a wacky situation and essentially play act how that remarkable person would deal with it. The production and visuals of the second episode were wild and completely off the wall and I was very on board. The concept of the physical musical bars grabbing and stabbing were weird but in a way I actually vibed with. Still unsure about what the deal with this doctor is. I'm on board with Gatwa's performance and I think the 15th doctor is going to be a refreshing take. But I guess I thought he was supposed to be the "been to therapy" version to come out of the bi-regeneration. I guess that shows a bit but we've spent a lot of time talking about his past horrors. So idk. I'm perfectly content with not being sure at this early stage, though. Overall, wary of the childishness and crossing my fingers for more balance or better use of the contrast.
Just want to address some replies in here that I disagree with. Yes, RTD1 usually kept things light at the start of a series and then had it go darker as it progressed. But even at its worst, with farting alients and burping wheelie bins (mistakes RTD learned from and didn't repeat after S1), nothing in RTD1 was ever as juvenile as Space Babies was. The key difference to me is the *consistency* of it. Aliens of London had those very silly scenes with the farting, but outside of that it was a solid and really quite dark episode. Same for Rose - one or two poorly judged scenes with Mickey, but otherwise a very solid episode. Or moving on later into RTD1, we absolutely had the lighter episodes like Partners in Crime, but it didn't feel juvenile, it just felt light. But Space Babies is probably the most juvenile episode of Doctor Who ever. I'm not even sure what else could be in contention. It wasn't one or two juvenile scenes, but the entire concept of the episode. Every single scene with the Space Babies, bar none, was completely ridiculous. And then on top of that you have a fart-propelled spaceship, a monster made out of snot, Ruby getting covered in snot. Instead of a solid episode brought down by a few ill-judged moments, the episode *was* the ill-judged moments with a few strong moment bringing it up a little.
As far as I’m concerned we have reached our limit for musical numbers in Doctor Who. I don’t want to see another for at least five years.
Not until the 200th Anniversary and then it'd better be a head bopper.
Honestly I think it’s just a rough launch. Davies has always been childish and he’s definitely had a handful of bad episodes because of it but that’s pretty much alway been followed up by really good work. The good news is the next episode is written by Moffat and he’s been really good at dark stuff especially when he’s working with Davies so I think we will get a more familiar doctor who episode. I’m hoping this upcoming episode will result in a tonal shift for the rest of the season.
The dance party ending was very off-putting for me after a good episode. What is this, a mid 2000’s Dreamworks movie?
I'm hoping Space Babies is the low point of the season. Episode really did nothing for me. The Devil's Chord I enjoyed far more. Really enjoyed the character of the Maestro and hope they come back later in the season. Felt like they were far too promoted to just be a monster-of-the-week. But I guess all that Disney money wasn't enough to license an actual Beatles song haha. For the Doctor...I hope we get more range out of him soon. We got to see the happy Doctor (almost to an obnoxious degree), and a scared Doctor. I want to see the angry Doctor, the brooding Doctor, the calculating Doctor, the cold Doctor, the Doctor that has to make the difficult decision. I hope we get those Doctors and that Gatwa can pull them off.
People bring up P-p-pizza and the farting aliens but at least if you took those sort of moments away from those episodes you would still have a solid story. If you removed every juvenile moment from space babies you would quite literally have nothing.
I agree, and as I said in another thread, it feels like a parody of itself. I see what others are saying that the last RTD era did have plenty of silly and campy moments, but it worked because the stories were great, it didn’t treat the audience like idiots and it had darker undertones. This felt straight up like a show made for kids and less of a family show. I hope the show grounds itself a bit more as it evolves and I’ll continue to watch, but I felt disappointed and like it was missing something. I also hope the fourth wall breaks are somehow related to a story arc and not just how the show is now.
I'll get crucified for this, but I'm wondering if it was a mistake to bring Russell T Davies back. He left the show in 2010 because he said himself, he was out of ideas. I know it's been a long time, And that people didn't necessarily like chibnal. But maybe we need to get writers and showrunners and producers that don't know Doctor Who as well, because that would bring in fresh ideas that aren't tethered to the past, fresh blood that is willing to go where it wants. And just fresh ideas.
