Doctor Who- returns for series whatever it is 11/5/24 | The Grand Moff is back!

I liked it too! Jodi may not be the most favorite Doctor but she's so promising

Really like it, kicks the strawberry float out of the capaldi stuff and I got a good feeling for the future.

Ive not mega enjoyed anything since the end of the Tennant years, I never really got on the stories and stuff, so hopefully this will do it.

Jodie is awesome and it's anew write isn't it now? So hopefully we will have some awesome less clown doctor.

I like clowny but I think it needs to balance and I think in the Tennant era it got it right, it was a little silly but not too much, but when matt Smith rocked up that went to gooseberry fool and it become a cbbc show.

I think it'll take a few episodes to "get used" to the new people. I recall that the opening episode of Matt Smith's era was awful and, initially, I wasn't a fan of Peter Capaldi's take on then Doctor, either. A few episodes went by and I grew to like both, though :-). As ever, the quality of the storylines and scripts will be critical.

jawafour wrote:I think it'll take a few episodes to "get used" to the new people. I recall that the opening episode of Matt Smith's era was awful and, initially, I wasn't a fan of Peter Capaldi's take on then Doctor, either. A few episodes went by and I grew to like both, though . As ever, the quality of the storylines and scripts will be critical.

Yeah story is going to be key.

It's the guy that did broadchurch now isn't it? Which means the dude can write awesome story lines so hopefully.

Rik_ wrote:I liked it, nothing to write home about exactly but I'm warming to Whittaker already. Companions seem decent, they didn't really have much time to shine between them but I guess they'll all get their moments through the rest of the series. Predator guy had a cool design even if the teeth thing was a bit weird. Ending was an odd one -

I feel like there was more to be said with the Doctor telling Carl or whatever he was called he had no right to kick Predator off the crane, and the gran dying is a weirdly downbeat final twist for a first ep, but I like what they've done with sending them out into space, it makes for a nice change from the standard "come escape your boring life with me" spiel. It'll be cool if they spend the next few eps just tracking down the Tardis I reckon, give them all time to bond before the Doc asks them to carry on with her.

Bit of a mixed bag - but pretty hopefully.

Better introductionary episode than Rose, Christmas Invasion and Deep Breath. But then I think 11th Hour (kissogram bit aside) is generally a very strong intro. The story was bobbins though (and the "let's make a sonic" section was painful)

I think 13 also had a better establishment than 10 and 12 - although it'll take time to fully gauge.

The cheerful/helpful passer by is nice to return and I quite liked the general tone/style. The companions got a good bit of intro (although there seems to be a bit of cross over between the two younguns).

captain red dog wrote:The problem since the reboot is that they aren't getting decent Sci fi writers and inevitably no matter how good the lead actor is, the show falls flat. The move to Sunday night seems odd to me too, I don't think BBC particularly advertised that well. I tuned in on Saturday and was pretty pissed off to see Strictly had the entire evening slot. Had to put some David Tennant Who on for the nipper instead!

The result?

The most watched Who debut of the new era.

I like the new Doctor and the companions were all ok. The story wasn’t great, but as a quick introduction to the new cast it worked.

The “coming soon” at the end was daft though.

Forgot to mention I liked the plot came down to saving 1 person (and then the cast with the bombs) rather than "THE WORLD IS ENDING" faff



Who the hell thought the "coming soon" section was a good idea.

I must have turned off before this "coming soon" section, either that or they didn't have it on the iPlayer version?

I really enjoyed that for the most part! They kept the story simple for an opening episode which is reasonable and worked well to push the focus more onto the characters who all had moments to shine. Jodie seems promising, hard to know exactly where her interpretation of the character is going to land yet but she's certainly an engaging lead and managed to walk the line between "oddball" and "know-it-all" well enough. I also think I'm going to take to these companions far more that I expected, I audibly groaned when I heard that Bradley Walsh was going to be a part of this and he did seem to be the worst part of things initially but fair play to everyone involved, by the end I was very impressed by him!

That said I agree with others that it was disappointing to see the Doctor continue to pull deus ex machina solutions out of her ass with no real build up or internal justification to it. The writers really need to stop just going "because <sci-fi nonsense A> and the fact that <sci-fi nonsense B>, if I just do this <almost always pointing the sonic at something> then the world will be saved!"

It was a better first episode than Capaldi got (Peter tried his best but that story ) and I'd say it's also plenty better than Tennant's intro in the Christmas Invasion, but it still falls short of the 11th Hour which to me remains the pinnacle of New Who Doctor intros, such a strawberry floating fantastic episode.

