Poll: New Doctor Who - what should they change?

Mr.Squishy

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Bat Vader said:
Even though he is in his mid 70's I think they should try and get Christopher Lloyd
Dude. Cristohpher Lloyd just turned like, what 90? And celebrated his birthday by putting out a metal album.
 

Kotaro

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I'm going to miss Matt Smith, honestly. I kind of wish he'd stick around for a while longer. Somehow he managed to come across as both incredibly goofy and unbelievably badass, often at the exact same time (i.e., talking down the monster while picking out a tie). Yeah, he sometimes acts like a little kid, but he's still very clearly the Doctor, and he's been turning in some stellar acting performances (check out his dual performance as both the Doctor and Mr. Clever in "Nightmare in Silver," for one example). Yeah, his plot arc is pretty much resolved after "The Name of the Doctor," but I just love 11 too much to see him go.

Some people call me crazy for liking Smith more than Tennant, but I do like them both a lot.
 

HellbirdIV

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Lilani said:
You really think the show will fail because a black Doctor steps onto the scene? Sure it'll cause controversy, but if anything I think it'll cause the truly decent Whovians to defend it even more.
Quote-unquote "Whovians" don't make up the majority of the show's viewership. Probably not even a substantial minority. Doctor Who is a show ultimately aimed at a younger audience, and the adult Doctor Who fandom is really akin to "Bronies" - a notable, passionate but ultimately unintentional audience, from the perspective of the creators.

Lilani said:
in the the Doctor's Wife episode the Doctor talks about a time lord called the Corsair, who "was a great man, or sometimes woman." Time Lords changing gender after regeneration is canon.
And yet the Doctor has never been a woman. Nor has The Master, or Rassilon, and the Rani was never a man, was she?

From what I've seen, the Corsair is a more of a joke character, as to my knowldge (s)he has never appeared in any actual stories before being killed off-screen by House.

It seems to me like a weak excuse, at best - and as someone with a transgender partner, I kind of find the whole concept of regenerating into a different sex ... Problematic.
 

The Event

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Lilani said:
They didn't have a problem with Martha, I think they only briefly mentioned that in just a couple of episodes. The only episodes that really did anything with that were the Family of Blood episodes, and that was only because the point of those episodes was to explore different aspects of the Doctor and Martha's characters (the Doctor as a human and Martha on her own). And they never address fact that the female companions would face the same problem in many time periods. In the way that the show already deals with this exact problem, this is a total non-issue.
Are you sure they didn't have a problem with Martha? She had three stories that took place in a historical setting - Family of Blood, Daleks In Manhattan & The Shakespeare Code.
Family of Blood & Shakespeare Code had numerous references to her race, that's two out of three stories. So it doesn't seem as if the producers are able to simply carry on as normal with black characters in the past and nor should they because it would be unrealistic to do so. Yes, I said realistic in a show about time travel and aliens, because to be good the setting for those aliens and the time travel needs to be realistic. If the school cadets of Family of Blood been armed with laser rifles instead of SMLEs we wouldn't have accepted that would we?

I would also disagree that sexism of the past hasn't been addressed for female companions. Sarah Jane got a nasty introduction to the sexism of medieval England in the Time Warrior, Susan was to be forcibly married in The Aztecs, even Leela in Talons of Weng Chiang received a lesson in how ladies only take one lump of sugar in their tea regardless of if they want two.

But there's an important difference between companions and The Doctor. The traditional roles of the companions are to get into trouble and be rescued and to serve as a plot device for The Doctor to explain things to the audience. It's The Doc who takes the lead and saves the day and while a female or black Doctor (or companion) is perfectly capable of doing that in the present or future, she/he would not have been allowed to do that in the past.

As has been said by someone else I don't want my sci fi adventure series to become full of "issues" surrounding the Doctor's change of race or sex, I want to be able to enjoy it without having to sit there thinking "that would never have happened" all the time.
 

SuperSamio64

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I think it's high time for a 'minority' Doctor. By keeping the Doctor as white they're only preventing themselves from hiring a great actor in the part (Idris Elba springs to mind). I completely agree that the Doctor shouldn't be a woman though, the writers would cock it up and start writing 'The River Song Adventures' instead of Doctor Who.
 

Thaluikhain

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HellbirdIV said:
Quote-unquote "Whovians" don't make up the majority of the show's viewership. Probably not even a substantial minority. Doctor Who is a show ultimately aimed at a younger audience, and the adult Doctor Who fandom is really akin to "Bronies" - a notable, passionate but ultimately unintentional audience, from the perspective of the creators.
Ah, that's a point. Last time they made Dr who for the fans, not the general audience...well, Colin Baker's run is much maligned.

HellbirdIV said:
And yet the Doctor has never been a woman. Nor has The Master, or Rassilon, and the Rani was never a man, was she?
Um, how does that work with your previous argument?

Anyway, the Doctor never used to marry English queens, or the daughters of companions and the Tardis, or talk directly to the Tardis, or...
 

Nigh Invulnerable

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OneCatch said:
Flatfrog said:
I'd agree with this - while being completely baffled by it, since during the RTD days, Moffat's scripts were uniformly the best. I was totally expecting him to take it over and make it awesome, and instead it's been a total mess. I can scarcely watch it, although I keep hanging in there.

