Logopolis and Steven Moffat

[publiusr]

I love that term "Emboitment." Right up there with calling the Tardis shell "continua."

 

[Timewalker]

Recently rewatched Logopolis and was struck by how Steven Moffat-y it was:
* paying off a vague arc in the season finale
* hints about future knowledge that don't quite make sense (like, what did the Watcher tell the Doctor to send him to Logopolis?)
* dropping said hints as soon as the story is over
* the first half of the story is spent preventing the Doctor from getting to the actual plot
* tying the regeneration into some kind of universe-level threat (to be fair, this is both Moffat and Davies)

Most importantly, I think: is Logopolis the first Doctor Who story to be completely about the show itself? By this, I mean, the Doctor usually stumbles into other peoples' stories: the Tribe of Gum trying to make fire, the Thals trying to survive in the woods, and so on.* But there's no story to Logopolis independent of the fight between the Doctor and the Master and the deepening of the mythology about the TARDISes. He doesn't interrupt someone else's story; from the beginning it's about the Doctor trying to better protect himself from the Master, and there would be no story if the Doctor didn't allow the Master to infiltrate Logopolis. It strikes me as very Moffat move: compare tales like "A Good Man Goes to War" or "The Big Bang" or "The Wedding of River Song."

* I guess Inside the Spaceship is an early exception to this.

There's Tegan's story. She and her Auntie Vanessa are on the way to Heathrow so Tegan can start her job as a stewardess, they get a flat tire, and Tegan goes into the TARDIS to phone for help, thinking it's an ordinary phone booth. While she's wandering around lost in the TARDIS, the Master kills Auntie Vanessa.

^ I can see that. What does strike me as Moffat-y is that the companions go through giant emotional traumas that no one ever mentions-- Davies would have made the whole thing about Nyssa/Tegan's feelings (on some level, at least

We do get to know their feelings. It's just not done in an overblown soap-opera way. Nyssa's father was murdered and her entire planet was destroyed, Tegan is grieving her aunt, and Adric is still grieving his brother Varsh at the end of Earthshock (the scene where he's holding the belt that was a gift from his brother).