Doctor Who Thread III: Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow

[Fjolnir]

New episode

Spoiler

Weasley Vs. Filch, Mitchell & Webb, The logical conclusion of "X on a Y", Big game hunters and dinosaurs without a "clever girl" reference, the doctor is still reveling in somehow being able to be constantly contacted but still not recorded, and what I said last week still stands; If Rory divorced Amy over the constant tardisnapping that happens in their relationship, I don't think anyone would have batted an eye.

[Fjolnir]

My wife actually advanced a theory that makes some sense, what if somehow this new companion gets mindwiped by the doctor and placed back on her homeworld with some sort of compartmentalization done specifically to guarantee the asylum of the daleks ending?

[LokeyITP]

Why does it really matter when Amy was gangered? I'm really baffled why we'd want to introduce horrible star wars story-telling into Who (nothing happens off-screen, no subtlety, etc...). There's no reason anything need happen linearly, and even if Closing Time can be exactly dated, why would that matter? Doctor even says so next ep :)

Not sure what about Doctor's Daughter could need apology either (or anything about season 4 off the top of my head).

Same complaints as Silurian 2 parter: good stuff but trying to do way too much with too many characters. Great production-wise. Missed a lot, should watch 1 and 2 alone so I can better find the plot holes.

[SuperPanda]

Well I've been away for a while, so much to reply to... I'll keep it limited to the article about Moffat and the start of NuWho season 7.*

*sorry, series 7, I'm a yank and we call them seasons while the who show would be the series. Still while talking about a UK intellectual property I should probably respect it's vernacular.

So first up: Article about Moffat:

Spoiler

Given the title I was expecting everything to be something I could ignore or just grumble about. I've found my personal enjoyment of the show diminish during season 6 despite finding each episode individually better done than the majority of the Davies era Who, so I though the points that I've been looking for a way to articulate might have been in the article somewhere.

In truth, some of the things that I hadn't been able to articulate were spelled out very clearly for me in the article and a few things which I really didn't care much about were brought up and expanded on.

The article I think does take a good hard look at the portrayal of women in the series, and its something I think Curly hit on as well in her review of Dinosaurs on a space ship. Strangely, I disagree with the article about as much as I agree with it on the analysis of the potrayal of women.

For me, Moffat has an incredible talent at introducing characters, he can bring in a person and give them a couple of identifying quirks and make them instantly endearing. The problem I have though is that they never seem to break out of being characters. Moffat's characters, with the exception of the doctor, feel a lot more written than Davies's did even while Davies's plots were a lot clumsier done. Davies was good at establishing a series arc and subtly layering it together to build up tension and expectation for a conclusion that he rarely could deliver, Moffat is great at setting up clever endings subtly within an episode but seems to have no faith in an audience to remember things from past episodes.

The analysis of River's story arc is actually very revealing and incredibly disturbing. It makes River's character make even less sense than she did already and highlights subtle things that probably lead to my lack of enthusiasm for episodes centered around her in Season 6.

The discussion of "Fear Her" I felt was just a sign of different tastes. I did not like the episode, I felt it was a poorly executed attempt at something that could have been a fantastic episode. The monster/dad drawing had a lot of potential and ignored, the incredible Olympics cheese was narmy to the point of funny and almost deserved to get hammed up (and then go terribly wrong) requiring a sequence where Rose and the Doctor try to fix it over dialogue with lines like "and you thought that was a good idea did you?"

The eleven year old's idea for having Amy having killed the Daleks I personally wouldn't have liked, but I did expect that line to have a much more ominous implication than it did.

So to sum up, I think it actually had some very good points that were rather well articulated. I think it is a bit too nostalgic for Series 1-4 of NuWho in saying that the problems they've noticed recently are the only changes. Davies and Moffat are both flawed creatures, and when they worked together before they managed to work with each other's strengths to cover their own weaknesses. Blink and Empty Child/Doctor Dances remain my absolute favorite episodes to date, both written by Moffat with Davies doing minimal oversight.

The only point I'd add for myself is that in Season 6 I started to miss the whimsy of Davies's run. There was no point in Davies's run that I watched the show and wondered if the cast was having fun or not, the entire show was so seriously silly and there was so much obvious love going into the character portrayals and goofiness that I knew the entire production staff had to be having a blast. It was playtime they were getting paid for with the occasional awesome-serious episode thrown in to remind us that it could be a poignant show in between silly romps.

I've found that dynamic has switched in Moffat's run, for better or worse, the show seems alot more to be about the serious/poignant/bitter/angsty progressions of the story than to be about big kids at play making something fun to share with the family.

And then you get episodes like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and I know that I've come home because it was every-bit as irreverent and silly as I'd hoped while still having the magic balance of fun to serious Christopher Eccelson had in his better episodes.

