Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2011-05-04 07:46 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2011-05-04 07:46 pm
[ SECRET POST #1583 ]
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 83 secrets from Secret Submission Post #226.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 3 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 0 - hit/ship/spiration ], [ 0 - omgiknowthem ], [ 0 - take it to comments ], [ 0 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.
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I seriously think Moffat resents the hell out of the fact that anyone else has ever written for DW, and it shows in his writing. He outright steals from and attempts to "one up" the episodes/characters/events of seasons he wasn't show-runner during, and when he was writing for DW under RTD, he sidelined and ignored the characters he didn't create (Rose, for example). And now that he is showrunner, he merrily ignores any characters, events, or history that he didn't write, as if he can just pretend this is the very first Doctor and he wouldn't have any attachments or contacts with, say, prior companions, or anything.
It's really kind of infuriating, that he's taking a show with such a rich history and boiling it down until all that's left is what he's created. It's disgusting, tbh.
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I think you really hit the nail on the head here, for why I don't like Eleven so much. With Nine and Ten, even though I've barely watched any of the old Who, I still felt like they were part of something bigger. Now I'm not getting that feeling so much any more...
Though I really don't know enough about DW in all its seasons to know if my complaint is justified =/
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Having seen a bit of Old Who, and having it on good authority from someone who's seen a lot more that my intuition is right here, I'd say your complaint is definitely justified. I'm not even really a big fan of Old Who (I'm one of those insufferable people who finds it hard to watch older television shows seriously), but I squeed when RTD referenced back to aliens, events and such from Old Who that weren't Daleks and Cybermen; I squeed and loved it when he brought Sarah Jane Smith onto the show. I especially loved that his series' referenced back to each other and had a canon continuity -- Martha showing up and being a big part of The Sontaran Stratagem two-parter, Mickey coming back in the Army of Ghosts two-parter, and so on.
Moffat's series don't do that. At all. They simply pretend the show before Moffat never existed, and not only does it give a sense of disconnect that jars me out of enjoying the show and spoils a lot of its feel, but it feels out of tone and out of character for the Doctor, even in a new regeneration, to never even think of his past companions. I don't find that believable for the character, especially in New Who, where his connections to his companions have been so deep and lasting.
But Moffat doesn't like to think about other people having "tainted" his Doctor Who, and he hates to write characters that he himself didn't create, so... there you have it. A Doctor Who without the rich history that makes it Doctor Who.
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And yeah, I loved the inner-continuity. Even characters I liked a bit less, I was super happy whenever they came back for cameos in other episodes. IMO, it really gave you the feel of 'time'. Just because the Doctor isn't somewhere, doesn't mean life doesn't go on.
I think there was one moment where Eleven vaguely referenced the occurrences of the previous season... but it didn't really go anywhere. Maybe that's another reason River annoys me a bit - she's one of the few vestiges from the previous season, and nobody else gets to come back.
It sounds a bit like maybe Moffat should reconsider writing for a shared canon =/ though iirc, his episodes before Eleven were pretty good.
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Exactly! That's exactly it-- and sometimes even if it's a character you didn't like much the first time, they come back ten times more awesome, and it's just great to see. I didn't like Martha much in series three, but you better believe I fangirled her hardcore after the Sontaran Stratagem two-parter! The continuity thing, the way the world keeps turning even after the Doctor's gone... I feel like that's been a major theme of New Who through series four, and I'm sorely upset that Moffat broke that off so completely when he took over.
Yeah, it basically doesn't happen. And the thing is... River only gets to come back because Moffat ensured, through how he ended the Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead two-parter, that River would be his alone and no one else could write for her. She was "untouched" by RTD or other writers, so she was allowed to come back.
Yeah, Moffat should never have written for a shared canon at all. He doesn't do it well.
