Doctor Who

[Ben X]

Shockingly, there seems to have not been a single discussion of Doctor Who on these forums.

Well, I was at the in-laws' for a couple of days recently and took advantage of their tv licence to watch all of the Whittaker episodes so far. Spoilered not for plot but for those who might get upset reading the mainly negative opinions of someone who's never been a huge fan of the series but has seen a fair amount of New Who anyway:

 

Spoiler

Same as always, really - some promising ideas and visuals let down by clumsy writing and bad acting. A couple of times it felt like they were hitting a really nice Arrival or Pitch Black (the good atmospheric bits, not the cheesy B-movie bits they ripped off previously) vibe, but then some cheesy face-makeup-only alien shows up doing their standard angry/momentarily confused by the Doctor's wackiness acting and it all just ebbs away.
The new Doctor is fine - very Tennant-y, perhaps to the point of feeling a little stale. Hopefully they'll find more individuality for her soon. The companions are okay, though the young guy is doing a ropey Sheffield accent, and I don't know why they decided on this - it's not like when Capaldi came along they set it in Scotland and had everyone doing their best drama school Glaswegian.
The new music is definitely better than Murray Gold's, though occasionally overwrought when they're doing their reverential episodes about noble historical POCs.
Overall, very Russell T Davies, which is definitely not the direction I was hoping for.

 

Any Whovians or casual fans here?

[Roderick]

Currently diving deep into Who again, picking up where I left off some time back: Matt Smith's final season. After that it'll be familiar turf for me, heading into the Capaldi years. I'll probably rewatch the better episodes, or at least the ones that amused me a few years ago. And then I'll start earnestly watching Whittaker, of whose run I've seen only the first two eps so far. They were very different, mostly in terms of pacing and visuals! But it was bound to pick up in storytelling speed. This is Who, after all.