h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have no problems with the latest Doctor Who being a woman. It's something that was bound to happen. The problem is the storylines. In three out of the six stories the monster has been human. I'm including Arachnids in the UK - Chris Noth was the real monster in that episode. So far we've had a racist, a businessman who's careless with toxic waste and a Hindu fundamentalist.

I appreciate that the new chief writer wants to get away from the old monsters. Daleks, cybermen and weeping angels have been overdone. But Doctor Who is supposed to be about alien monsters or bad guys. I feel that it's getting a bit too preachy to be entertaining any more. Hopefully things will improve as the series progresses.

Doctor Who is lucky not to have caravans of aliens coming up from Central America.

I don't think that the aliens from Central America can afford caravans. They're lucky if they can afford a tent!

So what! is it change for the sake of it, the PC view is irrelevant it may mark the end of Dr Who as it is just fiction people do not care but as a change of an established character, this may lead to the end of the show.
The old saying "if it is not broke dont fix it" is possibly relevant, but good luck to the new doctor.

I think the female Master, Missy, was a trial run to see how viewers responded to a woman in a role traditionally played by a man. That paved the way for a female Doctor, so I don't think the decision had anything to do with being PC. Giving the old monsters a rest was also a good idea, IMO. It's just some of the "monsters" I have an issue with.

Yes, racism and religious fundamentalism are bad, and it's good for children to learn about the stand taken by Rosa Parks and about the partition of India. I suppose that Doctor Who is as good a place as any to get the message across. It's just that two episodes early on make me wonder where Chris Chibnall is going with the series. As I said, it's early days and things may improve. Time will tell.

Could also be budgetary considerations? They've been filming in South Africa, redesigned the set and got three companions rather than the traditional one, so if they're not re-using the old monster suits they've got to save money somehow and having the baddy being a human rather than alien saves a few pennies. Also they seemed to make a big deal about their guest stars, who admittedly I didn't recognise many of apart from Lee Mack (I'm not sure how much crossover there is between 'Sex and the City' and 'Doctor Who', for instance; I would have thought they have quite different target audiences – how many parents say to their kids, 'After 'Doctor Who' let's watch a 1990s US television drama about women having sex containing lots of nudity'?)

As for the big change this year – I must admit that at first I wasn't sure how well it would work as it is going against all precedent, but actually I've come to accept it. I've always associated Sundays with rubbish such as 'Little House on the Prairie', 'Highway to Heaven' and everlasting 'Last of the Summer Wine'. But actually broadcasting 'Doctor Who' on Sunday rather than Saturday works well as it means you can enjoy living the weekend to the full on Saturday and be back home again on Sunday.

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Being on on Sunday is genius for me, as it means we actually watch it. Have missed large swathers of recent seasons as we simply never get around to it on catch up.

I'm really enjoying this season for some reason - for me it has the feel of the episodes that came out when I was very young in the mid-70s (my impression from rewatches of course - my memory is not *that* good). I guess because they're relying more on imagination and character more than the usual enemies and special effects.

"it has the feel of the episodes that came out when I was very young in the mid-70s"

Pertwee-era then - it does feel quite a lot like that for me too.

Except... for the most part, this season seems to have forgotten what Doctor Who IS. I don't give a monkey's about it being a woman - about time, I say. I don't give a monkeys about three companions - it's been done before, although arguably never actually very well. I don't give a monkey's about the excessive political correctness and diversity-box-ticking-ness of it, but I'm equally no so far down the drinking-the-SJW-Kool-Aid road that I can't agree that it's definitely gone that way.

No, my problem is this: the show, for the most part of its 55 years (so far), has been about the Doctor and companion(s) turning up somewhere and FIXING things. They rock up, and one way or another by the end of the story things are better. Occasionally (Horror of Fang Rock, Pyramids of Mars) literally everyone they meet dies. Occasionally (The Doctor Dances), "everyone lives". But either way, by the end of the story, things are better. It's THE DOCTOR: he/she makes it better.

Except this Doctor... doesn't. They meet Rosa Parks, and make sure everything horrible continues to happen. They meet some giant spiders and just... lock them in a room to starve? AND they let a nasty Trumpalike discharge a handgun on British soil and just walk away, no arrest, no charge. They go to partition-era India and stand by while a good man is shot to death.

My deadly question to this incarnation of the Doctor is: what is the POINT of you?

"They go to India and stand by while a good man is shot to death."

They had to let that happen. The man who was shot was Yaz's gran's first husband. If he'd lived then gran would not have married Yaz's grandfather and Yaz wouldn't exist.

As for the other things you object to: Yes, locking the spiders in a sealed room is objectionable, but only one would have starved. Spiders will eat each other if there's no other food source, so you'd end up with one enormous spider and that's the one that would starve - provided that it's size didn't prevent it from breathing properly as happened to the spider that was shot. And that's another thing. Yes, firing a gun isn't a good thing, but shooting an oversized spider doesn't break any laws, AFAIK. As for the Rosa Parks episode, the Doctor's good but not good enough to wipe out racism in a single episode. Obviously Rosa Parks' action wasn't a fixed point in time. Given that a racist time traveller was trying to change history, the best the Doctor could do was make sure that he failed.

I believe the International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum has some good points about the issues that arise when you wontonly change history.

International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum
Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War
Page 263
http://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/

I have a new answer to my question:

The point of the Doctor is to protect the super-capitalist consumerist monopoly system from the little people.

The point of the Doctor is to turn up, eventually identify the straight white man responsible for all the evil stuff that's happening, and either let him walk or deliberately murder him to death.