I touched on the episodes briefly and this is already longer than I planned so here's my reactions to both:

Asylum of the Daleks:

Spoiler

This was one of the "its fun until you think about it" episodes. My initial reaction when I watched it was "that was really fun, and I am going to like this season."

Now my brain went with the Power Ranger Daleks having gone back in time and recreated Skaro somewhere off screen, and then apparently lost it to a war, and then created very bad looking human dalek puppets that made me try not to laugh at what I saw as a reference to "Doctor Who and the Case of the fatal death."

"I have upgraded myself with superior dalek technology!"

The Amy and Rory breaking up made sense when they first showed it and I was looking forward to there being an interesting and adult direction from that development since they're relationship - however sweet it was - appeared rather unhealthy in a lot of series 5 and had gone through a lot of challenges in 6.

Needless to say I was very disappointed with what they did do with it. I strongly disagree with the article about how it was "unreasonable" for Rory to say/feel that he loved Amy more than she ever had him or even that Rory felt he had more love in general than Amy ever had. There was an implication that since Amy didn't return his love she just had less of it, but then there is also the fact that Rory is a Nurse, that he's good at a job that requires a caring and loving devotion to helping people. I thought they were going to do something like "Take me for what I am" in RENT with that though. Amy's flirting and teasing finally gotten to be too much for straight laced, somewhat insecure, Rory and him having left in a tuff over it.

Instead devote a whole scene to fixing a relationship problem that they hadn't actually introduced anywhere while pointing out that the drama which created the scene never actually needed to occur because the Doctor is immune to the Dalek super nano-bot virus and didn't bother to tell anyone.

And I liked this episode when I watched it... it just doesn't make much sense.

Now I really liked Oswick so the logic holes with her didn't bother me nearly as much. I can wave away all the things I need to with the words insane and genius. Maybe she never was human, she always was a Dalek but decided she'd rather be human (because she was insane), or because she was really such a potential genius that the insane Daleks tried to make her find a way out of their prison, but it didn't work because they were insane and got the conversion process all wrong. Doesn't matter, I liked the story with her, it was fun, it was touching, it was contained to one episode.

I really liked her character.

I really hope she doesn't come back because her story is wrapped up already.

And Dinosaurs!

Spoiler

I have nothing bad to say and so much good to say about this episode. Neffie was a bit off yes, while "walking inudendo" was actually very well presented to be a lot more complex than he first appeared.

It was weird for me how calm Brian stayed about so many of the things happening to him. I can't really imagine anyone staying that calm in that kind of situation... but he was incredibly fun and had some genuinely precious moments.

I loved playing fetch with Cera, that sequence was very well done. I have expected Cera to start wagging it's tail.

Not sure if I liked how the Doctor killed Solomon. There was no question in my mind that he was going to, but the act of gloating over the fact he was doing it was very dark for the doctor. I was reminded of a quote from terry Pratchet's "Men at Arms" which, paraphrased, said that if a man is going to try to kill you pray that they are an evil man. Evil men like to gloat, like to make you feel powerless, they like to draw it out. If a good man wants you dead though they simply do it because they take no pleasure in the act.

If he'd explained to the others and left it behind to kill Solomon I'd have had not trouble with it. It was that the Doctor enjoyed the killing, the fear, the power of it that made me less than happy with it. Series 6 had alot of emphasis on The Doctor being "a good man", possibly the best of them, but they haven't shown that with 11, they set Rory up to be the "good man" while the Doctor is almost more grey and always has been.

I think I like the doctor equally well grey as I would if they actually made him be the "good man." I personally feel frustrated when they make one characterization of

edit: Looking through this I use season and series interchangeably because I was trying to use the UK terminology and then forgot I was doing it through the post... I'll just stick to season from now on so that future posts aren't cluttered like this one was.

[Friv]

Originally Posted by Thufir

No it hasn't, it's been the Silurian name since Chibnall used it in series 5.

I was curious about that, so I looked it up. Apparently the name dates back to the Doctor Who comics in the 90s, when K9 first used it to refer to the Silurians and the Doctor picked it up.

I mean, it's still wrong, but given how much Chibnall drew on older Silurian stories for the reboot, I expect he took it from the existing canon rather than creating it.

Anyway, I liked this one a lot more than the last one that he did. (Also, the line that cracked me up more than anything else, especially after our recent discussions about Moffat and women?)

Spoiler

Riddel: Do you know what I want?
Amy: Lessons in gender politics?

EDIT: Wait, one more thing!

Originally Posted by SuperPanda

Spoiler

If he'd explained to the others and left it behind to kill Solomon I'd have had not trouble with it. It was that the Doctor enjoyed the killing, the fear, the power of it that made me less than happy with it. Series 6 had alot of emphasis on The Doctor being "a good man", possibly the best of them, but they haven't shown that with 11, they set Rory up to be the "good man" while the Doctor is almost more grey and always has been.

