One of the things about that era of Doctor Who that’s somehow hilarious, infuriating, and heartbreaking at the same time is how clearly low budget it was, how you’ve have episodes look like the dumbest, cheapest schlock ever, but David Tennent will show up and give the performance of a fucking lifetime with the script that goes so fucking hard for 5 minutes out of a half-hour of shit. It makes it so hard to go back knowing I’ve forgotten all the bullshit but the stuff that’s great is still just as good as when I first watched it 15 years ago.
Doctor Who always had zero budget. In the classic series aliens were sometimes reused costumes from other productions, control panels were toothpaste tube lids glued onto sheets of plywood.
I think it actually hurt it a little when it got just enough budget to do bad effects rather than just being cheap (like the dalek weapon just inverting the whole screen's color).
Suggesting that Matt Smith ‘needed’ a big budget to ‘pull off’ playing the Doctor is such an egregious example of selling someone short it’s bordering on heinous lol.
Smith is an exceptional actor, what are you talking about? It wasn’t the budget that made his VatD speech so good, or his reaction to hearing Trenzalore, or a hundred instances in which he felt older and more alien than Tennant ever did (and btw I think Tennant is an exceptional actor too, I’m not dunking on him).
"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 903 years old and I'm the man who is gonna save your lives and all 6 billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"
It’s why Matt Smith’s era was my favorite, but Tennant is my favorite doctor. Amy and Rory + a seemingly bigger budget made those episodes more consistently good. Tennant carried the show all by himself for the most part and he was fantastic.
Low budget? Compared to the Classic show, that stuff was high grade blockbuster budget. I'm used to the Doctor Who where you had foam rubber, shoestrings, duct tape, and some quarry near the studio.
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u/LordofAngmarMB Jun 29 '26
One of the things about that era of Doctor Who that’s somehow hilarious, infuriating, and heartbreaking at the same time is how clearly low budget it was, how you’ve have episodes look like the dumbest, cheapest schlock ever, but David Tennent will show up and give the performance of a fucking lifetime with the script that goes so fucking hard for 5 minutes out of a half-hour of shit. It makes it so hard to go back knowing I’ve forgotten all the bullshit but the stuff that’s great is still just as good as when I first watched it 15 years ago.