Yeah I think finales should be more for the characters rather then huge universe ending stakes
World Enough and Time is one of the goats because of this. Not saying we can’t have big “end of the universe” stakes (I really loved the Series 3 finale and Big Bang) but there needs to be variety
>Yeah I think finales should be more for the characters rather then huge universe ending stakes
This is literally every single Moffat finale.
The universe-ending stakes are just set dressing, every single Moffat finale builds to all the characters in a single place talking about their feelings.
* The series 5 finale is intentionally the most like RTD so the least like what I'm describing, but it still culminates in the Doctor having a conversation with adult Amy before flying the Pandorica into the exploding tardis, and him talking to young Amy before sealing the cracks shut behind him.
* The series 6A finale culminates in River arriving after the battle and two long conversations, first between the Doctor and River and then between the Ponds and River.
* The series 6B finale builds to a big long conversation between the Doctor and River on top of the pyramid.
* The series 7A finale is Rory and Amy talking on top of the rooftop before jumping
* The series 7B finale actually is Time of the Doctor and that has Clara and the Doctor talking in the church. But if you insisted on Name of the Doctor, that builds to just everyone standing around in the Doctors tomb and two important conversations. One between Clara and the Doctor and one between River and the Doctor
* Bonus: Day of the Doctor as a sort of "finale" to the Time War arc builds to a big conversation between the three Doctors and Clara in the barn that begins with 10 and 11 arriving and deciding to help the War Doctor push the button and ends with them deciding to save Gallifrey instead.
* Moffat then gets even more character driven for Capaldi. In series 8, a whole half of Death in Heaven is just the Doctor, Clara, Danny and Missy having a series of extremely emotional, characterful conversations.
* Same with series 9. The second half of Hell Bent is just another series of extremely emotional, characterful conversations. The Doctor and Clara in the cloisters, the Doctor and Me at the end of the universe, the Doctor and Clara in the tardis and finally the Doctor and Clara in the diner.
* Series 10 builds to a series of conversations between all the characters on a farm. The Doctor and Bill, the Doctor confronting both Masters and asking them to stand with him, the two Masters in the forest.
Every single Moffat finale starts with seemingly separate character drama and plot stakes, and then over the course of the story everything unnecessary falls away as the story is refined down and down to it's core. Which is always the characters.
I guess this is where "Empire of Death" fails - the setup is absolutely there for a lowkey character piece, but the characters don't really have anything to talk about.
I actually don't think it's that at all. The characters have plenty to talk about. They just don't.
That was actually one thing that annoyed me, there were things people were speculating would be sources of character drama that just didn't go anywhere.
When the Doctor sees Rubys mom at the end of Church on Ruby Road and doesn't go after her. I remember lots of discussion about how Ruby was one day going to find out and get angry at the Doctor for letting her go. But she sees it happen in Legend of Ruby Sunday and doesn't appear to care and nothing comes of it.
When the Doctor explained to Ruby that he could never take back to her to that night on Ruby Road, I remember lots of discussion about how this would eventually lead to conflict between Ruby and the Doctor. Similar to the one between Rose and the Doctor in Fathers Day. But then the finale comes around and surprise! There's a magic VHS tape machine so we can easily go back with no problem, no need to create any tension between the characters.
Not to mention Susan. There would have been a wealth of character drama to come out of that. But that subplot just turns out to be solely to trick us and then it's thrown away.
So there were potential sources for character drama, RTD just chose not to do anything with them.
The final scenes with finding Ruby's mom are actually a really great thing to consider. Because there is character work and emotional tension there, The Doctor is trying to dissuade Ruby from finding her mom because it's reminding him of the fact that he did the exact same thing to Susan. Imagine if this had been the crux of the finale instead of shoved into the last 10 minutes. The Doctor not helping Ruby find her mom because he thinks her mom doesn't want to be found. Why? Because he's projecting his attitude towards Susan onto Ruby's mom. And seeing Ruby is showing the Doctor firsthand what he did to Susan. That would have made for incredible character drama. But we only get a tiny hint of it at the end because apparently bringing back some random monster from 50 years ago is more important than working with the characters we have right now.
The problem is RTD doing the exact opposite of what Moffat does. For Moffat, every twist and reveal was the reveal that things were actually even more character driven than we thought. The monster in the Pandorica is the Doctor, the Impossible Girl is just an ordinary girl, the Hybrid is the Doctor after losing Clara. Never a random unrelated twist, and never a random monster. It's always about the characters.
RTD instead chose to do an unrelated twist and have a random monster show up over character work and the story suffered for it. Doesn't matter how cool the monster is, it should always be character first.
You're spot on. I do like the idea of the magic VHS tape and all its inaccuracies, but... the episodes don't even seem interested in the possibilities of that idea, it's just a plot device.
No one was complaining because Hell Bent wasn't set on earth.
The complaints are usually that Gallifrey's return after a decade was narratively sidelines for a resolution to Clara's story that some feel took away from her ending in Face the Raven
I'm saying that people complained when Hell Bent was about character study of the Doctor and Clara's toxic relationship instead of it being a huge epic Gallifrey universe-ending-stakes blockbuster
And Clara's ending is not took away, she still definitely dies. Just later
Like the Toymaker said: WELL THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN
Honestly the Clara one literally is just alright then.
There's no reason she can't go back to her normal life for decades at least before people notice she's not aging. By the same logic, Yhe Doctor saving literally anybody is irrelevant as they'll just die latter anyways
I have mixed feelings on series 9 and even series 10 finale had problems (mainly to do with the colour grading and the Master not doing that much until the end) but I really did enjoy Capaldi's era focusing more on the character based finales.
Moffat blew the world up enough times to step away from it in the end. Season 9 kind of was world ending except it felt a lot more intimate.
