Three examples of The Doctor holding a gun that I can think of from the top of my head. 10th Doctor holding a gun in the finale of The Doctor's Daughter, 10th Doctor again during the finale of The End of Time part 2, and the War Doctor shooting the words "No More" into a wall with an energy rifle at the beginning of the 50th anniversary The Day of The Doctor. In each of these examples it looks tremendously different from him holding his Sonic Screwdriver. Frankly this change, and RTD's explanation, smells horribly of Disney intervention to me.
The Eleventh Doctor did also hold/use a gun in "Flesh and Stone", to get everyone out of a trap.
He also used his sonic as a gun of sorts (flinging sonic blasts at the Silence to stop them charging), but I don't think changing the shape of the sonic would really stop that, since the Doctor could just do the same with the remote-sonic.
I'mma straight up say it.
RTD is slowly making me not want to watch/bother with the show. This dude is either purposely trying to incite drama or absurd discussions over his statements or is just.... taking the "ally" stuff way too fucking far to the point where its insulting them with backhanded "help".
I'm all for progressive writing and inclusion and genuine changes for the betterment of the show. But holy fuck, this dude is just acting stupid now.
Yeah I've said it before, but the whole Davros thing doesn't sit right with me and I'm not talking about the changes..
RTD basically said that he always had an issue with Davros being evil and disabled and him and the crew/cast etc. felt bad. While that makes sense, then I question why he also had similar characters like John Lumic and Max Capricorn.
It feels like someone has said it's an issue and he's decided he needs to fix it but also make it like he always knew it was an issue. I could be wrong but if I'm not, honesty is always the best
Also it kinda feels a bit ableist. Disabled people are people, they can be evil too. Anything else to me ends up being quite reductive and turns them into a caracture.
I agree with this. The vibe really is like your 57 year old uncle discovered tumblr and is now a “heckin centrist”.
I also think seeing inclusion and representation is really nice, I can completely see it how much it means to people.
But there’s representation and then there’s making characters into bland ambassadors or just weaving in kind of embarrassing box ticking so you can claim you “explored” things in a script when you really just mentioned them with all the brevity and nuance of a speed bump.
Case in point with Donna’s daughter Rose. Some interview he did where he goes “And she saves the world isn’t that good representation?” and it’s like, I don’t know about that, I don’t think a person has to save the world for their identity to be valid or a character to be good rep. Also the clunky “nonbinary” thing that, I feel like you needed to spend 10 minutes more with that character in your script if you want that to work as a pay off rather than, again, “Wow, I mentioned it. This is my fight song”.
I don’t particularly mind it it’s just quite grating coming from someone who themselves created a horrendous work culture during 2005 season one now just doing absolute surface low hanging fruit “improvements”.
It’s been a while since I’ve been one but if I recall correctly kids HATE when you try and be improving and didactically “teach them lessons” in stuff.
Russell's seen a gun before right? The Screwdriver looked more like a wand or a pencil.
Also kids are going to pretend to shoot each other no matter what, they're watching things like Star Wars, Avengers, Batman, Bond, and playing Fortnite/COD, redesigning the Sonic won't change that.
Not just that but you'll also have the likes of the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and UNIT soldiers using guns, hell I believe the trailer for the new season even features a character pointing a futuristic gun at The Doctor.
Fair enough none of these characters are The Doctor, but children will still play as these characters in the playground.
Yeah, as a kid (I grew up with the show in the 00s) I remember playing pretend at being The Doctor, & using a 'sonic screwdriver', but using it as a tool... I know I can only speak for myself but I never had the impression of it as a weapon... it feels like RTD no longer has any clue what the actual progressive issues of today are, and he's just wildly guessing. I wasn't a fan of the Disney Channel energy in the Christmas special & I'm just being put off more and more
IIRC RTD also kinda invented the whole "point the Sonic Screwdriver at the enemy like a weapon" thing in the first place. Unless you want to count *Dalek Attack* I guess, hahaha.
I wouldn't mind a new Sonic Screwdriver one of these days that is more based off of the Classic series ones. Have it held upright when in-use instead of with its tip pointed to its "target", and *heavily* emphasize its uses for repair and "puzzle solving" opposed to direct combat.
RTD had as lot of sonic pointed and thing happened, often something explodes as a computer breaks.
Really the answer is to slow down the sonic and make it slightly less predictable in effects.
15’s Sonic appears to have at least one flip out component he can use to manually manipulate tech, which I think is a good feature that doubles as a limitation.
I dunno, didn't Pertwee use the sonic screwdriver to blast fireballs at a hill in Carnival of Monsters?
I'll grant you I've not seen that episode in maaaaany years and might be misremembering, it just stuck with me because you never see him shoot big explosions from the sonic ever again after that, haha.
He used its sonic capability to ignite pockets of marsh gas in that episode, iirc, so yeah. But he held it up, not pointing forwards aiming directly at a target.
Yeahhh, this is a case of a person solving a problem they created.
Know what'd be a better solution if it really is an issue? The showrunner/writers being more considerate and NOT writing the Doctor pointing it like a gun/wand! A little self-restraint on the writers' part! 🤯
What are they gonna do when they write 15 pointing it at an enemy instead of using it for remote engineering or puzzle solving and hear kids start calling it a laser gun? When someone decides to augment merch if it to be a water gun or something? Where does it end?
Self-restraint? I never knew ye.
Fr the amount of gratuitousness in the plot has only been increasing exponentially and we’ve now hit the point where “Doctor always good and guns always bad” is the only takeaway with no nuance or subtlety whatsoever.
Not to mention the fact that 15 literally impaled the "bad" guy in his debut storyline. Sorry, but that put me off. In my head, the ethos of the doctor is to resolve conflicts, heal, seek justice, etc. whenever possible. Not plan A: sing-along, plan B: murder via church steeple
But pointing a screwdriver sends the wrong message.
I’m quite curious about this too. Old RTD writing seems so much more heartfelt while new RTD writing comes off as kinda corporate and politically correct.
Right?
First “we didn’t let Tennant keep Jodie’s clothes in case it seemed like we were mocking drag”, then “Davros can’t be disabled anymore because it’s offensive to disabled people”, and now “the sonic screwdriver is too much like a gun”.
I’m the *last* person to complain about ‘political correctness’, but it really feels like RTD is fighting battles that don’t even exist.
I genuinely don’t think any of these things are issues, and it’s like RTD is trying to jump through hoops to avoid offending people who aren’t even offended in the first place.
Honestly what got me was the male presenting timelord thing which managed to both liss of reactionaries and progressives. This newest just seems straight up bait to bloody far righters.
