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pennie_dreadful) wrote2014-01-02 04:56 pm
pennie_dreadful) wrote2014-01-02 04:56 pm
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My love/hate relationship with Doctor Who, let me tell you about it. I hope I not the only one to have a “what the hell did I just watch” reaction to Matt Smith’s final episode. Because seriously, what the hell did I just watch? It was an absolute jumbled mess of a story with practically nothing to hold it together. Perhaps this is just a personal taste thing, but in a long running show, I hate it when the writer suddenly adds in new elements or characters with absolutely no lead in (i.e., Handles, Tasha Lem). Now, the concept of The Doctor buying a Cyberman head and reprogramming it into his personal assistant? That is—brilliant. But by just bringing Handles in for the Christmas special and then killing him off in the same episode, oh my god what is even the point of that? What did that add to the story? Nothing. And we’ve had references to The Papal Mainframe a few times over the series, and all this time I was given to believe that they are, if not exactly enemies of The Doctor, then definitely people he wants to stay out of the way of. But here he apparently has history with the Mother Superious, Tasha Lem. What? Oh, but it’s okay, it was revealed later in the episode that Madame Kovarian and her cohorts were a splinter group of the Mainframe, and things are actually totally chill with the Mother Superious.
Using the TARDIS to cook a turkey should be funny (at any other time, with any other writer, it probably would be), but at this point it feels like trying too hard (reminds me of Clara’s line in The Snowmen, “it’s smaller on the outside”, because she’s super special, in case you couldn’t tell).
Let me fast forward right to the end of the episode, when The Doctor was apparently able to use the regeneration energy the Time Lords sent him through the crack in Amy’s wall to blow up the Dalek mothership. (Regeneration energy can do that???) But, the Time Lords themselves apparently choose not to come through the crack and back into their home universe, which they have been trying to do for millennia, because…of…reasons? I’m not sure I understand what happened here: Clara managed to convince the Time Lords that The Doctor really was The Doctor without him having to tell them his name, and instead of coming back into their home universe guns blazing, they sent The Doctor a new regeneration cycle. And for some reason that means that instead of regenerating immediately, he de-ages, then regenerates into a middle aged guy.
Oh, and the scary big-headed aliens that can zap you with electricity and make you forget about them as soon as you don’t see them anymore? Those guys are genetically engineered confessional priests. And they join forces with The Doctor once they realize their mission to prevent The Doctor from reaching Trenzalore totally failed--in fact, they facilitated the very thing they were trying to prevent by trying to prevent it, lol the Destiny Trap.
I just can’t even begin to describe the disappointment I felt while watching this. The only thing, the only thing I can say that I liked was Eleven’s farewell speech.
I remember being excited when I heard Steven Moffat was taking over as showrunner, because all of Moffat’s episodes during the Russell T. Davies era were among my favorites. But more and more Moffat is proving that he should not be the man in charge. Oh, he’s definitely a talented writer. He writes great dialogue, and he can come up with some amazing story arcs, but the execution is where he runs into trouble. His sense of pacing is terrible, and his episodes frequently have a frenetic, almost ADD quality. He zooms right through so much exposition so he can hurry up and get to the good part, which is usually a monologue by The Doctor about being The Doctor, followed by blowing shit up. And I am a fangirl, okay, I love the blowing shit up part. But not at the expense of character and plot development.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the River Song story arc. Now, I can completely accept the idea that Amy and Rory’s daughter was part Time Lord because she was conceived in the Time Vortex, and I can accept that River was kidnapped at birth by Madame Kovarian’s sect of the Mainframe so they could turn her into The Doctor’s assassin. I can even accept that she fell in love with him instead of killing him. That sounds like a totally fantastic idea! But only if you realize and accept that this is, in fact, totally non-romantic. Think about it: This is a woman who has been brainwashed her entire life to be obsessed with The Doctor in one way or another. And after she finally succeeds in assassinating him, River turns around on a dime and decides that she’ll save The Doctor’s life by giving up all her remaining regenerations to him, just because Amy and Rory say she should. She then goes on to earn a Ph.D in archeology for the express purpose of being able to access all the material about The Doctor that exists—in short, becoming an expert on The Doctor. And I am supposed to think this is romantic? This is approaching—if not exceeding—Twilight-level skeeviness.