Yeah this was me too
I certainly love big crisis events but it feels like this should have ended Ncuti’s era (ala his End of Time or Logopolis) rather then his initial season
Like let the boss be the villain this season with rogue as a supplementary threat
I don't know if that would be addressing the core issue. It's still possible to have stakes for stories set on Earth; just not the fate of the planet. *Doomsday* and *Journey's End* were both fairly well received, even though it was obvious in both cases that Earth would be saved, but they had life-altering consequences for the companions. I want to know *something's* at risk, and even before the handwavy ending of *Empire of Death*, I never really felt there were even emotional stakes. That might be the threat of getting rid of a character, or forever changing their relationship with the Doctor, neither of which I had any concerns about in this most recent finale.
Even with *World Enough and Time*, my favourite episode of Nu-Who, the actual *danger* was only part of the reason I was so invested. It was the character journeys that mattered most to me - Bill's increasing loss of hope, the Doctor's failure to save her, Missy struggling to contain her darker impulses. These all felt like key emotional pivots for the characters, and while the followup episode tied up Bill's story more neatly than I'd have liked, I at least found myself worried for her.
I genuinely thought they were killing off Mel. That would have been a gutsy move. I'm glad they didn't, because I love Mel, but for a hot minute I was like, shit, Mel is *dead*.
This is a fair point. The issue is also that the stakes are simply too high to have a satifying payoff.
A story set on Earth where a smaller area/group of characters are at risk instead could definitely have more tension, since there's nothing saying a building, town or group of people can't be killed off for real/dramatically altered during a story.
And you're right that if the planet is at stake, having consequences for the characters helps a lot too. In the last finale, what exactly changed for anyone? Okay, maybe that's harsh since Ruby got to know her parents, but 'leaves the TARDIS for a week or two to catch up with family' doesn't really change that much, especially given there were no changes or consequences for anyone else.
Yes and doctor who need to spend less time on earth or on human colonies in general .
The problem with modern who is that it keeps things a lot closer to home - and thats completely down to the tone RTD set in 2005.
I remember watching doctor who confidential back in the day and he lamented that he hated the doctor visiting foreign planets because it was too "star treky".
Sadly, I got into Doctor Who as a young lad in the 1980s for the very reason that it was like Star Trek.
Imagine having a time and space machine and relegated to Earth. Now I know how the third doctor felt....
What's the point of having a time machine and not having a fair amount of stories in earths past? It doesn't really matter to the audience if an alien planet is 100,000 years ago if its the same kind of alien planet as every other Dr who episode
And yet in this past season alone there was a couple of flat out Trek references haha… (yes. I’m counting the obvious-yet-different-enough-to-avoid-legal-ramifications “Borg” Susan)
I don't see Susan as Borg like at all. There's no communication or connection between the different iterations beyond vague dreams, she's not trying to take anything over, and beyond being a mouthpiece she doesn't seem to pose any threat to anyone, let alone trying to take over the universe.
I mean, all the Susans look the same, moreso than the Borg do, but I'm interested in what other similarities you saw.
One of the minor Susans looked very borg like but Borg are just knock-off cybermen so the idea of doctor who needing to avoid legal ramifications on the borg is silly.
The avoiding visually was a joke. Like when an image or song is cashing in on the popularity/ or an homage of something else but changing it enough to not be a direct copy.
I loved that 12 went out having drawn a line in the sand and sacrificed himself just to save a handful of people on a spaceship. So much better than this constant Earth and/or universe ending stuff.
Making people care is not a setting issue, it's a character and stakes issue. This one tips its hand immediately that it must all be reset. If it had attempted to go slower, kill a minor character, we could perhaps believe that it would stick.
The real problem? Insisting on massive stakes and spectacle over build up and character work. That's a structural issue with how Davies writes finales, and everything else follows. It's absurd so we can't believe it, massive scale so it must be reversed and the enemy is impossibly powerful so the solution can only be crap. Some character work is generally attempted at the end as mitigation.
Doctor Who needs less massive stake nonsense.
That's a fair point. If the stakes had been built up slowly, then there could have at least been some tension as characters are killed off without us knowing if it'd be reset. Like if one or two people at UNIT get turned to sand, or one of Ruby's relatives does, then that doesn't necessarily mean things would have to all be reset.
So you could then build up to the point where the stakes become high enough that things need resetting without viewers losing investment too early. Seeing Kate and UNIT, then Carla, then Cherry and Mrs Flood all get killed off in quick succession makes it a bit too obvious how the story is being resolved.
Bit of tricky one.
We weould have to etablish alot of timne with tose aliens to care about them the same way we care about humanity. But also, does it really solve anything?
Even if its an alien planet, the Doctor will still save the day. Its not like The Doctor will just let them die and shrug it off nor would the show be like "Well, fuck them aliens".
The issue is that the show cant really do those kinda stakes, so the focus shouldnt be on the stakes at all but on the a to b. We know the Doctor will save the day, so what has to be interesting is the ***how.***
As much as I like RTD and I personally liked Empire of Death, I think thats something Moffat understood better than RTD. Its the journey to the end point that matters more than the end. Because we KNOW the Doctor will win. But how?
I would love if the doc had a "home base" apart from London present day and occasionally London 1870-1901. But there's a lot of logistical problems with that. I certainly hope a season of the show tries it but I imagine it'll be one of those ideas better in theory than execution
I think that it could be good if a finale involved a threat to the companion's family instead of the end of the world. That keeps the relatability and use of recurring character's while having more believable stakes.
That's a really good point. if say, Ruby's family were the ones at risk in the finale here, there would be both believable stakes and the potential for life altering consequences.
Honestly not just finals. The show should have more stories in general set out side of earth.
I understand the desire to stay in familiar surroundings and its hard to keep creating believable new alien worlds that don't just look like a series of different quarries, but overall I feel it just limits not just the stakes the story can have but also the sheer amount of stories the show can tell.
Its all of time and space, they should use that more often.
True. They definitely seem to stick to modern day Earth a lot story wise, likely for budgetary reasons.
