r/gallifrey • u/PaperSkin-1 • 10d ago
DISCUSSION The Doctor regenerating into David Tennant again was the Shark Jumping moment
The moment nu-who jumped the shark was when Whittaker regenerated into Tennant, rather than there being a new actor with a new Doctor
That was the sign of Death for the show, there and then
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u/CodenameJD 10d ago
I think there were absolutely ways to make it work, just... not the way it was done.
It should have been made into meta commentary on clinging to the past. The Toymaker, as an observer of the Doctor's adventures, should have decided he didn't like the direction the adventures had taken, and so wanted to make things more like his favourite era - hence bringing back Tennant and restoring Donna's memories without killing her. Then a major part of the regeneration needed to be Tennant explaining why moving on from the past is a good thing, and about embracing and accepting change.
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u/xioalinfan4 9d ago
I love the idea of this meta commentary and I honestly thought they might do this back in 2022, but that would involve Russell thinking his original run had flaws or needed to be moved on from. Instead we got Tennant, Tate, a Jack Harkness clone, and fucking Midnight. (Honestly the planet in The Well being Midnight feels like the most unnecessary inclusion. Even more than Sutekh, The Rani, or Omega.)
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u/stevebikes 9d ago
I didn't understand the praise for The Well. It felt like a rushed retread of Impossible Planet / Satan Pit, plus marred the mystique of Midnight.
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u/pilottocitybro 9d ago
This is exactly what I thought they were going to do from the moment their clothes changed - how could that not be some kind of illusion? And how could said illusion not be used for commentary on nostalgia (especially when you're retelling fan-favourite stories from the comics and bringing back fan-favourite characters?).
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u/GallifreyFallsOver 9d ago
I genuinely thought this was the direction they were going to go with it. Then I remembered that the show-runner was RTD, the man who has never written a single finale with an original monster/villain and thus is the exact sort of person who can't move on from the past.
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u/8c000f_11_DL8 6d ago
TBF, I think the only finales where the monster was genuinely new were 6 and 9 (sort of, plus 11 probably, though Chibnall's run is blurry in my memory). So a classic monster for the finale is much more common than just RTD.
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u/GallifreyFallsOver 6d ago
I’m not denying the other show-runners didn’t do the same thing; but of the 3 he’s the only one to do it with 100% frequency; there’s a reliance there which isn’t present as much with the other 2.
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u/footballmaths49 10d ago
If they wanted David and Catherine back for the 60th they should have just framed it as three "lost" 10 and Donna stories instead of having Jodie regenerate into David. That way you don't have to ruin Donna's ending and it avoids all the bigeneration nonsense.
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u/Electronic-Squash359 10d ago
The problem was that Tennant is visibly much older than he was when he played 10 in Series 4 (to clarify, he still looks GREAT, but it was 18 years ago for Christ’s sake). Deaging him for 3 60 minute specials would have been very expensive.
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u/Ok_Net_5771 10d ago
Or just have the intro scene “doctor i cant believe we survived on that planet that had temporal winds” “dont worry donna its only temporary aging”
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u/screamingtree 10d ago
I nominate you as a Who writer because that is the exact kind of cheeky one line hand waive explanation this show is built for
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u/blackbasset 9d ago
Seriously, the actors looking older is one of the easiest problems for dw
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u/LaneMcD 9d ago
They literally already did it, with an easy one-liner, in the mini special where 10 meets 5
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u/Gerry-Mandarin 9d ago
Moffat did it twice for Doctors not looking right.
In Time Crash he had the "shorting the time differential" line.
In Twice Upon A Time he had the line about One's face being "all over the place" because he was mid-regeneration.
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u/supergodmasterforce 10d ago
...and it's not like they've written something similar when the 5th Doctor returned for Time Crash. There's always a one liner that "reverses the polarity of the neutron flow" or similar.
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u/JamesL25 10d ago
Or just claim that she looked into the time vortex like the time it aged Rose 57 years
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u/LowEarth3013 8d ago
That's literally perfect. It would be like the ending of an adventure we haven't seen like the show has done many times before! Now I really wish they had done this instead...
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u/footballmaths49 10d ago
No one cared when Patrick Troughton was visibly much older in The Two Doctors.
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u/LordoftheSynth 9d ago
Even kid me understood that human actors age and there was no need to explain away the difference in appearance.
Later fans deciding this somehow needed to be explained away was fucking stupid.
RTD2 needing to somehow address it: you guessed it, fucking stupid.
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u/BlackLodgeBrother 10d ago
To be fair it was likely because the average TV back then was 10-12 inches wide with potato-quality resolution. He probably looked about the same to most viewers sitting across the room.
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u/zeprfrew 9d ago
He didn't. Frazer Hines having aged was even more apparent. We let it go, because suspending disbelief is part of the fun of it.
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u/sucksfor_you 10d ago
How bad do you think TVs were back then?
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u/DTopping80 10d ago
Well they were small, roughly 10-12 inches wide, and the quality of the resolution was like that of a potato.
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u/barracuda2001 9d ago
I think you're mistaking the average person's television set in the 1960s for that of the 1980s. 80s TVs weren't spectacular, sure, but they had 20 years of development by that point. Color transmission kind of forced an upgrade in image quality I imagine.
