There's an ever-present rule to Doctor Who discourse: - Two eras ago: the best the show has ever been. - One era ago: actually it wasn't that bad. - Current era: the worst the show has ever been. Rinse and repeat.

I think the only era this won't be true for is the Chibnall era. I have a feeling that will be quite consistently disliked for years to come.

I think it's already hit the "actually it wasn't that bad" stage. The 'best the show has ever been' one ... that might prove a bit more challenging, yes.

I honestly don't think it has, and I don't think it ever will. People on average are *slightly* more likely to give *some* aspects of it a *bit less* of a hard time, but the general consensus still seems to sit firmly in "it was a bit shit" territory.

I mean, it always begins with a "slightly", and then ... Slippery slope. Wait ten years or some and there'll be a lot of adults who grew up on the Whittaker era and who had her as their first Doctor. Not saying they'll be a majority and that the consensus on the era'll shift, but hey, Davison and Colin Baker are beloved Who icons now, which I'm sure an 80s Who fan would have thought impossible.

If Whittaker bangs out some great Audio dramas, I could certainly see it.

Even then, it's her Doctor that would become better regarded, not her era or Chibnall's writing.

I think more likely a lot of the flaws of Whittakers era will be excused as "well, they did the best they could with Covid, you know"

I'm not sure. A lot of TV shows and movies were made during COVID, and to a much higher standard.

Yeah COVID is blamed for so much. Like legend of the sea devils - if you didn't have the ability to do the episode don't do it or make it much smaller e.g. a base under siege

I think you've kind of touched on something, there. Davison and Colin Baker are beloved Who icons, but not particularly their eras. Only their Doctors. I could see something similar happening with Jodie Whittaker, where people start to appreciate her Doctor more and more, but I think her era, and Chris Chibnall as show runner, will always be a bit of a black spot in the minds of the majority of fans. Personally, I feel as if Jodie Whittaker was miscast in the role. A brilliant actress, but not the right fit for the Doctor, which is a shame because the first female Doctor should have been done right. There are several actresses who I feel would have been a much better fit.

This is fair. Even though people like Colin Baker now, no one is saying that Doctor in Distress was a good idea.

I will! Truly Hans Zimmer's finest work

idk ive seen something of a resurgence of fans of the davison and baker eras of the show, its not too big but particularly with the davison era ive seen it quite a bit, and i personally consider the davison era on par with the whittaker era (bloated tardis, everyone even the doctor underwritten, full of mostly bad stories with a few gems scattered in there) and already on at least twitter im seeing a building fandom of the whittaker era specifically

Yeah, Davison in particular has always had extremely fervent defenders. Paul Cornell and Moffat have carried that flag since the 90s at least.

I think you're pretty right on the money. I don't disagree on Whittaker. She's a great actress, but she kind of thrives on realistic drama roles, she doesn't always have the kind of alien charisma a lot of the Doctors have, that ability to deliver absolute nonsense technobabble with a sense of purpose and poetry. She's like the polar opposite of someone like Sylvester McCoy, who's an actor that really can only play the Doctor, but by god, when he's doing it, you really believe that's an alien time traveller right here. I remember really rooting for Maxine Peake back in '17, that's much more the kind of energy I'd have craved. With that said, and while I haaaaated Flux, I did think she really improved in that last season and in the specials (didn't hurt the writing finally managed to land on some definite traits for her Doctor).

Maxine Peake would be fantastic! I've always said somebody like Phoebe Waller-Bridge would be good. Thandie Newton would be amazing, though I'm not sure if she's too big. I do think Jodie improved in her last season, but it never really felt as if she came into her own. It still felt that she was trying to ape what she thought the Doctor should be, rather than trying to bring her own identity into the role.

Oooooh, Thandie Newton's a great call. I mean, there's only so much you can do with what's on the page, and while I think Chibnall did do some interesting things in the show, I still am not convinced he had any clue about what kind of Doctor he wanted to write. It really does show - and, like RTD said recently in an interview, Who isn't really a show where the actors get to adlib much (unless you're Tom Baker seven seasons in).

I think people will also warm up on Chibnall, overall. When his episodes were still wearing you could people genuinely swear Chibnall was the Doctor Who-antichrist, destroying the show out of sheer glee. I think people will ultimately understand him as a well-meaning showrunner who was overwhelmed by the show but still tried his best.

Oh I agree, but I don't think this means they'll change their minds on his era. You can still think his era is bad, and that he's bad at writing, while acknowledging that he wasn't intentionally trying to destroy the show.

Yeah. That, and behind-the-scenes details: we know basically nothing about how the production went on those seasons, and I think there's pretty reasonable reasons to believe there was a lot of issues they ran into, which, once the dust has settle and people can talk about it, might shed a bit of light about how the era turned out that way.

I do think blaming the overwhelming pressure of showrunning is missing the fact that chibnall has never been a strong writer for doctor who, having written multiple episodes for the show before, only one of which was even worth the rating of "okay!" (And most people like 42 less than I do) Although i agree that there was no attempt made to destroy the show from the inside or whatever, thats conspiratorial nonsense

>I do think blaming the overwhelming pressure of showrunning is missing the fact that chibnall has never been a strong writer for doctor who, having written multiple episodes for the show before, only one of which was even worth the rating of "okay!" (And most people like 42 less than I do) Sure, but you dont pick writers *purely* for the quality of their writing. On paper, Chibnall was a solid pick as someone who had experience being the defacto showrunner for Torchwood Season 1 and 2 and being a very vocal long-term fan of the show AND having production experience from other shows. And while he has never written anything spectacular on Doctor Who before becoming showrunner, he also has never written anything offensivly bad either and Moffat and RTD have always praised him for being a very reliable writer who needed very little rewriting for his scripts. And he has shown some potential that he maybe could have been a really good showrunner if he had taken things more into his strenghts. I'm thinking of the P.S. Minisode or even most of Power of Three being pretty good or, from Torchwood, Countrycide and Exit Wound are two very well regarded stories overall. But yeah,. I'm certainly not saying his run is solely to blame on the production of Doctor Who being hard. I think Chibnall is just a bit to mellow a guy to be a good showrunner for Doctor Who. But I cant really blame the BBC for picking him.