Spoiler

That, I didn't mind so much. The Doctor has always had a darkness in him, which grows and shrinks depending on what he's about. There's the Colonel Runaway sequence, or the bit in Runaway Bride when he just watches the Raknos Queen begging for mercy, or when the ninth Doctor gloats and tries to kill the last Dalek. Or, heck, the first time he kills Lady Cassandra in End of the World by watching her dry out and die. If we look back at Classic Who, he gloated over destroyed enemies quite frequently, really, with the most impressive being when he gloated a Dalek into suicide after destroying Skaro.

The Doctor spends a lot of time fighting against that inner darkness, and he doesn't always win. On the other hand, if they are going towards the Doctor turning darker...

Valyard!

[SuperPanda]

Originally Posted by Friv

one more thing!

Spoiler

That, I didn't mind so much. The Doctor has always had a darkness in him, which grows and shrinks depending on what he's about. There's the Colonel Runaway sequence, or the bit in Runaway Bride when he just watches the Raknos Queen begging for mercy, or when the ninth Doctor gloats and tries to kill the last Dalek. Or, heck, the first time he kills Lady Cassandra in End of the World by watching her dry out and die. If we look back at Classic Who, he gloated over destroyed enemies quite frequently, really, with the most impressive being when he gloated a Dalek into suicide after destroying Skaro.

The Doctor spends a lot of time fighting against that inner darkness, and he doesn't always win. On the other hand, if they are going towards the Doctor turning darker...

Valyard!

Spoiler

I love that inner darkness about the character, and I'd love the Valyard plot to be coming to fruition... the frustration I've been having is in the dissonance between what the show has been saying and what the show has been showing.

For 9 and 10 it was very clearly laid out that the Doctor's inner darkness is very powerful, so much that he keeps people around so that they'll stop him from becoming the very thing he fights against. The Doctor knew it, he struggled with it, he hated that about himself and he fought it, but ultimately he knew it.

From Season 5 on I've felt that actors have kept that battle very much alive while the show has taken a firm stance that "the doctor is the hero because he is." instead of leaving that ambiguity that you could feel in "Waters of Mars" or "Dalek" where you look at the Doctor and realize that he's more of a force of nature than a hero.

For how this relates to Dinosaurs:
I'd have liked exactly what they did, if they'd made Solomon less completely unlikable, or included some reaction from the companions, or had not had te whole "good man" arc in the previous season (since I mentioned I didn't like that one).

They easily could have had the Doctor do exactly what he did and had Neffie say something about the Doctor being too kind to Solomon, or having wished he'd suffered more. Then you give Matt Smith a reaction shot where it dawns on him that he's nodding in agreement and is a little scared by that. Another option would have been to have Rory ask about what happened, have the Doctor or Neffie tell them and have the Rory and/or Brian challenge the Doctor's choice, ask about due process or legal system or the likes.


Overall, its such a minor issue that I didn't mind it at all, it just felt extremely deliberate (for the Doctor) and a wasted opportunity because no one calls him on it (yet... who knows about the rest of the season).

[Starscream]

I honestly can't see the whole "Moffat is sexist" thing, no matter how much I squint at it. Especially compared to Davies.

Davies female companions: Rose (clingy, selfish, a bit dim), Martha (smarter and better educated, but spends whole time mooning over an uninterested guy), Donna (starts off annoying and shallow, gets loads better, ends up back where she started).

Moffat's female companions: Amy (tough, smartass, a little scary when she wants to be), River (ultra badass, doctor/professor/archaeologist, a LOT scary when she wants to be).

I mean, Moffat's kissogram honestly comes off as a lot brighter and more feminist than Davies' medical student most of the time.

[Reverent-One]

Originally Posted by Thufir

Simple answer - the Time Lords didn't know about the Asylum. The all made the same (perfectly reasonable) assumption the Doctor did about it. And since the Daleks in the Asylum couldn't escape, obviously it never came to their attention.

Except at the beginning of this episode, the Doctor's able to describe the Asylum, so clearly he knows about it.

Angels are still the same, we just know more about them now.

The new abilities are pretty significant, the images of angels becoming angels mean very bad things of the characters from Blink. They went from "the only creatures in the galaxy to kill you nicely" to breaking your neck and stealing your internal organs. And worst of all, they can be fooled by someone merely acting as if they can see. There are no words for the ridiculousness of this. They're supposed to turn to stone automatically when they are observed, actually be unable to avoid this, they should realize that she can't actually see them when this automatic response does not kick in. Plus the fact that they never moved in Blink when we were watching them was a nice touch, and is also gone from the two-parter.

And,
Really? Moffat, who tends to establish the means of his resolutions, be they Dei ex Machina or not, properly in advance, is "more handwave-y" than Russell T "It works because the Doctor/Master/Dalek is clever" Davies?

