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I've been covering Doctor Who way out of order, starting with Peter Capaldi, then eventually working my way around to the classic series before finally reaching David Tennant. But I'm here now, in Doctor Who (2005)'s golden age, so now I get to ask the question "But was it really that good though?" Was the Tenth Doctor and Rose's time in the TARDIS really the stuff of legends, or does this run look very dated 20 years later?
I can tell you right now that I still don't like that logo much. It looks like it should be mounted in front of a shop somewhere on the trendier side of a high street, not mucking about in the time vortex.
Okay, there are going to be SPOILERS here mostly for The Christmas Invasion up to Doomsday, though I may also mention something from an earlier story. I'll not be saying anything about The Runaway Bride, though you can probably assume from the title that it has a bride in it.
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Series 2 of Doctor Who really wanted to deliver more of the same. It's structure echoes series 1's, starting with a present day alien invasion story, a future story with Cassandra, a past story with a historical celebrity, a big reintroduction of a classic foe, and so on. We also got three two-parters again, including the finale.
But there was one small problem that they had to work around: they'd lost their lead actor. Christopher Ecclestone had been succeeded by David Tennant, and he inevitably brought a different energy to the Doctor. Ten is the sexy charming incarnation of the big space nerd, who doesn't mask his pain with goofy behaviour... as much. He's still a bit eccentric, but it's less forced. The end of series one gave him some closure over the Time War and that, plus his time with Rose and his regeneration into a new body, has clearly taken a weight off his shoulders. The stories aren't about him slowly revealing his pain, it's about his joy having a expiration date.
He's David Tennant, you don't need me to tell you that the audience accepted him right away, in fact this era can be considered the 'good old days' for this series. The Doctor and Rose are often on the verge of falling into Hell, but as people they're in a good place.
Though there was one other small problem: they were about to lose their other lead actor.
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Like the first season, this year has an arc word (Torchwood), but it doesn't exactly have an arc. Instead episodes featured themes and threads that got pulled together in the finale. We got multiple episodes about lonely people who'd been left behind, and a statistically unlikely number of queens and kings.
It also had a sense of doom hanging over it, with characters like Queen Victoria and Elton from Love & Monsters outright telling us that the Doctor and Rose can't keep doing what they're doing forever. Something tragic is going to happen.
Not many ongoing series are able to completely replace their cast after two seasons, but Doctor Who can and has done so many times already. This is one of the reasons why Sarah Jane's appearance was such a smart move, as it prepares viewers for the reality that Rose will leave and reassures us that the show goes on. It was just a good idea to bring Sarah Jane back in general actually.
Anyway, I've heard that it was Billie Piper who decided to walk away and it was probably a good time for it. Part of what makes the Doctor Who formula successful is that the Doctor is always accompanied by a regular person from the present day who looks at the universe with fresh eyes and pushes back against the Doctor's alien behaviour, and Rose was becoming a bit too much like him for that.
I'm actually lying, the Doctor has travelled with another Time Lord, a tin dog, genius aliens, a warrior woman from the savage future... the show can do what it likes. Though for this era of the series Rose was getting a bit too comfortable with the sci-fi and it made sense for her to leave.
Plus this era also likes to be emotionally manipulative, and her departure gave Russell T Davies a chance to really twist the knife and get the tears going. One of those recurring themes I mentioned is that you can't have the Doctor without the monsters - salvation and damnation are the same thing. But some things are worth getting your heart broken for.
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RTD's reinvented Doctor Who is all about love & monsters, this season more than most.
Monsters have always been a mandatory ingredient in the series, at least after the pure historicals got phased out, but love is something a bit new and not something that traditionally goes with the Doctor. He's been the granddad, the crazy uncle, the professor, the stressed single dad taking the family out in the car... but 1996 TV movie aside, he's not been the romantic lead. So the writers definitely risked annoying old school fans by putting him in a relationship with Rose (and Madame de Pompadour!)
In fact they did annoy some old school fans. I didn't become a fan myself until years later and it feels a bit weird even to me. But I don't recall it turning up in any 'Top 10 Things That Ruined Doctor Who Forever' lists, so I think it's mostly accepted.
One of the reasons they kind of got away with it is that the Doctor always stops short of saying that he loves someone. It happens on multiple occasions (when he's arguing in School Reunion, when he's dangling over the void in The Satan Pit), leading to the scene on the beach where it seems like he might just finally admit to Rose that he's in love with her... but then he runs out of time. Maybe he just really cares about her, that would be normal for any incarnation and any companion.
