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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[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.
no subject
And, you know, I wanted so badly to like End of Time. I kind of sadomasochistically love what a messed-up puppy Ten is, and I really really wanted to see him finally come to grips with his demons and lay them to rest. Instead, even after he's finally laid the Time Lords to rest, the prospect of laying down one of his lives for a friend and regenerating sends him into a tantrum that could fit, word for word, into the final scenes of Waters of Mars. It's not even that Ten is a horrible person, because I kind of enjoy it when Ten is a horrible person; it's that he gets no growth, no resolution, he just gets more and more broken until he decides to give up and throw in the towel and hope his next self is better.
You can see it, right there at the end of that monologue--he brings himself up short and goes "I've lived too long." It's like he just realized that he's never going to be able to fix what a fuck-up he is without becoming a different person: this is it, his final moments have arrived, and here he is throwing a selfish tantrum at a frightened old man about how "I could do so much more" when he can't even stop his own downward spiral. In the end, he doesn't grow or make himself a better person or work through any of his multitudes of issues, he just sort of accepts his own inability to deal with them and remains a selfish self-pitying fuck-up until the end. That's not a satisfying ending; that's fucking soul-crushing, and I really, truly wanted better for him.
(And this is why, even though RTD writes the emotional heroin of my heart, I also really love what Moffat is doing, which is taking the character RTD broke and putting him back together. Ten never did claw his way towards any sort of peace, but maybe Eleven can do it for him.)
no subject
I gotta admit though, I don't think Moffat's doing a good job. Well, not anymore. I'm going on record to say season 5 was close to 'flaw'less. NOT in the sense that it was perfect, not by a long shot. But its problems were "it didn't do enough" rather "it did x, y, and z all wrong." The difference between skipping a question on a test and getting a question wrong on a test. And the way a good amount of season 5!Eleven was a careful, as-tasteful-as-possible sendoff of Ten and addressing of Ten's issues was a big part of why I liked it, I think. I could do a whole list of how awesome the very under-the-radar continuity between the RTD era and season 5 was, but I'm way too tired atm.
(To be super-general: it's all about Eleven going in the opposite direction of Ten by making everything not about him to the point of it becoming a major fault, as when something was about him (the Daleks, and then the Pandorica), he was too blind to see it until it was too late and had to basically repent for his error by making everything so not about him yet all about him at the same time that he reboots the entire universe by himself on one hand, and gets erased from ever existing anywhere ever on the other. And it's only because of the friend he's made that he's able to return to existence at all, so he quite literally owes everything he is to his friends, as he said in a more metaphorical sense.)
However, the way his ability to face death and make things about everyone else and not about him and accept and fight fate at the same time and not pity himself at all but feel glad that there was some way to fix whatever he had done wrong and fix his companion's life -- that was all done kinda perfectly in season 5 and The Big Bang. He did pretty much get a good chunk of peace from some of his lingering issues there...and then it all kind of was for nothing, because the Groundhog Day Loop of plot-forgetfulness and event-pointlessness was instated.
Season 6 was pretty much just a tiresome, unconvincing retread of all that same old shit, but in a really irritating way, done at the expense of actually following through on and dealing with the consequences of everything that happened in season 5 and continuing on from that on the same track, seeing how the story and the character could develop after working to get over that hump. And that kind of cheapened that story arc and re-broke him a bit (although not as much as the poor mistreated-by-the-writers Ponds).