Gavin WintersThere are at least lots of funny bits, such as the flashbacks where everyone’s lying about what they were up to. Or the scene where they all emerge from their rooms in response to the Doctor’s call… with the butler belatedly poking his head out of the son’s room… 😄 #DoctorWho
But they’re also just repeating the whole routine from The Shakespeare Code of the historical author hearing mentions of works they’ve not written yet. It’s not as good as that episode, or The Unquiet Dead, which also gets a nod. #DoctorWho
All in all the whole convoluted story of the Vespiform and how it gets Agatha’s books imprinted on its mind (?) just seems like nothing more than an incredibly long-winded way of explaining why one of her book covers apparently had a huge bloody wasp on it. 🫤 #DoctorWho
Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead: a great pre-credits teaser, which immediately hooks you in with the mystery, and from there everything is gradually revealed and explained at exactly the right pace. This almost equals Blink as Moffat’s best story under RTD. #DoctorWho
“Hello Sweetie!”
River is noticeably much calmer here in her first (last?) appearance, not so much the outrageous ‘could-out-flirt-Captain-Jack’ whirlwind of a character she later becomes. #DoctorWho
Everything about this now feels like a forerunner of the imminent Moffat era, and especially all the hints about the future from River carry a lot more weight and meaning now we’ve seen her full story. #DoctorWho
It’s a bit daft that, having established the idea of keeping out of the shadows, not crossing them, etc… *everyone* starts wandering through clusters of shadow all the bloody time. #DoctorWho
Lots of familiar Moffat tropes on display here… a repeated phrase… a sound or image appearing subtly in the background before you realise its significance… but also the first appearance of “the Doctor quotes his own notoriety to get out of a tricky situation” #DoctorWho
Its overused in the years to come, but even this first example is a bit silly, telling the Vashta Nerada to “look him up”.
What if they did, but still kept coming? What would he do? What could he *actually* do to stop them?? Always feel it’s a bit of a lazy get-out. #DoctorWho
Love the fake ending of the Doctor and Donna walking away, before he sprints back to get the screwdriver and the subsequent mad dash to save River. Another triumphant “everybody lives” ending from Moffat. #DoctorWho
Midnight: a masterpiece from RTD, a horrible exploration of the worst excesses of humans when paranoid and terrified.
And credit to the director and sound editors too, for their achievements in getting the whole concept of this mysterious creature on to the screen. #DoctorWho
I’ve heard of ‘multi-screening’, but the entertainment system here is ridiculous. How could anyone watch that?
Although… if the alternative is the Doctor being one of those annoying twats who wants to engage you in conversation on the bus… maybe it’s not so bad! 😬 #DoctorWho
It’s quite something to see the Doctor’s familiar bravado and swagger and confident assumption of authority just completely fail him here. Until his last desperate claim of “Because I’m clever!” is met with complete scorn. #DoctorWho
People like Val are of course the real monster of the episode, domineering and bullying the less confident members of the group like Jethro and Deedee to fall into line. “It’ll be you next!”
And that barbed comment comparing the Doctor to an immigrant… #DoctorWho
Turn Left: another stellar episode in the run up to the finale. Taking the basic ideas of ‘Doctor-lite’ and ‘let’s run through recent #DoctorWho history’ from Love & Monsters, but with a horrific, dystopian twist that escalates and escalates the further it goes.
Amongst all the other terrible happenings, RTD just offhandedly kills off not only the Torchwood crew, but also Sarah Jane and all the kids from The Sarah Jane Adventures. Must’ve been a bit of a shock for any children watching… 😳#DoctorWho
Amidst all the sci-fi concepts of death and destruction, RTD also slips in probably the darkest and bleakest allusion to real world horrors ever seen in #DoctorWho, with the fate of the Colasanto family. The look in Wilf’s eyes says it all.
Using mirrors to assist in time-travel is a neat callback to Evil Of The Daleks, and feels like RTD trying to give that fairly vague and fantasy-esque notion a bit more of a science-fiction justification. #DoctorWho
Donna running through the streets looking like a terrorist with a coat covered in wiring and electronics should really cause a bit more of a panic amongst onlookers than it does! #DoctorWho
The two word message being Bad Wolf caught everyone by surprise back then. I thought it was going to be ‘Davros Lives!’ or something. 😁 Not quite as good a cliffhanger as Utopia the previous year but still one of the most memorable. #DoctorWho
The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End: peak RTD. The absolute epoch of his first era. It’s not just turned up to 11, but 11000. This has a frenetic reckless pace to it, which keeps bashing you over the head with more and more guest stars and returns from across the #DoctorWho universe.