Anyway, the threads and themes all inevitably lead to where the arc word said they would: Torchwood.
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Series 1 was all heading towards explaining what the hell "Bad Wolf" was about. The phrase appeared everywhere; an impossible coincidence. But then it turned out that Rose had planted the message herself when she became god for a bit. Bad Wolf was Rose telling herself that she had the power to reject a mundane life of chips and working in a shop, as long as she didn't give up.
Torchwood is the opposite. Created accidentally due to the Doctor and Rose screwing around in the past, it's a reflection of their arrogance and hubris. And the events there drag Rose away from the Doctor and back to Earth.
It's basically a friendlier version of Henry van Statten's operation from Dalek, except with imperialistic ambitions passed down from the Victorian era. Which I suppose is why the season keeps coming back to characters doing their patriotic duty for royalty and their empires. They're always looking for more power and ending up next to a pit to Hell.
Torchwood could've been a decent villain on their own perhaps, but that's not how things worked out. Instead the series crashed them right into the 'medical experiments to extend life at the expense of humanity' themes, the Doctor's Time War baggage, and Rose's parallel universe fantasy, and it made the finale satisfyingly chaotic. I just wish they'd had a bit more money for that Lever Room set. Maybe they could've put something outside the windows too.
THE BAD
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While I'm complaining about things, I have to talk about series 2's tone.
The first series was all over the place, with mature emotional stories like Father's Day surrounded by episodes with a burping wheelie bin, Plastic Mickey being hyped for p-p-pizza, and a farting alien trying to fly away on a space surfboard before turning into an egg. But no one knew what Doctor Who was supposed to be in 2005 and the production team had to figure that out as they went.
They didn't really have that excuse for series 2 though, and this year was still all over the place!
I feel like this is partly because Doctor Who's often considered to be a kids show, so every now and then they have to throw in something really childish. And it's partly because Russell T Davies just likes this stuff and thinks it's funny.
I want to keep watching the series that gave us episodes like The Girl in the Fireplace and The Impossible Planet, that show is absolutely my kind of thing. Though I know some people really enjoyed Love & Monsters and I bet there are some kids who like Fear Her, so I'd want that series to carry on as well... as something separate that I don't have to watch.
I never saw The Sarah Jane Adventures, but I know it started the next year, and it seems like that would've been a more suitable place for the actual 'kids show' stories to end up. And hopefully all the sexy paving stone scenes got redirected to the other spin-off, Torchwood, after this, seeing as it was supposed to be the wild, dark sexy thriller for adults and it was also starting soon.
THE GOOD
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I also have to talk about the good things. Like the Cybermen.
The Cybermen were a major force this season, appearing in four of the episodes, and I think the series did a great job of reintroducing the classic villain. They basically just reset them, clean slate, while acknowledging that all the old history is still there. The classic mythology is just not relevant here, because these are a different group from a twin Earth in a parallel universe (instead of a twin Earth that just happened to be in the solar system.)
They could've done anything with these new Cybermen really, completely reinvented them, and they did give the costume way more of a makeover than the Daleks got. But then the Cybermen looked different almost every time they appeared anyway, and the reimagining kept the important parts the same: the handles on the head and the teardrops in the eyes.
I didn't fully appreciate how good these suits are until I had all these screencaps to glance at while writing; they're a really nice design and well executed. They're also suitably stompy and have a great theme. I mean their music's good, not their story themes... though they did a good job with that as well now that I think about it. 2006's incarnation of the Cybermen still give you the horror of having your identity, body and emotions taken away, but now they're presented as an mandatory upgrade, like a new phone or Windows 11. They're the product of a billionaire who feels like if he's going to have to be a cyborg to survive, so should everyone else, and they should go first.
The series actually did a pretty good job with continuity this year, seeing as it brought back Sarah Jane Smith and K9 and did them both justice. It was a bit risky to unambiguously tie the series to the classic show like this, they could've alienated new fans by making them feel left out, but I think they got away with it. Plus it even gave viewers a list of classic stories to try, if they didn't mind googling "Sarah Jane dinosaurs" or "Sarah Jane Loch Ness Monster".