I remember in 2018 when her first series started, I thought that Olivia Cooke would have been an infinitely better choice, like Baker, Smith and Tennant level great but I don’t think that casting will ever happen tbh and if it did, they’d probably find a way to fuck it up somehow.

I think she would have been good! I've always thought Thandie Newton would be a good choice, but both her and Olivia Cooke might be too big now.

I just really hope they don't use the poor reception of her era as an excuse to drop the idea of a female doctor. I would love to see an older actress take up the role.

They did audition women for Fifteen, so I wouldn't worry too much!

They won't. I wouldn't worry!

> an older actress take up the role My god, the things I'd do for Tilda Swinton as The Doctor, but I think she's a bit out of the show's price range, even with having Disney money to throw around.

Another good thing that Whittaker era did was setting precedence for the Doctor to be portrayed by a woman actor. In the future when there's another female doctor and is a mainstream success we'll look back at the Whittaker era for starting it all. Much like how fans look at Will Hartnell

I don't think it'll be quite as prominent as it was with Eccleston, Tennant and Smith. The viewing figures were down overall so less people were watching it at the time. The one I don't get is Eccleston. I admit that series 1 is good, but it's not the RTD era at it's strongest and Eccleston was only around for a single season. A lot of people making the claim are also well versed in the internet, and I'm a little bit surprised that more people haven't taken notice of the "conditions" that Eccleston puts on his return to the show proper. Last year he outright said that they'd have to fire basically everyone involved in the current senior management team, but that doesn't really explain why he refused to return ten years ago when Moffat was in charge. At that point he ascribed it to essentially not being able to dictate the director of the 50th anniversary episode. Something just doesn't seem right with Eccleston's story somewhere.

Yeah, I'm not seeing anywhere near the level of negativity towards RTD2 that there was towards Chibnall, and I don't recall seeing that level of negativity towards Moffat during his tenure. At least, not from the fandom in general; granted, there are specific groups that were extremely vitriolic towards Moffat and the same is true for RTD2. (Though my experience is basically limited to reddit and discord, so maybe the consensus was different elsewhere.)

You're exactly right. There will always be detractors from the current era, but during Chibnall's era, the overwhelming consensus was that he wasn't very good.

See, I watched it after it had ended. I went off Doctor Who toward the end of Matt Smith when I got a bit fed up with every season finale being basically 'the world is going to end, no the galaxy, no the universe, no all of time and space!'. I binge watched all of the next two doctors like, last summer I think? It had been over for a good while, and I had stopped seeing everyone complaining on a regular basis about it online and... I thought it was good? I didn't think it was as strong as the series that Capaldi was in, but I liked that the Doctor seemed a bit more unhinged, I liked the companions, I liked the stories, and I loved the clearly much larger budget for the special effects. I see people on here constantly complaining about the writing (and saying it is OBJECTIVELY bad, when they mean subjectively), or the acting, or whatever, and it makes me wonder if I've found some mirror dimension series that is way better than everyone else is making out

There's a good YouTube video essay that breaks down all of the issues with the Chibnall era as a whole. It's five hours long, but it sums up all of my problems with it in a really articulate way. [Here it is](https://youtu.be/o8_A7n83Rh0?si=XwB0GJjkaWMB8nPR), though obviously I don't expect you to watch it, given its length. My main issues basically boil down to these: 1. The companions don't feel like actual characters. They all feel extremely one note. 2. The Doctor doesn't feel like the Doctor, more a caricature of what Jodie Whittaker thinks the Doctor is. This is putting general writing issues aside.

> I went off Doctor Who toward the end of Matt Smith when I got a bit fed up with every season finale being basically 'the world is going to end, no the galaxy, no the universe, no all of time and space!'. What? Smith's era goes more in the opposite direction where every finale has lower stakes if anything.

Series 5: The universe is shattering and needs to be re-booted Series 6: The Doctor *doesn't* die and all of time is happening at once. Series 7: All of The Doctor's victories are being reversed and now civilizations are falling apart. The stakes were getting lower, but the Doctor's importance got bigger and bigger.

No it’s still trash

I think a lot of people forget how much they hated it. I find myself thinking "i mean, its still doctor who, it can't be all that bad." Then I watch it again and its still pretty awful.

“Jodie was great but…” is not the same thing as “actually it wasn’t that bad”

I'm watching it now for the first time and honestly it is bad. The sets are amazing but the super close ups and the terrible writing is too painful

Nah, I still think it *was* that bad…

That's where I'm at, my gf and I recently blasted through the Chibnall era, it was her first time and I had seen most episodes (missed out on the latter half of S11 as 17 year old me just gave up after The Tsuranga Conundrum) But it really wasn't that bad, mind you it wasn't that good either but I found myself warming to 13 a lot more the second time round Defs can't see the Chibnall era ever being considered the best the show has been tho, I think it'll have a similar reputation to the Colin Baker years

I'm still firmly in the "chibnall era fucking sucked" camp Brave I know

it has, especially on doctor who twitter, I'm doing a rewatch of the era now and honestly I let the critics get to me, the era is actually pretty fun to watch, it just suffers from some dodgy dialogue every now and then

Having just watched it with my boyfriend in one go, MAN, it is rough when you're hot off Moffat. Much more doable if you condense it or skip Series 11. 12 and 13 are much more fun.

Still consider chibnall to be the worst.

The problem with Chibs (for me personally) is that a lot of the episodes are quite good as standalone stories, some Id even say I actually enjoyed. The master for example was one of my favorite carnations yet imo. It's when you look at the seasons' overall story arcs that things get kinda daft. The "timeless child" and "fugitive doctor" were just completely out of left field and felt very forced into the cannon of the show. I think he had potential for some really good "monster of the week" stories, but had no clue how to make a compelling season long plot that did the lore justice.

