For the first time in nearly 34 years, I am utterly disappointed and disconnected from the television show Doctor Who. After watching “Let’s Kill Hitler” the other night I have pretty much written off the rest of the season.¹ Oh, I’ll continue to watch, grumbling as I do because if Doctor Who is on, I’ll watch. But I have such lowered expectations that I’ll be happy if there are a handful of moments that I enjoy.

Why? Why this negative reaction when so much of the world had finally come to the show and the Doctor is, for the first time, a genuine international hit with a larger fan base than ever before? Am I just being pissy because “my” show has become popular? I don’t think so. Ultimately, my problems are with Steven Moffat’s running of the show as its current producer and they stem from his weaknesses as a writer. Last night I had a running commentary on Twitter about my reactions and while this metaphor is a bit facile, I think it makes some sense:

RTD’s #DoctorWho was like a decent if impetuous 12 yo scotch. Moffat’s is like one of those new, flavored vodkas in a fancy bottle.

Moffat certainly knows how to be clever and make flashy shows and design intricate story arcs that are detail oriented and that are like jig-saw puzzles and that, when they come together, provide a sense of completion and a bit of awe at just how clever he was. What he cannot seem to do, and I’ve been waiting for a season and a half for him to get past his “oh look I have a new toy” phase to do this, is write complex and interesting characters with any semblance of depth.

This is not new. Neither is it a surprise to those who have followed, and thoroughly enjoyed, some of Moffat’s shows in the past. Take Coupling for example. One of the funniest comedies done on British television. The timing, the plotting, the dialogue are all pitch-perfect for the genre. Basically Moffat brought back elements of farce to the television comedy that had been lacking in many shows: the intricate plotting and attention to the details of timing and character interactions were breathtaking and hilarious. He moved his characters around a complex, three-dimensional chess board with clarity, intention, and grace. What he did not do, is create deep characters or give them genuine story arcs that changed them over the course of the series. Oh, sure, they changed, to some degree, and there were a few moments here and there that were genuinely human and compassionate moments, but for the most part we knew characters had changed because of something they said or did: we rarely saw the process by which they experienced growth.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing for the show. It was doing some very specific storytelling and it did it well.

Let’s look, for a moment, at his series Jekyll. Compelling to watch, to be sure. But that is almost entirely due to James Nesbitt’s performance of the Jekyll character. Overall the story is a bit clunky, none of the other characters are compelling or memorable, and if Coupling could be forgiven for some of its stereotyping of women because the men were equally stereotypes, Jekyll demonstrates quite clearly just how bad Moffat is at writing women. Which is bad. Seriously bad. When you can take someone of Gina Bellman’s talent and turn her into a boring, cardboard cutout of a character who has no depth and no complexity, you are showing a serious shortcoming as a writer.

Actually, now that I think of it, I wonder if one of the reasons the Jekyll character worked so well, was so damned interesting in that series was, beyond Nesbitt’s performance, the fact that the sociopathic tendencies of Jekyll actually perfectly match Moffat’s sociopathic attitude toward his characters? Think about it. Moffat deploys characters almost always as a means to a plot end. They are tools to move story and plot and comedy along. Characters don’t, in the end, mean anything to Moffat. Just as sociopaths don’t see other people as anything more than a means to their own ends, Moffat treats his characters as functions of a plot, instantiations of a theme, nodes that interact with other nodes to create a flashy narrative and a clever, oh-so-clever plot.²

But he doesn’t care about them. Not in the way a good dramatist cares about his/her characters. Say what you will about Russell T. Davies (overly sentimental, bombastic plots, overuse of the word “impossible”, too much in love with the Daleks, allowing “Daleks in Manhatten” and “The Doctor’s Daughter” to exist, etc), you never doubted that he cared, deeply and genuinely, for each and every character that crossed paths with the Doctor and his companions.

Another problem I have with Moffat is just how little agency and action the character’s seem to have. This is, in large part, because they are cogs in a machine. However, one of the results of this is that they don’t actually do anything but react to the variables around them, spinning one way only because another cog has spun them in that direction. There was a time when, if the Doctor had been seriously poisoned by the kiss of a beautiful woman and had 32 minutes to live, he would have used his vast knowledge and scientific genius to work up an antidote rather than let himself die, with only the mildest of protestations and just “hope for the best.” There was a time when, instead of waving a magic wand around, the Doctor would learn and interact with people and machines, struggling to gain some mastery of a situation that was barely containable, even for him. There was a time when character’s choose their fates, when their decisions meant something and had consequences. Moffat’s universe is one of destiny and fate rather than individual choice and the struggle between those choices and how they affect other people.