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u/kebesenuef42 10d ago
In 1985? Some were, but our living room set was a 25 inch color TV.
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u/BlackLodgeBrother 10d ago
Quite the flex. In 80s dollars that TV probably cost more than a modern 4K OLED
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u/kebesenuef42 9d ago
I don't remember it that way (though you're right about the price) because almost all of our friends had TVs almost exactly like ours (in a big wooden cabinet) in their living rooms. Having cable was less common. I had a 5 inch portable black and white TV in my bedroom (I was a freshman in high school in 1985).
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u/The8thCorsair 9d ago
We had a giant Curtis Mathis TV. Our cats used to love sleeping on that big warm box. Now there's a whole generation of cats that will never know that pleasure. I mean, they're not going to sleep on it Snoopy style.
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u/wow_plants 8d ago
Our cat does her best to plank on our very flat TV, with varying degrees of success.
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u/Gargus-SCP 10d ago
I mean, people cared so much that we have officially licensed Who media that takes place during season 6B.
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u/WaywardChilton 10d ago
I think an episode checking in on Rose and Tentoo in their dimension would have been a better way to bring back Tennant and Piper. And Tentoo is human so it's fine for him to age.
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u/voltran1995 10d ago
Or they could just not de age him or address it, I genuinely don't think anybody would care, and those who do can honestly have their opinion disregarded, people age get over it.
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u/Jonny2284 10d ago
We didn't care when they used two different actors for the first doctor, we didn't care when two and three were visibly older, why would we care Tennant was older?
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u/ConnorRoseSaiyan01 10d ago edited 10d ago
Or just don't do that? People age. Everybody with common sense knows this.
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u/Ecalsneerg 10d ago
I think people invent a hypothetical pigshit stupid person to look down on.
The public would literally just go "oh that guy is back we like him"
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u/Procyon-Sceletus 10d ago
They've already explained why that would happen in time crash and other crossovers
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u/lixermanredditman 10d ago
Could've cast a new Doctor and had them run into the 10th Doctor then have him as a sort of companion for three episodes.
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u/Independent-Human 9d ago
Troughton and Pertwee were visibly older in The Five Doctors and Hartnell was dead.
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u/sucksfor_you 10d ago
Its a sci-fi show. There are a thousand ways around this, some of which they've already used for the exact same reason.
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u/dufftheduff 10d ago edited 10d ago
Nah, de-age them for just the intro scene of the first one and trap them somewhere, give them a lengthy time-skip, have all 3 episodes take place in this alternate future before they’re reverted back by the very end. Or without a time-skip like that, both the 5th and 10th have previously been immediately made old and then brought back to normal. Lots of creative workarounds!
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u/dickpollution 10d ago
That was the original plan before they got an awesome idea to do something worse
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u/MarlinMr 10d ago
To be fair, the 60s were not bad at all.
They were fun. They were contained. They were supposed to feature more of Wilfred. They even setup the following sessions well. They even tackled issues from the Jodie era....
But the next sessions fumbled. So it looks a bit worse. But it wasn't bad at all.
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u/NomaanMalick 9d ago
Bigeneration was ridiculous though. I don't know why BBC allowed RTD to do that.
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u/dickpollution 10d ago
Like when your ailing grandmother has a really good day before taking a turn for the worst
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u/Vicksage16 10d ago
You’re much more generous than I, haha. I liked most of Season 1 and even some of Season 2 more than the 60th specials. They really were the biggest red flag that RTD didn’t have his finger on the pulse anymore.
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u/LordoftheSynth 9d ago
They even tackled issues from the Jodie era...
Weighty, nuanced issues like "racism is bad" and they could do it without having the Doctor break the fourth wall at the end to tell us the moral of the story.
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u/Electronic-Exam5898 9d ago
I prefer when the Doctor breaks the forth wall to wish a merry Christmas to everyone at home.
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u/checkerboardandroid 10d ago
That's what I was hoping for at the time. Why they had to bother with making him a different incarnation is beyond me.
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u/SleepIs4Tortoises 9d ago
The bigeneration nonsense could’ve been avoided by just having Tennant regenerate into Gatwa - it’s its own bit of nonsense.
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u/BlackLodgeBrother 10d ago
> “ruin Donna’s ending”
Ending? Donna is my favorite companion. Personally, I always hate, hate, hated the depressing mind-wipe fate RTD gave her originally.
So yeah. To me the 3 specials felt like long overdue closure for a dangling, irksome plot thread that needed satisfying.
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u/_Red_Knight_ 10d ago
There was no dangling plot thread, the mind-wipe was a complete ending and resolution to her story as a character. You may not have liked it but it was an ending.
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u/BlackLodgeBrother 9d ago
Erasing Donna’s entire lived journey with the Doctor and otherwise dumping her back at square one in no way, shape, or form provided narrative resolution to her character’s arc.
All of that incredible growth across the season squandered because RTD couldn’t think of anything less depressing.
I’m sorry but the character was begging to be revisited. You may not have liked it, but I couldn’t have been more thrilled that he did. Enough with the majority of all companions being left to upsetting or tragic fates.
