Moffatt and his vision.....

[Admiral_Young]

I'm loving what Moffat has been doing but I too feel like there is something missing here...something that was here during RTD's era but not with Moffat. I can't quite put my finger on it but I understand what you guys are all saying. Perhaps we're still just adjusting to the change over? This is quite different from RTD/Tennant. In tone and structure.

 

[Starkers]

I'm loving what Moffat has been doing but I too feel like there is something missing here...something that was here during RTD's era but not with Moffat. I can't quite put my finger on it but I understand what you guys are all saying. Perhaps we're still just adjusting to the change over? This is quite different from RTD/Tennant. In tone and structure.

It's definitely missing the bright loud in your faceness of the RTD era, but that isn't neccesarily a bad thing.

I think it is just as simple as a different show runner and a different star. I'm still glad Moffat is in charge, and I have no major problem with the direction the show's going, as Bob said earlier though, I kinda fear he's being too clever for his own good at times, and I'm not sure he's making it for the 8 year old inside everyone anymore.

But by the same token I wouldn't have wanted the show to carry on in the same vein as the RTD/Tennant years, so this just may be my inability to be truly happy with a tv show

 

[Blamo]

RTD's era was generally a fun brainless romp of the comic strip variety, with good characterisation but very thin on story and plot.

Moffat's era generally tries to be a bit more clever, with more story and plot, but less the characterisation (though it's vastly improved this series).

 

[Jax]

RTD's era was generally a fun brainless romp of the comic strip variety, with good characterisation but very thin on story and plot.

Moffat's era generally tries to be a bit more clever, with more story and plot, but less the characterisation (though it's vastly improved this series).

We seem to have a fanbase war brewing between this new story driven long term arcs and those who want a story of the week, easy to pick up character driven style with a soft arc built in.

I wonder will Moffat call it a day after 2011 or go on for one more year since I reckon Smith will leave in 2012.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Moffat will stay on as long as the BBC is content with what he's doing. That's my take.

 

[Jax]

Moffat will stay on as long as the BBC is content with what he's doing. That's my take.

Part of me only wants one more season from him so he can produce a longer Sherlock season

 

[intrinsical]

Between the time shifts, warp speed plot development and long multi-season story arcs, I find that it's way too easy to for me as an audience to loose the plot.

Heck, I don't have answers to simple questions like "Is Rory still made of plastic with a gun in his hand?"

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ He's human now

 

[Candlelight]

It feels like it has something to do with pacing issues, or it might be characterization issues....but that seems so surface, and I can't help but feel there's something underneath, something fundamental, that's bothering me....except I can't figure out what it is.

For some reason, I find myself actually not caring during most of these episodes. Now, I've been watching Doctor Who faithfully all my life...

My point is, I have no problem with change. I've embraced the show in most of its different guises over four decades. But somehow, since Moffat has taken over, I can't help but feel that something basic has altered, and it's putting me off, somehow, and I can't articulate to myself what's missing.

I'm in the same boat, then again I started to lose interest during Tennant's final full season.

I don't mind Smith, but he's not my favourite either. The stories haven't been engaging enough. The cliffhanger to The Pandorica Opens was silly - of course he'll get out, of course he'll reset time. It was a foregone conclusion.

Some theorize, the little girl in the Space suit is the one who killed the Doctor. When I saw the Impossible Astronaut the second time, it felt very much like it was intentional to get the Doctor to regenerate, so that essence could be shared with the executor. If this is so, it wouldn't neccessarilly be out of the blue that the little girl regenerated.

Some theorize that the little girl could be River and the Doctor's child (or some anomaly created by the Tardis for Timey-Wimey-ness). Again if this turns out to be true, the little girl regenerating doesn't come out of the blue.

Or the Doctor himself, who somehow becomes a girl and shoots himself, then smiles as (s)he regenerates. Back into the 11th Doctor.

OK I haven't really thought it through very well.

Between the time shifts, warp speed plot development and long multi-season story arcs, I find that it's way too easy to for me as an audience to loose the plot.

This is one thing that I know bugs me. I was very disappointed that the Silence arc wasn't wrapped up in Season Five. The show works really well with season-by-season storytelling. Spanning seasons and you start getting into different territory.

