All New Who

halfwise wrote:HeHe the Guardian puts Ansiz Answari on its wish list.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jan/31/doctor-who-peter-capaldi-casting-wishlist-bbc

The thing is with a female Doctor, there's no real reason why there shouldn't be one...on the other hand there's no reason why they should introduce one, if it aint broke...

Ansiz Answari ain't female. Not even close.

halfwise wrote:Ansiz Answari ain't female.  Not even close.

...Having read the article now, he's American which would be even more divisive I think (no offense intended)...

He's totally not what you'd expect in Dr Who. That's why I'd watch him. He's a stand-up comic with a long-standing bit about being Muslim in America, with curiosity about pork and trying to pin any religious lapses on his girlfriend.

I wouldn't mind Colin Morgan, I really like him, but they may go for an unknown.

Love Colin. My swooning over him makes Beliebers look unimpressed, and Petty like he thinks Moffat is "meh, ok I guess". Not so sure how they would make Jethro('s face) from Midnight into the Doctor in a believable way, but he'd kill.

Wouldn't it be lovely to have him as a companion too though? Acting skills, range, soul!

{{{Sometimes you find out some Who related news or trivia in the most unexpected places. Today it was the BBC's midday politics show The Daily Politics- the discussion- State Visits- in the midst of which the visit of the Chinese came up and the Royal reporter  let out that what the Chinese wanted more than anything was for there to be pictures of their man not with the Queen, but with Kate Middleton, and the other thing they really wanted was have there picture taken with Daleks and the TARDIS.
They got both, oddly at the same time. This does explain however why there was a TARDIS and a Dalek rather randomly in the background in this picture of the delegation meeting the Royals!}}



{{But whats really odd here, odder than everything else I mean, is that Doctor Who is banned in China!! }}}

{{Info from Gatiss on his episode for series 10- spoilery if you dont want to know who the villains are }}

Spoiler:

I wish Gatiss would STOP writing for Who and Sherlock. I know writing for tv is a lot more difficult than anyone could imagine, but he really cant do it. he has singlehandedly ruined Sherlock, and none of his episodes for Who are much cop, apart from the Dickens one like 10 years ago.
Its probably difficult for Moffat to say NO, because they are besties and he is Mycroft, but srsly enoughs enough.

{{I dont know if his stuff works better on the page than on the screen or something but he does keep getting employment as a script writer, not just on Who, but even there both RTD and Moffat returned to him and everyone has to get signed off by the BBC bigwigs too. There must be something they are seeing there which sadly doesn't always seem to make it as far as the screen I find.}}

Re Visit from China: This seems to me as being very high on the "how to get UK to like you" list.

1. Pretend you like New Diana.
2. Pretend you like Doctor Who.

Whether they actually do or not is far less important than making a good appearance.

{{Perhaps- but the reporter was rather implying they wanted those specific photographs for domestic PR reasons- Kate being a global fascination for some reason as Diana was and hugely popular in China- that bit makes complete sense for domestic propaganda purposes. But wanting photos with props from a show they banned? That seems weird.

But if you are right and its just a be nice to the Brits then it says something of the shows iconic status that they would consider it as quintessentially representative of Britain as the Royals! }}

if anyone is missing Capaldi.   this is actually quite brilliant.

{{Yeah he is quite an artist is Capaldi, studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He did an excellent documentary on Scottish portraiture painting}}

{{I'm really not sure Capaldi going is good thing for the show. And not just because of how good in the role I think he is. But with regards to Chibnall.
He is now in the same position Moffat was in coming into take over- a former episode writer who has to take over writing the show and cast a new Doctor and new companion.
Granted at this point we dont know if Bill will be a 1 series companion or hang around longer.
But that aside its largely the same position.

Now we know from stuff Moffat has said that the job was overwhelming when he first started because anyone he could have turned to who had been doing the job for a while was gone. Including the entire cast and production team.
Because of this I'd assume Moffat has tried to make things smoother for Chibnall than it was for him coning in.

But there is a major difference between the two- Moffat when he started was hugely backed by good will from the fans- at the point he took over Moffat's Who resume was without blemish and all his episodes considered among the very best of the RTD era.
Chibnall does not have anything like that goodwill;- his previous episodes have been ok, never terrible, never rising above the average either though.

And now as well as taking over the mantle of writing the show he will also have to recast it- and get the casting wrong of the Doctor and its game over. Not only that the press will be full of speculation (its already started), and the internet will be poised to pounce if the new Doctor is  not at least black, or a woman, or a transgender midget with a guide dog. That's a fair bit of added pressure to a job already boiling over with pressure.

Had Capaldi stayed one more year that would be at least an issue he could have but on the backburner and concentrated on just getting the writing team together ect }}}

{{Big two page spread in todays Sun on Who- actually more a hatchet job- claiming Capaldi was pushed because he asked for a pay increase and that the viewing figures have fallen drastically since launch- they attribute this too over complicated plots and an old actor playing the Doctor.

But the main graphic of the spread is a timeline showing average ratings for the show trailing off since it started to present day.
Only thing is I have no idea where they got those figures- they certainly arent the official ones!

For example they give as the average for 2016- 6.5 million.