I remember being incredibly confused and angry when after “Let’s Kill Hitler”, we were back to our regular monster-of-the-week style episodes. Amy and Rory’s grief that they never got to raise their own daughter is never mentioned, much less dealt with. Oh, wait, I forgot, there was one online minisode or episode prequel where Amy called The Doctor to find out if he’d found River yet, and The Doctor was a total chicken shit and let her call go to voicemail, and she goes on about not wanting to miss all those years with her daughter. So that was, what, two minutes of at least acknowledging that this was a really fucking huge and painful thing that happened to Amy and Rory.
Then we get to “Angels in Manhattan” and River drops the gem “Never let him see you hurt” because evidently The Doctor’s pain is the only pain that matters. Then “The Name of The Doctor” rolls around, and The Doctor reveals that he’s always been able to see River’s data ghost, he just never acknowledged her because it would hurt him too much. I just. Motherfucking what. And am I the only one who’s wondering if, as Madame Vastra says, time travel has always been possible in dreams, then why couldn’t The Doctor have used that to communicate with River in the Library? I mean, if you can meet anybody from the past, present, or future and talk to them in a special dream, then why not use that with River? Okay, her body is dead, but he could have still talked with her (betting they could do more than just talk, wink, wink). It didn’t have to be the end. Hell, what about Amy and Rory? Couldn't he have kept in touch with them, too? But River is totally okay with her husband that she gave her life for ignoring her when she reaches out to him--leaving her like a book on a shelf, because he hates endings. I was just so fucking over Doctor Who at that point. The only reason, and I mean the only reason I am still watching is because of Vastra and Jenny. I’m tempted to just skip all the episodes they aren’t in, but then I wouldn’t have context, and that would be irritating and confusing. And I am both hoping for and dreading the day they get their own show, because Steven Moffat will inevitably fuck it up. I have visions of recalling the days when they were just a couple of recurring characters with a patchy backstory on Doctor Who with nostalgia, because a patchy backstory is better than a skeevy codependent relationship.
If I were on the writing team, my suggestion would have been, completely scrap “Let’s Kill Hitler”. Find another was to introduce the Tesselecta. After “A Good Man Goes to War”, let’s just go back to our regular monster-of-the-week episodes, but let’s have River pop up every once in a while. Let’s make her the monster of the week from time to time, and gradually, over a series of encounters with The Doctor, let her start to develop the idea on her own that maybe it would be a mistake to kill him. Finally they have an encounter where she’s not trying to kill him. They talk. She starts to fall in love. I could, maybe, come to appreciate River/The Doctor if the romance was handled with the sensitivity it needs. If. Maybe.
Of course, here is where I confess that if I make myself forget about the brainwashing and obsessive behavior, I really like River and actually do ship them. She’s interesting, and they have great chemistry. But then I remember the skeeviness, and the cognitive dissonance hits me like a ton of bricks.
Using the TARDIS to cook a turkey should be funny (at any other time, with any other writer, it probably would be), but at this point it feels like trying too hard (reminds me of Clara’s line in The Snowmen, “it’s smaller on the outside”, because she’s super special, in case you couldn’t tell).
Let me fast forward right to the end of the episode, when The Doctor was apparently able to use the regeneration energy the Time Lords sent him through the crack in Amy’s wall to blow up the Dalek mothership. (Regeneration energy can do that???) But, the Time Lords themselves apparently choose not to come through the crack and back into their home universe, which they have been trying to do for millennia, because…of…reasons? I’m not sure I understand what happened here: Clara managed to convince the Time Lords that The Doctor really was The Doctor without him having to tell them his name, and instead of coming back into their home universe guns blazing, they sent The Doctor a new regeneration cycle. And for some reason that means that instead of regenerating immediately, he de-ages, then regenerates into a middle aged guy.
Oh, and the scary big-headed aliens that can zap you with electricity and make you forget about them as soon as you don’t see them anymore? Those guys are genetically engineered confessional priests. And they join forces with The Doctor once they realize their mission to prevent The Doctor from reaching Trenzalore totally failed--in fact, they facilitated the very thing they were trying to prevent by trying to prevent it, lol the Destiny Trap.
I just can’t even begin to describe the disappointment I felt while watching this. The only thing, the only thing I can say that I liked was Eleven’s farewell speech.
