Dr. WHO: Aliens in London/World War III

[CrypticMirror]

Limiting it just to rebooted Who, he's second best of the three behind the man who managed to get the show rebooted. Nobody could top that, even with the fart jokes. I didn't even mind the fart jokes, but then I liked Time and the Rani. Of all Who, he's... still behind RTD who gets to be just behind Verity Lambert at the top of the pile. I'd put Moffat at the second bottom just behind P.D. Segal. Oddly enough, he's still ahead of the same person when just limited to NuWho.

Three? You're judging Chibnall based on... his casting choices and nothing else?

Yes.

Well you shouldn't.

No, I'm 100% allowed to. I can, and I will. You don't get to tell someone what they should and should not judge their preferences in fiction on.

[Sir Will]

Didn't say you weren't allowed to. I said you shouldn't. Implied it is stupid and petty to do so.

[CrypticMirror]

Didn't say you weren't allowed to. I said you shouldn't. Implied it is stupid and petty to do so.

It is not petty at all. When I was a little girl, I watched Dr Who because it -sad as this sounds- was the one show that I connected with and which provided me with a substitute father figure. y own father had died when I was very young, and the older male figures in the very rural area I grew up in were very much not good role models for anyone. Most of them couldn't even be father figures for their own kids, much less anyone else. When Who came back on air I watched it for the nostalgia it gave me, sure at least two of the new Doctors were younger than me now, but it still took me back to being that little lost girl looking for a dad, and now... It doesn't. Chibnall took tat away from me. When I rank worst showrunners of Who, the guy who took that feeling of safety and closeness away from me is always going to be top of the list. No matter what else he does, he did that.

Even JNT and Colin Baker's coat of many colours did not manage that (it was the eighties, that coat didn't even crack the top ten bad fashion choices of that decade), not even Time and the Rani managed to take away that feeling and enjoyment from me, not even The Key to Time season did it. Not even that episode where Tom Baker went five full minutes with a giant snotter hanging from his nose managed that. Chibnall did. I'll admit that there were times that Moffat seemed like he was trying to alienate me, but even that "Me" arc never quite managed it either.

Chibnall managed that with a single casting decision. It isn't what I want to see in Doctor Who. It is that easy. You want to enjoy it, feel free; you want to call Chibnall the best thing that happened to Who, go ahead; you want to call the new actress the best in the role, go ahead. However for me, Chibnall is the worst, and the show will need a continuity hard-reboot for me to enjoy it again. The shame of it being, I would have watched the hell out of a Romana show, and the BBC sorely needs something to replace the Sarah Jane Adventures, so it has lost me twice over with one bad decision.

Just because your feels are different, is no need to call mine petty. My feelings are just as important and valid as yours are.

[TorroesPrime]

I don't really remember much of her outside this two parter, The Christmas Invasion, and the season four finale where she got a nobel sacrifice and the Doctor seemed to regret turning on her, but did they really reduce her to a joke?

And yeah, as much as I love the 10th Doctor, he had a pretty bad first impression, what with being out of it for most of the special and then turning on Jones like that.

Well... that's all of her appearances in the series so... yeah that should be all you remember her from.

Those cabinet members that are farting uncontrollably in the 'Aliens of London' review are they communicating with their farts?

the explination given in the episode is that the aliens use a compression field to literally shove themselves into their human skins. And when you compress matter, the gases in that matter get compressed... and well it has to go somewhere.

[Darth Wedgius]

Those cabinet members that are farting uncontrollably in the 'Aliens of London' review are they communicating with their farts?

The Curse of the Fatal Death reference would have improved the episode for me.

[BunBun299]

I think a good fart joke is possible. But just because something is possible does not make it easy. And I would argue that the total number of actually funny fart jokes in the history of television can be counted on one's fingers. And none of them are in this 2 parter. Even when I was 11, I never found them funny.

There were good parts to these episodes. I loved 9's reaction to just sitting in Rose's living room, trying to watch the news with the humans. I loved the consequences to Rose missing a year. I loved Harriet Jones as a character, how she took charge when it mattered most. But I hated the farting aliens.

On the broader discussion that's popped up in this thread, I've never gotten why some people hate Moffat. All I ever see are broad generalizations that boil down to, "I don't like him" without ever giving any kind of specific reason that I can understand, even if I disagree with. With RTD, at least I can point to specific things I disliked about his run. The aliens in this episode for starters. Even then, I don't hate everything he did. I just think Moffat's time running the show was superior.

[SuccubusYuri]

I can understand why people don't like Moffat's style. There are a number of elements that rub people wrong, and when combined could make the viewing experience difficult. Stuff like, Moffat isn't very interested in self-contained stories, or at the least, not -that- concerned making them satisfying. A lot of his stories have random interjections, like 'Into the Dalek', that can feel like cheap pseudo-cliffhangers and if they don't ultimately pay off, a lot of people can feel cheated. He had a love of turning Who back into the Peter Davison era, for good and ill, and the fairy-tale stuff Chuck talks about does have a camp that just doesn't agree on principle.

Add in that the mess of the S6 finale is a WAR CRIME and it kinda broke the counter-narrative that he was weaving more complexity into the show, as his twists from the second half of S6 ultimately prove he isn't as clever as we might originally assume.

But I certainly don't know why so many seem to think this makes him unique or singular in the history of the show.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Because we expected BETTER from him.
We got to know him through episodes like the Empty Child two-parter or Blink. We were PSYCHED when we heard he was gonna be show runner. This was gonna be awesome! =D Every episode would be as good as Blink!
He brought us back to reality, hard, fast, and with hideous, dawning clarity. Is it any wonder people turned on him when they learned he had feet of clay?

[CrypticMirror]

I liked quite a few episodes of Moffat's early run, but by the last couple of seasons it had turned into every episode being a jerk-joke being played on the audience. That is really when I started getting disenchanted with him. I can take the occasional bit of prank playing and teasing of the audience, but when every episode seems like an excuse to troll or outrage the viewers, then it just isn't fun any more.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yeah, the latter days of Sherlock is where we really got to see that in all of its naked horror.