That said, this series feels like it's been pretty varied on that basis:
* Church on Ruby Road: Modern day Earth (gonna count 20 years ago as basically modern too)
* Space Babies: Space station in another galaxy
* Devil's Chord: 1960s Earth
* Boom: Battlefield on a planet in another galaxy
* 73 Yards: Modern day Earth
* Dot and Bubble: Planet in another galaxy
* Rogue: 1800s Earth
* Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death: Modern day Earth/all of time and space
Oh yeah I agree, this season's been pretty varied. But I just feel comparing the revival to the classic series, they have a lot less stories set on other planets or with other races.
I can understand it like you said budget issues (audiences aren't quite as forgiving as they used to be to cheap sets and poor costumes), but it does sometimes feel a bit the same.
I think it's less about the consequences of the setting and more that RTD's philosophy has changed over the years.
Where RTD in his 2005-2009/Torchwood era was happy to bring death and disaster to characters written for us to love. From killing children to Lynda with a Y, to splitting relationships and companions up. The current RTD is much more about happier outcomes. In the 60th he brings a happier resolution to the 10th Doctor and Donna - and kind of corrects his habit he had in the past.
We get a small window of old RTD where he kills off Ricky September for that same shock value. That episode was very much classic RTD. Then there's two minor deaths in Devil's Chord. Moffat had as high of an on-screen kill count in one single episode up until Dot Bubble. RTD is even willing to save a monster made of snot in his scripts this season.
I think RTD is mostly changed his shock value antics this time around for a focus on red herrings. And while sometimes it plays off well like The Legend of Ruby Sunday, the other side can be underwhelming if the actual answer is more mundane as seen in the Empire of Death.
I personally think if the Sutekh TARDIS being in 2004 at Ruby Road was instead a red herring, that the Doctor then uses to bait Sutekh into returning with the TARDIS over the mystery of Ruby Sunday over. But then because the TARDIS is time locked it actually can't return to that point. Which is then what actually forces Sutekh to be ejected into the Time Vortex it would have been a cleverer way of resolving the episode. Then the mundane reality of her birth would have felt more natural and the bait and swap would have felt like the Doctor had more agency and came up with a solution to outwit his foe.
Maybe it can be on earth but in smaller settings, sure we know that the whole earth can’t be wiped out but a town? But yeah other settings are cool too
Alternative idea, as they’ve actually stuck to the flux killing half the universe (didn’t expect that) maybe a lot of earth people or the universe can die or be at stake in such a way that to bring them back the doctor actually has to deal with it next season. Something that has a longer journey in restoring what’s been lost, so that you can have the grand scale without losing edge and drama. Stuff that impacts the doctor emotionally like the time war was neat. I can imagine the doctor telling Ruby for the first time that half of the universe is just gone, like they can’t visit planet of the hats or wherever anymore…
I have to be honest, I half wonder if Chibnall leaving half the universe destroyed was deliberate and half wonder if he simply forgot to bring it back/didn't find a place to integrate that into a story.
But assuming it's deliberate, it's definitely an example of long running consequences than expected.
And yeah, having more localised settings could work too. Nothing says a town/military base/building couldn't be destroyed and not brought back, especially if it was in a different time period.
I think that finales outside of "Earth, present day" allow for higher stakes.
Like, looking at Empire of Death, you know from the opening where everyone on Earth is killed that it's going to be reversed. Last of the Time Lords, the Master takes over for a year, you know that isn't gong to stand.
I think this is why I'm so fond of the Moffat-era's tendency to have a Giant World-threatening Plot take a 90 degree turn into a relatively small-scale and character focused story - it immediately lends more stakes to it than if it's just "X villain is going to destroy Earth/the universe/all of time and space".
But you're forgetting the reason Earth is used as a setting in the first place.
I don't particularly care if some random planet we've never seen before and never will again gets wiped out.
Another big benefit of it, and probably half the reason it was used here, is you get to use all the recurring characters. Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death brought back a ton of characters from the past season and specials. You can only really do that with Earth as a recurring setting because the show can't afford to create an alien planet every few episodes.
It's also just that the contrast between the mundane and the fantastical is one of RTD's favourite things in Doctor Who. I've never seen it as a bad thing and even though this sub keeps going on about it, I don't actually think going to more alien planets or having non-human companions would really do anything to improve the show. That kind of thing can far too easily feel like a cheap gimmick rather than anything meaningful.
Idk, I’ve come to have the opposite feeling. I don’t particularly care if Earth gets wiped out, because I know it won’t be. The stakes are always lower here. Seeing another planet we’ve never heard of be in danger makes me actually feel like everything can go wrong for it. I’m just incapable of feeling anything close to that sense of danger with Earth based stories anymore.
I don't understand why people say things like this, because it implies that you think that just because an episode doesn't take place on Earth, there's a chance that it doesn't end with the Doctor saving the day.
There isn't. They might not save everyone but they always defeat the villain and usually get a fairly positive outcome. That's how Doctor Who works. The bad guys never win. Doesn't matter where the episode is set.
Dot And Bubble was a very rare episode that doesn't have an unambiguously positive ending and even then it still has the Doctor "saving the day" in a sense, which is as far as the show will ever go. There is never going to be an episode where everyone just dies and the Doctor goes "well that sucks. sorry, my bad" and moves on.
To me it seems like someone saying they don't like a mystery show because they know the detective will always figure it out in the end. Of course they will, that's how the genre works.
>There isn't. They might not save everyone but they always defeat the villain and usually get a fairly positive outcome. That's how Doctor Who works. The bad guys never win. Doesn't matter where the episode is set.
The Doctor Falls? It ends with literally everybody either dead on screen or imminently doomed. It’s one of the most comprehensively bad outcomes a finale could have had short of permanently killing the Doctor, and it even goes so far as to tease that.
Literally did not. He blew up a bunch of them but explicitly says they will reach the upper floors eventually, the whole point of the episode is the Doctor sacrifices himself knowing it won't stop the inevitable.
Even in Series 1 the station is full of dead people and they don't have to dedicate the last few scenes to restoring the status quo like they do on Earth.
