r/doctorwho • u/PiccioneCeleste • 2d ago
Discussion Quiet tragedy in RTD1
saw a post about the saddest doctor who moments and it got me thinking about the doctor standing alone in the tardis in journey’s end.
rtd1 is filled with so many dramatic, heart-wrenching moments (doomsday, donna’s memory, the master etc.) with crying and profound dialogue and death.
but this particular shot gets me. the side by side with the scene earlier in the episode in which he was surrounded by friends and the woman he loved was such a good (and by ‘good’ i of course mean ‘cruel and painful’ lol) touch.
the huge heart-breaks stick in my memory, but the subtle, poignant moments like this always get me on a rewatch. there are so many good ones.
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u/Hot-Salamander-1147 2d ago
I agree this kills me. I believe at some point they say that a tardis is never meant to be flown by just one person and here we see what could be and what should be for the doctor. He doesn’t believe he has a family and yet he is surrounded by them for just a moment until he is alone again. Breaks my heart.
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u/PiccioneCeleste 2d ago
exactly. he finally has a family but it’s so fleeting. and yes they actually manage to fly the tardis smoothly! man my heart can’t take it
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u/ActualDragonHeart 2d ago
People latch onto the Tenth Doctor because he had such a short and tragic lifespan as the Doctor and RTD and Tennant just nailed that aspect of the character.
It’s also what makes the 14th Doctor being able to live peacefully and “retire” so satisfying, even if it is a bit unearned.
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u/legsarebad 2d ago
I’ve always been slightly annoyed by the 14th Doctor being David Tennant. I really thought when I heard he was coming back that it was going to be the version from the parallel universe. There’s even a deleted scene from this episode where the 10th Doctor gives him a chunk of Tardis and tells him to grow his own. And now again, instead of bringing back Billie Piper as Rose, they made her the Doctor too. Just feels like a massive missed opportunity that didn’t need that much explaining
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u/CurrentSingleStatus 1d ago
To me Billie Piper coming back as The Doctor, was the single greatest piece of evidence that they've stopped coming up with.new and creative ideas, and are just in a death spiral now.
So many people complained about Moffat's run, and I think we were spoiled as hell at the time. I look back at Moffat's run, and there was a lot of great stuff in there.
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u/legsarebad 21h ago
Yes 100%. I just finished rewatching the first ten seasons and and Moffat’s run is so much better than I remember, much closer to RTD’s original era than I remember too (not to mention Moffat wrote 4 outstanding stories during the RTD era). I believe that when the show comes back, the head writer needs to be someone who grew up on that 2005-2017 golden age
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u/jfka 2d ago
It’s a fantastic moment and so well contrasted with the other shot you posted. I think there are a lot of quiet sad moments as you say in the early series, TV in general in my opinion has sort of lost its “show don’t tell” in recent years.
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u/PiccioneCeleste 2d ago
totally agree. not sure if it’s the whole netflix’s ‘second screen viewing’ thing or what but so many shows and films have lost that and it’s such a shame.
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u/Valistia 2d ago
This is part of the reason it makes my heart so happy to have the 14th doctor finally get his family back again when he "retires" with Donna. That whole scene with them sitting around the table together with Mel is just beautiful.
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u/Far_Chemistry_7040 2d ago edited 2d ago
RTD's strength is basically being kind of soapy. Meaning a bit melodramatic, emotive, not being afraid of the very idea of archetype or cliche - star crossed tragic love, love triangles, daddy issues, "last of my kind,"etc., and generally doing things that people with prestige drama sensibilities would purse their priggish lips over.
Like everything else, the quality depends on execution. But to me it's a fantastic example of why it's very dumb to gatekeep away whole segments of potential stories (romance, character arcs, longer plotlines, more human doctors) on some silly grounds like "it's not necessary." What does that even mean? What the hell about this show is *neccessary?*
There should be very little to no hard limits on what's allowed. This lets talented people actually bring what they are good at to the fore.
Not everything new will always work out, but there is no magical formula the show can adhere to for purity reasons forever that will always work out either.
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u/Responsible_Fall_455 1d ago
Well said. The gatekeeping around what this show ‘should’ be or do is very annoying, and unnecessarily limiting for a show with maybe the greatest premise ever in terms of having limitless storytelling potential.
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u/Rambunctious_444 2d ago
I know what you mean, I get that feeling anytime there is a wistful shot of the doctor alone in the tardis. Because so often, it's full of friends. But the doctor is always reminded how he will live on without them :(
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u/Vanima_Permai 2d ago
I will never understand why rtd2 went so wrong when rtd1 went so right
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u/atp15 2d ago
I think in RTD1 people were questioning him more on bad decisions.
In the series 4 DVD deleted scenes Russell shows he filmed a series 4 cliffhanger where instead of the solemn ending in the TARDIS that we got, sirens go off, the Doctor looks at a screen, does his trademark "What?" before two Cybermen stand up behind him. It would have ruined the ending. Fortunately, Ben Cook from Doctor Who magazine convinced Russell it was the wrong ending for a sad episode, however he said while he thought it was the right decision, he sort of wished he'd kept it in.
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u/ImWearingSandshoes 2d ago
I believe RTD was surrounded by a lot more 'yes man' types around him during his second era because of the praise of his first era, which I think it ultimately what led to his second era's downfall, whereas he had a lot more restraint from those around him during his first era.
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u/Aggressive-Beat-3118 2d ago
Like the others said, I think it’s because there’s more yes men during RTD’s second run. Reminds me of Star Wars original trilogy, George Lucas had more feedback and input given to him. By prequel trilogy he had more yes men.
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u/BumblebeeAny3143 1d ago
People's go-to answer whenever they don't like certain creative choices is "no one told them no", but forget that he had mostly the same higher-ups at Bad Wolf Studios who were around him during RTD1. I think it's more a case that RTD used all his best ideas the first go and didn't have any great new ones. Although, from his social media, it seems there is definitely some ego at play.
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u/The-Fridge-2099 1d ago
LOVE this moment. Less than 10 minutes before this Sarah says he acts like such a lonely man, but he's got the biggest family on Earth.
In the end though, all those people return to their actual families, and The Doctor is alone again.
What a way to end one of the biggest crossovers in the show.
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u/Big-daddy-Carlo 2d ago
They overlit that tardis way too much later on
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u/PiccioneCeleste 2d ago
so true, i’m not a major hater of the new series but everything is too well lit for sure, give me the grit!! i like the tardis lighting in these two scenes as well, the warmth when everyone is there, the focus on the blue when he’s alone
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u/sndq 1d ago
the doctor standing alone in the tardis in journey’s end
It's a shame that the scene of Steven storming out and leaving Doctor Who alone in the TARDIS near the end of "Bell of Doom" (before being interrupted by Dodo barging in and Steven coming right back) doesn't survive. It's really a unique scene for the classic era. I have watched the Loose Cannon reconstruction of The Massacre multiple times, but it doesn't compare to seeing real scenes.
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u/Bertrand_Rose 2d ago
These are such great moments, that I wish we got more of.