I wonder if Gatiss might do a better job, but I'm nervous that the same thing would happen.
This is EXACTLY what I've thought for ages. Moffat was great at single episodes, but it's like he just can't string an overarching plot together or something. The last few seasons have kind of been a soap in space.
I've been thinking the same thing. Moffat writes some interestingly convoluted stories and such, but his character writing is terrible. No one develops and grows in a meaningful way (that lasts) and he's more fond of just coming up with more "End of the universe" type scenarios than with making the audience connect with the Doctor or the companions. Russell T Davies may have had some silly stories, but the characters were much stronger and more interesting to me.
 

repeating integers

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Mr.Squishy said:
Bat Vader said:
Even though he is in his mid 70's I think they should try and get Christopher Lloyd
Dude. Cristohpher Lloyd just turned like, what 90? And celebrated his birthday by putting out a metal album.
No, that's Christopher Lee, who used to walk in these woods but now has a mind of metal.
 

red dragon 52

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I would like to see Michael Caine as the doctor, I think he would be perfect for the role, but that isn't going to happen.
 

Kaxbe

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I'd actually find it interesting if the next Doctor wasn't a white dude. The Doctor would probably be forced to approach certain situations differently.

However, if I were to change one thing about New Who, it'd just be to retcon the entire Moffat run semi-completely. If Moffat fans complain, we could always just claim it was a paradox~
 

repeating integers

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Kaxbe said:
I'd actually find it interesting if the next Doctor wasn't a white dude. The Doctor would probably be forced to approach certain situations differently.

However, if I were to change one thing about New Who, it'd just be to retcon the entire Moffat run semi-completely. If Moffat fans complain, we could always just claim it was a paradox~
As much as I prefer Moffat to Russel T Davies, I did smile at this.
 

Atmos Duality

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Silvanus said:
That all said, the direst problem with the show is the writing, not the doctor. It's not Sci-Fi; it's only pretending to be.
Bingo. I think I can count on one hand the number of episodes of New Who I've seen that are genuinely memorable for reasons other than abject stupidity. (yes, between both Davies and Moffat.)

Also, agreed with the gender swap. Mostly because I want to see the showrunner squirm trying to write a female Doctor.
 

suitepee7

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personality, make him a lot more cynical would be funny xD no objections to a change of race though, provided the actor is good (that goes for any race to be honest). i wouldn't be happy with a change in gender though, just don't think it would work because they'd have to make a male companion, and it would probably be like rory, and fuck rory. on a similar note, fuck amy, i hated both of them...
 

talideon

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Tilda Swinton! Idris Elba! Or why not do both and make it the two old Jamaican ladies from the Lilt ads: that's be awesome! :)
 

Bat Vader

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Mr.Squishy said:
Bat Vader said:
Even though he is in his mid 70's I think they should try and get Christopher Lloyd
Dude. Cristohpher Lloyd just turned like, what 90? And celebrated his birthday by putting out a metal album.
That is Christopher Lee. If he was a few decades younger he would pry make a good Doctor as well.
 

Mr.Squishy

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Bat Vader said:
Mr.Squishy said:
Bat Vader said:
Even though he is in his mid 70's I think they should try and get Christopher Lloyd
Dude. Cristohpher Lloyd just turned like, what 90? And celebrated his birthday by putting out a metal album.
That is Christopher Lee. If he was a few decades younger he would pry make a good Doctor as well.
Well, gosh and golly, isn't my face just red now. Well, thanks for the heads-up.
 

Kaxbe

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You know what would be hilarious? If the next Doctor is actually YOUNGER.

Imagine if the Doctor, being a thousand years old, had the appearance of a 20 year old human.
 

Arkhangelsk

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Get Neil Gaiman to become the main writer. At least for a season. It would be awesome.

Other than that, I actually like Matt Smith as the Doctor, so I'm hoping they won't go too far from that kind of personality. I never watched the old Doctor Who so I don't really know how the older actors played the Doctor. But yeah, I like Matt Smith's hyperactivity, although I'd like a more serious touch as well. When I saw the Christmas episode, I fell in love with how he acted at the start. Then when he found Clara he just went back to the same old silliness, as if he never learned anything.
 

smartalec

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Oh, no, no! No! They aren't changing the Doctor again, are they? These new serieses seem like a constant stream of getting-to-know-yous, in which characters are put in front of the screen until we have learned every detail about them, and then they are cast aside. It feels that as soon as I have come to get to know and love a character, they're swopped out for someone else to drain of drama. The aliens, the settings, the stories all seem to be a backdrop. I can't take having to meet another fresh face! They don't have enough space in these 45-minute-episodes to keep cramming all this character exposition in there!

When did Doctor Who stop being a show about going to interesting places and trying to save people, and start being The Doctor Who Show About The Doctor And His Companions? Those sets an the rotating cast of guest stars must be expensive, why can't they take some time and do a three or four parter every now and again? Many of the new Who's episode ideas are fairly good, but they just don't have enough time to do them justice on screen, the pacing's all off, they've got to slow down... all they've got time for is the episode idea and some angst before they have to blitz towards the episode climax...

*sigh*

Moffat, take a breath, man. Give us time to appreciate an episode, don't rush through it at breakneck pace, don't crowd it out with main-character-centric drama...
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Gordon_4 said:
What's springing to my mind is some serious fucking retcons or ass-pulls are going to need to be made unless they can pin down the next Doctor for like a decade: this will be Regeneration 12, the last one.

I mean when they put this in after William Hartnell left, they probably didn't think they'd get that far.
That wouldn't even take effort - the doctor got a new set during the time war because that's something they can do - see, for example, the master.

As far as what they should change, I think it's fairly simple. They need to stop with the endlessly going darker route they've been on since the relaunch. Hell, if they could just manage to reliably keep a companion from being written out of the show via death (or effectively death as was the case with Rose and Donna), that'd be a step forward.