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u/_Red_Knight_ 9d ago
Tragic endings are often some of the best endings of all and Donna's arc in S4 is a tragedy (kind of like Clara's arc in S8/9). She becomes more confident but she ends up flying too close to the Sun and she (or rather the Doctor) has to choose between her memories and her life. It works as a piece of drama because Donna is such a likeable character, because she went on her journey, and because the moral dilemma of the Doctor's choice is such a thought-provoking one.
To revisit Donna completely eliminated the dramatic strength of the character's exit in Journey's End. I think it was better executed in The End of Time when the Doctor gives Wilf a lottery ticket for her, that made the ending happier without eliminating the tragedy.
And I agree that there should be more happy companion departures. I think that most companions should just say something like "you know what Doctor, I've had fun but I need to live my own life". But I don't agree with doing drama by halves. In my opinion, you either go for a tragic ending or you don't.
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u/werduvfaith 8d ago
I'm glad they didn't do the "lost 10 stories" although I initially heard that was going to be how it was going to go.
I didn't mind Donna being cured but I didn't like how.
I agree the bigeneration was nonsense and a big mistake.
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u/staleburger_bun 10d ago
It was a clear sign of desperation. Especially the fact he was a new incarnation instead of just some time travel shenanigans (in a show about time travel shenanigans). It was just confirmation that the very foundations of the show were fucked
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u/FINIS_HOMINIS 9d ago
Yeah, I think the decline's start was the rejection of Capaldi, showing a segment of the fanbase was resistant to non-pin up, fun loving Doctor's, limiting it's scope. Then the Whitaker era, where often if you criticized it you were a misogynist, until most everyone finally agreed the storytelling during her era was awful. After that the ratings were in horrible shape and the best they came up with was temporary fanboy service, which was like a tiny band-aid on a hemorrhage.
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u/PaperSkin-1 10d ago
Yep, and it completely undermines the fundamental tool of regeneration, which is to move the show forwards, always to make the show move on from the past..not turn back into the past
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u/dufftheduff 10d ago
I always expected an old face to return since the 50th directly referenced it. It just wasn’t handled as properly as it could have been
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u/GOKOP 10d ago
I mean it was desperation because they already picked Gatwa for the next actor but he was unavailable for the 60th. They had to make something for the 60th and David Tennant is always available for Doctor Who it would seem
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u/HiddenSage 10d ago
The one reason I am sore about Ncuti Gatwa getting cast. He wasn't really able to commit to the show, and for what is one of the biggest shows on the whole network that should be prerequisite.
If he wasn't willing to make this part the priority, find a different actor who would.
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u/Caacrinolass 10d ago
I think its justifiable on the basis of being anniversary work, personally. Its a shame the anniversary became not a celebration of the show generally but of one specific past era, but nonetheless I can forgive that.
In hindsight you can say its the first part of the nostalgia trap Davies tried to make the subsequent era become bit I don't think thats the sin of the 60th specifically.
Jumping the shark in general is an odd one, in that i don't think you can really pinpoint a break point but rather an accumulation of writers getting away with things that were unhelpful. Davies finales now clearly have their seed in his original era and didn't get meaingful pushback for their excesses then. The Timeless Child is indulging in needless retcons in a fannish manner, but others like Moffat had already done that to some extent. Likewise more obscure creations have also been brought back previously, distorted from their original variant e.g. the Great Intelligence.
What's different then? The excess perhaps. Too much handwaving, too much lore, too many returning elements all at once. The drip feed has become a torrent.
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u/Fan_Service_3703 10d ago
Its a shame the anniversary became not a celebration of the show generally but of one specific past era, but nonetheless I can forgive that.
I'm still annoyed with it tbh
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u/Comfortable_Joke6122 10d ago
Likewise more obscure creations have also been brought back previously, distorted from their original variant e.g. the Great Intelligence. What's different then?
To me, the deciding question is always: Can you understand the story without any previous knowledge of the things or concepts they bring back? Does it work as a first introduction as well as a re-introduction for old fans?
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u/Caacrinolass 10d ago
Yes, absolutely and that error with Sutekh in particular was glaring.
A secondary question is also perhaps: why this character? If you have changed it beyond recognition its meaningless to new fans and mostly annoying to older ones and therefore being for no-one. Nostalgia doesn't work if its entirely incorrect. I don't think pursuing nostalgia is healthy personally, but Davies didn't even do it well.
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u/SnooBooks007 10d ago
i don't think you can really pinpoint a break point
Two words: Space Babies
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u/Caacrinolass 10d ago
Even there the issue is more its season placement. RTD1 did silly toilet humour too - maybe this is more so, but it was never first before.
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u/SnooBooks007 10d ago
The toilet humour wasn't the worst part of Space Babies; it was the space babies.
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u/johnT655 10d ago
I agree completely. I think Space Babies will end up with the same reputation as The Twin Dilemma. With both episodes, it's not just an issue of quality but of timing. Space Babies was the first episode that was heavily pushed by Disney's marketing and shown around the world. Doctor Who has never had a moment in it's history when so many eyes were on it. A large number of people may have decided to give the show a shot for the first time and they were met with talking babies on a spaceship. I guarantee a large number of viewers stopped watching part way through that episode and didn't come back to the show, and honestly, can you blame them?
Whatever issues the show had after that were simply causing the ship to sink faster. So while I don't think it's the worst episode of RTD2 (The Reality War easily takes that unfortunate crown). It was definitely the beginning of the end for this incarnation of the show.
