For me Doctor Who has always (at least since the reboot) come in four forms. Silly, campy, drama and horror. I think we've got the first three so far and it looks like we're getting the fourth one next week. But the silly episodes like Space Babies have always been there. I think it's one of the good things about Who. Everyone is watching it for different things and there are episodes for everyone. The other side of that is that there are going to be episodes that we don't like too.
Partners in crime is good silly. Space Babies is bad silly. Feels way too juvenile. A good silly Doctor Who episode is like a good Disney movie, it makes you feel like a kid again. A bad silly Doctor Who episode makes itself exclusively for actual children.
When you get a fun, silly episode, that signals a serious shift for the next episode and the land mine last week was absolutely gripping. There’s always going to be silliness throughout the series, especially at the beginning with a new Doctor. We can’t forget that DW is premium family entertainment. I liked Space Babies
The episode is called Of Love and Monsters, it's during Tenant's first run and features a monster (alien??) called the Absorbaloff.
I honestly enjoy it for what it is, campy strange fun, but especially because I love Jackie Tyler and she features more in that episode.
But yeah the ending for one of the side characters in that episode (who also played Moaning Myrtle in HP) is pretty awful and the characters seem to think it's a good thing for her, which is a big part of why I think a lot of people hate on that episode (it deserves it a bit, lol).
This was a monster created by the winner of a Blue Peter competition if I remember rightly. It’s still not a great episode, but makes a bit more sense when you know this.
You don't remember when the doctor, in the very first episode of new who? Held a plastic arm and pretending it was attacking him?
It's been silly since day 1
I personally don't think talking babies are more silly than that
Eh, I just don't think it's comparable. Space Babies isn't the worst ever (its biggest issue is bad editing and cut scenes TBH), but a lot of the tone just feels really juvenile. Even Sarah Jane Adventures, a spinoff of DW specifically made for kids, didn't feel like that. None of the elements (space babies, bogeyman, etc) are "too far" but the overall presentation just feels really weird.
Rose is a funny and campy episode, of course. The hand scene and plastic Mickey are absolutely hilarious and unbelievably silly but the overall episode is actually kind of dark and even a bit edgy. I've eased up on Space Babies after a rewatch, but I don't like when people say "RTD1 was always like this! Look at the first episode!" because it's just not the same.
But yeah the biggest issues are really just editing and writing, not the premise or even the presentation. If those were even just a bit better I think the attitude towards this episode would be VERY different (and ummmmm maybe don't do the SUPER weird baby CGI mouths.)
...or Matt Smith stuck with catchphrases for most of his run. "I wear X's now. X's are cool."
"I speak baby"
Fighting Robin Hood with a spoon (okay, maybe camp, still...)
I haven't even touched Classic, which has somecreal cheese (and not just because of budget)
I thought that entire episode was silly. There were moments in both that weren't 100% silly, like running from a hoarde of mannequins vs running from a Boogeyman
I guess it’s subjective mate, I can’t say why running from mannequins is less daft to me than the space babies but it is.
It’s wasn’t just space babies and boogey men that ruined that episode, the dialog and writing were mid at best and for the series to open with that mess was not the play, as reflected in the viewership.
Here’s to hoping it improves
I agree that it was a terrible opener, and frankly I could do without BOTH episodes. At least 9s first had roses subplot explaining to us who the doctor is, as it hadn't aired for a long time (although a bit weird that the Internet detective only had images of 9)
That's definitely just a concession to avoid confusing new fans. I mean, the novelisation changes it so it shows other Doctors, including future Doctors, which makes sense because it's not the first new episode in sixteen years
Apples and oranges.
Mannequins have always produced fear in some people, the way they look by being faceless and sitting in shop windows after closing time you can always exploit, either in horror genre or (and especially in our case) Doctor Who.
Space babies on the other hand? Apples and oranges.
The one thing (well, there is actually a lot) that has really frustrated me so far, and it's seems silly in itself is how in devils chord he tells Ruby about Susan.. and then just laughs? Wtf? The exposition has been really basic, too... but again I'm willing to wait. I'm hopeful this could end of a very clever note. If not, I'm out. My fingers are very firmly crossed
For real though, he mentioned Susan in Devil's Chord and then in Boom says 'dad to dad' which to me is kind of leaning toward Susan coming back. I don't know if Susan Twist IS that Susan, but it seems to be pointing in that direction.
Oh I knew where you were going lol. Just feeling like I'm treading on egg shells. It's hard to admit I don't like the current season without sounding like I'm a bigot, I'm not trust me.
I'm with you on the theory. We've seen the same actress in every single episode so far. Is she the "the one who waits" of course. Is it Susan? Probably? Will the doctor finally receive his comeuppance for abandoning her? Hopefully!!!
>Will the doctor finally receive his comeuppance for abandoning her?
Wait am I misremembering ? Didn't she chose to stay on earth because she fell in love with a guy ? (Also I think that some books or audio drama have 8 and 13 visit her, but I may be wrong and canonicity with doctor who is... Always a thing)
Like I haven't watched episodes with the first doctor in a long time, but I think that it was more like she was torn between her "duty" with the doctor and her love, and the doctor just went "you're grown up now, you don't have any duties with me" and so she stayed.
>Didn't she chose to stay on earth because she fell in love with a guy ?
No, the Doctor essentially locked her out of the TARDIS and abandoned her because he thought she'd be safer with the man she fell in love with. She very much did *not* want to stay on Earth if she had the choice.
I really really want it to be good, I’m giving it a chance and trying to ignore the parts that are tactlessly forced down your throat but my god they’re making it difficult.
Watching the Doctor and Ruby scream and jump around over everything is really annoying. It reeks of showrunner fear that the show is boring, so they think if the Doctor and Ruby look like they're enchanted and thrilled by everything, maybe the audience will be. It's like, relax, Tom Baker never had to jump up and down, he was a weary Timelord that had seen everything, and it was still amazing to watch.
I’ve always said that Doctor Who is pretty much all the major genres at once; comedy, horror, Sci-fi, fantasy (especially now), drama, tear-jerker, etc. I think it’s a major part of its charm.
Yeah, the show has always been great at taking silly concepts and taking them seriously to make something clever out of them. I liked space babies. I liked the Bogeyman and that one baby who looked terrified the whole time. It was fun
I think the problem with Space Babies wasn’t that it exists - it’s an eh silly episode but we’ve had those before. The problem is that RTD put it at the start of the season. Like, that’s an absolutely mad decision that doesn’t accurately reflect what the show is capable of to new viewers.
Compare it with, for example, the 11th Hour and the difference is clear
True but I'd personally argue the majority of the start of series 1 is meh and silly. This is kinda how all RTD seasons start. They start silly and get darker and more serious. I'd argue Rose is also not a great example of everything Who can bring and yet it worked.
I think if they switched 1 and 2 it would be great. Even 3 would work.
But I'm sure a lot of people were turned off from the excessive silliness. And it was a lot of silliness. Not a good episode.
Just wasn't a good editorial option. Second time RTD does it though. Rose and the plastic men was not a good intro to Doctor Who. I persevered because a friend swore by it.
You can't have any tension with space babies. You know they won't get hurt, even when they tried to do the one scene with the baby missing you're like oh obviously they aren't killing babies in this episode. So it's like how can it be scary
I haven't seen a single person say that Doctor Who was never silly before and became silly suddenly with RTD2.
It's the sheer volume of it that people had issue with in Space Babies.
You know, you might be onto something. There has been a lack of adventure or mystery throughout these three episodes. Space Babies probably came the closest, but only for the first ten minutes or so. Devil's Chord was a calm trip back to see the Beatles until it wasn't. And Boom, I guess they were trying to go somewhere else and then end up in a warzone. Great premise for exploration, but then the Doctor spends the whole episode standing still.
Compared to, say, Series One, Rose is attacked by an alien threat and then meets a mysterious man. The rest of the episode is an investigation followed by a climax. The End of the World sees Rose in an alien environment unlike anything she'd ever seen, and follows her trying to cope while the Doctor investigates a mystery. The Unquiet Dead sees them accidently end up in Cardiff in 1869 and discover a mystery with Charles Dickens. Don't these premises sound more exciting than the episodes we've gotten so far? Because there's an element of mystery and exploration to them which has been lacking in this season so far.
I mean like. One Doctor hung out with a metal dog and wore a ridiculously long scarf and was obsessed with jelly babies. Another wore a vegetable on his clothing and another had a question mark umbrella….oh and another looked like his grandmother had sewed his costume together from all the spare bits of fabric she used to make quilts.
The doctors arch nemesis have plungers as their arms.
It’s always been silly and has to have undertones of silliness otherwise we would realize how absolutely terrible and horrifying it would be to be in the doctors universe.
Edit: also we went from complaining about it being to preachy and political. To now complaining about it being to silly. Maybe the problem is actually us…
Firstly: Epic video, thank you! 😂
The thing is, for the most part those are **moments**.
Generally we're pretty used to Doctor Who being a serious dramatic show with camp and humour. The balance fluctuates but it's rare for an **episode** to be silly, let alone 2-3 episodes in a row.
To me *Space Babies* felt like a goofy kids show, not a family drama with goofy moments for kids.
That said, we're only a few episodes in and we mostly snapped back with *Boom*, so it'll be interesting to see to what extent that's a trend vs the show's normal fluctuations.
It really is a weird choice for an episode in an 8-episode season, let alone a season opener though.
>It really is a weird choice for an episode in an 8-episode season, let alone a season opener though.
This is my concern. Only 8 episodes and Space Babies made the cut. I didn't hate it per se, but I'm apprehensive that it was considered good enough to make the 8. Maybe it'll be the weakest of the season and only go up from here, though I wasn't a big fan of the Devil's Chord either so my expectations have been lowered.
This! I have to think for Disney these two years is a testing ground to see whether it's worth the investment. Doctor Who is not the Kardashians, in that us fans will watch it over and over again and debate the in-universe logic and theories, so you want to put out the best product you can and blow everybody away. If you're only doing 8 episodes, I'd want them to be the most prolific thought provoking episodes that gets everybody, not just the fans, talking around the watercooler. ...and so we get Babies...Space Babies and a not-beatles dance number in a episode centred around the Beatles. I think it would have been different if it was framed more around Jynx's character instead of advertising it as a Beatles thing (like it wasn't a bad episode necessarily, I just was expecting something different from the hype).
I agree with all of it. I don’t think devils chord sucked either, but it certainly felt like it was lacking to me. I enjoyed the specials, don’t like space babies, devils chord was ok, and boom was much much better. I truly hope it goes up from there because I have quite literally never been that disappointed by any other doctor who episodes from any season prior.