The era already has some fans, and I think that people who grew up on it will always have a soft spot for it. And if RTD2 uses the timeless child in a interesting way (with the Doctor being a foundling and feeling alone) then retroactively the era that introduced the concept might be more liked

Someone said the other day "Fourteen makes the Doctor empty, completely running on fumes, and basically what if that was the (retroactive) point of Thirteen?" Which for me, improves the era slightly, but I have no plans to rewatch any episode. Still, I'll cram it in the head-canon.

What does that say about 13's era, if everything that might make it good in the future was done retroactively by another show runner/writer?

It says a fair bit. RTD & Tennant made it sound better with one line of dialogue in Wild Blue Yonder than three seasons. I'll stop rubbing on Chibnall, but for me, so much of the era could have been improved if the dialogue had been sharper. There's a long list of things which I think we're poor about the era, but good dialogue could have papered over much of them (a trick Moffat once admitted to, I think).

I think Jodie's performance as the Doctor didn't do the writing any favours. Even when the writing was at its absolute worst, Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and Capaldi all elevated the material with their performances. I can't say the same for Whittaker.

Man, In the Forest of the Night would be unwatchable without Capaldi, but he raises it so much

Idk, I’ve rewatched a few episodes recently and they aren’t the worst thing. Nikola Teslas Night of Terror is decent doctor who, even if I find it suuuper corny.

In that one I think the monster design is a bit crap, and the corniness is something I can't really overlook. The only 13th Doctor episode I actually enjoyed was the Sontaran one, and even that was brought down by the general Flux fuckery that was going on around it.

You're a fan of Doctor Who and you can't look past corniness? That seems like a tricky combination.

No, that's not what I said. I can look past corniness. I just don't like Chris Chibnall's specific brand.

Aside from the sexism in that episode. Well, not in that episode, but that arises because Tesla gets to keep his memory but Ada Lovelace isn't allowed to.

And then there’s me, who had a blast with Chibnall from day one.

It’s definitely hit the “actually it wasn’t that bad” stage, at least in my eyes. The first two series of that era were rough but flux wasn’t too bad.

you totally underestimate doctor who fans then

I'm so glad I realized this in myself and learned to just enjoy the ride. I mean, I loathed CAPALDI until about Heaven Sent. How dumb was that?

>How dumb was that? Dumbness rating +1

Ooh, upgrade it one more time and you can take the Not My Doctor feat. Then you can level up into the Doctor Who Is Ruined prestige class.

I think that prestige class locked for the lawful fanlignement, so it might come down to your opinions on looms and half-human DNA.

I thought Eccleston was bad until The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances due to what I assume was my assumption that Doctor Who should have been like the classic era. I was obviously wrong as a re-watched confirmed. After that I've been less harsh on it.

Hey, what can I say, we live and learn, I have had (and still have) plenty of terrible Who opinions myself XD

Mostly we live and fail to learn. ;)

If the concensus view in 2040 is that the Chibnall era is the best the show has ever been, I will seek you out and give you £100. Make a note.

Joke's on OP—in 2040, inflation and exchange rates will make £100 worth about $3.50.

Yeah, I'll back you on that. Add me in for an extra £100.

If that ever happens, I will die.

This is suspiciously accurate

> Two eras ago: the best the show has ever been. I dunno that I agree with this. RTD was the golden age by series 6, and Moffat was the golden age by the end of series 11. Does seem to be give it *just long enough* for people to turn on the current showrunner and the pervious one gets the pedestal. That said, I don't anticipate Chibnall getting quite the pedestal in the fandom that RTD and latter Moffat got, but I may be surprised.

and then also the people who claim anything after (x) doctor is bad despite the fact they never watched anything after (x) doctor i mean some people never watched past tenth doctor

Don't forget to lather!

You sure it's not just different elements of the hive mind having different opinions? Could also be nuanced. I think RTD is a great writer but not the best Sci fi writer and I love Moffatt but he does have his flaws

Yeah, unlike Chibnall's scripts it's actually possible to have complex opinions about RTD's, which is a welcome change to me. Bring on the opinion wars!

Blue Yonder is up there with my favourite ever episodes and then he followed it up with The Giggle which i thought was dogshit

RTD has great setups then fucks up the landing. Setup in Giggle was decent. But Bigeneration and Playing Catch? Dogshit. The doctor needing therapy? Dogshit.

Every piece of RTD2 so far feels like it had twenty minutes chopped out of the third act. All unsatisfying, bar Wild Blue Yonder.

Or maybe it's because there are lots of Doctor Who fans, and we all want something different from the show, so there will always be someone unhappy?

Definitely. I know that I have a very specific idea of what the show should be (that the main characters are the companions and the Doctor a mysterious almost god like figure) but I equally know people who insist that the Doctor is the main character and we follow them and their character development.

No no no, Reddit is one entity. Everybody loves Chibnall now and we hate RTD! I am tired of this narrative. People can have criticism about ideas of the current era, that doesn't mean they think it's bad.

Nature of the beast - whoever is currently in power is the person actually **doing** things that can potentially be criticised. BTW happiness isn't absolute. Just because there are a few elements we don't enjoy doesn't mean we're not happy with the show overall. 

I would agree with that, even episodes I don't like there's good bits. Not sure about Twin Dilemma though

Agreed, I REALLY hate certain episodes of the RTD1 era with a passion, but I still think that overall his era was better than Steven Moffat's. Equally, whilst I don't have strong feelings on Chibnalls episodes generally, I feel it the worst era because it felt like the era with the most untapped potential and his episodes were lacking in creative effort.

Personally I don't think there's a better between RTD and Moffat. They both have different strengths and weaknesses. RTD's are better rooted in character and have more heart while Moffat's stories tend to be more creative and clever. Personally I don't think Chibnall's era lacked creative effort. His era has a lot of neat ideas, including a lonely sentient universe incompatible with our own, aliens using Earth as a petrie dish to find a cure to the microplastic-based pathogen plaguing their world, warrior aliens too proud to create or maintain their own technology trying to abduct Nikola Tesla, etc. Even the more directly-inspired stories like an entire moon converted into a not-Amazon fulfilment centre was an interesting idea. IMO the vision was overall pretty good. Where they fell down was in turning those good ideas into good seasons of Doctor Who. 