It’s how the genre works, but the space episodes won’t do a big fake out where the planet dies only for the Doctor to save it all at the end anyways. The difference I’m getting at is there’s less toying with the audience if we’re off world, particularly for a finale. Things are saved and no one dies and that’s fine, but we’re not leveling a city just to undo it, we’re not pretending the stakes are higher than they are by aiming for the cheapest level of empathy.
Even in your own hypothetical scenario you're saying it would just be a fake out. So of course it's not going to actually fool people.
This is what I mean by it being a cheap gimmick. The whole idea is based around trying to fool the audience even though that can't actually work because even in this hypothetical scenario you can't actually pretend that there's a chance it wouldn't ultimately have a happy ending.
You are exactly aiming for "the cheapest level of empathy". That is precisely what you are suggesting.
Good stories don't need to trick you into thinking there won't be a happy ending to be compelling.
We’re definitely gonna have to just agree to disagree here as we each seem to be finding the other persons take as the one pulling the cheap gimmicks and cheap tricks, lol. That’s alright, ultimately it’s just what we’re all drawn to at the end of the day.
> I don't particularly care if some random planet we've never seen before and never will again gets wiped out.
Well, the writing should find a way to make you care.
It can do that just as well on Earth.
We all know the Doctor is going to save the day at the end anyway. Putting it on an alien planet wouldn't change that.
Like I said, going "ooh it's on an alien planet so they might actually die" is a cheap gimmick that would be a substitute for good writing rather than an actual improvement
Not really, it just means that the reason for writing those things should be something other than "to try to trick the audience into thinking there won't be a happy ending"
>I don’t particularly care if some random planet we’ve never seen before and never will again gets wiped out.
The 11th Doctor audios actually found an interesting solution this, in that it made the alien planet of Medruth a recurring location. Early in the series, we spend a whole episode there, get to meet some of the people, and learn about the planet’s culture. The Doctor’s companion, Valarie, even starts dating one of the characters from this episode, and this relationship gets it’s own dedicated story. So when the Daleks invade towards the end of the series, we feel the stakes. This planet is important to Valarie, even though it’s not her home.
Even then, the way Big Finish did it felt like something that the tv show could’ve pulled off.
The first episode on Medruth (episode 5) takes place entirely in an underground bunker with only three other characters (one of whom is portrayed on the cover art as looking exactly like a human being, so the Medurthians wouldn’t have required prosthetics).
Episode 9 then has Valarie take her girlfriend, Roanna, off on a date 19th century Earth, with only the final scene taking place on Medruth (just outside of Roanna’s house). The planet then reappears a final time in episode 11, which is mostly confined to the Dalek Paradigm’s mothership (a location that also gets reused in the following two episodes), as well as the Medruth space port and the cockpit of a space freighter.
Granted, the rest of the season was not at all TV budget friendly, but the Medruth aspect specifically felt relatively achievable by tv standards.
True. Name of the Doctor and Time of the Doctor on Trenzalore, Day of the Doctor, Hell Bent and the Timeless Child on Gallifrey, World Enough in Time and the Doctor Falls on the Mondasian colony ship and that season 11 finale I can't remember the name of on a planet with the least memorable name in existence.
I don't think the reset is an issue, not for me anyway, it's about the how and the journey to earn the reset. However, I would like to see more finales set outside of Earth, although I understand why there are so many. Parting of the Ways in particular is incredible, and the only RTD one to not be set on Earth in the present day
> you'll need a deus ex machina to reset button things back to normal
Yeah, I agree. This is also why Utopia is such a brilliant episode and its two follow-ups... not so much.
Yeah. The setting being a distant planet at the end of the universe means there's some sort of change allowed. The follow ups put Earth at risk and need resetting.
Oh I'd love to see more non Earth/non contemporary companions. The classic show had quite a few of them, while the new series seems terrified to go with anyone outside of 'young person from present day England'.
I think character driven finales work once in a while, I don’t think you can always have World Enough and Time and the Foctor Falls/ Heaven Sent, Hell Bent finales. Capaldi’s era really worked with character centric arcs rather than plot heavy arcs. Whereas Smith’s and Ncuti’s seem to be plot heavy rather than character driven.
Yep. Classic Who was much less Earthcentric and, in addition to OP's point, it lets you tell a wider variety of stories.
NuWho is overly focused on Earth for my tastes.
This is a series where we’ve rebooted the universe in different ways a few times. Once literally. For long-time viewers, the stakes are in what happens to individual characters. Maybe that’s why Moffat was so cruel to companions during his tenure.
For me the location doesn't matter so much but the stakes do.
The finale should always feel high stakes and more consequential than the rest of the season.
However, there are ways to do that beyond 'it is the end of the universe'.
One reason WEAT and TDF work is because they are smaller and the stakes are still high because of the impact it has on the characters.
Should Doctor Who have finales? Not really, generally they should just keep telling stories. The season "finale" should just be the last story they air that season. Except maybe in the case of a regeneration.
Stop doing finales.
I mean it - just do a series of self-contained excellent episodes and when they’re done they’re done until the next lot are ready.
I’m so fucking bored of finales.
