I like every Doctor that came before and after him, but damn do I miss Matt Smith’s Doctor.
My favourite Doctor is:
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Whoever is currently playing The Doctor
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Paul McGann (the film wasn’t great but he was, and I wish we’d seen more of him than one mini episode and a quick cameo…)
I really didn’t care for the Jodie Whittaker doctor.
Which is a shame because she is an amazing actor. But the new show runner really fucked over the stories. There were so many companions that I really didn’t give a shit about any of them because I never knew them beyond “woman”, and “one of those guys”
Maybe I’ll give it another go now that the season is over and I can see some tennant after. But I’m really not feeling this show runner, the stories were dull and the villains didn’t feel very convincing, even for doctor who, where the greatest villains of all are trash cans with egg beaters glued to them.
Moffatt is back as the show runner, so the new Tennant specials were pretty good. I’m optimistic that it will be good again.
Moffats not back. Also, the new specials were the same tier as plenty of Chibnal’s run (ie ok to decent). People are just nostalgia goggling themselves for Tennant/Tate.
Whittaker’s really good, she carried her run until the Flux, which I watched for the first time last week. It was shit, even she couldn’t save it. It was so bad that the Tennant episodes that follow it are better in comparison, despite them being pretty poor and repeating themes from RTD’s run, like he didn’t have any new ideas. A mysterious monster from the void of space that steals your voice and turns into you? That’s Midnight.
I don’t really get everyone’s problems with Flux, personally. Was it perfect? No, but I’ve watched it twice now along with the prior seasons and it feels at least on par.
It’s a pretty significant drop in quality, I was enjoying myself until I got to Flux, even though there was a clear drop it the quality of the writing before it. It spends so much time trying to build a mystery but doesn’t give enough information to really make it intriguing for me, then it just solves whatever that was over the course of a few minutes and skips over to another.
Flux is poorly written throughout and it destroys everything we know about the doctor. Previously the doctor was basically a rogue escapee of a morally ambiguous and very powerful alien race, but now is instead the entire reason for that race’s existence. Powerful, immortal, and with a past we now know practically nothing about…it completely changed the dynamic of the show and retconned the doctor’s entire backstory just for a cheap surprise that goes completely against everything we knew, and they didn’t even manage to deliver it well. May as well make the doctor “the chosen one.”
Its RTD thats back, not Moffat. Both are damn good though.
4 companions over the whole run is “so many”? Really?
Considering most of the other docs had like 1 or 2, yeah.
They were also just kinda… there.
Like sure that’s how the doctor originally met rose until the did the whole bad wolf plotline, but all the other companions had a compelling reason to be his companion. Martha was also a doctor who was there when her hospital got stolen by alien cops. Donna was gonna marry a guy who was involved in a plot to destroy the earth. Amy was at the center of a crack in the timeline, and Rory just happened to tag along for a lot of it. Even Clara was involved in a plot to kill the doctor.
I really liked ’the Fam’. It was a nice change of dynamic from previous (usually) single companions. And different from the Amy and Rory relationship too - grandfather/grandson and Ryan not being romantically involved with Yaz just felt different.
Plus they were all good fun and bounced well off The Doctor in their different ways.
And Jodie Whitaker was a great Doctor too. While I won’t try and defend every idea in every episode, we needed the change of pace from a decade of Moffat and Segun Akinola’s music was also excellent.
Thirteen gave me what I wanted out of a Doctor when she left - the desire for just a bit more time with her.
What are you talking about? Somehow the alien trying to kill this group is different than the aliens trying to kill the other group? There’s literally nothing different about 13’s companions to those you listed. They were all “just there”. That’s how it always works.
Re: companions, I go over that in another comment. In short, ”1-2" is not average, and 4 isn’t unreasonable.
The difference is the reason they were “just there”
13s companions were literally just sitting around when she literally fell into their laps.
All the other companions of the modern show have had a compelling stories for how the doctor found them. These people were literally just milling about like they were waiting for someone to fall through the roof and change their lives.
4 is definitely unreasonable for a show known for its character arcs. How am I supposed to connect with any of these characters when they’ll get an average of a couple minutes of dialogue per episode.
13s companions were literally just sitting around when she literally fell into their laps.
They were in a train going home…
Rose was “just working”. So was Martha. Donna was “just getting married”. Amy was “just sleeping”. Clara was “just babysitting”. Bill was “just going to school”. See how you can do that for literally any companion? The whole point of the characters is that The Doctor drops into their normal life and whisks them away.
And honestly, your “requirements” are just absurd. If you can’t “connect” to these characters over several seasons, that’s a you problem. Maybe try to meet the show where it’s at instead of being so closed off to anything outside off your demands.
*forgot to add Amy
I mean most only had 1-2 in the modern era.
Tenant had 3 (plus Wilfred) and their families, who count for something. Smith had 3. Capaldi had 2. Ecleston is the only Doctor with 1 companion.
And yes, 4 is still “more” than those, but it’s not like it’s an outrageous or overwhelming amount.
Matt Smith had 5.
as a performer mine is Capaldi, but God damn they really short changed him in the writing
I mean, he still got Heaven Sent. One of the strongest eps in the entire series.
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Such a weird head.
