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Aug. 18th, 2019 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grimorieThe Doctor Who showrunner wars is still in full swing despite the three Doctor Who showrunners being friends IRL, and some things they’ve done and implemented can all boil down to preference.
I wanted to weigh in with my thoughts on this.
I like some things RTD did in his time in Doctor Who, I am very grateful to him for bringing the show back from the war but I also remember slowly getting disgruntled with his writing.
He is a drama writer, and one of the best; RTD has a way of turning a phrase that just fires up the imagination like:“Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been-King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres.”
He has also written and help re-write my favorite two-parter of Revival!Who Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, Midnight, Turn Left, and Children of Earth. The problem is as much as he loves both camp (sometimes the results can work, sometimes it doesn’t), RTD’s cynicism does leak through.
He tried to fight against those instincts in Doctor Who but you can see the strain show as he struggled to keep that cynicism away from the show.
There’s also the part where his frequent joke targets are middle-aged women. And TBH, I was tired of Ten’s God Complex (“I am the final authority!”) and how the narrative rarely calls him out on it. Unlike Nine, he started to believe his own press and the press of other people
I wasn’t keen on the way he joked about appearances of women above thirty, and tbh, I was tired of Ten’s God Complex (“I am the final authority.”) and how the narrative refused to call him out on it.
Ten believing his own press could have been interesting if the narrative didn’t think he was right. For example, The Water of Marscould have been interesting but I thought WoM resolved Ten’s Time Lord Victorious moment far too soon and easily.
I thought they could have explored more about the ‘Time Lord Victorious’ moment for at least another episode, or have The End of Time comment on it.
Apart from series 1, all of RTD’s series finales were heart-wrenching; each finale I ended up feeling like I was going twenty rounds against a meat grinder.
It was why I loved and will continue to love series 5 and how refreshingly happy the ending was.
No one was trapped in another dimension! No one had to single-handedly stop an apocalypse and have their family enslaved, or mind-wiped.
In the scheme of things, I think in certain aspects, Moffat’s storytelling style is more in line with my tastes. The fairytale seasons. Even Twelve becomes a fairytale Doctor, and I wager that his arc in series 8 is remembering the joy and becoming the fairytale Doctor again.
Another reason why I love series 5, coming directly from Ten’s Lonely God thing, was that a lot of people called out the Doctor on their God Complex and made their self-loathing a lot more text. I also loved the fairy tale aspect of his seasons.
But like with RTD not everything Moffat’s done is my favorite, there were some stories that had missteps, and one of those missteps was Moffat trying to out clever himself. Credit to him for swinging for the fences but he also started to spread himself too thin working on two shows, and the seams showed.
One of the criticisms about Moffat’s writing is character work, and he had no interest in the Companions’ families.
I’m in the middle. I have issues but also (especially after rewatching) I was more forgiving, as an example, in the end, I didn’t care as much about the state of Amy’s parents.
No, that’s wrong, I did care.
I cared the first time I watched Angels Take Manhattan, I cared so much that when Amy and Rory disappeared I was so angry because all I could think about was Amy’s parents and Brian (Rory’s dad). I cared to the point that it was one of the reasons why I stopped watching.
On subsequent rewatches, I’ve reconciled with the idea that Companion families and family dynamics (the Companion’s parents) aren’t something Moffat was interested in. It took Chibnall to give Rory a dad (interesting that parent-child dynamic is really something Chibnall is drawn to).
Honestly, if family dynamics isn’t something he is interested in, that’s fair. Also, Amy’s parent’s weren’t a factor since series 6 and Amy’s parents might have well fallen back into the Crack for all we know.
Rewatching also helped me come to terms with some narrative choices I wasn’t fond of. Binge (re)watch tended to sand down any rough parts and I find rewatching can help me hold the shape of a story more.
Still, it took a while to realize Eleven acting big and bombastic was deliberate. Moffat needed Eleven to be big and loud, and full of himself so he can also go crashing down. It falls in line with what River describes the Doctor she knew: “Now my Doctor, I’ve seen whole armies turn and run away. And he’d just swagger off back to his Tardis and open the doors with a snap of his fingers.”
One of the things I wasn’t satisfied with Moffat’s writing (and there were plenty) was how series 6 dealt with child loss. Or, how s6 initially didn’t deal with child loss. The writing would eventually address it, and most prominently in The Wedding of River Song in a fantastically chilling scene between Amy and Kovarian.
But even then I felt it wasn’t enough. Emotional continuity during this time was very low.