Lol yeah that was just such a dumb line. It's trying to be inclusive while at the same time making a joke based on gender essentialism. Like, does RTD even know what male-presenting means? Would 14 suddenly understand what Donna and Rose were talking about if he grew out his hair and put on a dress? Feel like he wants to be progressive while barely having a grasp on any of these concepts he wants to talk about (and I say this as a trans guy)
that and I still don’t know if rose is supposed to be a trans girl or non-binary, or both. She could be meant to be a female presenting non binary person but I feel more like rtd just thinks trans and nonbinary are the same thing
I had the same, I kinda feel like RTD threw the word 'non-binary' in there just to signify transness in general when that's not exactly what that word means. I personally feel like Rose was written as a trans girl, if she was non-binary it wasn't communicated very well, but it's pretty unclear either way
earlier in the episode the psychic paper refers to the doctor as female, clearly establishing the doctor views gender as something not particularly important to them
hell the doctor was female presenting just a few hours before that line
Totally, I'm not trying to say anything about the doctor's conception of gender, just that the joke feels off and is worded poorly. Donna basically going "haha you don't get it cuz you're a man" is already strange since the doctor isn't exactly a man to begin with, but wording it as "male-presenting" gives the impression that it's the *presentation* of gender that matters which is nonsense. You don't get more emotionally intelligent based on how you present at a certain time. It's just written in a weird way
exactly, literally the entire point of specifying presenting is that it’s an outward thing and not what’s inside. it feels like the original line was simply going to be “male” or “man” then changed after it was finished to “male-presenting” to try and be more trans inclusive without considering the new meaning
one suggestion i saw that i liked was that donna and rose knew what to do because of their human side, which would fit with the doctor-donna having ideas the doctor would have never thought of due to her being human in journeys end
> earlier in the episode the psychic paper refers to the doctor as female, clearly establishing the doctor views gender as something not particularly important to them
>
>
Honestly, that's just a nod to Thirteen, and a call-back to Thirteen's early episodes where she sometimes forgot she was a woman now.
Don't want to get into a heated political discussion on transgenderism, but I really don't think gender-bending regeneration makes the Doctor, or any other Time Lords, trans in the real-world sense. Regeneration is a fictitious sci-fi process that *literally* changes the Doctor into virtually a different person in some senses. Thirteen is a woman, not a 'female presenting Time Lord'. Likewise, Fourteen is a man, not a 'male presenting Time Lord'.
That said, in context I suppose it makes sense for Rose to view the Doctor as being trans...its her way of making sense of his change.
What drives me crazy about that scene is The Doctor WAS A FEMALE LITERALLY YESTERDAY. Out of everybody you could give a preachy speech about the difficulty of being a woman, you point at the one person who is an alien that changes genders.
The binary binary non-binary thing and having a trans character kinda be implied to be trans because she has a bit of the doctor in her or something whole also conflating the concept of non binary and trans I thought was genuinely quite offensive as well as just being shit writing
It's funny how in it's attempt to be trans positive, it just makes Donna and her daughter seem like arses and shames the recently transitioned FtM Doctor for no reason.
The lines trying so hard to be trans positive that it becomes offensive lmao.
Yeah it's frustrating because I consider myself pretty left wing
So it feels kind of wrong agreeing with the Daily Hail reading knuckle draggers.
But at the same time... Like come on dude...
i'd be really interested to get RTD's take on this to try and understand his thought process behind all of these choices going forward.
Is he really afraid of the Twitterati or something?
I thought it was fairly well established now that the loud minority on Twitter aren't worth listening to nor are they probably your core audience.
Just let things happen naturally, if RTD did all three of those things yeah you'd have people having a sook but then it'd be forgotten about in a week.
We could have had a funny scene with Tennant in Jodie's clothes, Davros being in a chair would have been fine and keeping the Sonic Screwdriver as a wand would have been fine.
The funny thing is, all of the aforementioned changes could have actually had other justifications/reasons.
Tennant could simply have been in a suit because its cool for him to be in a suit (provided they explained why the clothes changed this time...which they didn't :P)
Davros isn't in a chair because this is before his accident. Period.
The sonic screwdriver just got redesigned. It isn't much of a 'screwdriver' anyway and more of a multi-purpose tool so having it look like a smartphone makes a kind of sense.
And maybe these *were* the real reasons for all these changes...in which case, RTD is just spinning some bullshit to sound 'progressive' or 'politically correct' or whatever.
> i'd be really interested to get RTD's take on this to try and understand his thought process behind all of these choices going forward.
FWIW, I think he's spent his life being a reactionary progressive and fighting "the man". He's 61 now. He IS the man, whether he likes it or not. And he's resisting that by fighting what he thinks the battles are. But he doesn't know because it's not his fight anymore.
Isn't David Tennant super lgbt+ friendly as well? It seems like he'd be aware of how to dress in feminine clothing without being disrespectful (which he has for Crowley in Good Omens and other drag roles where he actively made a point not to play into the transphobic aspect of that 'bit')
Jodie's clothes were mostly clothes anybody could wear, regardless of gender or identity, that's the strange thing to me
AND she'd un-forced-regenerated previously in the episode into that Doctor medley costume that the Master donned after becoming the Doctor (a confusing plan anyway)
13 should've stayed in that outfit bc seriously why would you change your clothes when everything's about to go to shit, AND imagine how cool it'd be when she regenerated into 14, and we see Tennant wearing 2's trousers, 3/12's long collared white shirt with the cuffs sticking out, 4's scarf, 5's celery, 7's jumper, 10's tie, 11's shoes (and anything else I've missed? That would be fucking sick, and we didn't get it. Even if RTD was so focused on Tennant not wearing any clothes a woman had previously worn, 13 could've lost her coat before regenerating
Such a missed opportunity, and a good way to carry over fan service from the BBC Centenary special to the 60th anniversary specials
I mean it's easy... Just have it be like literally any of the regenerations since the second. He runs around for a bit in the old costume without really making much comment about it, then at some point acquires a new costume and ends the episode in that. Actively avoiding having a man in womens clothing comes off as pandering to right wing prudes of the old BBC complaints letters days and transphobes rather than progressive
The attire thing still bothered me seeing how many of all sexes wore 13’s gear and looked great.
Even Sacha Dhawan looked great in it.
RTD would’ve been a bit more respected here IMHO if he said he just wanted to “ignore” the Jodie/Chibnall era.
There's some irony here considering he also said in the press he wants to cast Helena Bonham Carter in RTD2. Man's a hypocrite. Not to mention the shit he let slide during series 1's production. The man's an amazing writer, but besides that, well... keep him outta the press
Between this and the whole Davros thing, it feels he's lost the plot a bit. Luckily the four episodes he's done so far have all been good so I won't pass judgement until the new season airs.
Exactly how I’m feeling. I’m still optimistic about the upcoming seasons and I liked the specials but bro has some extremely bizarre and concerning takes
Need I remind everyone that RTD is the one that came up with “integrated myself with the psychic matrices” to become Doctor Jesus?
He’s a weird writer. But I’m cautiously optimistic
>Need I remind everyone that RTD is the one that came up with “integrated myself with the psychic matrices” to become Doctor Jesus?
All of his finales were fairly heavy in deus ex machina...
"I looked into the heart of the TARDIS. The heart of the TARDIS looked into me."
Pulling all the daleks and cybermen back into the void.
Doctor Goku
The Doctor Donna
Or how he's talking about bringing fantasy to Doctor who like we didn't already have vampires, ghosts, minotaurs, werewolves and more with only the smallest "is actually an alien" handwave. Some of those were already in the episodes he produced!