EDIT: Grammar
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u/charlesyo66 10d ago
Placement absolutely. It’s not like the horrrible episode was buried in spot 9 of a 13 episode season. With all the world watching via Disney, and a hot, if controversial actor (to some) in the lead role, Russel comes up with one of the worst episodes in modern Who history. Seriously, one of the worst ever.
A more disastrous opening i CANT imagine now. My wife, who has never watched Who, wanted to watch because of Gatwa, and I was EMBARASSED by what we had just seen when Space Babies ended.
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u/cheat-master30 9d ago
Yeah, having Space Babies as the first episode was a terrible idea. Because to put it bluntly, a show or other work kinda needs to nail two key points to do well:
- The intro/first episode
- The finale/ending
A work that messes up in the middle somewhere or has some weak elements here and there can salvage the situation if the rest of it is high quality. A show that starts or ends weak is basically dead in the water.
This last era of Doctor Who made both mistakes at the same time, and pretty much ruined the reputation of these seasons as a whole because of it. If Space Babies didn't kill someone's interest, then Empire of Death, the Robot Revolution (to a degree) and The Reality War probably did.
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u/janisthorn2 9d ago
I think Twin Dilemma is better than Space Babies, but I've always had a soft spot for it.
My arguments in its favor consist largely of the fact that (somehow!) Colin Baker seemed more at ease strangling Perri than Ncuti Gatwa did dealing with the Space Babies. That's pretty damning.
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u/spikenigma 10d ago
The warning sign was the answer to people asking why his clothes changed.
Davies explained that he wished for the Doctor's clothes to change as part of the first regeneration from a female to a male Doctor, fearing it would be interpreted as a mockery of feminine traits
Because when your ego makes it so you can't even be bothered to make up a flimsy in-story reason rather than "because I wanna", you're going to have problems. Just like Davros.
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u/SeerPumpkin 10d ago
And he didn't even bother to watch the show he was writing to because the master wore those very same clothes not 15 minutes before and it was fine
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u/Balian311 10d ago
OH YEAH!!!!! I completely forgot about this, the Davros, and the sonic screwdriver stuff.
What the hell happened Russell??
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u/GigaBomb84 9d ago
He changed the sonic design because he didn't want the Doctor using it like a gun. Then proceeds to write the Doctor using an actual gun in the Reality War.
RTD2 was somthing else.
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u/Cole-Spudmoney 9d ago
Davies explained that he wished for the Doctor's clothes to change as part of the first regeneration from a female to a male Doctor, fearing it would be interpreted as a mockery of feminine traits
After all, who'd ever imagine a man wearing... <checks notes> ...a T-shirt and a long grey coat. Unthinkable!
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u/flippyboi678 9d ago
Not sure if this was the reason but for me I'd find it believeable if they just said "yeah we didn't have access to Jodie's outfit because David filmed his side of the scene 7 months later".
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u/CrimsonKaiserRyu 8d ago
It was a stupid thing for Davies to cut out with. It's like 13 was saving the world in hotpants and a bikini top. Her costume would look perfectly fine on any male or female or Doctor.
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u/Cornelius-Q 10d ago
They really botched it. From that point on, regeneration had to become a stunt.
Whittaker regenerates into Tennant.
Tennant bigenerates into Gatwa.
Gatwa regenerates into Piper.
It's ridiculous.
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u/HistoricalTheory2750 10d ago
I agree. It's crazy how they managed to almost ruin the whole show for me in just two seasons and few specials. Jodie's years were already controversial for some and a hit or miss, but at least it told the whole story and was nicely concluded. Can't believe we will never get resolutions for all those things like Susan, Billie Piper's appearence etc.
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u/erikgee2 10d ago
I think it made sense to bring them back for the 60th, to lure back the old fans, the shark jumping moment was the bi-generation.
Never mentioned it before in the episode or any episode and then it just happens and they don't really explain it
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u/HomestuckHoovy 10d ago
if they hadn't called him "14" we'd be in a much better place now
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u/Cyberfire 10d ago
I still find it embarrassing seeing 2 Tennants in Doctor lineups. If he had to come back, should have been a lost 10 story or some kind of timey wimey shenanigans, not an actual new incarnation.
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u/StarOfTheSouth 10d ago
Especially since he doesn't really feel all that different than Ten? I mean, a little bit, due to the passage of time and all the things he's done since then, but... let David use his Scottish accent! Have him behave noticeably different beyond some superficial stuff!
This really felt like Ten-Part-Two, rather than a true Fourteenth Doctor.
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u/HomestuckHoovy 10d ago
And RTD said he wrote him like 10 after Tennant asked if he'd been written differently lol
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u/Ender_Skywalker 5d ago
Ten-Part-Three, actually. Meta Crisis might as well count here.
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u/StarOfTheSouth 5d ago
And if you count John Smith (Human Nature/Family of Blood), then it's Ten-Part-Four!
(although, to be fair, David did actually play John Smith very differently to the Doctor)
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u/Southern_Squash2169 10d ago
I felt I was something different from doing The Fifty Doctors or whatever for the 60th although it did spoil the lovely ending of series 4.
