New Doctor Who Series Discussion *Spoilers*

[Solo4114]

I don't think Moffat is bad, but he needs someone to pull him back from time to time. Much like George Lucas needed a series of checks & balances. When an artist is free to basically do whatever the hell they want the work can often be too out there. Moffat is definitely a serious repeat offender of the "too big" crap though and his story arcs, if I'm being completely honest, are crap and over complicated.

I long for a simpler Doctor Who. Still holding out hope that it'll come.

Agreed. I think Moffat basically suffers from trying to go too big/complex, and from moving too fast through his stories. He ends up wanting to have some big moment (A dinosaur in London!!), but bobbles the execution (...except it's distractingly too big for a dinosaur's real height) and then it ends up being largely pointless to the episode (the dinosaur is incidental, and it's really the Madame du Pompadour robots at work). Or he tries building up this incredibly complex story arc (Silence, Trenzalore, etc.) and when you finally get to the end...it doesn't really make a ton of sense. He races through the explanation (again, in favor of "big moments"), and while at first blush it seems engaging, at the end of it, you're left saying "Wait.....WHAT?!"

I find that at the end of Moffat seasons, I'm left having a difficult time remembering (A) specific episodes, and (B) what the story was that was being told throughout the season. Like, I have almost no recollection of the "Crack in Amy's wall" thing. The latter seasons were even more confusing, although I kind of remember them better. It seems like he builds up various beats and moments into the series, and then doesn't do enough to sell you on why they were meaningful, yet he draws a TON of attention to them in the moment. By contrast, in the RTD days, you saw far more subtle hints and clues scattered in episodes that actually resonated, rather than a tacked on "And here's ANOTHER dead person going to Mystery Heaven with Mystery Missy who maybe the Mystery Master or Mystery Rani or....hell, I don't know."

On the other hand, when Moffat doesn't have absolute free reign, his individual episodes are terrific. The two-parter ending with The Doctor Dances is still one of my favorites of the entire new run because it's (A) memorable, and (B) steadily paced. Newer episodes....I dunno. They seem to blaze by and I'm left wondering "Wait....so....what happened this episode?"

 

[Angelus Lupus]

So (not to sound like a stuck record) are we all agreed: New head/writers should have come in with the new Doctor?

 

[Solo4114]

I don't know that I'd go quite that far, but Moffat needs someone to rein him in.

 

[glunark]

The crack thing never made sense, the universe is full of cracks because the tardis exploded in the future, yet even after that is prevented there are still cracks.

Also the Doctor's tardis is not that special, surely in the time war tardises must have been blowing up left right and centre.

 

[NormanF]

I'm ok with the shows so far except for two things:
1. How has Clara not thrown a fit yet at Pink's mysterious background. He seems to have shot someone while he was in the service.
2. I am interested and dreading what is going to come of the dead people at the ends of some of the episodes.

 

[Solo4114]

The crack thing never made sense, the universe is full of cracks because the tardis exploded in the future, yet even after that is prevented there are still cracks.

Also the Doctor's tardis is not that special, surely in the time war tardises must have been blowing up left right and centre.

Yeah, see, it's that stuff that bugs me about Moffat. It's like he's going at a million miles a minute while brainstorming, comes up with this stuff, and then it leaves you saying "Wait, what? How's that work?" The problem is that, as a writer, he creates rules within his universe and then regularly disregards them. That's different from breaking the rules you've created, though. Breaking rules is fine. It can be essential to heightening drama in a situation.

But Moffat often ignores or disregards his own rules, often for the sake of hitting an emotional beat or expeditiously reaching a climax without further explanation. Sometimes he can get away with it because he's good at the emotional aspects to distract folks, but the problem with building a universe is that when you ignore your own rules for convenience, you lose the trust of the audience. Not always fatally -- and Moffat usually isn't fatal in this -- but over time, people come to trust you less and less, and therefore it's harder to get the viewer to engage with the universe and the characters as they occupy it.

If Moffat could, say, break the rules for dramatic effect, that'd be different. But he doesn't, often. He ignores them and figures "Oh, who cares."

I'm ok with the shows so far except for two things:
1. How has Clara not thrown a fit yet at Pink's mysterious background. He seems to have shot someone while he was in the service.
2. I am interested and dreading what is going to come of the dead people at the ends of some of the episodes.

About those....

1. Might be she recognizes how difficult that subject is, and doesn't want to touch on it yet.

2. Same here. That's the stuff that leaves me thinking "oh great. Well, this will end up being explained poorly..." Plus, when they keep doing the same thing at the same place in the episodes, it really makes it feel "tacked on."