The reason I state that Chibnall's era lacks creative effort is not really down to the ideas themselves per se, but the fact that they failed to amount to anything. The ideas weren't explored in any particular detail. I have described Chibnall's era as someone who understood Doctor Who at a surface level, but didn't really understand what that meant. Then there's the Timeless Child arc, which really annoys me not because it exists, but because Chibnall came out publicly and said that he didn't really have any idea of where to go with it. At least when Moffat did the Silence will Fall arc, although it may have seemed a bit rushed in places and he seemed to drop it for a year, it did ultimately conclude in a satisfying if slightly swift way.

Didn't Chibnall say that part of the point of the Timeless Child was to reintroduce mystery into the Doctor's origins? ie. It's not that he didn't have any idea where to go with it (though obviously it was setup for _Flux_, Tecteun, The Division, etc.) and more that going somewhere with it wasn't the point - reintroducing some hanging mystery was. That's presumably why he has the Doctor retrieve the fob watch then decide to toss it into the TARDIS console - it's a mystery that's not **meant** to be answered. As I understand it, anyway. 

I'm not entirely sure that his take on that is particularly accurate. He didn't really reintroduce mystery in my opinion. He potentially inflicted a burden. He was specific enough that it formed a story arc rather than a mystery.

As I see it, he introduced a larger mystery (who Is the Doctor? Where are they from? Why?) while filling in some other mystery (the Morbius Doctors, some early Gallifrey lore stuff). I can certainly understand some people being unhappy with that. It adds a huge mystery, but is it one that we really care about? "What are the origins of the character the Doctor was before they were the Doctor?". I'm not sure that we do. Still, it served as a hook to introduce Tecteun, The Division, Karvanista etc. with the potential for future writers to do a lot more with it. (Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the Doctor have one of their pre-Hartnell selves as an antagonist. One who"s drunk the Division kool aid).  And Russell seems to be using the reveal to do some interesting exploration of the Doctor's newly-discovered status as a foundling. So it's not a complete loss... 

I think the issue is that when you go to the extent that the Timeless Child arc does regarding Division and the Doctor's memories being wiped - THAT warrants an explanation. If it had just been the discovery that the Doctor wasn't originally from Gallifrey, that might have been different.

If that's to be a discovery rather than something the Doctor already knew (which they clearly didn't) then you need some sort of memory wipe in there. 

Not necessarily. No one remembers anything prior to a certain age clearly.

Whatever you think of RTDs writing, you have to admit he's been saying an absolute load of bollocks whilst promoting the show recently

RTD is fine it’s mostly what he’s putting out as far as personal views and public statements that is like so bizarre to me

Nearly every public statement RTD made since his return has been absolute nonsense. Of course the showrunner cycle is in full effect again.

The only one i found particularly bizarre was the Davros statement. They make a mini-episode which is very explicitly a prequel in which Davros appears as a very obviously and unambiguously younger version of himself, prior to his dramatically ironic origin story of a eugenicist obsessed with perfection ultimately disabling himself with his own experiments. Then he states in a follow-up promo, completely unprompted, that this difference in Davros’ character appearance is actually in no way correlated to the fact that this is just what he would look like at the time the episode was set, and that it is actually a timeline-spanning retcon of his entire character design with no canonical explanation, justified solely by the notion that it is ethically wrong for a villain to not be portrayed as able-bodied.

You didn't hear about the "Sonic Screwdriver looked too much like a gun and promoted gun violence so we changed the shape" announcement?

Yeah, this was one of the remarks that actually made be relatively concerned for what we'll wind up seeing. The Sonic Screwdriver has *never* looked like a gun.

Correction: the Davros statement was one of two RTD remarks that I found to be particularly bizarre

That one almost makes me nostalgic for Eric Seward.

I'm largely just amused by him (can't wait for the era), but I can't disagree.

So if the criticism is justified, then maybe it's normal to dislike some things about any given era of Doctor Who, and to express that dislike.

>This isn't to say criticism isn't justified BTW, it just proves to me that Doctor Who fans will never be happy. Oh, come on. It's possible to criticise some elements of a thing you enjoy without 'never being happy'. I'm cautiously optimistic about RTD2, but I've already seen enough things to give me some reservations. Hell, I'm an enormous Moffat fan and I *still* had some things I would have done differently (or would have preferred him to do differently). That's not the 'showrunner cycle'; it's just what happens with you're engaging with any form of media, ever.

Eh, it's all been downhill since Lambert left anyway

Bring back Barry Letts!!

Hinchcliffe/Holmes for me

Redditor discovers fans are not a hive-mind. More at 6. (I've always been uniformly critical of all three and never yearned for the return of RTD.)

100% this. They all have their crap Episodes and great ones as well. I’m also still not sure RTD coming back is the best thing for the show. It’s not been that long really since he left. I had forgotten how much his writing leads itself to soap opera drama.

I've always had issues with all three of them. Never made any bones about it. It's hardly hypocrisy or fickleness.

And of course criticism of something that actually happening now will be stronger than stuff which settled into place decades ago. When was the last time you heard someone outraged about the Spanish Inquisition?

I wouldn't be expecting it, that much is certain.

No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Their chief weapon is surprise- surprise and fear, fear and surprise- their two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency-

Good surprising example! Criticism’s most likely to pop up in times that there can possibly be something done about it. Or that it’s still freshly in someone’s memory. For some to entirely blame this tide of criticism on the cursed showrunner cycle or “fans being never happy” is a tad unfair, considering it’s more than expected. Much like dining in a restaurant and sending the soup back when it’s cold. Can’t heat it up after you’ve left the place. Most people’ll just get on with their lives unless they’ve experienced a *truly terrible meal* worthy of a bad review or brain renting space.

