Maybe it's uncool to pick a modern series regeneration, but I think David Tenant's was the best. Brilliantly scored, brilliantly acted, brilliantly set up. As far as the effect goes, 7 to 8 looked the coolest
+1
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited February 2014
Tennant's is one of my favorites. A lot of people complained about the 20-minute coda, but it was a victory lap for an entire era of the show, not just one Doctor, and it wsa earned.
I think it definitely also got some extra oomph from the audience knowledge of what the role meant to Tennant. His last line is really good, but with that extra context it just gutted me (and still does).
I'm also pretty fond right now of Smith-to-Capaldi. I don't agree with every choice Moffat made (but when do I ever?) but I really do like the idea of going against the grain and playing a regeneration as a moment of explosive triumph instead of grim or funereal.
Jacobkosh on
+1
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I really enjoyed Bidmead's time as script editor. Season 18 remains my favourite season from the classic series (as a whole; I don't necessarily love every serial in it) because of those recurring themes of entropy, decay and recursion, that sense of the Fourth Doctor and everything sort of slowing down as he approaches his death, as well as the actual attempts to make the science in it not completely and laughably awful.
Season 18 is terrific, I agree. The Hinchcliffe era is my favorite of the entire classic run, but series 18 comes in right behind that. I really think a lot of the Graham Willaims/Douglas Adams era is just trash. Baker was bored (and probably, from what people have said, an undiagnosed bipolar) and his performance was getting broader and broader while the scripts got sloppier. You can actually feel the exact instant the pall sets in as you tick over from Horror of Fang Rock, a terrific tense story with a Gothic feel, to The Invisible Enemy, which is just kind of ehhhh.
Say what you will about JNT, but he and Bidmead really gave the show the kick in the seat it needed. Right from the beginning of The Leisure Hive you can see Tom Baker getting energized and interested again.
Actually, the talk of the last two regenerations reminded me of Nine's regeneration scene. There was a Doctor prepared for death and happy to go, most likely because of the guilt and the (iffy) memories he carried around. I found Ten's reluctance to leave annoying coming after The Parting of the Ways, though it does fit in with his character and really fits well with the fact that his two incarnations with that body were by far the shortest lived.
A great little 'in hindsight' thing regarding the War Doctor I didn't immediately realise: what Nine, Ten and Eleven would have remembered would be stealing the Moment, then Gallifrey disappearing in a massive explosion, then the War incarnation standing in the TARDIS, laughing as he regenerated.
It was so emotional, but I don't feel like it became melodramatic. It walked the tightrope between the two perfectly.
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
The one thing about modern regenerations is, if doing it makes everything around you randomly explode, maybe he should stop having them in the TARDIS. We are now three for three on "the Doctor regenerates and the TARDIS promptly crashes" in the new series.
Regenerations do tend to go a bit more smoothly for the Doctor when he's in or near the TARDIS. If you go back to the first, the Second Doctor even says, "It's part of the TARDIS. Without it I couldn't survive."
I really enjoyed Bidmead's time as script editor. Season 18 remains my favourite season from the classic series (as a whole; I don't necessarily love every serial in it) because of those recurring themes of entropy, decay and recursion, that sense of the Fourth Doctor and everything sort of slowing down as he approaches his death, as well as the actual attempts to make the science in it not completely and laughably awful.
Season 18 is terrific, I agree. The Hinchcliffe era is my favorite of the entire classic run, but series 18 comes in right behind that. I really think a lot of the Graham Willaims/Douglas Adams era is just trash. Baker was bored (and probably, from what people have said, an undiagnosed bipolar) and his performance was getting broader and broader while the scripts got sloppier. You can actually feel the exact instant the pall sets in as you tick over from Horror of Fang Rock, a terrific tense story with a Gothic feel, to The Invisible Enemy, which is just kind of ehhhh.
Say what you will about JNT, but he and Bidmead really gave the show the kick in the seat it needed. Right from the beginning of The Leisure Hive you can see Tom Baker getting energized and interested again.
@Jacobkosh if you like the Hinchcliffe era then this should be about as relevant to your interests as it is possible for a thing to be.
Good lord yes
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I should emphasize for the sake of fairness that part oft he problem with the Graham Williams era was not really his or the production team's fault. You may have heard of Mary Whitehouse, the moral crusader - she stirred up a fuss in the media about the "horrible violence" in TV in general and Doctor Who in partiuclar. Sequences like the bit in Deadly Assassin where the killer tries to choke the Doctor and drown him came in for partiuclar criticism.
