Steven Moffat: Peter Capaldi saved Doctor Who

[Harpo]

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-11-14/steven-moffat-peter-capaldi-saved-doctor-who

Alien hero the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is well-known for his hobby of saving the universe – but according to Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, the recent off-piste casting of the Time Lord rescued the series itself from possibly stagnating.

“A show dies when it’s reliable like a pair of old slippers,” he explained earlier this week at a Royal Television Society event. “If any reviewer says that about a show that show is gone within a year.”

“Shows die when people say: ‘Oh, it’s quite good. I quite like it.’ And the ‘new show’ is old now, so this had to be a reinvention.”

 

[Dave]

Nothing can save Doctor Who scripts that are as bad as this years.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Saw the first few episodes of this season. Liked Capaldi rather a lot. The scripts (and the pointless Danny Pink nonsense) persuaded me to stop watching.

However, it has been entertaining reading the Chrons' threads about the episodes.

 

[markpud]

It's been an up and down season certainly, but Capaldi has been great throughout. Once Christmas is out of the way I'm very much looking forward to a new companion and all the Clara-baggage being dropped in favour of a clean slate.

Has there been any news on if there will be a full season next year??

 

[Anushka Mokosh]

No news about next year as of yet or I hadn't been paying enough attention. I just want them to get rid of Clara. I have a feeling that will fix a lot of things since it is she who is introducing the soap opera drama to the show and thus taking away from it.

 

[HareBrain]

This might have been said before, but I wonder if the problem with NuHu is that it's basically fanfic. The people in charge since its regeneration were fans as kids. I propose that such people are not good for it. It needs good writers who don't feel a need to live out their childhood longings. Nor do I think it's a good idea for one person to have all the responsibility, especially not someone who decides to ditch any interest in basic science in favour of "timey wimey" (something that gave me a shudder of warning in the otherwise pretty good episode "Blink"). I think it's one show that would benefit from a good writing team.

Also, slash the budget. Like with Hollywood blockbusters, high production values for visuals and music leads to the script ending up bottom of the heap. Especially, get rid of most of the background music, and all occurrence of choral voices and "feel emotion here" musical signage. Back to basics! A return to Seventies values, that's what we need! Et cetera!!

(This rant has been brought to you by too much coffee.)

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I've got a series mapped out and a first episode more or less written. I am just guessing I need to get a sit-com on air before I can pitch it. Although I've gone eighties as I resurrected the Kandy Man.

Peter Capaldi is a pretty good doctor but he really can't as others have said rescue these dire scripts and rather bizarre storylines. Like Harebrain I think a smaller budget is called for - some shows just work better with rickety sets and pepper pots.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Fair point, HareBrain. It's similar to a point about lore being a crushing weight rather than an asset I made [more or less] when comparing New Who and Farscape in a guest post on Mouse's blog: http://emmy-j.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/farscape-is-better-than-new-who-by.html

 

[willwallace]

I like Capaldi's alienness compared to the often too-human characterizations of the previous doctors(though I also liked them). Getting rid of Clara is a good step, but I believe her character could have been so much more interesting than she turned out to be. Most episodes this season were, for me, pretty good; the two worst being the first and last. Hopefully the Christmas episode is a winner.

 

[A J Dalton]

So, the series is done. There were some very duff episodes and I then stopped watching for a bit. But I watched the penultimate episode and it was really very good. Properly scary. Plenty of moral and intellectual challenge. And the Doctor being genuinely outwitted. That episode alone has given me hope that the next series will see everything get on track.

There are still significant problems for all that. One of them has to be Clara's characterisation. She's just too annoying very often. And twitters on and on - often saying completely paradoxical or illogical things. It's just poor script-writing at times. It feels like the scripts have been produced under time pressure or something.

And Capaldi is 'good', but he's channeling Tom Baker soooo much, that it feels a bit old hat sometimes. I'm hoping he will put more of his own twist on things as he settles further into the role.

But there is hope... if not necessarily faith.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I think he is closer to Sylvester McCoy's doctor than Tom Baker.

 

[markpud]

There are many elements of many doctors inside Capaldi, another sign of the fans running the show!

 

[HareBrain]

To enlarge on my theme, I'm halfway through watching Spearhead From Space (the first Jon Pertwee story, shown on the Drama channel this afternoon) and have been trying to work out why, despite its sometimes dodgy acting and the annoying Liz Shaw, I like it so much more than the new stuff.

I've concluded it boils down to this. Old Who was so blindingly obviously made for kids. No one else. If adults liked it at the time, great, but really it didn't matter.

New Who, it seems to me, is made with the aim of pleasing kids now, and adults who were kids then. If you view Old Who as though it were a show intended for adults, it instantly becomes ridiculous. But you have no choice but to look at New Who as though it were a show at least partly intended for adults, because of its apparent sophistication and because it's got all that relationship crud in it. Now, I guess I could be wrong in assuming that kids these days aren't any more interested in relationships than kids in the seventies were. Perhaps they are. But I doubt it. So they try to please everyone and end up pleasing ... well, quite a lot of people by all accounts. But not me.

 

[Ice fyre]

I have to say the first half of the season wasnt great, but it picked up, and now I think Capaldi will be one of the classic Who's. His performance has capitivated me, the crushingly vunerable wars with his childlike nature and inherent grumpiness. Capaldi has the potential to be great. I think Clara sadly isnt a good fit, though I actually enjoyed Danny Pink. His sarcastic refusal to be cowed by the doctor was something fresh. I loved the fact he told the Doctor just exactly what he thought of him, his assement of him as a general sending his troops into battle. Not flattering him in the slightest scoring a few points off him. I wish they got rid of Clara and kept him. He was a lot more than the "Robot Dog"

 

[althea]

I think Peter Capaldi is a wonderful actor.I had stopped watching Doctor Who for some time,but I'm watching now because of Capaldi.

 

[Caledfwlch]

I couldnt stand Danny Pink. All that "yes Sir, No Sir, the Doctor is an officer drenched in blood" stuff

When was the last time the Doctor gunned down a CHILD?

Now who was it that did do that, oh yeah Mr Pink.

 

[althea]

The writing is poor,but Peter Capaldi does his best with it.
I still maintain he is a wonderful actor.

 

[Caledfwlch]

The writing is poor,but Peter Capaldi does his best with it.
I still maintain he is a wonderful actor.

We have been in horrible danger of repeating what befell Tenant as the Doctor, a wonderful, brilliant actor capable of so much but whos character of the doctor was written as someone very hard to love, not to mention the twilight channeling lonely god stuff. Oh woe is me for I am cursed to walk the universe for erm well, ok not forever, and I dont need to bite people, but a very long time!

Thankfully I think The Moff has realised he has gone too far down the grumpy route, with not enough in the opposite to make us love him as much as we should. The Xmas Special? I bloody loved him in that! This was the Dr Capaldi's casting promised. And yeah, The Moff gave us his old concept (like in the children in need special) of who the Dr is, through Clara, the "your Santa Clause, Scooby Do etc" stuff, but for me that is dr who.

 

[Alter Business]

I wish they would stop having the doctor's companion slap him. It is disrespectful, and the original doctors would never have put up with that abuse. Why are the female characters so violent and obnoxious? I would have liked Amy Pond more, but she was such a cow to Rory. The doctor has come across as a teenage baboon since Matt's tenure, as have the doctor's male companions. How about a good male companion who isn't a wimp and a female companion who can communicate without slapping everyone (Ms. Mulligan's character from Blink was a good example, as was Ben or Jamie).