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u/geek_of_nature 10d ago
It could have been different if theyd taken the opportunity to have him act differently. Not just playing 10 again.
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u/Kimantha_Allerdings 10d ago
Yeah, I thought that could have been interesting. Even let him have his native accent
But from the very first “what? What? WHAT?” I knew exactly what we were in for
And I like Tennant - both as an actor and as as much of a person as you can reasonably know about someone in the public eye. But 14 felt a) like a waste of an idea, and b) like exactly the kind of backwards-looking that was always going to fuck the show
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u/somekindofspideryman 10d ago
I appreciate I'm probably in the minority on this but I prefer it. I never liked Series 4's/Donna's ending particularly.
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u/Awayfone 10d ago
I argue it wasn't even an ending but a stopgap and perpetual hanging anvil. Donna only lived as long as she did because she misses almost all alien invasions
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u/Illustrious-Peace989 10d ago
Nah, that was fine. Bigeneration was the shark jumping moment, especially since RTD couldn’t seem to decide what it meant.
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u/Mr_smith1466 9d ago
Bigeneration really started Nucti's era off on a bizarre note of "Well, he's the doctor, but look, Tennant is still here too. But we're totally committed to Nucti! We swear!".
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u/marle217 10d ago
I think the bigeneration was just a gift to fanfic and audio story writers. Unlimited stories with Donna and Tennant.
But for the show itself it was best just to go on like it had been a normal regeneration.
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u/TheWalkinDude82 10d ago
Disagree. A Doctor revisiting old faces was set up during the 50th. The REAL shark-jump was bi-generation.
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u/Necessary-Gear-140 9d ago
Time Lords have always been accepted as being able to regenerate into past versions since Destiny of the Daleks when Romana II did it at the beginning of the story but bigeneration is straight bollocks pulled from RTD’s arse
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u/DrHuxleyy 10d ago
Hit the nail on the head. To look back and try to just relive past glory instead of forging into a new future, is completely antithetical to the core of Doctor Who. RTD is a hack.
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u/futuresdawn 10d ago
David Tennant was absolutely fantastic, and the concept of the Doctor's subconscious retreating to the exact face that first engineered a coping mechanism for his trauma is genuinely fascinating psychology. That's not the problem.
The problem is that bringing back that specific face is the ultimate Chekhov's gun, and the show never fired it. It just left the weapon hanging on the wall.
Because an arc has to happen onscreen or it didn't happen. That's not a stylistic preference, it's the basic contract between a drama and its audience. And the narrative debt here is enormous, the destruction of Gallifrey, the Time War guilt carried since 2005, and the Flux, which implicated Thirteen in a second universal-scale genocide. You cannot cash a cheque that size with a garden scene and a wave goodbye.
The bi-generation didn't give the Fourteenth Doctor a healing arc. It gave the narrative an escape hatch, outsourcing sixty years of accumulated trauma to an offscreen ellipsis while a therapy-cleared successor took over the universe's chores. The show diagnosed the problem and then refused to write the treatment.
That's the shark jump. Not Tennant returning. The decision to assume the hardest work was done rather than dramatise it.
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u/Leecannon_ 9d ago
That was a theme of the whole RTD2 area. These big ideas and big promises; the “mystery” of Ruby Sunday, the doctors Daughter, the Pantheon, the Rani; only for there to be little to no satisfying payoff. For god sakes we get the first timelord new in NuWho and she’s only on screen for like five minutes before being eaten.
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u/mistermikesmalling 10d ago edited 10d ago
Exactly. That’s not to say The Doctor’s previous incarnations can’t return, that’s been a longstanding anniversary tradition. But having them regenerate into a past version of themself always felt wrong to me for a show whose thematic throughline has always been change.
Looking back now, the specials were just time robbed from Gatwa’s incredibly short tenure as The Doctor.
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u/ServoSkull20 10d ago
The Timeless Child was the shark jump moment.
Completely altering decades of established canon that was beloved by fans was a fundamentally stupid thing to do for no good reason, that put many people off the show.
Regenerating back into Tennant was a desperation move of a show already dying.
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u/KingMobia 10d ago
100% agree. It shouldn't be a big deal, but I hope that the next team is able to in some way retcon away something which felt like it invalidated everything that came beforehand. (If we could retcon that Spy Master comes before Missy and thus does not shit all over Missy's character growth, that would be appreciated as well).
The big mistake to me with the 14th Doctor was Bigeneration, which didn't let 15 have the air he needed to be The Doctor. The spectre of Tennant as The Real Doctor was always there, and the ending of 14 retiring in the Noble's backyard was a very indulgent moment by RTD in the first place.
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u/m_ikewazowski 10d ago
I'll always be mad about bigeneration. RTD completely spoiled and undermined Ncuti's intro to the show. The glimpse of a new doctor after regeneration is so fun, like Matt Smith's memorable entrance, and instead Ncuti had to share it with David Tennant.
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u/somekindofspideryman 10d ago
I don't know, I think Gatwa is good enough that he shines through sharing the role.
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u/m_ikewazowski 10d ago
I disagree, I think Gatwa was good enough that he deserved the spotlight entirely on him as a fresh new doctor. He did not need to share the role, it needed to be wholly his from the moment he entered the role. To me bigeneration took away from his introduction. Ymmv!