0
Options
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
The Doc should be able to snap a neck or three if they need to.
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
The fourth Doctor certainly killed some baddies, didn't he?
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited February 2014
lots of Doctors have shot, blown up, electrocuted, kung-fu'ed or otherwise dispatched their enemies onscreen. There are too many examples to even bother listing.
The Tenth Doctor is really the odd one out in that respect. I suppose he was the last whose personality was heavily shaped by his experiences in the Time War.
lots of Doctors have shot, blown up, electrocuted, kung-fu'ed or otherwise dispatched their enemies onscreen. There are too many examples to even bother listing.
Even though they spent the whole episode setting up that he totally had it coming, I was a little shocked when he killed the slaver in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. But then again, it was a Chris Chibnell episode.
Speaking of, do we have any idea when they will post the episode names and writers for S8? It would be nice to know if I need to brace myself for another double whammy of Chris Chibnell and Mark Gatiss episodes.
@Coinage You'll probably be relieved to hear that Chibnall said that although Moffat approached him (why?), he'll probably be too busy with Broadchurch.
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Why (in the real world) did Eleven get a second new console room, anyway? I wasn't watching the show at that point. There were rumors in PRivate Eye during Smith's first season that that console room was really hard to film in and had caused delays, but I'm not about to just go believing Private Eye about everything.
The Tenth Doctor is really the odd one out in that respect. I suppose he was the last whose personality was heavily shaped by his experiences in the Time War.
I think eleven was still very much effected by the time war but he certainly edged closer to acceptance.
Why (in the real world) did Eleven get a second new console room, anyway? I wasn't watching the show at that point. There were rumors in PRivate Eye during Smith's first season that that console room was really hard to film in and had caused delays, but I'm not about to just go believing Private Eye about everything.
I believe that was part of the reason. The reflective surfaces made lighting and shooting quite difficult. There were also a number of complaints (which I'd never heard, but Moffat said they were addressing) that Eleven's first console room was too 'whimsical'. The new set is also less power hungry (designed to be the greenest console room so far) and a properly 360 degree set.
I'm not certain on this point, either, but I believe the new set is smaller, which I'm sure would be appreciated by at least someone somewhere in the BBC. The previous set was where Torchwood Hub used to be and was pretty massive.
Edit: Also, it was part of the 'prepping for the 50th' set of changes, like the title sequence. I guess the costume change and the new paint job on the TARDIS exterior also fall under that, too.
The Tenth Doctor is really the odd one out in that respect. I suppose he was the last whose personality was heavily shaped by his experiences in the Time War.
I think eleven was still very much effected by the time war but he certainly edged closer to acceptance.
No doubt it was still there in his mind, but he didn't dwell on it or mention it anywhere near as much as Ten did. Eleven very much seemed like the Doctor who had finally moved on. In The Beast Below, he describes the death of his planet and his people as 'a bad day' and glosses over it, something neither of the previous two Doctors really did.
@Coinage You'll probably be relieved to hear that Chibnall said that although Moffat approached him (why?), he'll probably be too busy with Broadchurch.
Well that's good to know, with any luck it will be another 5 years before he gets another one.
I loved Dinosaurs on a Spaceship!
The Silurian two-parter less so, and The Power of Three even less
Dude is hella inconsistent
Dinosaurs had some good jokes, but the characterization was terrible and most of it felt like filler. 42 was so boring I couldn't even finish it (because Chris loves to write filler). One thing I will say about Power of Three is that I think Crimson Horror wins as the worst episode with Matt Smith by a significant margin. It's weird, I actually liked Unquiet Dead a lot, but every episode Gatiss has written after that ranges from terrible to acceptably mediocre. It's been too long since I saw Hungry Earth for me to complain about it.
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Given how prolific Chibnall has been for how many different shows, my guess is that "tolerably mediocre today" trumps "genius five months from now" in the minds of the Who production team.
Given how prolific Chibnall has been for how many different shows, my guess is that "tolerably mediocre today" trumps "genius five months from now" in the minds of the Who production team.
Probably yeah. And Crimson Horror certainly feels like Gatiss wrote it in a weekend after clicking the random page on Wikipedia for a while.
Wasn't Crimson Horror one of the ones that had to be hastily rewritten when they changed it to Modern-Clara as the companion instead of Victorian-Clara?
Wasn't Crimson Horror one of the ones that had to be hastily rewritten when they changed it to Modern-Clara as the companion instead of Victorian-Clara?
