Here is your thread for all things Doctor Who. Talk about your favorite Doctors, episodes, eras, TARDISes, whatever you want that’s Whovian!
I had the same reaction to Peter Capaldi, and have yet to go back. Honestly, I felt the writing had been suffering for a bit toward the end of Matt Smith’s run, and it was the writing that turned me off to Capaldi, who I really wanted to like as the Doctor.
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Believe it or not, Peter Capaldi eventually became my favorite Doctor after getting to watch him for a while. It was nice to see a Doctor for once who wasn’t kind of goofy and silly like David Tennant and Matt Smith (who are my other favorite doctors) and who constantly has their lady companions fall in love with them (except for Dona). I think that Capaldi’s golden era as the doctor was in his last season with Bill and Nodole as his companions, I just got tired of Clara and I think she held on to long, and should have left at the end of Capaldi’s first season. Also, Capaldi has one of the best Doctor Who episodes of all time in my opinion called: Heaven Sent, which extra cemented him as my favorite. Although you might want to watch the episode before it for context if you intend to skip to that episode.
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I consider Matt Smith as “my” modern doctor, but I think Capaldi was the best. And I fully agree; I was never a fan of Clara, so that last season was my favorite, and I wish we’d had more of Bill and Nardole.
Absolute YES on “Heaven Sent.” One of the best hours of genre TV I’ve seen. Blew my mind and Capaldi just took it HOME.
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Oswin from Asylum of the Daleks is the companion we should have had.
Clara from Bells of St John was a mix-up of so many half-baked ideas and plotlines and twists and dropped threads.
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Capaldi’s Doctor was my breaking point, but in a good way. Just as I was finally going to quit this series (Capaldi episode “Flatline”), I realized I really enjoyed the actors. Even Jenna Coleman. Even, eventually, Matt Smith, and (not surprisingly) Jodie Whittaker. They’re proven professionals and good at what they do, IMO. (They are just often given silly nonsense to say in this show. … IMO.)
So I continue to watch Doctor Who for the (let’s face it) non-story aspects I enjoy, hoping for new leadership eventually to right this listing ship. For me this is more like “loyalty”-watching, or “hope-it-will-return-to-enjoyable-for-me”-watching. It’s hard to end [mumbled] decade(s) of watching this show, which has had both high and low points throughout its history.
FWIW I found the final Jodie Whittaker episode to be a delight as a fan of original Who, and a very nice lead-in to the coming “60th Anniversary Special”.
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As someone who is just getting into Doctor Who, I will say that so far, I like the 4th and 5th best of the Classic Who and David Tennant best of New Who.
However, that being said, I haven’t been able to watch any of the First Doctor and I’m still working my way through the New Who, but I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube clips and I’m finding them quite enjoyable.
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I’m a HUGE Pat Troughton fan. His stories with Frazier Hines are great fun. That said, Troughton and Hartnell’s eras can be tough as so much is missing. All of the audio exists, and the Beeb is working with an animation studio (with various levels of success) to animate the missing episodes.
Much better than listening to the audio with a few telesnaps to try and convey the action, which is how I “saw” the missing episodes.
Early Tom Baker is also a fun romp. The last two seasons of McCoy’s era has some good stories, too.
Of the new era, I loved Christopher Eccleston’s season. Pretty much a perfect season.
David Tennant was also a good run. The season with Martha was probably the weakest for the whole unrequited love thing. And I found Martha’s family incredibly annoying, which I guess I was supposed to. 
Matt Smith’s first season was another pretty much perfect run of episodes. His second season was also strong.
I’m doing a slow rewatch of Capaldi now. I think Clara works better with Peter than with Matt, though once again the forced romance angle with Danny Pink gets tiring.
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The moment at the end of this deleted scene became popular recently.
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I have to admit that I’ve sought out the regeneration moments and those are really a hoot. Peter Capaldi’s in Deep Breath was hilarious. “These are attack eyebrows! You could take bottle tops off with these!”
Then, Tom Baker: “I tell you Brigadier there’s nothing to worry about. The brontosaurus is large and placid!”
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I love that one. I like this compilation as well:
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Donna Nobles is the best Companion of the modern era and you will not change my mind. Still mad about what they did to her.
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It surprises me that they’re doing a BluRay release of S2 (which is only missing two episodes; amazing by pre-1970 Doctor Who standards) with just the audio and set photos for the missing eps. Why not get those animated before doing a full season set on the highest quality media you’ve ever released the show on? I mean, I’ll still buy them, but fneh.
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Scoot over, I’ll sit with you. Donna was fantastic, and yeah, I never got over what they did to her.
Hopefully they’ll fix that in the upcoming specials!
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I used my second maternity leave to get into Who, binging 9, 10 & catching up on 11. (My daughter probably has a pavlovian reaction to the theme music…) I enjoyed 12’s run as well.
I really, really wanted to like 13 (I was wowed by Jodie in Broadchurch). But I gave up on her and the series halfway through her first season. The writing of the companions made it unwatchable, IMO. The nail in the coffin for me was the episode in Norway: the Doctor was talking about a future war involving humans and sheep. Graham cut her off to ask about the fjord in front of them. Argh! No curiosity at all. I wanted to kick him into said fjord.
I hope for everyone’s sake that things improved, but as Moffat wrote many of my favorite episodes, I didn’t hold out hope.
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I will admit I was not thrilled with the idea of a female doctor. The idea just reeked of pandering to me. I have never understood this idea that the only way to identify with a character was if they looked like me. I identified with every Doctor just fine, thank you very much.
That rant aside, I did try to enjoy Jodie’s era. I had a few issues with the dumb design of TimShaw in the first episode, but hey, Doctor Who has had questionable monsters in the past. But as things went on it became clear the writing was a problem. The third episode(?) the one with the supposed universe-spanning race (that we never see) on the uber-dangerous planet (that we never see why it was so dangerous) where Doc 13 finally find the TARDIS was where I realised things were not going to get better. I stuck it out to almost the end of that season and just gave up.
I dipped back in a few times, but the writing was just so bad I walked away entirely.
I am excited to see what RTD does with the 60th-anniversary specials, and what I’ve seen so far in set photos of Ncuti gives me hope that better Doctor Who is on the horizon.
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I watched the first JW episode with my son back when it premiered. Afterwards he turned to me and said “Doctor Who would never leave a Companion to die like that.” I had to agree.
And then, Doctor Who disappeared from my feeds because people stopped talking about the show.
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Did most of you get into the show in the reboot era or did any of you start with the classic Who?
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