Oh right, I was talking about the music. Composer Murray Gold made most of the series 1 soundtrack in his attic with samples. but he was given a little extra money to spend this time. Enough for a couple of days with the National Orchestra of Wales to record the music with live instruments this time! I've heard that only The Christmas Invasion and the finale got the full treatment, but he also recorded some of the returning musical cues and this apparently helped, as to me the soundtrack was a noticeable upgrade over series 1.
CONCLUSION
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And that's it for the Tenth Doctor and Rose era. It only lasted 13 episodes and a special.
Series 2 might have a bit of a cloud hanging over it, due to all the talk of loss and predictions of Rose's inevitable doom, but I think this was a pretty fun year for the show. Everyone's grown closer, the heroes are always joking around, and it's nice to see the Doctor less burdened by guilt and trauma. The series took Eccleston's departure and saw it as an opportunity instead of a catastrophe. Plus it delves deeper into who he is, interrogating what he believes and why he never returns to his old companions.
So you'd expect me to give it really good episode scores, right? Right?
But I'm going to make you wait to find out, as first I want to say something about the three companions we said goodbye to this season.
Rose Tyler (aka Bad Wolf): In a lot of ways the realistically
messy Rose was the companion the classic series had been heading towards,
after two seasons exploring the character of Ace. Rose wasn't a badass
fighter, she was more likely to go sulk in jealousy than to pick up a rocket
launcher, but stories were often as much about her as they were about the sci-fi plot. Plus Rose
did something new for the series: she fell in love with the Doctor and was
too obsessed to leave. It's lucky that she also had an arc about her dead
dad so the tragedy of her departure was softened slightly by getting
everything else she ever wanted and also becoming rich and getting a good job.
Mickey Smith (aka Ricky, aka Mickey the Idiot): Mickey is the companion that turned
down the call to adventure over multiple years. But that's because he had the
most room to grow. Over two seasons he went from a kind of pathetic figure,
obsessed with Rose but without the confidence to follow her in the TARDIS,
and became a brave hero who knew what he wanted and believed he had the
skills to get the job done. He could also be relied on for some decent
quips, often at the expense of Rose or the Doctor. In fact Mickey could be
relied on for anything. Even when he stumbled he accidentally saved the sun.
Jackie Tyler (aka Rose Tyler): Jackie was the anti-companion,
the normality that Rose left behind. She didn't like the Doctor reducing
things to science and she hated that Rose was becoming a different person
because of her travels. But we've never had a companion's parent's
perspective before and her distinctive personality made the constant returns
to present day London more fun. She was the good bit of
Love & Monsters! Plus when it was her turn to travel in the
TARDIS and walk in Rose's shoes, she stepped up, noticed things, and asked
questions. She also earns points for escaping the Cybermen on her own, which her alternate
universe doppelganger failed at.
Ranking
Series 2 was pretty short so I'll rank all of it. I'll even throw in the Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion, partly because it came in my Series 2 box set, partly because I want to. It's an important part of this year's arc, and the season could use another good story to help balance Love & Monsters and Fear Her.
I still think it's weird how Tooth and Claw has an 'and' while Love & Monsters has a '&'.
These are very similar scores to what I handed out in my series 1 review, which seems about right as I liked series 2 roughly the same overall. This is also a very generic normal order to rank the episodes, without any wild choices, so I apologise for being boring.
Next time on Doctor Who:
I can't make any predictions for series 3 as I've seen it all already. I can't even predict if I'll write about it or not.
If I was going to carry on covering Doctor Who episodes on their 20th anniversary, next would be Torchwood episode 1: Everything Changes, on 22nd October 2006. And then before Doctor Who season 3 starts there's a Sarah Jane Adventures special, Invasion of the Bane. But I won't be reviewing them, because I don't want to.
Honestly the idea of writing about Doctor Who's third series doesn't have much appeal to me right now either, but it's not because series 2 let me down. No, I like this run, David Tennant's great as the Doctor, and there's tons for me to talk about in series 3. It's just not the project I want to devote my time to at the moment.
Next, on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm basically done for the rest of the year! I'm supposed to be
writing about Dungeons & Dragons games for my video game site, I
can't keep splitting my focus each week.But there was one small problem that they had to work around: they'd lost their lead actor. Christopher Ecclestone had been succeeded by David Tennant, and he inevitably brought a different energy to the Doctor. Ten is the sexy charming incarnation of the big space nerd, who doesn't mask his pain with goofy behaviour... as much. He's still a bit eccentric, but it's less forced. The end of series one gave him some closure over the Time War and that, plus his time with Rose and his regeneration into a new body, has clearly taken a weight off his shoulders. The stories aren't about him slowly revealing his pain, it's about his joy having a expiration date.
