Series 8 in my mind was pretty good. I really enjoyed Peter Capaldi as The Doctor and enjoyed his debut series. With that said I did feel that there could be some improvement to make the series better. With Series 9 beginning filming this week I have come up with a few things that I would like to see in Series 9.
The new series has a lack of going to alien planets. Now if they were able to go to a lot of alien planet is the Classic Series with their limited budget and sets then there is no reason why the new series cannot go to more alien planets. I think there are still quarries in England so maybe go on location and have an adventure on an alien planet. It just seems like there are more places in the universe for The Doctor to have adventures than on planet Earth.
Monsters
Series 8 had three monsters and they didn’t seem to have a main central part of the story. Flatline came close with The Boneless but they were mainly regulated to monsters inside a wall and not really relevant in body form until the last 5 minutes. The Mummy in Mummy on the Orient Express was scary but wasn’t in the story much and the Teller was used as a weapon for Ms Dalphox and wasn’t really a threatening monster until it was set free to do her bidding. So three monsters in Series 8 not counting the Daleks, Cybermen and the countless threatening robot’s. What we need is more monsters to be the main baddie in Series 9. Something that was done really well in the Classic Series as you could always count on the monster of the week if the usual recurring baddie wasn’t used. Doctor Who always had great monsters but lately there haven’t been any memorable ones and we need a series with more monsters in that are really threatening for The Doctor to face.
Yes I would like to see Michelle Gomez return as The Master now known as Missy. They don’t have to explain how she survived in Death in Heaven (They never did in the Classic Series) just bring her back to cause trouble for Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. The two actors have a great chemistry together and it would be good to have a Master/Doctor rivalry like they did in the Pertwee and Davison era. I think Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez can challenge Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado for Doctor Who’s fun couple.
No More of the Clara Show
Series 8 can be seen as the Clara show and for one series it was fine to have stories that helps develop Clara more and we get an insight of her personal life. Ok. Fine that was a nice change but her boyfriend is dead and lets just move on from the whole domestics and personal life stuff. No more of The Doctor picking Clara up at home or at Coal Hill School and taking her on an adventure because he needs her or wants to show her something. Let’s have her be a traveler for a change and have them show up and see what happens. That’s the way it used to be and not that long ago during the Smith era. Plus it is called Doctor Who and let’s have the show focus more on The Doctor. I don’t mean having Clara become the stupid companion that gets captured and waits to be rescued or need The Doctor to explain everything to her but take some of the spotlight off her and let the show be more about its main star Peter Capaldi.
Last Christmas was a good Christmas Special and I enjoyed it quite a bit. But do we really need to have it to be centered on Christmas. Have the story be something like The Snowmen which took place at winter and did not have an in your face Christmas theme. What made the Christmas theme and the Santa Claus aspect of Last Christmas enjoyable was that it was a dream sequence brought on by the Dream Crabs and that worked but it would be good to tone down the Christmas factor now and again.
Go Back to Gothic Style Stories
If you’re going to Hinchcliffe the crap out of a story then actually Hinchcliffe the crap out of it. Kill the Moon was supposed to be the type of story that Steven Moffat wanted to Hinchcliffe the crap out of but it missed the target. It did not have a Gothic feel to it and was more of a moral dilemma story. It was definitely not what it should have been to be a Hinchcliffe story. So for Series 9 I would like some scary Gothic style of stories like Seasons 12 to 14.
As much as I like stories with the Daleks and Cybermen I’m getting a tad tired of them. I would like if they could bring back a villain from the past. Number one for me would be the Sea Devils. Last seen in the Fifth Doctor story Warriors of the Deep a not so stellar story as they looked like a bad Samurai Warriors and was not that threatening at all. An updated version is needed for the cousins of the Silurians and hopefully has a story near a beach or harbor which they must have in Cardiff. It would be really cool to see Peter Capaldi face the Sea Devils and hopefully maybe have UNIT along also. It would be also good to have the Sontarans back also and have them less silly and make them threatening again. Get away from the Strax image and make them the fierce warriors that they are. A long shot that I would like to see back would be the Kraals. The enemy from the Tom Baker story The Android Invasion would make a great villain for NuWho with a city full of androids getting ready to take over an unsuspecting world. That would be something I would like to see.
Great list Ken - you should send it to Moff
ReplyDeleteNot me - Jeff. My list would be 50 things I would like to see,
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