Haha, I didn't know they were considering doing that, that would have been silly. But Wikipedia says it was written specifically for the actresses who play Ada and Mrs. Gillyflower, and Clara is hardly in it so I don't see how that would be a problem.
Wasn't Crimson Horror one of the ones that had to be hastily rewritten when they changed it to Modern-Clara as the companion instead of Victorian-Clara?
Haha, I didn't know they were considering doing that, that would have been silly. But Wikipedia says it was written specifically for the actresses who play Ada and Mrs. Gillyflower, and Clara is hardly in it so I don't see how that would be a problem.
I believe Neil Gaiman confirmed that Nightmare in Silver was originally written with Victorian-Clara and the Victorian kids she was taking care of (and also that it was originally a two-parter). Since Nightmare in Silver is the episode immediately after Crimson Horror, and...
...there is a shoe-horned scene at the end where the present-day kids suddenly reveal they know Clara is a time traveler...
...it's not hard to believe there's a chance that Crimson Horror was also written with Victorian-Clara (and her supporting cast from the Snowmen) in mind and all of that had to be stripped out. Especially since Crimson Horror is set in England just a few months after the Snowmen.
Posts
I think it definitely also got some extra oomph from the audience knowledge of what the role meant to Tennant. His last line is really good, but with that extra context it just gutted me (and still does).
I'm also pretty fond right now of Smith-to-Capaldi. I don't agree with every choice Moffat made (but when do I ever?) but I really do like the idea of going against the grain and playing a regeneration as a moment of explosive triumph instead of grim or funereal.
Season 18 is terrific, I agree. The Hinchcliffe era is my favorite of the entire classic run, but series 18 comes in right behind that. I really think a lot of the Graham Willaims/Douglas Adams era is just trash. Baker was bored (and probably, from what people have said, an undiagnosed bipolar) and his performance was getting broader and broader while the scripts got sloppier. You can actually feel the exact instant the pall sets in as you tick over from Horror of Fang Rock, a terrific tense story with a Gothic feel, to The Invisible Enemy, which is just kind of ehhhh.
Say what you will about JNT, but he and Bidmead really gave the show the kick in the seat it needed. Right from the beginning of The Leisure Hive you can see Tom Baker getting energized and interested again.
No wonder they couldn't stand the memory of him.
It was so emotional, but I don't feel like it became melodramatic. It walked the tightrope between the two perfectly.
Thus why that Dalek battle cruiser is still hanging around over Trenzalore. :P
Oh dear, Invisible Enemy is next in my queue.
Good lord yes
Speaking of, do we have any idea when they will post the episode names and writers for S8? It would be nice to know if I need to brace myself for another double whammy of Chris Chibnell and Mark Gatiss episodes.
yeah, Bleeding Cool reprints their Who blind items pretty frequently
I think eleven was still very much effected by the time war but he certainly edged closer to acceptance.
I believe that was part of the reason. The reflective surfaces made lighting and shooting quite difficult. There were also a number of complaints (which I'd never heard, but Moffat said they were addressing) that Eleven's first console room was too 'whimsical'. The new set is also less power hungry (designed to be the greenest console room so far) and a properly 360 degree set.
I'm not certain on this point, either, but I believe the new set is smaller, which I'm sure would be appreciated by at least someone somewhere in the BBC. The previous set was where Torchwood Hub used to be and was pretty massive.
Edit: Also, it was part of the 'prepping for the 50th' set of changes, like the title sequence. I guess the costume change and the new paint job on the TARDIS exterior also fall under that, too.
No doubt it was still there in his mind, but he didn't dwell on it or mention it anywhere near as much as Ten did. Eleven very much seemed like the Doctor who had finally moved on. In The Beast Below, he describes the death of his planet and his people as 'a bad day' and glosses over it, something neither of the previous two Doctors really did.
The Silurian two-parter less so, and The Power of Three even less
Dude is hella inconsistent
I believe Neil Gaiman confirmed that Nightmare in Silver was originally written with Victorian-Clara and the Victorian kids she was taking care of (and also that it was originally a two-parter). Since Nightmare in Silver is the episode immediately after Crimson Horror, and...
...it's not hard to believe there's a chance that Crimson Horror was also written with Victorian-Clara (and her supporting cast from the Snowmen) in mind and all of that had to be stripped out. Especially since Crimson Horror is set in England just a few months after the Snowmen.
What the fuck is going in in this story?
...So, don't piss of Moffat. He'll erase your ass like he says.