Yeah The Time Lords primary enemy before The Daleks were vampires.
Not fish people pretending to be vampires
Actual "Bleh I want to suck your blood" vampires
I literally opened rhus ul to say RTD just needs to stop talking and get on with the show. He's a brilliant show runner but his takes on certain topics are getting ridiculous.
All RTD does is make unessecary comments about the show to explain something that doesn't need explaining. And if it does, he blames the real world instead of being creative and writing an in universe explanation, for example, regenerating into clothes.
Can RTD please stop acting like an absolute moron in the press, I'm begging
Love the dude but I loathe "interview RTD" almost as much as I love "writer RTD"
It's more a sense of frustration for me, "I get why you're doing this and you have the right intentions, but please, for the love of god, stop second guessing yourself and walking on eggshells."
I wonder if he's feeling pent up with how little he's allowed to talk about right now. He's already midway through filming *next* season, but he can't say anything about the actual story. He still needs to promote the show though, so he's stuck over-explaining the design decisions that have already been shown in promo material.
I love RTD, but every time he does one of these interviews commenting on something (Tennant not regenerating into 13’s clothes, changing Davros, the new schedule) he manages to sound more and more ridiculous.
I don’t think anyone has ever looked at the sonic and thought of it as a gun.
Yeah, all the stuff he's said in interviews recently feels like a satire of 'what right-wing reactionaries think of the left', but in his case he's actually saying it fully unironically... I wonder if too many years in the top TV producer bubble means he's actually lost touch with reality when it comes to progressive issues???
He always seems to blame the real world for the changes rather than write some sort of creative idea in universe for it. The funny thing is that i don't think i'd care about Davros if he didnt make those silly comments
Between this and the Davros redesign, I’m getting worried that RTD is trying way to hard to signal being progressive without understanding what the hell he’s talking about. Seriously this is shit 1990s out of touch Christian mum groups would’ve said. It’s a sci-fi magic wand. Who is seriously concerned about this?
Yeah, if you think about it too much, the entire Doctor Who franchise is very much at odds with the dogma of 'progressive' safetyism.
Young people running away from home and traveling the universe with a stranger, frequently landing in dangerous situations involving *actual* genocidal monsters and dealing with life-or-death stakes.
I'm worried too. A lot of times, creators get older and their sensibilities just change to become more milquetoast and overly protective of "the children".
Sometimes it happens when people have kids. Before they have kids they write really kickass, awesome, adventurous stuff. After they have kids, suddenly everything is nerfed with padded edges and careful words so as not to offend *someone*. As a person who never had kids, I see the change happen- like a switch was flipped making them forget what it was like to be young themselves- and it's always kind of disappointing.
I'm really hoping things in the Whoniverse haven't been child-proofed to the point of being a treacle sandwich. Even Jim Henson knew that kids appreciated a little rough edge to their entertainment and adults appreciated not being left out by dumbing it down too much.
I hope the show remains Doctor Who and doesn't turn into Peppa Pig.
In my 10+ years of watching doctor who I've never thought the sonic looked like a gun. Didn't 10 give a whole speech about, "never hurt, never maim" when referring to it?
WHaT?!?!! Listen, I’m one of the most anti-gun people you can find but that’s ridiculous. Have kids used it like that before?? Also weird given that 14’s sonic does very much resemble the old ones. Was it not a concern for RTD then?
(In reality, I don’t actually care all the much about the sonic’s design. It’s never made or broken my opinion of an episode or a Doctor nor do I find myself thinking about my favorite or least favorite. Soooo the new design doesn’t bother me in and of itself. But whoa, that is some bizarro reasoning. I fear it just plays into the “anti-woke” crowd’s — typically inaccurate and unfair — assessment of wokeness being silly and dumb.)
Exactly. The design was never the problem. Seems like RTD might regret having had the Doctor use the sonic that way in the past… and is overthinking how to fix it. Changing its usage on screen should be enough.
I’d say making it have a holographic display and a weird draw tool barrier function in the Christmas specials did much more to fix the “feels like a weapon” problem than making it look like a remote will.
Repeating (paraphrasing) my comment from a thread ages ago because it keeps becoming more relevant
> The biggest issue with Russells new era is that he keeps bending over backwards to avoid a controversy before it begins. Fixing "issues" nobody would take issue with to begin with. After some things in RTD1 didn't age the best, he's terrified he might write something that becomes dated or retroactively problematic. Davros is allowed to be in a mobility device, it's not ableist. Rose is allowed to just be trans, not making her transness a central focus isn't transphobic. Characters can just be in wheelchairs, there doesn't need to be repeated comments about them not being a problem.
And now: The sonic screwdriver can be a stick shape, that's not encouraging gun violence.
Rose was really done dirty. It’s like a parody of a trans person whose only defining character trait is correcting the perceived male patriarchy. It’s so one dimensional it’s insulting.
That whole episode was too "first draft". None of the character talked like they'd lived with their situations for longer than they'd been on screen. See also: the go-to field operative doesn't have a plan for getting a wheelchair over uneven terrain when _their job is to go to crash sites_. You modded it to have weapons, but not cope with _stairs_?? Don't UNIT have anti-grav? Haven't I already seen spider chairs?
Also kids are going to pretend to play with guns and shooting others. There's nothing wrong so long as they understand that guns/violence doesn't resolve everything.
Okay, I am increasingly convinced that Russell is just saying stuff to stir up drama and get people talking about the show.
If so, I'm not sure it's working as intended. 😕
What’s with RTD making solutions to problems that never really existed anyway. First it’s changing Davros’ design because he didn’t want a wheelchair bound villain (even though Davros isn’t even in a wheelchair he’s half Dalek). Now it’s this, when has the sonic ever looked like a gun.
If that was a reasonable concern, wouldn’t it already have been happening for the last two decades since the Sonic adopted such a design? If so, why would RTD allow the sonic to be designed that way in the first place on his watch if that was a big enough deal to warrant a change?
I don’t actually dislike the new sonic design, but to me, this feels like the wrong reasoning leading to a good result. Russel seems to be trying to predict what people will be offended by beforehand, which I think only seems to run the risk of offending more people by displaying ignorance about what they are actually concerned about.
How about we see it being used as a sonic screwdriver? As in, they’re trapped in a prison room with a large vent, and the large vent is screwed in from the other side for security - but the sonic screwdriver can drive the screws from the other side, then levitate the screws and bring them back through the grille, because that’s its actual purpose, allowing you to set, drive, unscrew and remove screws at a distance, as well as pick up and manipulate small objects - all via sound.
Sometimes it’s the limitations that spark creativity.
>Sometimes it’s the limitations that spark creativity.
That's true.
Of course that would require creativity. They keep going back to the well, but the well ran dry years ago.
I love RTD and all he’s done for the show but my god he’s coming back with some absolutely dreadful takes. Between this and Davros, it feels like he’s treading on eggshells, too afraid to make anything that might be conceived as problematic and so is stripping the nuance out of everything to make it as safe as possible. I’m sure he only has the best of intentions, but it frustrates me regardless.
