"A Christmas Carol" reviewed

[ed_rex]

Collateral Damage: The Problem With Steven Moffat

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.

Comments

[charamei]

Oh, thank you! You've found and explained exactly what I've been trying to put my finger on for the past year. Maybe I can stop obsessing over it now.

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.

[gehayi]

I think you've nailed it. Moffat can tell stories--but he forgets about the people in those complex stories of his. There's not a lot of agency, and there's not a lot of heart.

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.

[jhumor]

Oh I am so glad to have read this! I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what was so wrong with this season. And I have lots of reasons, but this one kind of draws the others together.

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.