Who Is Moffat Making The Series For?

[Mitty]

All of this will blow over come episode three, where one assume they are back in the good old UK.

I don't recall any of this hooha for the episode "Dalek" for instance.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Well, they kept the episode from Americans for six months, so that way they could be clear it was for British people first.

 

[DimesDan]

I don't recall any of this hooha for the episode "Dalek" for instance.

No, but then again there was a massive hooha over the fact that Doctor Who was, starting it's new season on America and it had a massive media blitz that surrounded it. Where as Dalek did not.

Was my rambling post earlier so with out merit that no one actual understood why I personally felt The Impossible Astronaut quiet blatantly pander to the American market.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Once again, why is it a big deal that the BBC was attempting to reach out to the United States market? They want people to watch. I didn't feel the episode itself seemed all that different from any other episode. Sure, it had a "this is America" type admiration, but it was about at the exact same level as "this is Pompeii" and "this is Venice" in the past. So you're upset that there was a media campaign in order to get more people to watch?

Like I said, Doctor Who doesn't have to be an exclusive club.

 

[od0_ital]

Plus, 'Dalek' may have been set in the U.S., but filmed in the UK. Same as the 'Daleks in Manhatten' two-parter in the third season (or series).

The two-part season (or series) premiere that started last night is the first time Doctor Who was filmed in the U.S., so yeah, kind of a big deal.

 

[DWF]

Once again, why is it a big deal that the BBC was attempting to reach out to the United States market? They want people to watch. I didn't feel the episode itself seemed all that different from any other episode. Sure, it had a "this is America" type admiration, but it was about at the exact same level as "this is Pompeii" and "this is Venice" in the past. So you're upset that there was a media campaign in order to get more people to watch?

Like I said, Doctor Who doesn't have to be an exclusive club.

Reaching out is one thing but what's always Dr. Who special was it's "Britishness" personally I don't think the show has crossed that line with this story anymore than it became more Italian for basing The Fires OF Pompeii in Rome.

 

[Gepard]

Don't you think calling him Brannon Braga-esque is a bit much?

Not really. Braga was writing timey-wimey stories long before Moffat wrote "Continuity Errors," though Moffat is a vastly more talented writer than Braga. But timey-wimey-ness isn't why I compared Moffat and Braga in my blog post.

Rather, I felt that "The Impossible Astronaut" aped a narrative structure that Braga pioneered on Star Trek: Enterprise, where Braga eschewed the traditional five act structure common to television drama; rather than having rising tension and incident, ending each act (which coincides with the commerical break) on a dramatic note to hook the audience, Braga would structure his scripts so that there was no narrative momentum and no rising tension, and the story beats would be muted. And that's what bothered me about "The Impossible Astronaut"; there are events that happen, but they don't develop the narrative and push it forward, and the episode gives us no pay offs. When I describe "The Impossible Astronaut" as "incidentless," that's what I mean.

It's a two-parter for crying out loud. Can't really judge a two-parter based on the first part alone.

I disagree, because there are some things that the script could have and should have done that it didn't.

Over on Gallifrey Base, someone quotes Moffat as saying during Confidential that "What the Silents represent is a far, far bigger deal." Really? I wish Moffat had gone to some effort in this episode to make the Silents any sort of deal. As it is, other than vaporizing Joy, they're just creepy aliens with a cool power.

Yes, it is a clever narrative conceit to have a "big bad" that the audience knows about but the characters don't, which is why I'm coming around to the idea that Moffat really needed to end the episode with the characters unambiguously recognizing and remembering the Silents rather than Amy shooting at a space-suited girl. (Which, by the way, I'm not convinced is real -- a little girl wouldn't fit in that suit.)

As it is, the more I think about this episode, the more I feel like it was a wasted hour. I don't feel like the story has started yet. And that makes me think about the classic piece of editorial advice -- if your story starts on page ten, you throw out pages one through nine. They may be cool scenes, they may have fantastic character moments, you may have had a blast writing them, but if they're not in service to your plot, they're unwanted, unnecessary, and useless. And at the end of "The Impossible Astronaut," I'm not sure what the hell the plot is. Who are the antagonists? What do they want? What are our protagonists doing to thwart them? You can't answer any of those three questions at the end of "The Impossible Astronaut" based solely on what we see in the episode. You can't even prove that the Silents are the antagonists. Even Brannon Braga, at his absolute worst, didn't write a script as formless as this.