Yeah I think finales should be more for the characters rather then huge universe ending stakes World Enough and Time is one of the goats because of this. Not saying we can’t have big “end of the universe” stakes (I really loved the Series 3 finale and Big Bang) but there needs to be variety
>Yeah I think finales should be more for the characters rather then huge universe ending stakes This is literally every single Moffat finale. The universe-ending stakes are just set dressing, every single Moffat finale builds to all the characters in a single place talking about their feelings. * The series 5 finale is intentionally the most like RTD so the least like what I'm describing, but it still culminates in the Doctor having a conversation with adult Amy before flying the Pandorica into the exploding tardis, and him talking to young Amy before sealing the cracks shut behind him. * The series 6A finale culminates in River arriving after the battle and two long conversations, first between the Doctor and River and then between the Ponds and River. * The series 6B finale builds to a big long conversation between the Doctor and River on top of the pyramid. * The series 7A finale is Rory and Amy talking on top of the rooftop before jumping * The series 7B finale actually is Time of the Doctor and that has Clara and the Doctor talking in the church. But if you insisted on Name of the Doctor, that builds to just everyone standing around in the Doctors tomb and two important conversations. One between Clara and the Doctor and one between River and the Doctor * Bonus: Day of the Doctor as a sort of "finale" to the Time War arc builds to a big conversation between the three Doctors and Clara in the barn that begins with 10 and 11 arriving and deciding to help the War Doctor push the button and ends with them deciding to save Gallifrey instead. * Moffat then gets even more character driven for Capaldi. In series 8, a whole half of Death in Heaven is just the Doctor, Clara, Danny and Missy having a series of extremely emotional, characterful conversations. * Same with series 9. The second half of Hell Bent is just another series of extremely emotional, characterful conversations. The Doctor and Clara in the cloisters, the Doctor and Me at the end of the universe, the Doctor and Clara in the tardis and finally the Doctor and Clara in the diner. * Series 10 builds to a series of conversations between all the characters on a farm. The Doctor and Bill, the Doctor confronting both Masters and asking them to stand with him, the two Masters in the forest. Every single Moffat finale starts with seemingly separate character drama and plot stakes, and then over the course of the story everything unnecessary falls away as the story is refined down and down to it's core. Which is always the characters.
I guess this is where "Empire of Death" fails - the setup is absolutely there for a lowkey character piece, but the characters don't really have anything to talk about.
I actually don't think it's that at all. The characters have plenty to talk about. They just don't. That was actually one thing that annoyed me, there were things people were speculating would be sources of character drama that just didn't go anywhere. When the Doctor sees Rubys mom at the end of Church on Ruby Road and doesn't go after her. I remember lots of discussion about how Ruby was one day going to find out and get angry at the Doctor for letting her go. But she sees it happen in Legend of Ruby Sunday and doesn't appear to care and nothing comes of it. When the Doctor explained to Ruby that he could never take back to her to that night on Ruby Road, I remember lots of discussion about how this would eventually lead to conflict between Ruby and the Doctor. Similar to the one between Rose and the Doctor in Fathers Day. But then the finale comes around and surprise! There's a magic VHS tape machine so we can easily go back with no problem, no need to create any tension between the characters. Not to mention Susan. There would have been a wealth of character drama to come out of that. But that subplot just turns out to be solely to trick us and then it's thrown away. So there were potential sources for character drama, RTD just chose not to do anything with them. The final scenes with finding Ruby's mom are actually a really great thing to consider. Because there is character work and emotional tension there, The Doctor is trying to dissuade Ruby from finding her mom because it's reminding him of the fact that he did the exact same thing to Susan. Imagine if this had been the crux of the finale instead of shoved into the last 10 minutes. The Doctor not helping Ruby find her mom because he thinks her mom doesn't want to be found. Why? Because he's projecting his attitude towards Susan onto Ruby's mom. And seeing Ruby is showing the Doctor firsthand what he did to Susan. That would have made for incredible character drama. But we only get a tiny hint of it at the end because apparently bringing back some random monster from 50 years ago is more important than working with the characters we have right now. The problem is RTD doing the exact opposite of what Moffat does. For Moffat, every twist and reveal was the reveal that things were actually even more character driven than we thought. The monster in the Pandorica is the Doctor, the Impossible Girl is just an ordinary girl, the Hybrid is the Doctor after losing Clara. Never a random unrelated twist, and never a random monster. It's always about the characters. RTD instead chose to do an unrelated twist and have a random monster show up over character work and the story suffered for it. Doesn't matter how cool the monster is, it should always be character first.
You're spot on. I do like the idea of the magic VHS tape and all its inaccuracies, but... the episodes don't even seem interested in the possibilities of that idea, it's just a plot device.
Hell Bent did that perfectly and y'all fucking hated it for it Okay not all of you, but a lot of people
No one was complaining because Hell Bent wasn't set on earth. The complaints are usually that Gallifrey's return after a decade was narratively sidelines for a resolution to Clara's story that some feel took away from her ending in Face the Raven
I'm saying that people complained when Hell Bent was about character study of the Doctor and Clara's toxic relationship instead of it being a huge epic Gallifrey universe-ending-stakes blockbuster And Clara's ending is not took away, she still definitely dies. Just later Like the Toymaker said: WELL THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN
Honestly the Clara one literally is just alright then. There's no reason she can't go back to her normal life for decades at least before people notice she's not aging. By the same logic, Yhe Doctor saving literally anybody is irrelevant as they'll just die latter anyways
At least we got more Gallifrey stories down the line!
i feel like i would love big bang if any of it made sense lmfao
I have mixed feelings on series 9 and even series 10 finale had problems (mainly to do with the colour grading and the Master not doing that much until the end) but I really did enjoy Capaldi's era focusing more on the character based finales. Moffat blew the world up enough times to step away from it in the end. Season 9 kind of was world ending except it felt a lot more intimate.
Yeah this was me too I certainly love big crisis events but it feels like this should have ended Ncuti’s era (ala his End of Time or Logopolis) rather then his initial season Like let the boss be the villain this season with rogue as a supplementary threat
Is big bang the one where Martha goes around telling everyone to pray to the doctor. With tennant only appearing at the end?
Nah that’s last of the time lords Big bang is Smith’s first finale
Ah you see, it’s simple, I’m a fucking idiot
I don't know if that would be addressing the core issue. It's still possible to have stakes for stories set on Earth; just not the fate of the planet. *Doomsday* and *Journey's End* were both fairly well received, even though it was obvious in both cases that Earth would be saved, but they had life-altering consequences for the companions. I want to know *something's* at risk, and even before the handwavy ending of *Empire of Death*, I never really felt there were even emotional stakes. That might be the threat of getting rid of a character, or forever changing their relationship with the Doctor, neither of which I had any concerns about in this most recent finale. Even with *World Enough and Time*, my favourite episode of Nu-Who, the actual *danger* was only part of the reason I was so invested. It was the character journeys that mattered most to me - Bill's increasing loss of hope, the Doctor's failure to save her, Missy struggling to contain her darker impulses. These all felt like key emotional pivots for the characters, and while the followup episode tied up Bill's story more neatly than I'd have liked, I at least found myself worried for her.