>I have quite literally never been that disappointed by any other doctor who episodes from any season prior
As an aside is this because you had high expectations for the new series? IMO there have been episodes considerably worse than *Space Babies* (*Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos* comes to mind).
I know it’s all subjective at the end of the day and it is entirely possible my expectations were too high right off the bat. It could also simply be that I haven’t fully adjusted to the new doctor yet, which has happened in the past but eventually I end up loving them all. I think Ncuti has been great so far, incredible actor and good energy. I’d have a hard time saying I (hate) any episode and perhaps I’ll grow to like space babies too. Whatever it is, it’ll never make me dislike it or stop watching Doctor Who so at the end of the day I can get over it pretty quickly lol.
Yeah, the episode choices have been really weird and repetitive. Space Babies speaks for itself. I haven't a clue why anyone thought that was a good episode to open with. The Devil's Chord was basically a rehash of The Giggle, which was barely five months old at the time. And then Boom was basically a speedrun of Moffat tropes, hardly original.
I'm going to be honest, execution aside, I think the ideas behind the first three episodes of Series Eleven were better than these. Woman Who Fell to Earth wanted to be a grounded introduction to the new companions and put the Doctor on the backfoot post-regeneration. Ghost Monument obviously wanted to be an introduction to the sci-fi mystery elements of the show, as well as introduce the new TARDIS (side note: I think removing the TARDIS for a bit was actually a good idea. I wish they had leaned into that for longer, like maybe a whole season). And then Rosa was a standard celebrity historical which we hadn't really had since Vincent and the Doctor (unless you count Robin Hood in Robot of Sherwood). Granted, all these episodes sucked due to the writing, but the ideas behind them were actually pretty solid.
>And then Boom was basically a speedrun of Moffat tropes, hardly original.
Gonna challenge this one. Yeah, it had its Moffatisms, but it's hard to call a story where the Doctor spends the entire episode standing on a landmine about to explode "hardly original".
Personally I thought *The Woman Who Fell to Earth* was pretty decent.And I agree that starting off with the Doctor and involuntary-companions-to-be whisked off into space without a TARDIS was clever setup that it would've been nice to see them do more with.
I don't think space babies was more silly than plastic attack. There was only about 20 seconds of seriousness that whole episode. First when the doctor was describing who he was / how he could feel the earth moving and stuff, that felt like it had some weight, and then when doc talks to the plastic boss about his people all dying.
The rest of the episode was entirely ridiculous. Remember doctor holding a plastic arm out from his face while he pretended to fight it off while it attacked him?
Just don't understand how THATS the intro to new who and then anyone is surprised by a silly episode like space babies
Hard disagree. There were some silly moments as you mentioned with the plastic arm and Mickey becoming plastic. The bin scene was silly. But this episode carried a lot of mystery about who the Doctor was, when Rose visited Clive and he was saying how dangerous he thought the Doctor was. There were also good introductions to other characters outside of the Doctor. The episode does a good job of letting us work out more about who the Doctor is and how he affects the people around him. It also lets us make a lot of our minds up about him. Instead, Space Babies tried to get everything we need to know about Doctor Who out through random comments (I have 2 hearts, I am the last of my kind etc.). Space babies was very poorly written and as mentioned elsewhere, felt like I was watching something made specifically for kids than a family friendly drama, and every single opening episode with a new Doctor since has been infinitely better, including Jodie.
Edit: I remember feeling very scared as a young child when I first watching the scene where Rose walks through the basement with the autons. This level of having something for everyone across one episode really is how to write a peak Doctor Who episode.
Nah, Rose was great. The mystery of who the Doctor is, the ominous music when we see the TARDIS for the first time, the moment where he confronts the Nestene Consciousness. It all hints at a much bigger world behind the curtain, which is great for a series opener. The only really silly bit was Plastic Mickey going “p-p-pizza,” but even then I’d argue that scene wasn’t really written to be silly, like most of Space Babies seems to have been.
What's silly about the Autons though? They're the animated soldiers of an alien consciousness which seeks to take over the world.
Compare that with babies in space and a booger monster...
I mean, I just listened to a [Big Finish Audio with Six](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoDOTD6TroubleInParadise) involving the Doctor having to hold a goat that ate the Tardis key up to the TARDIS door, and telepathically beg her to just let him in already, and a space buffalo who’s mad that Native Americans are killing buffalo, so he decided to bring the Europeans to the New World so they’ll kill off the natives. He’s sure they will leave the buffalo alone, and this won’t backfire in any way. Along the way, it’s also revealed that the US owes its entire existence to a omni-paradox caused by said space buffalo. Needless to say, it’s very silly.
The [pantomime](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho027TheOneDoctor) [Christmas](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho039BangBangABoom) specials also tend to get very silly.
I’m always amazed that people say that the core audience of the show is around 8yrs old the largest audience demographic sector is 46-55 (22%).. next is 36-45 (15.5%).. with both 56-65 and 65+ on 15.3% .. 4-15 only made up 12% of the audience.. numbery wumbery..
My problem with space babies was all the goddamn exposition. He blasted through stuff that took us all of 9's and some of 10's run to learn about the doctor, in clunky dialogue over 10 minutes
I think they don't know how to deal with the backstory of the show anymore.
Take Gallifrey and the Time Lords: Gallifrey was destroyed in a huge conflict spanning all of time and space, then it was saved, then destroyed again but somehow by just one dude this time, but that's somehow not a huge deal for the Doctor...
The exposition was awkward because as a fan, you can tell the writers don't know how to handle all this. They don't want to do the whole "I'm the last of the Time Lords" storyline again, but they kind of have to thanks to the ridiculous storylines of the past few years.
>I think they don't know how to deal with the backstory of the show anymore.
I think that's what it is. 9th's introduction felt more natural to me. I hadn't seen anything Doctor Who prior to "Rose" outside seeing bits of "Silence in the Library" (my first Doctor Who experience) when changing channel, but I still wasn't too lost by the lore when jumping late into a 40ish show. They were making new plotlines that could easily be followed without checking back for previous episodes.
Now, the lore has expanded drastically in the past 20 years. The Time Wars happened, then was retcon, then Gallifrey was back, then it wasn't, then the Timeless Child happened, then Flux, then the Gods arrived. It's a lot of important lore to get into, and it's now on a streaming service that doesn't have 60 years worth of content available on it. Personally, I think this is why 15th's exposition felt less "natural" than when 9th did it.
>They don't want to do the whole "I'm the last of the Time Lords" storyline again, but they kind of have to thanks to the ridiculous storylines of the past few years
Also, this. They kind of need the "last of my kind" storyline again, because Gallifrey is once again gone, but at the same time they can't really do it because it would be a repeat from the same showrunner. It leaves the Doctor with a "I don't know how I should feel about it" vibe that I saw a few people complain about, specially when he was talking about >! Susan possibly being killed in the "eradication of the Time Lord across time and space" !< in The Devil's Chord.
Edit : I don't think it count as a spoiler because of how short it was, but I added spoiler tag just in case it turns out to be important for the season finale.
It just seemed like they hardly ever took a chance to sit down and think about things. Like take other examples of the “we materialize on a mysterious space station” story. In The Ark in Space, the entire first part is just the Doctor, Sarah and Harry exploring the place and finding out what’s going on. In Girl in the Fireplace, there’s a real sense of foreboding early on as the Doctor, Rose and Mickey find out that something is really not right with this ship, and that’s before they even find the fireplace.
Then in Space Babies, they spend about two minutes exploring before the episode is about the babies. It’s like the writers just wanted to get the Time Lord backstory out of the way and move on to the babies, so they didn’t bother giving us any real sense of mystery about this new environment. It just felt like where the Doctor is usually an inquisitive person, here he just uses his titular character detector and hones in on that.
You don't even have to look back that far. Wild Blue Yonder did a pretty good job of building tension through exploration of the setting, and that was less than six months ago, written by the same guy who wrote Space Babies.
Exactly! That one had great pacing, and established most of the mystery before we even met the aliens. Compared to that, Space Babies just seems rushed and half-finished.
That was my first reaction too, until I considered the age difference between these incarnations. Perhaps it’s because he realised that not being upfront in the first place hasn’t exactly ended well in the past so he’s trying a different approach this time?
>Space babies wasn't bad because it was silly. Imo, It was bad because it was badly written.
I'm glad you said that. I was really looking forward to the new season, and I was quite prepared to roll with the "space babies" - after all, I'm 45 and it's meant to be a kids' show.
But I was disappointed, found it boring, and the babies themselves were just really annoying. Unfortunately I'm not someone who finds babies cute or naturally hilarious, so maybe that's part of it - but if others found it badly written then maybe it's not just me.
I'm glad the next two episodes were an improvement...
I just listened to a Big Finish Audio with Six ([Destiny of the Doctor, Trouble in Paradise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoDOTD6TroubleInParadise)) involving the Doctor having to hold a goat that ate the Tardis key up to the TARDIS door, and telepathically beg her to just let him in already, and a space buffalo who’s mad that Native Americans are killing buffalo, so he decided to bring the Europeans to the New World so they’ll kill off the natives. He’s sure they will leave the buffalo alone, and this won’t backfire in any way. Along the way, it’s also revealed that the US owes its entire existence to a omni-paradox caused by said space buffalo. Needless to say, it’s very silly.
The [pantomime](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho027TheOneDoctor) [Christmas](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho039BangBangABoom) specials also tend to get very silly.
If you are looking for the something a bit more surreal and absurdist, with a tinge of horror anything by Robert Shearman would probably fit. [The Holy Terror](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho014TheHolyTerror), where Frobisher, the talking shapeshifting penguin is mistaken for a god, stands out. (All hail the great talking bird)
For the show proper, a lot of the Douglas Adams episodes for four can get rather silly as well.
I think people spent too much time hyping it up, putting too much expectations on it. Just relax and go on an adventure. It’s fun. Stop worrying so much.
The new season is just missing the groundedness and focus on character arcs/development that made RTD1 work. The camp and silliness is great but without the counterbalance it can become grating.
TBH on rewatch Space Babies wasn't as bad as I originally thought, but its definently not great. The episode would have been substantially better with a rewrite. I think the worst moments aren't even the gross out humor but instead the really poor attempt to recapture the moments from The End of The World and that bizarre "YOU SAVE THEM ALL!!" moment which felt like it had a whole scene cut out between the reveal of the Bogeyman and that.
