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'Anyone for a jelly baby ? ' - Doctor Who discussion thread.

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  • cooperman2cooperman2 Uk
    Posts: 418
    Because in the old days any messages in the storytelling were subtlety placed within the story, since the Chibnell era it's been done with all the subtlety of being beaten around the head with a brick.
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    Posts: 14,311
    cooperman2 wrote: »
    Because in the old days any messages in the storytelling were subtlety placed within the story, since the Chibnell era it's been done with all the subtlety of being beaten around the head with a brick.

    Exactly. Take Inferno, for example. It's a stark warning of what we are doing to the planet, but it also happens to tell an intense story, with good performances, and a genuinely upsetting ending, with the Doctor having to leave the people of the parallel earth to a fiery death.


    Now we get shallow messaging, with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited October 31 Posts: 19,514
    Inferno has a goo from under the Earth magically turn people into werewolves; if that were done today I can just imagine the whining on twitter! :))
    'Genuinely upsetting' is subjective, also. Inferno does nothing for me. I'm not going to say it's rubbish as clearly lots of people like it, but I did not find it particularly great.
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    edited 9:34am Posts: 14,311
    mtm wrote: »
    Inferno has a goo from under the Earth magically turn people into werewolves; if that were done today I can just imagine the whining on twitter! :))
    'Genuinely upsetting' is subjective, also. Inferno does nothing for me. I'm not going to say it's rubbish as clearly lots of people like it, but I did not find it particularly great.

    I never said that it was a documentary drama. Threads, it isn't. It was conceived as a science fiction / education show for children, so what better way to teach them about something than to throw in some monsters, so they don't feel as though they are being lectured at in school.

    As for the rest of your post, I get that. The Happiness Patrol is often a target for ridicule by fans because what what's on the surface, but I think it's wonderfully subversive, with a heavy dose of melancholy. Conversely, I don't care much for Genesis Of The Daleks, I feel there are better Dalek stories, and stories in general. And yet, it's been ranked the #1 Doctor Who story.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 19,514
    Yeah Genesis was never one of my favourites either. I don’t think many stories over four parts in length work that well (with some exceptions: like Invasion of the Dinosaurs), and Genesis especially drags for me.
    What Genesis and Happiness Patrol do do of course, is chuck in some politics in the mix in a not-very subtle way. If we’re taking sledgehammers, how about getting your guest baddies to dress up as Nazis or right wing politicians…
  • 007HallY007HallY
    edited 4:00pm Posts: 6,252
    To be fair, from what little I've seen of older Dr. Who and Star Trek, I don't get the sense they're exactly subtle with their ideas! They both have that kind of hokey morality tale vibe to them. Even the David Tennent era ones I watched consistently had him often giving some monologue about the morality of the situation during third acts. But I'm no expert.

    As for the Chibnall Who episodes, they're not something I consistently watched either. But from what I've seen I got the sense it was all very surface level in terms of these things. Diverse cast, female Dr. Who etc. One of the few episodes I watched was a very strange one with a sort of Alien Amazon type company. The Doctor came out with the line 'the system's not the problem' to describe some sort of system killing employees, which seems to me a very anti-progressive thing to say at the best of times, much less in a Dr. Who episode!
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 19,514
    Yeah, the morality of that episode was completely messed up, it's like they didn't think it through when they were making it. I only saw that one once so I can't remember it too well, but it did basically end with the Doctor championing the big mega corp and not the little people it had crushed, it was very odd.
    There was another episode where she met the Master in WW2 Paris, and ended up turning off his sci-fi disguise so that the Nazis could see his Asian appearance: your moralistic hero should not be weaponising Nazi racism against her enemies! You're right that it was often very surface level progressive stuff: the same episode had the Doctor meet Noor Inayat Khan, but she just stood around saying "What are you doing Doctor?".

    I got the feeling Chibnall was over his head writing the show and it was often just first drafts making it to the screen; so I give him the benefit of the doubt on that stuff.
  • 007HallY007HallY
    edited 4:08pm Posts: 6,252
    mtm wrote: »
    Yeah, the morality of that episode was completely messed up, it's like they didn't think it through when they were making it. I only saw that one once so I can't remember it too well, but it did basically end with the Doctor championing the big mega corp and not the little people it had crushed, it was very odd.
    There was another episode where she met the Master in WW2 Paris, and ended up turning off his sci-fi disguise so that the Nazis could see his Asian appearance: your moralistic hero should not be weaponising Nazi racism against her enemies! You're right that it was often very surface level progressive stuff: the same episode had the Doctor meet Noor Inayat Khan, but she just stood around saying "What are you doing Doctor?".

    Oh really? Wild! Sounds like something I'd expect from Rick and Morty (with a degree of self-awareness - maybe a 'Rick, that's kind of messed up' or whatever) rather than a Dr. Who episode!
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited 4:30pm Posts: 19,514
    Yeah it was bonkers and lots of people noticed it as you can imagine; I just tried to find a clip but found this Guardian article from the time pointing out how DW had gone sort of weirdly anti-progressive which mentions both the Nazi thing and the Amazon ep you mentioned:
    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jan/08/doctor-who-more-offensive-than-ever-jodie-whittaker-pc

    Actually I just looked back in this thread to see if we mentioned it here at the time, and kind of amused myself by seeing my own reaction to one of the episodes which came right after:
    mtm wrote: »
    Doing an episode where the Doctor all but turns to camera at the end like He-Man to tell us global warming is bad and flying the whole cast and crew to Tenerife to do so is pretty stupid.
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    edited 4:28pm Posts: 15,432
    007HallY wrote: »
    As for the Chibnall Who episodes, they're not something I consistently watched either. But from what I've seen I got the sense it was all very surface level in terms of these things. Diverse cast, female Dr. Who etc. One of the few episodes I watched was a very strange one with a sort of Alien Amazon type company. The Doctor came out with the line 'the system's not the problem' to describe some sort of system killing employees, which seems to me a very anti-progressive thing to say at the best of times, much less in a Dr. Who episode!
    Was that Kerblam!? That was one of my favourite episodes of Jodie's era. From memory, the twist was that the system wasn't the problem - the janitor was behind it all (gotta watch out for those janitors).
  • 007HallY007HallY
    edited 5:02pm Posts: 6,252
    QBranch wrote: »
    007HallY wrote: »
    As for the Chibnall Who episodes, they're not something I consistently watched either. But from what I've seen I got the sense it was all very surface level in terms of these things. Diverse cast, female Dr. Who etc. One of the few episodes I watched was a very strange one with a sort of Alien Amazon type company. The Doctor came out with the line 'the system's not the problem' to describe some sort of system killing employees, which seems to me a very anti-progressive thing to say at the best of times, much less in a Dr. Who episode!
    Was that Kerblam!? That was one of my favourite episodes of Jodie's era. From memory, the twist was that the system wasn't the problem - the janitor was behind it all (gotta watch out for those janitors).

    I guess that’d be it. Very weird. Just doesn’t seem like something I’d expect from Dr. Who (not in a subserve twist way, just a bad way).
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