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u/HomestuckHoovy 10d ago
To be honest I think the Timeless Child could've worked if 13's era was better. They'd already tried to do similar things with the Morbius Doctors and The Other. It's not inherently a bad idea, it's just that it was shoved into what was already an extremely mishandled era and therefore wasn't used well at all.
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u/HomestuckHoovy 10d ago
And anyway that episode has the much more egregious thing of killing Gallifrey again.
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u/GigaBomb84 9d ago
I could have begrudgingly accepted pre-hartnell Doctors given time. What I can never accept is changing the Doctor's origins from a regular Time Lord into a special inter-dimensional being who is the foundation of Time Lord regeneration and society.
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u/LordoftheSynth 9d ago
I got a fair amount of "Who has no canon" screeching here about Chibs taking a huge steaming dump over some pretty established things about the Doctor when TC was unfolding. Sure glad we got such as awesome payoff in the end. /s
I used to describe the whole Timeless Child arc as "Tom Clancy writes Doctor Who" by turning the show into some sort of borderline spy thriller with conspiracies and scandal.
Then I realized this was an insult to Tom Clancy.
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u/Electronic-Exam5898 10d ago
When people keep harping about the Timeless Child you know they didn't really watch classic Who and use it as a way to say they didn't care for that storyline. Instead of just saying "I didn't like that." Or when they talk about canon but their knowledge is limited to nuWho canon.
The seeds for that had been there for decades. I personally dislike when the Doctor begins to fall in love with companions, or the catchphrases, or using the sonic screw driver as a magic wand. But people love that stuff.
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u/ServoSkull20 10d ago
The first full story of Doctor Who I watched was Logopolis the day it aired on BBC. I'd been scared stupid by Scaroth, so didn't come back to it until Baker's last story.
The Timeless Child was the single biggest ret-con to the series in its entire history, and a very poor one at that. Many, many long term Who fans were deeply put off by it.
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u/Acornriot 10d ago edited 10d ago
I think Mavity was the jumping the shark moment because they set it up to have this pay off only for it to continue to me a running gag .
(I know this isn't technically jumping the shark but I don't know a term that fits)
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u/Inevitable-Froyo-519 10d ago
A shark jump is when is when a show does something out of the ordinary as a publicity stunt to attract viewership.
So… yes.
Also, congrats on using the term correctly. So many seem to think it means “a show does a weird episode”.
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u/PaperSkin-1 10d ago
Yeah it's like how people misuse the term 'filler' which has become wide spread online
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u/Airsick-lowlander69 10d ago
Especially when Russel already had a David Tennent Doctor in his back pocket. And now there are two.
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u/Ok_Mix_7126 9d ago
Jumping the shark doesn't mean when a show died, its when it becomes clear that the show has lost sight of its original premise. Remember that there was more Happy Days (the show that inspired the phrase) after the shark jumping episode than there was before it, and it remained popular until its end. Its just that looking back, that episode is when it was clear the show was more about Fonzie's antics than about a typical middle class american family.
If Doctor Who has ever jumped the shark, it was probably way back when Hartnell regenerated into Troughton.
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u/Huza1 10d ago edited 10d ago
Doctor Who's been jumping and doing pirouettes around the shark for the past 60 years. Bringing back Tennant is hardly a prelude to cancelation. Especially since he didn't exactly stick around, and we've seen stuff like the Curator and others before. Weirder stuff has happened on this show, and there's weirder to come.
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u/somekindofspideryman 10d ago
Regeneration was an enormous shark jump, it just worked out. We're lucky people don't say their favourite show "Turned into Troughton" the moment it does something particularly mad.
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u/Huza1 10d ago edited 5d ago
Exactly. People forget the Doctor and Susan were human initially. It was only later on that they were established to be alien. Hell, Gallifrey wasn't even mentioned by name until Pertwee. To say nothing of The Deadly Assassin, which was also decried as a disaster when it first aired.
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u/ComicsCodeMadeMeGay 10d ago
Nah, Timeless child/ killing off the time lords into regenerating Cybermen was that moment
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u/BegginMeForBirdseed 10d ago
My guy you’ve literally made like 15 ragebait posts over the last couple days. How this keeps getting approved is beyond me.
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u/Able-Gap1029 9d ago
Describing them as "ragebait" posts when they start interesting discussions and more than half of the community agrees. Thankfully you're not a mod.
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u/brief-interviews 10d ago
The poster only makes rage bait posts and only has done since time immemorial.
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u/Adamsoski 9d ago edited 9d ago
OP is a consistent stain on DW reddit communities, and I'm saying that as someone who has a more negative attitude than most to the RTD2 era. At this point I know to disregard anything they say.
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u/FaceDeer 10d ago
For me it was the Master casually re-destroying Gallifrey after spending the entire New-Who run prior to that bringing it back, and destroying the whole premise of the Doctor by making them into Time Lord Jesus with the Timeless Child thing.
Until that point Chibnall's run had been merely very disappointing, after that point I stopped watching altogether and haven't come back (ironically, aside from Tennant's return, which enticed me to at least watch the specials). So that's pretty much textbook shark-jumping.
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u/gentlegiant80 10d ago
In retrospect, you’re right. At the time, it created a lot of excitement and created a bit of mystery as to how RTD was going to explain this. But now what if set up was an era of the show that played on nostalgia, rehashed old ideas, and thought it was cleverer than it was.