I *like* Doctor Who. But I've come to the conclusion that Chibby Who is NOT what the manbaby MRA idiots are saying it is: an overly PC SJW-inflected diversity-quota-ticking shadow of its former self. It's not that at all.

It's a deliberate satire of the expectation that's what it would be. Because done right, diversity and liberal values are something Who has pretty much aspired to all along. Granted, it's been patchy in its execution over the years - don't get me started on "Talons of Weng-Chiang" - but its heart has been in the right place.

With yesterday's episode, though, they've gone too far.

Consider: there's a population who have wealth beyond imagining. They can order pretty much anything they like, and it will literally be teleported to them instantly.

There's another, definitely separate and much, much poorer and probably much larger population. It is from these peasants that the human workforce is drawn - people so poor that a box of chocolates from their boss is the only gift they've ever received, or so poor they have to work to look after a child they almost never see. They do tedious, repetitive tasks the robots could easily do, because the law says they must. And they consider themselves lucky - imagine how bad life is in that population if you haven't got a job.

One member of that subjugated population rebels, and tries to strike back at the 1%. His method is finely targeted to only strike those who by definition are the oppressors. There is some collateral damage, with a casualty number in single digits.

The Doctor turns up and... protects the 1% from the uprising. Thanks Doc. Good to know whose side you're on.

I honestly think I might not watch next week's episode. At this point, I'm past believing it's going to get any better. I'm so, so disappointed.

Yeah...

I wish I had a pair of those "They Live" glasses so I could watch that episode again to see all the "CONSUME" messages and alien faces.

Don't watch it with David Icke! A former player, he saw that film and has spent the last 30 years convinced it is true…

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I've had an idea. And I'm really hoping it's true (it's not).

This is NOT the Chibnall era of Doctor Who. We're supposed to think that. They've even mocked up fake credits... but it's not. Moffat is still in charge. The giveaway is the genius of "exploding bubble wrap". That's a very Moffat idea, but he's given away the truth:

Chibnall is NOT in charge. And, crucially, Jodie Whitaker is has NOT been cast as the Doctor. The entire thing has been done to troll manbaby Doctor Who fans AND achingly PC lefty snowflakes AT THE SAME TIME.

Here's the pitch: cast a woman. Annoys what I'm going to simplify as the alt-right. Then... make all her stories absolute shit. Have her make a sonic that looks like she got it from Ann Summers. Have gurn at stuff and act and dress like a presenter off Play School. Most important, have her FAIL. Every. Single. Time. Have her turn up, and NOT make things any better, time and again. When she does do something, have her make things worse, or pick what is obviously the wrong side - side with a massive, evil corporation, say, against the peasants who are desperately trying to rise up and reclaim some dignity in the teeth of exploitation. Have her develop into what is clearly a villain.

Then... in the final episode... have the REAL Doctor turn up and demand to know what this impostor has been doing in HER TARDIS. Because Whitaker is NOT the Doctor. Whitaker is the Master/Missy, in her new regeneration. The Doctor is played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and she is FSCKING ANNOYED we've all been watching this other person steal her TARDIS and screw up what her show is supposed to be about.

I so hope it turns out I'm right, because the alternative - that this IS Doctor Who - is so tragic I want to cry.

"Hey team, I've had a great idea! The Doctor is a WOMAN, right?"
"Right."
"Let's have her go to witchfinder times! And obviously we get to, y'known, tie her up. And DUCK her!"
"Where's that hill up north that had the witches? Pingu?"
"Google says Pendle. You there, knock us out a script. Oh, and put some aliens in it, nothing too expensive we blew the budget on that digital thing earlier in the season."

This is a conversation I would expect of the Doctor Who production team when they have solidly run out of *good*, creative, original ideas. What's next? A clip show?

Ah well, only two episodes to go. And if rumours are to be believed, only one more season of this crap.

Shouting into the void here, clearly, but...

I have a new phrase to use when some work of media, be it film, television, whatever, is pretty good for most of its length, then does something so egregiously stupid and shit that it ruins everything that went before.

Example: "I obviously loved the original trilogy, and even the prequels had some good things in them. OK, Force Awakens was a remake of the first film, but it was a good one. Last Jedi, though - that was a real talking frog on a chair."

Another example: "Cumberbatch Sherlock was great. Great acting, lovely references to and updates of the classic Conan Doyle stories, terrific production values. That stuff about his sister, though - that nonsense was a real talking frog on a chair."

I know – it should have been a talking on a beanbag…

I was reminded how Douglas Adams wrote in 'Life, the Universe and Everything' the person who tells the whole truth was in hysterics and that the funniest bits of truth were about

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As a measure of how little this series has failed to engage my interest, we didn't watch last week's episode because it clashed with something (Abu Dhabi GP, I think) and haven't bothered to watch it on iPlayer. We didn't watch last night's episode and probably won't catch up with it, either.

When Russell T. Davies handed over to Steve Moffat the magic stayed in the series. I accept that Steve Moffat felt that he'd done enough with Doctor Who and wanted to move on to other things, but it feels like he took the magic with him. If things continue as they are, his departure may have killed Doctor Who.

I've said this elsewhere but:

"his departure may have killed Doctor Who."

Nope. Whatever vitriol may be levelled at Chibnall, whatever shit he churns out and pretends is Doctor Who, he cannot and will not kill the show. This year, next year, sometime, he will move on (January 2nd 2019, I hope), and someone else will come in. And they will be different. And they will, I am pretty certain, be better. Or maybe possibly not, but there will be someone after that. This show is unkillable at this point. In five or ten years' time we'll look back on the Chibnall era as an unfortunate blip, a drastic but temporary plunge in quality in an otherwise excellent show. Like when they had Bonnie Langford in it.

So, the talking jumped the ...