47 - Favourite special (after series 4)

[Greg]

With the final of the 'gap year' specials coming to ABC TV this Sunday, now would be a good time to have this poll.

If you are commenting about The End of Time, part 2, please remember some readers may not have a chance to read it yet, so please be sparing with anything that might be a spoiler.

If you are reading this and haven't seen The End of Time, part 2, well... you are running the risk of enountering spoilers. You may want to exit this discussion thread until you have seen it!

Please feel free to explain why the special you have chosen as your favourite deserves that rating to you.

Oh, and I've separated the two halves of The End of Time, because there aren't many choices this time.

[jfisher01]

I don't truly think there's been one special that I have disliked. The Next Doctor was a little bog-standard, but the rest of them kept me thoroughly entertained for the whole hour. I'm going to reserve judgement until I've seen The End of Time Part 2, but at the moment, I think Waters of Mars just edged out The End of Time Part 1.

[DrJohnSmith]

The Waters of Mars was a classic. Both Planet of The Dead and End of Time were good, they just can't beat Waters in my opinion.

[jfisher01]

Right, having now seen The End of Time P2, I think I was right in voting for Waters. I loved The End of Time, and both episodes together would make my favourite special overall, but Part 1 feels pointless without Part 2, and Part 2 feels hollow without Part 1.

[charlie]

Waters is the clear winner here. Good zombie story with nice unobtrusive references to classic who and good character development for the doctor (getting harder and harder to find nowadays)

[DrJohnSmith]

Who voted for The Next Doctor?

[Dog Star]

Not me!
I thought it was a wonderful and colorful romp and it comes close to being my 2nd favorite, but I think that Waters.. stood out from any other Special in terms of dramatic plot, character development, acting and direction.
I like all Who, but every now and then one story really stands out from the others.

[Mister Andersen]

Who voted for The Next Doctor?

Me. Planet of the Dead was an utterly wasted story with largely unlikeable characters, the ending of Waters of Mars was badly plotted and written featuring a cast largely of ciphers, and End of Time, while it had some very good points -- indeed, the best points of the season -- just didn't hit the notes of why the Doctor is such an awesome person that One Doctor did (plus it revisted the stupid mess of an ending from season 4).

[montypython]

I also voted for The Next Doctor. They key word here is "favourite", and I interpret that to mean the special that I enjoy watching. Waters was scary and intriguing, but I didn't particularly enjoy watching the Doctor destroy everything he's been trying to prevent and driving a lovely woman to suicide. I felt that it messed up the rules of time travel, with Fires of Pompeii suggesting that you can't prevent key historical events, and Father's Day suggesting that there will be severe consequences if you do.

As for The Next Doctor, it was really interesting to watch the Doctor meet a man thought he was the Doctor. The Cybermen worked well in the workhouse setting, and Miss Hartigan was a good cold villainess.

[charlie]

I think the overall meaning of Doctor Who is that there are no rules of time travel. They're just there as a metaphor for a moral code. It's a moral message. eg You could go and murder someone but you probably shouldn't.

[Dog Star]

Must admit that I really enjoyed The Next Doctor and particularly David Morrisey's performance.
Loved the color, the extravagance and the whole weird "Dickens on LSD" vibe that it gave off. (Well, to me anyway.)
The only thing that I didn't like was the ending.
This has now irrevocably sentenced Doctor Who to the world of fantasy. (History does NOT record a 200 ft tall Cyber-thingy wading through London all them years ago.
Past episodes, both old and new series, have been at pains to integrate the Doctor's adventures with contemporary and historical reality, eg. many of the First Doctor's adventures, and much of the Third Doctor's earlier Earth-bound episodes.
Most of the historical stories in the new series have made at least a token effort to accurately represent the historical reality of the times.
It's a pity RTD had to relegate Doctor Who to the realms of Alice In Wonderland by taking it totally out of historical context.
Lazy writing, in my pedantic and temporal opinion.
A small quibble given the general quality of every other aspect of the production.

Still think Waters.... was better, though.