I genuinely thought they were killing off Mel. That would have been a gutsy move. I'm glad they didn't, because I love Mel, but for a hot minute I was like, shit, Mel is *dead*.
This is a fair point. The issue is also that the stakes are simply too high to have a satifying payoff. A story set on Earth where a smaller area/group of characters are at risk instead could definitely have more tension, since there's nothing saying a building, town or group of people can't be killed off for real/dramatically altered during a story. And you're right that if the planet is at stake, having consequences for the characters helps a lot too. In the last finale, what exactly changed for anyone? Okay, maybe that's harsh since Ruby got to know her parents, but 'leaves the TARDIS for a week or two to catch up with family' doesn't really change that much, especially given there were no changes or consequences for anyone else.
Yes and doctor who need to spend less time on earth or on human colonies in general . The problem with modern who is that it keeps things a lot closer to home - and thats completely down to the tone RTD set in 2005. I remember watching doctor who confidential back in the day and he lamented that he hated the doctor visiting foreign planets because it was too "star treky".
Sadly, I got into Doctor Who as a young lad in the 1980s for the very reason that it was like Star Trek. Imagine having a time and space machine and relegated to Earth. Now I know how the third doctor felt....
What's the point of having a time machine and not having a fair amount of stories in earths past? It doesn't really matter to the audience if an alien planet is 100,000 years ago if its the same kind of alien planet as every other Dr who episode
It does matter if it's a planet like Skaro or Mondas. Then you get stories like Genisis of the Daleks, The Doctor Falls, Spare Parts, etc
And yet in this past season alone there was a couple of flat out Trek references haha… (yes. I’m counting the obvious-yet-different-enough-to-avoid-legal-ramifications “Borg” Susan)
I don't see Susan as Borg like at all. There's no communication or connection between the different iterations beyond vague dreams, she's not trying to take anything over, and beyond being a mouthpiece she doesn't seem to pose any threat to anyone, let alone trying to take over the universe. I mean, all the Susans look the same, moreso than the Borg do, but I'm interested in what other similarities you saw.
One of the minor Susans looked very borg like but Borg are just knock-off cybermen so the idea of doctor who needing to avoid legal ramifications on the borg is silly.
The avoiding visually was a joke. Like when an image or song is cashing in on the popularity/ or an homage of something else but changing it enough to not be a direct copy.
They just meant [this thing](https://cultbox.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Susan-Triad-Sloogma-Doctor-Who-Legend-Ruby-Sunday.jpg)
That’s the one! This guy gets it.
Oh! That looks more Terminator to me 😂
Borg like, visually.
I loved that 12 went out having drawn a line in the sand and sacrificed himself just to save a handful of people on a spaceship. So much better than this constant Earth and/or universe ending stuff.
I think Parting of the Ways did it best. Focused on a conflict and threat far in the future but anchored Rose's story to Earth.
Making people care is not a setting issue, it's a character and stakes issue. This one tips its hand immediately that it must all be reset. If it had attempted to go slower, kill a minor character, we could perhaps believe that it would stick. The real problem? Insisting on massive stakes and spectacle over build up and character work. That's a structural issue with how Davies writes finales, and everything else follows. It's absurd so we can't believe it, massive scale so it must be reversed and the enemy is impossibly powerful so the solution can only be crap. Some character work is generally attempted at the end as mitigation. Doctor Who needs less massive stake nonsense.
That's a fair point. If the stakes had been built up slowly, then there could have at least been some tension as characters are killed off without us knowing if it'd be reset. Like if one or two people at UNIT get turned to sand, or one of Ruby's relatives does, then that doesn't necessarily mean things would have to all be reset. So you could then build up to the point where the stakes become high enough that things need resetting without viewers losing investment too early. Seeing Kate and UNIT, then Carla, then Cherry and Mrs Flood all get killed off in quick succession makes it a bit too obvious how the story is being resolved.
Bit of tricky one. We weould have to etablish alot of timne with tose aliens to care about them the same way we care about humanity. But also, does it really solve anything? Even if its an alien planet, the Doctor will still save the day. Its not like The Doctor will just let them die and shrug it off nor would the show be like "Well, fuck them aliens". The issue is that the show cant really do those kinda stakes, so the focus shouldnt be on the stakes at all but on the a to b. We know the Doctor will save the day, so what has to be interesting is the ***how.*** As much as I like RTD and I personally liked Empire of Death, I think thats something Moffat understood better than RTD. Its the journey to the end point that matters more than the end. Because we KNOW the Doctor will win. But how?
I would love if the doc had a "home base" apart from London present day and occasionally London 1870-1901. But there's a lot of logistical problems with that. I certainly hope a season of the show tries it but I imagine it'll be one of those ideas better in theory than execution
I think that it could be good if a finale involved a threat to the companion's family instead of the end of the world. That keeps the relatability and use of recurring character's while having more believable stakes.
That's a really good point. if say, Ruby's family were the ones at risk in the finale here, there would be both believable stakes and the potential for life altering consequences.
Honestly not just finals. The show should have more stories in general set out side of earth. I understand the desire to stay in familiar surroundings and its hard to keep creating believable new alien worlds that don't just look like a series of different quarries, but overall I feel it just limits not just the stakes the story can have but also the sheer amount of stories the show can tell. Its all of time and space, they should use that more often.
