Has anyone else fallen out of love with Doctor Who?

[NakedMoleRat]

I can't be the only one! And no, not because the Doctor is woman now, but because the show has become a lame whisper of what it once was. What ever happened to the Doctor randomly visiting a planet and getting caught up in the local turmoil? Now the show has just become a statement for gun control and equal rights, etc.

Doctor Who used to be about adventure where the moral was to help when you could, whenever needed.

I think for me, Capaldi's second season is when I started to fall out of love with the show. By his third season I was sort of done with it. This new season did not capture any of the magic and bring me back.

Matt Smith had a BUNCH of stupid scripts, but he was so brilliant in the role that he more than made up for them.

Not to mention they keep putting it on hiatus for a year or more at a time. The BBC doesn't treat it like it's their biggest show.

It's sad as it used to be my favorite show, and now I don't even really enjoy it anymore.

At least I have all my DVD's of the former glory days of Who to watch again and again.

 

[Jaitea]

I agree,....it just doesn't do it for me, theres better telly to watch

To me, it's the same with Star Wars.....the best has been done

J

 

[NakedMoleRat]

Sad, but true...

 

[Solo4114]

I haven't watched the most recent season. I don't mind episodes that make statements.

But I did get really tired of the Capaldi/Moffat run. I loved Capaldi in the role, but Moffat was just an awful showrunner who got worse and worse over time. The final season with Bill was generally entertaining (much better than the Clara seasons), but it really was not the sendoff that Capaldi should've had. I think he deserved a lot better.

It was actually Clara's (2nd) final season that truly turned me off to the show and made me...hmm...intensely apathetic is probably the best description. I'd been on kind of a downward slide for a while with the show, but that season really did me in.

I'm looking forward to watching Chibnall's first season, and to a female Doctor, but my interest level going in will be more sort of "Well, this is something to watch" than the kind of enjoyment I used to get from the show.

On the other hand, I've been having fun re-watching old school Who, starting with the 1st Doctor. My wife has never seen the "wobbly sets" era of Who, so it's a lot of fun to watch. The stories are a mix of good and tedious, thanks to the serial structure they used at the time.

 

[NakedMoleRat]

I haven't watched the most recent season. I don't mind episodes that make statements.

But I did get really tired of the Capaldi/Moffat run. I loved Capaldi in the role, but Moffat was just an awful showrunner who got worse and worse over time. The final season with Bill was generally entertaining (much better than the Clara seasons), but it really was not the sendoff that Capaldi should've had. I think he deserved a lot better.

It was actually Clara's (2nd) final season that truly turned me off to the show and made me...hmm...intensely apathetic is probably the best description. I'd been on kind of a downward slide for a while with the show, but that season really did me in.

I'm looking forward to watching Chibnall's first season, and to a female Doctor, but my interest level going in will be more sort of "Well, this is something to watch" than the kind of enjoyment I used to get from the show.

On the other hand, I've been having fun re-watching old school Who, starting with the 1st Doctor. My wife has never seen the "wobbly sets" era of Who, so it's a lot of fun to watch. The stories are a mix of good and tedious, thanks to the serial structure they used at the time.

I think you hit it exactly on the head!

 

[Cephus]

I'm done with it and I don't know that they can do anything to get me back. Get it off the BBC, maybe. That's what is causing all of the problems.

 

[Apollo]

That ship sailed for me a few years ago......

 

[TazMan2000]

I can't say I was ever in love with the show, but I did enjoy it. But I agree with you NakedMoleRat .

A good thing is, is that the series can be reborn as soon as a Doctor is regenerated. Have hope.

TazMan2000

 

[Zombie_61]

Doctor Who pretty much lost me when Steven Moffat took over as showrunner. Initially I blamed Matt Smith, but before long realized he wasn't the problem. Peter Capaldi as The Doctor won me back somewhat, but I would really like to have seen what he could have done with the role if Moffat hadn't still been involved.

That being said, I still haven't seen any of the episodes with Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor. Not because I'm opposed to The Doctor being a woman, mind you - that happened for all intents and purposes when Moffat made Jenna Coleman the star of the show and forced Capaldi to play second fiddle. But after years of Moffat treating the show like his own personal playground and my being disappointed time after time, I just didn't see the point in familiarizing myself with a new cast and starting all over again.

 

[AJK001]

I know everyone was hoping once Chris Chibnall took over things would get better, they didn't. I was very disappointed in the last season and not because the doctor was a women, I thought Jodi did a great job with what she had to work with and enjoyed a few episodes but overall was not thrilled with it. Now we are hearing that both Chris and Jodi may leave soon so those that didn't like it may get a chance for something better but I don't think the problem is with Doctor Who, I think it is with the BBC who don't know what to do with it. This is reminding me of the end of the classic Doctor Who era when you had the people who ran the BBC hating Doctor Who and doing everything they could to sabotage it. I think the BBC are the ones who determine these long breaks between series so that by the time they come back you are sick of waiting and don't want to watch it.

 

[Strikerkc]

I checked out a couple of episodes into the first Capaldi season. Not because I didn't care for him as a Doctor or because the plots got "bad", it was just that watching a new episode felt like watching a rerun. nothing particularly new was being offered, I'd already watched so much of it. it was just clear that I'd done my time with Doctor who, and it was time to leave it, and spend that time doing other stuff.

 

[MattBlack]

I really enjoyed the first Matt Smith season, but the tone felt like they were definitely starting to target a new audience. However there was such a dramatic dip in quality in his second series that I quickly lost interest. The introduction and focus on Clara, and the increasingly ego-stroking/self congratulatory tone of Moffat's writing was when I dropped out completely.