[Aquaman]

This has now irrevocably sentenced Doctor Who to the world of fantasy. (History does NOT record a 200 ft tall Cyber-thingy wading through London all them years ago.
Past episodes, both old and new series, have been at pains to integrate the Doctor's adventures with contemporary and historical reality, eg. many of the First Doctor's adventures, and much of the Third Doctor's earlier Earth-bound episodes.
Most of the historical stories in the new series have made at least a token effort to accurately represent the historical reality of the times.
It's a pity RTD had to relegate Doctor Who to the realms of Alice In Wonderland by taking it totally out of historical context.
Lazy writing, in my pedantic and temporal opinion.
A small quibble given the general quality of every other aspect of the production.

I'm of the opinion that the transition to fantasy is much broader than that. Since the new series has returned there has been an increasing amount of publicity photos that depict The Doctor pointing the Sonic Screwdriver at something, evoking the image of a wizard waving a magic wand. That this kind of attitude towards the Sonic Screwdriver had also crept into the programmes became apparent to me in The End of Time when it was used to disable the salvage ship by basically waving it in the air, not even directly interfacing with any part of the ship. It emits a light and makes a noise. It may be argued that this was a way of showing, televisually, a signal transmission but I'm sure there are other examples in the new series that demonstrate the Sonic Screwdriver as a magic wand analogue (though details elude me at the present time). RTD tried to limit the function of the Sonic Screwdriver by introducing the deadlock seal, but really this is nothing more than one form of magic to counter another.

Really, I don't have a problem with the Sonic Screwdriver and I agree with RTD that you shouldn't let a locked door in the way of the advancement of the plot. The 'magic' doesn't bother me too much either. But when it is used to contrive situations such as the disabling-the-spaceship set piece then things are going a bit too far. I got quite a bit of enjoyment out of End of Time (particularly at the DWCA screening - it's a very good example of 'Stadium Who', I subject I may or may not elaborate on later) but RTD's repeated use of throwaway explanations for magical plot devices and other contrivances was irritating.

With what we know about Moffat era it seems like there is no end in sight for this quasi-fantasy line of stories, but really this a sign that the new series is a product of it's era: the era of Harry Potter, zombie walks and, though I am loathe to admit it, Twilight. Musicians dress up like robots as some sort of statement about cool. Hard sci-fi is probably about as in vogue as prog rock right now. But we have a current series of Doctor Who, people like it and it's enough of a commercial viability to ensure it's survival for a few more years yet.

[Aquaman]

Oh, and the Tenth Doctor's regeneration was triggered by an unsubtlely foreshadowed plot contrivance. What other role it played in the narrative is lost on me. Still, the episode was still watchable for Tennant, Simm, Dalton, Cribbins and Smith.

And the Vinvoci would make fascinating recurring characters, possibly even companions.

[Dog Star]

This has now irrevocably sentenced Doctor Who to the world of fantasy. (History does NOT record a 200 ft tall Cyber-thingy wading through London all them years ago.
Past episodes, both old and new series, have been at pains to integrate the Doctor's adventures with contemporary and historical reality, eg. many of the First Doctor's adventures, and much of the Third Doctor's earlier Earth-bound episodes.
Most of the historical stories in the new series have made at least a token effort to accurately represent the historical reality of the times.
It's a pity RTD had to relegate Doctor Who to the realms of Alice In Wonderland by taking it totally out of historical context.
Lazy writing, in my pedantic and temporal opinion.
A small quibble given the general quality of every other aspect of the production.

I'm of the opinion that the transition to fantasy is much broader than that. Since the new series has returned there has been an increasing amount of publicity photos that depict The Doctor pointing the Sonic Screwdriver at something, evoking the image of a wizard waving a magic wand. That this kind of attitude towards the Sonic Screwdriver had also crept into the programmes became apparent to me in The End of Time when it was used to disable the salvage ship by basically waving it in the air, not even directly interfacing with any part of the ship. It emits a light and makes a noise. It may be argued that this was a way of showing, televisually, a signal transmission but I'm sure there are other examples in the new series that demonstrate the Sonic Screwdriver as a magic wand analogue (though details elude me at the present time). RTD tried to limit the function of the Sonic Screwdriver by introducing the deadlock seal, but really this is nothing more than one form of magic to counter another.

Really, I don't have a problem with the Sonic Screwdriver and I agree with RTD that you shouldn't let a locked door in the way of the advancement of the plot. The 'magic' doesn't bother me too much either. But when it is used to contrive situations such as the disabling-the-spaceship set piece then things are going a bit too far. I got quite a bit of enjoyment out of End of Time (particularly at the DWCA screening - it's a very good example of 'Stadium Who', I subject I may or may not elaborate on later) but RTD's repeated use of throwaway explanations for magical plot devices and other contrivances was irritating.

