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Thread: NuWho Annoyances

  1. #1
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    Lightbulb NuWho Annoyances

    After watching Doctor Who for the last several years, there has bee something that vaguely bugs me about it and I think I finally figured it out

    1. An irritating sense of moral smugness: Has anyone noticed this? It's very similar to the First season or so of Star Trek: The Next Generation , where in the Crew of the Enterprise would swoop in and enlighten the local savages (read: alien of the week) about the Moral Superiority of the Federation (and themselves) and have a moral that would always put them in the right....but make them look like arrogant assholes. Nu Who seems to suffer from this a lot, and there is no one to gainsay the Doctor as he seems to be the top power in the universe. I seem to remember the Various Guardians, Chronovores. and a lot of other powers that outstripped the Time lords in sheer power, thus having to make the Doctor be more like a clever man up against the big nasty. Now, he's Ultimate authority lecturing to everyone who can't escape his sense of Smug. So.....A Gallifreyan Timelord from The Second Doctor Era, Not the Doctor.

    2. "The Man Who Wouldn't Kill": RTD and Moffet really have missed the mark on this one. Classic Who Had the Doctor kill at least once per incarnation, And body count got rather impressive during incarnations 5 and 6. Now perhaps I could have bought this if instead of the moral smug approach, I could have seen the remorseful approach. "The Man Who Wouldn't" becomes "The Man Who Stopped" because he remembers all the carnage he's caused. That would have been a more interesting, and logical take, on the character.

    3. The Doctor on a Sugar Rush: Okay, people here have watched classic who and has anyone noticed the Doctor seems to behave like a spastic teenager? The Classic Doctors at least had some sense of dignity. The 9th was at least a stream of restrained anger (but still, restrained) after The Time War (which makes sense) , But 10 was....lets be honest....a Self-Absorbed Jerk, and 11 was a walking Poster Boy of Denial. Luckily 12 (or 13, depending on how you view it) seems to have largely worked out the Guilt from the Time War, but still has occasional RTD/Moffetisms which are annoying. I'll be curious to see where it goes, but some of the tone is getting very old.

    4. The over use of the Sonic screwdriver: This thing is now a magic wand that does what the plot needs to move things along. I remember when it was a screwdriver, and only occasionally used to open doors. Now it's a Lazy plot writers tool. Half the time I wish they would break the thing....
    A brave little theory, and actually quite coherent for a system of five or seven dimensions -- if only we lived in one.

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  2. #2
    Doctor on SUgar Rush and the overuse of the Sonics... Cant fault that.

    The man who wouldn't kill, TBH I always read that as 'the man who stopped'. Very much so under Eccleston. Although most notably this started in Classic Who under Sylvester McCoy who wanted this approach to the Doctors personality.

    I sort of see what you are getting at with the Moral smugness, but having watched a fair amount of classic who recently this is at least fairly consistant.

    Out of interest are you up to date on the latest incarnation?
    DanG/Darth Gurden
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  3. #3
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    The newest doctor I much prefer to the goofiness that was Matt Smith. This guy is overbearing, obstiante and opinionated, and under it all lies a core of ruthlessness. He may (or may not) have dropped the "will not kill" quirk as alluded to in the season premiere. Eccleston was "meh" Tennant was great, and Smith was terrible. I never got into Who before the new stuff, not caring for its kiddie-show origins, which it only shook in the newest incarnations, and I saw Smith as a reversion to that.

  4. #4
    All of the episodes post-Leela are a bit meh for me.
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  5. #5
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    The sonic screwdriver has been less used since the beginning of the current season, but I agree it had become a magic wand in the previous seasons, so I can't really say anything positive about it (and the eventual ubiquity of deadlock seals and the ridiculousness of "don't do wood" were not helping).

    As for the smugness, it has varied a lot depending on the episodes in nuWho, and there has been more than one episode where the Doctor's smugness explodes in his face (Waters of Mars comes to mind in a spectacular way, as does Midnight). The new show tends to love to deconstruct itself periodically, so you can be sure that any advantage of the Doctor that is played in excess will be reversed at some point.

    Strangely enough, while I was dubious of Matt Smith at first, I was won over by his first lines; conversely, I was looking forward to see Capaldi in the role, but it took me a few episodes to really get his Doctor (though that may be the writing at fault instead of the actor). This one is closer to his 6th, 3rd, and even 1st incarnations (as an action man with a really thing grasp of how human relationships are supposed to work, and really not caring).
    But the histrionics of the Tennant and Smith incarnations were not that far from the 4th IMHO.

    Concerning the killing, it seems to me that it's more a matter of not killing in cold blood. The Doctor never seems to have much qualms, even in the new series, to kill people he thinks deserve it (and even that sometimes come back in his face), no matter what he says about it.
    "The main difference between Trekkies and Manchester United fans is that Trekkies never trashed a train carriage. So why are the Trekkies the social outcasts?"
    Terry Pratchett

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