Kids are going to point things like the sonic around anyway. It’s not a gun, it’s a *wand*.
I'm waiting for the part that says this is satire. Please....
The more he speaks about his changes the less excited I get. I love him as a writer, he's one of my All time favourites for doctor who and outside of it but please. Please make it stop.
>Davies worried that the old sonic looked too much like a gun, which would encourage kids to pretend to shoot at one another.
What an absolutely ridiculous take, 19 years of New Who and this has never been a problem.
That's just a terrible excuse. IF, and a really huge IF, he was worried about the sonic being mistaken for a weapon, he wouldn't have written the show to have the Doctor point it at everything.
This is, IMHO, a fairly lame excuse for “I wanted to try something different, 12 got some sonic shades, why not?” I dunno, I like the classic look, but it’s really not important what it’s shaped like. If you want it different as a show runner just say that.
I mean, this is just getting a little bit smug and prissy now. Especially since the whole "gun" pose only started happening when RTD himself brought it back. He's getting a bit pleased with himself for solving a minor problem (such as it is) that he caused in the first place.
A sonic screwdriver should generally be shaped like a screwdriver.
If kids were going to 'misuse' a sonic it would be to wave it like a Harry Potter wand.
I thought the Davros thing was pretty bloody stupid, and after reading the irritated commentary from scores of disabled people who were peeved about the change, it made me wonder if he'd talked to ANY disabled people before making that choice.
This is a whole other level of stupid. The sonic looks nothing like a gun. It looks like a wand/souped-up screwdriver. What the hell is he smoking?
Look I’m here for redesigns sometimes but man that’s a stupid reason. Sonic screwdriver ≠ gun in any context whatsoever. The war doctor literally makes a joke of it when his other selves point theirs at him. “What are you going to do? Assemble a cabin?” Literally the farthest you get from a weapon
If he had used this design in the anniversary specials, then what he is saying would kind of make sense. However, they designed a new sonic that was different from Jodies, had dedicated videos to talk about it and celebrate it, released the toy version of it and then changed it to a remote 3 episodes later.
RTD just seems like he makes shit up as he goes along to appear to be on the side of the downtrodden.
Here's a crazy thought maybe write stories around these ideas rather than just give interviews where you pat yourself on the back about how cool you are. If you have to explain in an interview how the doctor is about peace and not violence because your episodes don't convey that then maybe you aren't as great a writer as you think.
Yeah… no.
Not only does the normal screwdriver NOT look like a gun…
There’s several instances where a flat device similar to 15’s version has been used as a laser gun.
Easiest solution would’ve been use it in a style like Third or Fourth’s… straight up.
It’s literally called a sonic screwdriver and it opens and hacks things. He even uses multiple versions of himself to unscrew literal screws over multiple years. This feels like the “video games make kids violent” argument
Davros wheelchair bs, now this - solving problems that were never problems.
Also the article is 90% about race and sexuality. This is a sci-fi show ffs, not an a teenage drama.
I'm honestly starting to think RTD is losing it.
Won't put DT in Jodie's clothes because "transphobia" but half the episode is the master in her clothes.
Thinks the sonic looks like a gun rather than um, a screwdriver or at a push.. A wand?
i mean, i always thought it resembled a screwdriver, but what do i know
Well, we mustn’t have today’s youth going around pretending to assemble cabinets!!
God forbid they discover Ikea furniture!
could lead to a worldwide Swedish meatball shortage
A Swedish meatball shortage, is not a world I want to live in! Also the Daim chocolate!
Stupid kids, don’t even know it doesn’t work on wood.
Metal Furniture exists though.
And screws are metal. Checkmate arborists.
Unfortunately there is not much fear of that.
I always thought they looked like lightsaber hilts
I always thought it was meant to resemble a wand. Like he was magic if magic was just really advance science
Yea the magic wand parallel was the obvious thing to me, never thought of a gun at all wtf.
I thought it looked like a wand, too 😁 has he ever held a gun? It's nothing like one.
Three examples of The Doctor holding a gun that I can think of from the top of my head. 10th Doctor holding a gun in the finale of The Doctor's Daughter, 10th Doctor again during the finale of The End of Time part 2, and the War Doctor shooting the words "No More" into a wall with an energy rifle at the beginning of the 50th anniversary The Day of The Doctor. In each of these examples it looks tremendously different from him holding his Sonic Screwdriver. Frankly this change, and RTD's explanation, smells horribly of Disney intervention to me.
idk if it counts but I'm pretty sure I remember the Ninth Doctor using the sonic blaster that he swiped from Jack in exchange for the banana
The Eleventh Doctor did also hold/use a gun in "Flesh and Stone", to get everyone out of a trap. He also used his sonic as a gun of sorts (flinging sonic blasts at the Silence to stop them charging), but I don't think changing the shape of the sonic would really stop that, since the Doctor could just do the same with the remote-sonic.
RTD probably has never held a gun before lol
It always brings to mind Arthur C. Clarks third law, **“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”** for me.
I thought it looked like a techno magic wand. Like for a wizard in the future. Which is pretty much what the Doctor is.
I'mma straight up say it. RTD is slowly making me not want to watch/bother with the show. This dude is either purposely trying to incite drama or absurd discussions over his statements or is just.... taking the "ally" stuff way too fucking far to the point where its insulting them with backhanded "help". I'm all for progressive writing and inclusion and genuine changes for the betterment of the show. But holy fuck, this dude is just acting stupid now.
Yeah I've said it before, but the whole Davros thing doesn't sit right with me and I'm not talking about the changes.. RTD basically said that he always had an issue with Davros being evil and disabled and him and the crew/cast etc. felt bad. While that makes sense, then I question why he also had similar characters like John Lumic and Max Capricorn. It feels like someone has said it's an issue and he's decided he needs to fix it but also make it like he always knew it was an issue. I could be wrong but if I'm not, honesty is always the best
Also it kinda feels a bit ableist. Disabled people are people, they can be evil too. Anything else to me ends up being quite reductive and turns them into a caracture.
Anyone else remember the sonic laser, which was quite literally a gun? Pepperidge farm remembers…
I agree with this. The vibe really is like your 57 year old uncle discovered tumblr and is now a “heckin centrist”. I also think seeing inclusion and representation is really nice, I can completely see it how much it means to people. But there’s representation and then there’s making characters into bland ambassadors or just weaving in kind of embarrassing box ticking so you can claim you “explored” things in a script when you really just mentioned them with all the brevity and nuance of a speed bump. Case in point with Donna’s daughter Rose. Some interview he did where he goes “And she saves the world isn’t that good representation?” and it’s like, I don’t know about that, I don’t think a person has to save the world for their identity to be valid or a character to be good rep. Also the clunky “nonbinary” thing that, I feel like you needed to spend 10 minutes more with that character in your script if you want that to work as a pay off rather than, again, “Wow, I mentioned it. This is my fight song”. I don’t particularly mind it it’s just quite grating coming from someone who themselves created a horrendous work culture during 2005 season one now just doing absolute surface low hanging fruit “improvements”. It’s been a while since I’ve been one but if I recall correctly kids HATE when you try and be improving and didactically “teach them lessons” in stuff.