Ha. You have that backwards. For all the hate tinkerbell doctor gets, that's a example of an established resolution, the archangel network, Martha telling about the doctor to the world are all set up in advance. Compare to The Pandorica Opens, where the doctor's escapes because..."Paradox!!"

[Archonic Energy]

Curly as well as Weasley "crazy old creepy guy" was Mr Filch.

just thought you ought to know...
*passes out*


also: i don't see why Rory's dad wasn't just called Mark...

[Strawberries]

Originally Posted by SuperPanda

Spoiler

I love that inner darkness about the character, and I'd love the Valyard plot to be coming to fruition... the frustration I've been having is in the dissonance between what the show has been saying and what the show has been showing.

For 9 and 10 it was very clearly laid out that the Doctor's inner darkness is very powerful, so much that he keeps people around so that they'll stop him from becoming the very thing he fights against. The Doctor knew it, he struggled with it, he hated that about himself and he fought it, but ultimately he knew it.

From Season 5 on I've felt that actors have kept that battle very much alive while the show has taken a firm stance that "the doctor is the hero because he is." instead of leaving that ambiguity that you could feel in "Waters of Mars" or "Dalek" where you look at the Doctor and realize that he's more of a force of nature than a hero.

For how this relates to Dinosaurs:
I'd have liked exactly what they did, if they'd made Solomon less completely unlikable, or included some reaction from the companions, or had not had te whole "good man" arc in the previous season (since I mentioned I didn't like that one).

They easily could have had the Doctor do exactly what he did and had Neffie say something about the Doctor being too kind to Solomon, or having wished he'd suffered more. Then you give Matt Smith a reaction shot where it dawns on him that he's nodding in agreement and is a little scared by that. Another option would have been to have Rory ask about what happened, have the Doctor or Neffie tell them and have the Rory and/or Brian challenge the Doctor's choice, ask about due process or legal system or the likes.


Overall, its such a minor issue that I didn't mind it at all, it just felt extremely deliberate (for the Doctor) and a wasted opportunity because no one calls him on it (yet... who knows about the rest of the season).

Yes, that. Exactly that.

Spoiler

I wasn't surprised or shocked about the Doctor killing Solomon, because it's very much in character with what we know of him. but I had expected it would be a lit more expanded upon.

Also, on the whole stance taken by the show on this matter... we know the Doctor at least doesn't self-identifies as a good man. "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many"

[Aidan305]

Originally Posted by Fjolnir

My wife actually advanced a theory that makes some sense, what if somehow this new companion gets mindwiped by the doctor and placed back on her homeworld with some sort of compartmentalization done specifically to guarantee the asylum of the daleks ending?

Curlers

Spoiler

But hasn't that already been done with the whole Doctor-Donna thing? Erasing the mind of the companion I mean. Not that it wouldn't make sense, it's just that, from a story point of view, when it's already een used then the impact is lessened (especially given he rather tragic way it was done with Donna)

[Closet_Skeleton]

I hated Davies 'threaten the world and then resolve things far too quickly' plots because they happened again and again, not because they didn't work by themselves. Davies needed to go because he had simply run out of tricks. Moffet's seasons are not Davies seasons and that's a good thing not because Davies was bad but because stagnating series will only lose viewers while a change of direction that alienates old viewers can also attract new ones.

Originally Posted by Reverent-One

Ha. You have that backwards. For all the hate tinkerbell doctor gets, that's a example of an established resolution, the archangel network, Martha telling about the doctor to the world are all set up in advance. Compare to The Pandorica Opens, where the doctor's escapes because..."Paradox!!"

But the Doctor randomly showing up with a Fez and a mop was fun and Tinkerbell Jesus was cringe worthy. All the grand scale story telling in the world can't make a small scale seen like that any less lame.

Davies used the Doctor as a messiah figure throughout his run and that consistency didn't stop it being massively lame every time. 'Why has he turned the Doctor into Kal El' was a complaint we had in my household right from Eccleston's first mention of the Time Lord's destruction.

The Vortex manipulator's time travel abilities weren't exactly an asspull either, they were just a logical use of something that Davies had deliberately ignored to create drama that never made sense. But I consider Father's Day to have been one of the worst time travel stories ever.

[CurlyKitGirl]

Originally Posted by Starscream

I honestly can't see the whole "Moffat is sexist" thing, no matter how much I squint at it. Especially compared to Davies.

Davies female companions: Rose (clingy, selfish, a bit dim), Martha (smarter and better educated, but spends whole time mooning over an uninterested guy), Donna (starts off annoying and shallow, gets loads better, ends up back where she started).

Moffat's female companions: Amy (tough, smartass, a little scary when she wants to be), River (ultra badass, doctor/professor/archaeologist, a LOT scary when she wants to be).