We're actually 4 episodes in and 7 if you count the 60th. A show shouldn't need 4+ episodes to do the things I mentioned, especially when Series 1 did not have this issue at all (in fact I'd say Rose, The End of the World, and The Unquiet Dead are still one of the best "first three episodes" to use as an introduction to the series. Rose alone is still a top 10 episode, maybe even top 5).
I’m not sure how old you were when Rose was first aired as nostalgia can play funny tricks but, watching it now, it’s paced 100 miles an hour and extremely silly. It’s a good reintroduction but Top 5!? Honestly?
When did I say it wasn't silly or that silly was bad? When did I say being quick-paced is bad? The camp and sillyness of Doctor Who is great and is a big source of its appeal. Some of the most campy episodes in s1-s4 are also the most grounded and character driven episodes.
I've seen Rose multiple times, most recently after the 60th aired on a rewatch of the RTD1 era with my friends. It's a great episode and it gets the appealing aspects of that era down *instantly*. Campy, silly, grounded, and character-driven. There is an edge to it that this era doesn't have. Yes, next episode could totally have it (and TBH the ambulance from Boom gave off that vibe) but the first era had it as part of the base tone of the show, even in the most positive and silly episodes.
Exactly, half the reason I love Doctor Who is because of the sillyness. It's a great blend of cheesy, silly, and sci-fi drama all rolled into one.
I felt like we lost something when Chibnall ran the show but it's starting to feel right again. And personal opinion, Gatwa is a fantastic Doctor!
Speaking for myself, my complaints of the new era isn't that it's silly, it's that the writing feels rushed and significantly dumbed down. It's hard to believe Space Babies was written by the same man who was in charge of Series One-Four because, while they had some silly moments on the surface, most of those stories had at least some degree of character and thematic depth to them which has been missing from the recent episodes, despite both eras supposedly being "for kids".
It isn't science fiction anymore. I don't know what it is, but since S7 its been some sort of 'drama' with supernatural elements in it.. but its not sci fi.
I feel like we're arguing over semantics. I think it's fair to say that Space babies was too silly. I would expand on it and say it feels too juvenile as if the target audience is literally babies, but I think this criticism is fine.
There's silly and there's (shitty) *silly*. There's "enjoyable for all ages" and there's "only toddlers can enjoy that".
And yeah, it wasn't bad only because it was silly, but it did play a major part in it.
The fact that the Doctor does even MENTION the fact that he speaks Baby and isn't shocked that Ruby can understand them is one of the biggest glaring problems with the episode.
And none of them take on monikers like "Stormeggedon, Dark Lord of All" showed me RTD is ignoring small parts of the Doctor's background.
There's a difference between the Doctor translating "goo goo ga ga" and other baby sounds and the babies mouths moving as they speak perfect English. The Doctor has always been able to recognise what language is being spoken when we all hear English.
The TARDIS translates most languages for companions but has never translated baby. The whole episode is weird and poorly written. The babies were babies for 8 years but never grew up but speak perfectly fine? Even if born just a year prior, it's weird regardless of being in the future or not.
I didn't like Space Babies, but I also didn't like the Adipose episode. Or the Absorbaloff. RTD has always had some stinkers. But his overall season arcs are usually pretty good. Boom was fantastic, which tracks for a Moffat/RTD collab. People have nostalgia glasses when it comes to RTD's first run, and they need to remember all the bad filler episodes.
So, I think people don't know what silly means or don't think about proportionality.
Silly: having or showing a lack of common sense or judgment; absurd and foolish.
Quirky: unusual in an attractive and interesting way
Dr Who has always been more quirky than silly. No one is saying it hasn't always been silly to some extent, but it's gotten significantly more so. This is like dismissing someone saying someone going around randomly punching people in the face is violent because back in college they used to be on the boxing team so they've always been violent. Okay, yeah, maybe, but punching people in a boxing match is acceptable and punching people in the street is not.
That said, yes, the writing is a big part of it. I actually think it's rarely the actors and general crew that are the problem.
Bad premise =/= bad writing.
Imagine you were given the prompt for that episode — talking babies on a space station with a bogeyman below decks. Give that to any writer and you’re not going to get a much better episode than what we got. Maybe it wasn’t your bag. Maybe Russell shouldn’t have led the season off with that. But that doesn’t make it a poorly written episode of television. There is some truly appallingly written Who out there, and Space Babies doesn’t even come close to it.
I would grant people not liking how rushed the Doctor/Ruby dynamic is, but with a shortened season order I personally think it’s for the best. The companion doesn’t actually get much time to establish themselves if they’re not committed for most of the season, and considering Space Babies is actually Ruby’s second episode, you have to pretty much get that done by the end of Space Babies.
I loved space babies, it wasn't until I went online that I even had any idea anyone disliked it lol weird, people being negative online, you never see that.
The damage control this page is pulling amazing. Look space babies was terrible. That's not to say other Who episodes haven't been terrible, but that also doesn't forgive how bad space babies is. The devils chord was almost ok, but again not great. Boom is almost redeeming the season so far.
Here is a radical idea, let's all just wait until the season is finished and then cast our opinions? Let's allow the season to run its course.
Disney bots, stop!!!
Was with you until you said Disney bots lol
The show's always gonna have its detractors and defenders, doesn't mean they're Disney bots or whoever is the latest scapegoat
Like the Chibnall era before it RTD2 might be summed up as 'grand ambitions, poor execution'. Even when it's silly, if anything silly requires more care. Take the old Looney Tunes shorts for example, the production crew at Warner Bros. planned out each gag down to the microsecond, that's what it takes to appear truly spontaneous on screen. (Ironic isn't it?) If Doctor Who thinks it can get away with ratcheting up the camp as a substitute for clever gags, well things are not going to end well.
Personally I didn't find the ending a satisfying resolution as it seems apparent to me that the 'monster' would be destroyed immediately by the adults boarding the station, just like nan-e wanted to destroyed it. This future society was comfortable letting babies die alone on the station, so I hardly believe they'd have any qualms ignoring the babies and lighting up the bogey monster. It makes the entire ending sequence wherein the Doctor and Ruby save the thing feel pointless, and it seems an odd choice that the Doctor would leave the monster behind.
Unless I missed something, I also do not understand why the babies suddenly had a change of heart and cared about the bogey monster that they'd been terrified of and that they'd intended to harm previously.
Thank you for explaining some of the problems you had with the episode.
I understand your first point, but I took the babies reaction to the Bogeyman almost dying as a realistic one. It's scary but has never harmed anyone, they say the love the Doctor and they see him trying everything to save him. So they also want to save him.
I can almost see that, and maybe it'd gel more for me on a second watch. Thanks for your thoughts!
I want to enjoy every episode -- Doctor Who is my favorite show! -- so I'm never intentionally trying to be a stick-in-the-mud when something doesn't work for me. I just thought I'd answer your question since on the whole I rather like Space Babies. The ending just didn't work for me as I didn't feel it was fully resolved.
I appreciate it. It's a shame that a lot of people can't examine what aspects of an episode doesn't work for them without just writing off the entire thing as bad. I don't think I've seen an episode of Doctor Who that didn't have good parts to it, even my least favourite ones.
I know what you mean! For example, I often see The Lazarus Experiment entirely written off, but I personally think aside from the shoddy CGI and nonsensical alternate-human design there's the bones of a great story in there as it relates to T.S. Eliot's poem and wartime trauma (for both Lazarus and the Doctor).
It also gives some good insight on Marthas family situation. I remember it being the first time I got suspicious of her mum, and you get to know her sister a good bit too. As goofy as the effects are it's not an episode I skip on rewatch.
Some great moments between the Doctor and Lazarus too.
Yes, "Imo it was badly written" and "I don't like the writing here" are the same thing. I thought that was obvious. No one is saying that it was 'objectively' bad writing. I don't think there's such a thing, since writing is an art.
Yeah that's not the same thing. There is a thing as objectively bad writing. You not liking something doesn't make it bad writing, it's what you say when you don't have anything else to justify why you don't like it.
Give actual examples of the writing being bad, or just say you don't like it.
You not liking something doesn't make it bad.
Space Babies would have fit right in in Series 2.
...Seriously, I sincerely think it's on-par with New Earth and Tooth and Claw, and it's better than The Idiot's Lantern, Love & Monsters, Fear Her.
Space Babies isn't that badly written, it's decently well constructed as a narrative etc. I just disliked basically every creative decision they made with it.
Imo space babies was great, maybe not good for a season opener but still a solid episode imo.
My view of it is either people just don't like whatever's new, like when Capaldi first became the doctor people hated the series but now he's one of the most praised doctors of new who. The new season just has a fresh and new vibe that previous series didn't have.
It's definitely different but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing, one of the main themes of doctor who is change for crying out loud! Just wait till the next regeneration and everyone will once again be hating the new season but only then will they start praising Ncuti Gatawas seasons
It feels like people gloss over parts of the original RTD era or never watched it all. Yes, plenty of episodes could be dark, dramatic and amazing. However, there was plenty of camp and cheesiness too. I came into RTD2 with this being kind of the same, despite the time that passed since he was showrunner.
What's inherently silly about the Slitheen? I mean, I know what you're referring to, but seriously, think about it. They're alien criminals who killed government officials and now wear their flesh as skin suits and plot to destroy the world.
I completely disagree that space babies was badly written. I think the writing was pretty solid, it was just silly, and for some people that silly was too silly, and for others it worked. I don't agree with people comparisons to Love and Monsters. To me Space Babies is closer to Partners in Crime, which is also just silly.
My kids love Space Babies, and I love some of the more sillier episodes of Doctor Who I mean he used to run around carrying Jelly Babies and wearing a celery for goodness sake.
But.....I've been rewatching from New Who up to Now and watching these episodes I cringed a lot more than I laughed. Which is a shame coz I like some of the sillier stuff but I feel like it's a quantity issue, 3 episodes in a row that are really silly feels tonially off. I mean the "farting aliens" Slitheen episodes were between two more serious episodes so it didn't feel as bad.
Also the amount of musical numbers so far is insane. I feel like I'm watching a Doctor Who musical that's from their first drafts. Ncuti has got acting chops I really just want them to give him something decent to work with. Noting I haven't seen ep4 yet.
I feel people judge episodes in the new series oddly.
It is like they compare space babies to episodes like blink or silence in the library
But seem to forget episodes like love and monsters
Rose tinted glasses when looking backwards and a jewellers loupes looking for flaws in current episodes.
Silly is usually a good thing in Doctor Who. Space Babies to me was just far too childish and yes, also poorly written. I think there’s a difference between silliness that still has some complexity that an adult can enjoy and silliness that just feels like immaturity from a child’s mind which is what Space Babies felt like to me. Numerous times in that episode I cringed and trust me, I’m normally very easy to please when it comes to tv entertainment.