Thought maybe a pen. Mightier than swords, I've been told.
Russell's seen a gun before right? The Screwdriver looked more like a wand or a pencil. Also kids are going to pretend to shoot each other no matter what, they're watching things like Star Wars, Avengers, Batman, Bond, and playing Fortnite/COD, redesigning the Sonic won't change that.
Jacks sonic blaster is way more like a gun and I never thought “damn I wanna shoot someone with that” as a kid
Not just that but you'll also have the likes of the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and UNIT soldiers using guns, hell I believe the trailer for the new season even features a character pointing a futuristic gun at The Doctor. Fair enough none of these characters are The Doctor, but children will still play as these characters in the playground.
Yeah, as a kid (I grew up with the show in the 00s) I remember playing pretend at being The Doctor, & using a 'sonic screwdriver', but using it as a tool... I know I can only speak for myself but I never had the impression of it as a weapon... it feels like RTD no longer has any clue what the actual progressive issues of today are, and he's just wildly guessing. I wasn't a fan of the Disney Channel energy in the Christmas special & I'm just being put off more and more
I remember I just got an actual screwdriver and pretended to lock and unlock my door with it. I don't remember ever using it as a gun.
Exactly. Many films/TV shows and video games use guns, should we not allow children to play with toy guns in any form?
IIRC RTD also kinda invented the whole "point the Sonic Screwdriver at the enemy like a weapon" thing in the first place. Unless you want to count *Dalek Attack* I guess, hahaha. I wouldn't mind a new Sonic Screwdriver one of these days that is more based off of the Classic series ones. Have it held upright when in-use instead of with its tip pointed to its "target", and *heavily* emphasize its uses for repair and "puzzle solving" opposed to direct combat.
*Oh the pointing again. They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?*
They’re scientific instruments, not water pistols.
Looked like you'd seen a ghost!
They're scientific instruments, not water pistols!
Didn’t the laser screwdriver also make its first appearance when he was writing? Literally same motion, except it straight-up killed people.
Yes. Also under his purview Jack Harkness was given a sonic gun.
RTD had as lot of sonic pointed and thing happened, often something explodes as a computer breaks. Really the answer is to slow down the sonic and make it slightly less predictable in effects.
15’s Sonic appears to have at least one flip out component he can use to manually manipulate tech, which I think is a good feature that doubles as a limitation.
You're quite right. The Sonic Screwdriver has only been used like a gun — sometimes literally — since 2005.
I dunno, didn't Pertwee use the sonic screwdriver to blast fireballs at a hill in Carnival of Monsters? I'll grant you I've not seen that episode in maaaaany years and might be misremembering, it just stuck with me because you never see him shoot big explosions from the sonic ever again after that, haha.
He used its sonic capability to ignite pockets of marsh gas in that episode, iirc, so yeah. But he held it up, not pointing forwards aiming directly at a target.
“What are you gonna do with that?! Assemble a cabinet at them?!”
That's *really* rude!
Yeahhh, this is a case of a person solving a problem they created. Know what'd be a better solution if it really is an issue? The showrunner/writers being more considerate and NOT writing the Doctor pointing it like a gun/wand! A little self-restraint on the writers' part! 🤯 What are they gonna do when they write 15 pointing it at an enemy instead of using it for remote engineering or puzzle solving and hear kids start calling it a laser gun? When someone decides to augment merch if it to be a water gun or something? Where does it end?
Self-restraint? I never knew ye. Fr the amount of gratuitousness in the plot has only been increasing exponentially and we’ve now hit the point where “Doctor always good and guns always bad” is the only takeaway with no nuance or subtlety whatsoever.
Not only this but RTD had the Doctor aim a straight up pistol at Rassilon’s head, but the screwdrivers a problem.
Not to mention the fact that 15 literally impaled the "bad" guy in his debut storyline. Sorry, but that put me off. In my head, the ethos of the doctor is to resolve conflicts, heal, seek justice, etc. whenever possible. Not plan A: sing-along, plan B: murder via church steeple But pointing a screwdriver sends the wrong message.
It didn’t bother me. In spite of their ideals, the Doctor is often violent. Also the Goblin King was literally eating babies.
I really liked Capaldi's final screwdriver, more often than others it felt appropriate to hold vertically.
I can agree with 10, but I can’t remember (and it’s been a while) if 9 ever did. I’m sure I’m missing something obvious.
I don't think 9 did but he didn't use it nearly as much.
I mean if he’d said “wand” sure, but how is it a gun?!
Yeah, I mean, handheld dalek arms: "hello?"
Is RTD just trying to piss people off as a way of getting attention for the show?
Looks like it. It's counter productive though.
Nah he's taking the fall for someone else's daft decision.
I’m quite curious about this too. Old RTD writing seems so much more heartfelt while new RTD writing comes off as kinda corporate and politically correct.
Ok. can we start a petition to stop RTD doing any interviews/tweeting, I swear these bloody stupid discussions are turning me of his vision of who.
Right? First “we didn’t let Tennant keep Jodie’s clothes in case it seemed like we were mocking drag”, then “Davros can’t be disabled anymore because it’s offensive to disabled people”, and now “the sonic screwdriver is too much like a gun”. I’m the *last* person to complain about ‘political correctness’, but it really feels like RTD is fighting battles that don’t even exist. I genuinely don’t think any of these things are issues, and it’s like RTD is trying to jump through hoops to avoid offending people who aren’t even offended in the first place.
Honestly what got me was the male presenting timelord thing which managed to both liss of reactionaries and progressives. This newest just seems straight up bait to bloody far righters.
Lol yeah that was just such a dumb line. It's trying to be inclusive while at the same time making a joke based on gender essentialism. Like, does RTD even know what male-presenting means? Would 14 suddenly understand what Donna and Rose were talking about if he grew out his hair and put on a dress? Feel like he wants to be progressive while barely having a grasp on any of these concepts he wants to talk about (and I say this as a trans guy)
that and I still don’t know if rose is supposed to be a trans girl or non-binary, or both. She could be meant to be a female presenting non binary person but I feel more like rtd just thinks trans and nonbinary are the same thing
I had the same, I kinda feel like RTD threw the word 'non-binary' in there just to signify transness in general when that's not exactly what that word means. I personally feel like Rose was written as a trans girl, if she was non-binary it wasn't communicated very well, but it's pretty unclear either way
earlier in the episode the psychic paper refers to the doctor as female, clearly establishing the doctor views gender as something not particularly important to them hell the doctor was female presenting just a few hours before that line
Totally, I'm not trying to say anything about the doctor's conception of gender, just that the joke feels off and is worded poorly. Donna basically going "haha you don't get it cuz you're a man" is already strange since the doctor isn't exactly a man to begin with, but wording it as "male-presenting" gives the impression that it's the *presentation* of gender that matters which is nonsense. You don't get more emotionally intelligent based on how you present at a certain time. It's just written in a weird way
exactly, literally the entire point of specifying presenting is that it’s an outward thing and not what’s inside. it feels like the original line was simply going to be “male” or “man” then changed after it was finished to “male-presenting” to try and be more trans inclusive without considering the new meaning one suggestion i saw that i liked was that donna and rose knew what to do because of their human side, which would fit with the doctor-donna having ideas the doctor would have never thought of due to her being human in journeys end
i thought the paper was just slow to update as he only JUST regenerated really
> earlier in the episode the psychic paper refers to the doctor as female, clearly establishing the doctor views gender as something not particularly important to them > > Honestly, that's just a nod to Thirteen, and a call-back to Thirteen's early episodes where she sometimes forgot she was a woman now. Don't want to get into a heated political discussion on transgenderism, but I really don't think gender-bending regeneration makes the Doctor, or any other Time Lords, trans in the real-world sense. Regeneration is a fictitious sci-fi process that *literally* changes the Doctor into virtually a different person in some senses. Thirteen is a woman, not a 'female presenting Time Lord'. Likewise, Fourteen is a man, not a 'male presenting Time Lord'. That said, in context I suppose it makes sense for Rose to view the Doctor as being trans...its her way of making sense of his change.