Additionally, the Doctor may spout off beautiful sounding words, but he doesn’t act curious, he doesn’t seem to take an interest in other people. Even at his most self-involved (and the Doctor’s arrogance is not the issue here—from the beginning, the Doctor has always been arrogant), the Doctor has always been genuinely curious about people and about the worlds he finds himself in. In fact, what made the Doctor’s arrogance work, was precisely that it was not seen as always justified. Various companions would challenge the Doctor (Sarah Jane Smith, Ace, Donna), while others would simply not accept his world-view completely (Leela, Romana). Yes, they and we knew that the Doctor was special and braver and smarter than we would ever be, and that he had certain kinds of wisdom and that he had lived a long life and that he had seen things in the universe we could only dream of. However, the people around him did not, continually and loudly insist that the Doctor was the greatest, the best, the most awesomest person in the galaxy with near godlike abilities to overcome the greatest of odds by simply being brilliant and ohmygoddon’tyoulovehimbecauseheisjustsocompletelythegreatestbeinginthewholeuniverseSWOON.

Because the Doctor seems to know all, he is not curious about anyone around him. Not even his companions. Because he already has every angle covered, every contingency planned for, there is no need for curiosity. No need to learn more. No need to grow. Moffat has created a completely self-perpetuating and self-sustaining character. In fact, growth and change would undermine everything that Moffat is working toward with the Doctor: turning him into a kind of god. All powerful deities are not, in the end, all that interesting.

The more powerful you make a character, the less interesting they are. Batman will always be more interesting than Superman because he doesn’t have superpowers. The Doctor is a man. With 2 hearts and the capacity for a long and varied life and the ability to travel in time. While all that gives him considerable power, he is not a god. He is not a superhero. Throughout most of his existence, he has been a curious, well-intentioned man who makes mistakes, who tries his best to make the world a better place (and does not always succeed), and who has considerable flaws, shortcomings, and blind spots. He is always complemented by companions who do not accept him at his word. Moffat (and, to a lesser but still somewhat culpable degree, Russell T. Davies) is so damned in love with the concept of the Doctor, and is so busy creating an entire universe that spends all its time worshiping or hating the Doctor that there is gradually no room for anyone else to be anything else but a reflection of that glory or hatred. Good guys adore and bad guys hate. Simple, all-encompassing, and, ultimately, boring.

The more times you say “look at me, I’m cool”, no matter how “ironic” you are, the less cool you are.

The more times you say “the Doctor is brilliant” the more times I wonder why you need to tell me that instead of just letting his actions and compassion and brilliance speak for itself.

Moffat insists on calling out the Doctor’s brilliance and specialness time and time and time and time again: look how clever and look how brilliant and look how powerful the Doctor is. But as every freshman in a writing seminar knows, the more you tell something the less dramatically interesting that something is. Moffat, with each and every repetition of “the Doctor is special” is draining all the narrative interest from the Doctor and replacing it with glibness, godhood, and a flashy exterior.

Like I said, I’ll still watch, because the show is woven deeply into the fabric of my life, but I’m not really looking forward to the rest of the season and I don’t expect to see much that will be genuine or true.³ Oh yes, it’ll be clever and witty, but it will be hollow and empty as well. While I know Moffat will be with us for several more years, I am already looking forward to his replacement and I just hope that whoever comes next, they will help create a show with compassion, curiosity, and one that genuinely cares about the characters we encounter. Such a show can still be adventurous, dark, scary, silly, and fun. In fact, I would argue that until Moffat’s tenure, Doctor Who has, on balance⁴ been all those things and more, but only because we cared about the characters as people and not as pieces on the complex chess-board of Moffat’s intricate plots.

1. This must be what older viewers felt like when Colin Baker became the Doctor. I like Colin Baker, don’t get me wrong, but from what I’ve read, many people had a strong reaction against his Doctor and the direction that John Nathan-Turner was taking the show.
2. This is also apparent in Moffat’s recreation of Sherlock Holmes: none of the secondary characters mean a damn or have any complexity to them.
3. Compare the first season’s meditation on fatherhood in “Father’s Day” to “The Curse of the Black Spot” for an indication of how RTD was concerned with making Doctor Who a truly decent dramatic program and how Moffat just throws in themes glibly and with no attention to the truly complex human emotions that he plays with.
4. I’m not ignoring the fact that there have been HORRIBLE episodes all throughout its history.

It is now part of my body.

Nothing more to say but, how frakin’ awesome is that!

