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ed_rex at 08:41pm on 26/12/2010Collateral Damage: The Problem With Steven Moffat
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There are (at least) two kinds of cheating common in the writing of popular fiction. One is when a plot doesn't make sense, where an apparently intricate tapestry is revealed to be only a bunch of holes where the logic fell through; another is when a story's human logic is lacking, when long-established characters betray their readers' or viewers' previous experience of them.
25 minutes into the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special, "A Christmas Carol", I was having a wonderful time, and thinking that the Steven Moffat I'd once loved — the Steven Moffat who gave us the intricate yet humane chills of "Blink" and "The Doctor Dances — had come back to us at last.
But still, I had misgivings, and by the 30 minute mark, they had re-emerged full-blown. The Steven Moffat who concocted last season's "crack in the universe" story-line, and who had first shown his true colours with the popular but hollow and inhumane "The Girl in the Fireplace" was still in charge.
Moffat can be an excellent writer, whose plots are complex and who can create intriguing and believable characters with a few deft strokes of the auctorial keyboard. But as a dramatist, he has one honking big flaw, and it takes centre stage here. "A Christmas Carol" is a grand, meticulously-constructed romp, but a romp with a monstrous emptiness at its fairy-tale heart.
My full review is at Edifice Rex Online. Minor plot spoilers ahead, but unless you've never heard of Charles Dickens, not too many.
(no subject)
I haven't truly enjoyed a single one of the Eleven episodes, and yes, this sums up everything I've been saying into one coherent problem.
Not quite so negative
But that's about as many episodes as I liked during Davies' third series, so it's pretty low marks so far as I'm concerned.
Re: Not quite so negative
(no subject)
In another of Moffat's episodes, "The Beast Below," the Doctor is confronted with a tortured space whale and is confronted with what he thinks is a choice: free the whale (which he assumes will lead to the deaths of millions of humans) or let the humans continue torturing it so that it will continue to power their city. His solution, which he tries to carry out? Lobotomize the whale. The idea of talking to the whale and finding out what it wants--and the Doctor is a telepath, so communication with other species should NOT be a problem--never occurs to Eleven.
And certain themes keep recurring in Moffat, don't they? Like the wise young girl or woman who is physically a prisoner. Abigail Pettigrew, stuck in her coffin-like freezer, could be an older version of Cal, the dying little girl trapped as the computer's core in "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" grown up. Amy Pond spends two thousand years asleep in the Pandorica. Or the women imprisoned in an altered space-time, often without their will or consent. This happens to Miss Evangelista, Donna Noble and the intrepid River Song within one two-part episode. Kathy Nightingale, Sally Sparrow's friend, gets flung back to the 1920s and is compelled to live out her life there. Even Liz Ten, the Queen of the ship of England in "The Beast Below" and who certainly knows where she is, doesn't know WHEN she is. She has had her time perception altered; she doesn't know she's hundreds of years old.
And the women who are so imprisoned have no say in it. They are put in that position by men who cannot imagine another solution. Cal's father has his daughter's mind joined to the Library computer; the Tenth Doctor puts a saved copy of River Song into the virtual reality of the computer for all time. Abigail leaves her cryogenic freezer once a year because the Doctor and Kazman want her to--KNOWING that she is using up what little time she has--and then goes blithely back into her refrigerator for another year. She never tells the Doctor that she is ill and dying, and the Doctor--who has all the medical knowledge of time and space at his disposal with the TARDIS--ultimately refuses to help her. Nor does the Doctor help the millions trapped in cryogenic storage on that planet--even after the ship is no longer crashing.
The recurring theme seems to be that women can affect the world for the better--can even save or create worlds with their knowledge and power--but that they are also fragile creatures incapable of knowing what's best for them, and that they must be protected from the worlds they can affect.
And that is about as sexist as you can get.
I would have liked Abigail to be a real person, rather than a tool the Doctor was using.
(no subject)
I was listening to October/November's 8th Doctor Adventures, Deimos/Resurrection of Mars, earlier tonight... it's a fantastic deconstruction of the Doctor's morality, but the part that grabbed me is when Eight discusses Seven. Paraphrasing: "That's how evil gets started, when you sacrifice forty lives to save forty thousand. Doing the maths, that's what it ends up being about. Eventually I was travelling alone, because I didn't trust myself with anyone's life. [...] And now I make sure I always have someone with me, to remind myself that every life is precious."
He's talking about Seven, but it reminded me even more strongly of Eleven and this Christmas episode. That's exactly where Ten got to, isn't it? Travelling alone because his companions always got hurt. And Seven and Eleven do share that very forced quirkiness. Maybe this time, he didn't bounce back into a friendly Eight; maybe this time, he carried on his downward spiral.