This brings me to River. I loved her the moment she stepped on screen in Silence in the Library but my love for her character cooled because of series 6. My theory is Moffat wrote himself into a corner trying to out grand series 5.
For those taking notes at home, I watched Doctor Who sporadically during series 7 and then stopped watching at Angels Take Manhattan. I stopped watching until Day of the Doctor happened.
DotD reignited my love for *Doctor Who! So much so that I went back and binged series 7.
I liked s7 well enough except for how Amy and Rory left, that still sticks in my craw. I would have been okay if the Ponds left at the end of the Power of Three. Unfortunately, for Revival!Who, there’s an expectation now that Leaving Stories should be hard and tragic, and breaks your heart. I don’t always need grand leaving stories.
It was why Clara choosing not to travel with the Doctor at the end of Death in Heaven felt refreshing.
Of course, that was walked back in the next episode.
TBH, with the exception of The Day of the Doctor, Series 7B is one of my least favorite Moffat seasons.
One of the many factors was the way the writers kept giving Matt Smith big speeches. The writers know he can do big speeches so they kept writing big speeches for him. It was their default.
Also, as one podcast speculated series 7B could have been where the writers realized (belatedly) that Smith was actually quite hunky. This and Moffat being too busy to manage the next half of the season because of The Day of the Doctor can explain the disaster that was the Time of the Doctor.
TotD remains as one of my least favorite Doctor Who episodes ever. (Well, not ever, there are some series 2 and 3 episodes that stand above it).
And then the Capaldi era.
This was the turn around where I started loving Moffat’s work again. It wasn’t easy to get to that point though, and like the previous series, there was a time I fell off the Doctor Who wagon because the first half of Capaldi’s season didn’t click with me.
I found him far too mean and unlikable which broke my heart since I loved Capaldi.
But a binge, again, sanded down all sins (well, not*all*) and now the difficult and prickly series 8 is something I really enjoy because knowing where Twelve ended up in his character journey helped.
This is why, I don’t mind getting spoiled about a show, as long I only get the broad strokes but not the details. I love finding out what his journey was and I don’t think I would have come back if I didn’t know where he ended up.
I think I saw snippets of Zygon Inversion speech on YouTube, and then I decided to give Husbands of River Song convinced me to finally watch all of Twelve’s run.
And now Twelve is my favorite Doctor.
Moffat’s writing didn’t magically become perfect (to me) but I loved the themes he chose to tackle for Twelve. Twelve is another PTSD!Doctor but unlike Nine, he had an opportunity to grow from that trauma. (And get fresh ones — thanks Time Lords!).
I love that Moffat used Twelve’s stories as a way to interrogate Ten’s stories culminating in Heaven Sent/Hell Bent.
IMO, Twelve’s relationship with Clara is similar to Rose and Donna. Twelve and Clara developed quite a co-dependent relationship by the time series 9 rolled around. They never quite achieved the height of smugness that was the first minutes of Impossible Planet nor have they ever been as obnoxious as Ten and Rose were in Tooth and Claw. Possibly because the Doctor’s older at this point and knows the perils, and similar to Donna because of how Donna kept Ten grounded. And, of course, because of the mindwipe argument that was definitely Moffat’s answer to the mindwiping of Donna, and as Moffat said in the War Games commentary, to the mindwipe of Zoe and Jamie.
And then we have Bill with Twelve, showing the very final form of the Twelfth Doctor. Twelve as a grown-up, feeling settled with himself, finally. He learned a lot of lessons and committed himself to stay in one place.
I love the relationship he built with Bill and while I do love, love, love Jodie Whittaker, I was sad to have only one season of Bill and Twelve. Especially since after Lie of the Land Missy’s story began to have more prominence over Bill’s.
(And there’s the whole Missy thing which tbh would make this a longer post than it already is!).
TLDR. Both showrunners aren’t perfect, sometimes their views don’t align with mine. I loved series 1 because it was my entry point into Doctor Who but there are also things about RTD’s run I wasn’t happy with. Same with Moffat there were things I adored and things that really didn’t sit well with me.
There were points during both showrunner’s time on the show I had to take time off.
Now with Chibnall, the same thread runs through: I like most of his stories in series 11 but it also isn’t perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.