My personal New Who Doctor intro ranking:

11th > 13th > 9th > 10th > 12th

Jenuall wrote:I must have turned off before this "coming soon" section, either that or they didn't have it on the iPlayer version?

I really enjoyed that for the most part! They kept the story simple for an opening episode which is reasonable and worked well to push the focus more onto the characters who all had moments to shine. Jodie seems promising, hard to know exactly where her interpretation of the character is going to land yet but she's certainly an engaging lead and managed to walk the line between "oddball" and "know-it-all" well enough. I also think I'm going to take to these companions far more that I expected, I audibly groaned when I heard that Bradley Walsh was going to be a part of this and he did seem to be the worst part of things initially but fair play to everyone involved, by the end I was very impressed by him!

That said I agree with others that it was disappointing to see the Doctor continue to pull deus ex machina solutions out of her ass with no real build up or internal justification to it. The writers really need to stop just going "because <sci-fi nonsense A> and the fact that <sci-fi nonsense B>, if I just do this <almost always pointing the sonic at something> then the world will be saved!"

It was a better first episode than Capaldi got (Peter tried his best but that story ) and I'd say it's also plenty better than Tennant's intro in the Christmas Invasion, but it still falls short of the 11th Hour which to me remains the pinnacle of New Who Doctor intros, such a strawberry floating fantastic episode.

My personal New Who Doctor intro ranking:

11th > 13th > 9th > 10th > 12th

Once again Jenuall nails it like a boss.

Jenuall wrote:...but it still falls short of the 11th Hour which to me remains the pinnacle of New Who Doctor intros, such a strawberry floating fantastic episode.

My personal New Who Doctor intro ranking:

11th > ...

...

Hexx wrote:Once again Jenuall nails it like a boss.

... .

I think need to revisit Smith's first episode and check this out; I had genuinely thought it was awful. He was far too manic and trying to mimic Tennant. I grew to like Smith, but that episode... I will dig out the disc and review!

jawafour wrote:

Jenuall wrote:...but it still falls short of the 11th Hour which to me remains the pinnacle of New Who Doctor intros, such a strawberry floating fantastic episode.

My personal New Who Doctor intro ranking:

11th > ...

...

Hexx wrote:Once again Jenuall nails it like a boss.

... .

I think need to revisit Smith's first episode and check this out; I had genuinely thought it was awful. He was far too manic and trying to mimic Tennant. I grew to like Smith, but that episode... I will dig out the disc and review!

He's very manic (like most new world post regens) - but settles nicely at the end - and the callback/hospital speech sets him up nicely.

I think it's clever in introducing the star (of a kids show) through the eyes of a kid. It's about 10-15 minutes before we meet anyone else.

I think the strippergram (sorry "kissogram!) element is poorly done [and the "Jeff contacts some famouses in his bedroom].

Hexx wrote:

jawafour wrote:

Jenuall wrote:...but it still falls short of the 11th Hour which to me remains the pinnacle of New Who Doctor intros, such a strawberry floating fantastic episode.

My personal New Who Doctor intro ranking:

11th > ...

...

Hexx wrote:Once again Jenuall nails it like a boss.

... .

I think need to revisit Smith's first episode and check this out; I had genuinely thought it was awful. He was far too manic and trying to mimic Tennant. I grew to like Smith, but that episode... I will dig out the disc and review!

He's very manic (like most new world post regens) - but settles nicely at the end - and the callback/hospital speech sets him up nicely.

I think it's clever in introducing the star (of a kids show) through the eyes of a kid. It's about 10-15 minutes before we meet anyone else.

I think the strippergram (sorry "kissogram!) element is poorly done [and the "Jeff contacts some famouses in his bedroom].

Hexx
Jawa

I'm a big Smith fan so will now have to "come at you" as I believe the kids are saying these days!

Personally I just think 11th Hour is just so brilliantly constructed as an episode of television - the pacing is beautifully done, the production when compared to the Tennant era is off the charts (direction, lighting, sound, pretty much everything took a big step up in S5 IMO and 11th Hour was an instant display of that), it features a genuinely intriguing storyline with prisoner zero and the first hint at the season arc (which loops back to this opening in a very neatly done way eventually), and the Doctor resolves things by being intelligent and thinking about a problem rather than just pointing the sonic screwdriver at everything!

I don't think Smith was trying to mimic Tennant, but he was admittedly manic. It works very well though in my view - of all the "oh I've just regenerated and so I'm behaving odd" scenarios we've seen in New Who I'd say Smith's works the best by a big margin. The cooking scene between young Amy and the Doctor is wonderfully written and performed and the shift from humour:

"Why can't you give me decent food? You're Scottish - fry something."

