I really really REALLY hope they aren’t going for the "mischievous pixie personality
Every time they change doctors I say, maybe this time I’ll start watching. I never do, but … maybe this time I’ll start watching.
Tons of ads for the new series on BBC America.
I am excited. :)
Hahahah. Same here. I think what really killed it for me is how much I disliked Christopher Eccleston’s series, which got lots of praise. The praise is what made me think “This is what gets praise? Maybe this series is still not for me”. Then when they change the Doctor I’m always tempted to sneak a look, but never actually have.
Eccleston series was kinda weird. I still enjoyed it but it was weird. Tennant was vast improvement, I loved his seasons. Then with Smith my interest waned again, I dropped it somewhere around there.
Whitaker looks likeable, but I doubt I will go back to it.
I’m still mad that the writing for Capaldi was mostly terrible. He had moments of true greatness, and he did the best with what he was given, but I still feel he was wasted much of the time, which is a god damned tragedy.
Boy, they are teasing the crap out of this. What the tiniest molecule of barely suggested non-informative new-but-not-new content we can slide slowly across the table to our fans?
I’m still pretty excited.
But as @BrianRubin implies, my excitement is more about the fact that there’s a new showrunner than a new Doctor. They need to get the writing back on track. If they have a first episode on the level of that god-awful first Capaldi episode (that was the T-Rex one, right??), then I’m back to ignoring the series.
My favorite Doctors, by a wide margin, are Capaldi and Eccleston, and they both labored under some genuinely atrocious writing. Overall, Tennant had the best material to work with, and he definitely had some moments of brilliance. Smith had most of the same terrible writing and meandering pointless arcs that Capaldi suffered from with half the talent and charm, but still wasn’t actually bad.
My gf has the exact opposite ranking as me, and no longer watches the show after being bored to tears during the Clara years and hating Capaldi because he was old :(
Anyway, while I am really sad that Capaldi didn’t get a season under the new leadership, I am pretty pleased with how they wrapped him up, and he wound up with some of my favorite episodes ever (including “Heaven Sent”/“Hell Bent”, “The Husbands of River Song,” “World Enough and Time,” and “The Doctor Falls.”
I remain cautiously hopeful for 13. The gf is thinking about coming back onboard, too, which has me giddy. We don’t really enjoy much TV or film together at all (wildly different tastes), but the years that she was addicted to DW with me are some of my favorite memories we have together :)
Sure was, what a pile of crap.
Oh my god, right?
I too am hoping a new showrunner gets the writing back to a better place.
My wife and I have the same experience. I trawl about madly to find something that we can both enjoy. If I made her watch Doctor Who though her eyes would roll so fiercely I’m not sure she could ever stand up again.
Moffat was in charge for so long that I usually forget that it’s not his show anymore. I’m pretty optimistic about Chibnall, but I also think it’s a bummer that we’ll never get a Chibnall-Capaldi season.
Yeah. My gf is, by and large, a way more sophisticated and artistically aware person than I’ll ever be. She’s all about character and interpersonal drama and heavy, weighty explorations of the human condition and the soul, and boundary-pressing underground rebel-art and auteurs and all that shit. I like explosions and gee-whiz antics and worldbuilding and escapism and “fun” (sorry @tomchick), and most of all, I absolutely don’t want my fiction to ask me to think.
After forcing me to suffer through Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9 and Dancer in the Dark and dealing with my utterly emotional breakdown from the latter, she’s generally stopped trying to introduce me to stuff she’s into, so I kinda have to be the one to constantly prod with stuff she might not utterly loathe.
But hey, she liked Thor: Ragnarok because Taika Waititi’s “Korg” was funny, so that was nice.
Oh I 100,000% agree.
I pity you people who didn’t enjoy all of the Doctors. Well, at least the 2005+ version, I didn’t watch the older ones. But I went through everything from 2005 onward last winter and had a blast with all of it. You have to adjust your expectations with each new Doctor and execution staff changes, but I didn’t think any of it was bad…though certainly there were plenty of differences.
Still trying to decide if I want to get some kind of BBC subscription to watch the new one, or just wait until it lands on Amazon Prime video. Probably the former since it seems to take a year or more for each season to make its way to Prime. Anyone know if one of the Amazon Prime channels will have the new season? Or I suppose I could always go back to Sling TV to get BBC America.
Looks like Beeb America is on YoutubeTV, and I can pre-allocate DW to be DVR’ed now so that I don’t forget when the season actually starts. I am set thanks to reading your post and wondering for myself!
And to wit, as I may have come across overly negative above, I don’t actively dislike any of the Doctors at all. While 9 and 12 are my favorites by a pretty wide margin, I still think of Tennant and Smith as very charming and delightful, and I’d admit without much prodding that Seasons 2-4 of NuWho are my favorites overall, and that 5 is probably right after them.