In Stunning 2D! [probable SPOILERS for NuWho episode "Flatline"]

[jjpor]

Is it just me being a curmudgeon, or is it a bit early to be crowning Jamie Mathieson showrunner-in-waiting just because he wrote two good scripts in a row? Are people that eager to be rid of Moffat? (And before you scoff at my naivety, I do glance at Tumblr from time to time nowadays and know that yes, yes quite a lot of them are

Comments

[liadtbunny]

I guess hailing Mathieson as the new Messiah is the usual fan over reaction, but yes his two stories were good. I think he handled the emotional stuff better. I said in another's lj, it's like they're working out character and relationships as they go along rather than sorting it all out in their heads before filming.

I do think Moffat needs to decide which show out of DW & Sherlock he wants to do, before the Dr nicks Sherlock's coat;p

Oh and the show does look lovely!

[jjpor]

Well, fans will be fans. Railing against them for lionising Mathieson probably itself is just part of the same thing, I suppose. ;) They were good stories, definitely; no arguing with that. From a personal standpoint, though, I didn't find that they stood out that much from the rest of the series.

I think Moffat inevitably will move on at some point in the next couple of years. And of course, as soon as there is a new showrunner he (unfortunately, almost certainly he) will be getting exactly the same sort of abuse from fans at large within the space of a few months. I think Moffat's honeymoon period lasted about two episodes of Series 5, if that! ;D

Yes, the direction this series has been great; perhaps having a "name" director on board in the form of Ben Wheatley made everybody else up their game. There's been a more uniform look across stories, too, I think.

oh no it's gone all tumblr!

[liadtbunny]

I’d love to see a female writer, full stop, working semi-ish regularly on 'Dr Who', never mind the heady heights of getting a female showrunner. Why won’t they let women write for Who? I don’t know I’m a woman:S I suppose the BBC could say the producer is a woman, but the most creative thing a producer does is the accounts. They can hardly use the argument the female companions do stuff now because it's not true - companions in the old days did stuff too. Nobody can claim women don’t or can’t write sci-fi - I‘ve been on the internet

Re: oh no it's gone all tumblr!

[jjpor]

It is a genuine concern, and one that a lot of people are voicing, and I'm not sure what the reason might be (although certainly a lot of people assume it's Moffat's fault, like everything else, although I'm not sure whether he's really the sole person responsible for commissioning all of the other writers involved, or has any sort of veto or anything).

You may have seen something publicised recently where Neil Gaiman was perceived as being critical of Moffat and the rest of the Who production team on this very issue. Pressed, he seems to have backed off from the alleged personal criticism, but he's sticking to his guns as regards the issue:

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2014/10/neil-gaiman-discusses-securing-women.html

I don't know whether that's true or not, or if fans online would accept the notion that it's just bad luck, but it's another angle on the problem.

[akashasheiress]

I didn't even know who this Mathieson person was, to be honest. Too much hype is never good. Or maybe I'm just getting old and don't know who the Cool Kids are supposed to be these days. ;D

[jjpor]

I didn't really know who he was either until the present fandom stuff. He's written various things for British TV over the past few years, but nothing I recall watching. He wrote two good Doctor Who stories that were shown back to back, but last time I checked the Nobel committee's criteria for handing out their prizes were a bit steeper than that. ;)

I think it was ''time for a change'' in the sense that it's always ''time for a change'' sooner or later in Who.I think that's definitely true. I don't think there was any pressing reason, other than Matt Smith's desire to move on (which I admit was a big one), why the change had to come then rather than, say, a year later. Still, I'm enjoying the new series and think Capaldi is doing excellent work, so I'm not complaining, exactly, just trying to keep a sense of perspective. dbskyler, above, knows the score, I think

[jjpor]

I don't know if I can really envisage what a Gatiss-controlled Doctor Who would really be like. I think people thought they sort of knew what they were getting with Moffat and were largely proved right, but apart from a couple of obvious themes he likes returning to I'm not sure I know what Gatiss's "style" would be. And I'm not really sure I would enjoy finding out. ;)