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Doctor Who: Grand Theft TARDIS


Derfel Cadarn

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Some of the prequel mini-episodes for previous series have felt a bit pointless, but that one was good.



I'm not sure why the Doctor didn't leave the ship before it crashed since he didn't appear to have a plan to save the pilot, but maybe he misjudged the timing?



I've not seen the McGann movie, so this was the first time I'd seen him as the Doctor. It is a pity he didn't get to do it for longer since he is a good actor and manages to do a good job of portraying a Doctor in only five minutes.



I think it did an efficient job of explaining why the John Hurt 'Doctor' became who he was and also why he had a different character to the other regenerations, because he was designed to be what was needed to end the Time War.



Edit : Apparently 'Quote' and 'Spoiler' aren't the same things...


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That was a treat

but why did they give him such an idiotic death? I'd rather he'd went back in the TARDIS and then coerced into helping via the woman's death-by-timelord-hatred. Other than that it was really nice for Mcgann to be given some respect and from the 5 minutes we had of him I can't help but think we lost out on only seeing him in the movie. Makes me almost hope that he is in the special. Need to check out all of Moffat's quotes now as I'm pretty sure he said "McGann isn't in the anniversary special". But he was in the mini meaning a lot of his statements could be misleading while technically true


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You could not have put a better title on that.....

Having just watch the movie on The Doctors Revisited. As much as people bitch about it, they did a lot of it good things, but McGann was perfect choice, glad he got finally got a curtain call as the Doctor.

I'm a Doctor, but probably not the one you expected!

That is correct.

Yes, that was perfect.

Well that almost makes up for all the piffle that Moffat has spin around the entire idea of Doctor Who since he has been in charge.

Moffat really does a lot of things right w/ Who, he just always adds that little something else that is stupid, pointless, that takes a way from all the good he has done and leaves a bitter taste. Kind of like make an amazing cake, and then pissing on it.

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I find it amazing how fast the Moff turned from saviour to Antichrist about 5 seconds after the beginning of hidss first episode as showrunner.


Suddenly, he seems to be as bad, if not worse as RTD, although everybody loved him before.



Which does not mean that I unconditionally loved all of his episodes. But this hate is a bit over the top. IMHO.


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I still prefer him over RTD by a long shot. I've also reconciled myself with the fact it's a children's show first and foremost and a lot of my gripes with Moffat is because he is catering to that audience. I guess there's a lot of unresolved or weirdly resolved stories that's an iteration but the target audience is my main gripe


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Moffat is basically a Lost writer on steroids. He poses questions and mysteries and then does one of two things: he over-explains and over-uses them to the point where they become boring and actively offensive to use (River Song, possibly the Weeping Angels) or he gets bored and wanders off without satisfyingly answering the mysteries (the exploding TARDIS, the Silence etc), though rumour has it that a few apparently abandoned plot points will be revisited in the Christmas special (and the 50th will allegedly resolve a lot of outstanding Time War stuff) so he can still turn that around.



More to the point, he's become a much poorer writer since he became showrunner and also started writing a lot more episodes per season (something both he and RTD felt was necessary, though it isn't really; most of the old Who showrunners never wrote an episode at all, in fact). In the RTD era, when Moffat could focus his energies solely on the couple of scripts he wrote per year, they ended up being outstanding. Now he hasn't got that time and they fall flat.



He's also in love with time paradoxes as solutions to problems, which was fine a couple of times but now has become insanely annoying. Doctor Who had very specific rules about how it couldn't pull bullshit solutions out of thin air (most notably that the same Doctor could not cross his own timestream, something Matt Smith has done two or three times now) and Moffat has ignored them. He's also very keen on DEM and nonsensical technobabble. This isn't new in Who, of course, but certainly the overwhelming frequency at which such things are being used is.


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I loved Moffat's first series in charge. Since then, it's been more hit and miss. The arc-heavy stories in particular fell flat to me.



But when it's good, it can still be very good.



Moffat also seems to want to build a mystery round every companion. It worked with Amy, he wrecked it with River, with Clara it was just "who cares?"


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I think it is also interesting that he regenerated as a young John Hurt. It show he spent a very long time fighting the Time War

It also:

gives a nice implicit explanation for why McGann looks older, as he must have been worn down a bit as well.

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I find it amazing how fast the Moff turned from saviour to Antichrist about 5 seconds after the beginning of hidss first episode as showrunner.

Suddenly, he seems to be as bad, if not worse as RTD, although everybody loved him before.

I've also noticed it feels like RTD gets more praise now than he did when he was running the show, at the time he got at least as many complaints as Moffat does nowadays.

I'd say Moffat's first season in charge is probably the best of the 'new' seasons. The next two had plenty of good episodes but the overall story got very confused at times (particularly the River Song story arc), I think Wert's Lost comparison is fairly apt there since it was another show that had many good episodes but no clue about where it was heading. I'd still say on average that despite his flaws Moffat has more good episodes than the RTD era did.

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BWS,

What is Moffat adding that is pissing so many people off? I've only recently gotten into the last couple of seasons of DW. What are y'all talking about?

Mostly what Werthead said, and ...

The other big thing is he/new Who keeps doing the same thing, over and over again. Classic Who, companions from time to time saved the Doctor, and IIRC 2 died doing it, but other then the lingering effects after Adric death, it wasn't that big a deal. He thanked them, but it wasn't the get all that ends all, fate bring it all together.

Rose and Bad Wolf

Martha and the fob watch

Doctor Donna ( lesser extent Jack dying, and Rose bring him back)

Amy remembering him at her wedding ( to lesser extent Rory's kept coming back from the dead)

Everything about River Song

Everything to do w/ Clara the impossible girl

All of the primary companions are female, most that fell for him and they all were born to save the Doctor?

How many times did the 10th and 11th Doctors think they were really going to die, for the final time? How many times did they say farewell?

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Yeah:



We might see the start of the regeneration and the insinuation that it ends with Eccleston getting up and putting on his leather jacket, but without actually showing his face. Or showing the TARDIS landing on Earth in 2005 or something. You could also use stock footage, though Eccleston might need to give permission for that (which he may or may not have agreed to).


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