I mean, Moffat's kissogram honestly comes off as a lot brighter and more feminist than Davies' medical student most of the time.

Here's the thing: I don't thin Moffatt is sexist, and I certainly do take issue with a fair amount of gender politics in Davies' reign, but sometimes Moffatt's women are just disturbing and I'm never entirely sure why.

Rose: I detest her. She is a hateful person and a hateful woman. And even then I do have to . . . (and this is actually painful) admire some of her actions. Cannot believe I wrote that.
She's not a coward and is able to take command of a situation even if she's creeped out, and I do think she is compassionate. Towards people who aren't her family, friends or boyfriend. But still, a little bit compassionate nonetheless.
BUT she's creepily obsessed with the Doctor even as she flirts with every other male going; in 'Rose' she was nineteen "with no qualifications", which I took to mean she has a few GCSEs, but nothing else. I wouldn't complain about this if she had no academic qualifications (AS/A Levels), but the implication is she didn't even do a vocational course or anything like that.
Again, I can more than understand people going to work straight out of school, if this didn't fit into her character as someone with no ambitions or motivations pre-Doctor.
And if you think about her character arc - she doesn't have one. And she goes to live in an alternate universe with her millionaire father. Not ever going to develop.

Martha: better, but still, the whole love thing? NO.

Donna: total BFFs with the Doctor. I love Donna. Lots. She's brash, confident, has common sense, and is able to ground the Doctor when he gets overwhelmed. She's not perfect, but she's a character first, and by removing that stupid romantic-love-with-the-main-character thing it makes her much better.
Look, you don't need a love interest. I don't want a Companion to love the Doctor.
AND SHE GROWS SO MUCH AS A PERSON. No one else did that with the Nu Doctors to this point!

I find that his female side-characters are better than his female Companions. Jackie I really liked and found her to be a believable character even though I don't like some of her actions.
Lady Cassandra was fun, and a self-absorbed, beauty obsessed purist. And she was a person almost completely stripped of her gender even though she identified as female. A believable person first, a woman second.
Same with the politicians etc.

It's that stupid love thing. While I certainly don't naysay romantic love, by making that love one of the key points in a Companions personality reduces them down to woman-who-loves-the-Doctor-and-will-do-anything-for-him. Now, I don't know how Donna was pre-series four opening, but the impact the Doctor had on her was so strong she basically became an investigative journalist of her own accord! That's the kind of impact the Doctor should have - the desire to better oneself and to see more!

There's also Davies' queer agenda, and other things I can talk about, but let's not. I shall simply reiterate that at time the Queer Hammer is very heavy and almost distracting. (Even if at times it is fun. Oh that phone call)

But when it gets to Moffatt and women I'm kind of . . . disturbed? Maybe?

River Song: after much thinking I have come to the conclusion that she is, quite simply, mentally ill, and that actually makes a lot of sense. She had an abusive childhood and was raised to be, in essence, a complete sociopath and an assassin.
As such, when she met the Doctor and found him to be kind of nice the obsession - her life's literal purpose - basically became the polar opposite. From hate and kill to love and protect. He was nice to her for no reason. Even when she'd 'killed' him in 'Let's Kill Hitler'.
While she 'loves' the Doctor, I think it's a stalkerish love. For who knows how many years she spent in prison she waited for the Doctor to take her 'on a date', even though she could easily escape. She keeps a journal about her adventures with the Doctor - although to be honest that could just as easily be more practical than anything.
The more I think about her character as if she was a real person the situation just becomes more tragic and nightmarish.
I think that's why she took the actions she did in 'The Wedding of River Song'. She is mentally ill, and to her what happens makes perfect sense, even though it is clearly all kinds of wrong.
Also everything about her is kind of incestuous:
Doctor/TARDIS is canon.
River Song is the child of Rory, Amy and the TARDIS.
River Song has flirted with all four of them.
River Song then marries someone who could be read as her second mother's lover.
She is creepy, but also very pitiable.

Amy: I can't say much about her as I've still not caught up on series five. But really, I had no major issues with her as a woman aside until very recently. It's that 'can't have children' thing. If you read it as physically incapable there's always adoption, and perhaps surrogacy - although from what I know surrogacy over here is a little more complex than it is in the US.
If you read it as 'Demon's Run was so traumatic I do not want any more children in any way' it's much more understandable as everything about her first pregnancy was traumatic up to, and including, having a ganger baby.
While I want it to be the latter - the mere thoguht of children sends her into a panic - I'm afraid it's more likely to be infertility. And that's cruel. Not just to the Ponds because they'd be the best parents. But from a feminist/narrative standpoint it turns what could be a very complex, moving, morally grey area into black and white.
In essence, it turns their marital issues into 'I am a woman who cannot bear children, I have failed as a wife, I do not deserve Rory, I must make him leave'. AND THIS IS WRONG. From a feminist POV Amy's suddenly gone from being a badass who's just as good as the Boys to being an unworthy woman because she can't pop brats out of her vagina. i.e. the very thing feminists tend to rage against.