The ‘TO BE CONTINUED’ cliffhanger of the first part and the subsequent week of mad speculation (even on the news!) must represent the pinnacle of public engagement with and interest in #DoctorWho
It’s a good update to Davros, going back to his classic look from Genesis, but of course fanboy Russell had to make sure to give him a metal hand after what happened in Revelation.
And another great fan-pleasing moment to have him and Sarah Jane recognise each other. #DoctorWho
One thing that always seemed to rub certain fans up the wrong way is RTD’s tendency to write his sci-fi ideas with broad brushstrokes. Everything’s handwaved with a lot of technobabble. It might irk those fans but always seemed to work for kids and the general public. #DoctorWho
I’ll grit my teeth again to get through the last stage of Ten and Rose. Right… blah blah, you and metacrisis Doctor, off to your parallel universe, etc. Done. Now stay there this time!
Back to the proper drama of poor Donna’s fate. It only happens to the best, Donna! #DoctorWho
Despite some brilliant episodes (some of the all-time best in fact) and that storming Marvel team-up style finale, season four doesn’t quite hit the heights of season three for me. Only by the narrowest of margins though. I’d rank them 3, 4, 1, 2. #DoctorWho
The Next Doctor: since it was now in the public domain that Tennant was leaving, RTD was blatantly teasing the viewers and the press with that title. And the episode itself continues to play the game for as long as possible. #DoctorWho
Always liked Dervla Kirwan’s performance as Miss Hartigan. There’s a very dark backstory there, hinted at in a few lines. Same with Rosita.
All the crap Moffat got for how he wrote women, and RTD writes the only #DoctorWho episode ever where all the female parts are prostitutes!
Another big step in acknowledging the show’s past with the images of all the former Doctors. No John Hurt of course, but you could retrospectively imagine the War Doctor left an impression on Jackson Lake due to him wearing the strip of info-stamps like a bandolier. #DoctorWho
There’s a sort of reverse-Human-Nature thing on, with “The Doctor” discovering he’s actually a normal human man rather than the other way round. #DoctorWho
Do the Cybermen really need kids to push those cogwheels, shovel coal, etc? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to do it themselves? They only seem to be there to provide a Christmassy image of Victorian Urchins in distress being heroically rescued. #DoctorWho
I bet Russell was giggling to himself imagining the boggled “WTF?!” reactions from fans upon seeing this… 😄 #DoctorWho
Planet Of The Dead: my eyes! It’s HD! 😵
In another timeline this could have been a decent opener for the 2009 season. As it stands it’s a fairly normal “special” before things start to ramp up next time. #DoctorWho
Isn’t it kind of overkill for that museum to have four guards (armed with machine guns!) surrounding that exhibit all night? And they still don’t notice someone descending from the ceiling! Doh! #DoctorWho
Once again the Doctor is portrayed as that annoying twat on the bus who ignores all the empty seats and sits next to someone to try to engage them in conversation.
Seriously, who ever thought that was a good personality trait to give him?? #DoctorWho
Malcolm is a prototype Osgood, but while both are clearly fans of the Doctor, Malcolm does that RTD-character thing of gushing, over-the-top, *worship* of him.
Really, Russell, calm it down a bit! #DoctorWho
Even after Davros’ jibes about the Doctor turning people into soldiers, he literally then tries to do that by getting Nathan and Barclay jobs with UNIT.
Good spot by the casting director getting a young Daniel Kaluuya, but should have given him a bigger part. #DoctorWho
Finally… this shot, presented without comment. 😳 #DoctorWho
The Waters Of Mars: for my money the best of the 2009 specials, and a solid contender for one of the best episodes of Tennant’s entire run. Top 5 at least. A great concept to put the Doctor in this type of situation, that the show doesn’t often explore. #DoctorWho
Usually the mechanics and implications of time-travel are handwaved away, so it’s interesting to finally see it dealt with here. The Doctor can’t turn up in a real historical catastrophe that might be too close to home, so a fictional future one is a good workaround. #DoctorWho
I know it only bothers the nerdiest of us nerds, but it’s a bit of a continuity error to imply that Dalek left young Adelaide alone because it knew her death was a fixed point…
…while at the same time it’s carrying out Davros’ plan to destroy the entire universe…🤷🏻♂️ #DoctorWho
The whole final act, as the tension ratchets up and everything spirals to its inevitable conclusion, while the Doctor is leaving and hearing the desperation of the others over the radio, is among some of the very best #DoctorWho ever put on screen.