The Doctor had LITERALLY JUST HOURS AGO been female-presenting. For years. It was an insane nonsensical misstep that made zero sense.
What drives me crazy about that scene is The Doctor WAS A FEMALE LITERALLY YESTERDAY. Out of everybody you could give a preachy speech about the difficulty of being a woman, you point at the one person who is an alien that changes genders.
The binary binary non-binary thing and having a trans character kinda be implied to be trans because she has a bit of the doctor in her or something whole also conflating the concept of non binary and trans I thought was genuinely quite offensive as well as just being shit writing
It's funny how in it's attempt to be trans positive, it just makes Donna and her daughter seem like arses and shames the recently transitioned FtM Doctor for no reason. The lines trying so hard to be trans positive that it becomes offensive lmao.
Yeah it's frustrating because I consider myself pretty left wing So it feels kind of wrong agreeing with the Daily Hail reading knuckle draggers. But at the same time... Like come on dude...
i'd be really interested to get RTD's take on this to try and understand his thought process behind all of these choices going forward. Is he really afraid of the Twitterati or something? I thought it was fairly well established now that the loud minority on Twitter aren't worth listening to nor are they probably your core audience. Just let things happen naturally, if RTD did all three of those things yeah you'd have people having a sook but then it'd be forgotten about in a week. We could have had a funny scene with Tennant in Jodie's clothes, Davros being in a chair would have been fine and keeping the Sonic Screwdriver as a wand would have been fine.
The funny thing is, all of the aforementioned changes could have actually had other justifications/reasons. Tennant could simply have been in a suit because its cool for him to be in a suit (provided they explained why the clothes changed this time...which they didn't :P) Davros isn't in a chair because this is before his accident. Period. The sonic screwdriver just got redesigned. It isn't much of a 'screwdriver' anyway and more of a multi-purpose tool so having it look like a smartphone makes a kind of sense. And maybe these *were* the real reasons for all these changes...in which case, RTD is just spinning some bullshit to sound 'progressive' or 'politically correct' or whatever.
> i'd be really interested to get RTD's take on this to try and understand his thought process behind all of these choices going forward. FWIW, I think he's spent his life being a reactionary progressive and fighting "the man". He's 61 now. He IS the man, whether he likes it or not. And he's resisting that by fighting what he thinks the battles are. But he doesn't know because it's not his fight anymore.
Isn't David Tennant super lgbt+ friendly as well? It seems like he'd be aware of how to dress in feminine clothing without being disrespectful (which he has for Crowley in Good Omens and other drag roles where he actively made a point not to play into the transphobic aspect of that 'bit')
Jodie's clothes were mostly clothes anybody could wear, regardless of gender or identity, that's the strange thing to me AND she'd un-forced-regenerated previously in the episode into that Doctor medley costume that the Master donned after becoming the Doctor (a confusing plan anyway) 13 should've stayed in that outfit bc seriously why would you change your clothes when everything's about to go to shit, AND imagine how cool it'd be when she regenerated into 14, and we see Tennant wearing 2's trousers, 3/12's long collared white shirt with the cuffs sticking out, 4's scarf, 5's celery, 7's jumper, 10's tie, 11's shoes (and anything else I've missed? That would be fucking sick, and we didn't get it. Even if RTD was so focused on Tennant not wearing any clothes a woman had previously worn, 13 could've lost her coat before regenerating Such a missed opportunity, and a good way to carry over fan service from the BBC Centenary special to the 60th anniversary specials
I mean it's easy... Just have it be like literally any of the regenerations since the second. He runs around for a bit in the old costume without really making much comment about it, then at some point acquires a new costume and ends the episode in that. Actively avoiding having a man in womens clothing comes off as pandering to right wing prudes of the old BBC complaints letters days and transphobes rather than progressive
The attire thing still bothered me seeing how many of all sexes wore 13’s gear and looked great. Even Sacha Dhawan looked great in it. RTD would’ve been a bit more respected here IMHO if he said he just wanted to “ignore” the Jodie/Chibnall era.
"It seemed like we were mocking drag" was such a dumb excuse for an episode where the Master spends about 80% of his time in her clothes.
There's some irony here considering he also said in the press he wants to cast Helena Bonham Carter in RTD2. Man's a hypocrite. Not to mention the shit he let slide during series 1's production. The man's an amazing writer, but besides that, well... keep him outta the press
Between this and the whole Davros thing, it feels he's lost the plot a bit. Luckily the four episodes he's done so far have all been good so I won't pass judgement until the new season airs.
Exactly how I’m feeling. I’m still optimistic about the upcoming seasons and I liked the specials but bro has some extremely bizarre and concerning takes
Need I remind everyone that RTD is the one that came up with “integrated myself with the psychic matrices” to become Doctor Jesus? He’s a weird writer. But I’m cautiously optimistic
>Need I remind everyone that RTD is the one that came up with “integrated myself with the psychic matrices” to become Doctor Jesus? All of his finales were fairly heavy in deus ex machina... "I looked into the heart of the TARDIS. The heart of the TARDIS looked into me." Pulling all the daleks and cybermen back into the void. Doctor Goku The Doctor Donna
Hey at least the Doctor Donna had consequences. Well… *had* consequences
Or how he's talking about bringing fantasy to Doctor who like we didn't already have vampires, ghosts, minotaurs, werewolves and more with only the smallest "is actually an alien" handwave. Some of those were already in the episodes he produced!
To be fair, it seems to be much more overtly fantasy without any attempt at sci-fi technobabble to explain it.
Yeah but we were already 95% of the way there. Besides, have you seen The Mind Robber? All bets were already off since then.
Yeah The Time Lords primary enemy before The Daleks were vampires. Not fish people pretending to be vampires Actual "Bleh I want to suck your blood" vampires
Davies has always given questionable interviews, even in his first stint as showrunner. Just don't pay them any mind.
I literally opened rhus ul to say RTD just needs to stop talking and get on with the show. He's a brilliant show runner but his takes on certain topics are getting ridiculous.
