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Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2013-01-07 06:25 pm

[ SECRET POST #2197 ]


⌈ Secret Post #2197 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #314.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

(Anonymous) 2013-01-08 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
Hm, I was going to partly disagree with you because I really liked season 5 despite it being kind of messy, but then it occurred to me that the "arc" of season 5 is really contained within the premiere and finale and the mentions in-between are just simple plot points (like Rory's death) or Bad Wolf-esque mysterioso. So it doesn't really count as an arc.

Season 6...I don't even know how to describe it. Not only was it a mess of utter pointlessness (seriously, WHAT WAS THE POINT OF SEASON 6????), but also, season 5 kinda left a lot of potential to be built on, particularly with regards to the Alliance and Amy's massively different extra timeline with parents and everything that she now remembers, and season 6 kinda just...ignores everything. Everything! The specific events of season 5 literally had zero impact on the setting of season 6. I think that was what made me the maddest, that there was no follow-up whatsoever.

And then it had the gall to be tediously redundant of everything in season 5 on top of ignoring it. And make a big season-long deal out of things that could have so easily be resolved in a single episode. So yeah, I totally agree: Moffat can't write ongoing stories.

(Anonymous) 2013-01-08 03:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, what was the point of Series 3? Series 3 introduced a companion who came and went with little consequence to the Doctor or universe. Martha didn't have the life-changing consequences that Rose or Donna did.

I'd argue Series 5 is pretty abstract. It gets Amy and Rory together, which is important, but you can argue Series 6 gets River and the Doctor together (which was...well...you saw).

You're saying what is the point of Series 6 as a follow to Series 5, and I totally agree. But Series 6 itself was not pointless. It wasn't a good season, but it wasn't pointless. It established the Doctor's too-great power and reputation, and how far other species are willing to go to stop him. It established (and simultaneously destroyed) River.

It's really just a matter of expectations--you wanted things like Amy's parents to matter, but I think focusing on them and her feelings about them would have made it so much more soap opera-y than it ever was before. The Alliance was...yeah...a little too one-off. It was retreading Amy/Rory where I got really annoyed.

(Anonymous) 2013-01-08 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)
The arch in season 3 might have little impact to the Doctor but it was a wonderful character arch for Martha! And lets face it, the Doctor learner to take care of his shit too, Martha as companion was the perfect continuation from Rose.

(Anonymous) 2013-01-08 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)
ayrt

I'd say season 3 had a point because the Doctor's extreme loneliness was on full display in season three, culminating with the arc with the Master, and his unconscious rejection of Martha kind of showed that his loneliness was so severe than a companion couldn't alleviate it. It didn't have massive changes, but it at least introduced big new themes and ideas (however, I kind of have problems with season 3 too because it didn't have a lot of follow up - the Doctor didn't really change his behavior due to his experience with Martha, which annoyed me).

Season 6, on the other hand, had no unique ideas or themes of the sort. One paragraph of dialogue -- River making the Doctor hear the trillions of people promising to help him in gratitude for what he's done -- was the summation of the season, which could have been done in a million other, far more meaningful stories. And season 5 ALRREADY established the Doctor's too-great reputation with the Alliance and the Pandorica and everything. Therefore, it should have been a no-brainer to, you know, actually follow up on that in season 6 instead of pulling a completely new (and preposterously convoluted) plot harping on the exact same themes out of nowhere. It would have made perfect sense (AND left more time for interesting new stories) for the Doctor to be shaken by getting locked in the Pandorica and take steps to reevaluate his methods right at the start of season 6, because it's something that has been cropping up since Ten's run.

And it's all a matter of how you do things: it didn't have to focus on Amy's ~feelings~ and be soap-opera-y and talk-y to deal with her character conflicts, there could have been, say, a recurring theme of her running away from her time and her planet and her normal life because her memories were too confusing for her to deal with.

Which could easily be shown through her actions rather than tedious talking. Like...I dunno, I'm just throwing out random possible examples here, but maybe by having an episode set on earth at her home in her time (like "The Power of Three", which despite having a heavily flawed plot, was more substantial, character- and relationship-wise, than the entirety of season 6), and culminating in a departure that made thematic sense for her character, like her deciding that she's ready to start a new stage of her life and to stop running away and metaphorically "grow up." Which would complete and connect to the sort of Peter Pan-ish fairytale/imaginary friend theme of her arc in season 5.

Season 6, instead, yanked Amy in a direction that was totally arbitrary and had nothing to do with her pre-established character -- that part of her story could have happened almost exactly the same way to almost any companion. It had nothing uniquely to do with Amy.

(sorry for the tl;dr. My massive issues with season 6 come from the fact that I love the characters to death and think they had so, so, so much glorious potential that was wasted).