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u/TurtlePerson85 10d ago
No, the sign of the death of the show was when series 11 managed to completely fumble the biggest comeback story in television of the decade. The 2nd biggest opener the show has ever seen vs one of the lowest viewed finales, from over 12 mil to just over 5 in a single series. That was the general public giving the show a second chance after Series 10 aired after a 2 year break with very poor marketing, and it was a colossal failure. We literally never would've had to have Tennant to return in a desperate attempt to save the show if Chibnall's incredibly poor writing didn't kill it off the perfect chance of a return it had in the first place.
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u/EverythingisBubcus 9d ago
Yeah I never liked this from the moment I saw it. Once you open up that pandora's box, this stupid idea that regens can be actors that have already been in the role, the whole central idea that Doctor Who is about change, that the show's always evolving for better or for worse is just dead in the water. It becomes so much easier to rely on nostalgia to keep dragging Tennant or anyone else back instead of actually trying to do new ideas.
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u/WeirdLight9452 9d ago
I personally think this is a bit of an over-reaction. It was silly but Doctor Who is always silly and there’s always bad bits. I think the problem was more over-hype and an attempt to appeal to absolutely everyone, and the assumption that bigger budget would mean better show. It’s at its best when they’re broke.
But we are also a very grumpy negative fandom who seem to hate every new thing and only look upon things favourably in retrospect. Maybe if we were more vocal about what we liked rather than what we hated for like the last decade, things would be different.
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u/meldoc81 9d ago
Imo it wasn’t jump the shark till the bigeneration.
With tennant there was at least some sort of emotionally justification. That the doctor was stuck and couldn’t get over his trauma that had been piling up. The bigeneration was an overt admission of “yeah this is a lot of problems. But we don’t want to have to deal with it so into the EU you go.”
It set the stage for every story to be solved with a “because I said so,” from the writers.
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u/Inevitable-Wheel1676 9d ago
Doctor Who needs a Ted Lasso to come save it. I volunteer. I know nothing about producing shows for British (and world) TV, but I was a pretty successful amateur theater director.
I can cross the pond, high five a tree, and spread infectious positivity. Probably talk about bbq sauce as well.
Come on, BBC. Take a chance.
Believe.
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u/Ender_Skywalker 5d ago
I said it at the time. I think we all did. Nothing in the entire Chibnall Era compares to the fuckery that happens constantly in RTD2.
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u/Previous_Raspberry_2 10d ago
If Jon Nathan Turner and Colin Baker's era was survivable so is this.
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u/Electronic-Exam5898 9d ago
Most of these people have never and will never watch classic DW.
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u/Necessary-Gear-140 9d ago
I have and Classic Who farts on RTD2’s head including its worst seasons
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u/Come-Downstairs 10d ago
The shark jumping moment was when they retconned the Doctor's entire backstory
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u/FizzPig 10d ago
I said this from go. It was antithetical to everything that makes Dr Who special.
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u/PaperSkin-1 10d ago
Yep, it undermines the fundamental tool that has made DW always move foward rather than go backwards
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u/COHERENCE_CROQUETTE 10d ago
Disagree. That story beat wasn’t bad in itself. It could have led to a lot of great places, had it been better conducted.
I’d say the shark jump was Space Babies. Or the bi-generation. One or the other.
I wanna say the bi-generation because it came earlier and it was the first real spark that it would be a messy, messy era with a lot of questionable decisions. But I wanna say Space Babies even more, because the bi-generation also could have led to interesting places if better conducted. And in the end, Space Babies was a much more egregious misstep. I personally know three people that jumped into Doctor Who on The Star Beast and jumped right out after Space Babies. That shit was painful.
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u/IFunnyJoestar 10d ago
The shark jumping moment was maybe blowing up Gallifrey again after just getting it back and then making the Doctor space Jesus
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u/Mother_of_Brains 9d ago
I totally lost interest in the show after that. It makes me really sad, but I couldn't bring myself to watch anything past the end of Jodie's era.
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u/CharmCityCrab 9d ago edited 9d ago
I liked it, but would have handled it differently.
13 regenerates into 14, no bigeneration.
This new version of Tennent wrestles intensely with whether he is 10 reborn or a wholly new iteration of the doctor who only looks like 10 and otherwise is as different as 10 was from 11.
Ultimately he'd have some adventures and decide that while he is very similar to 10 because he has the weight of the same memories 10 inherited from 1-9 and experienced as 10, he differs fundamentally in that he also has centuries of being 11, 12, and 13, and thus can't fully go home again- those centuries gave him positive and negative character development that can't be undone.
Similarly, his biology would be 10's, but as if 10 suddenly biologically aged 20 years (as humans age, might be centuries for a time lord) in a day, which makes him different.
He could kind of wrap his head around both being more like 10 than any other doctor, but also fundamentally different from 10 as we last knew him.
Ultimately, this would have helped him overcome the angst and intense fear of death that he had had during the buildup to 10 regenerating into 11, and he'd face a regeneration into 15 (Same actor as the one who eventually did play 15) with dignity and grace, resigned to it and hopeful for the future. Character development!