Via IO9

A gorgeous, whimsical, and fun Flickr set that shows maps of the various areas of the TARDIS.

via IO9

This new Tardis – not an obligatory accessory for each new Doctor, but required by the damage done to it in Tennant’s last episode – is big. It must be three times the size of Tennant’s, on multiple levels with staircases in between. Less grubby than its predecessor, with a transparent plastic floor on the main level, its walls are resplendent with polished copper and its central column features a blown glass decoration that could be straight from Tales of the Unexpected. There are old car seats and downstairs – downstairs! – a swing. With a nod to Paul McGann’s Tardis, the central column features an old TV screen on an extendable trellis. It also has a 1980s-style computer keyboard, and a His-Master’s-Voice style trumpet speaker. (Link)

(via IO9)

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‘Tonight’s new serial seemed to be a cross between Wells’ Time Machine and a space-age Old Curiosity Shop, with a touch of Mack Sennett comedy. It was in the grand style of the old pre-talkie films to see a dear old Police Box being hurtled through space and landing on Mars or somewhere. I almost expected to see a batch of Keystone Cops emerge on to the Martian landscape. Anyway, it was all good, clean fun and I look forward to meeting the nice Doctor’s planetary friends next Saturday, whether it be in the ninth or ninety-ninth century A.D.’wrote a retired Naval Officer speaking, it would seem, for a good many viewers in the sample who regarded this as an enjoyable piece of escapism, not to be taken too seriously, of course, but none the less entertaining and, at times, quite thrilling . . .

If you are a Doctor Who fan, new or old, I recommend checking the site out and seeing some of the elements that went into the show’s origin nearly fifty years ago.

Wow. Nearly fifty years ago: November 23, 1963. You just know that 2013 is going to be a huge year for Doctor Who in celebration of that achievement (despite the show being off the air for fifteen of those years). I loved growing up with this show and I love that it’s back and can’t wait to see where the story goes from here.

BBC Wales and BBC Drama has announced that Bafta and Hugo Award winning writer Steven Moffat will succeed Russell T Davies as Lead Writer and Executive Producer of the fifth series of Doctor Who, which will broadcast on BBC One in 2010.

[From BBC - Doctor Who - News]

This episode was really, really bad. More than that, however, it was actually insulting to fans of the show as well as the show’s own mythology in a way that felt calculated and cynical.

Let me stop you here if you are watching the show on Sci-Fi in America. The British air dates are about four weeks ahead of you, so you should probably stop reading right now and come back to this entry after you have seen this episode. For those of you in Britain or who are getting the show through, ahem, other channels . . . click through to read the rest of this rant.

Let me back up for a moment and talk briefly about my overall reaction to the new series. Several years ago, I posted here about the first series and I still stand by my assessment of those first 13 episodes and the grace with which the series was brought back to television after a hiatus of almost 20 years. My admiration for Russell T. Davies in pulling off what many had thought impossible is quite high and I will always be grateful that he had the passion, the dedication and the talent to give us a new generation of Doctor Who. That first series was the most consistent, in terms of quality, of the four series to date and I think it had a lot to do with the fact that Davies and his production team were laboring under no expectations, or, rather, they were laboring under their own high expectations for storytelling and for the characters involved. Not having much money and not having themselves to compete against, they crafted quality stories that were consistently character driven. Davies had a tremendous ability to make use care about even minor or secondary characters to the extent that if they were killed for plot purposes, we actually cared. I’m thinking here of the blue skinned maintenance worker in “End of the World,” as well as Gwyneth from “The Unquiet Dead.”

Stories such as “Father’s Day,” “Dalek,” and Stephen Moffat’s excellent two-parter “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” had plenty of action and tension and fear, but were primarily driven by the characters involved. These were stories you could watch over and over again, stories you would want to watch over and over again. Unfortunately, with each succeeding series, the level of storytelling seems to have declined and too often we are seeing episodes that depend on specious plot points or random “magical” solutions that have no impact on the characters in any moral way. Almost immediately, in the subsequent series, we have a story like “Tooth & Claw” – which focuses on trying to be clever and action-packed instead of letting us in on the real pathos and complexity of Queen Victoria or some of the other secondary characters. Instead of working for our sympathy, the writers begin to simply expect our sympathy. Certainly this is not true of every episode and in each of the series there have been wonderfully written characters and stories.

Let me also say that I grew very weary, by the middle of the second series, of the whole “companion in love with the Doctor” and was very disappointed when they revisited that idea when Martha came on board. So this year’s addition of Donna–an older woman with attitude and a maturity than neither Rose nor Martha possessed, makes me very happy (except we can cut the “we’re not a couple” bit that seems to creep into every single episode), and I really do like the way that the Doctor and Donna are relating to each other and the difference that she brings to the show after the past two years. To be quite honest, their relationship is the best thing so far in series 4, where the stories have ranged from the mediocre (“Partners in Crime”) to the decent-despite-a-cheesy-first-half (“Fires of Pompeii”) to the good-despite-a-cheesy-ending (“The Planet of the Ood”), to the mediocre Sontaran two-parter and finally, the atrociously bad “The Doctor’s Daughter.”