(no subject)
Well, let's consider Eleven's episodes. (This is me figuring it out as I write--I haven't honestly analyzed most of the eps so far.)
The Eleventh Hour: Eleven effectively warps little Amelia Pond's whole life. Like Peter Pan, he flies into this little girl's life, shows her a world of wonder and magic that she can't help but be fascinated by, and then disappears, not realizing how much time is passing while she waits for the ragged boy-man who won't grow up. And like Wendy, Amelia DOES grow up in her Peter Pan's absence...and not necessarily into who she would have been otherwise.
The Doctor does get Prisoner Zero re-captured--and he does intimidate the jailers for daring to consider harming a whole planet that he happens to like. But the fact that the problem went on so long is also his fault--he could have taken care of the situation back when Amy was a little girl. I have to put this one in the neutral column. He helped people, but he could have helped earlier and minimized the damage.
The Beast Below: The Doctor failed miserably in this one. He didn't save the whale; Amy did that. He didn't save the kids who had been rendered mute and mindless slaves, either; he didn't even seem to notice that they were present. And he didn't solve the problem of what to feed the whale. The whale, up till then, had been given garbage of various kinds...and people. We're told that the whale won't hurt children...but since the whale raises no objection to the kids that are sent to it being enslaved and either physically or psychologically lobotomized, I don't think that the whale's concept of "damage" is all that wonderful. Also, we're only told that the whale won't hurt/eat children. Adults, apparently, are fair game. And since the whale tastes Amy and the Doctor with no hesitation (though it doesn't think much of their flavor), I'd say it's used to live prey.
So, thanks to Amy, humans are no longer torturing the creature that is transporting the ship for the price of who knows how many human minds and lives, over the centuries. I'm glad that humans stopped torturing the creature...but I don't think that the situation at the end of the episode is an improvement. All negatives in the Doctor's column. Amy gets credit for a partial win.
Victory of the Daleks: The Doctor has to choose between saving Earth and destroying the Daleks. He chooses Earth. Good choice...but then he leaves Bracewell, the android creature of the Daleks on Earth. Granted, he turned off the device inside Bracewell that could create a black hole that could destroy Earth. But devices can be turned back on. And the Daleks are loose in the universe, able to conquer countless planets as if the Time War had never been. Earth wins, sort of, but is still in jeopardy. The rest of the universe loses big time. I think the Doctor failed here.
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone: I don't think the Doctor saves anyone in this. He tries hard, but everyone dies except for Amy and River. Also, Father Octavian's death is utterly pointless. I mean, the argument is that the Doctor can't stop to talk the Angel holding Octavian in a headlock because if he does that, he'll have to move and take his eyes off the Angel and then it will kill Octavian. Obviously, then, the logical thing to do is NOT to take your gaze away from the Angel, but to keep staring at it while incapacitating it. It's made of stone, after all. And stone is breakable. (And considering that I have seen the Doctor going all MacGyver against an entire army with a ball and some jelly babies, I'm not impressed by the Doctor's failure to save Octavian.
Also, the Angels get sucked into a crack in the time stream. That crack gets healed later in the season when Amy hits the universe's reset button. Which means that effectively the Angels are out of their prison and are free to annihilate lives at will. Zero for the Doctor.
The Vampires of Venice: This episode infuriates me. Not only does the Doctor commit genocide (or at least attempts to do so), he does it for the flimsiest of reasons: the Saturnynian Rosanna Calvierri doesn't know who the Doctor is talking about when he mentions a girl named Isabella.
The problem with this is...well, here are some endnotes from my fix-it fic, The Vampires of Venezuela.
"Isabella" and its variants "Isabelle," "Isabel" and "Isabeau" were almost ridiculously common from the 1300s to the 1500s, not only in Venice but also throughout the rest of the Italian states, France, Burgundy, Brittany, Spain and England. To compare it to more modern names, it was like being named "Jennifer" or "Melissa" in the 1980s, or "Lisa" in the 1960s. I think it is entirely possible that when Eleven thought that Rosanna's failure to recognize Isabella's first name meant "does not care about people and therefore deserves to die," Rosanna simply did not know which pupil at the Calvierri School named Isabella that the Doctor was referring to. The odds are that there would have been more than one.
So, basically, the Doctor wants an entire race to die because ONE member of that race doesn't know which bearer of a common name he's talking about.
Not only that, the Saturnynians don't have to die. If the Doctor wants to save Venice, the logical thing to do is to clone Rosanna multiple times (since the Saturnynians desperately need females) and then take all of the Saturnynians to another planet compatible with their biology—both of which are MORE than possible if he uses the TARDIS. The Saturnynians, after all, weren't thrilled with turning humans into something approaching their own species; they were simply down to the last female of their kind...and she looked like she was at least middle-aged.
