Christpher Eccelston Comes Clean About DW.

[TC Pilot]

There's a reason Pete's World was far more interesting than We All Forgot About The Space Titanic Flying Past world, and it's not just scifi guns.

Zeppelins?

[Parallax]

Rose didn't exist there and that was a definite plus.

[Batman]

Some of us liked Rose Tyler you know.

[Shroom Man 777]

Rose was good in S1. Her ridiculously chav mother and Micky the idiot were excellent characters too. Somehow, Doctor Destro was able to work with the positively mundane and drab and make them... better.

No pretensions of grandeur, no grand standing or weirdo trying hard to be cool or witty or clever or funny or weird. The Tyler family had the best dynamic out of the NuWho side characters. Ever.

[DaveJB]

Their nukes wired into the crust of the Earth were only to be used in the most extreme last restort circumstances (like a Dalek invasion)

That's what they said, and it would be understandable if, say, the Doctor was confirmed to be truly dead, the cities of Earth were all burning, and the human race was in the process of utter annihilation. What actually happened was that the Daleks showed up announcing their intention to EXTERMINATE! humanity, and within about 5-10 minutes UNIT decided "No thanks, we'd rather do it ourselves!"

If RTD had been clever and set this up as an example of how the human race had inadvertently become like the Daleks themselves, it might have worked. Heck, they could even have had the system as Martha's idea after she witnessed the state of humanity after a year under the Master's control, which would have worked as part of that whole subplot about how the Doctor militarises his companions. Instead, it ended up being another stick with which to beat UNIT over the head with in favour of his own little intelligence organisation.

[Stark]

The practical aspect didn't help either - there was solid scope for drama around the idea of someone destroying the world (for good, if really stupid, reasons) and what kind of headspace you'd need to be in to even consider it... but we got a lot of wasted screentime and a climax of ROFFLE TELEPORTED YOU HAHA. If only the finales didn't have to include a laundry list of characters?

[Big Orange]

Heck, they could even have had the system as Martha's idea after she witnessed the state of humanity after a year under the Master's control, which would have worked as part of that whole subplot about how the Doctor militarises his companions. Instead, it ended up being another stick with which to beat UNIT over the head with in favour of his own little intelligence organisation.

That actually makes sense and explains Martha's motivations, and the UNIT doomsday device could only work with Martha's activation key she was entrusted with and she could've chosen not to detonate the buried nukes after UNIT's central command got overrun by Daleks. I don't see how the original Torchwood Institute was better than UNIT when they were neo-Imperialists who wanted to resurrect the British Empire with stolen/salvaged alien tech and their inter dimensional experiments at the top of Canary Wharf brought about a worldwide Cyberman invasion. UNIT's chain of buried last resort nukes was well intentioned stupid overkill.

As for Torchwood, the show itself, with such dreck like "Cyberman" and "Countrycide", its first season was less enjoyable than any of the Tennant and Smith seasons. But for years now it's become divorced from its parent show when it became genuinely successful with Children of Earth, but as with S1 of NuWho, it set such high standards and expectations the follow up mini-series, Miracle Day, is currently struggling somewhat in comparison to out do Children of Earth's success. As much as I love CoE and like the current mini-series, Torchwood's main problem was that it had drawn away the smash hit supporting character Captain Jack from Doctor Who (who proved to be a decent male companion in "Boomtown", a real missed opportunity he didn't remain a more regular reoccurring character, I would love to see him meet the 11th Doctor).

Some people who disliked the 10th Doctor’s ruthlessness (which was at its most extreme in S3) seem to conveniently ignore how incorrigibly evil and omnicidal his victims were (like the Racnoss), with no other options available to the Doctor to stop them. The 10th Doctor was going to imprison the Master (if not for his unhinged and abused mistress killing him) but remember he also harmlessly imprisoned or banished the Carrionites (who were as omnicidal as the Daleks and Racnoss), emotionally helped the murderously vain Cassandra along when she died for the second and final time in the otherwise unremarkable "New Earth", and refrained from shooting the evil clone commander in the head from "The Doctor's Daughter". Wilfred gushed at the 10th Doctor, but his grand daughter, Donna, called out on the 10th Doctor's excesses (also Wilfred was never around the Doctor when he dealt with alien villains really until "The End of Time"). The 11th Doctor had his moments ('You should kill us all on sight!').

The 9th Doctor could be a bastard as well when he coldly looked on in "The End of World" when Cassandra "died" for the first time.