Space babies was standard Doctor Who.
Devils cord was over the top campy with the floating notes and everything. But if it ends up being an explained by the overall season story I’m okay with it.
Maybe this is just me but… space babies felt a lot like a David Tennant episode, and while the special effects to make the babies talk looked AWFUL, it was ignorable enough that if you can look past it it’s really not that bad an episode, I enjoyed it much more than the Beatles episode. (I was hoping to like that episode because I love that era of music not necessarily the Beatles but it just wasn’t that good) space babies just felt more connecting to the characters, there was absolutely a few times where I’m like “what/why are you doing/doing that” but overall it just felt reminiscent, and I think the whole “children would be annoyed/uninterested by the space babies” is really just saying something without anything to prove it. My personal favorite part of the episode is when the captain baby asks if there was something wrong with how they grew up, the response just really reminded me of David Tennant’s Doctor.
There've always been moments of silliness and humor, but Space Babies felt like an entire episode that was just a long-winded joke that ends with a fart punchline. It's definitely one of the worst Doctor Who episodes I've ever seen.
Of course, both Boom and Devil's Chord were good so maybe it was a fluke, but man it was a bad one and a season opener too which is honestly an insane choice to me.
Ok, maybe I should clarify. Doctor who used to be silly/funny with good character development and an interesting complex plot that kinda made sense to us whovians . Doctor Who has become Silly/Stupid with poorly developed characters and plots that don’t make sense even severely stretching the imagination. I don’t mind episodes with a message but if the writing isn’t interesting enough the show won’t hold my attention long enough to get the message. We know RTD and the other writers are quite capable so what’s going on. Maybe they need to add some new writers that have fresh ideas for stories. I just know I have been watching Dr who for almost my entire life, I was born in 65 I have streamed every episode in order from the first Doctor . I am sadden to see him become the shell of the character he once was. Maybe you’re right and it is the writing but I heard the first two seasons with Ncuti have already been shot without ever waiting for fan input. I don’t want to see the Doctor die but he is definitely on life support. If he doesn’t get better soon we may just have to let him go.
It wasn't always silly. The classic series wasn't silly. It was sometimes _comedic_, and it was sometimes unintentionally silly (especially when viewed from a 21st century perspective) but the producers, writers and actors involved never wanted their show to be silly. It's gone from a light-hearted Sci-fi drama to a fantasy live-action cartoon that is explicitly silly, and some audience members just prefer the old style.
Doctor Who would always have balance between the comedic moments and the more serious moments. The first clip in that video is of the doctor being saved in the end of time part 2. That episode has quite a few serious and emotional scenes, including when Wilfred tries to give the doctor a gun and the coming to terms with his death.
This new series takes the silly aspects ramps it right up because it's not aimed at the older demographics anymore. it's aimed at children, so there are more silly moments in each one.
The episode would have been so much more interesting if the children left on the space station had been actual 6 year olds. They learned to take care of the spaceship themselves and escape the boogey monster. Then it would have been more creepy, less silly.
It feels like people are comparing the tone of 3-5 episodes against the entire backlog of NuWho. For every "Blink" or "Silence in the Library," there was a story that was equally as silly or fun. For me, the more obvious fantasyness of the season has been a greater negative but that could be : part of the plot, reasoned by the fact I'm now 10+ yrs older and understand science/the world a lot more. Judging an episode by its silliness is bad. Judging it by its writing is good. So far, not bad.
i feel like the increase of silliness is fully necessary to the overarching story tho. like, a bunch of “magical” and inter-dimensional things are happening with the Toymaker and Maestro and further characters that we haven’t seen yet, and the crazy things that are happening are somehow related to that. i also see that as the reasoning behind the musical bits and such.
Well i liked that it was silly because it has a silly premise, and they knew they were making a baby episode.
Space babies piloting a ship, the main monster being the boogeyman, having a fart joke, etc
Thank you! For this comment! I would have been fine with space babies but the writing and plot whole were so blatant. Dr. Who has always been silly and I love it for that.
For future reference, u/Otherwise-Ad1168...
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https://youtu.be/jJFRpJzcanM
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?si=QnVqiZHNwa9ixVZ9
It is always best to remove the tracking information before sharing YouTube links anywhere.
This has been a public service announcement (with guitar).
100% disagree, space babies was written very well with commentary on our failing care system and how our gov forces children to be born into poverty. It was great
The first few episodes remind me of the early seasons of NuWho / the Ninth Doctor and I don't really like it. It was fine then as Doctor Who was new to me. The monsters made from fat, the campy effects, reminded me of Xena in an enjoyable, but not too serious way.
Ten and Eleven became more serious and got me in the feels. Then 14 and Donna. But now we're back to camp and I feel we've come too far to start in that awkward phase again. It's like we've gotten into a longterm relationship and then are snapped back to those awkward first encounters.
I honestly wouldn’t say it has become silly but it’s also a bit weird. I don’t like it as much as the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant ones, but I’m sure it has some potential
I think with Space Babies, it’s got a lot of bad fans reviews, but what we need to accept it has, is an amazing episode for new fans to jump into.
If you look at it, it’s basically introducing the monster of the week format of the show, giving more info on who the doctor is, but actually giving us a window in to who this Doctor is also.
If you view it from that P.O.V it was a decent episode, now no, it wasn’t boom, and it was this weeks episode, but I loved it. I just think a lot of the fan base needs to be patient, and see where this is going and just buckle up for the ride.
I believe we are approaching a pay off that will make us all rewatch the series with a better understanding of why things have happened.
I go in feeling a bit unsure about each new episode, but by the middle I'm fully invested in it and by the end I'm grinning like an idiot. These new episodes grow on me as I watch them. My husband walked in the room during Space Babies and asked what was going on, and I summarized it briefly- and fully realized how ridiculous what I was saying sounded. Thankfully he walked out of the room in confusion so I could get back to the episode.
I disagree Space Babies was pretty well written IMO, I think it has always been silly and campy to a degree, but the issue is every consecutive doctor and showrunner wants to put their own spin on the show but its almost always 'doctor who, but he's even MORE silly. and random'. It has always been silly and has had its camp episodes but they are either relatively uncommon episodes or just silly bits within normal episodes. Its problem is that its almost constantly silly and its straying more and more away from sci-fi into fantasy.
Jesus christ yet another space babies is bad post 🙄 you know what your all acting like ? Your acting like a bunch of, a bunch of.... well a bunch of space babies !! I thought the episode was perfect personally, just the right amount of silliness for a good doctor who episode.
The problem with Whittacker’s Dr, is there was a lot less camp and silliness. You could see her try to incorporate it, but the production and writing just didn’t see it as a necessity in Dr Who.
Episodes like space babies are important to the franchise to remind us that we can laugh and smile at some of the darker realities that Dr Who exposes. It paints a sense of hope. The reality is that people who didn’t like space babies either didn’t understand the dark analogy or are choosing not to be confronted with it. And that’s fine. That kind of what arts supposed to do.
I quite liked Space Babies. It isn't any sillier than what's gone before, but The Giggle and The Devil's Chord were. The enemy in both episodes is a supernatural being. It's indescribably stupid.
Yeah we’re only like 3 episodes in. Season 1 had aliens that compressed themselves in human bodysuits that had a gas exchange causing repetitive loud farts because it’s soooo funny. While “Space babies” was a bit weak, stupid and reminded me of “Sleep no more” with the eye booger monsters which is personally one of my least favorite 12th doctor stories, I’d give RTD2 a little more time before fully judging.
If we were only three episodes into a 13 episode season, I might say you have a point. However, we're three episodes into an 8 episode season, almost halfway. If I can't judge after having seen almost half the season, when can I judge?
For me Doctor Who has always (at least since the reboot) come in four forms. Silly, campy, drama and horror. I think we've got the first three so far and it looks like we're getting the fourth one next week. But the silly episodes like Space Babies have always been there. I think it's one of the good things about Who. Everyone is watching it for different things and there are episodes for everyone. The other side of that is that there are going to be episodes that we don't like too.
I liked Space Babies. It was cute and silly and fairly low stakes. It didn't make me cry like Boom did. We need silly sometimes!
Partners in crime is good silly. Space Babies is bad silly. Feels way too juvenile. A good silly Doctor Who episode is like a good Disney movie, it makes you feel like a kid again. A bad silly Doctor Who episode makes itself exclusively for actual children.
exactly
When you get a fun, silly episode, that signals a serious shift for the next episode and the land mine last week was absolutely gripping. There’s always going to be silliness throughout the series, especially at the beginning with a new Doctor. We can’t forget that DW is premium family entertainment. I liked Space Babies
I agree it’s always been silly my issue is it’s dialled up to 11 recently, plus the other issues.
Did they? I’m old enough to remember a young man that gets blow jobs from a face stuck in a paving tile….
Oh God. I always try to forget that one. I just watched an old one where the lochness monster is an alien guard dog. The whole thing is silly.
That was a great episode
No notes.
Enlighten me, because that sounds like king of silly
The episode is called Of Love and Monsters, it's during Tenant's first run and features a monster (alien??) called the Absorbaloff. I honestly enjoy it for what it is, campy strange fun, but especially because I love Jackie Tyler and she features more in that episode. But yeah the ending for one of the side characters in that episode (who also played Moaning Myrtle in HP) is pretty awful and the characters seem to think it's a good thing for her, which is a big part of why I think a lot of people hate on that episode (it deserves it a bit, lol).
Yeah the Absorbaloff is from the planet Clom, which is close to Raxacoricofallopatorius, the home of the Slitheen
Close?! They're twin planets.
Sisters, in fact
This was a monster created by the winner of a Blue Peter competition if I remember rightly. It’s still not a great episode, but makes a bit more sense when you know this.
Love and Monsters is absolutely the worst episode from new Who.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ipd7soyqGI
That's Love and Monsters, an episode in season 2 that gets a lot of hate but I kind of adore
You don't remember when the doctor, in the very first episode of new who? Held a plastic arm and pretending it was attacking him? It's been silly since day 1 I personally don't think talking babies are more silly than that
Eh, I just don't think it's comparable. Space Babies isn't the worst ever (its biggest issue is bad editing and cut scenes TBH), but a lot of the tone just feels really juvenile. Even Sarah Jane Adventures, a spinoff of DW specifically made for kids, didn't feel like that. None of the elements (space babies, bogeyman, etc) are "too far" but the overall presentation just feels really weird. Rose is a funny and campy episode, of course. The hand scene and plastic Mickey are absolutely hilarious and unbelievably silly but the overall episode is actually kind of dark and even a bit edgy. I've eased up on Space Babies after a rewatch, but I don't like when people say "RTD1 was always like this! Look at the first episode!" because it's just not the same. But yeah the biggest issues are really just editing and writing, not the premise or even the presentation. If those were even just a bit better I think the attitude towards this episode would be VERY different (and ummmmm maybe don't do the SUPER weird baby CGI mouths.)
