Doctor Who Marathon
So I'm binge watching Doctor Who on BBC America as part of its lead up to the Christmas Special/Regeneration episode (which I'm thinking is going to be fantastic, as the Ninth Doctor might say), and I'm struck by how pervasively craptastic much of the RTD era was. By the middle of Season Two (after Age of Steel), it's like he'd run out of good ideas and was just going through the motions and/or writing ridiculous dreck. Idiot's Lantern was a nothing, the Ood two-parter was ok (probably didn't need two parts), but then we fall off a cliff with Love & Monsters, Fear Her, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, where Davies seems to think, "Crap, I'm out of ideas, let me rip of Pullman!"
The next season starts out ok with Donna then Martha and Shakespeare Code is excellent. Then we're relegated to Gridlock, the stupid Cult of Skaro and their pig slaves, and Lazarus. Things improve for a while with the Family of Blood two-parter and Blink (ever notice that Moffat's episodes are the best of every year of the RTD era?). Utopia is very good, but the whole Harold Saxon thing is ridiculous.
Season 4 recovers; there are a number of good episodes, the great introduction of River Song, and no truly awful ones (I'm not sure why everyone hates on VotD -- yeah, the villain is a bit lame (no pun intended), but the rest of the guest stars are good and interesting characters (and I'd take Astrid Peth over Rose Tyler any day, though I do appreciate Billie Piper's range as an actor now that I've seen her in Penny Dreadful and DotD as the Moment).
Finally, the specials are very good, until RTD tries writing for John Simm again. I've realized that I think Ten is the least of the four new-era doctors not because Tennant's the weakest actor, but because he had the worst writing. It's an analogous reaction that I had to the first season of Capaldi, but there the writing problem was the character, not the plots (some of the best plots in the history of the series that year -- Listen, Mummy and Flatline). Luckily, Moffat course corrected on Twelve (just as he did with Clara the year before -- with Eleven she was just a McGuffin) and made him a lot more fun.
I hope Chibnall doesn't screw everything up (and if you want to see what that looks like, check out Broadchurch season two).
The next season starts out ok with Donna then Martha and Shakespeare Code is excellent. Then we're relegated to Gridlock, the stupid Cult of Skaro and their pig slaves, and Lazarus. Things improve for a while with the Family of Blood two-parter and Blink (ever notice that Moffat's episodes are the best of every year of the RTD era?). Utopia is very good, but the whole Harold Saxon thing is ridiculous.
Season 4 recovers; there are a number of good episodes, the great introduction of River Song, and no truly awful ones (I'm not sure why everyone hates on VotD -- yeah, the villain is a bit lame (no pun intended), but the rest of the guest stars are good and interesting characters (and I'd take Astrid Peth over Rose Tyler any day, though I do appreciate Billie Piper's range as an actor now that I've seen her in Penny Dreadful and DotD as the Moment).
Finally, the specials are very good, until RTD tries writing for John Simm again. I've realized that I think Ten is the least of the four new-era doctors not because Tennant's the weakest actor, but because he had the worst writing. It's an analogous reaction that I had to the first season of Capaldi, but there the writing problem was the character, not the plots (some of the best plots in the history of the series that year -- Listen, Mummy and Flatline). Luckily, Moffat course corrected on Twelve (just as he did with Clara the year before -- with Eleven she was just a McGuffin) and made him a lot more fun.
I hope Chibnall doesn't screw everything up (and if you want to see what that looks like, check out Broadchurch season two).