He's David Tennant, you don't need me to tell you that the audience accepted him right away, in fact this era can be considered the 'good old days' for this series. The Doctor and Rose are often on the verge of falling into Hell, but as people they're in a good place.
Though there was one other small problem: they were about to lose their other lead actor.
_Series_2_Review_03.jpg)
It also had a sense of doom hanging over it, with characters like Queen Victoria and Elton from Love & Monsters outright telling us that the Doctor and Rose can't keep doing what they're doing forever. Something tragic is going to happen.
Not many ongoing series are able to completely replace their cast after two seasons, but Doctor Who can and has done so many times already. This is one of the reasons why Sarah Jane's appearance was such a smart move, as it prepares viewers for the reality that Rose will leave and reassures us that the show goes on. It was just a good idea to bring Sarah Jane back in general actually.
Anyway, I've heard that it was Billie Piper who decided to walk away and it was probably a good time for it. Part of what makes the Doctor Who formula successful is that the Doctor is always accompanied by a regular person from the present day who looks at the universe with fresh eyes and pushes back against the Doctor's alien behaviour, and Rose was becoming a bit too much like him for that.
I'm actually lying, the Doctor has travelled with another Time Lord, a tin dog, genius aliens, a warrior woman from the savage future... the show can do what it likes. Though for this era of the series Rose was getting a bit too comfortable with the sci-fi and it made sense for her to leave.
Plus this era also likes to be emotionally manipulative, and her departure gave Russell T Davies a chance to really twist the knife and get the tears going. One of those recurring themes I mentioned is that you can't have the Doctor without the monsters - salvation and damnation are the same thing. But some things are worth getting your heart broken for.
_Series_2_Review_04.jpg)
Monsters have always been a mandatory ingredient in the series, at least after the pure historicals got phased out, but love is something a bit new and not something that traditionally goes with the Doctor. He's been the granddad, the crazy uncle, the professor, the stressed single dad taking the family out in the car... but 1996 TV movie aside, he's not been the romantic lead. So the writers definitely risked annoying old school fans by putting him in a relationship with Rose (and Madame de Pompadour!)
In fact they did annoy some old school fans. I didn't become a fan myself until years later and it feels a bit weird even to me. But I don't recall it turning up in any 'Top 10 Things That Ruined Doctor Who Forever' lists, so I think it's mostly accepted.
One of the reasons they kind of got away with it is that the Doctor always stops short of saying that he loves someone. It happens on multiple occasions (when he's arguing in School Reunion, when he's dangling over the void in The Satan Pit), leading to the scene on the beach where it seems like he might just finally admit to Rose that he's in love with her... but then he runs out of time. Maybe he just really cares about her, that would be normal for any incarnation and any companion.
Anyway, the threads and themes all inevitably lead to where the arc word said they would: Torchwood.
_Series_2_Review_07.jpg)
Torchwood is the opposite. Created accidentally due to the Doctor and Rose screwing around in the past, it's a reflection of their arrogance and hubris. And the events there drag Rose away from the Doctor and back to Earth.
It's basically a friendlier version of Henry van Statten's operation from Dalek, except with imperialistic ambitions passed down from the Victorian era. Which I suppose is why the season keeps coming back to characters doing their patriotic duty for royalty and their empires. They're always looking for more power and ending up next to a pit to Hell.
Torchwood could've been a decent villain on their own perhaps, but that's not how things worked out. Instead the series crashed them right into the 'medical experiments to extend life at the expense of humanity' themes, the Doctor's Time War baggage, and Rose's parallel universe fantasy, and it made the finale satisfyingly chaotic. I just wish they'd had a bit more money for that Lever Room set. Maybe they could've put something outside the windows too.
THE BAD
_Series_2_Review_05.jpg)
The first series was all over the place, with mature emotional stories like Father's Day surrounded by episodes with a burping wheelie bin, Plastic Mickey being hyped for p-p-pizza, and a farting alien trying to fly away on a space surfboard before turning into an egg. But no one knew what Doctor Who was supposed to be in 2005 and the production team had to figure that out as they went.
They didn't really have that excuse for series 2 though, and this year was still all over the place!
I feel like this is partly because Doctor Who's often considered to be a kids show, so every now and then they have to throw in something really childish. And it's partly because Russell T Davies just likes this stuff and thinks it's funny.