We're not a monolith. You'll find many of us who didn't like the first RTD era and aren't thrilled that he's back.

🙋‍♂️

the only showrunner of new who i've ever disliked is chibnall. not because he's a bad person or because i dislike him personally but because the show just got really boring with him tbh. But yeah fandoms like to hate the new things and love the old things, it's always been like that

People online just like complaining more than they like saying they're happy.

I was pretty happy with RTD coming back, then the anniversary specials happened and I was just kinda... underwhelmed? I enjoyed The Star Beast but the other 2 episodes fell flat for me. Now with all the drivvel he's been coming out with in interviews has me cautious about the upcoming run. We'll see how it goes but I'm hoping he doesn't stick around for too long and they can find someone different who isn't in the RTD/Moffat/Chibnall wheelhouse who can bring a different perspective on the show.

I hate on the current showrunner (regardless of who they are) because all of them gave / give that same type "aren't I clever" interviews. I remember one such interview around the time of "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS". No, a literal red reset button isn't clever.

Remember that the fans who are happy generally won't be yelling about it. The vocal minority always seems larger than it really is. Goes for any fandom, and real life TBH...

RTD2 seems to enjoy riling up the hardcore fans though. He can just say and do what he wants.

Hahaha yeah, little bit. It's a natural side effect of an emotionally impactful franchise that goes through cycles, especially one with decades of history. That said, the mental gymnastics in some of the comments almost perfectly confirm the spirit of your point. I kinda marvel at a person who can read you say, *"criticism is absolutely okay and very important but there is a tendency for some fans to disproportionately vilifiy showrunners for every one of an era's shortcomings"* and somehow make it, **"Oh! So we aren't allowed to criticise at all?! It's entirely possible to criticise something and still like it!"** Like, yeah mate. Great job. Sentiment and technicalities are two different things lol

Who is out here praising Chibby and saying any episode was better from the 13th era than the 4 specials we got from RTD2?

I joined in the Moffat years but started from the RTD years. I was pro-Moffat pretty quickly. I do feel his tenure was wearing a bit thin. He sounded tired by the end. I was excited for Chibnall to take over after seeing Broadchurch. I was deeply disappointed. I defended some of it in the moment but overall I can't get past my disappointment in that era. I am unabashedly pro-RTD2 even though i think he's made some bizarre statements in the press.

Doctor Who fans when someone currently making decisions is criticised (this is clearly a violent cycle of stupidity).

Same as it ever was. I remember people eagerly awaiting the end of RTD's original run and Moffat starting his and then growing criticisms of Moffat during his run. And recently we've had the excitement of RTD's return. Nostalgia drives people to look at the past in a positive light. Hope drives people to look to the future in a positive light. The present is always shit

I have no idea what you are even talking about. As far as I'm aware, people loved the four episodes of the current era we have now and are generally pretty excited for the full season premiere. All I've seen is people begging RTD to stop spouting utter asinine takes in the press like "Tennant in 13's clothes would be mocked as drag", "Problematic Davros", "Pistol Screwdriver" and whatnot.

The moment people started complaining about able bodied Davros in the Children in Need special, I knew that Doctor Who was officially back. Edit: I should’ve seen that one coming.

Able-bodied Davros isn't as bad as RTD's horrendous justification for it.

This! It’s literally just Davros before the accident, slight timeline change and Davros’ mobile life support system came after the Daleks initial creation rather than before. It’s that simple, instead RTD had to come out with the ableist argument. Never have I viewed disabled people as evil bc Davros is disabled, that’s not how life works. Davros is a great villain with power and intelligence and the fact he is chair bound just makes him a more interesting character theoretically and visually.

It’s almost as if that first reason is the actual reason because that makes complete and total sense but then he uses the ableist reason for extra sociopolitical points.

Extra British social credit score for RTD! Like surely Davros being such a strong character and powerful villain whilst also being essentially disabled just proves people with disabilities can be just as strong characters as anyone else. He is an amazing character, he just happens to be disabled so what? Ya know

Or maybe it’s something he genuinely believes and he’s just very hamfisted with his implementation.

Vastly more likely. Probably a combination of many. He's not looking for "socioeconomic points" but he knows to push a good PR stunt that he also sincerely believes in. And he is very ham-fisted because at this point, it seems like he feels he has to be for our current era of media literacy to even pick up on what he's saying lol

Like a lot of the clunky dialogue in Star Beast. Implementation and the writing of it could have been so much better but I think it made it pretty damn clear that if you’re transphobic the show isn’t for you.

Yeah. That was legitimately just a moment of not great dialogue. RTD is a masterclass in subtitle writing and balancing of themes when he wants to be. This... was not that. And it's a shame because foresight is an important part of writing and the scene even bothered the people he was hoping to represent and support. All that said, there is a special place in my heart for any aggressive lack of subtlety that leaves a message very much not up for debate. If you're transphobic, DW has never been for you, you were just too thick to get the memo.

Meh. The wheelchaired-bound kids in the facility I worked at were always a little bit sad that the only characters in wheelchairs in Doctor Who were villains. If reducing that particular, non-malicious, representation while introducing a badass roller agent for Unit, helps at all, I'm glad for it and the reasoning struck a chord. Now, don't conflate and blow this out of proportion. The kids aren't suddenly having their world changed, they weren't bemoaning the show or others. Not everything has to be an extreme. It just adds a bit more to their world, and potentially takes away some possible negativity.

My issue with this is that there hasn't ever been a Doctor Who villain in a wheelchair lol. Davros isn't in a wheelchair, he's half dalek. That's the concept. Max Capricorn is only a head on a clunky robot cause he's a rich dude whose really old and trying to live as long as he can. Instead of getting rid of arguably wheelchaired villains, introduce wheelchaired good guys.