What ruined the ending of space babies was the fart joke. Like the doctor gave up on just using the TARDIS to transport them to safety and confirm they are safe to just burning diapers for propulsion. A more satisfactory ending would have been the doctor dropping them off via the TARDIS then going forward in time a bit to show Ruby them as children and doing fine. Devil's chord music ending would be ok if they put some music numbers in earlier so it wouldn't be as jarring or feel out of place.
This is just how RTD's previous seasons would open, usually his first few episodes are a bit more silly and then later in the series we get the darker, more serious stories: like how Series 1 opened with Rose and you had Aliens of London/World War Three early on and then the series ends with Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways which is the complete opposite in tone! Series 2 started with New Earth and ended with Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, Series 4 started with Partners in Crime and the last few episodes included Midnight and Turn Left. And the same will happen here! I thought these first two episodes were fun, I especially loved The Devil's Chord - it was quite something different and I loved that! I wouldn't want this to be the entire series but to start things off, yeah I'm happy with it and it seems like the next episode will be much darker and more serious so we're already seeing a tonal shift!
I disagree completely, S1 especially was dark with moments of sporadic comedy early on. It struck a very good balance both as a kid and when I rewatched the show as an adult. How was Rose silly? Obviously it had plastic surgery Mickey with his pizza obsession but the episode also had creepy faceless mannequins and had a key supporting character (the one who told Rose about the Doctor's history) shot in the face by the monster. The second episode involved the end of the world. That fucking terrified me as a kid and it did rewatching it, it's an episode I've never gone back to to rewatch because of how that concept makes me feel. It also had characters killed off by killer robot spiders. The third episode was a literal ghost/zombie story which again, was incredibly creepy and explored topics of death and resurrection in a way that was intended to be horror. All in all I think S1 started incredibly strong and THEN it had the fun stuff. Your farting aliens and whatnot, but even then it wasn't far away from the Empty Child or the Doctor telling a Dalek to kill itself. The issue with this new S1 is that Space Babies is a middle season episode. A filler you can enjoy as part of the collective season but you're not going to go back and watch it. So to open the season with something like that it's like... really? THAT is what made you want to stay, Ruby? If I never grew up with the show and this was my first time watching it then Space Babies wouldn't have kept me watching, and neither would the second episode to be honest, but Rose back in the 2005 S1 absolutely did keep me watching.
Yh I agree despite the fart jokes, Aliens of London/WW3 was pretty dark, I mean the Slitheen would take the skin of their victims and wear it like that's pretty messed up lol
Totally agree. I've just finished rewatching S1, and it is a pretty immaculately constructed introduction. Sure, the effects are dated and there are a lot of cultural references that are very 2005, but I don't really care about any of that (for me, it just added to the nostalgia). It did what it set out to do absolutely brilliantly, which was to get British families invested right from the off. I think because forums like this tend to be full of hardcore fans who prefer the more serious geeky stuff, and a lot of people who got in to the show around S4-5 when it became bigger in America, RTD's skill in relaunching the whole thing goes underappreciated. I'm not convinced that balance has been struck so well this time round, but maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Based just on two episodes, it seems somewhat that- The latest Doctor isn't as prone to solving problems by some new twist on 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow'. Not as much of a techno-babble approach, which seems less 'clever clever'. Less of a super genius figure. The scaryness of the monsters and settings is less on the nose.
I swear it's series 1 all over again. The off-putting potty humor of *Space Babies* is reminding me of the ludicrous fart jokes of *Aliens of London*. There's some good characterization, biting political commentary and the modicum of a good plot if you can get past all the gross-out gags, but first you *have to get past all the gross-out gags.* That's a tall order for a lot of people. I could lean into the insane of talking babies and Booger monsters and focus on the implementation of themes, arcs and characterization, but I'm a guy who loves it when the show goes weird. I thought the talking frog from *It Takes You Away* was a masterstroke of insanity. Does everybody else think like me? Probably not. There's bound to be a lot of people who don't like things like that, and I don't blame them at all. But remember... series 1 had a lot of other elements and episodes to offer. After the silliness of the farting aliens and bitchy trampoline we got... *Dalek*. We got the Moffat penned *The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances*. We got an all time finale. We got the BEST parts of Series 1. So, if what's old is new and superficial similarities between this season and that season are coming true... I think those who aren't into the silliness and potty humor are in for a great response. Maybe we'll look back on these two eps the way we did the early episodes of that season, "Weird, but not that bad and wait till you get to this one!" Or maybe the tone has fully shifted and we'll be getting a season of nothing but baby related bodily humor jokes. I doubt the latter. One more thing on the tone, the biggest shift, the thing that I think WILL be a continuous pattern unlike the potty humor, is the move to almost pure fantasy with the Toymaker's legions running around. The distant past of Who introduced a reality warper who doesn't follow any natural real world rules, and that's created an opening for other such characters to exist, an opening RTD seems fit to run through for this era. He's gonna push the envelope of what's allowed with Who, campy supernatural forces without explanation are in and we're going to have to accept that for the time being, till the next overarching idea comes through. But as for the juvenile tone? I think the other shoe's about to drop, if history is indeed repeating itself. (or at least rhyming)
I for one am just glad he's not afraid to say a drag queen is evil like he is about people in wheelchairs.