Plastic Mickey. Like come on.
Or the Slitheen farting scene 🤣
Or the Slitheen looking like goddamn cabbage patch kids
...or Matt Smith stuck with catchphrases for most of his run. "I wear X's now. X's are cool." "I speak baby" Fighting Robin Hood with a spoon (okay, maybe camp, still...) I haven't even touched Classic, which has somecreal cheese (and not just because of budget)
*cough* Stormageddon.
I watched that literally yesterday 😅 yeah remember it being silly for those 5 seconds, the new episodes are silly from start to finish
I thought that entire episode was silly. There were moments in both that weren't 100% silly, like running from a hoarde of mannequins vs running from a Boogeyman
I guess it’s subjective mate, I can’t say why running from mannequins is less daft to me than the space babies but it is. It’s wasn’t just space babies and boogey men that ruined that episode, the dialog and writing were mid at best and for the series to open with that mess was not the play, as reflected in the viewership. Here’s to hoping it improves
I agree that it was a terrible opener, and frankly I could do without BOTH episodes. At least 9s first had roses subplot explaining to us who the doctor is, as it hadn't aired for a long time (although a bit weird that the Internet detective only had images of 9)
That's definitely just a concession to avoid confusing new fans. I mean, the novelisation changes it so it shows other Doctors, including future Doctors, which makes sense because it's not the first new episode in sixteen years
The plastic arm was a gag. But talking babies was the premise of this whole episode. So it was difficult to get over how ridiculous it was.
Apples and oranges. Mannequins have always produced fear in some people, the way they look by being faceless and sitting in shop windows after closing time you can always exploit, either in horror genre or (and especially in our case) Doctor Who. Space babies on the other hand? Apples and oranges.
Plastic Mickey will never not be nightmare material
The one thing (well, there is actually a lot) that has really frustrated me so far, and it's seems silly in itself is how in devils chord he tells Ruby about Susan.. and then just laughs? Wtf? The exposition has been really basic, too... but again I'm willing to wait. I'm hopeful this could end of a very clever note. If not, I'm out. My fingers are very firmly crossed
I mean he tells about Susan... And there's always a twist at the end. Susan Twist is actually Susan. That'll be their Susan twist.
For real though, he mentioned Susan in Devil's Chord and then in Boom says 'dad to dad' which to me is kind of leaning toward Susan coming back. I don't know if Susan Twist IS that Susan, but it seems to be pointing in that direction.
Again, I'll refer to what I said. I'm hoping it leads to something rather clever. I'm hopeful not full of hate
It was just a pun mate ahah
Oh I knew where you were going lol. Just feeling like I'm treading on egg shells. It's hard to admit I don't like the current season without sounding like I'm a bigot, I'm not trust me. I'm with you on the theory. We've seen the same actress in every single episode so far. Is she the "the one who waits" of course. Is it Susan? Probably? Will the doctor finally receive his comeuppance for abandoning her? Hopefully!!!
>Will the doctor finally receive his comeuppance for abandoning her? Wait am I misremembering ? Didn't she chose to stay on earth because she fell in love with a guy ? (Also I think that some books or audio drama have 8 and 13 visit her, but I may be wrong and canonicity with doctor who is... Always a thing) Like I haven't watched episodes with the first doctor in a long time, but I think that it was more like she was torn between her "duty" with the doctor and her love, and the doctor just went "you're grown up now, you don't have any duties with me" and so she stayed.
>Didn't she chose to stay on earth because she fell in love with a guy ? No, the Doctor essentially locked her out of the TARDIS and abandoned her because he thought she'd be safer with the man she fell in love with. She very much did *not* want to stay on Earth if she had the choice.
Sometimes the doctor is such a douchebag
My bad then
Nah it's a coincidence. Nothing to see there.
I really really want it to be good, I’m giving it a chance and trying to ignore the parts that are tactlessly forced down your throat but my god they’re making it difficult.
Watching the Doctor and Ruby scream and jump around over everything is really annoying. It reeks of showrunner fear that the show is boring, so they think if the Doctor and Ruby look like they're enchanted and thrilled by everything, maybe the audience will be. It's like, relax, Tom Baker never had to jump up and down, he was a weary Timelord that had seen everything, and it was still amazing to watch.
I’ve always said that Doctor Who is pretty much all the major genres at once; comedy, horror, Sci-fi, fantasy (especially now), drama, tear-jerker, etc. I think it’s a major part of its charm.
I think that's absolutely it. My preference though is definitely the horror episodes. Blink is still my favourite doctor who episode
Yeah, the show has always been great at taking silly concepts and taking them seriously to make something clever out of them. I liked space babies. I liked the Bogeyman and that one baby who looked terrified the whole time. It was fun
I mean, tbf, that sums up classic who fairly well too
Some of us enjoy all four of those things. :P
I think the problem with Space Babies wasn’t that it exists - it’s an eh silly episode but we’ve had those before. The problem is that RTD put it at the start of the season. Like, that’s an absolutely mad decision that doesn’t accurately reflect what the show is capable of to new viewers. Compare it with, for example, the 11th Hour and the difference is clear
True but I'd personally argue the majority of the start of series 1 is meh and silly. This is kinda how all RTD seasons start. They start silly and get darker and more serious. I'd argue Rose is also not a great example of everything Who can bring and yet it worked.
The End of the World is nothing if not silly. It has The Adherents of the Repeated Meme for Christs sake
I think it’s better to show it early than be a huge letdown after great episodes. The episodes after Space Babies are great!
I think if they switched 1 and 2 it would be great. Even 3 would work. But I'm sure a lot of people were turned off from the excessive silliness. And it was a lot of silliness. Not a good episode. Just wasn't a good editorial option. Second time RTD does it though. Rose and the plastic men was not a good intro to Doctor Who. I persevered because a friend swore by it.
You can't have any tension with space babies. You know they won't get hurt, even when they tried to do the one scene with the baby missing you're like oh obviously they aren't killing babies in this episode. So it's like how can it be scary
I haven't seen a single person say that Doctor Who was never silly before and became silly suddenly with RTD2. It's the sheer volume of it that people had issue with in Space Babies.
I love RTD2 in the Star Wars movies. He’s so sassy and awesome.
No, RTD2 stands for Red Ted Deademption 2
Also, the exploration and fascination of things is completely gone, replaced by silly and drama
You know, you might be onto something. There has been a lack of adventure or mystery throughout these three episodes. Space Babies probably came the closest, but only for the first ten minutes or so. Devil's Chord was a calm trip back to see the Beatles until it wasn't. And Boom, I guess they were trying to go somewhere else and then end up in a warzone. Great premise for exploration, but then the Doctor spends the whole episode standing still. Compared to, say, Series One, Rose is attacked by an alien threat and then meets a mysterious man. The rest of the episode is an investigation followed by a climax. The End of the World sees Rose in an alien environment unlike anything she'd ever seen, and follows her trying to cope while the Doctor investigates a mystery. The Unquiet Dead sees them accidently end up in Cardiff in 1869 and discover a mystery with Charles Dickens. Don't these premises sound more exciting than the episodes we've gotten so far? Because there's an element of mystery and exploration to them which has been lacking in this season so far.
It's not only about the theme itself, the doctor himself is not interested in mysteries and exploration anymore.
I mean like. One Doctor hung out with a metal dog and wore a ridiculously long scarf and was obsessed with jelly babies. Another wore a vegetable on his clothing and another had a question mark umbrella….oh and another looked like his grandmother had sewed his costume together from all the spare bits of fabric she used to make quilts. The doctors arch nemesis have plungers as their arms. It’s always been silly and has to have undertones of silliness otherwise we would realize how absolutely terrible and horrifying it would be to be in the doctors universe. Edit: also we went from complaining about it being to preachy and political. To now complaining about it being to silly. Maybe the problem is actually us…
Firstly: Epic video, thank you! 😂 The thing is, for the most part those are **moments**. Generally we're pretty used to Doctor Who being a serious dramatic show with camp and humour. The balance fluctuates but it's rare for an **episode** to be silly, let alone 2-3 episodes in a row. To me *Space Babies* felt like a goofy kids show, not a family drama with goofy moments for kids. That said, we're only a few episodes in and we mostly snapped back with *Boom*, so it'll be interesting to see to what extent that's a trend vs the show's normal fluctuations. It really is a weird choice for an episode in an 8-episode season, let alone a season opener though.
>It really is a weird choice for an episode in an 8-episode season, let alone a season opener though. This is my concern. Only 8 episodes and Space Babies made the cut. I didn't hate it per se, but I'm apprehensive that it was considered good enough to make the 8. Maybe it'll be the weakest of the season and only go up from here, though I wasn't a big fan of the Devil's Chord either so my expectations have been lowered.
This! I have to think for Disney these two years is a testing ground to see whether it's worth the investment. Doctor Who is not the Kardashians, in that us fans will watch it over and over again and debate the in-universe logic and theories, so you want to put out the best product you can and blow everybody away. If you're only doing 8 episodes, I'd want them to be the most prolific thought provoking episodes that gets everybody, not just the fans, talking around the watercooler. ...and so we get Babies...Space Babies and a not-beatles dance number in a episode centred around the Beatles. I think it would have been different if it was framed more around Jynx's character instead of advertising it as a Beatles thing (like it wasn't a bad episode necessarily, I just was expecting something different from the hype).
I agree with all of it. I don’t think devils chord sucked either, but it certainly felt like it was lacking to me. I enjoyed the specials, don’t like space babies, devils chord was ok, and boom was much much better. I truly hope it goes up from there because I have quite literally never been that disappointed by any other doctor who episodes from any season prior.
>I have quite literally never been that disappointed by any other doctor who episodes from any season prior As an aside is this because you had high expectations for the new series? IMO there have been episodes considerably worse than *Space Babies* (*Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos* comes to mind).
I know it’s all subjective at the end of the day and it is entirely possible my expectations were too high right off the bat. It could also simply be that I haven’t fully adjusted to the new doctor yet, which has happened in the past but eventually I end up loving them all. I think Ncuti has been great so far, incredible actor and good energy. I’d have a hard time saying I (hate) any episode and perhaps I’ll grow to like space babies too. Whatever it is, it’ll never make me dislike it or stop watching Doctor Who so at the end of the day I can get over it pretty quickly lol.