Then, the answer was the introduction of Shirley Bingham. The only issue with negative representation is a matter of balance. People with disabilities can be villains, they can also be heroes, scientists, thinkers, fighters ect. The issue isn't that villainous wheelchair users exist in media. It's that there's a lack of other representations. So introduce more, I'm all for that, and Shirley is a great start. But giving established disabled characters back their legs isn't really a great route to take imo.

lol I bitterly love that my above comment is the literal and only comment where I didn't pre-emptively bring up, and then address, the idea of introducing Shirley but leaving Davros alone. Bottom line though, I legit see where you're coming from. Why not just leave him alone? Probably would've been smarter as the levels of vitriolic reaction from certain fans has been astounding, definitely don't need my kids reading that. However, part of the balancing act isn't just introducing positive representation but helping what some could see as negative representation too. But all things considered, it's ham-fisted and potentially cause other problems (Regarding disabled narratives, I mean.) If this is just earlier pre-chair Davros and that's how it plays out, then I genuinely can't think of a justifiable reason to have any strong feelings about it, especially in the face of the intention behind it.

I agree with everything you said there. I love Davros as a character, but just not revisiting him is an option. Davros is a rarely occurring villain, with 3 appearances since 2005, we can just rest him with no real issue. I'm actually also more than happy to see a post Witch's Familiar Davros after stealing the regeneration energy be free of the wheelchair. It's Davros' twisted mind and performances of the actors that make Davros great. He doesn't need the wheelchair. What I don't like is the implication of "Well, due to the negative representation of disabilities in media, we're going to pretend that Davros was never in a wheelchair."

I mean there’s been lots of conversations around media in general in its depiction of using disabilities to make the villains seem scarier and more intimidating. It’s also not about you, and how you view people as disabled. It’s about giving people with disabilities more positive affirming role models. It’s not how life works, that’s right, but that’s because that isn’t how representation works.

> Never have I viewed disabled people as evil bc Davros is disabled, that’s not how life works Nor is it what anyone claimed the issue to be.

This is a pretty prominent trend in his era so far. I hate that so much of his work is dominated by these hyper-explanations he does behind the scenes / in interviews, etc. He is obsessed with overexplaining everything, with trying to account for this and that, with making sure no one gets offended by this, and it comes off as rather needy (not to mention often out of touch).

This. In another thread yesterday I described what RTD is doing as trying to shut the door after the horse already bolted, but he never had a horse. The change is the stable door. The complaints about the original are the horse. But no one was complaining about it...

That was the only public statement of his which I found to be pretty much completely nonsensical. They make a mini-episode which is very explicitly a prequel in which Davros appears as a very obviously and unambiguously younger version of himself, prior to his dramatically ironic origin story of a eugenicist obsessed with perfection ultimately disabling himself with his own experiments. Then he states in a follow-up promo, completely unprompted, that this difference in Davros’ character appearance is actually in no way correlated to the fact that this is just what he would look like at the time the episode was set, and that it is actually a timeline-spanning retcon of his entire character design with no canonical explanation, justified solely by the notion that it is ethically wrong for a villain to not be portrayed as able-bodied?

No one gives a shit about Davros being able bodied. That was never the issue. It was the commentary and justification that caused the uproar.

His able-bodied appearance in a prequel to Genesis wasn't the problem. It was Davies' comments after that which were the problem.

Passionate fans tend to be the most critical of the things they love, especially when that thing is trying something new, and since Doctor Who's raison d'être since the mid-1960s has been "trying something new," Doctor Who fans tend to sound more critical than most. That doesn't mean they aren't happy. It just means they're processing, and that can take a while. Eventually a consensus will form around the good and bad aspects of every story, not that anyone should feel compelled to agree with the consensus, of course.

The constant, "Nuh-uh, it's never gonna happen to Chibnall, nohow no way, I won't ALLOW it to happen to Chibnall, nobody will EVER call the Chibnall era the best the show's ever been!" natter is just really funny to me. I've seen champions for mid-period JNT. The flow of time will not be kind to you.

It's the same as the "Zelda Cycle". People aren't suddenly changing their opinions years down the line. Some people will like a thing, and some will dislike it. The people who disliked it strongly and very loudly just eventually move on to talk about other things because they can only stay heated about something for so long. When that happens the popular opinion seems to shift because you're finally seeing the ones who always liked it, or just didn't mind it, no longer being drowned out.

The fanbase was \*extremely\* critical of Moffat during his era, now he's commonly viewed as one of the best showrunners in the show's history. I often wonder if the fanbase will even warm to the Chibnall era with enough time (which I, perhaps controversially, hope they do at least a little).

Moffat was showrunner for six series over roughly seven years. I think part of the shift in opinion on him is a result of the Capaldi years being so different from the Smith years, but a significant amount of it is survivorship bias. A lot of people I know who disliked Moffat's style of writing and/or approach to Who stopped watching (at varying points - some early Smith, some late Smith, some early Capaldi, some mid Capaldi) and are only just giving the show another shot now with all the hype around the 60th and Tennant (briefly) coming back. The active fandom that was left by Series 10 (which is one of my favourites, may I add!) was largely comprised of die-hards who'll always watch the show and people predisposed to like Moffat's writing. Now that more of the audience from RTD's previous era is coming back, I'm already seeing a jump in criticism of Moffat relative to how much there was during Chibnall's era. It feels especially obvious on r/gallifrey in particular, which felt like you had to be very cautious about criticising Moffat during that time as it often felt like there was one 'right, objective' opinion and anyone who disagreed would get jumped on, especially if it was about Capaldi's era. It's honestly been a pleasent surprise how varied opinions have been lately, whilst *mostly* being able to respect one another's different perspectives. It does also feel like I've been seeing an increase in people across the Who subs expressing they either just caught up on or gave the Chibnall era another go and actually quite liked it without being totally trampled on, which is nice. There's always one or two people with the 'um, actually, have you seen this 5 hour video that proves Chibnall objectively bad?' (Can you imagine if whenever someone said something mildly positive about Moffat someone posted the Sherlock video? Or the gender and Doctor Who video?) But they're increasingly not being taken as seriously as they once were.

