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Post by nucleusofswarm on Nov 12, 2016 15:15:47 GMT
Now, I don't mean this question in terms of what it did for 7´s character, restoring mystery to the Doctor or adding more layers to Gallifreyan lore. Rather, I'm asking if the Masterplan was the right approach to take with the programme, given where it stood with both the viewing public and the BBC at that time. Was it too heavy on continuity to invite newcomers in? Was it too ambitious for the format and budget of the time? Was it a case of 'good for the story, bad for the show'?
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Post by jasonward on Nov 12, 2016 15:38:28 GMT
The show needed a new direction, it was needed because of the battering it was taking from BBC insiders, people who let their personal dislike of the show prevent them taking an objective view, at the time these people were in the ascendant and the show needed to escape, whether Cartmel's Masterplan was the best way to do this I cannot say, but the show needed someone with vision and drive and he had that.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2016 19:05:49 GMT
We'll never know for sure, obviously, but I think it would have been the right way to proceed. Some sort of direction was required for Season 27 onwards and Andrew Cartmel's ideas were not bad (on paper), but no matter how good or bad his ideas actually were, or would have been, the top bods at the BBC wanted the show cancelled and that was that.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Nov 12, 2016 19:48:16 GMT
I think it would have made for an interesting exploration for who the Doctor is. There's plenty that could have been done with it and I actually think it's a plan that would fit in seamlessly to the Moffat era. Andrew Cartmel and Steven Moffat have very similar ideas.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2016 20:25:12 GMT
I'd have said it was good for the story and the show. If you consider mention of the Dark Times in The Five Doctors, it's not unprecedented either. Suddenly, we had a very well-characterised Doctor with an expanded background that he wasn't sharing with us. It was like the Hartnell/Troughton days again where there was always a niggling doubt about where exactly he stood in terms of cosmic events, an alienness which Cartmel was very good at exploiting in his latter-day Seventh Doctor stories. I suspect that move was inspired a little by Sapphire and Steel in that regard, Steel and Seven share similar characteristics towards their end run.
As to whether or not it worked... Well, the VNAs were treated for a very long time as an official continuation of the television series (so much so that DWM comics introduced Benny apropos of Love and War), so I guess it depends on how you thought it was handled there. Lungbarrow was a long time coming concept, it was what Ghost-Light was originally intended to be before JNT asked Marc Platt to write something less mythological. It was also peppered in stories like Nightshade which showed us the Doctor leaving in his TARDIS, Time's Crucible that dealt with Gallifrey's history before Rassilon came to power, Transit which showed how dangerously common knowledge of the Doctor's activities was becoming, Kadiatu being mentored as the Doctor's potential replacement for the ka faraq gatri, etc.
Would it have worked on television? Who can say, but the amount of freedom it gave the writers in prose was astounding.
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Post by kalendorf on Nov 13, 2016 3:32:38 GMT
Now, I don't mean this question in terms of what it did for 7´s character, restoring mystery to the Doctor or adding more layers to Gallifreyan lore. Rather, I'm asking if the Masterplan was the right approach to take with the programme, given where it stood with both the viewing public and the BBC at that time. Was it too heavy on continuity to invite newcomers in? Was it too ambitious for the format and budget of the time? Was it a case of 'good for the story, bad for the show'? I'd say it was no worse for impenetrable continuity than much of the Davison and Colin Baker era had been, and arguably in many ways better. I think casual viewers might've had more chance following and understanding Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield than they would've with Resurrection of the Daleks or Attack of the Cybermen. I don't think the show was going to survive in any case. Its days were always going to be numbered after 1986, and I don't think refraining from doing the masterplan would've made the show not end in 1989. In that regard the Cartmel masterplan was good because it mostly ensured the show ended with most of its loose ends wrapped up finally and conclusively in Remembrance of the Daleks, Silver Nemesis and Survival spelling the seeming final end for the Doctor's greatest foes, and even the defeat of Fenric and the Gods of Ragnarok compliment this sense of finality. My only regret, and I'm aware I'm in a minority here, is I actually think Lungbarrow should've been made as it was the masterplan's final missing piece that would've actually made the mysterious teases more substantial. |
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Post by Timelord007 on Nov 13, 2016 9:26:55 GMT
We kinda got a conclusion to the Cartmel Masterplan with the Lost Stories although changes had to accommodate Ace not leaving the Tardis.
On the whole i thought it was pretty good.