As far as his episodes before Eleven, I really can't stand any of them but The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances two-parter. This artlce (http://io9.com/#!5022250/why-steven-moffat-isnt-all-that) pretty clearly illustrates some of the problems with his RTD-era episodes. Suffice to say the massive plotholes, sexualization of the Doctor, sidelining of current companions, and so on really got to me.
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Same with Mickey! I was so happy that he didn't stay the jilted boyfriend, but kept living and changed and became awesome.
Also, I liked that Rose had a history - true, we didn't get bales of episodes about her friends and whatnot, but we got to see her connection with her mother and how everything affected that. Amy seems a bit of a standalone, for me. Where's her previous life, huh?
That article really is interesting, thanks for the link! I liked TEC/TDD and Blink, but the other episodes I wasn't such a huge fan of. Though, I didn't really pay too much attention to who wrote which episode.
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Moffat's taking away the ability to see that -- and in a big way it's because I just don't think he's capable of writing that caliber of story. He just doesn't do character growth and development, especially not for his female characters. Amy, for example, changed not one whit between her first appearance and the recent episodes; she's still exactly the same person (for the worse, IMO). And since Moffat is unwilling to let her go and give Eleven a new companion, we won't ever see her after the Doctor -- again, partially because I don't believe Moffat knows how to write that kind of a story. I don't think he could believably show how someone would develop in the wake of traveling with the Doctor.
The history is a good point, too. None of Moffat's characters have that -- at all. Amy doesn't seem to have a family, or it was eaten by a crack in the wall, or some shit, so she doesn't remember them... fine, whatever. But what about Rory? What about all those people at their wedding? None of those people worried or cared when the both of them vanished for ages? Rory doesn't have any family? And River Song, of course, we're not meant to have any knowledge about. So basically, he's disconnected his characters from any kind of relatable history. Part of the reason we as viewers are able to identify with and connect with characters like Rose and Martha and Donna is because we feel so deeply like we know them; we know what their parents are like, we've seen their flat, we know some of their friends, and we have an idea of what their lives are like! We know that Rose's mum is a bit of a flake and has a sometimes-boyfriend who gets hungry in his sleep; we know that Martha's parents are divorced and her dad has a new girlfriend that nobody likes much; we know that Donna's mother is kind of overbearing but her grandfather is very loving and a bit odd. We knew that Martha was a medical student and that Rose worked at a department store and that Donna was a temp office worker. This is all stuff that helps us relate to the characters and feel like we know them. It's also a lot of development for the characters -- and Moffat is rubbish at development, so of course he finds ways to disconnect characters from this or the need from it, unwittingly - or perhaps just carelessly - cutting his viewers off from one of the biggest avenues for identification with a character that you can get.
You're welcome! I actually didn't like Blink at all, and the reaction from other fans was so huge I just thought there was something wrong with me, lol. I always paid attention after I started hearing Moffat lauded for writing "Blink"... and okay, because I wanted to know what idiot wrote "The Girl in the Fireplace," because god I hated that episode! lol.
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Heck, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End were over-the-top and melodramatic, but I didn't care because we got to see everybody ever being awesome on screen at the same time.
IA, both Amy and Rory are so... disconnected. I hardly even feel like they come from a specific time period, or a specific place. There are no consequences to them vanishing, which is something I really loved about the previous seasons. It's funny, because until you pointed it out, I hardly realized how much we know about the previous companions. But it's true, they're really people to me. I think that's why they embody the Companion fantasy so well - they started out as just your everyday people, and then everything changed. With Amy, I felt like she had... idk, a certain glamour from the beginning. She wasn't a "regular" person.
Also, I liked how the aliens eventually affected the rest of the world, in the previous seasons.
I think it's more that Moffat isn't quite managing character development, not that he's not trying. Or at least, not managing to convince us (since other people obviously don't have this discontinuity problem with the current season).
I think I liked Blink because the concept was pretty cool, I thought the suspense was well done, and I tended to like the episodes in which the Doctor doesn't play such a big role. I think because those episodes fleshed out the world for me, showing how people who aren't constantly involved with the Doctor can be influenced by him swooping in and out of their lives.