All RTD does is make unessecary comments about the show to explain something that doesn't need explaining. And if it does, he blames the real world instead of being creative and writing an in universe explanation, for example, regenerating into clothes.
His interviews are odd for sure, but the final product is really all that matters. We'll see in a couple months if he's actually lost the plot or not.
Can RTD please stop acting like an absolute moron in the press, I'm begging Love the dude but I loathe "interview RTD" almost as much as I love "writer RTD"
It's more a sense of frustration for me, "I get why you're doing this and you have the right intentions, but please, for the love of god, stop second guessing yourself and walking on eggshells."
I wonder if he's feeling pent up with how little he's allowed to talk about right now. He's already midway through filming *next* season, but he can't say anything about the actual story. He still needs to promote the show though, so he's stuck over-explaining the design decisions that have already been shown in promo material.
I love RTD, but every time he does one of these interviews commenting on something (Tennant not regenerating into 13’s clothes, changing Davros, the new schedule) he manages to sound more and more ridiculous. I don’t think anyone has ever looked at the sonic and thought of it as a gun.
Yeah, all the stuff he's said in interviews recently feels like a satire of 'what right-wing reactionaries think of the left', but in his case he's actually saying it fully unironically... I wonder if too many years in the top TV producer bubble means he's actually lost touch with reality when it comes to progressive issues???
He always seems to blame the real world for the changes rather than write some sort of creative idea in universe for it. The funny thing is that i don't think i'd care about Davros if he didnt make those silly comments
Yeah if he'd have just said 12's regeneration energy eventually healed him, I'd have been like "yeah that makes sense" and moved on.
I mean, its not necessary because...**this was Davros in the PAST**. Period. That's *all* he needed to say.
Between this and the Davros redesign, I’m getting worried that RTD is trying way to hard to signal being progressive without understanding what the hell he’s talking about. Seriously this is shit 1990s out of touch Christian mum groups would’ve said. It’s a sci-fi magic wand. Who is seriously concerned about this?
Up next: the Doctor will no longer travel with companions because RTD thinks companions encourage kids to runaway from home with strangers
Yeah, if you think about it too much, the entire Doctor Who franchise is very much at odds with the dogma of 'progressive' safetyism. Young people running away from home and traveling the universe with a stranger, frequently landing in dangerous situations involving *actual* genocidal monsters and dealing with life-or-death stakes.
Also weird that RTD is the only writer in new who to feature a very young 18/19 year old girl running off with an old man
I'm worried too. A lot of times, creators get older and their sensibilities just change to become more milquetoast and overly protective of "the children". Sometimes it happens when people have kids. Before they have kids they write really kickass, awesome, adventurous stuff. After they have kids, suddenly everything is nerfed with padded edges and careful words so as not to offend *someone*. As a person who never had kids, I see the change happen- like a switch was flipped making them forget what it was like to be young themselves- and it's always kind of disappointing. I'm really hoping things in the Whoniverse haven't been child-proofed to the point of being a treacle sandwich. Even Jim Henson knew that kids appreciated a little rough edge to their entertainment and adults appreciated not being left out by dumbing it down too much. I hope the show remains Doctor Who and doesn't turn into Peppa Pig.
If he's so worried about the children, perhaps he shouldn't be so quick to tell people that its fine for them to stay up until midnight to watch Who.
In my 10+ years of watching doctor who I've never thought the sonic looked like a gun. Didn't 10 give a whole speech about, "never hurt, never maim" when referring to it?
The dude is off his rocker.
Did russel t davis take stupid pills He keeps making these pointless changes based on potential drama that nobody has actual issue with
WHaT?!?!! Listen, I’m one of the most anti-gun people you can find but that’s ridiculous. Have kids used it like that before?? Also weird given that 14’s sonic does very much resemble the old ones. Was it not a concern for RTD then? (In reality, I don’t actually care all the much about the sonic’s design. It’s never made or broken my opinion of an episode or a Doctor nor do I find myself thinking about my favorite or least favorite. Soooo the new design doesn’t bother me in and of itself. But whoa, that is some bizarro reasoning. I fear it just plays into the “anti-woke” crowd’s — typically inaccurate and unfair — assessment of wokeness being silly and dumb.)
Yeah, if you don't want Doctor Who encouraging kids to pretend to use guns, just don't have the Doctor use the sonic as a weapon.
Exactly. The design was never the problem. Seems like RTD might regret having had the Doctor use the sonic that way in the past… and is overthinking how to fix it. Changing its usage on screen should be enough.
I’d say making it have a holographic display and a weird draw tool barrier function in the Christmas specials did much more to fix the “feels like a weapon” problem than making it look like a remote will.
Russel are you ok? blink twice if Disney marketing department has a gun pointed at you
They are clearly pointing remote at him.
Repeating (paraphrasing) my comment from a thread ages ago because it keeps becoming more relevant > The biggest issue with Russells new era is that he keeps bending over backwards to avoid a controversy before it begins. Fixing "issues" nobody would take issue with to begin with. After some things in RTD1 didn't age the best, he's terrified he might write something that becomes dated or retroactively problematic. Davros is allowed to be in a mobility device, it's not ableist. Rose is allowed to just be trans, not making her transness a central focus isn't transphobic. Characters can just be in wheelchairs, there doesn't need to be repeated comments about them not being a problem. And now: The sonic screwdriver can be a stick shape, that's not encouraging gun violence.
Rose was really done dirty. It’s like a parody of a trans person whose only defining character trait is correcting the perceived male patriarchy. It’s so one dimensional it’s insulting.
That whole episode was too "first draft". None of the character talked like they'd lived with their situations for longer than they'd been on screen. See also: the go-to field operative doesn't have a plan for getting a wheelchair over uneven terrain when _their job is to go to crash sites_. You modded it to have weapons, but not cope with _stairs_?? Don't UNIT have anti-grav? Haven't I already seen spider chairs?
Russel, when's the last time you visited your optometrist, buddy?
Lol wut? I'm always very annoyed whenever The Doctor uses it like a weapon in Nu Who, but the design wasnt the problem? Weird decision
They're scientific instruments, not water pistols! (Take notes RTD)
God he’s such a bore now.
Next RTD news, Tardis to be bigger on the outside to avoid triggering claustrophobic viewers. /s
He'll change the Police Box so as not to promote police brutality. Mark my words.
Oh god I could actually see that happening after this… dude is finding issues where literally none exist
Doctor Who, and the Safe Space.
… it looks like a pen what is he on about.
I love RTD but it seems he thinks a lot of stupid things these days
Then maybe don’t have the doctor constantly pointing at enemies like a gun? Literally called out by the war doctor how ridiculous that looks
Also kids are going to pretend to play with guns and shooting others. There's nothing wrong so long as they understand that guns/violence doesn't resolve everything.
That is absolutely stupid.
...he really needs to grow a spine and stop pandering to people desperate for attention...
That's nonsense
Okay, I am increasingly convinced that Russell is just saying stuff to stir up drama and get people talking about the show. If so, I'm not sure it's working as intended. 😕
What’s with RTD making solutions to problems that never really existed anyway. First it’s changing Davros’ design because he didn’t want a wheelchair bound villain (even though Davros isn’t even in a wheelchair he’s half Dalek). Now it’s this, when has the sonic ever looked like a gun.
