Is this the golden age of Doctor Who?

I agree. We've never had it so good.

You can tell that by all the complaints.

No golden age was about 5 years ago, for both the show & BF

Sure we are getting great high quality audios, but much of what Moffat has done over the last 5 years has unraveled the show, and spoilt my love for it.

BF's move to multi box sets, short trips & diversification, although still brilliant has changed my loyalty to them somewhat.

No I have to agree the new golden age on TV was RTD and DT there was something about that combo that connected everywhere.

The Classic golden age being the 70s again it suddenly connected everywhere.

(Though my personal TV favourites for consistent good quality are the 2nd Doc, Seasons 12-16 4th Doc, season 19, 6th Doc, everything from Season 25 through to End of Time)

Now BF is more down to personal taste. It consistently better then TV output IMO with a couple of exceptions.

Regards

mark687

In terms of exposure, I reckon it got kicked off with Russell T. Davies and David Tennant. From the ground, I remember trying to explain the TARDIS and the Daleks to people during the reruns in 2003 and everybody was focussed instead on things like The Simpsons, but when the Tenth Doctor made his debut I didn't have to do the preamble anymore, they knew exactly what I was talking about. The show was big and everyone seemed to love it, all the merchandise kept popping up and people were quoting lines from the show. When Matt Smith entered the role it was like the shift from Tom Baker to Peter Davison.

You could see certain people dropping off from the programme, but there was still a fondness for it and that star was still bright in the sky... Then we hit Let's Kill Hitler or Asylum of the Daleks and something happened, it was like the substrata of ice cracking beneath a frozen lake. Complaints started to converge on an increased gimmickiness, overused gags like "Noun is cool," and a new worry that the Doctor had started to become minimised in his own show, which brings us to where we are now. Granted this isn't universal, but from where I stand it seemed that the bubble burst halfway through the sixth series and casual viewers started trailing off, so the show became largely fan-orientated which you can see in moves like in Series 9 where there was an attempt to reintroduce the classic series format (in the style of Season 22) to a twenty-first century audience. Didn't quite work with some people, I recall a friend who didn't like the format change and was actually cajoled away from looking at the classic series because of it. We may have more or less passed the golden age for the new series right now.

In terms of content, the show has never been better. We've got Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures (both series), I, Davros, Lethbridge-Stewart, The Minister of Chance, Erimem, UNIT, Jago and Litefoot, Bernice Summerfield, Cyberman, Dalek Empire, Iris Wildthyme, Faction Paradox, The Lives of Captain Jack, The Diary of River Song, Charlotte Pollard, Short Trips, the revival, the classic series, the comics, the novels, the novel adaptations, the audiobooks, the audio dramas, twelve Doctors and a partridge in a pear tree. We are not for want of content. There is so much to absorb now that I've actually found a sizeable decrease in fan content since the RTD years. All the old contributors I used to follow from then have up and vanished in one way or another. Some have broken through into professional productions like Philip Lawrence who once did Action Figure Theatre, others have just up and vanished into the ether. It's really fascinating looking at all these works actually, Doctor Who as it stands now is nowhere near what it was in say 2004 for example. It's an entirely different animal. Very firmly science fiction with the razor edges that accompany it. Very little happened without reason.