 

[Michael Bergeron]

1. How has Clara not thrown a fit yet at Pink's mysterious background. He seems to have shot someone while he was in the service.

The scene that indicated he shot someone was in the classroom, Clara wasn't present. Everything else that she's seen from him just suggest that he went through something traumatic, which is pretty standard for a former soldier.

 

[astroboy]

Yeah, the mystery heaven thing is just tiresome. It's a terrible way of creating an arc.
I love it when the larger arc still has something to do with the episode.

The almost people comes to mind. When we found out that the whole reason for THAT adventure was to investigate their next one. Utopia also springs to mind

 

[astroboy]

BTW, the greatest show I've ever seen to create arcs is Stargate. They had it down to a science. And they were able to keep it interesting with 20 - 24 episode seasons

 

[phez]

Great episode. Got to admit, I like the direction the new Doctor is taking the series. This is the first time in a while I have been excited to see the next episode.

 

[Kerr Avon]

Meh. The threat was just balderdash. I liked Clara getting fed up with the Doctor, and everything about that, but the spider/bacteria that spins webs and the moon an egg? And after the space thing that just hatched from an egg, laid an egg that just happened to be as big as the moon again? That's pretty unbelievable that something that just hatched could lay an egg greater than the mass of itself.

 

[glunark]

Well to be fair, they did explain many times the moon was heavier than it should have been, so the egg wouldn't be the same mass, only the same mass as the moon used to be.

 

[CutThumb]

There are stories that make you cheer and there are stories that make you weep. Guess which one I thought this one was ?
I know Doctor Who is supposed to be science-FICTION!!!! but there are bl**dy limits!
The Moon is a hundred million years old? Try four and a half billion! Spiders that are giant bacteria? With teeth!!!!!! (by the way was it at all possible the writers just happened to watch "The Mist" before they came up with this?) . And what did the creature feed on to put on all that extra mass? Proton crispies ???? I know its supposed to have sucked all the minerals out of the lunar surface ,but how in the hell did it come up with another egg????
Putting aside the terrible science I thought the visuals on this were actually some of the best I'd ever seen in a DW episode, but the story sucked so hard I wanted the whole thing to disappear into a blackhole. And what was the point of that kid??? I thought the Tardis was locked to STOP anyone but the Doctor plus companion getting in! Truely it was just as terrible as I thought it would be after last weeks trailer and nothing would beat it . Until I saw whats coming next week.
On the plus side Clara's melt down seems to mean its going to be goodbye fairly soon.

 

[astroboy]

Even though I liked this episode, it's hard to believe this doctor is the same man who praised humanity on so many previous adventures. This is a man who finds brilliance in anyone. Remember how high he held Donna noble?

And yet this man couldn't tell a young girl that she was special, seems to dislike his companion and shows contempt for humanity.

 

[osric]

The only thing I really liked about this was the sets: Shooting on Lanzarote gave a great moonscape (I thought it was all CGI until I watched the Doctor Who Extra) and the lighting of the interior of the moonbase was really nicely done.

But that story - ugh.

At least we got to hear Hermione Norris say "My granny used to post on Tumblr."

 

[NuRF]

Is next weeks episode gonna reference the 'adventure' the Dr, Amy and Rory went off on after their wedding at the end of The Big Bang? I remember Matt Smith receiving a phone call in the Tardis about the Mummy of an Egyptian princess running about The Orient Express...in Space.

 

[madmikeee]

I was thinking the same thing! Here's to hoping! Is anyone else as annoyed and THRILLED as I am about Clara NOT being there AND her whiny BS at the end of this last episode?? "Oooh *cry* you made me make a hard decision whaaaaa" She has traveled with the Doctor for years and obviously NEVER noticed that the Doctor makes those types of decision EVERY FRIGGIN DAY. Decisions that can wipe out a species or let them live. She really needs to die off. She is now neck and neck with Donna Noble to me as the most annoying companion EVER in the new series in my opinion. She is supposedly there to HELP the Doctor, not dictate how things are supposed to work.

 

[0neiros]

Why doesn't Clara just shoot the Doctor until he Regenerates into someone she does like?

 

[madmikeee]

Why doesn't Clara just shoot the Doctor until he Regenerates into someone she does like?

LMAO... It seems that is what she would LIKE to do most of the time doesn't it?

 

[glunark]

Here is a question for you, not from the most recent episode, but from the 50th anniversary.

Once Ten and the War Doctor went back into their timestreams, they forgot what had happened, because only the most recent doctor can remember.

But if the Tom Baker character was one of the last doctors when he chose to retire, wouldn't that mean 11 wouldn't remember either?