I think what he meant, though, is that it's hardly a trait unique of Moffat. It seems most TV two-parters tend to be let-downs these days.
Moffat: The Whole Rotten Saga
- Thread starter TommyR01D
- Start date
These days? Let's be honest here, pound for pound the second part of a two-parter never quite living up to part one isn't exactly a new phenomenon is it? Go back 30 years and however much you love Best of Both Worlds Pt 2, does it live up to that cliff-hanger? Set up is often easier than resolution, in fact it'd be interesting to review all the NuWho 2 parters and work out how many of them were perceived as let downs (irrespective of author)
Might be easier to work out which ones weren't let downs. My first thought would be "The Family of Blood" which was the second part to "Human Nature"
When I say his cliffhanger resolutions are weak, what I'm talking about specifically is his habit of starting part 2 with a scene that has nothing to do with how part 1 ends. I used Heaven Sent/Hell Bent as an example, but there are others, and not just in Doctor Who. He's been doing it as far back as Silence in the Library and The Pandorica Opens. Now in those cases I think it works alright, but then he did it a bit too often. And you could say the same about a lot of his tricks. They work well the first time, but then he doesn't know when to stop and find something new.
Oh, well I won't argue that. What I was referring to is this which captainkirk elaborates on here:
The habit of starting Part 2 off with a scene which does not really have anything or at least much to do with how Part 1 ends. That's a trend I'm noticing in many TV shows these days.
Not having watched much modern TV I haven't noticed it as much. The main example outside of DW I can think of is season 2 episode 7 of Stranger Things.
They do it a lot on The Walking Dead. It's nothing to have the next episode start in a way that seems completely unrelated to how the previous one ended. The resolution to the heavily publicised cliffhanger season 6 ended on doesn't even happen until about ten or fifteen minutes into the season 7 premiere. Sometimes you have to wait two-to-three episodes later for the cliffhanger an episode ends on to even be addressed. Then there was the infamous dumpster cliffhanger which they managed to avoid for four episodes or so.
I don't mind holding off on it a bit, I really hate cliffhangers that are resolved in the first few seconds of the episode, but sometimes it seems that the writers just like screwing around with the viewers.
Then there's just the general trend of starting-with-the-end. Battlestar Galactica did it a lot, because it worked well in a season one episode, it became their go-to desperation move in the second half of season two if they were worried an episode wasn't starting with enough excitement. Then they realized they'd gone to the well too often and stopped (personally, while I don't think it made a big difference either way for most of the episodes, aside from being annoying since it wasn't dramatically motivated, I think "Scar" would've been much better if it'd just been told linearly).
I feel that "Hell Bent" isn't a great example for criticizing that trope, since there's a good reason to set it up that way. "Heaven Sent" ends with a big moment of the Doctor back on Gallifrey, but it's also too big and too open-ended (imagine if the episode just started with him walking up to the barn and then making some soup). Aside from the framing story allowing the Doctor to narrate and give some life to the early sequences, there's the fact that storytelling on a base level is about asking and answering questions. "What happened next?" is the most basic one, but it's not very engaging. "Hell Bent" gives us a much better one than what we were left with (namely, "Now what?"), with the question of why the Doctor and Clara are acting like they don't know each other. It narrows down the ways the story can go out of a nearly infinite set of options, without actually giving away anything.
Ah, ok. Agreed.
I notice a common complaint about Moffat's companions not feeling as "human" as RTD's because we rarely (if ever) see their families.
Okay, but they also "conveniently" forget that RTD used the same trope for his companions three times (overbearing mother, absent/dead father, their home life sucks, their jobs go nowhere)
Okay, but they also "conveniently" forget that RTD used the same trope for his companions three times (overbearing mother, absent/dead father, their home life sucks, their jobs go nowhere)
To be fair, the only reason Donna had a dead father was because the actor actually died during filming of Partners in Crime.
The irony is the Doctor is basically the family in the Moff era, and we do see Amy’s Family, once she has ‘remembered’ them. The Tardis team is the family, and that’s more traditional.
Aces Mum predates her offscreen xD
I don't know how common that complaint is. This is literally the first time I have ever heard it.
I loved not seeing families. I hated Martha's family, especially her asshole mother, and Rose's Mom was usually annoying. Outside of River Song being related to Amy/Rory, families of companions have never really worked (in my opinion) in NuWho.
Families don't bother me. It's always the execution of it.
We saw Rory's dad. He was great fun.
I forgot about Rory's Dad. he was fine. But, generally speaking, I dislike the NuWho approach of "Companion as main character". I'm here to watch a show called Doctor Who, and I want the show to focus on The Doctor. Not completely ignore the companion of course, but at this point I'm tired of The Doctor playing second fiddle to random person from present day earth #132489 (and I say that as someone whose favorite companions are Amy and Rory).
That said, as long as we don't get another Clara I'll deal with the companions getting a bit too much focus. No more impossible girl bullshit or anything like that is what I consider my bare minimum requirement from nuWho companions at this point.
While i didn't quite like Jackie, her dynamic with Rose was important, I think, as it gave some needed new dimensions to the companion dynamic that was previously not that explored in OldWho. It said that companions could be like regular people, and enforced the idea that anyone could be a companion.
Martha's family was never really explored beyond Smith & Jones, though.
Martha's family was never really explored beyond Smith & Jones, though.