With what we know about Moffat era it seems like there is no end in sight for this quasi-fantasy line of stories, but really this a sign that the new series is a product of it's era: the era of Harry Potter, zombie walks and, though I am loathe to admit it, Twilight. Musicians dress up like robots as some sort of statement about cool. Hard sci-fi is probably about as in vogue as prog rock right now. But we have a current series of Doctor Who, people like it and it's enough of a commercial viability to ensure it's survival for a few more years yet.

Yeah, know what you mean and tend to agree.
Doctor Who has always contained a strong under current of fantasy in its science fiction mix, but that mix has been significantly altered in the new series so that fantasy is the predominate element. (IMO)
But I guess that the above statement just identifies me as just another whingeing old geezer.

With regards to the Doctor waving the sonic screw driver around like a magic wand, I've long had the opinion that one of the reasons that Doctor Who is so popular is that it is very much a modern day re-telling of the Arthurian myths of Merlin.
Merlin is a potent mythical archetype and I think that the Doctor is very much an echo or reverberation of that archetype.

Still, there's a subtle difference between good fantasy and just plain bad science and I think RTD has crossed the line more than any other writer or producer.
Still, as you say, a product of the times.
(Have we gone Off Topic yet?)

[dallas]

My selection would be

The Next Dr.

As it is the best "special". Ie It fun and Xmasy.

[jfisher01]

Oh, and the Tenth Doctor's regeneration was triggered by an unsubtlely foreshadowed plot contrivance. What other role it played in the narrative is lost on me. Still, the episode was still watchable for Tennant, Simm, Dalton, Cribbins and Smith.

And the Vinvoci would make fascinating recurring characters, possibly even companions.

And that, for me, is precisely the point. It WASN'T The Master who killed The Doctor. It WASN'T The Timelords. It was little old Wilf. That's exactly why I love it. It doesn't play any part in the narrative at all.

[charlie]

The problem with sci-fi in general is that it has become irrevocably similar to fantasy. Quite often in scifi something will happen, some incomprehesible and unfactual techno babbal as its called will be spouted and the story will continue. Much like in fantasy when there's unicorn blood in the broth so the effect is doubled. This similarity has led scfi and fantasy to be grouped into the same category at bookshops, cinemas and video shops etc. One of the reasons I like 60s scifi, black and white scifi, and earlier is that so much of it was true, hard core scifi- where they would take a theory on the forefront of science, exaggerate it a bit and fully explore it's proposed effects thus challenging the viewer mentally. Sort of like in war of the worlds when the aliens are eventually defeated because they cannot cope with Earth bacteria. That was a genuinely new concept when that book was written. Kind of like when they came up with the idea of the universe expanding with bubbles sprouting off it thus leading to the E-space trilogy in an offshoot of the universe.
Nowadays it seems that science has gone so far that it is inconceivable to the average viewer and even the writers so hard-core scifi is just too hard. And there's no money in that.

[Dog Star]

Yeah, I know where you're coming from and tend to agree.
The Science Fiction section in the local Dymocks is basically full of fantasy novels.
It's weird. I've been reading about and trying (unsuccessfully) to understand string theory for about the last 3 years and from my puzzled perspective the science of string theory and quantum physics makes the fantasy of much modern SF look kind of staid, dull and unimaginative. It's just not as daring and balls-to-the-wall as real science.
But yeah, kind of hard to crack out a fictional story about it that will appeal to a mass audience, I guess.

[Speckled Jim]

I think it can be done. Authors like Greg Bear and Iain M Banks manage to skirt that clever ground between hard science and great storytelling. I'd love to see it done more in Dr Who, and with the end of the Era of Magic and Dodgy Plotholes, we just might see it happen....

[jfisher01]

I think it can be done. Authors like Greg Bear and Iain M Banks manage to skirt that clever ground between hard science and great storytelling. I'd love to see it done more in Dr Who, and with the end of the Era of Magic and Dodgy Plotholes, we just might see it happen....

Why is it that everyone immediately assumes that Moffat is going to change things dramatically. He's already said he's going to follow the RTD format, and that it's not going to be dark. So, pray tell, why do you immediately assume that he will make things (in your eyes) better?