[Hillary]

Some people who disliked the 10th Doctor’s ruthlessness (which was at its most extreme in S3) seem to conveniently ignore how incorrigibly evil and omnicidal his victims were (like the Racnoss), with no other options available to the Doctor to stop them. The 10th Doctor was going to imprison the Master (if not for his unhinged and abused mistress killing him) but remember he also harmlessly imprisoned or banished the Carrionites (who were as omnicidal as the Daleks and Racnoss), emotionally helped the murderously vain Cassandra along when she died for the second and final time in the otherwise unremarkable "New Earth", and refrained from shooting the evil clone commander in the head from "The Doctor's Daughter". Wilfred gushed at the 10th Doctor, but his grand daughter, Donna, called out on the 10th Doctor's excesses (also Wilfred was never around the Doctor when he dealt with alien villains really until "The End of Time"). The 11th Doctor had his moments ('You should kill us all on sight!').

The 9th Doctor could be a bastard as well when he coldly looked on in "The End of World" when Cassandra "died" for the first time.

Are you sure about all this. The main criticisms of Tennant's Doctor was the inconsistency. On the one hand he was "I won't carry a gun/won't kill the Master/come with me Davros, I forgive you/let's hide from the Family of Blood rather than kill them/how dare you shoot the baddies, Harriot Jones" and on the other he was very happy to wipe out the Racnoss's children/imprison the family of blood for eternity/allow humanity to be ruthlessly executed by the Master and his mini saucers.

[DaveJB]

I don't see how the original Torchwood Institute was better than UNIT when they were neo-Imperialists who wanted to resurrect the British Empire with stolen/salvaged alien tech and their inter dimensional experiments at the top of Canary Wharf brought about a worldwide Cyberman invasion. UNIT's chain of buried last resort nukes was well intentioned stupid overkill.

What the fuck?! Seriously, how did you get the impression that I was talking about Torchwood One? Did you miss the part where I mentioned Torchwood as "three people in a cave under Cardiff Bay," along with the bit at the end of Journey's End where Captain Jack openly and contemptuously dismisses UNIT as being a bunch of insane idiots, and tells Martha that she should forget about going back there and should instead join up with Torchwood full-time?

Are you sure about all this. The main criticisms of Tennant's Doctor was the inconsistency. On the one hand he was "I won't carry a gun/won't kill the Master/come with me Davros, I forgive you/let's hide from the Family of Blood rather than kill them/how dare you shoot the baddies, Harriot Jones" and on the other he was very happy to wipe out the Racnoss's children/imprison the family of blood for eternity/allow humanity to be ruthlessly executed by the Master and his mini saucers.

That's exactly it. To be fair, the Tenth Doctor was portrayed fairly consistently before and after "Last of the Time Lords" - it's just that either side of that serial, Ten might as well be two completely different characters. Beforehand we've got the guy who casually killed the Sycorax leader after a (literal) backstabbing attempt, mockingly referred to his former excess of mercy while talking to the Headmaster, drowned the infant Rachnoss, and then trapped the Family of Blood and Weeping Angels for all eternity. After that we've got... well, Jesus Christ: Time Lord, basically.

[Vaporous]

The instance of this freshest in my mind is the end of Demons Run, when River show's up to give her "You are Legend" speech to the Doctor for kind of being a genocidal maniac, and instead of having an epiphany or even a denial or any kind of development, it turns into Matt Smith making goofy kissy faces at River and then leaving to do nothing for a few months.

[Hillary]

Are you sure about all this. The main criticisms of Tennant's Doctor was the inconsistency. On the one hand he was "I won't carry a gun/won't kill the Master/come with me Davros, I forgive you/let's hide from the Family of Blood rather than kill them/how dare you shoot the baddies, Harriot Jones" and on the other he was very happy to wipe out the Racnoss's children/imprison the family of blood for eternity/allow humanity to be ruthlessly executed by the Master and his mini saucers.

That's exactly it. To be fair, the Tenth Doctor was portrayed fairly consistently before and after "Last of the Time Lords" - it's just that either side of that serial, Ten might as well be two completely different characters. Beforehand we've got the guy who casually killed the Sycorax leader after a (literal) backstabbing attempt, mockingly referred to his former excess of mercy while talking to the Headmaster, drowned the infant Rachnoss, and then trapped the Family of Blood and Weeping Angels for all eternity. After that we've got... well, Jesus Christ: Time Lord, basically.

The worst part of the Jesus Doctor meme, was that his morality was just as fucked as the real JC. He allows the Master to enslave the entire human race (well, those who aren't killed) to spare him from having to kill the man, he chastises the Donna Doctor clone for wiping out the Daleks (who were trying to tear apart the very physical being of the universe, i.e. killing everything) and he refuses to take out the Master, once more, even though it could have stopped the mad and bad Time Lords from reappearing to wipe out time itself.