Worse than this, though, is the fact that the Doctor doesn't just commit genocide. He, Amy and Rory, have a good hearty laugh about the death of an entire species. I desperately wanted to smack them all for that.
For actively striving to kill a race that was not evil but merely desperate, I give the Doctor minus several million--1 for Rosanna, -1 for Francesco, -10,000 for the hatchlings who couldn't survive outside the canals...and minus the remainder for the planet of Saturnyne, which was destroyed as a result of that crack, which was said to have been caused by the Time War.
Amy's Choice: The Doctor doesn't solve anything here; part of his mind creates the danger by creating two realities and demanding that the Doctor, Rory and Amy pick—which one is real and which isn't? Amy, not the Doctor, is the one who can figure out that both realities are fakes, thus saving them all. If not for Amy, the Doctor would have simply found a very intricate way of committing murder-suicide.
Minus three for the Doctor.
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood: Okay, the Doctor and the Silurian leader destroy the drill menacing the Silurians, and the Silurians decide to go back into hiberation for...no reason, really. It's a plot convenience because the humans and the Silurians aren't coping with each other very well, and if both sides remained conscious there would have to be some serious changes or a world war. And a few people die on both sides. And Rory gets killed, which keeps happening to the poor fellow, and is erased from existence. And Amy completely forgets about him. Oh, yes, and the Doctor learns that the TARDIS is going to explode and be destroyed in the future.
The world is still here and the Silurians haven't been wiped out, so by this season's standards, it's probably a win. But it doesn't feel like one.
Vincent and the Doctor: No one really gets helped in this. The invisible monster turns out to be a newly blinded member of a race called the Krafayis, left behind by its pack to die of loneliness. The Doctor can't talk to it; the creature, it is implied, is already insane from loneliness. Vincent Van Gogh—the most eerily perceptive of the group--is the one who fights it and accidentally kills it.
And Vincent doesn't fare too well, either. He's already mentally unstable with the Doctor and Amy come along, and the Krafayis, time travel to 100 years after his death and the sudden loss of his two closest friends does nothing to improve his mental state. At best, the Doctor did nothing to help the man by trying to improve his life and by befriending him; at worst, the Doctor's actions may have encouraged or even accelerated Van Gogh's suicide.
The Lodger:The Doctor, trapped on Earth, and Amy, trapped on the not-quite materializing TARDIS, do manage to save a couple of lives in Colchester. Unfortunately, it's the weakest episodes in the season.
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang: The Doctor definitely saves lives here—a whole universe full of them—by rebooting a universe that is going out (powered by the exploding TARDIS and sealing the crack in time by stepping into it, using his own body and his own timeline to restore balance. Amy, thanks to two thousand years in the Pandorica, is the one whose memories inform the reboot. And Rory is the most fantastic boyfriend in the history of ever by waiting for and protecting his Amy for two thousand years.
It is freakin' awesome.
And yet...most of what happens this season is just that—an attempt to restore the world to the way it was before everything went kerfloopey or turned evil. I can't think of any episode where the world is better because of the Doctor; there are a lot where the world is either the same as it was before the episode, and a lot where the world is a good deal worse.
I like Matt Smith, I like the girl who plays Amy, and I love Rory's actor. I've liked a good many of the episodes. But I'm not getting the sense of victory that I got from so many other Doctor Who episodes. Instead, I feel that the status quo is being touted as the best that can be achieved. It fits the political climate nowadays...but it doesn't fit the optimism and hope of Doctor Who, which has always been about making things—and people—better.
Many thanks for that
But seeing the whole series down in a paragraph or so apiece, it becomes even more clear that the reason it's fading from my memory is that the episodes mostly weren't very good. For all Moffat's love of puzzles, the individual pieces didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, unless 11 is going to become known as the brain-damaged Doctor, or the post-concussion syndrome Doctor.
(no subject)
That was kind of what I suspected, based on vague recollections and a general sense of discontent.
(It's taken me so long to reply because I thought I had more to say, but I'm not so sure I do now. I think you covered it.)
False immoratlity
I hadn't quite consciously made that connection before, so thank you for sparking it. Moffat does seem to have a penchant for presenting any kind of "immortality" as being better than life lived until death, doesn't he?
When you started to talk about Moffat giving women particularly "special" treatment I was going to point to Rory and suggest that 2,000 years spent as a plastic guard over a tomb is a similar fate — and it is — but your nubmers do suggest there might be something sexist as well as simply uncaring going on.
I wasn't comfortable with Kathy Nightengale's happy acceptance of her fate, but at the time I could accept that Kathy herself really did. The character was written well enough that I didn't disbelieve it. More often though, as you've reiterated, Moffat's women (and his men! I still want to add, but I don't remember the previous series well enough to back it up (which is kind of saying something right there, I think) simply don't exist as anything but stock characters, so we never know what they might or might not want or like.
