[ SECRET POST #2181 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2181 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 100 secrets from Secret Submission Post #312.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 2 (again) - repeat ], [ 4 - trolls ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[awkward_as_heck]

I was always a bit iffy on Moffat, I never thought Girl in the Fireplace was that special and Forest of the Dead didn't seem to follow through for me but I was willing to give him a chance. The Eleventh Hour unfortunately lost me during the scene the Doctor called the alien eyeball back and the Doctor gave the 'Do you know who I am' speech instead of asking any actual questions as to what the hell they were thinking like the Doctor said he would. So much of seasons 5, 6 and 7 so far seem to build and build and build but without any satisfying payoff and it is immensely annoying.

RTD gets a lot of deserved flack but I still think he told a pretty good story through his four years up to the S4 specials which probably could have been saved by a good rewrite and some judicious editing (though it seems that RTD got pretty big for his boots and didn't have anyone to rein him in, a modern day Gene Roddenberry perhaps).

Moffat on the other hand, I just don't know. He's just exploded into a mess of non sequiturs, convolution and 'cleverness' which isn't actually that original that I'm not sure it could be saved by anything other than burning it all and starting again. He had pretty much everything to start with but has thrown in so many twists and turns that it just isn't interesting anymore, its like in trying to be original and intersting he's put in so many twists that he somehow skipped the whole way round and landed on unoriginal and dull instead.

River Song for example, she was really interesting when all we knew about her was that she knew the Doctor and their timelines were all backwards. I thought it would have been really cool if she was a normal human that had a fantasic life but somehow making her Amy and Rory's daughter and for most intents and purposes a timelady makes her so much less fantasic, like of course she had an amazing life, she was born all fantasical and special and unique and what not.

TL:DR Moffat tries too hard to be clever, ends up dull.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

Uhhhh...seriously? A teeny little inconsistency was the thing that "lost" you on a whole episode? Um, okay....no offense, but as much as much as I like certain things about Davies (I certainly prefer him to Moffat in the balance - he never fucked up half as badly), he was massively inconsistent about that exact kind of thing, especially when it was for the sake of spectacle, and I don't really understand how you could like Davies but feel something that minor was a fatal flaw in Moffat, especially in a first episode.

I actually think Moffat was very much like Davies: good at creating characters and telling stories when he first came up with them, but got waaaaaaaaaay too caught up in himself and his own awesomeness and convinced that his stupid ideas were material for good television when it came to continuing them. It's just their styles that are very different. Moffat's fail is all about being ~cool and ~clever, while Davies is all about being ~epic and ~emotional. And both styles descend into a convoluted, irritating, and emotionally and narratively incoherent mess when they're given too much leeway.

[awkward_as_heck]

I know it is a pretty silly thing to get bent out of shape over but it just stuck in my mind especially the as the scene was supposed to be the crowning moment for the new Doctor. I did pick up on inconsistencies when it came to RTD episodes but it was on the second time round, the first time I got so swept up in the spectacle that the niggles didn't bother me. I guess its that it seemed like such an obvious mistake at a very important point in the first episode of the new era that I just happened to catch the first time round that bothered me.

For me I tend to think that for all his faults　RTD at least managed a pretty coherent story arc which for the most part had moments of both subtle quietness and epic bombast that fitted with the stories being told without always beating you over the head with its message or deeper themes, sure they are a lot of 'hang on a minute' moments when you look back on them but they seem minor in the grand scheme of things.

Moffat on the other hand seems intent on throwing a lot of cool ideas at you without really caring if they make sense and expects you to accept them, the 'hang on a minute' moments seem so obvious that you are surprised that Moffat didn't think of it which makes it harder for me to brush the minor niggles aside. That and he doesn't seem to do subtle very well he always has to draw your eye to everything and tell you how to feel about something. It gets very grating.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Ah, I guess I see what you're getting at. Difference in perspective, I guess? Because for me it seemed pretty obvious that the Atraxi weren't exactly going to listen to him ask them wtf they were doing in a reasonable manner, so it would have been weird to me if he had done that, and therefore it didn't bother me that he went straight to freaking them out (plus, it was a nice bit of setup for how that method bit him in the ass in The Pandorica Opens).

But IA about Moffat and subtlety. Davies definitely does the small quiet stuff better, even if he occasionally gets irritatingly cloying about it. Well, Moffat did a handful really great small quiet moments in The Eleventh Hour and The Beast Below, but...not really elsewhere. The (occasional) quiet stuff in the rest of his run was mostly written by other writers. It's kind of telling that some of my favorite Moffat-written scenes are deleted scenes, stuff he apparently decided was filler which wasn't important enough to go into the completed episode.

Re: Davies and storytelling. I actually agree with you that Davies did a good job of telling a coherent story arc over his tenure. It's just that I really disliked that story arc, especially the way it ended. And I...gotta kinda question you on the idea that Davies didn't beat us over the head with deeper themes. Really? Tinkerbell!Jesus!Doctor with Martha walking the Earth to tell the world of his coming wasn't "beating us over the head"? I mean, not everything was quite that blatant, but...it got pretty close to that blatant several times.

(I don't say this as a defense of Moffat, btw, just a criticism of Davies. IMO it's tempting so say "I hate Moffat, I wish we had Davies instead" but...I kinda don't like Davies or Moffat. I liked Davies' stuff better simply because Moffat's was even worse, but I sure as fuck wouldn't want him back).

[awkward_as_heck]

I see what you mean. I guess I wished he'd made a token effort at getting the reason out of them before jumping to the 'you sure you want to mess with me' stuff because finding out why they'd skipped straight to the fire and brimstone would probably have been useful. Maybe its another of Moffat's long hanging threads that he'll use to pull the rug out on us in the future but even then it just seems like sloppy writing to me.

I was fine with the story arc until the S4 specials when RTD really went overboard but overall, even with its faults I felt like he managed to tell a complete coherent story. And yeah he did get pretty preachy about themes sometimes, the S3 ending was a particular low point on a lot of things and evolution of the daleks wasn't much better but its been mostly second watch hindsight for me. I think RTD was better at getting me swept up in the grand spectacle whilst Moffat's obession with the minutiae and drawing your attention to it makes everything seem smaller and leaves the flaws easier for me to spot.

(But yeah, I hope there will be a new showrunner once 11 comes to an end. I think if they'd both had a firm exec or a strong second/producer/director willing to argue with them things then some things probably would have worked out better, the emotional end of S4 stuff especially but also River and the Ponds in general, I'm not sure the convoluted plot could be unpicked though.)