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end of an era
Jan. 23rd, 2016 09:29 amSo Steven Moffat is standing down from his role as Doctor Who showrunner, with season ten to be his last, held back until 2017, after which Chris Chibnall will be taking over.
Well, it's no secret that I haven't enjoyed Moffat's tenure, which never quite rang the right note for me even from the earliest days. My feelings toward his showrunning style started off ambivalent back in season five, then slowly degenerated into outright dislike in the later years. His vision of the show simply doesn't work for me and never really has. It is more than time the baton was passed on.
As for Chibnall, his track record isn't great but neither is it terrible, and how he is likely to fare as showrunner is hard to judge from the commissioned episodes he's produced. He's another from the same stable that brought us Davies and Moffat, so it isn't a complete fresh start, but for better or worse he will bring his own vision to the show and only time will tell what that vision looks like. I'm choosing to be optimistic, because I want to love Doctor Who again. We'll see.
Really, the biggest drawback of this early announcement is that fans will have two whole years to work themselves into a frenzy of anticipation before Chibnall's first season airs - and two years is plenty of time for a lot of prejudices and preconceptions to set themselves in stone. I hope everyone gives him a chance before judging.
I really hope Capaldi stays on at least for Chibnall's first season - it's about time we got to see how a different showrunner handles an established New Who Doctor!
Shall I say what I'd really like to see? New Who has played with soap opera and comedic stylings, it's played with the concept of the Doctor as romantic hero, it's done the Time War, it's played with timey-wimey themes, it's played with the idea of the Doctor as Machiavellian Merlin a la the late '80s. I'd like to see the show get right back to basics with more of an early '60s styling - an ensemble cast and 'found family' theme, multiple companions from different eras or planets, character-driven storytelling that derives organically from the respective situations and personalities of the main characters - and by that I mean character stories, rather than plot-tied-to-character. It's unlikely to happen, though.
In other news, according to the Big Finish's planned schedule for the year, the following Doctors will all have more new adventures in 2016 than Peter Capaldi:
David Tennant
Colin Baker
Paul McGann
John Hurt
Peter Davison
Sylvester McCoy
(Plus Patrick Troughton via Frazer Hines' uncanny voice impressions!)
Well, it's no secret that I haven't enjoyed Moffat's tenure, which never quite rang the right note for me even from the earliest days. My feelings toward his showrunning style started off ambivalent back in season five, then slowly degenerated into outright dislike in the later years. His vision of the show simply doesn't work for me and never really has. It is more than time the baton was passed on.
As for Chibnall, his track record isn't great but neither is it terrible, and how he is likely to fare as showrunner is hard to judge from the commissioned episodes he's produced. He's another from the same stable that brought us Davies and Moffat, so it isn't a complete fresh start, but for better or worse he will bring his own vision to the show and only time will tell what that vision looks like. I'm choosing to be optimistic, because I want to love Doctor Who again. We'll see.
Really, the biggest drawback of this early announcement is that fans will have two whole years to work themselves into a frenzy of anticipation before Chibnall's first season airs - and two years is plenty of time for a lot of prejudices and preconceptions to set themselves in stone. I hope everyone gives him a chance before judging.
I really hope Capaldi stays on at least for Chibnall's first season - it's about time we got to see how a different showrunner handles an established New Who Doctor!
Shall I say what I'd really like to see? New Who has played with soap opera and comedic stylings, it's played with the concept of the Doctor as romantic hero, it's done the Time War, it's played with timey-wimey themes, it's played with the idea of the Doctor as Machiavellian Merlin a la the late '80s. I'd like to see the show get right back to basics with more of an early '60s styling - an ensemble cast and 'found family' theme, multiple companions from different eras or planets, character-driven storytelling that derives organically from the respective situations and personalities of the main characters - and by that I mean character stories, rather than plot-tied-to-character. It's unlikely to happen, though.
In other news, according to the Big Finish's planned schedule for the year, the following Doctors will all have more new adventures in 2016 than Peter Capaldi:
David Tennant
Colin Baker
Paul McGann
John Hurt
Peter Davison
Sylvester McCoy
(Plus Patrick Troughton via Frazer Hines' uncanny voice impressions!)