And Neffie . . . she creeps me out. While she's actually Chibnall's Neffie, Moffatt as the Overseer, or any of the editors etc. reading the script/directing should have noticed there was something very wrong about her. I think she's too sexually aggressive. The groping, the space invading, she's very off.
While this can most definitely be a good thing if written well, I don't think she was here, and a script editor should have helped either tone it down, or make it better somehow.

The more I think about Moffatt's female characters, the more they disturb me because they seem very unstable. And I don't just mean mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically either. Just overall.
And then there are those writing gaffs like the ones I picked up on in 'The Wedding of River Song' where the Doctor sounds dismissive of River Song because she's a woman and thus can only be expected to act that way.

While Moffatt is good at writing people, sometimes some horrible sexism slips through, or little hints about the character build up to become really worrying. See: River Song.
Or there can be a massive swerve that leads to something completely OOC that actually becomes offensive to women when you think about it. Or just hear it.
I am not saying that just physical infertility is easy to overcome, it isn't, but by having the marriage conflict and resolution be so quickly brought up and overcome in the same scene it just reduces everything to something a bit farcical and almost anti-feminist.

To sum up: when Moffatt writes women sometimes he is very confusing indeed.

Originally Posted by Archonic Energy

Curly as well as Weasley "crazy old creepy guy" was Mr Filch.

just thought you ought to know...
*passes out*

Cool. I wonder if they liked working together on set again. In a way it's kind of a shame Tennant wasn't there (even though Eleven is my Doctor) because I know he's in the Potter films somewhere and it would be fun if the protagonist, antagonist and mostly neutral bystander were all Potter actors.

Originally Posted by Archonic Energy

also: i don't see why Rory's dad wasn't just called Mark...

Perhaps Mark is his acting name and Brian his real name? Either way, don't care, Rory's dad acts as Mr. Weasley in the Whoniverse. End of.

[Friv]

Originally Posted by Starscream

I honestly can't see the whole "Moffat is sexist" thing, no matter how much I squint at it. Especially compared to Davies.

Davies female companions: Rose (clingy, selfish, a bit dim), Martha (smarter and better educated, but spends whole time mooning over an uninterested guy), Donna (starts off annoying and shallow, gets loads better, ends up back where she started).

Moffat's female companions: Amy (tough, smartass, a little scary when she wants to be), River (ultra badass, doctor/professor/archaeologist, a LOT scary when she wants to be).

I mean, Moffat's kissogram honestly comes off as a lot brighter and more feminist than Davies' medical student most of the time.

The thing is, sexism and misogyny aren't actually the same thing. They usually get conflated, because frankly most sexists are misogynist, but it is possible to believe in seperate gender roles without believing that one of those gender roles in less significant than the other.

I find that this is what Moffat does, and it means that while no single one of his women is particularly bad (not misogynist, so any of them fit well on a continuum of powerful women), all of them have the same root desires and ideals. Marriage and babies are at the heart of every one of Moffat's major women characters. Always and forever. Even back in the Empty Child, it was about a mother who had to learn to be a mother.

[Reverent-One]

Originally Posted by Closet_Skeleton

But the Doctor randomly showing up with a Fez and a mop was fun and Tinkerbell Jesus was cringe worthy. All the grand scale story telling in the world can't make a small scale seen like that any less lame.

Which doesn't change the handwave-yness of the Doctor getting out of the Pandorica at all.

Davies used the Doctor as a messiah figure throughout his run and that consistency didn't stop it being massively lame every time. 'Why has he turned the Doctor into Kal El' was a complaint we had in my household right from Eccleston's first mention of the Time Lord's destruction.

The Vortex manipulator's time travel abilities weren't exactly an asspull either, they were just a logical use of something that Davies had deliberately ignored to create drama that never made sense. But I consider Father's Day to have been one of the worst time travel stories ever.

It's not the Vortex manipulator that's the problem, but that he got a chance to use it. Why did he? Because "Paradox!!".

[dehro]

Originally Posted by CurlyKitGirl

stuff

sorry to disappoint, but lestrade didn't

Spoiler

build the stun guns.. he just found them (all he did was loading the cartridges..just like Amy did)

[Weezer]

Originally Posted by CurlyKitGirl

And Neffie . . . she creeps me out. While she's actually Chibnall's Neffie, Moffatt as the Overseer, or any of the editors etc. reading the script/directing should have noticed there was something very wrong about her. I think she's too sexually aggressive. The groping, the space invading, she's very off.
While this can most definitely be a good thing if written well, I don't think she was here, and a script editor should have helped either tone it down, or make it better somehow.


