That’s fair enough. That two parter isn’t good. Neither is The Long Game or most of Boom Town, but I thought the rest of the season was good-excellent.

Great stuff. I haven’t seen him in anything before, which is a very exciting thing.

It seems kind of depressing that as of right now there are two people on the planet capable of show-running Doctor Who. Someone really needs to find a way to lessen the workload. Chibnall was just the wrong fit for Doctor Who, I think. And on a more personal level his writing style just doesn’t jibe with my tastes at…

What is it about Scottish Doctors being excellent? Lol. All 3 so far would probably rank in my top 5.

Yes, but ideally you’d prefer the showrunner to always be opening the door to more possibilities, more stories. And regardless of what Chibnall said, the Timeless Child nonsense didn’t do that (I think there were ways of accomplishing Chibnall’s goals in other ways).

He was raised in Scotland, though. Does that make the 4th Scottish Doctor?

To be fair, I know that S7 doesn’t have any universally loved classics, but there are a few in there that I really like. But yes, what he achieved with Capaldi was an incredible turnaround to have in his 4th year on the job. One of the most dramatic ‘2nd winds’ that I think I’ve ever seen on tv.

Interesting. Rose, Dalek, Father’s Day, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways are all among my favorites. I’d rank it as the best RTD(1) season pretty easily.

Reminds me of those people who still spell Moffat’s name with two ts, all these years later.

Yeah you can’t really skip it. But the characterization and plotting feel a lot more haphazard to me than the subsequent seasons.

Halt and Catch Fire’s upswing was quite impressive.

Fringe was really good. One of the better sci-fi shows of recent memory. Doesn’t seem like Kurtzman’s involvement in its writing was that extensive beyond the first season though.

Maybe he visited her on weekends during Breaking Bad.

I love family drama like that, and it’s so well earned.

I’d say Gilligan and Gould’s (and their writers room’s) craft has only improved over time. I’d say it’s on Breaking Bad’s level, honestly, despite the first two seasons testing my patience at times. The last three have been phenomenal.

One thing Better Call Saul has over Breaking Bad is that its supporting characters are incredibly well written (not that I’d call Kim a supporting character, but still). Even characters like Howard feel fully three-dimensional.

I thought that Season 4 was the show’s best. But yeah, the final two years were a step down, and that’s largely because of the books they were based off of.

Still have no idea what happened to that machine Angela saw.

Happens often these days, doesn’t it? Sure seems that way to me.

It’s equally true that Better Call Saul is so good in part because there’s significant drama to be found in the variables of how it gets to its inevitable ending, and the parts of the show that are set in stone are markedly less compelling.