The only part that’s perhaps a bit of a stretch is Adelaide’s death at the end. If a man claiming to be a time-traveller turned up and told you everything the Doctor told her, would anyone really be so quick to kill themselves to ensure things happened the “right” way? #DoctorWho
The End Of Time pts 1 & 2: this buckles slightly under the weight of expectation, and everything it’s trying to do, but in the end I think RTD manages to pull it off as a finale to his entire run. Some of the fan criticism at the time was ridiculous and over the top. #DoctorWho
I like how Russell always writes the encounters between the Doctor and the Master on this grand, epic scale, as if it should really be happening off-world, and the entire human race is in danger if they start battling each other here on earth. #DoctorWho
Bernard Cribbins is bloody great as always, and how fantastic that he finally got to take a trip in the TARDIS.
And then a Star Wars style dogfight with laser cannons too! Who could have ever predicted that? #DoctorWho
It’s a pity the budget or the ability of the CGI at the time couldn’t stretch to giving us the nightmarish vision of a few children or babies with John Simm’s laughing face… #DoctorWho
“That guard is one inch too tall…” the Doctor says of the disguised Vinvocci bloke, who’s actually about a foot taller than John Simm… 🤷🏻♂️ #DoctorWho
Something that I think has been a bit lost or forgotten or not really noticed by people watching nowadays is what a huge reveal it was/is when the President is named as Rassilon. They avoided mentioning his name until then, a big ‘WTF!’ moment for us old school fans. #DoctorWho
And so, after a whirlwind tour of old friends, in the end he had to go…
As much as I loved Ten at the time, I don’t feel much watching this now. Sadly I’m a bit soured on his Doctor due to 14 years of “Oh it was only PROPER #DoctorWho when he was in it!”
Boils. My. Piss…🤬
But anyway, on a brighter note… “Blimey!” 😃
Everything’s fresh and new again, and onto a new era… #DoctorWho
The Eleventh Hour: one of the best ‘soft reboots’ the show’s ever done. An easy jumping on point for new viewers. Matt hits the ground running, literally in fact as he spends most of the episode dashing about being suitably Doctorish. #DoctorWho
The new, more ethereal, ‘fairy-tale’ style is evident from the start, and Murray Gold adapts his music appropriately.
Plus ‘I Am The Doctor’ is the best theme for the character there’s ever been.
🎶 “Doo-do-doo, da-doo-do-doo…” 🎶
#DoctorWho
Amy working as a kissogram is a prime example of Moffat’s cultural reference points always being years out of date. Who did that job in 2010?? (Okay, 2008, to be pedantic) #DoctorWho
Shame that Moffat starts his new era by again having the Doctor ‘quote his notoriety’ to get out of a sticky situation - saying “Basically, run” to the Atraxi.
Have him actually *do* something! Not just go “Ooh, see all the stuff I did in the past? Now run away!” #DoctorWho
The new console, upgraded for HD, looks lovely and shiny, but they did go a bit far with the self-conscious wackiness of including taps, typewriters, and so on. Thankfully they came back to sanity a bit with the next one. #DoctorWho
The Beast Below: a slight misstep for the new production team. In hindsight it’s not that bad, it was just a bit of a disappointment at the time coming after the enjoyment of the opening episode, and being the first Moffat story not to be seen as an instant classic. #DoctorWho
I have to remember with this new era to slip in all the minisodes, extra scenes, deleted scenes, DVD extras, etc, that go between episodes.
RTD had two (Born Again and Time Crash). Moffat had approximately 15,794 of the bloody things. 🫤 #DoctorWho
Amazing that Magpie Electricals is still going, all those centuries into the future. And hasn’t changed its logo since the 1950s! #DoctorWho
Some of Moffat’s favourite themes and ideas are already starting to make early appearances - manipulation of people’s perceptions and memories, or their experience of time, such as Liz 10 doing the same things every ten years and then getting mind-wiped. #DoctorWho
Dan Hatton@gavinwinters RTD had all the web tie-ins: the Leamington Spa Lifeboat Museum, Pete's-World Hendrick's, Cybus Industries, etc.
@only_ohm Oh, the TARDISodes, yes. But they were kind of separate in a way, and without the main cast. Whereas Moffat had lots of extra bits that slotted directly into or in between the actual episodes.
David M.@gavinwinters It’s not the best, but I still find, “Nobody human has anything to say to me today!” to be powerful.
@gavinwinters That is, though, I guess, the grand arc that culminates in Madam Kovarian targeting Amy and Melody.
ĸurth@gavinwinters Are you crossing the Davies-Line? #doctorwho
ƧƿѦςɛ♏ѦਹѤʞ@gavinwinters What a star: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vezc2XFkeIk