The last of which being, ostensibly, the point of this whole rant, I best get on with it . . .

Let’s start with the fact that at no point do the writers of this episode earn any emotional response from the audience, they simply conjure up a “daughter” and expect us to care. Think about what it meant for Rose to spend time with her father and compare that to the off-hand, almost casual way that they make up a new relation for the Doctor. Not only that, but we are expected to believe that cloning Time Lords is as simple as that? For @%*#’s sake, if it were that easy why haven’t the Sontarans, the Cybermen, the Daleks, etc, just scraped some cells from the Doctor and put it into a nice little cloning machine and run off some copies. The laziness of this seems to indicate that the whole episode was geared around the concept of the Doctor having a daughter and not telling a compelling story or the examination of a compelling character. Nothing about this episode felt honest. Just as the daughter was manufactured with a mechanical “poof,” the emotions expressed by all of the characters were equally manufactured and expected to elicit response from the audience because of the concept rather than the actual dialogue and characters. In the end, I cared more about that blue-skinned worker who had a scene of maybe 90 seconds in “End of the World” than I did about Jenny, the ostensible “daughter” of the Doctor. Why? Because the writers invested nothing in making her a three-dimensional person, because they invested nothing in making an honest examination of how the Doctor might react to another possible Time Lord, because they didn’t care.

I smell spin-off in the air. I smell cynical, money-grubbing, “let’s make a Doctor Who lite version with an annoying, perky young girl in order to capitalize on the success of this show,” in the air.

Some more specific problems:

1. What the hell was Martha doing in this story? She contributed nothing to the plot expect to take away air time that might have been devoted to a more honest examination of relationships between the Doctor and Jenny.

2. The “war” had only been going on for 7 days but countless generations? Um, why? How does this help the story? I mean, forget that there is nothing in the story or character’s to support it (how can the leader of the humans be an older man? How can you run a military command without the ability to measure time? for this to work there couldn’t be any overlap between generations which makes no sense), forget that it’s a dumb idea, how does it help the story? How does it help us care about or understand the people in the story. It doesn’t.

3. The Doctor’s “I would never” speech. Umm, have we forgotten everything from the first series? When the Doctor stands by and lets Cassandra die, that is a powerful and important moment. When the Doctor is willing to do almost anything to kill the last (but of course not the last) Dalek, you are shaken by the violence and desperation and fallibility of the Doctor even while, quite possibly, agreeing with him. If there was one thing that I felt Davies brought with him to the new Doctor Who, it was a moral complexity. In point of fact, the Doctor is lying when he say’s “I would never” because he has.

4. Let’s not even talk about the stupidity of having terraforming work in a matter of hours – again, a matter of writers being damn lazy.

5. When Jenny revives after her “death” why isn’t the Doctor able to feel that? If we trust that he can indeed sense his family and other Time Lords, why can’t he sense that she is not dead?

If the episode were simply a bad episode, I wouldn’t be so disappointed. The problem is that, by introducing a “daughter” into the story-line, this episode has consequences for the larger mythos of the Doctor. Having her blast off and go explore the universe (how does she know how to fly the shuttle? seems like extraneous knowledge to the purpose for which she was created) has consequences for future episodes and story-lines. The worst episode of the new Doctor Who has some of the most profound consequences for the show and the characters.

This is the episode where Russell T. Davies and his production crew have jumped the proverbial shark. Despite my true appreciation of what he has done, and despite my true enjoyment in the relationship between the Doctor and Donna, I am now waiting for two things: any episodes written by Stephen Moffat and the day when Davies and his team leave the show and let someone else (hopefully Moffat), run the show.

I will still watch. I will still be a fan (because that’s what fans do). But I no longer trust the show to invest the care and attention to story and characters that differentiates mediocrity from quality.

And that makes me sad.

Darknote provides an excellent analysis of some of the problems and failures of the new Doctor Who series. If you are a fan, definitely give it a read.

In the history of the revived Doctor Who series, there have been ten multi-episode stories thus far. If we classify these multi-episode stories into three rough categories of “hits”, “misses”, and “neutrals”, most of them frustratingly fall into the category of misses than anything else. The most recent two-parter helps to further solidify a theory i have as to what makes more of these New Who multi-episode stories disappointing and also touches upon a fundamental problem with the series overall.

[From mutli-episode stories in the New Who » darkblog resonate ]

Of course, only fans get to critique the show like this.