Xmas special Dr Mysterio - Doctor Who (1963) Discussion

[–] 8 years ago

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[–] Chris12955 8 years ago

I still watch the new stuff, but I agree with almost all of what you said. Peter Capaldi as an actor, is wasted being used with Steven Moffat's lousy writing.

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[–] ant-mac 8 years ago

4/5 - Above average.

I rather enjoyed this Christmas special. It's certainly not the worse one we've had since New Who began.

ant-mac

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[–] Chris12955 8 years ago

I saw the special, and I was mostly unimpressed. 6/10, that is a not bad rating from me, but not a good one either. The Special had parts that I enjoyed, but the rest either turned me off, or bored me. I don't think well of the standing of a show that offer up 6s after an entire year's hiatus. That is ignoring the quality of the current episodes, which are mediocre television for the most part. Give me Classic Who any day over the current stuff.

My ranking system put into one word descriptors. 1 is ignominious garbage, 2 is atrocious, 3 is bad, 4 is poor, 5 is lacking, 6 is a decent, 7 is good, 8 is great, 9 is superb, with 10 being excellent.

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[–] Verse101 8 years ago

Quite liked it overall although I thought it dragged whenever Capaldi wasn't on screen - i.e. whenever it was trying to be a budget Superman movie rather than an episode of Doctor Who - but overall it was perfectly acceptable Christmas TV fluff.

I'll reserve judgement on Bill until I've seen more of her but other than that I thought the trailer looked okay - but it's only a trailer so we'll have to wait and see.

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[–] mail-81278 8 years ago

Started off great, even if it's the same old Moffat trope of the Doctor meeting a kid at the start of an episode for what, at least the third or forth time.

Totally lost interest halfway through. Watched the last third on fast forward just to get through it and see if anything interesting popped up.

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[–] mindbait 8 years ago

just watched it, I vaguely wondered if the American setting was to pander to the US market, other than that it was good fun.
I'd definitely rate it above some of the previous christmas specials (time of the doctor and the husbands of Riversong were probably better). Capaldi was great and generally had some good material to work with (though I reckon Moffatt could tone down the "watch out for me, I'm crazy" lines). Matt Lucas was inoffensively enjoyable.
It could potentially have been too OTT, but I tend to give the Christmas specials a bit of leeway as far as tone goes and the larger-than-life superhero was balanced nicely with almost Bond-esque villains

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[–] timmdoolen 8 years ago

Matt Lucas's character was enjoyable, someone needs to tell me exactly who that character is, was he in Who previously?

Matt Lucas was a character in the previous Christmas special 2015. If I remember, his head gets cut off and put on top of a robot for much of his screen time in that episode, hence the line in this episode about how the Doctor dug him out of there. It also seems he will be making at least a few appearances in the new season.

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[–] Chris12955 8 years ago

I vaguely wondered if the American setting was to pander to the US market

If the New York setting was to pander, it didn't work for this American. Most of us don't care that much about New York City anyways. I think Moffat just likes the place for some reason.

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[–] michaellevenson1 8 years ago

The ratings for the UK have been revealed. 5.7m at its peak, which is not good compared to previous specials , but still gets it a top ten placing for Xmas day.
Ratings are probably less important nowadays but it's still just 2m more than when the Classic series was axed.

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[–] Verse101 8 years ago

The ratings for the UK have been revealed. 5.7m at its peak, which is not good compared to previous specials , but still gets it a top ten placing for Xmas day.

It doesn't sound great until you look at the rest of the top ten. The overall winner on Christmas Day was Strictly Come Dancing but that only had 7.2m so ratings for Christmas Day in general are down quite considerably but that's only natural considering how much TV viewing has changed in the past few years. The eventual final tally may rise quite considerably once all the freeview and catch-up numbers figure are released.

The ratings system is antiquated now anyway and only really of interest to tabloid newspapers!

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[–] Chris12955 8 years ago

The eventual final tally may rise quite considerably once all the freeview and catch-up numbers figure are released.

They do rise for the final figures when you add in the downloads and DVR's over the week. BUT, the show has been losing even those numbers in recent years. When you take them into account, it has been going down for some years now for the Christmas specials(ignoring the Regeneration specials since those are special circumstances.)