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Post by shutupbanks on Nov 13, 2016 11:31:15 GMT
I liked it: it brought an air of mystery back to the character and gave the incarnation a will he/ won't he attitude that he hadn't had for a while. I mean, 6 had colossal arrogance and self-belief but you never really doubted that he'd do the right thing: 7 might have done the right thing but you always got the impression that he was keeping some sort of score with someone: it became more of a long game with his own integrity on the line rather than the conflict and if it cost him something with his relationship with Ace he was prepared to gamble that to make sure that his goals were met.
Would it be too much to say that it was the biggest change of direction the show had taken - Key To Time and Trial Of A Timelord notwithstanding - since exiling the Doctor at the end of The War Games?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2016 12:33:26 GMT
We kinda got a conclusion to the Cartmel Masterplan with the Lost Stories although changes had to accommodate Ace not leaving the Tardis. I would have preferred it if they'd stuck to the plan and had Ace depart... |
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Post by Timelord007 on Nov 13, 2016 16:45:43 GMT
We kinda got a conclusion to the Cartmel Masterplan with the Lost Stories although changes had to accommodate Ace not leaving the Tardis. I would have preferred it if they'd stuck to the plan and had Ace depart... I also wasn't sold on Ace becoming a timelord, why would they even consider Ace a mere human? I wonder who would've played Raine on tv? |
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Nov 14, 2016 12:10:48 GMT
At the time, yes it was the perfect thing to do. We wouldnt have had such great stories like Ghost Light, Curse of Fenric, Remembrance of the Daleks and Survival if the Masterplan hadnt have been started i think
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Nov 14, 2016 14:14:50 GMT
A lot of good answers gents, but I feel like you're straying back to the 'good for story/mythology' reasons. I was more asking about if it was the right approach to try and bring the audience back onto Who after it had taken a knock from Grade and the false hiatus in 85.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2016 2:27:54 GMT
A lot of good answers gents, but I feel like you're straying back to the 'good for story/mythology' reasons. I was more asking about if it was the right approach to try and bring the audience back onto Who after it had taken a knock from Grade and the false hiatus in 85. I'd like to think so. The show had suffered quite a bit from what happened in 1985/86, its reputation was in the gutter thanks to Grade's vendetta against the programme. When people thought of Doctor Who, they imagined lumbering monsters, a buffoonish protagonist and cardboard corridors, which is exactly what they got for Season 24. It was almost like a validation of all those criticisms and even though it had survived its execution, the show was now definitely in trouble. There needed to be a change and fortunately, Cartmel and McCoy came up with the idea of a singularly defined end point for the Seventh Doctor. The snap between the two years is astounding if you look at Time and the Rani and Remembrance of the Daleks back-and-back, it's Swamp Thing's transformation from Alec Holland into the thing that believed itself Alec Holland. The show proved that it could be intelligent again, bringing new things to the table for audiences to enjoy. It wasn't trapped lauding its own past, it was pushing forward into a brave new future. |
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Post by J.A. Prentice on Nov 15, 2016 5:56:01 GMT
I think it was definitely a good decision creatively, but too late to save the show. I don't think it really hurt the show since the BBC had basically already decided to kill it. The Cartmel Masterplan wouldn't have made any difference. If the BBC had promoted it as a fresh start, given the show more money, etc, perhaps it would have made a difference, but I think Doctor Who's problems in post-Colin Baker era had nothing to do with the writing and everything to do with the higher-ups.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Apr 27, 2018 23:36:59 GMT
Mentioned this on the Grade photo, but I wanted to expand it: While the CM did do good, that much we're all in agreement on, when a show can no longer attract established writers, and has to constantly gamble on total novices, however talented they may be, that's not a sign of great health. For a show that had been on for so long and had such an influence to be that toxic, even before Grade, is a nightmare. Greater focus on the mythology would shrink that pool even further (and when they went for someone who didn't know it, we got Silver Nemesis).