I watched a couple of Capaldi episodes, but despite him being a great actor, it just didn't appeal. Much like Strikerkc, I felt like they were not doing anything new and just didn't engage. I watched one or two Jodie Whittaker episodes hoping the writing had got better with the departure of Moffat, but it was same old, and the acting of the companions (bar Bradley Walsh) was terrible.

I think the problem they faced was during the Tennant/Russell T Davies years, the show kept ludicrously ramping up the stakes - First Earth is threatened, then the universe, then all of reality is doomed etc.. Where can you go from there? The first Smith season did a good job of lowering the stakes, but then Moffat got too pleased with his own intelligence and seemed to have an obsession with appealing to the Tumblr crowd (the same problem that happened to Sherlock) and the show just stalled. Capaldi could have rescued it with a better showrunner, but it was not to be.

They do need a serious rethink of who they want to appeal to, and what they want to do with the show - hard sci fi and more mature direction, or aim at teens and the younger audience? You can do both (Avengers is proof of that) but it takes serious planning. At the moment it feels like they don't know what the IP is anymore and who they are making it for.

But whatever they do, for the love of god, no more sodding Daleks.

 

[Cephus]

But whatever they do, for the love of god, no more sodding Daleks.

Absolutely agree. Cybermen too. If I never see either of them again so long as I live, I'm fine with that.

 

[Bigdaddy]

Last time I watched it the Dr looked like this:

 

[NakedMoleRat]

Still the best one!

 

[Marv]

Yeah it's been poor for a really long time now.

 

[tcsmit29]

No, you are not alone. I left in Matt Smiths second season. I think he made a great Doctor but the show lost something for me. Its just not good anymore. Its not the fault of the actors.

 

[Clutch]

Started losing me at the end of Tennant's run. Got so sick of him.

 

[d_jedi1]

I wouldn't say that I've fallen out of love with it... but I'd definitely say that we're having some... "turbulent times".
I wouldn't have minded the change to female if we hadn't been shown ages ago that timelord and timelady regenerations are wildly different things, indicating a distinct sexual dimorphism, needed for a species to survive..
I wouldn't have minded the casting, if she had DONE ANYTHING WITH THE ROLE.
Seriously, she never gets around to actually acting like The Doctor, I don't think she could intimidate a chihuahua, and it almost always seemed like the happy TARDIS friends show with only one or two episodes being standouts as even halfway decent or better.
Speaking of which, the writing this past season was absolutely abysmal... Kerblam looked like it was going to be an amazing episode about the way soulless companies like Amazon treat their employees... and then it wasn't.

I'll admit, I'm no fan of timelord gender-hopping. I think it breaks their species BUT that said, if they had cast the right person, it could have been great.
They didn't.

 

[Solo4114]

I think there's two problems with the show currently. Well, three, really.

1. The BBC's scheduling. Having anything more than a year between seasons is killing interest in the show. It's hard to stay invested when every time you come back, you need like a 15 minute "Previously on Doctor Who..." to catch you up and remind you of what the hell happened last season.

2. The "style" of plotting and writing has shifted to something that can't be maintained. Most episodes seem to play out (at least in my mind) at a breakneck clip, without any time to take a breath or a beat in between moments. Instead of doing things like letting tension build it's all running and shouting all the time. You can't have everything be running at the redline all the time. You gotta dial it back so that those redline moments land and are memorable. There are large swaths of the Moffat run, and even the late Davies run, where I'm just...completely at a loss for remembering what happened. Why? Simple. EVERYTHING happened, and none of it really had any impact. Some moments I recall, but Moffat especially seemed to have a tendency to want to make certain characters "pet" characters, build them up as important, and then either kill them abruptly or make them no longer important (meanwhile, other characters waaaaaaaay outlived their welcome -- lookin' at you, River Song and Clara). And it really is just the writing at fault here. The actors are all fantastic. I really like them in other things I've seen them in. Alex Kingston is great. So is Jenna Coleman. But those characters? Ugh. GO AWAY.

3. The plotting of things is likewise unsustainable. Again, you can't have everything be THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO THE DOCTOR THIS WEEK!!! You need to highlight smaller stories or self-contained stories. There needs to NOT be a single season-long Big Bad that you try to Marvel in as a kind of end-of-episode scene each week. Explore themes, instead of big bads. Explore character growth instead of reality-destroying plot threats. Likewise, I know it's just a silly sci-fi show, but try not to stretch credulity quite so far. Like, when the moon was a giant space dragon egg and upon hatching, it immediately laid another moon-egg of exactly the same size and everyone acts as if nothing happened. Or when London was entirely shrouded in trees that grew overnight, and everything caught on fire and the next day its' all fine as if nothing ever happened. That crap? Stop it. Just....stop it. Don't do that stuff. That's beyond stupid.

You know what I actually really enjoyed? Clara's first "last" season. The one with Danny Pink. I actually really, really liked how she seemed to be torn between two worlds -- her home life, which was safe and calm and predictable, and her life with the Doctor which was full of adventure and danger and the risk of death. The end of that season would have been a perfect sendoff for Clara, and if we'd only ever seen her again 15 years later as a guest star on an episode, it would've been fantastic. Instead, they brought her back full-time and basically made it as if nothing that happened that season mattered, essentially because Moffat had a ******* schoolboy crush on Jenna Coleman, and she -- being a reasonable businesswoman -- took the paycheck for another year, because, jeez, why not? Sure, that season had some of the dumb episodes I mentioned, but the theme of it, running through it, was great.

And then the Doctor got Sonic Sunglasses or whatever.