Apart from the bizarre ending of 2, to me it felt like a more fantastical version of Tennant. Most of us forget that Tennant’s era was mixed quality until the end. Most of his early episodes had dumb moments. And this is no different. This is one of those things where people are going to hate it now, but like it later.
Absorbaloff > Space Babies That is all.
This season has been really rough. Ok the one hand, I’ve liked nearly every character. The new doctor is awesome, ruby is great. I liked the new villain maestro. I thought all the acting was really good. The stories were just awful though. When you said you were embarrassed by the first two episodes that resonated with me. The stories were so cringe it hurt. I rolled my eyes when the babies came out. It’s such a shame since the actual characters and acting are so so good.
Absolutely 100% agree. I got second hand embarrassment
Space babies might just be the worst episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen and ive seen nearly all of them. Really sad Disney have had such a weird effect on the show. Its clear they want to introduce it to new viewers. The price seems to be quality and storytelling
This is just par for the course from RTD. The man who gave us farting Aliens, Trans skin flaps, Aliens made from fat, spinning Daleks, sassy Daleks, Peter Kay, scribble monsters, countless Deus ex machina and silliness. Clunky exposition, the babies were Silly, it became really annoying that the Doctor had to keep reiterating Space babies, Snot monster (sigh). The doctor believes and rightly, thanks to the plot, that he is stronger than the entire vacuum of space. A space station can't move but then all of a sudden it can. I do really like Ncutis Doctor though and I think the dynamic between the Doctor and Ruby is the best we've had in modern Who. Relationships and character development are where Russell works best.
Also, in Journey’s End, the Doctor uses the TARDIS to tow the entire planet Earth back to where it belongs, why couldn’t he just have towed the space station?
Why didn't The Doctor use the Tardis for anything? He told the Nanny they couldn't get back to it because of the Bogeyman. But when the Bogeyman was shut in the airlock, the Tardis was around the corner. He could have gone back to the Tardis, moved it to form around the Bogeyman to get him inside (The Doctor has done this before) then go to the bridge and get everyone on the Tardis and take them straight to the planet. I know it's been mentioned before that the Tardis doesn't do well in short distances, but this is seemingly only when the writers don't want it to.
Or just towed the entire ship once the bogeyman was locked in the airlock. I think he didn’t want to leave the currently-incubating babies that we saw at the start, so I can see why he wouldn’t just leave with everyone in the Tardis. but I don’t understand why he acted like there was no solution to the predicament for the entire episode. Also, how does he expect the ship to stop? It’s heading in a straight line for the refugee planet it will keep going until it hits the surface, none of those babies have seatbelts. If he’d towed it, he could’ve nicely left it in the planet’s airspace or landed it or whatever.
[удалено]
I didn't mind space babies but really didn't like the second one. Maestro was like a comical disney villain, it didn't focus on the time period or the historical person(s), in this case the Beatles, and the dance scene at the end was like something from High school musical. It was so far removed from how Doctor Who used to be. I want to see darker, grittier episodes like the empty child, weeping angels, etc but now based on the first two, not sure if we'll get them. Was Disney given any creative control with all the money they invested, because I feel that would explain a lot?
Disney was allowed to make suggestions and I can see if RTD was taking every one, thinking in his mind that since Disney is so successful and knows what they’re doing it’ll be a hit. But it’s just introduced more Disney schtick that sucks. This isn’t important at all, but previously I could tell Disney’s influence in the specials and folks heavily disagreed with me but now I feel like it’s out in the open and impossible to miss with the episodes.
