fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2217 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2217 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Early because sick, sorry.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Listing all the things I didn't like about season 4 would take quite a while (I could spend a couple pages on just Journey's End) so I'll just address my biggest problem, which was that I really didn't like the Doctor's arc - the way he went into a massive downwards spiral of Time War angst, starting with the season 3 finale and Voyage of the Damned, and kind of went nuts, getting into some seriously whacked-out neurotic behavior as he went on (it's mostly in a collection of little moments and comments and details, but a couple of big examples are the way he behaved towards UNIT and the Sontarans in the first two parter, how he acted towards Jenny and the human soldiers and the war in The Doctor's Daughter, and how he accidentally screwed himself over with his own obliviousness in Midnight), and never really coming out of it or changing because of it or learning and growing from it, not even in the finale. He just got more and more depressed and miserable, and that was depressing and frustrating for me, because, you know, I kinda really love him.

In retrospect, it seemed like RTD spent the whole of the season setting Ten up for his epic meltdown in Waters of Mars, and while that idea (and that special) was utterly awesome from an in-universe perspective, it really annoys me that so many other characters got dicked around in the process of furthering the "the universe is totes out to make the Doctor's life hell" message (Exhibit A: Donna), and that we got dragged and trolled through a full season of the Doctor behaving like he was suffering a cascade-failure-style unending paranoid nervous breakdown before finally snapping in the Waters of Mars and getting hit by the "oh shit, I kinda really screwed up there" clue bat, when the story would have been way stronger and less infuriating if it was shorter.

Not to mention the fact that he KEPT doing it for so long seemed rather forced and contrived -- it sometimes seemed a bit OOC for Ten to be so resistant to learning from his mistakes, and a bit OOC of Donna to not yell at him and chew him out harder for some of his batshittery. And not only did he not get to properly face his issues in the finale, he didn't get to face his issues until he was right about to kick the bucket, and therefore didn't get a chance to resolve them before regenerating, which is just depressing.

So tl;dr, season 4 had some really good ideas, but those ideas would have worked better if the whole damn arc had been way shorter, hadn't had so much collateral damage, and involved Donna yelling at him a lot more, and either a) his issues hadn't gone into overdrive until later in the season, or b) his Waters of Mars meltdown had occurred earlier in the season and he got a chance to recover from it.

Tangentially, what annoyed me about Waters of Mars and Ten's meltdown was the fact that we'd spent so long building up to it in the various ways you've said here, and other characters got dicked about by the progression (or lack thereof), and then in Water of Mars, when it's all supposed to come to a head, the actual consequences (that Ten had to face) of this season long downwards spiral were only momentary. Wham bam, than you ma'am, and the next episode is fucking End of Time.

I have various issues with Moffat — series six especially, and seven hasn't been brilliant — but the one thing I have genuinely enjoyed is the way that Moffat has appeared to embrace the fact (even in S5) that the Doctor's legacy is far-reaching and, in many cases, less than savoury. His gallivanting across the universe essentially doing as he wishes does and will have consequences even he can't imagine. S4 certainly started that, but I'm in 100% agreement with you that the handling of it was pretty atrocious.

in Water of Mars, when it's all supposed to come to a head, the actual consequences (that Ten had to face) of this season long downwards spiral were only momentary.

Yeah, I gotta agree with that as well. The scenes of the Doctor actually being pushed to the brink and snapping and saving everyone on the base, followed by that creepy as hell scene where he cheerfully tells them that screw timelines, he'll do what he wants (and asks to be thanked for it) was some of the best stuff the show has ever put out, but the immediate aftermath was really quite disappointing. Especially as literally five seconds after he realizes what Adelaide did and says to himself in horror "I've gone too far", Ood Sigma waltzes out of nowhere and the whole thing gets co-opted by the death prophecy thing, which really blunted its impact.

My biggest issue with Moffat, to be honest, is that he seemed to have completely ignored season 5. Season 5 raised basically all the same issues that season 6 did (including the Doctor's bad reputation problem) and handled them all way better. It was really annoying that Moffat apparently felt the need to do it all over again as if none of the characters had been affected by the previous season at all.

If I could go back in time and edit the crap out of season 6, my preference would be to have the Doctor be badly shaken by what happened to him with the Pandorica right from the season 6 premiere, and taking consistent, deliberate steps throughout season 6 to slowly make himself and his actions quieter and smaller and more responsible and to undercut his own reputation; instead of the whole season being bogged down in an unnecessarily convoluted and tiresome brand-new plotline.

[ SECRET POST #2217 ]

Re: Favorite Ten and Donna scene redux (now sans negativity)

Re: Favorite Ten and Donna scene redux (now sans negativity)

Re: Favorite Ten and Donna scene redux (now sans negativity)