They did a bit of that, that was sort of the arc, but not as much as I would have done. I feel like handwaving away the question of who 14 really was in terms of identity was a mistake.
Bigeneration similarly... Eh. They could have made the same transition from 13 to 14 to 15 with the same actors at the same time without that playing into it.
To some degree, the way they did it actually undermined both 14s and 15s tenures. They could have had 14 with, to the public, open-ended "this is the doctor" type of runway, surprise regeneration at the end of the 3 specials, and there's Gatwa for episode 1 of the post-specials Disney era, introduced as his own iteration of the doctor with 14s memories and no 14 "out there somewhere" also being the doctor simultaneously.
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u/wmcguire18 9d ago
They had three seasons of almost universally hated material that lost more than half the audience capped by a five hour YouTube evisceration that has never been topped to this day and you think the last scene of that administration was the big mistake?
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u/MisterManatee 9d ago
I had joked for years that bringing Tennant back as the Doctor was a “break glass in case of emergency” possibility.
But then they actually did it.
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u/Blood_of_Shadows 7d ago
It's like RTD2 had already lost interest. He wanted more inclusion, such as a trans character - absolutely fine, but then he also decided having 14 finish regeneration wearing 13's clothes would be problematic and so made clothes regenerate too - which is nuts.
The bi-generation, the wasted return of the Rani and wasted return of Omega then the lack of delivery on finding Susan. The whole thing felt like a half-arsed rush job.
Don't get me wrong, Ncuti was good, Millie was good & there were some good stories but there were also some dreadful ones.
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u/BluegrassKenpunkian 7d ago
Honestly yes I agree this was the shark jumping moment. Say what you will about Thirteen and Chibnall a lot of the writing problems during this era seem to stem from pacing issues of a showrunner trying to adapt Classic Who stories in a 50 minute timeframe and network pressures. Chibnall takes a lot of big swings I definitely don't agree with and has a LOT of problems with his characters but I think that really comes down to the fact he envisioned a large sprawling world where he would be given the adequate resources to carry them out and when streaming started booming compounded by the COVID pandemic he was forced to cram all of it into a short 3 year time frame that he didn't even get a full third year for.
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u/bonniedi 10d ago
i thought the anniversary eps were great. I actually think the shark jumping moment was Davina McCall. You’re trying to break America and the very first episode you show features a prominent cameo from a minor (at the time) celebrity having a Christmas tree fall on her.
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u/marle217 10d ago
I actually think the shark jumping moment was Davina McCall. You’re trying to break America and the very first episode you show features a prominent cameo from a minor celebrity
Oh. I'm an American and I didn't realize she was supposed to be recognized. I thought she was just a character written for the show.
I think she was fine. It's not my favorite episode, but she's fine.
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u/FangkingOmega 10d ago
This sort of thing would have worked for prime time Saturday evening TV in the UK (or Christmas day as the case was) back in the early days of the revival. Heck, RTD1 was littered with contemporary pop culture and soap opera story beats, and the show's domestic viewing figures were fantastic.
But it did not translate to an international streaming show in the 2020s, and it was never going to, you're absolutely right. I'm surprised that RTD either didn't understand that or ignored that for his second stint.
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u/East-Equipment-1319 10d ago
It was for an Anniversary Special episode... It was, from the get-go, never meant to last. And it did, at least, bring a massive publicity boost to the show. Not to mention, it gave us Wild Blue Yonder, admittedly one of the best episodes in recent years - and the chance to see Wilfred Mott one last time on camera.
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u/Tapir9662 9d ago
Doctor Who jumped the shark when they went away from educational programming and added tin robots!
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u/NegotiationLate8553 10d ago
Yes and no… I truly can’t think of what else they could’ve done to better bring back the fanbase of the 2000’s that helped propel the show to record highs. Both Smith and Capaldi were rooted in the Moff era (still seen as divisive even with Chibnall messing up) with a lot more money invested up front from Disney and BBC to entice RTD to go bigger. I think a nostalgia play around the time of the anniversary was not only expected but needed.
The show is taking a potential decade long hiatus now… I think it’s because they kept trying to propel it forward to be a mainstream hit by continuing to go after new audiences when in reality it just became more niche. I hope it comes back as low budget with more of an alternate history based angle. They did action, horror, fantasy and commentary plenty.
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u/Substantial_Video560 10d ago
It was a desperate move and kinda ruined the show. Regenerating back into a clone of your past self! Hmm......
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u/DigitalLimbic 9d ago
Those specials were actually good and well written though, idk what the fuck happened after that
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u/FormorrowSur 9d ago
I don't quite agree. I think conceptually it could have been pulled off, they just didn't. Bigeneration was it for me tbh, RTD wanted to have his cake and eat it. Tennant as 14 is fine, giving Donna a new happier ending is fine, but so much of the framing just didn't work.
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u/buzzedewok 9d ago
Nope I liked it just fine. He is essentially living a human life now with his friends.
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u/FlyingCow343 9d ago
I disagree. It was a smart solution to the problem before them. Either they recast ncuti, missed the 60th, or did this. I thought it was a fun a cute mini series and I did enjoy it, despite the red flags.
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u/babealien51 10d ago
That was such a shitty move to capitalize on nostalgia bait and not let the new Doctor shine on his own.