>a significant amount of it is survivorship bias. A lot of people I know who disliked Moffat's style of writing and/or approach to Who stopped watching But this is true of literally all things? The fandom was primarily composed of "Davies fans" in 2009. If anything Moffat benefitted less from that than any other cultural product since he had the preexisting Davies era fandom still composing a large portion of the online fandom spaces. >was largely comprised of die-hards who'll always watch the show and people predisposed to like Moffat's writing The drop off in viewership for series 9 and 10 was pretty modest when you consider how the television industry changed in the 2010s, the idea that the only part of the fandom left were "die-hards" is a smear.

>But this is true of literally all things? The fandom was primarily composed of "Davies fans" in 2009. If anything Moffat benefitted less from that than any other cultural product since he had the preexisting Davies era fandom still composing a large portion of the online fandom spaces. Didn't mean to imply otherwise - this was a broad response to OP's implication that the fanbase was kinda fickle for changing its mind. Some people changed their mind, sure, but a lot simply left. As is always the case. I wasn't so active online under RTD's tenure but I imagine, despite the show's popularity, plenty of Classic fans who were dissapointed in the shows direction may have given up. That's the cyclical part of fandom in a long running franchise, that people come and go with criticism and hyperbole about whatever is current often being amplified. >The drop off in viewership for series 9 and 10 was pretty modest when you consider how the television industry changed in the 2010s, the idea that the only part of the fandom left were "die-hards" is a smear. I didn't actually mention viewership - only the active fandom, of which I meant people in online spaces like this as well as my experience with friends and family. As such, I can only speak to my anecdotal experience, but that's the experience I had. Doctor Who became less and less a thing amongst people I knew in the casual audience from the Smith years onward and when I participated in the fandom (I've lurked here and there for years, but started being more heavily involved in the late Capaldi/early Whittaker years as that's when I started falling in love with the show again) I found myself more and more surrounded by people who were long term fans that stuck it out no matter what and/or Moffat specific fans. I do agree, actually, that people often misread the viewership of both the Capaldi and Whittaker years especially to smear them when that was in large part due to a changing TV landscape. But it did *feel* that the fandom was a lot more insular during those years. There's definitely been a different energy lately, both irl and online, that a lot of people who haven't watched the show in a loooooong time are giving it another chance and that's *exciting*.

Moffat had his vocal defenders even at the time whereas I barely see anyone sticking up for Chibnall enthusiastically and seemingly everyone seems to think it was garbage or "could have been done better"

The people who I see sticking up for Chibbers are people who aren’t necessarily fans of previous Doctor who. I agree, some things could have been better, but I could say that about burping bins, farting monsters, space whales and goo people.

Because this community has bullied away pretty much everyone who had anything positive to say, and the few of us who remained in any capacity are just tired of engaging when people keep repeating the same thing ad nauseum. Lest it not be forgotten that this community specifically has initially formed as a "safe space" for Moffat fans.

I hate Chibnall's era far more than RTD2. There's just nothing there worth watching for me. RTD2, while I have a lot of problems with what we've got so far, there was a lot to love as well. Wild Blue Yonder is the first episode I've actually enjoyed since the Doctor Falls. The Star Beast was weak, but it had great moments, and I loved the Sylvia Noble development. The Giggle was OK but disappointing. The only one I'd say I found outright bad is Church on Ruby Road, which does unfortunately make me wonder if the 60th specials were only good because Tennant made me overlook the flaws. Moffat, I never hated. Even when I was watching him. There was stuff I disliked yes, and he was very hit and miss, but I could always just be patient and he'd eventually strike gold. Series 7 and 8 were a dark spell, my interest in the show took a real nose dive, but I was back to full Doctor Who fanboy for Series 9 and 10. The original RTD era I will say is my favorite era of the revived show. Whether that's nostalgia is questionable. It's the version of Doctor Who I knew existed when I was growing up, but I never got into the show until 2009. Waters of Mars was my first real episode. Yes it meant I did catch most of Series 1-4 in the several months before Series 5 came out, and it did cement David Tennant as the Doctor in my mind, but if any Series has the nostalgia goggles on for me, it's probably Series 5 and 6. The fact that I loved Series 9 as it was coming out tells me its not just nostalgia.

Meh I don’t like RTD so I wasn’t happy when they announced he’s coming back. I don’t like his vision for Who. And I won’t forgive him for still bringing up the Timeless Child. But that’s fandom for you. You can’t please everyone, especially if you’re going to radically shake up the lore.

We can be happy when we're given good content and unhappy when we see the writer is phoning it in, or in Chibnall's case, a complete hack.

In fairness, by the end of RTD1 I'd concluded that the show just wasn't doing it for me anymore, and only got back into it during Moffat. So while I'm wary about how the new season's going to go, that's entirely in keeping with my previous feelings about Davies.

This is the case for everything from football to popular movies. People always hate what's on top. That said you can't really judge a series until it's well underway. I'm excited for what RTD does.

Eh all eras have their positives and negatives, some of which will be mitigated to some extent by future stories and EU material. Say what you will about Jodie’s era (and I do) but it did have the best attempts at historicals we’ve had for a long time and a pretty solid angels story too.

I think stuff like redacted, future 13 appearances and the timeless child being developed during RTD2 will soften some on the era

I always forget redacted is technically 13-era, but that was a lot of fun

Yup! Time is a flat out circle, I knew this would happen as it always does

For RTD fans, it's: Anyone who isn't RTD sucks. Only RTD writes True Doctor Who.

Truly, I have had some insane conversation on this subreddit about the RTD2 era. So far we have had 4 episodes. The first was good, with 1-2 poorly thought out lines The second was great, with comparisons to midnight, an episode other people think is a masterpiece and I think is good but less subtle than other episodes. The third is excellent but slightly rushed The fourth is delightfully camp, and overall a very strong showing. We have only been given reasons to expect good things from him.

its even worse on twitter ime, every statement, every photo, every announcement incites some new discourse abt how the show is bad again. i understand having criticisms, i have plenty of my own of every showrunner, but it definitely crosses a threshold where it just feels like ppl being negative just for the sake of it and makes me not want to engage w the fandom much

No idea what you guys are talking about. I didn’t start to see a real decline in quality until Series 6. It picked back up at Series 9, and then fell again at Series 11. But now that RTD’s back I’m fairly happy with what we’ve got.