Couldn't agree more. TIA was full of events, but nothing actually happened. It felt like a run-on sentence where Moffet was babbling out a stream of neat ideas he'd come up with, but with no punctuation or purpose. It's one of the first hours of Who that felt like a waste of my time.

 

[IndyJones]

I think there's also been a bit of an exaggeration about how much of a push this show has gotten here.

I watch plenty of tv and think I saw 2 commercials for the show. I saw Karen on Craig Ferguson's show, but he's on in the middle of the night and has about 5 viewers. Everything else I know about the show I found out here.

Hell, for $100 a month for cable and internet I don't even get BBC America.

 

[DimesDan]

Once again, why is it a big deal that the BBC was attempting to reach out to the United States market? They want people to watch. I didn't feel the episode itself seemed all that different from any other episode. Sure, it had a "this is America" type admiration, but it was about at the exact same level as "this is Pompeii" and "this is Venice" in the past. So you're upset that there was a media campaign in order to get more people to watch?

Like I said, Doctor Who doesn't have to be an exclusive club.

Are you deliberately being dense because a few people have understood my own personal viewpoint? I've explained why I felt that the episode was pandering to the American market more than it's "home" market and I've explained why it felt like that to me personally.

The original question of this now merged thread was "who is Moffat making the series for?" Now I can't really speak for the rest of the series, can't speak for the rest of the planet or all the other viewers, but that is how it felt to me, The Impossible Astronaut was not written primarily for the British market.

Now I'm pretty sure if a really stupidly popular American programme decided to film its season premier over here and base the episode in and around London or other "iconic" locations and then make a massive hoo ha about it being based here in our media, then there will be some who would say that, you know what, they're pandering to the Brits and not us!

Oh and I'm not upset, far from it, I think it's brilliant it's getting more and more popular in other markets, I'm just a wee bit concerned that this is to the detriment of the programme over all and it may lose some of it's "charm" you guys seem to so like about.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Now I'm pretty sure if a really stupidly popular American programme decided to film its season premier over here and base the episode in and around London or other "iconic" locations and then make a massive hoo ha about it being based here in our media, then there will be some who would say that, you know what, they're pandering to the Brits and not us!

Matlock did that for its second or third season. I remember thinking that was really cool.

(Matlock, as much as it gets mocked on The Simpsons, was, for its first few years, a big deal.)

 

[Jaster]

Can't manage to read all the pages on this, so I will simply state:

34 year old male (me) - Loved It
31 year old female (wife) - Loved It
11 & 8 year old boys - Loved It

Thats a reasonably broad demographic.

I agree, TIA was a different tone from previous series, but still quintessentially DW. By adjusting the tone, I think it prevents the series becoming to stale and predictable and keeps things fresh. There will always be those who bash change, but I for one liked it.

 

[Mr Light]

I believe Bones did that a year or two back, as well.

 

[DimesDan]

I believe Bones did that a year or two back, as well.

Bones? Sorry, not heard of it so that media blitz must have gone well then.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Are you deliberately being dense because a few people have understood my own personal viewpoint? I've explained why I felt that the episode was pandering to the American market more than it's "home" market and I've explained why it felt like that to me personally.

The original question of this now merged thread was "who is Moffat making the series for?" Now I can't really speak for the rest of the series, can't speak for the rest of the planet or all the other viewers, but that is how it felt to me, The Impossible Astronaut was not written primarily for the British market.

Now I'm pretty sure if a really stupidly popular American programme decided to film its season premier over here and base the episode in and around London or other "iconic" locations and then make a massive hoo ha about it being based here in our media, then there will be some who would say that, you know what, they're pandering to the Brits and not us!

Oh and I'm not upset, far from it, I think it's brilliant it's getting more and more popular in other markets, I'm just a wee bit concerned that this is to the detriment of the programme over all and it may lose some of it's "charm" you guys seem to so like about.