Cool. I wonder if they liked working together on set again. In a way it's kind of a shame Tennant wasn't there (even though Eleven is my Doctor) because I know he's in the Potter films somewhere and it would be fun if the protagonist, antagonist and mostly neutral bystander were all Potter actors.

I agree with you on Neffie. Something about her character from the beginning was just wrong, and not just cause they went with the agressive warrior woman type. All the things she did could work if done well, but they weren't, it felt like too much. In many ways she served no real purpose and was by far the weakest part of the most recent episode. I feel that the episode would've been improved greatly by removing her and slightly reworking the last little bit.

[JCarter426]

Originally Posted by Friv

The thing is, sexism and misogyny aren't actually the same thing. They usually get conflated, because frankly most sexists are misogynist, but it is possible to believe in seperate gender roles without believing that one of those gender roles in less significant than the other.

I find that this is what Moffat does, and it means that while no single one of his women is particularly bad (not misogynist, so any of them fit well on a continuum of powerful women), all of them have the same root desires and ideals. Marriage and babies are at the heart of every one of Moffat's major women characters. Always and forever. Even back in the Empty Child, it was about a mother who had to learn to be a mother.

Amy didn't want to get married and wasn't even thinking about children. Granted she wants both now, but Rory wanted all of it from the beginning, even more than her. We've also had the Doctor showing his fatherly side, recognizing a girl crying silently and keeping a cot in storage. Then there have been other characters for which the issue has never arisen - Vastra and her girlfriend, Sally Sparrow, Madame de Pompadour off the top of my head.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Originally Posted by Reverent-One

Which doesn't change the handwave-yness of the Doctor getting out of the Pandorica at all.

No, but it effects my response to the episode.

[Reverent-One]

Originally Posted by Closet_Skeleton

No, but it effects my response to the episode.

That's great for you. And irrelevant to the discussion you jumped into.

[Dienekes]

Originally Posted by Reverent-One

Ha. You have that backwards. For all the hate tinkerbell doctor gets, that's a example of an established resolution, the archangel network, Martha telling about the doctor to the world are all set up in advance. Compare to The Pandorica Opens, where the doctor's escapes because..."Paradox!!"

Honestly I'd say they both are terrible in this regard. Yes, the Doctor gets out of the Pandorica because... ... ...

However, in the same token there was no reason to believe that the archangel network, which was established as a means of mind control would turn the Doctor glowy, reverse the aging process, allow him to fly, or anything else that happened in that sequence. It all just happens because... ... ...

[Reverent-One]

Originally Posted by Dienekes

Honestly I'd say they both are terrible in this regard. Yes, the Doctor gets out of the Pandorica because... ... ...

However, in the same token there was no reason to believe that the archangel network, which was established as a means of mind control would turn the Doctor glowy, reverse the aging process, allow him to fly, or anything else that happened in that sequence. It all just happens because... ... ...

It taps into the psychic energy of humanity and focuses it into one person, the Doctor. You're right that they didn't tell us the specifics of what it could do, but that's merely because they didn't reveal the plan onscreen in an attempt to the fake out the viewers along with the Master. They easily could have, and did set up the elements of that plan. The same cannot be said for the Eleven's escape.

[Eldan]

DoaS:

Spoiler

I didn't feel put off by Neffie. She felt a bit annoyingly aggressive, sexually, but I was okay with that. However, I went WHAT when she came out of that tent in the last scene. Up until then, I had assumed she was just rolling eyes together with Amy at Lestrade (forgot his real name).

Moffat vs. Davies:

Spoiler

I'm not sure what I dislike about Moffat's run, but I do dislike it. Or rather: there are many individual good episodes and the Ponds are the best companions together with Donna (who had a shorter run, sadly), but somehow, it doesn't click.

I can say a few things that annoy me about Moffat:

Davies set up his season endings, but in such a way that, for the first at least three seasons, I didn't even notice anything was being set up until the finales. Bad Wolf and Saxon were there, but you had to look for them. Moffat is all CRACKS! SILENCE! LOOK! LOOK! There¨s an arc here! I'm totally setting up big things!

And the reveals. Yes, Davies' finales were silly and too epic to hold up in hindsight. But I liked them. They were silly, fun and grand. Moffat's just seem to collapse into nothing, for me. The build-up is too in-your-face for what actually happens. And because it is so straightforward and obvious, people start to guess and come up with the solutions. In Davies, I never started guessing and so was never disappointed when it was the obvious solution. I think I like a lack of riddles over obvious solutions.