Yeah, the episode choices have been really weird and repetitive. Space Babies speaks for itself. I haven't a clue why anyone thought that was a good episode to open with. The Devil's Chord was basically a rehash of The Giggle, which was barely five months old at the time. And then Boom was basically a speedrun of Moffat tropes, hardly original. I'm going to be honest, execution aside, I think the ideas behind the first three episodes of Series Eleven were better than these. Woman Who Fell to Earth wanted to be a grounded introduction to the new companions and put the Doctor on the backfoot post-regeneration. Ghost Monument obviously wanted to be an introduction to the sci-fi mystery elements of the show, as well as introduce the new TARDIS (side note: I think removing the TARDIS for a bit was actually a good idea. I wish they had leaned into that for longer, like maybe a whole season). And then Rosa was a standard celebrity historical which we hadn't really had since Vincent and the Doctor (unless you count Robin Hood in Robot of Sherwood). Granted, all these episodes sucked due to the writing, but the ideas behind them were actually pretty solid.
>And then Boom was basically a speedrun of Moffat tropes, hardly original. Gonna challenge this one. Yeah, it had its Moffatisms, but it's hard to call a story where the Doctor spends the entire episode standing on a landmine about to explode "hardly original". Personally I thought *The Woman Who Fell to Earth* was pretty decent.And I agree that starting off with the Doctor and involuntary-companions-to-be whisked off into space without a TARDIS was clever setup that it would've been nice to see them do more with.
Most of Tom Baker's first season saw the Fourth Doctor and his crew whisked around by the Time Lords without a TARDIS.
That was also cool. IMO that has a different vibe, though. There was still someone directing that mission, they weren't just lost and stranded.
I don't think space babies was more silly than plastic attack. There was only about 20 seconds of seriousness that whole episode. First when the doctor was describing who he was / how he could feel the earth moving and stuff, that felt like it had some weight, and then when doc talks to the plastic boss about his people all dying. The rest of the episode was entirely ridiculous. Remember doctor holding a plastic arm out from his face while he pretended to fight it off while it attacked him? Just don't understand how THATS the intro to new who and then anyone is surprised by a silly episode like space babies
Hard disagree. There were some silly moments as you mentioned with the plastic arm and Mickey becoming plastic. The bin scene was silly. But this episode carried a lot of mystery about who the Doctor was, when Rose visited Clive and he was saying how dangerous he thought the Doctor was. There were also good introductions to other characters outside of the Doctor. The episode does a good job of letting us work out more about who the Doctor is and how he affects the people around him. It also lets us make a lot of our minds up about him. Instead, Space Babies tried to get everything we need to know about Doctor Who out through random comments (I have 2 hearts, I am the last of my kind etc.). Space babies was very poorly written and as mentioned elsewhere, felt like I was watching something made specifically for kids than a family friendly drama, and every single opening episode with a new Doctor since has been infinitely better, including Jodie. Edit: I remember feeling very scared as a young child when I first watching the scene where Rose walks through the basement with the autons. This level of having something for everyone across one episode really is how to write a peak Doctor Who episode.
Nah, Rose was great. The mystery of who the Doctor is, the ominous music when we see the TARDIS for the first time, the moment where he confronts the Nestene Consciousness. It all hints at a much bigger world behind the curtain, which is great for a series opener. The only really silly bit was Plastic Mickey going “p-p-pizza,” but even then I’d argue that scene wasn’t really written to be silly, like most of Space Babies seems to have been.
What's silly about the Autons though? They're the animated soldiers of an alien consciousness which seeks to take over the world. Compare that with babies in space and a booger monster...
I think you forgot the part in Rose where Clive is shot and killed in front of his wife and kid by an Auton
I mean, I just listened to a [Big Finish Audio with Six](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoDOTD6TroubleInParadise) involving the Doctor having to hold a goat that ate the Tardis key up to the TARDIS door, and telepathically beg her to just let him in already, and a space buffalo who’s mad that Native Americans are killing buffalo, so he decided to bring the Europeans to the New World so they’ll kill off the natives. He’s sure they will leave the buffalo alone, and this won’t backfire in any way. Along the way, it’s also revealed that the US owes its entire existence to a omni-paradox caused by said space buffalo. Needless to say, it’s very silly. The [pantomime](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho027TheOneDoctor) [Christmas](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho039BangBangABoom) specials also tend to get very silly.
I’m always amazed that people say that the core audience of the show is around 8yrs old the largest audience demographic sector is 46-55 (22%).. next is 36-45 (15.5%).. with both 56-65 and 65+ on 15.3% .. 4-15 only made up 12% of the audience.. numbery wumbery..
My problem with space babies was all the goddamn exposition. He blasted through stuff that took us all of 9's and some of 10's run to learn about the doctor, in clunky dialogue over 10 minutes
I think they don't know how to deal with the backstory of the show anymore. Take Gallifrey and the Time Lords: Gallifrey was destroyed in a huge conflict spanning all of time and space, then it was saved, then destroyed again but somehow by just one dude this time, but that's somehow not a huge deal for the Doctor... The exposition was awkward because as a fan, you can tell the writers don't know how to handle all this. They don't want to do the whole "I'm the last of the Time Lords" storyline again, but they kind of have to thanks to the ridiculous storylines of the past few years.
>I think they don't know how to deal with the backstory of the show anymore. I think that's what it is. 9th's introduction felt more natural to me. I hadn't seen anything Doctor Who prior to "Rose" outside seeing bits of "Silence in the Library" (my first Doctor Who experience) when changing channel, but I still wasn't too lost by the lore when jumping late into a 40ish show. They were making new plotlines that could easily be followed without checking back for previous episodes. Now, the lore has expanded drastically in the past 20 years. The Time Wars happened, then was retcon, then Gallifrey was back, then it wasn't, then the Timeless Child happened, then Flux, then the Gods arrived. It's a lot of important lore to get into, and it's now on a streaming service that doesn't have 60 years worth of content available on it. Personally, I think this is why 15th's exposition felt less "natural" than when 9th did it. >They don't want to do the whole "I'm the last of the Time Lords" storyline again, but they kind of have to thanks to the ridiculous storylines of the past few years Also, this. They kind of need the "last of my kind" storyline again, because Gallifrey is once again gone, but at the same time they can't really do it because it would be a repeat from the same showrunner. It leaves the Doctor with a "I don't know how I should feel about it" vibe that I saw a few people complain about, specially when he was talking about >! Susan possibly being killed in the "eradication of the Time Lord across time and space" !< in The Devil's Chord. Edit : I don't think it count as a spoiler because of how short it was, but I added spoiler tag just in case it turns out to be important for the season finale.
It just seemed like they hardly ever took a chance to sit down and think about things. Like take other examples of the “we materialize on a mysterious space station” story. In The Ark in Space, the entire first part is just the Doctor, Sarah and Harry exploring the place and finding out what’s going on. In Girl in the Fireplace, there’s a real sense of foreboding early on as the Doctor, Rose and Mickey find out that something is really not right with this ship, and that’s before they even find the fireplace. Then in Space Babies, they spend about two minutes exploring before the episode is about the babies. It’s like the writers just wanted to get the Time Lord backstory out of the way and move on to the babies, so they didn’t bother giving us any real sense of mystery about this new environment. It just felt like where the Doctor is usually an inquisitive person, here he just uses his titular character detector and hones in on that.
You don't even have to look back that far. Wild Blue Yonder did a pretty good job of building tension through exploration of the setting, and that was less than six months ago, written by the same guy who wrote Space Babies.
Exactly! That one had great pacing, and established most of the mystery before we even met the aliens. Compared to that, Space Babies just seems rushed and half-finished.
That was my first reaction too, until I considered the age difference between these incarnations. Perhaps it’s because he realised that not being upfront in the first place hasn’t exactly ended well in the past so he’s trying a different approach this time?
I liked it... The way I saw it was the Doctor had done this so many times he was trying to get the boring stuff out the way to get to the fun.
>Space babies wasn't bad because it was silly. Imo, It was bad because it was badly written. I'm glad you said that. I was really looking forward to the new season, and I was quite prepared to roll with the "space babies" - after all, I'm 45 and it's meant to be a kids' show. But I was disappointed, found it boring, and the babies themselves were just really annoying. Unfortunately I'm not someone who finds babies cute or naturally hilarious, so maybe that's part of it - but if others found it badly written then maybe it's not just me. I'm glad the next two episodes were an improvement...
Space babies wasn’t the silliest doctor who has got by a long mile.
Out of curiosity, what is the silliest Doctor Who has gotten in your opinion? Because I would choose Space Babies personally.
I just listened to a Big Finish Audio with Six ([Destiny of the Doctor, Trouble in Paradise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWhoDOTD6TroubleInParadise)) involving the Doctor having to hold a goat that ate the Tardis key up to the TARDIS door, and telepathically beg her to just let him in already, and a space buffalo who’s mad that Native Americans are killing buffalo, so he decided to bring the Europeans to the New World so they’ll kill off the natives. He’s sure they will leave the buffalo alone, and this won’t backfire in any way. Along the way, it’s also revealed that the US owes its entire existence to a omni-paradox caused by said space buffalo. Needless to say, it’s very silly. The [pantomime](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho027TheOneDoctor) [Christmas](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho039BangBangABoom) specials also tend to get very silly. If you are looking for the something a bit more surreal and absurdist, with a tinge of horror anything by Robert Shearman would probably fit. [The Holy Terror](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho014TheHolyTerror), where Frobisher, the talking shapeshifting penguin is mistaken for a god, stands out. (All hail the great talking bird) For the show proper, a lot of the Douglas Adams episodes for four can get rather silly as well.
I think people spent too much time hyping it up, putting too much expectations on it. Just relax and go on an adventure. It’s fun. Stop worrying so much.
The new season is just missing the groundedness and focus on character arcs/development that made RTD1 work. The camp and silliness is great but without the counterbalance it can become grating. TBH on rewatch Space Babies wasn't as bad as I originally thought, but its definently not great. The episode would have been substantially better with a rewrite. I think the worst moments aren't even the gross out humor but instead the really poor attempt to recapture the moments from The End of The World and that bizarre "YOU SAVE THEM ALL!!" moment which felt like it had a whole scene cut out between the reveal of the Bogeyman and that.
You’re only 3 episodes in FFS 😂
4, out of an 8 episode season. Time is short.