Some people are upset. Some people have been claiming it affected the episode itself. You seem to be pointing out it was related to the BBC's marketing push. That's not a big deal either way. If an American show filmed in the UK, my first thought would be that it's cool they're going all out to get an accurate filming location.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I believe Bones did that a year or two back, as well.

Bones? Sorry, not heard of it so that media blitz must have gone well then.

You've never heard of Bones? David Boreanez series after Angel, been on the air for something like 6 seasons and one of Fox's biggest shows after House? Now on Living but was on Sky One for 5 seasons.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Are you deliberately being dense because a few people have understood my own personal viewpoint? I've explained why I felt that the episode was pandering to the American market more than it's "home" market and I've explained why it felt like that to me personally.

The original question of this now merged thread was "who is Moffat making the series for?" Now I can't really speak for the rest of the series, can't speak for the rest of the planet or all the other viewers, but that is how it felt to me, The Impossible Astronaut was not written primarily for the British market.

Now I'm pretty sure if a really stupidly popular American programme decided to film its season premier over here and base the episode in and around London or other "iconic" locations and then make a massive hoo ha about it being based here in our media, then there will be some who would say that, you know what, they're pandering to the Brits and not us!

Oh and I'm not upset, far from it, I think it's brilliant it's getting more and more popular in other markets, I'm just a wee bit concerned that this is to the detriment of the programme over all and it may lose some of it's "charm" you guys seem to so like about.

Some people are upset. Some people have been claiming it affected the episode itself. You seem to be pointing out it was related to the BBC's marketing push. That's not a big deal either way. If an American show filmed in the UK, my first thought would be that it's cool they're going all out to get an accurate filming location.

That's how I would feel about it, too. I think it's neat when American shows go on-location to somewhere outside the US. I think the problem with the reverse happening is the envy and general inferiority complex non-Americans seem to have toward Americans. "They can't film our show in America! That'll ruin it!" Do Brits not like a change of pace now and then? What if it was being filmed in Canada or Mexico or Brazil? Would that also be [nationality]izing it somehow?

 

[Tom]

Imagine if the 1996 Fox movie was a hit and Fox greenlit a doctor who series..man we would never hear the end of it..lol

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Are you deliberately being dense because a few people have understood my own personal viewpoint? I've explained why I felt that the episode was pandering to the American market more than it's "home" market and I've explained why it felt like that to me personally.

The original question of this now merged thread was "who is Moffat making the series for?" Now I can't really speak for the rest of the series, can't speak for the rest of the planet or all the other viewers, but that is how it felt to me, The Impossible Astronaut was not written primarily for the British market.

Now I'm pretty sure if a really stupidly popular American programme decided to film its season premier over here and base the episode in and around London or other "iconic" locations and then make a massive hoo ha about it being based here in our media, then there will be some who would say that, you know what, they're pandering to the Brits and not us!

Oh and I'm not upset, far from it, I think it's brilliant it's getting more and more popular in other markets, I'm just a wee bit concerned that this is to the detriment of the programme over all and it may lose some of it's "charm" you guys seem to so like about.

Some people are upset. Some people have been claiming it affected the episode itself. You seem to be pointing out it was related to the BBC's marketing push. That's not a big deal either way. If an American show filmed in the UK, my first thought would be that it's cool they're going all out to get an accurate filming location.

That's how I would feel about it, too. I think it's neat when American shows go on-location to somewhere outside the US. I think the problem with the reverse happening is the envy and general inferiority complex non-Americans seem to have toward Americans. "They can't film our show in America! That'll ruin it!" Do Brits not like a change of pace now and then? What if it was being filmed in Canada or Mexico or Brazil? Would that also be [nationality]izing it somehow?

I think it's less about an inferiority complex than it is about so much of everything we see is American, and then we have a popular show and then instead of it just being imported as is it's adjusted to attract the US audience.

Personally I don't see that it was Americanised at all, but I guess that's the view.

 

[JRoss]

See, now the original thread has been jacked away from its broad subject.

 

[Tom]

I dunno, you cant keep everyone happy it seems. A lot of people were not happy with RTD and some are not happy with Moffet. Moffet is more of grander overall story teller than RTD, yet RTD is much better with character writing IMO.