I want to keep watching the series that gave us episodes like The Girl in the Fireplace and The Impossible Planet, that show is absolutely my kind of thing. Though I know some people really enjoyed Love & Monsters and I bet there are some kids who like Fear Her, so I'd want that series to carry on as well... as something separate that I don't have to watch.
I never saw The Sarah Jane Adventures, but I know it started the next year, and it seems like that would've been a more suitable place for the actual 'kids show' stories to end up. And hopefully all the sexy paving stone scenes got redirected to the other spin-off, Torchwood, after this, seeing as it was supposed to be the wild, dark sexy thriller for adults and it was also starting soon.
THE GOOD
_Series_2_Review_06.jpg)
The Cybermen were a major force this season, appearing in four of the episodes, and I think the series did a great job of reintroducing the classic villain. They basically just reset them, clean slate, while acknowledging that all the old history is still there. The classic mythology is just not relevant here, because these are a different group from a twin Earth in a parallel universe (instead of a twin Earth that just happened to be in the solar system.)
They could've done anything with these new Cybermen really, completely reinvented them, and they did give the costume way more of a makeover than the Daleks got. But then the Cybermen looked different almost every time they appeared anyway, and the reimagining kept the important parts the same: the handles on the head and the teardrops in the eyes.
I didn't fully appreciate how good these suits are until I had all these screencaps to glance at while writing; they're a really nice design and well executed. They're also suitably stompy and have a great theme. I mean their music's good, not their story themes... though they did a good job with that as well now that I think about it. 2006's incarnation of the Cybermen still give you the horror of having your identity, body and emotions taken away, but now they're presented as an mandatory upgrade, like a new phone or Windows 11. They're the product of a billionaire who feels like if he's going to have to be a cyborg to survive, so should everyone else, and they should go first.
The series actually did a pretty good job with continuity this year, seeing as it brought back Sarah Jane Smith and K9 and did them both justice. It was a bit risky to unambiguously tie the series to the classic show like this, they could've alienated new fans by making them feel left out, but I think they got away with it. Plus it even gave viewers a list of classic stories to try, if they didn't mind googling "Sarah Jane dinosaurs" or "Sarah Jane Loch Ness Monster".
Oh right, I was talking about the music. Composer Murray Gold made most of the series 1 soundtrack in his attic with samples. but he was given a little extra money to spend this time. Enough for a couple of days with the National Orchestra of Wales to record the music with live instruments this time! I've heard that only The Christmas Invasion and the finale got the full treatment, but he also recorded some of the returning musical cues and this apparently helped, as to me the soundtrack was a noticeable upgrade over series 1.
CONCLUSION
_Series_2_Review_02.jpg)
Series 2 might have a bit of a cloud hanging over it, due to all the talk of loss and predictions of Rose's inevitable doom, but I think this was a pretty fun year for the show. Everyone's grown closer, the heroes are always joking around, and it's nice to see the Doctor less burdened by guilt and trauma. The series took Eccleston's departure and saw it as an opportunity instead of a catastrophe. Plus it delves deeper into who he is, interrogating what he believes and why he never returns to his old companions.
So you'd expect me to give it really good episode scores, right? Right?
But I'm going to make you wait to find out, as first I want to say something about the three companions we said goodbye to this season.
Rose Tyler (aka Bad Wolf): In a lot of ways the realistically
messy Rose was the companion the classic series had been heading towards,
after two seasons exploring the character of Ace. Rose wasn't a badass
fighter, she was more likely to go sulk in jealousy than to pick up a rocket
launcher, but stories were often as much about her as they were about the sci-fi plot. Plus Rose
did something new for the series: she fell in love with the Doctor and was
too obsessed to leave. It's lucky that she also had an arc about her dead
dad so the tragedy of her departure was softened slightly by getting
everything else she ever wanted and also becoming rich and getting a good job.
Mickey Smith (aka Ricky, aka Mickey the Idiot): Mickey is the companion that turned
down the call to adventure over multiple years. But that's because he had the
most room to grow. Over two seasons he went from a kind of pathetic figure,
obsessed with Rose but without the confidence to follow her in the TARDIS,
and became a brave hero who knew what he wanted and believed he had the
skills to get the job done. He could also be relied on for some decent
quips, often at the expense of Rose or the Doctor. In fact Mickey could be
relied on for anything. Even when he stumbled he accidentally saved the sun.