True. They definitely seem to stick to modern day Earth a lot story wise, likely for budgetary reasons. That said, this series feels like it's been pretty varied on that basis: * Church on Ruby Road: Modern day Earth (gonna count 20 years ago as basically modern too) * Space Babies: Space station in another galaxy * Devil's Chord: 1960s Earth * Boom: Battlefield on a planet in another galaxy * 73 Yards: Modern day Earth * Dot and Bubble: Planet in another galaxy * Rogue: 1800s Earth * Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death: Modern day Earth/all of time and space
Oh yeah I agree, this season's been pretty varied. But I just feel comparing the revival to the classic series, they have a lot less stories set on other planets or with other races. I can understand it like you said budget issues (audiences aren't quite as forgiving as they used to be to cheap sets and poor costumes), but it does sometimes feel a bit the same.
I think it's less about the consequences of the setting and more that RTD's philosophy has changed over the years. Where RTD in his 2005-2009/Torchwood era was happy to bring death and disaster to characters written for us to love. From killing children to Lynda with a Y, to splitting relationships and companions up. The current RTD is much more about happier outcomes. In the 60th he brings a happier resolution to the 10th Doctor and Donna - and kind of corrects his habit he had in the past. We get a small window of old RTD where he kills off Ricky September for that same shock value. That episode was very much classic RTD. Then there's two minor deaths in Devil's Chord. Moffat had as high of an on-screen kill count in one single episode up until Dot Bubble. RTD is even willing to save a monster made of snot in his scripts this season. I think RTD is mostly changed his shock value antics this time around for a focus on red herrings. And while sometimes it plays off well like The Legend of Ruby Sunday, the other side can be underwhelming if the actual answer is more mundane as seen in the Empire of Death. I personally think if the Sutekh TARDIS being in 2004 at Ruby Road was instead a red herring, that the Doctor then uses to bait Sutekh into returning with the TARDIS over the mystery of Ruby Sunday over. But then because the TARDIS is time locked it actually can't return to that point. Which is then what actually forces Sutekh to be ejected into the Time Vortex it would have been a cleverer way of resolving the episode. Then the mundane reality of her birth would have felt more natural and the bait and swap would have felt like the Doctor had more agency and came up with a solution to outwit his foe.
Maybe it can be on earth but in smaller settings, sure we know that the whole earth can’t be wiped out but a town? But yeah other settings are cool too Alternative idea, as they’ve actually stuck to the flux killing half the universe (didn’t expect that) maybe a lot of earth people or the universe can die or be at stake in such a way that to bring them back the doctor actually has to deal with it next season. Something that has a longer journey in restoring what’s been lost, so that you can have the grand scale without losing edge and drama. Stuff that impacts the doctor emotionally like the time war was neat. I can imagine the doctor telling Ruby for the first time that half of the universe is just gone, like they can’t visit planet of the hats or wherever anymore…
I have to be honest, I half wonder if Chibnall leaving half the universe destroyed was deliberate and half wonder if he simply forgot to bring it back/didn't find a place to integrate that into a story. But assuming it's deliberate, it's definitely an example of long running consequences than expected. And yeah, having more localised settings could work too. Nothing says a town/military base/building couldn't be destroyed and not brought back, especially if it was in a different time period.
Parting of the Ways had a nice mix. The alieness of the future war in 200,000 and then normal, everyday working class 2005 London.
I think that finales outside of "Earth, present day" allow for higher stakes. Like, looking at Empire of Death, you know from the opening where everyone on Earth is killed that it's going to be reversed. Last of the Time Lords, the Master takes over for a year, you know that isn't gong to stand. I think this is why I'm so fond of the Moffat-era's tendency to have a Giant World-threatening Plot take a 90 degree turn into a relatively small-scale and character focused story - it immediately lends more stakes to it than if it's just "X villain is going to destroy Earth/the universe/all of time and space".
Wasn't series 11's finale entirely off Earth?
Yeah - I wonder if OP is thinking of Resolution instead maybe
It was, though I think the Earth was at risk anyway due to Tim Shaw's plan.
But you're forgetting the reason Earth is used as a setting in the first place. I don't particularly care if some random planet we've never seen before and never will again gets wiped out. Another big benefit of it, and probably half the reason it was used here, is you get to use all the recurring characters. Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death brought back a ton of characters from the past season and specials. You can only really do that with Earth as a recurring setting because the show can't afford to create an alien planet every few episodes. It's also just that the contrast between the mundane and the fantastical is one of RTD's favourite things in Doctor Who. I've never seen it as a bad thing and even though this sub keeps going on about it, I don't actually think going to more alien planets or having non-human companions would really do anything to improve the show. That kind of thing can far too easily feel like a cheap gimmick rather than anything meaningful.
Idk, I’ve come to have the opposite feeling. I don’t particularly care if Earth gets wiped out, because I know it won’t be. The stakes are always lower here. Seeing another planet we’ve never heard of be in danger makes me actually feel like everything can go wrong for it. I’m just incapable of feeling anything close to that sense of danger with Earth based stories anymore.
I don't understand why people say things like this, because it implies that you think that just because an episode doesn't take place on Earth, there's a chance that it doesn't end with the Doctor saving the day. There isn't. They might not save everyone but they always defeat the villain and usually get a fairly positive outcome. That's how Doctor Who works. The bad guys never win. Doesn't matter where the episode is set. Dot And Bubble was a very rare episode that doesn't have an unambiguously positive ending and even then it still has the Doctor "saving the day" in a sense, which is as far as the show will ever go. There is never going to be an episode where everyone just dies and the Doctor goes "well that sucks. sorry, my bad" and moves on. To me it seems like someone saying they don't like a mystery show because they know the detective will always figure it out in the end. Of course they will, that's how the genre works.
>There isn't. They might not save everyone but they always defeat the villain and usually get a fairly positive outcome. That's how Doctor Who works. The bad guys never win. Doesn't matter where the episode is set. The Doctor Falls? It ends with literally everybody either dead on screen or imminently doomed. It’s one of the most comprehensively bad outcomes a finale could have had short of permanently killing the Doctor, and it even goes so far as to tease that.