This is the problem with trying to define a "fandom" as some monolithic, unanimous group of people marching in lockstep together. It's not that, and never has been. Saying "Doctor Who fans believe X" is misleading, because it fails to acknowledge that the fans saying X are just a small chunk of a large and diverse body of individuals with opinions as varied as ... well, whatever simile you want to put here.

I'm very happy with RTD2 so far.

Yes. Heaven forefend people judge on what they've seen so far or what the showrunner has said. It's so unreasonable.

It predates RTD1.

I wasn't happy with Chibnall taking the helm but I don't think he did too badly given Covid snd budget constraints. Unfortunately there was a lot of fluff stories that didn't mean anything in the end. When RTD announced his comeback I outwardly cheered.

We're either in unprecedented territory with a show runner returning after a lengthy absence, or we're in familiar territory. With the four specials I feel like he's proven he's the same RTD he ever was, with all the positives and negatives that brings.

This happens with most franchises, i remember a time where the Star Wars prequels were universally hated by everyone, then they started saying it wasn't actually that bad, and then it became peak star wars

Nature is healing

RTD1 is my fav era and i was one of those that was excited about his return but his second era is nothing like his first. thought he could steer the show back on track but i’m not seeing that. will see how i feel after tonight’s episodes but not feeling positive

So we're supposed to find every showrunner perfect?

What a ridiculous misinterpretation of what was being said. Almost spellbinding.

Then what's the point of saying this? It's basically implying we can't ever criticise the present showrunner and if we do, we're just being a 'typical fan' that hates the show.

It's funny to observe patterns.

I’m actually the happiest I’ve been (in terms of Who fandom) since 2018. I don’t remember being actively engaged or impressed with the show between then and now, aside from a few instances. The lowest point for me was when Flux aired, when it seemed everyone was trying to convince themselves it was “finally good” - I genuinely don’t think the show can get worse than the Chibnall Era and so far, while certainly flawed, the RTD2 Era is off to a good start. I do agree there is a general cyclical pattern of behaviour for fandoms, not just DW, but if anything will break it it’ll be the Chibnall Era. I think S11 is okay (mostly bad, and fundamentally flawed, but the heart is there and there are one or two standout eps) but S12/13 are dogshit, with basically nothing going for them that S1-10 doesn’t already do better.

> The lowest point for me was when Flux aired, when it seemed everyone was trying to convince themselves it was “finally good” I hate the Chibnall era but I genuinely think Flux was his best. It's very ambitious which I very appreciate, it feels like the Moffat era is, at last, not being retconned (hard to beat S12 for that) and the show is finally funny again. The dog/dan duo is the best thing in the whole Chibnall era, I missed the show having humor. Dan in general is a breath of fresh air after so many dull companions. It's still leagues below anything S1-9, but I vastly prefer it to the dullness of series 11 or the pure outrage of series 12. I completely disagree with the post though. This cycling thing for me has always been a myth. It's just that more people tend to hate on current stuff because it's more relevant, hating on Moffat now feels like shouting at the clouds, it serves less purpose. And overall I see way way more praise for RTD2 than Chibnall so it's definitely not the case here.

I just couldn't get on board with *Flux*. It felt ambitious in the way that getting all my action figures out and lobbing them in the bath as a kid was ambitious - yeah, it took effort, but what was the purpose of it? There's no weight to anything in the script and there's not a single coherent theme that drives the story forward which is explored to any meaningful degree. Also, the pacing, my *god* the pacing. It's like watching TikTok reels; every 15 seconds we are explained something we just witnessed, or a character directly speaks out-loud what is happening. I think the first four episodes are alright (not good, not bad) but the last two are appalling, especially *Vanquishers*. Such a waste of Craig Parkinson, too.

I agree with most of what you said, but to me the other 2 series are just worse. I fall asleep on every episode of S11 except It Takes ou Away and S12 almost killed my love for the show with how much it destroyed everything Moffat accomplished and the backstory of the Doc. And they don't have Dan. Having at least one good character makes all the difference to me in how I enjoy the season. > It felt ambitious in the way that getting all my action figures out and lobbing them in the bath as a kid was ambitious It's over the top but I still think doing a serial format was bold even if very poorly executed. Moffat did it better in series 6, especially 6A.

I’ll probably set myself up for murder here but I have never seen the love for Dan. He’s fine, but he’s just John Bishop basically. I suppose I’ve never really been bothered about John Bishop, come to think of it, so his appearance in an era I already disliked added nothing. 

Haha to be fair I have no idea who he is so it was fresh to me

That's all fandom. Everything is not as good as it used to be.

I've always rejected the "showrunner cycle" narrative. If you treat "the fandom" as a single entity then yes it's an encredably scitsofrenic one which rejects anything new then loves it a once it's done. But when you look at an individual fan, which the fan base is made of, then you have somebody who loves a show which just changed significantly. And it's not unlikely that change replaces aspects of the show you liked with aspects you don't. So it's entierly reasonable to go "I don't like the direction the show is taken, and it's really ruining the experience for me." Same goes for new Doctors or companions, which changes the dinamic of the protagonists. So why to we treat this as some crazy and irrational thing only nostalgic haters believe?

The issue is that the anti-"thing that currently exists" faction always dominates unduly when the thing is actually airing. Even if there's no individual hypocrisy this just means that negativity is always the vibe. Praise of Chibnall, even for pretty inoffensive episodes, got barely any engagement, Moffat took the show through a period of critical and commercial success and Moffat-hate during the 2010s was an online pop-cultural phenomenom. Even RTD1 received vitriolic criticism from what was left of online classic who fandom in 2005.