5 replies to this topic

[Commodore Kor'Tar]

It has been shown here locally in Texas on our PBS channel for the past few years on Saturday nights. I like it. The stories are different and unique. It is comompletely encapsualated in it's own universe, with stories spanning both time and space. It has both drama and humor, and the writing and SFX are excellent IMHO. I think you'd enjoy it if you are looking for something new to try.

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

My thoughts are that it's good if you want to be purely entertained. I'd say that Eccleston's Doctor and Tennant's up until Billie Piper leaves the show are the best. After Piper, the Doctor' assistants vary from the dully PC to the dumbed-down,tarty short-skirted bird variety, although Catherine Tate makes a great foil for the Doctor. The earlier epsiodes are smarter and more genuinely ironic. Davies' agenda gets in the way later on and it becomes rather like a monters' cabaret and subsequently less intelligent. Personally, I don't think a sci-fi show should ever have a Christmas Special where even granny will watch with baby because Kylie is in it.

Serious sci-fi fans who are into very serious sci-fi only will probably want to give it a miss because science is less important that characters and the spectacle of what the BBC can now do with special FX - even when the CGI is painfully, obviously CGI.

[The_Donster]

I'll admit, I never watched the show growing up. It was just one of those shows that was occasionally on PBS here in the states. So when it popped up on BBC America I was a little reluctant to check it out. I honestly can't remember how I got suckered into watching it, but however that was, boy am I grateful. Mind you, I've only watched the series from Eccelston's reign and that horrible made for tv back in the late 90's. I think this helped me go in with no preconceived notions or need to watch the original shows. I of course have my favorite, which is Eccelston's Doctor and my wife loved Tennant. Who I will admit had awesome chemistry with Piper and Tate. I'm not going to try and change anyone's mind who doesn't like it, but something I like is how everything ties into things. Everything has a meaning, much like how minor things in the Harry Potter series mean just as much as the major one's. This is a show that isn't afraid to laugh at itself and not take itself too seriously. It's a 45 minute ride and who knows where the Doctor's going to take you? At the end though, you might be glad you came along. While it isn't as serious as other sci-fi venues, I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. All of these shows have their merits, to entertain and I think Doctor Who fits that bill. I'm not sure how many of you have Netflix, but all of them are in the instant streaming section. So if you are looking for a change of pace, I invite you to check it out from the beginning. I'd also invite those who've tried starting in the middle of the new series to give it another shot from the beginning this time The new Doctor is great and give his own take on things. As far as his assistant? I love her, but then again I am partial to women with ginger hair Like I said above, not your cup of tea or joe? I understand and nothing I can do can persuade you. But if you are looking for a little break from all of serious sci-fi, check out the series. Who knows, you might hate it or end up loving it. Only you have that answer though. I'm just asking you give it a chance

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

I enjoyed reading your post 1701 because you mostly sum up my own feelings about the show as it has morphed from its 60s beginnings to being such a family favourite today. In a way, of course, it always was a family favourite because it aired on a Saturday teatime right after Dixon of Dock Hillback in the days whe Patrick Troughton was the Doctor. However, it was pretty much treated in our house as something to occupy me and my cousins (we always seemed to be round my gran's house for some reason) both as a reward for not ripping the house up during the interminable Grandstand and to keep us busy while the adults got on with making the tea. I don't really recall adults sitting down and watching it with us - come to that - I mostly don't recall my cousins watching with me either since they'd run behind the sofa at the first sign of a Dalek and stayed there for the rest of the show. Even my dad wasn't attracted to it, and he was always into Sci-Fi with a stack of those yellow Gollanz editions borrowed from the library by his side of the bed. Mind you, maybe that's why he wasn't impressed given that he was a scientist who, in those days, went to work in a white coat resplendent with a pocketful of biros and wore proper scientists' horn-rimmed glasses. He was involved in the developing the technology that led to him being offered a job with the NASA space programme (we almost emmigrated!). I was just a very odd, very nerdy kid who, incredibly, watched the show from when Hartwell was the Doctor and I must have been barely able to speak!

In fact, many British adults today have a certain nostlagia for regarding Doctor Who as something veiwed in childhood from within easy distance of a cushion to hide behind. My phobia was always the Cybermen, and they give me the creeps even now if I'm honest, but my point is that it was always kids' TV, and never was the glitzy annual Yuletide event and huge ratings puller it is today.