To the serious:
"You're not scared of anything! Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard, and look at you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?"
"What?"
"Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall."

Is handled so wonderfully and tells so much about the character of the Doctor in one short exchange. And as Hexx points out we get a first taste of a 11th Doctor speech (accompanied by his fantastic theme) which is just a joy to behold.

I'll freely admit that the wheels came off the Smith/Moffat era in a big way in S6 onward, there are still high points but it struggles more that it should have done. But in S5, and this opener in particular, they absolutely nailed it!

Oh, don't get me wrong, Jen - I really enjoyed Smith's run as the Doctor! I just didn't particularly like that opening episode. I guess this demonstrates just how difficult it is to create a story... everyone has different tastes.

Thinking about it, I don't think I've been a fan of many of the "opening episodes" of the new Doctors... it takes a little time for me to understand and click with them. Following that short period of time, I usually love what they bring to the show, though :-) .

Thinking back I think the moment this episode lost me was when the guy lobbed a bike off the edge of some moorland and it ended up caught in the canopy of some unrelated woods.

It probably reached the lowest point when the Doctor was able to make a sonic screwdriver in a workshop with a box of scraps.

Toothy predator wasn't up to much either and could have just killed everyone multiple times. Worse than Predator 2, not sure about the new film.

OrangeRKN wrote:Thinking back I think the moment this episode lost me was when the guy lobbed a bike off the edge of some moorland and it ended up caught in the canopy of some unrelated woods.

It probably reached the lowest point when the Doctor was able to make a sonic screwdriver in a workshop with a box of scraps.

I thought the bike thing was a bit stupid as well. Firstly I imagine the others would be just a little bit more pissed off than they were if he actually did that, and it is ridiculous that the bike would end up in that location. Also the idea that a bike thrown over a hill side would still be in any way usable is laughable!

I think with the sonic construction it does show her stealing bits from the alien pod as well as just using scraps from the workshop, but even so it is still a tad far-fetched!

jawafour wrote:Oh, don't get me wrong, Jen - I really enjoyed Smith's run as the Doctor! I just didn't particularly like that opening episode. I guess this demonstrates just how difficult it is to create a story... everyone has different tastes. Thinking about it, I don't think I've been a fan of many of the "opening episodes" of the new Doctors... it takes a little time for me to understand and click with them. Following that short period of time, I usually love what they bring to the show, though .

Too late, you've cast aspersions over one of my favourite Smith episodes, you're dead to me!

DML wrote:

captain red dog wrote:The problem since the reboot is that they aren't getting decent Sci fi writers and inevitably no matter how good the lead actor is, the show falls flat. The move to Sunday night seems odd to me too, I don't think BBC particularly advertised that well. I tuned in on Saturday and was pretty pissed off to see Strictly had the entire evening slot. Had to put some David Tennant Who on for the nipper instead!

The result?

The most watched Who debut of the new era.

Well its probably a case of me not paying attention because I don't tend to watch normal TV these days as I'm all about streaming!

Let's see how the figures hold though as I remember Matt Smith's figures falling away because the plots were so convoluted.

I can be added to the overnight figures as I have this recorded for the little one, I've only seen the one clip on the train and she sounds a bit like Brian Clough so I hope she sticks with that!

captain red dog wrote:Well its probably a case of me not paying attention because I don't tend to watch normal TV these days as I'm all about streaming!

Yeah it was advertised pretty heavily on normal TV.

captain red dog wrote:

DML wrote:

captain red dog wrote:The problem since the reboot is that they aren't getting decent Sci fi writers and inevitably no matter how good the lead actor is, the show falls flat. The move to Sunday night seems odd to me too, I don't think BBC particularly advertised that well. I tuned in on Saturday and was pretty pissed off to see Strictly had the entire evening slot. Had to put some David Tennant Who on for the nipper instead!

The result?

The most watched Who debut of the new era.

Well its probably a case of me not paying attention because I don't tend to watch normal TV these days as I'm all about streaming!

Let's see how the figures hold though as I remember Matt Smith's figures falling away because the plots were so convoluted.

I can be added to the overnight figures as I have this recorded for the little one, I've only seen the one clip on the train and she sounds a bit like Brian Clough so I hope she sticks with that!

I gave up looking at viewing figures a long time ago but I think it's hard to make judgements over how popular various New Who eras have been because of the way in which they report the data has not be changing quickly enough to match the way in which people watch TV.

I think there was certainly a gap in the data where iPlayer views weren't being considered for several series for example.