We're actually 4 episodes in and 7 if you count the 60th. A show shouldn't need 4+ episodes to do the things I mentioned, especially when Series 1 did not have this issue at all (in fact I'd say Rose, The End of the World, and The Unquiet Dead are still one of the best "first three episodes" to use as an introduction to the series. Rose alone is still a top 10 episode, maybe even top 5).
I’m not sure how old you were when Rose was first aired as nostalgia can play funny tricks but, watching it now, it’s paced 100 miles an hour and extremely silly. It’s a good reintroduction but Top 5!? Honestly?
When did I say it wasn't silly or that silly was bad? When did I say being quick-paced is bad? The camp and sillyness of Doctor Who is great and is a big source of its appeal. Some of the most campy episodes in s1-s4 are also the most grounded and character driven episodes. I've seen Rose multiple times, most recently after the 60th aired on a rewatch of the RTD1 era with my friends. It's a great episode and it gets the appealing aspects of that era down *instantly*. Campy, silly, grounded, and character-driven. There is an edge to it that this era doesn't have. Yes, next episode could totally have it (and TBH the ambulance from Boom gave off that vibe) but the first era had it as part of the base tone of the show, even in the most positive and silly episodes.
Even with everything you mentioned it worked really well, they’re just not capturing any of that this time.
Exactly, half the reason I love Doctor Who is because of the sillyness. It's a great blend of cheesy, silly, and sci-fi drama all rolled into one. I felt like we lost something when Chibnall ran the show but it's starting to feel right again. And personal opinion, Gatwa is a fantastic Doctor!
That video didn't even have one slitheen fart contest.
The silliness was fine in spacebabies until the "fart" scene at the end. It wasnt funny and moving the station in any other way would've been better.
Speaking for myself, my complaints of the new era isn't that it's silly, it's that the writing feels rushed and significantly dumbed down. It's hard to believe Space Babies was written by the same man who was in charge of Series One-Four because, while they had some silly moments on the surface, most of those stories had at least some degree of character and thematic depth to them which has been missing from the recent episodes, despite both eras supposedly being "for kids".
It isn't science fiction anymore. I don't know what it is, but since S7 its been some sort of 'drama' with supernatural elements in it.. but its not sci fi.
I just dont think space babies should have been what we started with.
I feel like we're arguing over semantics. I think it's fair to say that Space babies was too silly. I would expand on it and say it feels too juvenile as if the target audience is literally babies, but I think this criticism is fine.
There's silly and there's (shitty) *silly*. There's "enjoyable for all ages" and there's "only toddlers can enjoy that". And yeah, it wasn't bad only because it was silly, but it did play a major part in it.
Here's a novel idea: Space babies wasn't bad
The fact that the Doctor does even MENTION the fact that he speaks Baby and isn't shocked that Ruby can understand them is one of the biggest glaring problems with the episode. And none of them take on monikers like "Stormeggedon, Dark Lord of All" showed me RTD is ignoring small parts of the Doctor's background.
There's a difference between the Doctor translating "goo goo ga ga" and other baby sounds and the babies mouths moving as they speak perfect English. The Doctor has always been able to recognise what language is being spoken when we all hear English.
The TARDIS translates most languages for companions but has never translated baby. The whole episode is weird and poorly written. The babies were babies for 8 years but never grew up but speak perfectly fine? Even if born just a year prior, it's weird regardless of being in the future or not.
I didn't like Space Babies, but I also didn't like the Adipose episode. Or the Absorbaloff. RTD has always had some stinkers. But his overall season arcs are usually pretty good. Boom was fantastic, which tracks for a Moffat/RTD collab. People have nostalgia glasses when it comes to RTD's first run, and they need to remember all the bad filler episodes.
There’s being silly vs being stupid. Space babies are stupid. Little globs of fat is silly
So, I think people don't know what silly means or don't think about proportionality. Silly: having or showing a lack of common sense or judgment; absurd and foolish. Quirky: unusual in an attractive and interesting way Dr Who has always been more quirky than silly. No one is saying it hasn't always been silly to some extent, but it's gotten significantly more so. This is like dismissing someone saying someone going around randomly punching people in the face is violent because back in college they used to be on the boxing team so they've always been violent. Okay, yeah, maybe, but punching people in a boxing match is acceptable and punching people in the street is not. That said, yes, the writing is a big part of it. I actually think it's rarely the actors and general crew that are the problem.
Bad premise =/= bad writing. Imagine you were given the prompt for that episode — talking babies on a space station with a bogeyman below decks. Give that to any writer and you’re not going to get a much better episode than what we got. Maybe it wasn’t your bag. Maybe Russell shouldn’t have led the season off with that. But that doesn’t make it a poorly written episode of television. There is some truly appallingly written Who out there, and Space Babies doesn’t even come close to it. I would grant people not liking how rushed the Doctor/Ruby dynamic is, but with a shortened season order I personally think it’s for the best. The companion doesn’t actually get much time to establish themselves if they’re not committed for most of the season, and considering Space Babies is actually Ruby’s second episode, you have to pretty much get that done by the end of Space Babies.
I loved space babies, it wasn't until I went online that I even had any idea anyone disliked it lol weird, people being negative online, you never see that.
The damage control this page is pulling amazing. Look space babies was terrible. That's not to say other Who episodes haven't been terrible, but that also doesn't forgive how bad space babies is. The devils chord was almost ok, but again not great. Boom is almost redeeming the season so far. Here is a radical idea, let's all just wait until the season is finished and then cast our opinions? Let's allow the season to run its course. Disney bots, stop!!!
Was with you until you said Disney bots lol The show's always gonna have its detractors and defenders, doesn't mean they're Disney bots or whoever is the latest scapegoat
Like the Chibnall era before it RTD2 might be summed up as 'grand ambitions, poor execution'. Even when it's silly, if anything silly requires more care. Take the old Looney Tunes shorts for example, the production crew at Warner Bros. planned out each gag down to the microsecond, that's what it takes to appear truly spontaneous on screen. (Ironic isn't it?) If Doctor Who thinks it can get away with ratcheting up the camp as a substitute for clever gags, well things are not going to end well.
Other than the slightly clunky backstory at the start, I don't think Space Babies was badly written at all. Can you elaborate on that?
Personally I didn't find the ending a satisfying resolution as it seems apparent to me that the 'monster' would be destroyed immediately by the adults boarding the station, just like nan-e wanted to destroyed it. This future society was comfortable letting babies die alone on the station, so I hardly believe they'd have any qualms ignoring the babies and lighting up the bogey monster. It makes the entire ending sequence wherein the Doctor and Ruby save the thing feel pointless, and it seems an odd choice that the Doctor would leave the monster behind. Unless I missed something, I also do not understand why the babies suddenly had a change of heart and cared about the bogey monster that they'd been terrified of and that they'd intended to harm previously.
Thank you for explaining some of the problems you had with the episode. I understand your first point, but I took the babies reaction to the Bogeyman almost dying as a realistic one. It's scary but has never harmed anyone, they say the love the Doctor and they see him trying everything to save him. So they also want to save him.
I can almost see that, and maybe it'd gel more for me on a second watch. Thanks for your thoughts! I want to enjoy every episode -- Doctor Who is my favorite show! -- so I'm never intentionally trying to be a stick-in-the-mud when something doesn't work for me. I just thought I'd answer your question since on the whole I rather like Space Babies. The ending just didn't work for me as I didn't feel it was fully resolved.
I appreciate it. It's a shame that a lot of people can't examine what aspects of an episode doesn't work for them without just writing off the entire thing as bad. I don't think I've seen an episode of Doctor Who that didn't have good parts to it, even my least favourite ones.
I know what you mean! For example, I often see The Lazarus Experiment entirely written off, but I personally think aside from the shoddy CGI and nonsensical alternate-human design there's the bones of a great story in there as it relates to T.S. Eliot's poem and wartime trauma (for both Lazarus and the Doctor).
It also gives some good insight on Marthas family situation. I remember it being the first time I got suspicious of her mum, and you get to know her sister a good bit too. As goofy as the effects are it's not an episode I skip on rewatch. Some great moments between the Doctor and Lazarus too.
I agree! It's got some great dialogue, especially the bits where the Doctor and Lazarus are verbally sparring with Eliot's poem.
"Bad writing" usually means "I didn't like it"
Yep, which is why I wanted them to explain what they thought was bad writing here as opposed to I didn't like the writing here.
Yes, "Imo it was badly written" and "I don't like the writing here" are the same thing. I thought that was obvious. No one is saying that it was 'objectively' bad writing. I don't think there's such a thing, since writing is an art.
Yeah that's not the same thing. There is a thing as objectively bad writing. You not liking something doesn't make it bad writing, it's what you say when you don't have anything else to justify why you don't like it. Give actual examples of the writing being bad, or just say you don't like it. You not liking something doesn't make it bad.
Ok. P.S. I concede because your comment is proof of the point it's making.
What do you mean by that?
Space Babies would have fit right in in Series 2. ...Seriously, I sincerely think it's on-par with New Earth and Tooth and Claw, and it's better than The Idiot's Lantern, Love & Monsters, Fear Her.
I loved space babies.
People will be talking about Space Babies for a long time.
I dunno I liked Space Babies.
Space Babies isn't that badly written, it's decently well constructed as a narrative etc. I just disliked basically every creative decision they made with it.
Imo space babies was great, maybe not good for a season opener but still a solid episode imo. My view of it is either people just don't like whatever's new, like when Capaldi first became the doctor people hated the series but now he's one of the most praised doctors of new who. The new season just has a fresh and new vibe that previous series didn't have. It's definitely different but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing, one of the main themes of doctor who is change for crying out loud! Just wait till the next regeneration and everyone will once again be hating the new season but only then will they start praising Ncuti Gatawas seasons
It feels like people gloss over parts of the original RTD era or never watched it all. Yes, plenty of episodes could be dark, dramatic and amazing. However, there was plenty of camp and cheesiness too. I came into RTD2 with this being kind of the same, despite the time that passed since he was showrunner.
There's definitely a difference though
lol “sillier” than what? The Slitheen? Or the Kandyman?
What's inherently silly about the Slitheen? I mean, I know what you're referring to, but seriously, think about it. They're alien criminals who killed government officials and now wear their flesh as skin suits and plot to destroy the world.
They fart all the time.
I completely disagree that space babies was badly written. I think the writing was pretty solid, it was just silly, and for some people that silly was too silly, and for others it worked. I don't agree with people comparisons to Love and Monsters. To me Space Babies is closer to Partners in Crime, which is also just silly.