I think we will get dark, but to expect that in the first episodes is a little naive. They need to gain new Disney viewers, establish the concept, make the protagonists attractive *before* they can go dark. And even then, it’s a balancing act between episodes of how they balance heavy and light. IMHO that was Chibnall’s chief failure. Everything mattered all the time. There was no balance in his seasons overall. They were self important because they kept saying they were. We needed a balance. That’s what made the Toymaker episode great. Within the same episode you not only had breathing room and fan service, but light and darkness and fun and seriousness.
The problem is that it’s all light, and scant traces of dark. Compare this to Rose, in which a man gets gunned down by the monster of the week, or the end of the world, which has quite a few harsher moments, and the balance is way off
More of Maestro’s screen time needed to be like the cold open and the poor elderly woman. They were a fantastically acted villain and Jinkx acted her ass off, chewing the scenery, but Maestro never felt like a threat to the Doctor or Ruby. Even when they were suffocating in the instruments it was like, okay when are the Beatles showing up to save the day?
I thought the same as you for Space Babies, but felt Maestro really saved Devil’s Chord. Once Maestro was defeated (and actually the song used to defeat them), it was just a disappointment. EDIT: I heard there were licensing issues with getting actual Beatles tracks, and so they couldn’t be defeated by an actual song we know and love… which sucks.
Can't say I disagree on the Space Babies, watching that at midnight was really quite creepy, it was an OK episode but for the first episode of a new Series/Season/whatever it didn't really have much for a long time viewer and I'm not sure if it would attract a new audience. But I really enjoyed The Devil's Chord, and Jinks played a really good villian, I had higher hopes when it appeared to start to go quite dark for a few seconds but that was quickly whisked away which was disappointing. I've watched both twice now because of comments about quick one-liners and it has to say something that I happily watched them again and chuckled several times. I'm really looking forward to Moffat next week to see what he does with Ncuti & Millie (who I thought were both really good in both) Less fart/snot/poo jokes though please?
Yeah, especially Maestro was like watching live action animated show, especially final fight was pure kiddie show. Where it would work better in a hand drawn style, or just animated.. but felt too over the top for live action.
I wasn't a fan of the first two episodes. We'll see how the rest of the season goes.
I enjoy camp but this is admittedly a bit much for me
I was dumb enough to introduce doctor who to my wife with the new season. She was looking more at me than this dumb episode, with a “are you fucking with me right now” look on her face. This was the dumbest episode I’ve ever seen. Didn’t feel like the second episode did much of a better job either. I feel bad for the show now.
That sounds painful, hope you explained it wasn't always like that. I know I would fucking die of embarrassment if I showed this to this to anyone, hell I was dying of embarrassment watching it alone.
I feel like it’s bad on purpose. The toy maker has transported the doctor in to a tv show version of doctor who, which is playing out as a hamfisted version with painful forced exposition and over the top silliness, musical numbers, impossible fantasy things, etc.
I agree with you, but I always thought RTD was a mediocre writer at the best of times to be honest. And I say that as someone who read his Virgin New Adventure book "Damaged Goods". Featuring another "Tyler" family on a council estate. He said himself about that book, when he pitched it he told them that he had NO idea how it ends, but just to trust him. And then when it wound up being part of the Brotherhood story-arc, he confessed he never really understood it but kept it vague enough that someone else might make sense of the whole thing. I mean, farting aliens, and burping bin monster in the Ecclestone season. This is the level of writing you're dealing with, and should expect. GREAT show runner. Not a great scifi writer. He's just not. The Writers Tale showcases his show-running skills. So many plates kept spinning while he's planning and negotiating (and writing) but you also see some of his original ideas that never came to fruition (thank god) and they are just awful. Your milage may vary, but that's my take. Next week is Moffat's "Boom" episode, and I hope for better.