Jackie Tyler (aka Rose Tyler): Jackie was the anti-companion,
the normality that Rose left behind. She didn't like the Doctor reducing
things to science and she hated that Rose was becoming a different person
because of her travels. But we've never had a companion's parent's
perspective before and her distinctive personality made the constant returns
to present day London more fun. She was the good bit of
Love & Monsters! Plus when it was her turn to travel in the
TARDIS and walk in Rose's shoes, she stepped up, noticed things, and asked
questions. She also earns points for escaping the Cybermen on her own, which her alternate
universe doppelganger failed at. Ranking
Series 2 was pretty short so I'll rank all of it. I'll even throw in the Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion, partly because it came in my Series 2 box set, partly because I want to. It's an important part of this year's arc, and the season could use another good story to help balance Love & Monsters and Fear Her.
| 11. | Love & Monsters - Gives Jackie a chance to shine without the sci-fi. But then it goes full RTD camp. (5) |
| 10. | Fear Her - Lots of problems but the most annoying was the choice to have the antagonist whisper in all their scenes. (5) |
| 9. | New Earth - Lots of good comedy with Cassandra, leading to a surprisingly emotional ending. But man it's dumb. (5) |
| 8. | Tooth and Claw - Good CGI werewolf, shame about the inexplicable Shaolin monks. (6) |
| 7. | The Idiot's Lantern - It's mostly the villain's face-removing powers being absurd that bothers me. (6) |
| 6. | Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel - Good solid two-parter in an atypical Doctor Who setting that gets very personal for Rose. (8) |
| 5. | Army of Ghosts / Doomsday - Gets the edge over the previous Cybermen two-parter due to its extreme Dalek sass and all the other great lines. (8) |
| 4. | School Reunion - Weak plot, but great character scenes, with a fantastic appearance by a couple of classic companions and Anthony Head. (8) |
| 3. | The Christmas Invasion - A Doctor introduction that's also a Doctor-light story, but it works. I liked the global alien invasion drama contrasted with Rose very personal drama over the Doctor changing. (8) |
| 2. | The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit - Scary sci-fi with a bit of scary reality as the heroes have to confront their beliefs and the possibility they'll have to settle down. (8) |
| 1. | The Girl in the Fireplace - The love story fits awkwardly into Rose's overall story (and Doctor Who in general), but this is gold. (9) |
I still think it's weird how Tooth and Claw has an 'and' while Love & Monsters has a '&'.
These are very similar scores to what I handed out in my series 1 review, which seems about right as I liked series 2 roughly the same overall. This is also a very generic normal order to rank the episodes, without any wild choices, so I apologise for being boring.
Next time on Doctor Who:
I can't make any predictions for series 3 as I've seen it all already. I can't even predict if I'll write about it or not.
If I was going to carry on covering Doctor Who episodes on their 20th anniversary, next would be Torchwood episode 1: Everything Changes, on 22nd October 2006. And then before Doctor Who season 3 starts there's a Sarah Jane Adventures special, Invasion of the Bane. But I won't be reviewing them, because I don't want to.
Honestly the idea of writing about Doctor Who's third series doesn't have much appeal to me right now either, but it's not because series 2 let me down. No, I like this run, David Tennant's great as the Doctor, and there's tons for me to talk about in series 3. It's just not the project I want to devote my time to at the moment.
PROBABLY NOT DOING THIS
I realise that Star Trek's 60th anniversary is coming soon, but my enthusiasm for that franchise is at rock bottom, so I think I'll skip it. I dunno, maybe I'll change my mind later, I've still got a month or so until September.
Anyway, what did you think about Doctor Who's second season? Did Ten and Rose annoy you, or were you 100% on board for their adventures?
RTD did the whole companions' families thing all too well in the early days, keeping the companions connected to their loved ones, who in turn got their own development. It was key to the revival's success, hooking the female viewers who had not much watched Classic Who.
ReplyDeleteYet neither Moffat nor Chibnall really ever did that. Nor did RTD upon returning- why?!!!
I suppose it wasn't Moffat or Chibnall's style. I don't think the change hurt the show at all though, as ratings stayed steady until the Capaldi run.
DeleteAnd RTD did try with his second era, Michelle Greenidge actually appeared in half of his run. Briefly.
I've never liked this iteration of the logo. The tweaks didn't really improve it.
ReplyDelete