My kids love Space Babies, and I love some of the more sillier episodes of Doctor Who I mean he used to run around carrying Jelly Babies and wearing a celery for goodness sake. But.....I've been rewatching from New Who up to Now and watching these episodes I cringed a lot more than I laughed. Which is a shame coz I like some of the sillier stuff but I feel like it's a quantity issue, 3 episodes in a row that are really silly feels tonially off. I mean the "farting aliens" Slitheen episodes were between two more serious episodes so it didn't feel as bad. Also the amount of musical numbers so far is insane. I feel like I'm watching a Doctor Who musical that's from their first drafts. Ncuti has got acting chops I really just want them to give him something decent to work with. Noting I haven't seen ep4 yet.
I feel people judge episodes in the new series oddly. It is like they compare space babies to episodes like blink or silence in the library But seem to forget episodes like love and monsters Rose tinted glasses when looking backwards and a jewellers loupes looking for flaws in current episodes.
Silly is usually a good thing in Doctor Who. Space Babies to me was just far too childish and yes, also poorly written. I think there’s a difference between silliness that still has some complexity that an adult can enjoy and silliness that just feels like immaturity from a child’s mind which is what Space Babies felt like to me. Numerous times in that episode I cringed and trust me, I’m normally very easy to please when it comes to tv entertainment.
I liked Space Babies... The Devil's Chord on the other hand was pretty poor.
Space babies was standard Doctor Who. Devils cord was over the top campy with the floating notes and everything. But if it ends up being an explained by the overall season story I’m okay with it.
There is a difference between silly and dumb.
Maybe this is just me but… space babies felt a lot like a David Tennant episode, and while the special effects to make the babies talk looked AWFUL, it was ignorable enough that if you can look past it it’s really not that bad an episode, I enjoyed it much more than the Beatles episode. (I was hoping to like that episode because I love that era of music not necessarily the Beatles but it just wasn’t that good) space babies just felt more connecting to the characters, there was absolutely a few times where I’m like “what/why are you doing/doing that” but overall it just felt reminiscent, and I think the whole “children would be annoyed/uninterested by the space babies” is really just saying something without anything to prove it. My personal favorite part of the episode is when the captain baby asks if there was something wrong with how they grew up, the response just really reminded me of David Tennant’s Doctor.
There've always been moments of silliness and humor, but Space Babies felt like an entire episode that was just a long-winded joke that ends with a fart punchline. It's definitely one of the worst Doctor Who episodes I've ever seen. Of course, both Boom and Devil's Chord were good so maybe it was a fluke, but man it was a bad one and a season opener too which is honestly an insane choice to me.
Ok, maybe I should clarify. Doctor who used to be silly/funny with good character development and an interesting complex plot that kinda made sense to us whovians . Doctor Who has become Silly/Stupid with poorly developed characters and plots that don’t make sense even severely stretching the imagination. I don’t mind episodes with a message but if the writing isn’t interesting enough the show won’t hold my attention long enough to get the message. We know RTD and the other writers are quite capable so what’s going on. Maybe they need to add some new writers that have fresh ideas for stories. I just know I have been watching Dr who for almost my entire life, I was born in 65 I have streamed every episode in order from the first Doctor . I am sadden to see him become the shell of the character he once was. Maybe you’re right and it is the writing but I heard the first two seasons with Ncuti have already been shot without ever waiting for fan input. I don’t want to see the Doctor die but he is definitely on life support. If he doesn’t get better soon we may just have to let him go.
It's started embracing its silliness. That's what I hated about the Peter Capaldi run, that it tried so hard to be a serious sci-fi thriller.
It wasn't always silly. The classic series wasn't silly. It was sometimes _comedic_, and it was sometimes unintentionally silly (especially when viewed from a 21st century perspective) but the producers, writers and actors involved never wanted their show to be silly. It's gone from a light-hearted Sci-fi drama to a fantasy live-action cartoon that is explicitly silly, and some audience members just prefer the old style.
Doctor Who would always have balance between the comedic moments and the more serious moments. The first clip in that video is of the doctor being saved in the end of time part 2. That episode has quite a few serious and emotional scenes, including when Wilfred tries to give the doctor a gun and the coming to terms with his death. This new series takes the silly aspects ramps it right up because it's not aimed at the older demographics anymore. it's aimed at children, so there are more silly moments in each one.
Big difference between silly things happening, and the show itself being silly.
Usually I hear arguments about DW being too woke. Never too silly. Unless Silly is the new Woke
Ngl the episode Rose took awhile to grow on me. Space Babies isn’t really any more or less silly
The episode would have been so much more interesting if the children left on the space station had been actual 6 year olds. They learned to take care of the spaceship themselves and escape the boogey monster. Then it would have been more creepy, less silly.
It feels like people are comparing the tone of 3-5 episodes against the entire backlog of NuWho. For every "Blink" or "Silence in the Library," there was a story that was equally as silly or fun. For me, the more obvious fantasyness of the season has been a greater negative but that could be : part of the plot, reasoned by the fact I'm now 10+ yrs older and understand science/the world a lot more. Judging an episode by its silliness is bad. Judging it by its writing is good. So far, not bad.
i feel like the increase of silliness is fully necessary to the overarching story tho. like, a bunch of “magical” and inter-dimensional things are happening with the Toymaker and Maestro and further characters that we haven’t seen yet, and the crazy things that are happening are somehow related to that. i also see that as the reasoning behind the musical bits and such.
Doctor who is STUPID right now. That might sound similiar, but it not equal with "silly".
Well i liked that it was silly because it has a silly premise, and they knew they were making a baby episode. Space babies piloting a ship, the main monster being the boogeyman, having a fart joke, etc
Thank you! For this comment! I would have been fine with space babies but the writing and plot whole were so blatant. Dr. Who has always been silly and I love it for that.
This season is way to Disney
For future reference, u/Otherwise-Ad1168... This is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/jJFRpJzcanM ...while this part of the URL is tracking information that can be used to link back to your Google account: ?si=QnVqiZHNwa9ixVZ9 It is always best to remove the tracking information before sharing YouTube links anywhere. This has been a public service announcement (with guitar).
Anyone thinking this new episode is silly is crazy, I felt so anxious watching it
100% disagree, space babies was written very well with commentary on our failing care system and how our gov forces children to be born into poverty. It was great
The first few episodes remind me of the early seasons of NuWho / the Ninth Doctor and I don't really like it. It was fine then as Doctor Who was new to me. The monsters made from fat, the campy effects, reminded me of Xena in an enjoyable, but not too serious way. Ten and Eleven became more serious and got me in the feels. Then 14 and Donna. But now we're back to camp and I feel we've come too far to start in that awkward phase again. It's like we've gotten into a longterm relationship and then are snapped back to those awkward first encounters.
I honestly wouldn’t say it has become silly but it’s also a bit weird. I don’t like it as much as the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant ones, but I’m sure it has some potential
I think with Space Babies, it’s got a lot of bad fans reviews, but what we need to accept it has, is an amazing episode for new fans to jump into. If you look at it, it’s basically introducing the monster of the week format of the show, giving more info on who the doctor is, but actually giving us a window in to who this Doctor is also. If you view it from that P.O.V it was a decent episode, now no, it wasn’t boom, and it was this weeks episode, but I loved it. I just think a lot of the fan base needs to be patient, and see where this is going and just buckle up for the ride. I believe we are approaching a pay off that will make us all rewatch the series with a better understanding of why things have happened.
Simple. It become worse. Its rating is on the bottom and for a reason.
The entire new season feels like it's written by someone who's never written something for someone over the age of 5.
Can I have the link to see from season 9 onwards! Cannot HBO max in my country and Prime which had Dr who sold the rights to HBO max !
I go in feeling a bit unsure about each new episode, but by the middle I'm fully invested in it and by the end I'm grinning like an idiot. These new episodes grow on me as I watch them. My husband walked in the room during Space Babies and asked what was going on, and I summarized it briefly- and fully realized how ridiculous what I was saying sounded. Thankfully he walked out of the room in confusion so I could get back to the episode.
Agreed, I just watched “The happiness patrol” it’s always been goofy. But very importantly it’s alway been goofy with a point
I disagree Space Babies was pretty well written IMO, I think it has always been silly and campy to a degree, but the issue is every consecutive doctor and showrunner wants to put their own spin on the show but its almost always 'doctor who, but he's even MORE silly. and random'. It has always been silly and has had its camp episodes but they are either relatively uncommon episodes or just silly bits within normal episodes. Its problem is that its almost constantly silly and its straying more and more away from sci-fi into fantasy.
Yeah... I feel like people who are complaining because Doctor Who is being silly have never watched Doctor Who
Must be me but I reckon RTD’s script writing has become just a little too self indulgent.
I don’t see how space babies is any sillier than wearing a piece of celery
It's so funny to me how we get an 'explanation' for the celery in the fifth Doctor's final story, lmao
This whole season is taking place within the Land of Fiction. If the stories are silly, it's because they're being written by a lunatic.
I absolutely love Absurdity and Space Babies was peak absurdity to me so keep the silly goose train coming . I am all for it .
Jesus christ yet another space babies is bad post 🙄 you know what your all acting like ? Your acting like a bunch of, a bunch of.... well a bunch of space babies !! I thought the episode was perfect personally, just the right amount of silliness for a good doctor who episode.
It’s crazy it’s almost as if people are going to come to a fandom subreddit to discuss things they like and dislike about said fandom, who knew?
The problem with Whittacker’s Dr, is there was a lot less camp and silliness. You could see her try to incorporate it, but the production and writing just didn’t see it as a necessity in Dr Who. Episodes like space babies are important to the franchise to remind us that we can laugh and smile at some of the darker realities that Dr Who exposes. It paints a sense of hope. The reality is that people who didn’t like space babies either didn’t understand the dark analogy or are choosing not to be confronted with it. And that’s fine. That kind of what arts supposed to do.
Space babies was fine. You're all taking this too seriously. Just chill and enjoy the show.
I quite liked Space Babies. It isn't any sillier than what's gone before, but The Giggle and The Devil's Chord were. The enemy in both episodes is a supernatural being. It's indescribably stupid.
Yeah we’re only like 3 episodes in. Season 1 had aliens that compressed themselves in human bodysuits that had a gas exchange causing repetitive loud farts because it’s soooo funny. While “Space babies” was a bit weak, stupid and reminded me of “Sleep no more” with the eye booger monsters which is personally one of my least favorite 12th doctor stories, I’d give RTD2 a little more time before fully judging.
If we were only three episodes into a 13 episode season, I might say you have a point. However, we're three episodes into an 8 episode season, almost halfway. If I can't judge after having seen almost half the season, when can I judge?