Problematic indeed.
Re: False immoratlity
Rory chooses to do so.
And, in fact, chooses in direct opposition to the Doctor's advice. It's dangerous; he's made of plastic now so he can't heal if he's damaged; he can't sleep; he'll be completely alone for thousands of years; he'll almost certainly go mad; and honestly, the universe is in danger, and Rory's girlfriend isn't nearly as important as the universe--
And Rory socks the Doctor. HARD. And says four words that make him the best fictional boyfriend ever:
"She is to me."
So Rory chooses the trap, the prison, the possible madness. And he chooses it out of love.
The odd meeting ground between Rory and Moffat's women is, oddly, Craig, the frustrated fellow in The Lodger, has an unsatisfying life in a boring town. He would love to leave--but he chooses not to, because by staying, he remains in the same town with the girl he loves but who he believes doesn't love him. He chooses the trap--but he also chooses not to speak of his feelings or to ask her about her own. He has agency...but he doesn't allow the woman he loves any, for fear that he'll lose her.
Which is the motive for Cal's father, the Tenth Doctor, Liz Ten's male employees, and Kazman. "I'll miss this and I'll miss that and DON'T LEAVE ME! And for God's sake, DON'T CHANGE."
Re: False immoratlity
(no subject)
However, the entire fault cannot be placed on Moffet. I majored in theatre. Total packaged DOES count. I've read some of Series 5 scripts on their own (Not the Christmas one yet... hopefully I'll find a copy soon). And on their own... they're not bad. They're not fantastic, but they're on par with most of RTD'S stuff. RTD: Difference between Nine and Ten? Wasn't the Script, it was in the actors!
Karen Gillian is sub-par at best. She has her "pouty face"... that she uses for everything and nothing else. And Moff HAS given her some amazing lines to work with. I would blame it on age... but then I think of Kate Winslet in Sense & Sensibility and that notion goes out the door. She's just not that talented and when you give her a not great script, it's obvious she doesn't know what to do with it.
Matt Smith: Has potential. He's not there YET... and as Vincent & the Doctor suggests, he needs an exceptional script for him to be exceptional at this point. With him, I'm saying it's age/lack of experience. There's a lot of "Matt as the Doctor" right now (In that if you watch Matt's interviews, there's not a lot that's different between HIM and his Doctor.) He'll grow into it. He already felt better in the Christmas special than he had in all of Series 5. But he's not there YET.... And the preview for Series 6 has me greatly worried...
Authur Darvill, is the only one hitting his lines/emotions consistently as Rory. And, he's hitting them slightly differently NOW (Post "Universe reset") than he did all of last season. That's important. It shows that the 'reset' had some kind of impact on Rory's upbringing. It's not much, but it is there. And it's not in script (the script doesn't cover those things - it's all actor!)
I haven't even touched on the technical differences. Darks are darker, Brights are Brighter - more 'fairy-tale' like, which Moff, likes... that's fine, but its not my cup of tea. It lacks the "realism" that I was used to with Classic and that RTD maintained in his era. Well, that's fine. But it was a crap-load of change to deal with all at once. And Moff's notion that "everything was always new with every Doctor/producer"... is hogwash. I've watched this show for 30 years and NO turnover has had the overall - complete change - that this one has.
So yes, as head-writer Moff has to take a majority of the blame... but it's not completely his fault... everyone who touches the series has some kind of impact on it. Though I will say, I've always wanted to be involved in DW - silly American that I am! - but for THIS series, I'm kinda glad I'm not... kinda like most of Six's era. Though I DID love TRIAL OF A TIME LORD.
Trying again
No, I take it back. Gillan's pretty enough, I suppose, but she lacks the presence.
I think quite a bit more highly of Matt Smith than you do, but fully agree with you about Arthur Darvill. His work is particularly impressive given that he's had the very least to do.
[Sorry about that. Original commented deleted to fix bad HTML. Hope I got it right this time.]
It happens, no worries :D
Most people think more highly than I do about Matt Smith, it's fine. It's my opinion and how I view actors and what I look for. Perhaps it would be more fair to say: He's good when he's good, it's obvious when he's not. Or: He's got it, but not consistently enough for me.
And I just thought of something, Smith COULD be making a mistake young leads often make: Holding himself back because of Gillian. But has he done any other long-term role? I don't know... it would help me do a better critical analysis if he had. As with most of Series Five: There's really too many variables to know for certian.
I need to do more research on Darvill. Yes he's the best and the most consistent, but there IS that niggling that makes me say, "Is that only because the other's aren't quite up to par?" **Shrugs** Again, I don't know. And since I DO enjoy his work right now, I'm not too keen to find out :P