Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and My Little Pony

Star Wars and Star Trek are mostly cool in the mainstream now.

 

Nobody in their right mind would view Moffat as the "true" father of Doctor Who.
If anything, he's the one who's running the series into the ground with pointlessly overcomplicated storylines and annoying 'creator's pet' characters.

Also, I'd say that Harry Potter is probably a much more influential fandom than MLP.

 

I like Star Wars and MLP:FiM and I don't really "get" the other two. Especially Doctor Who.

But that's just me and my tastes obviously.

 

Thank you! If you hadn't have said it I would have. Moffat is as far from the "true" father of Doctor Who as you can get. I have to force myself just to watch the show right now it's getting that bad.

Also why isn't Transformers on your list? It has it's own Con, two cartoons (one on, and one starting soon), and a huge blow was the Bay Movies.

On the huge blow subject, Six wasn't that bad. I like him better than Clara and Twelve.

 

Twelve is great.
Capaldi is playing a Doctor that was forced to spend hundreds of years in a single town, unable to run from his mistakes, and forced to tell the truth at all times.

He would have spent a lot of his time thinking about his past, agonizing over every detail and wondering if he could have have done it better.
He would have grown close to people, and would have watched them grow old and die.
He eventually grew old himself, and had come to accept his own imminent death.

Then he was given a second chance, at the cost of losing Gallifrey all over again, and now he was forced to wonder if he truly deserved the chance he was given.
The question he asked Clara, "Am I a good man?" showed how much he was struggling with himself.

Capaldi was the perfect choice to play a tired, disillusioned Doctor, and he does so brilliantly.

The problem is that instead of giving him a companion fitting his new personality, Moffat decided to keep Clara in the show, and had her distance herself from the new Doctor.

We should have gotten a deep and meaningful exploration of the Doctor's personal torment.
Instead, we got the Clara Show.

 

I like Star Wars & Doctor Who, & I've watched most of Star Trek, but I'm not as emotionally invested in the franchises as some people seem to be (ie. PROBABLY not geeking out over it).

I like to enjoy things as they're presented, instead of creating a whole bunch of self-insert, fic scenarios, or gratuitous noncanon ship as people seem to do. That is probably really weird of me. There's no wrong way to enjoy things, I guess?

 

Maybe it's just his interactions with Clara, but I don't like 12 at the moment. I'm sick of Clara Marysue Pond. Since the most recent series she's stopped seeming like her own character and seems more like Amy Pond part 2. Then there's the whole time stream thing a retcon that made no sense.

 

Also, if we're going to debate which four franchises are most central to "geekdom", I'd say The Lord of the Rings and all the rest of Tolkien definitely edge out My Little Pony in terms of popularity, depth and general acceptance among geeks. It's not even a contest. You could definitely argue for the presence of Doctor Who among the four, but I would call it out as the weakest of the four (unless we're going to actually consider My Little Pony as being in the running...); good though it may be, it just doesn't have the background that Star Wars, Star Trek or LotR have. I might even argue that the Marvel comics universe would edge out Doctor Who, as well, but that one is definitely more heavily contested.

Nit-picking aside, interesting thread.

 

Doctor Who was once a Marvel Comic. It is in fact the fault of the Doctor that the original Deathshead became human sized.

You really don't thinks Transformers out does Marvel Comics? Did you know Marvel pretty much stole Circuit Breaker from Transformers.

 

In terms of popularity and diversity of viewership, no, I think the Marvel universe outdoes Transformers. It's not even a contest, really. Marvel just covers so much more ground, being both an older franchise (or series of franchises) and having a universe - multiple universes, actually - that have expanded in broader an more intricate ways than Transformers. That's not to say that there's nothing to the Transformer's universe; it stands along in its own right but doesn't really approach the grandness of the other things we're discussing in this thread, much like MLP does not seem to compare well to Star Wars or Star Trek.

 

Transformer has been back and forth between the US and Japan since it's inception as an American Marketing of Japanese toys. It's evolved from a half an hour commercial to a much beloved community that has been far more constant that Star Wars, Star Trek or Doctor Who. I'm a Trek and Who fan too, but they've both suffered longer hiatus than Transformers ever has. Now I'm willing to admit Transformers hasn't been around as long as the other three but I still think it should be considered a cornerstone of geekdom.

 

Nobody's whining.

This thread is just interesting from a few different angles, and those angles were being discussed. It doesn't really matter.

 

There's a difference though between offering something as an option in a poll or simply calling it one-of-the-four-sacred-geekdom-franchises-which-is-fact-because-I-say-so-deal-with-it.
But maybe that's just me.

 

Who says Geekdom only needs four cornerstones.

Russell T Davies brought Doctor who back. Moffat took over after him and is tearing everything down that the previous show runner did.