That's not me slighting the fine stuff we got from Aaronovitch, Platt and the others, but to go from having respected warhorses like David Whittaker, C.E. Webber and Terry Nation, to twenty-something guys who just finished their English degrees and have Who as their first credit could not be great PR.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2018 0:59:53 GMT
Mentioned this on the Grade photo, but I wanted to expand it: While the CM did do good, that much we're all in agreement on, when a show can no longer attract established writers, and has to constantly gamble on total novices, however talented they may be, that's not a sign of great health. For a show that had been on for so long and had such an influence to be that toxic, even before Grade, is a nightmare. Greater focus on the mythology would shrink that pool even further (and when they went for someone who didn't know it, we got Silver Nemesis). That's not me slighting the fine stuff we got from Aaronovitch, Platt and the others, but to go from having respected warhorses like David Whittaker, C.E. Webber and Terry Nation, to twenty-something guys who just finished their English degrees and have Who as their first credit could not be great PR. All pretty valid points. It was certainly a show hurting by the time that 1989 came rolling around. They had only just managed to get on top of the production values with directors like Alan Wareing. That said... Myth-building and story arcs have changed significantly since the late 80s/early 90s in how they are approached. Nowadays, it's very tightly woven, but back then -- I'm thinking shows like TNG and The X-Files -- you could drop into the middle of an arc and be none the wiser. There was very little lockout on these kinds of stories compared to now. If you didn't know what was going on, it was the responsibility of the story, not the viewer to catch the audience up. You didn't need to know what happened beat-by-beat on Iceworld to understand The Curse of Fenric, for instance. The links were treated much more as easter eggs for longtime viewers and given how Trial went (a tonne of questions unanswered), I think they'd be resistant to making it too interlinked. I can't say this with any certainty, but maybe stories revolving around the MP would be relegated to a particular stable of writers like Aaronovitch and Platt while the more standalone releases were used for fresh blood ( The Happiness Patrol, Survival, etc.)? |
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Apr 28, 2018 9:47:13 GMT
Mentioned this on the Grade photo, but I wanted to expand it: While the CM did do good, that much we're all in agreement on, when a show can no longer attract established writers, and has to constantly gamble on total novices, however talented they may be, that's not a sign of great health. For a show that had been on for so long and had such an influence to be that toxic, even before Grade, is a nightmare. Greater focus on the mythology would shrink that pool even further (and when they went for someone who didn't know it, we got Silver Nemesis). That's not me slighting the fine stuff we got from Aaronovitch, Platt and the others, but to go from having respected warhorses like David Whittaker, C.E. Webber and Terry Nation, to twenty-something guys who just finished their English degrees and have Who as their first credit could not be great PR. All pretty valid points. It was certainly a show hurting by the time that 1989 came rolling around. They had only just managed to get on top of the production values with directors like Alan Wareing. That said... Myth-building and story arcs have changed significantly since the late 80s/early 90s in how they are approached. Nowadays, it's very tightly woven, but back then -- I'm thinking shows like TNG and The X-Files -- you could drop into the middle of an arc and be none the wiser. There was very little lockout on these kinds of stories compared to now. If you didn't know what was going on, it was the responsibility of the story, not the viewer to catch the audience up. You didn't need to know what happened beat-by-beat on Iceworld to understand The Curse of Fenric, for instance. The links were treated much more as easter eggs for longtime viewers and given how Trial went (a tonne of questions unanswered), I think they'd be resistant to making it too interlinked. I can't say this with any certainty, but maybe stories revolving around the MP would be relegated to a particular stable of writers like Aaronovitch and Platt while the more standalone releases were used for fresh blood ( The Happiness Patrol, Survival, etc.)? I don't dispute that insightful point, as it's very true, but more the difference in writing calibre and how, casual as it was, it was one more element that likely didn't help bring on more established writing talent. |
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Post by Tony Jones on Apr 28, 2018 10:04:17 GMT
I would have preferred it if they'd stuck to the plan and had Ace depart... I also wasn't sold on Ace becoming a timelord, why would they even consider Ace a mere human? I wonder who would've played Raine on tv? I think Julia Sawalha was a candidate to play Raine, and she was the companion Emma in Fatal Death |
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on Apr 29, 2018 21:12:05 GMT
No.
But also yes.
Yes in that the 20th Century Series needed SOMETHING done to it to perk it up, something to add spice to a soup that was becoming a bit too watered down through continued use.
No in that making the Doctor (a) god was a silly idea. I like the idea that the Doctor was simply an underachieving Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and ran off to have adventures, meet interesting people etc.
21st century Who did it right, added some mystery and backstory with The War. I think they did it wrong with all that stuff about the Hybrid.
HOWEVER that stuff with the Hybrid could have worked. The Doctor left Gallifrey because he was bored AND he was worried that he was thr mysterious hybrid that legend has it will do stuff. It could have worked in thr classic series too.
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