fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2280 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2280 ⌋

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

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Notes:

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IMO, it seems like he got amnesia when he was erased by the crack and brought back by Amy, not when he regenerated. He seemed very much a continuation of the character in season 5 (except in The Lodger -- as much as I love that episode when I turn my brain off, he makes no sense there unless I headcanon that he was just goofing off and acting weird to mess with Craig for shits and giggles), especially when you trace him from "The End of Time" to "The Big Bang" -- that arc is pretty wonderful. More than wonderful, it was a nearly perfect reaction to and continuation of Ten.

But starting with "A Christmas Carol" he seems to have...really regressed into a weird self-deluding path of denial that makes very little sense. Unless you theorize it as him going on a massive ego trip after getting de-erased. Which I really, really, really, really DON'T want to theorize about him doing, because that totally defeats the purpose of season 5 :\ And the worst part is that he seems like a completely different person in non-Moffat episodes. I mean, contrast The Doctor's Wife and The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon and A Good Man Goes to War. It's rather jarring.

I try to see it as Eleven being uncomfortable about his past and not knowing how to deal with all the identity crises and PTSD and other shit that the Doctor has been struggling to deal with during his Ninth and Tenth incarnations, so he just kinda tried to pretend he was someone entirely different and forget about what happened. Kind of casting himself as Amy's imaginary friend and losing himself in that role. So he's purposely trying to act like a totally different person. And then the 200 years of wandering around doing god-knows-what exacerbated that.

Which is a very understandable idea for the character, but would work a lot better if I could see authorial intent in the text. It seems like Moffat just thinks "LOL THIS IS SO KEWL". He might not be, he might just be trolling like the lying trollface liar he is, but that's how it seems and it's not particularly enjoyable.

But yeah, as much as it depresses me to admit it, the longer Moffat keeps writing, the more I starting thinking Ten might have had a point with all his freaking out and anxiety about regenerating and feeling like he was dying in "The End of Time" :\ Maybe he knew himself better than we did. Which isn't a remotely satisfying idea from a character development perspective. But I'm sure it can all be fixed with the next writer. Just kind of integrate Eleven into the succession of incarnations as a stage of the Doctor's character development where he was trying to get away from his identity. Which, ta-da! is exactly what this whole season is about. So I have hope yet.

How the fuck did I tl;dr all that? Wow, kinda just came out of nowhere.

it seems like he got amnesia when he was erased by the crack and brought back by Amy, not when he regenerated.

Unless you theorize it as him going on a massive ego trip after getting de-erased.

New headcanon: the Doctor is acting this way because when Amy brought him back, she didn't bring him back - she brought back what he was like to her. The goofy, funny, fish-fingers-and-custard Doctor, who does silly things and defies the laws of physics with his blue box just because he can, who can do literally anything because so much of Amy's perspective of him was rooted in childhood - that's the Doctor we have now.

Granted, I don't remember enough of seasons 5 and 6 to make sure that this is coherent, but I also have no desire to rewatch them so let's just say it is and I'll rationalize things as they come up.

I think it does make sense...but that's even worse :(

No wait, actually, if this was an actual legit plot point, it might have been kind of cool.

Honestly I'd rather have the Doctor being Brought Back Wrong (or a version of it) than him having had a mental breakdown. Because either way, he is acting like what young Amy would think of him, and if it's the former then it's fixable, you know what I mean? The characters and we can discover the reason and be weirded out and in various states of emotional distress over it, but at the end of the day some other technobabble can swoop in and fix everything.

If he did "lose himself in the role", like you said up there, then... that's not a technobabble thing. That's a mental thing, and that's an Earth problem that would be kind of disrespectful to fix with some magic words and a wave of the sonic screwdriver*. And while the storyline of "the Doctor gets mental help to any extent" could be done well, I don't trust Moffat to do it at all.

*(Wanted to say here that I don't find anything inherently wrong in fixing mental problems with some magic/technobabble whatever. If it's an option in the universe, go for it. My problem is when the character to whom that tech/magic is available doesn't, at the first opportunity, immediately go and also fix anyone who wants it, and then is still treated by the show as A Very Good Person Who Should Be Loved. Because they are presumeable the only one with this resource, and they are also presumably not a selfish asshole.

TLDR: I'd rather Reed Richards was actually being possessed and fixed it, than Reed Richards being mentally ill, fixing it, and promptly being useless to the rest of the population.

Edited (Finish your sentence before you post, Inkmage.) 2013-04-02 05:34 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind him losing himself in the role naturally either, because IMO that would be fascinating (and would actually make a lot of sense given how there has often been a tug of war between who the Doctor is naturally and who his companions think he is and/or want him to be, and with Amy the potential for that tension is set up really well). But yeah, I don't trust Moffat to deal with that kind of storyline in a remotely satisfying way without getting distracted by some ~cool new idea and impatiently fixing the whole issue with something that's really nonsensical and/or distasteful if you think about it for five seconds.

Looks like a job for ~~Aquaman~~ fanfic!

I do think it would be fascinating, and possibly status-quo affecting, depending on how it was written, but it would just be such a change from "The Doctor screws up, something bad happens, he gets all depressed and moody/bitchy/sulky until a ~mystery~ comes along in the form of a new Companion," which is kind of what we have now. And now that I put more thought into it, it makes an awful lot of sense - kind of a continuation of the Time Lord Victorious. He's the only one left and therefore he can do no wrong, because bad things happen when he's wrong and everyone else wants him to be infallible, so... well, there you go.

Tell ya what, when I become a Famous Sci-Fi Writer and showrunner of Doctor Who, I'll remember this and do something with it. Problem solved!

[ SECRET POST #2280 ]

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