And everyone in the Whoverse thought these were the deeds of a righteous man - instead of saying "stop being such a selfish arsehole; fuck your morals out the window for once and save us from death and destruction". Pathetic.

The instance of this freshest in my mind is the end of Demons Run, when River show's up to give her "You are Legend" speech to the Doctor for kind of being a genocidal maniac, and instead of having an epiphany or even a denial or any kind of development, it turns into Matt Smith making goofy kissy faces at River and then leaving to do nothing for a few months.

You see, I didn't get this at all. When Song tells the Doctor that he is the cause of all this, it clearly affects him greatly. It's only when she shows him who she really is that he recovers his resolve.

My reading of him buggering off on his own, was him realising that he was using others to fight his war and that he should, instead, put himself in the firing line. That we don't yet know what he got up to does not mean he did nothing. This is sort of veering into the other thread, but I suspect we'll understand the last episode far more by the end of this series.

[Parallax]

One of the problem I have with this is that it doesn't gel all that well with the previous incarnations.

The 7th Doctor, for example, knew full well what he was doing when he obliterated Skaro's solar system and had no problem with doing it. Because it was necessary at the time and saved lives in the long run. He'd moved on from the 4th soul searching about whether or not he had the right to kill a species and decided that he did, if it served the greater good.
Again, the 7th set people up quite deliberately to be his pawns in combat against his enemies - his mindfuck of Ace in 'Curse of Fenric' is a decent example of this. He had no problem with this, more or less, because it was necessary to get the job done.

[Big Orange]

I haven't seen most of S2 of Torchwood, though I've heard about UNIT having an unethical detention centre used for holding suspects who stole alien tech without formal legal processing (poorly judged topical satire?). And while not overtly dastardly in Children of Earth they seemed out of place and on hindsight there was a feeling of the TW setting diverging from the main DW setting (that The Sarah Jane Adventures had more in common with, with annual stories where the Doctor guest stars).

And here's why I don't get too bothered about the Racnoss getting purged by fire and water:

THE DOCTOR
Empress of the Racnoss - I give you one last chance. I can find you a planet. I can find you a place in the universe to coexist. Take that offer and end this now.
EMPRESS
These men are so funny.
THE DOCTOR
What's your answer?
EMPRESS
Oh - I'm afraid I have to decline. (laughs)
THE DOCTOR
What happens next is your own doing.

Open and shut. Like with how he dealt with the deeply sadistic, mass murdering House from "The Doctor's Wife".

The worst part of the Jesus Doctor meme, was that his morality was just as fucked as the real JC. He allows the Master to enslave the entire human race (well, those who aren't killed) to spare him from having to kill the man,

I don't get the impression he planned the Jesus Doctor thing right from the start when he landed on Earth, that seemed to be Plan B after getting floored by the Master's laser screwdriver, and the Master's Year of Hell was erased from the timeline for most people anyway (the mass murder inflicted by the Master and his Toclafane after the activation of the paradox thingy was undone), though the Doctor, Jack, and Martha’s family still endured 365 days of the Master bullying and abusing them. However if Jack killed the Master earlier on that airfield, the Master would've likely just regenerated again and his Toclafane allies may haved even popped out of the air and killed Martha's family.

and he refuses to take out the Master, once more, even though it could have stopped the mad and bad Time Lords from reappearing to wipe out time itself.

That was mainly down to the machinations of a billionaire industrialist who sent out a commando team to capture the Master and got him to operate his alien machinery that caused all the trouble.

The Doctor dealing out sadistic punishments to the horrific Family of Blood while coddling the similarly cruel Master seems to be down to him having a bias towards a fellow Time Lord and a fellow Time War survivor (he also refrained from shooting supposedly last Dalek in "Dalek" and even offered a hand to Davros). Also "Human Nature"-"The Family of Blood" was adapted from a 7th Doctor novel, which partially explains the 10th Doctor being more cold blooded in that popular two parter.

The 9th Doctor’s aggression/morality balance was a bit better thought through than that of the 10th/11th Doctor’s - in “The End of the World” he callously stood by as a fatally parched Lady Cassandra burst apart and quickly arranged blowing up of the Slitheen. But the turning point came in “Dalek” where his thirst for vengeance against the last Dalek faded away, then in “The Doctor Dances” resolved a crisis without anybody dying, and in “Boomtown” helped to redeem a surviving Slitheen member. Crunch time came on the Bad Wolf Corp.’s space station where he refuses to set off a homemade doomsday device.

The 11th Doctor gave the impression of shirking emotional responsibilty and going into denial at the end of "A Good Man Goes to War", with things likely going to bite him hard on the ass in the conclusion of S6.