I remember being excited when I heard Steven Moffat was taking over as showrunner, because all of Moffat’s episodes during the Russell T. Davies era were among my favorites. But more and more Moffat is proving that he should not be the man in charge. Oh, he’s definitely a talented writer. He writes great dialogue, and he can come up with some amazing story arcs, but the execution is where he runs into trouble. His sense of pacing is terrible, and his episodes frequently have a frenetic, almost ADD quality. He zooms right through so much exposition so he can hurry up and get to the good part, which is usually a monologue by The Doctor about being The Doctor, followed by blowing shit up. And I am a fangirl, okay, I love the blowing shit up part. But not at the expense of character and plot development.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the River Song story arc. Now, I can completely accept the idea that Amy and Rory’s daughter was part Time Lord because she was conceived in the Time Vortex, and I can accept that River was kidnapped at birth by Madame Kovarian’s sect of the Mainframe so they could turn her into The Doctor’s assassin. I can even accept that she fell in love with him instead of killing him. That sounds like a totally fantastic idea! But only if you realize and accept that this is, in fact, totally non-romantic. Think about it: This is a woman who has been brainwashed her entire life to be obsessed with The Doctor in one way or another. And after she finally succeeds in assassinating him, River turns around on a dime and decides that she’ll save The Doctor’s life by giving up all her remaining regenerations to him, just because Amy and Rory say she should. She then goes on to earn a Ph.D in archeology for the express purpose of being able to access all the material about The Doctor that exists—in short, becoming an expert on The Doctor. And I am supposed to think this is romantic? This is approaching—if not exceeding—Twilight-level skeeviness.
I remember being incredibly confused and angry when after “Let’s Kill Hitler”, we were back to our regular monster-of-the-week style episodes. Amy and Rory’s grief that they never got to raise their own daughter is never mentioned, much less dealt with. Oh, wait, I forgot, there was one online minisode or episode prequel where Amy called The Doctor to find out if he’d found River yet, and The Doctor was a total chicken shit and let her call go to voicemail, and she goes on about not wanting to miss all those years with her daughter. So that was, what, two minutes of at least acknowledging that this was a really fucking huge and painful thing that happened to Amy and Rory.
Then we get to “Angels in Manhattan” and River drops the gem “Never let him see you hurt” because evidently The Doctor’s pain is the only pain that matters. Then “The Name of The Doctor” rolls around, and The Doctor reveals that he’s always been able to see River’s data ghost, he just never acknowledged her because it would hurt him too much. I just. Motherfucking what. And am I the only one who’s wondering if, as Madame Vastra says, time travel has always been possible in dreams, then why couldn’t The Doctor have used that to communicate with River in the Library? I mean, if you can meet anybody from the past, present, or future and talk to them in a special dream, then why not use that with River? Okay, her body is dead, but he could have still talked with her (betting they could do more than just talk, wink, wink). It didn’t have to be the end. Hell, what about Amy and Rory? Couldn't he have kept in touch with them, too? But River is totally okay with her husband that she gave her life for ignoring her when she reaches out to him--leaving her like a book on a shelf, because he hates endings. I was just so fucking over Doctor Who at that point. The only reason, and I mean the only reason I am still watching is because of Vastra and Jenny. I’m tempted to just skip all the episodes they aren’t in, but then I wouldn’t have context, and that would be irritating and confusing. And I am both hoping for and dreading the day they get their own show, because Steven Moffat will inevitably fuck it up. I have visions of recalling the days when they were just a couple of recurring characters with a patchy backstory on Doctor Who with nostalgia, because a patchy backstory is better than a skeevy codependent relationship.
If I were on the writing team, my suggestion would have been, completely scrap “Let’s Kill Hitler”. Find another was to introduce the Tesselecta. After “A Good Man Goes to War”, let’s just go back to our regular monster-of-the-week episodes, but let’s have River pop up every once in a while. Let’s make her the monster of the week from time to time, and gradually, over a series of encounters with The Doctor, let her start to develop the idea on her own that maybe it would be a mistake to kill him. Finally they have an encounter where she’s not trying to kill him. They talk. She starts to fall in love. I could, maybe, come to appreciate River/The Doctor if the romance was handled with the sensitivity it needs. If. Maybe.
Of course, here is where I confess that if I make myself forget about the brainwashing and obsessive behavior, I really like River and actually do ship them. She’s interesting, and they have great chemistry. But then I remember the skeeviness, and the cognitive dissonance hits me like a ton of bricks.