EDITED
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Date: 2019-08-18 04:12 pm (UTC)While it’s easy to pin point the episodes/storylines where they became self indulgent and could have needed another editor, I find it as instructive, if not more so, to compare their successes because of what that says re: their writerly interests. If Moffat is in an experimental mode and willing to challenge himself as a writer, you get something like Blink - it uses his interest in non-linear storytelling welll, it’s a perfect self contained gem of a tale that still fits within the larger show format, it introduces original new antagonists. The Doctor and Martha are almost incidental to it, but that doesn’t make it a lesser DW episode. (It would work with every regeneration of the Doctor, as he only provides the means to solve the central problem, and all the narrative attention is on Sally Sparrow, the character we meet and whose entire story we learn in this particular episode.) The horror of the episode is external and has a fairy tale dimension (another Moffat trait); it’s not something caused by the characters.
When Davies challenges himself as a writer, you get something like Midnight, which is almost entirely a bottle show limited to one room (except for the scenes with Donna at the beginning and end). While the episode also provides menace via a new-to-DW-creature, the true horror likes in how everyone reacts, in the people themselves, their paranoia and increasing readiness to scapegoat in ordert to feel safe again. And we never „see“ the creature as something separate, instead, its power derives from possessing one character and taking our series main character’s powers of speech and physical self control away – something which almost never happens to the Doctor. He doesn’t provide the solution to the central problem, and as the companion isn’t present, she doesn’t, either, and yet both her absence and his presence are important to the plot and couldn’t be taken away without changing the story. (Were Donna present, the Doctor might have been less distrusted, less immediately classified as another outsider and also less hubristic in his initial assumption that he’ll save the day.) Still, at its heart this is a story about paranoia and the dark side oft he human condition, with the sci fi premise providing the gimmick. (Though what a gimmick – the scene with Lesley Sharpe and David Tennant starting with him speaking first and her echoing him, then them, them speaking in synch and then her overtaking him is an acting tour the force for both players.) The point isn’t the Monster, it’s the humans. Blink, by contrast, of course also has a human at its center, but the mystery of the Weeping Angels and how to defeat them is important to the episode’s allure in a way that the question about what or who the creature possessing Sky is just is not.
If you look at their non-DW work, I think Moffat (with the exceptin of Coupling tends to focus on taking an established (fictional) narrative and putting his own spin on it (which he did with Jekyll & Hyde, Sherlock, of course, and probably will do with Dracula), which is as much about stories (and thus meta) as it is about the characters themselves. (Fairy tales again.) Davies seems more drawn to either putting his own spin on historical (not invented) figures (which he did with both Casanova and last year in A Very English Scandal with Jeremy Thorpe and the boyfriend Thorpe tried to kill) or completely invented figures (as in Queer as Folk or now Years and Years), but more often than not, a question about the human condition or an issue is at its heart (being gay in the 1980s for Queer as Folk, political hypocrisy and repressed sexuality for A Very English Scandal, how to live in a world increasingly going mad (and to the right) in „Years and Years“.
What I would love to see is another (and non-DW) collaboration between them, precisely because they have different strengths and weaknesses. Either can be the main show runner; I’m sure the result would be great!
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Date: 2019-08-21 05:35 am (UTC)I admit, I used to play that game too but I got tired of it. The realization didn’t come easily.
While it’s easy to pin point the episodes/storylines where they became self indulgent and could have needed another editor, I find it as instructive, if not more so, to compare their success
This is true! And thank you for pointing it out! I do love when both Moffat and Davies challenge themselves because we do get gems like Blink, Heaven Sent, and Midnight*. As you pointed out in their non-DW work both Moffat and Davies go back to certain themes and stories.
It makes me curious if we will ever see Chibnall produce a story similar to their works, I love Broadchurch but I feel like he could also push the envelope more.
What I would love to see is another (and non-DW) collaboration between them, precisely because they have different strengths and weaknesses. Either can be the main show runner; I’m sure the result would be great!
Same! Another friend pointed out the same thing! It would be fantastic to see their work together again because Moffat under Davies brought out amazing stories! He did amazing work as his run as showrunner but as a writer that didn’t need to worry about productions and budgets Moffat produced great stories!
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Date: 2019-08-19 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-21 06:00 am (UTC)This was definitely one of the factors why I initially stopped watching. Binge-watching helped me get through some of my issues but like you whenever I get to that arc I'm still dissatisfied.
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Date: 2019-08-26 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-28 03:52 am (UTC)Rewatching really helped me look at things from a broader lens and sometimes some writing styles or directions just isn’t for me.
Twelve’s Era is definitely something I glommed on to although it was a rough start but seeing his arc made me appreciate the journey he went through!
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Date: 2019-08-30 11:03 pm (UTC)