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)
fandomsecrets2012-12-26 06:34 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-12-26 06:34 pm
[ SECRET POST #2185 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2185 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[not a repeat; was broken yesterday]
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #312.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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I definitely can empathize with those that can't stand 10's drama though.
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(I mean, at least RTD's shit episodes were entertainingly shitty and gave the appearance of earnestness, and harping on and over-glorifying a character to annoying levels for years is more palatable than treating characters like irritating plot points you have to work around when you get bored of them.)
While I tend to be sympathetic to Ten's drama given his motives for it and just how much shit happened to him and his whole past, I do understand those who can't stand it, because the writing and framing of it was really over the top and annoying a lot of the time. I can't help but think it's kinda indicative of RTD's comment about the Zogs -- that viewers are too dumb to care about things unless it's really personal.
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(I've noticed that as well. I still feel let down when I watch them, but I find it a lot easier to rewatch my least favorite RTD episodes than I do my least favorite Moffat ones. Maybe it's because even in the bad ones there's still some good character development stuff you can pick out... and Tinkerbell Jesus is a lot more entertaining and self-contained than the going through entire season-long River Song plotline.)
(I've also noticed that RTD got really good at setting up contiguous multi-episode stories and tripped fantastically at the end [compare Utopia and Turn Left - two of my most favorite episodes - with Last of the Timelords and Journey's End - which were like "Wait... what?"]. And Moffat's good at throwing a bunch of stuff out all over a season and never fully delivering. So that also can make the difference between disappointing episode/finale vs disappointing season, if that makes sense.)
Ten's drama was kind of like super rich chocolate cake. Delicious in small bites, but impossible to fully stomach in one sitting. I do rather miss the modern day earth stories though. I forgot exactly how much until the Power of Three. Obviously all the time is a bit overkill, but it'd be nice to have something with the companions' families and/or UNIT at least once a season.
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For example, I used to frequent the lj macro comm ihasatardis (...omg I just realized...you were the one who did the Ultimate Who Showdown of Ultimate Destiny set, weren't you?) all the time and the macros mocking the crap in RTD's run had me crying with laughter at the sheer ridiculous awesome. Whereas Moffat's worst is like "....what the fuck was that supposed to be?"
Which is a shame, because Moffat's good crack is so delicious. Giant eyeballs in snowflake spaceships! Hijacking fire trucks to break into hospitals! Fish swimming in fog! Miniature nazi hunters from the future running around 1930s Berlin in a shapeshifting ship that can take the form of a human and spit energy bolts and is patrolled by snarky homicidal robot antibodies! But alas, his crappy stories were never remotely the same level of wonderful stupidity as RTDs.
I agree about RTD always screwing up his finales. So. Damn. Frustrating. Especially the season 3 one, which I had really high hopes for for some reason. Although he did do a good job in Parting of the Ways. And I agree about the "present day at home" stuff, which was a big reason I loved the Power of Three to pieces even though the villain's plan made no sense. I think PoT had more genuine and logical character development than the entirety of season 6, actually. And while Season 5 being totally removed from the present was understandable, since the whole season took place in one night....tbh, a Father's Day type situation where they had to run around in past of just a few months ago investigating the cracks or something while avoiding being seen by past!Amy and Rory would have done wonders for the characters, I think.
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ihasatardis perfectly sums up the difference between RTD's and Moffat's bad episodes, and GOD how I miss it as how it used to be in its heyday. (Also, yep. The Ultimate Who Showdown of Ultimate Destiny was mine, and you have no idea how happy that makes me that someone remembers the stuff I did. I still have the notebook where I wrote out all the alternate song lyrics during a particularly boring freshmen year programming class... good times. Good times.)
I started watching Doctor Who in 2008 right after Avatar: the Last Airbender ended, and Doomsday (then Journey's End) pretty much killed me. If it wasn't for ihasatardis, taking those tragic scenes and reworking them into pure comic genius, I don't think I would've gotten over them as fast I ended up doing. Team SMASK was a particular favorite of mine, and is still my side headcanon as to what happens to Donna post-S4. And the glorious memes... the hypno-boobies, emo!John Smith, Terrifying!Pertwee, Ten's Sock Puppets, Tinkerbell Jesus! (Which reminds me, I really need to start saving more of my favorites from that comm to my hard drive since I've noticed that a bunch of the older macro links are starting to break.)
I'm starting to think that Moffat's crack isn't as inspiring for macros (I noticed I lost interest in making them in the 5th season), is that a lot of it - with the exception of the Amy/River baby plotline - doesn't have to do directly with the characters? IDK. I'm actually trying to analyze this now and not coming up with a direct, obvious answer. Or rather, RTD's era was characterized by change. Nine, Rose, Mickey, Jack, Ten, Sarah Jane, Martha, and Donna all continued to pop in and pop out on a regular basis. It was like a group of friends that you never really loss touch with and the constant present-day Earth episodes grounded the whole thing... which actually might be a lot of it. Taking the wacky, beyond the stars premises of Doctor Who and throwing them in modern day London.
Right now with Moffat's Who, you couldn't have an episode like Journey's End. (Not to say that Journey's End was necessarily good, but it definitely was a ride.) The only characters Moffat has bothered with are Eleven, Amy, Rory, and River. And he's never really revisited a place. That's what I think made episodes like the New Earth trilogy and Planet of the Ood that much more compelling. They were multi-season sub arcs, so to speak. A diligent watcher could appreciate all the back references, but they didn't need them to get the episode.
I think RTD did a great job with the Season One and Two finales, but I completely hear you about the rest. Especially the season 3 one. Looking back, season 3 has by far the best set up. The hints about Mr. Saxon are built up slowly, you know he's trouble, you see him making the four taps at the end of the mid-season trailer, the Face of Boe says his last words, the chameleon arc in the Human Nature/Family of Blood remains my favorite use of foreshadowing in the entire new series, the inclusion of Captain Jack pushes it into "you know this is going to be awesome" territory, the Doctor and Yana's interaction before they find out anything's amiss (and the Gallifrey theme is PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND)... which is why the actually finale is that much disappointing. I think a lot has to do with a lack of focus in having it be a Martha story that ends up being a Doctor story since her whole 'mission' is to spread word of Doctor while, at the same time, aging the Doctor into Gollum so that he and the Master don't have any sort of interaction which helped make the two preceding episodes until the last couple minutes of the episode.
I really liked Power of Three as well. If they could've rewritten the actual weird plot stuff in that episode (have it be an, I don't know, mental link that fuses with their subconscious thought processes, similar to how Prisoner Zero took over Amy), it could've easily been one of the best in Moffat's era so far. And I would've loved a timey wimey episode with the current characters trying to investigate stuff without being seen by their past selves. (Which also reminds me, should Amy and Rory have never been on that hill now, seeing as how they're trapped in past!NYC? Not that I think Moffat bothers with that kind of internal consistency. One thing I do like is how in the end of the God Complex, the Doctor tells Amy that if she keeps traveling with him, it's going to end with him standing over her grave.)
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