"The Girl in the Fireplace" was pretty what, I agree. I mean, the concept of random bits of France showing up in that spaceship was neat, but the development was kind of meh. "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead" stand out more in my memory as episodes I'm vastly ambivalent about. On one hand... they were cool. On the other hand...I didn't like the resolution one bit.
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Thanks. I was wondering why I don't care too much about Amy, and this helped me figure it out. Rose isn't my favorite companion either, and she annoyed me at times, but I still had some investment in her character at the end of the day. Because she came across as a person, even if it was an annoying person (YMMV of course).
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I'm not trying to claim the balance of new to old isn't off, because it is. I'm just not convinced the motives behind it are anything so sinister.
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A large part of series five consisted of Moffat basically "one-upping" things that RTD had already done, stealing directly from RTD's work in a lot of ways. Part of this is just that Moffat is obviously not an original writer - I literally have never seen the man do anything honestly original. Part of it is that I think he wanted to establish his Doctor as "better," his companion as "better," and so on.
It came off to me as nasty. I don't follow the interviews, so I don't know what he's said really (other than his vile sexist and misogynist comments I've seen), but the way it came off in the show was particularly... nasty to me. As though he simply couldn't stand anyone else writing for the show and so he had to shun everything that came before him.
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Well he's been reusing so many plot devices and themes that people have been calling him a copycat/unoriginal anyway.
-Amy is the (fiery redheaded) bride that ends up in the TARDIS on the eve of her wedding.
-One woman being the key to saving the universe because her life has been being manipulated by alien/spacey stuff her whole life.
-Little children calling phones that they shouldn't be able to call/creepy child voices.
-People in spacesuits creeping around and chasing after people
-Monsters that you can't look away from or they'll disappear
-The Doctor fake-dying
-symbols scrawled on the skin in black ink
So his attempts to really break away from the past have failed since he's pretty much recycling everything. Not that is bad, per se. But it's really noticeable.
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- Bringing Rory back to life (Jaaaack-), the "all the power in the universe" thing, was straight out of the Bad Wolf episodes
- The Year That Never Was idea
- The "waiting for the Doctor for a few bajillion years" thing was Jack Harkness's schtick well before it was Rory's
- "You can't see it, so it's scary!"
- "The planets are disappearing!" Yeah, RTD already did that Moff.
- River Song allegedly being based on The Time-Traveler's Wife
- Reusing his own aliens and monsters come the fuck on now. Let the Weeping Angels die, Moffat. Let them die.
- Characters with no apparent family or "grounding" in any particular place or time (which goes along with what I said above in this thread... that Moffat's characters aren't ever relatable because you never know where they're coming from or anything about their home-life before the Doctor)
And on, and on... if he wanted to be original, he should have been. But I'm fairly convinced Moffat isn't capable of originality by now -- he's never shown himself to be.
And re: Amy, I've always said she's basically a compilation of all the worst traits of the Doctor's other New Who companions, lol. Like, seriously, she's a much less tolerable Donna.
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I think the Amy coming on to Eleven was supposed to parallel the Rose/Doctor ship. I think Rory/Amy was supposed to parallel Mickey/Rose. I could go on, but I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. I also feel that in the TARDIS redesign, the destruction of the sonic screwdriver, and a myriad of other ways, Moffat is trying to wipe the RTD era off the map. (Not all of Who, though. To me Eleven's personality harkens back to the older (younger) doctors in a way Nine and Ten didn't (I'm not complaining about this - Time War, after all).)(Parenthesis abuse!) In some ways this makes me laugh. I have a bit of a rabid hate-on for late Ten. In some ways this makes be sad. I miss Rose/Jack/Martha/Mickey/Donna. I wish we could have references to some, and appearances from others.
This is all to say that I see it too.
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