But there was only 1 episode in 2016 the xmas episode and it got 8.5 million. How does one episode of 8.5 million = an average of 6.5? It was the second rated top drama on the day after Call the Midwife (9.2 million).

The article also takes no account of falling tv audiences across the board-

'television ratings on Christmas Day last month falling to their lowest level on record.
The programme that drew the most viewers was the BBC’s Christmas special of Call the Midwife. Although 9.2 million people tuned in, according to the consolidated ratings that include online streaming, it was the smallest audience number for the most watched show on Christmas Day since ratings began in 1981.'- The Guardian

So Who getting 8. 5 million puts it right up there with the top shows on BBC no2 in fact in drama.

Tabloids should be banned from using ratings figures until they can report them accurately and not, as it seems the Sun have done, pluck them out the air to fit the story they want to tell }}

{{heres the per episode viewing figures for Tennants debut series- Smiths- and Capaldi's for comparison. }}

Tennant-

New Earth 8.6
Tooth and Claw 9.2
School Reunion 8.3
Girl in Fireplace 7.9
Rise of Cybermen 9.2
Age of Steel 7.6
The Idiot's Lantern 6.8
Impossible Planet 6.3
The Satan Pit 6.0
Love & Monsters 6.6
Fear Her 6.9
Army of Ghosts 7.9
Doomsday 8.0

Smith-


Eleventh Hour 10.08
Beast Below 8.4
Victory of Daleks 8.2
Time of Angels 8.59
Flesh and Stone 8.50
Vampires of Venice 7.68
Amy's Choice 7.55
Hungry Earth 6.49
Cold Blood 7.49
Vincent and Doctor 6.76
The Lodger 6.44
Pandorica Opens 7.57
Big Bang 6.7

Capaldi-


Deep Breath 9.17
Into the Dalek 7.29
Robot of Sherwood 7.28
Listen 7.01
Time Heist 6.99
The Caretaker 6.82
Kill the Moon 6.91
Mummy Orient Ex 7.11
Flatline 6.71
Forest of the Night 6.92
Dark Water 7.34
Death in Heaven 7.60



The difference is negligible. especially for a show thats been running for more than 10 years since its return and more than 50 since it started. }}

A lot of people have had enough of both Moffat and Capaldi. They need a fresh start, Chibnalls episodes may have been hampered by too much editing by Moffat in the past, as Broadchurch is more an indication of his talents as he was in control. plus ratings were going down that's why Moffat has gone and they are talking about rebooting and making things less adult and complicated, it had to happen because Who was turning into neither fish nor fowl and becoming a bit up itself like Sherlock. It never good when someone has entrenched power and gives his mates jobs they are not up to. (Gatiss)

may have been hampered by too much editing by Moffat- Figg

{{or by RTD then as he wrote for both and wasn't very good for either}}

plus ratings were going down - Figg

{{According to the figures by less than 1 million viewers, and that doesn't account for different ways of watching TV shows now which are not included in the iplayer figures (I don't count in the iplayer figures for example even though I am watching) The ratings argument is a non-starter- the only way to make it seem like it is an issue is to do what the Sun did and conflate individual episode ratings with series averages and overnights with consolidated- of course it got higher overnights in there past- more folk watched TV as broadcast then than now. These days sometimes half of Who's audience are not watching it as broadcast but when it suits them. For Capaldi era the consolidated figures are anything between 2-4 million up on the overnights. Back in the Tennant era that was only knocking on 1 million}}

'and gives his mates jobs they are not up to. (Gatiss)'- Figg

{{That would have actually been RTD, again. He gave Gatiss the Who gig. Moffat kept him on.}}

yeah but when Gatiss wrote for RTD he was ok. ie Dickens episode was pretty good. When he wrote for Moffat he had run out of steam and was rehashing any old trope and the kitchen sink.

{{The Dickensian one was just ok- its a pretty simple tale, the performances lift it a fair bit and its full of the sort of ideas and mood that would crop up again in his later episodes. And the Idiots Lantern was pretty poor. }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Tabloids should be banned from using ratings figures until they can report them accurately.  }}

Would they still be tabloids?

They did the episode where Obama saves the world with his brilliant economic announcement, have they done an episode where they stop Trump from destroying the world?

{{There was never an episode where Obama saves the world- you must have had a fevered dream Bungo!- there was a story (The End of Time) when the Master was using an alien medical device to change every human into a copy of himself, Obama included, and Obama got changed with everyone else as he was about to announce a ridiculous economic plan that was going to reverse the global crash of the time caused under Bush. He was in two scenes, you never saw his face and he had I think 1 line of perfunctory dialogue.
That was also back in the 10th Doctor era under RTD in an episode I'm not overly fond of for much better reasons than Obamas minuscule appearance in proceedings.

Who doesn't tend to do politics directly like that very often, thankfully, its usually more broad, like the Zygon inversion speech or more subversive like The Happiness Patrol }}

bungobaggins wrote:They did the episode where Obama saves the world with his brilliant economic announcement, have they done an episode where they stop Trump from destroying the world?

that would be pretty much every episode from the last 50 years. The Doctor saves the world from rampaging monster, evil genius, or smiling dictator only the Doctor tries to reason with them and doesn't nuke em.