[Androgeus]

Davies' arcs,
1. Write individual stories
2. Choose a word that has zero plot relevance to anything else
3. Sprinkle word liberally over series
4. Get a cup of tea
5. ???
6. Profit

[Eldan]

Yes, exactly. And I prefer it that way over how Moffat handled the Silence.
"Hey, we haven't had a crack this episode yet! We should include a crack and some ominous music in the last three seconds of the episode. Oh, and how about some voice-over so people don't forget that this is so damn important."

[Avaris]

...So you prefer a fake story arc over actual progression? There was no story arc in Davies stories, just an occasional clue that was only apparent in hindsight. The finale of each series had no meaningful link to the rest of the episodes.

I will give you that Moffat has perhaps gone too far the other way, but I'm sure there were episodes where there was no crack (or equivalent arc development). I find it much more interesting having an obvious event which the characters start to react to and deal with, rather than waiting for everything to blow up in the final episode.

Basically, Davies (IMO) did not have story arcs. He had foreshadowing, and quite limited foreshadowing at that. What we have now are actual story arcs, where the plot develops every few episodes to build to the finale (which do, unfortunately, tend to fall apart just as much as Davies ones...).

[Eldan]

I agree that Davies didn't have story arcs, and having (good) story arcs would be a good thing.

But with Moffat I have the feeling that the story arc parts often feel tack onto episodes in the worst way, and they were horribly blatant about it. And much of the arcs didn't seem to get anywhere. The last season finale was rushed and annoying.

If the choice is no ark, or a bad ark, I'd rather have no arks.

[Sunken Valley]

Here's some more fuel for the Moffat/Davis war.

Doctor Who writers:
Does your story make an ordinary thing scary? Yes
Does it have a casual relationship with causality? Yes
Does it have a clever gimmick? Yes
Does it have funny dialogue? Yes
Does it have a smart and witty woman? Yes

Congratulations, You are Stephen Moffat. This is all you can write

Regarding finales I think that when your season 1 finale involves the time goddess possessing a human and saving the day in a deus ex machina, I think your show's gonna have this problem, especially with regard to the Sorting Alogrithm of Evil.

From:

The aforementioned time goddess.

All the villains being vacuumed up, even those with no void stuff on them

Tinkerbell Doctor

Curlers

Spoiler

A human timelord fusion caused by being slow to leaving a room

The problem being literally hand-waved away and a gun is pointed around for no real reason

A paradox, a paradox, a most peculiar paradox

A universe which literally made no sense (time still flowed normally in the 5:02 universe) being removed by someone holding anothers hand and then something which was blatantly forshadowed in an episode where everything was squashed.

Yeah, it gets crazier and crazier.

Now I'm gonna have to do a pros and cons list for you people.

[Thufir]

Originally Posted by SuperPanda

From Season 5 on I've felt that actors have kept that battle very much alive while the show has taken a firm stance that "the doctor is the hero because he is." instead of leaving that ambiguity that you could feel in "Waters of Mars" or "Dalek" where you look at the Doctor and realize that he's more of a force of nature than a hero.

I would disagree with that. The attitude of "The Doctor is the hero because he is" is highly prevalent with Amy and River, and to a lesser extent Rory and one-shot companions. But the darker side of the Doctor is clearly brought out through the attitudes of some antagonists (Kovarian, Runaway, etc) and the Doctor himself. I mean, a whole arc in the second half of series 6 was the Doctor seeing how utterly he can screw up people's lives and how dark a figure he could be becoming.

Originally Posted by Reverent-One

Except at the beginning of this episode, the Doctor's able to describe the Asylum, so clearly he knows about it.

He describes it as a myth he never believed in. Exactly in line with what I said.

Originally Posted by Dienekes

However, in the same token there was no reason to believe that the archangel network, which was established as a means of mind control would turn the Doctor glowy, reverse the aging process, allow him to fly, or anything else that happened in that sequence. It all just happens because... ... ...

My point exactly.

Originally Posted by Reverent-One

It taps into the psychic energy of humanity and focuses it into one person, the Doctor.

And it gave him abilities which made no sense in that context. If he'd saved the world through psychic abilities granted by that, I wouldn't be arguing as much (Though, note, 'as much', there are other issues with that plan working).

Originally Posted by Reverent-One

They easily could have, and did set up the elements of that plan. The same cannot be said for the Eleven's escape.

The elements of that escape? Time travel. It's the premise of the show, it doesn't really need additional setting up. My assumption has always been that such a paradox might be hazardous in a universe which wasn't shortly going to cease existing anyway, but such an escape is actually apparently in line with current theories about the possibility of time travel in any case, so...
Additionally, and significantly, the Doctor's escape from the Pandorica was not the entire resolution of the universe-threatening problems the finale had to deal with. Whereas Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor pretty much literally hand-waved the Master's victory away.

[Eldan]

Random little fun thing about DoaS no one mentioned yet: the bots singing Dasiy, Daisy. I giggled.