This of course is also ignoring the reduction in the final numbers in general for each series. Capaldi saw an uptick in the final figures for his first few episodes because he was an incoming Doctor, but it has gone back down again, further than before. The fact is, that the show IS losing viewers. The more rabid fans are becoming casual, and the casual viewers are slowly dropping out.

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[–] michaellevenson1 8 years ago

I think the show is safe so long as overseas sales and merchandise continues to be strong,when that falls off then the writing will be on the wall.
It's difficult to predict what'll happen but one more series of Capaldi then a new showrunner , a new Doctor and perhaps two more series is my prediction.
I'm dead opposed to this but a female Doctor might just give it the boost needed.
Who should be the next Doc? Just concentrating on women, what about Olivia Coleman or Tamsin Greig or as a more outlandish choice, Jennifer Saunders.

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[–] Chris12955 8 years ago

I think the show is safe so long as overseas sales and merchandise continues to be strong,when that falls off then the writing will be on the wall.

The new episodes of the show already plateaued in popularity here in the States. If Hot Topic is slowly removing your products from their stores, you are losing your hip merchandising edge. Even though BBC America gets higher ratings for the Christmas specials each year, I attribute that to the channel becoming part of the lower tier cable/satellite packages you can buy as time has gone on. BBC America has higher rating in general from year to year, so I discount the Doctor Who increases since the channel as a whole keeps getting more. South of the United States the show has just been discovered in recent years, so that should make up for declining sales here.

I'm dead opposed to this but a female Doctor might just give it the boost needed.

I'm also opposed to it, but it strikes me as a gimmick ploy that more likely than not, will backfire. Back in the 1980's they tried similarly desperate ploys, and they just earned the ire of fans and fell flat with the general audience with how they were pulled off. I am talking about celebrity casting and blatant fan pandering to the more fringe fans. A woman cast as The Doctor smells of the latter.

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[–] mindbait 8 years ago

I dunno, I know a few people who end up downloading it in ways that are not recorded and do not count towards the ratings in the end, and those are dedicated fans too... for me it's not even that it doesn't screen over here, it's just that I don't have an on-demand service and I was busy when it was on tv (ditto with a bunch of season 9 eps).

Whether or not Who's ratings are dropping, I don't think that the traditional ways of measuring this really reflect the current viewership. I'd be interested to know the sales figures across the various seasons of the new show

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New song "Breathless Love"

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[–] Chris12955 8 years ago

I dunno, I know a few people who end up downloading it in ways that are not recorded and do not count towards the ratings in the end

Don't they do a survey to achieve all of the download and DVR figures?

I'd be interested to know the sales figures across the various seasons of the new show

The DVD sales of new series are down, and the downloads not only stopped increasing(which used to compensate for the drop in live ratings) but are down in the downloads compared to two or three years ago as well. So less getting it for free from the BBC to download, DVRing it for free, downloading outside of the BBC, and paying for the seasons on DVD as you mentioned.

So, yes, the viewers are quietly leaving. Even I didn't watch The Husbands of River Song and Last Christmas for some months after their first airing. The Return of Doctor Mysterio was an exception as there wasn't anything else on, and we didn't pay as much attention as we would have when it was Matt Smith, David Tennant or Christopher Eccleston. So I am one of those who have been quietly dropping out of the new stuff. A Whovian I made acquaintance with last year also admitted something similar to me without my prompting. He now only watches them after he can watch the DVDs for free from the library. He has the earlier stuff on DVD at home, not the newer stuff.

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[–] apostasia 8 years ago

It didn't feel like very much happened. Have liked the last couple of Xmas specials, but this one was basically just like watching a boring version of Superman, and god knows that was boring enough first time around. Funnily enough, I didn't think much of the trailer, but turns out the Doctor eating takeout whilst infiltrating a building probably was the highlight after all.

Just a painted face on a trip down suicide row

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[–] frosted_one 8 years ago

Didn't bother watching it, I turned off the 2014 Xmas episode and haven't bothered since. They've never been good but the writing of the last few has been even worse than the regular episodes.

The only peeve I have is that the trailer for the new series didn't excite me, seems the new companion is another Donna

I've read that in reviews, this might be enough to see me give up on New Who at least until they bring the new EP in and hopefully a completely new writers room.

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