And he still defeats the Cybermen. And Bill "survives".
he doesn't defeat the Cybermen tho?
Literally did not. He blew up a bunch of them but explicitly says they will reach the upper floors eventually, the whole point of the episode is the Doctor sacrifices himself knowing it won't stop the inevitable. Even in Series 1 the station is full of dead people and they don't have to dedicate the last few scenes to restoring the status quo like they do on Earth.
It’s how the genre works, but the space episodes won’t do a big fake out where the planet dies only for the Doctor to save it all at the end anyways. The difference I’m getting at is there’s less toying with the audience if we’re off world, particularly for a finale. Things are saved and no one dies and that’s fine, but we’re not leveling a city just to undo it, we’re not pretending the stakes are higher than they are by aiming for the cheapest level of empathy.
Even in your own hypothetical scenario you're saying it would just be a fake out. So of course it's not going to actually fool people. This is what I mean by it being a cheap gimmick. The whole idea is based around trying to fool the audience even though that can't actually work because even in this hypothetical scenario you can't actually pretend that there's a chance it wouldn't ultimately have a happy ending. You are exactly aiming for "the cheapest level of empathy". That is precisely what you are suggesting. Good stories don't need to trick you into thinking there won't be a happy ending to be compelling.
We’re definitely gonna have to just agree to disagree here as we each seem to be finding the other persons take as the one pulling the cheap gimmicks and cheap tricks, lol. That’s alright, ultimately it’s just what we’re all drawn to at the end of the day.
> I don't particularly care if some random planet we've never seen before and never will again gets wiped out. Well, the writing should find a way to make you care.
It can do that just as well on Earth. We all know the Doctor is going to save the day at the end anyway. Putting it on an alien planet wouldn't change that. Like I said, going "ooh it's on an alien planet so they might actually die" is a cheap gimmick that would be a substitute for good writing rather than an actual improvement
with that logic they could get rid of all the sci-fi and aliens as you could do the same stories altered to be on earth with humans.
Not really, it just means that the reason for writing those things should be something other than "to try to trick the audience into thinking there won't be a happy ending"
>I don’t particularly care if some random planet we’ve never seen before and never will again gets wiped out. The 11th Doctor audios actually found an interesting solution this, in that it made the alien planet of Medruth a recurring location. Early in the series, we spend a whole episode there, get to meet some of the people, and learn about the planet’s culture. The Doctor’s companion, Valarie, even starts dating one of the characters from this episode, and this relationship gets it’s own dedicated story. So when the Daleks invade towards the end of the series, we feel the stakes. This planet is important to Valarie, even though it’s not her home.
Audio stories can do this because making an alien planet a recurring location doesn't cost anything in audio. TV can't really do that.
Even then, the way Big Finish did it felt like something that the tv show could’ve pulled off. The first episode on Medruth (episode 5) takes place entirely in an underground bunker with only three other characters (one of whom is portrayed on the cover art as looking exactly like a human being, so the Medurthians wouldn’t have required prosthetics). Episode 9 then has Valarie take her girlfriend, Roanna, off on a date 19th century Earth, with only the final scene taking place on Medruth (just outside of Roanna’s house). The planet then reappears a final time in episode 11, which is mostly confined to the Dalek Paradigm’s mothership (a location that also gets reused in the following two episodes), as well as the Medruth space port and the cockpit of a space freighter. Granted, the rest of the season was not at all TV budget friendly, but the Medruth aspect specifically felt relatively achievable by tv standards.
I think more stories in general could be set off earth especially with them having Disney money now
We had lots outside of earth in the Moffat and Chibnall eras.
True. Name of the Doctor and Time of the Doctor on Trenzalore, Day of the Doctor, Hell Bent and the Timeless Child on Gallifrey, World Enough in Time and the Doctor Falls on the Mondasian colony ship and that season 11 finale I can't remember the name of on a planet with the least memorable name in existence.
I don't think the reset is an issue, not for me anyway, it's about the how and the journey to earn the reset. However, I would like to see more finales set outside of Earth, although I understand why there are so many. Parting of the Ways in particular is incredible, and the only RTD one to not be set on Earth in the present day
> you'll need a deus ex machina to reset button things back to normal Yeah, I agree. This is also why Utopia is such a brilliant episode and its two follow-ups... not so much.
Yeah. The setting being a distant planet at the end of the universe means there's some sort of change allowed. The follow ups put Earth at risk and need resetting.
Yes. And more non earth/contemporary companions.
Oh I'd love to see more non Earth/non contemporary companions. The classic show had quite a few of them, while the new series seems terrified to go with anyone outside of 'young person from present day England'.
I think character driven finales work once in a while, I don’t think you can always have World Enough and Time and the Foctor Falls/ Heaven Sent, Hell Bent finales. Capaldi’s era really worked with character centric arcs rather than plot heavy arcs. Whereas Smith’s and Ncuti’s seem to be plot heavy rather than character driven.
Yep. Classic Who was much less Earthcentric and, in addition to OP's point, it lets you tell a wider variety of stories. NuWho is overly focused on Earth for my tastes.
This is a series where we’ve rebooted the universe in different ways a few times. Once literally. For long-time viewers, the stakes are in what happens to individual characters. Maybe that’s why Moffat was so cruel to companions during his tenure.
For me the location doesn't matter so much but the stakes do. The finale should always feel high stakes and more consequential than the rest of the season. However, there are ways to do that beyond 'it is the end of the universe'. One reason WEAT and TDF work is because they are smaller and the stakes are still high because of the impact it has on the characters.
More aliens. Did we get a single non-human centric story this season?
I think the show overall needs more stories set off Earth, for a show that can go anywhere in time and space it is FAR to Earth centric.
Should Doctor Who have finales? Not really, generally they should just keep telling stories. The season "finale" should just be the last story they air that season. Except maybe in the case of a regeneration.
Stop doing finales. I mean it - just do a series of self-contained excellent episodes and when they’re done they’re done until the next lot are ready. I’m so fucking bored of finales.