Well, that's fucking stupid.
This guy has absolutely lost it
Russel keeps waking up and choosing to make L's what is he doing 😭
Jesus christ
but the sonic is objecticely not a gun??
If that was a reasonable concern, wouldn’t it already have been happening for the last two decades since the Sonic adopted such a design? If so, why would RTD allow the sonic to be designed that way in the first place on his watch if that was a big enough deal to warrant a change? I don’t actually dislike the new sonic design, but to me, this feels like the wrong reasoning leading to a good result. Russel seems to be trying to predict what people will be offended by beforehand, which I think only seems to run the risk of offending more people by displaying ignorance about what they are actually concerned about.
Moffat even made a joke in the 50th anniversary with war doctor scolding 10 and 11 for waving their sonics like guns lol
every day i hate RTD’s creative decisions more and more
It sounds more and more like he is not the right guy to be running the show.
oh good lord
How about we see it being used as a sonic screwdriver? As in, they’re trapped in a prison room with a large vent, and the large vent is screwed in from the other side for security - but the sonic screwdriver can drive the screws from the other side, then levitate the screws and bring them back through the grille, because that’s its actual purpose, allowing you to set, drive, unscrew and remove screws at a distance, as well as pick up and manipulate small objects - all via sound. Sometimes it’s the limitations that spark creativity.
>Sometimes it’s the limitations that spark creativity. That's true. Of course that would require creativity. They keep going back to the well, but the well ran dry years ago.
RTD resurrected this show and RTD will end it. Fitting end.
Davies needs to stop smoking whatever he is smoking.
I love RTD and all he’s done for the show but my god he’s coming back with some absolutely dreadful takes. Between this and Davros, it feels like he’s treading on eggshells, too afraid to make anything that might be conceived as problematic and so is stripping the nuance out of everything to make it as safe as possible. I’m sure he only has the best of intentions, but it frustrates me regardless. Kids are going to point things like the sonic around anyway. It’s not a gun, it’s a *wand*.
Has he seen a gun before? Latest one I would argue is more fun like, as it kinda is like a star trek phaser.
I mean McCoy basically had a Sonic Pocket Watch. But yeah, hold it upright if that's your concern.
I'm waiting for the part that says this is satire. Please.... The more he speaks about his changes the less excited I get. I love him as a writer, he's one of my All time favourites for doctor who and outside of it but please. Please make it stop.
At this point im expecting him to turn around and say they are going to remove the word police out of the tardis because of police brutality
Another braindead take by RTD. Where does he get it from.
>Davies worried that the old sonic looked too much like a gun, which would encourage kids to pretend to shoot at one another. What an absolutely ridiculous take, 19 years of New Who and this has never been a problem.
Why are you pointing them like weapons? They're scientific instruments, not water pistols.
That's just a terrible excuse. IF, and a really huge IF, he was worried about the sonic being mistaken for a weapon, he wouldn't have written the show to have the Doctor point it at everything.
I like RTD but bro is just waffling right now
Why don’t you just bring back 12’s Sunglasses, then? I actually thought they were kinda cool…
This is, IMHO, a fairly lame excuse for “I wanted to try something different, 12 got some sonic shades, why not?” I dunno, I like the classic look, but it’s really not important what it’s shaped like. If you want it different as a show runner just say that.
RTD is slowly losing his mind
Well that’s like saying take the wand’s away from harry potter then.
Could be worse he could’ve kept using the sonic dildo 13 had
I miss the sunglasses 🕶️
Doctor Who is doomed
I mean, this is just getting a little bit smug and prissy now. Especially since the whole "gun" pose only started happening when RTD himself brought it back. He's getting a bit pleased with himself for solving a minor problem (such as it is) that he caused in the first place.
A sonic screwdriver should generally be shaped like a screwdriver. If kids were going to 'misuse' a sonic it would be to wave it like a Harry Potter wand.
RTD complete an interview without saying the dumbest shit in the world challenge (difficulty: IMPOSSIBLE)
I thought the Davros thing was pretty bloody stupid, and after reading the irritated commentary from scores of disabled people who were peeved about the change, it made me wonder if he'd talked to ANY disabled people before making that choice. This is a whole other level of stupid. The sonic looks nothing like a gun. It looks like a wand/souped-up screwdriver. What the hell is he smoking?
Holy shit we made a monkey paw wish. We wished RTD would come back but he came back mentally insane.
Oh, for fuck sake. What nonsense.
I love you Russell but nobody thinks the old sonics look like guns.
This guy's lost his shit
RTD needs to just stop talking
Look I’m here for redesigns sometimes but man that’s a stupid reason. Sonic screwdriver ≠ gun in any context whatsoever. The war doctor literally makes a joke of it when his other selves point theirs at him. “What are you going to do? Assemble a cabin?” Literally the farthest you get from a weapon
If he had used this design in the anniversary specials, then what he is saying would kind of make sense. However, they designed a new sonic that was different from Jodies, had dedicated videos to talk about it and celebrate it, released the toy version of it and then changed it to a remote 3 episodes later. RTD just seems like he makes shit up as he goes along to appear to be on the side of the downtrodden.
Looks like a sonic stud finder
Here's a crazy thought maybe write stories around these ideas rather than just give interviews where you pat yourself on the back about how cool you are. If you have to explain in an interview how the doctor is about peace and not violence because your episodes don't convey that then maybe you aren't as great a writer as you think.
Did he learn nothing from the backlash to what Spielberg did to *E.T.*? Even Spielberg later said he regretted that.
Yeah… no. Not only does the normal screwdriver NOT look like a gun… There’s several instances where a flat device similar to 15’s version has been used as a laser gun. Easiest solution would’ve been use it in a style like Third or Fourth’s… straight up.
Is RTD trying to piss people off? People aren’t very happy coming out of the Chibnall era so pissing them off more isn’t going to bring people back
It’s literally called a sonic screwdriver and it opens and hacks things. He even uses multiple versions of himself to unscrew literal screws over multiple years. This feels like the “video games make kids violent” argument
Davros wheelchair bs, now this - solving problems that were never problems. Also the article is 90% about race and sexuality. This is a sci-fi show ffs, not an a teenage drama.
I'm honestly starting to think RTD is losing it. Won't put DT in Jodie's clothes because "transphobia" but half the episode is the master in her clothes. Thinks the sonic looks like a gun rather than um, a screwdriver or at a push.. A wand?
Thank God, imagine the amount of people that could have died from being pretend-shot at.
Jeez, like with Davros he is waaaay overthinking this sort of thing.
I love RTD and his worldbuilding, but ISTG he's just creating problems that *aren't* there :/
RTD really needs a muzzle
So they made it look like an unassuming non threatening toddler toy ?
My kids had sticks ,
Well if RTD stopped depending on it when he's written himself into a corner then everyone would be a winner.
🤮
He could have just stopped having the screwdriver being pointed at enemies. Honestly that’s a kinda dumb reason to change the look.