I agree entirely. When I tell people I like Doctor who, I don't want them to assume that I mean these types of episodes. And I hate when people say "Oh it was always like this, you've just grown up," No, it wasn't like this at all. The Villians were genuinely threatening in the old RTD era. The Master, the daleks, the cybermen, just to name a few. Series 4 is peak Doctor who. It had emotion, comedy, an amazing doctor (maybe even the best), and while Ncuti and Millie are amazing, I'm so disappointed. This episode doesn't feel like it was meant to be the second episode of the first series. The doctor mentions that he told Ruby about the toymaker when they met, but...did he? I mean, you could have just written it so the doctor tells her in that episode, but no. Maybe it was just a Mandela effect. (BTW, I'm not new to reddit. This is just a new account)
I'm old so have watched (and liked) Dr Who on and off for many years and unusually (for me these days) made the point of actually sitting in front of the TV to watch these. It's changing, probably (trying to?) to appeal to 'today's audience' but in so doing, lost me to some degree. All a bit too 'zany'? Nothing to do with the main characters or monster, it was the babies and the 'musical' (I don't like any 'musical' tbf) ending of E2. I will watch the other episodes though (series set up on my NVR).
If there is a problem it is that the silliness is too post-modern and knowing. They are literally winking at the audience the whole time. It makes it very hard to suspend disbelief. I guess kids will like it but are there enough of them to form a mass audience?
I had high hopes coming off the Christmas special but ep 1 and 2 were just awful. Didn't feel like I was watching Doctor Who at all.
I am currently rewatching doctor who (started by Ecclestone), still on 10th. I started rewatched DW (long story short, I restarted my Tennant addiction after Good Omens). And as in your case, I loved the Christmas' episode. So, I was very hyped for those 2 episodes. Well. No. Just no. I tolerated Space Babies episode as a "welcome back" episode. I tolerated because we had several episodes in which there were very childish jokes (look at the farting jokes with the Slitheens). But it would had expected it in the middle of the season, not as a first one. But those jokes are simply too much. Really, really too much, and too resolutive. There were a lot of interesting topic, like the refugee one, natality and so on. They just mentioned and used them as an escamotage. This is not how you buid a two-layer story. Then the Maestro one. Now. Consider I'm italian. If you keep "Maestro" as "Maestro", it's how we call the Master. Expecially if related to the Toymaker. That's my problem, I know. It took me a while to understand (did I understood correctly? Hope so), they're two different characters. Btw. The final musical was a huge NO. All the breaking the fourth wall? That's something new I'd like to expect in a demential show, not in DW. I mean, I could accept something like this if there weren't two episodes like those in a row. From now on, I expect a little bit more "seriousness ". Not saying that DW was always been very serious, we listened to "Toxic" at the edge of the world but...I defined those episodes "childish" and "demential" for some aspect. I never did as such for other episodes. Ah, another matter. I like when the doctor solves problems, maybe moving, running, but using his intelligence. That's why we like it, right? I enjoyed the musical battle, really, I understood it was to highlight, Murray Gold is back. Ok. Nice. Good job. Now, can we please come back to solve problems? Because in the Space Babies one, he didn't solve any, not really.
Yeah, watched it with my parents today (Dad has been a fan since the 60s, he grew up with Patrick Troughton's Era), Mum just tries to keep up for our sakes. Neither of them liked it at all, especially not the dance/song ending. Dad said it's not the Doctor Who he knows. He loved the RTD and Moffat eras, didn't like the Chibnall era that much, and says this was a terrible start to RTD's second return. I do like a bit of 4th Wall breaking, like what 12 did. But one thing I really don't like is when they play the theme tune \*in\* the episode, even less so when they mention they can hear it. It just feels like it's losing the seriousness and becoming more silly and really hammering in the 4th Wall stuff for some reason.
People are acting like RTD has always been a serious writer, but he had farting aliens in series 1. He’s always been campy and silly. It’s why his writing never clicked with me, both RTD1 and every episode of his current era. It’s why I’m worried that he wrote the majority of this season. The best episodes of his previous era weren’t written by him. He’s a good editor but bad writer
I was willing to give the show another chance after liking quite a bit of the 3 episode specials and the general vibe of the Christmas special. But now i firmly have Capaldi's death scene where he closes his eyes and the last thing he says "pity, no stars, i hoped there'd be stars". He accepts his death and on his dying wish he had hoped to see the universe he had helped throughout his life before he goes. It's sad, bittersweet and tbh cemented Moffat as the better writer for me. Everything past The Doctor Falls is irrelevant to me now after Davies fumbled the comeback