I think it's been argued eslewhere that the reason why Who had become genuinely family fayre is that it has definitely ceased to be a genuine sci-fi show. I actually think that it only ever had pretentions of being a sci-fi show, and now it is more an adventure with special effects, the science not being to the fore and not really discussed; the TARDIS being more part of the iconography of the show (like Starsky and Hutch's red car with the white flash) than being something that scientists believe they could replicate for real - unlike the hardware in a show like Star Trek (cloaking technology currently being explored at the university where my daughter is currently a fresher!).

I think those of us who went on to enjoy sci-fi shows that worked with the ethical amd moral issues surrounding what mankind might do with awesome technology, would find Doctor Who lacking in this respect. The occasional moral dilemma strikes The Doctor, but really it has lapsed into the world of a few recurring fantastic species and the might of the Time Lord is barely explored beyond some basic problem solving.

Eccleston's revival of The Doctor promised a great deal, but his departure after one season meant that it remained a promise that mostly didn't deliver. His relationship with Piper did promise to raise the relationship between The Doctor and his Assistant to a more adult level (and I don't necessarily mean sexual), but with Tennant it became quite touching and from that time the assistant has lapsed mostly into totty and not really an apsirational figure for little girls.

As I say, once Tennant left the show, I really felt that Who had become stagnant. What had once been an enlivening part of the mix seemed to take over as Davies' tendency for visual sub-Lurhmann (sp?) visual pizzaz ran on unchecked, and the CGI took over leaving little to please the cerebral viewer. I think the BBC is as prone to over-flog a popular model as the US and very often what is part of a successful formula takes over so that it becomes the formula. This is true of such shows as Lost with its high octane WTF now? formula, and audience can get jaded quite quickly if they feel the writers are teasing without delivering in attempts to keep them hooked in. It's like an overload of E-numbers in your processed food with Davies - a different hook but the effect of overdosing on it is much the same.

Of course, I'm not part of the mainstream, and like 1701, I feel like I really outgrew Who many years ago. Who for me was always about feeling mildly afraid as a kid in a safe environment and the noughties show doesn't do that for me.

I agree that since Piper left the show the Who writers don't seem to have known what to do with a female character. They are two-dimensional or there for sex appeal and that's disappointing. Star Trek has always played with the idea of females in sci-fi well - it was one of the show's cutting edge attractions back in the 60's when Joanne Linville's awesome Romulan Commander swivelled round in that chair! It was good at placing women in positions you wouldn't expect, leaving expectations high. In the TNG era Deanna was a bit of a carer, but Crusher was the MO, the woman with the power to declare the Captain unfit for command. I agree with 1701 that Ro Laren was something of a spike in TNG - and I think it was always the intention to make her character a regular (although that never really happened) but she was definitely the blueprint of my favorite female characters of all time: Kira in DS9 (closely followed by Jadzia Dax who played with what it means to be male or female).

There has been some really awful epsiodes in Star Trek across all the seasons and series, but even at its very worst there was enough science to satisfy the sci-fi fan and you cannot say that for Doctor Who. As Star Trek evolved, it never forgot that it was in the business of giving us a sneak preview of the future and the hardware of the future - and many of its techno-predictions have come true or are on their way to becoming things we regard as everyday realities. At its best, Star Trek has about it the ring of prophecy, especially in DS9 which predicted religious fundamentalism causing terrorist activity, and the clash of beliefs.

BSG - is in a whole other class. Again it looks at technology from a moral and ethical viewpoint: what really happens when our technology becomes so advanced that we can't even really call it ours? BSG raised the bar in so many areas for what a sci-fi drama can deliver (beyond being a nerd-pleasing smorgasboard) that that is a whole other thread!

I think it's fine to enjoy Doctor Who today, but my Who-love-in really ended when Jon Pertwee became Tom Baker because, basically, I was growing up. Today, I tend to think of Doctor Who in the same breath and Strictly Come Dancing and The X factor - not really much to do with Science Fiction. Sad but true. It can be enjoyed as a gawdy visual romp, but it leaves me feeling like I ate just ate one of those flying saucers made out of rice paper filled with sherbet.

I agree that thre attempt to revive the show in the 90s was a total flop - an interesting footnote to this is that one of my creative writing tutors was married to Paul McGann! She always knew me as a Trekker and a sci-fi nerd, but we, thank goodness, never had that conversation about her husband's brief spell as the Time Lord!