Just once I'd love to see one season with 13 separate stories.

 

[JoeZhang]

RTD's era was generally a fun brainless romp of the comic strip variety, with good characterisation but very thin on story and plot.

Moffat's era generally tries to be a bit more clever, with more story and plot, but less the characterisation (though it's vastly improved this series).

We seem to have a fanbase war brewing between this new story driven long term arcs and those who want a story of the week, easy to pick up character driven style with a soft arc built in.

I wonder will Moffat call it a day after 2011 or go on for one more year since I reckon Smith will leave in 2012.

I think there is a third position here - I like what he's doing but equally I realise that my friends and family and people who don't want to draw charts of River Song's timeline and simply want some light easy to follow Saturday night viewing are a bit baffled and bored by it. RTD's stuff wasn't particularly interesting to me but it has an emotional connection to the mainstream audience that I think Moffatt's stuff lacks. I'm starting to think that his era will be one that is looked by on as being "for fans".

 

[Starkers]

It's a shame we can't have elements of both really.

 

[Icemizer]

It is always difficult to gauge a change. Todays viewing audience is used to things being tied up in an hour with maybe one or rarely two things left over for the next episode. Reality shows, Cop shows, Comedies, all these are like reading a magazine. Its quick and you get everything you need to know and you can move on. The last two seasons of Who from Moffatt have been like a novel. Each episode is a chapter revealing more information. I would love to see his outline for the whole season to see how deeply he has plotted out all the small points we keep noticing.
Did the Doctor lie when he said he was 1103?(Rule number 1 the Doctor lies) What did he mean when he said he had been running faster than ever before? And from what? and on and on.
I think we are getting away from wacky wizard in a blue box who travels in time and has adventures to something much more interesting.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

It's a shame we can't have elements of both really.

I think it's a bit unfair. We do have elements of both, in my opinion. Moffat is the one who brought us a Christmas fairytale with flying fishes, a Doctor Who sitcom called The Lodger, a heartbreaking episode with Vincent Van Gogh, romance, catchphrases, a marriage, vampires, and, apparently, pirates.

Doctor Who is still being made with a large audience in mind, even if the raw science-fiction elements and ongoing plot threads seem to be used more prominently than they used to be.

I think the problem has nothing to do with that, actually. The problem is Matt Smith, whom, as far as I'm concerned, is the best actor to play the role since Patrick Troughton. But his Doctor is not the romantic time-travelling protagonist played by Eccleston and Tennant. He's a bit weird, a bit off, a little more alien than the ninth and tenth incarnations, and less likely to take centre stage and be the action hero. He's secretive, he's a bit of a geek and he's a team player. That's an unlikely combination for a main character.

I think that's why it's a little more difficult to relate to the show right now. We've got Space Gandalf, whom we like but can't really understand. We've got Amy, who's basically "the girl you cannot have". And we've got Rory, who is us, and would be the most natural choice to be the focus character in the series right now, but he's not, for some reason. So we're lost.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ That's a great post.

 

[Ubik]

It's a shame we can't have elements of both really.

I think it's a bit unfair. We do have elements of both, in my opinion. Moffat is the one who brought us a Christmas fairytale with flying fishes, a Doctor Who sitcom called The Lodger, a heartbreaking episode with Vincent Van Gogh, romance, catchphrases, a marriage, vampires, and, apparently, pirates.

Doctor Who is still being made with a large audience in mind, even if the raw science-fiction elements and ongoing plot threads seem to be used more prominently than they used to be.

I think the problem has nothing to do with that, actually. The problem is Matt Smith, whom, as far as I'm concerned, is the best actor to play the role since Patrick Troughton. But his Doctor is not the romantic time-travelling protagonist played by Eccleston and Tennant. He's a bit weird, a bit off, a little more alien than the ninth and tenth incarnations, and less likely to take centre stage and be the action hero. He's secretive, he's a bit of a geek and he's a team player. That's an unlikely combination for a main character.

I think that's why it's a little more difficult to relate to the show right now. We've got Space Gandalf, whom we like but can't really understand. We've got Amy, who's basically "the girl you cannot have". And we've got Rory, who is us, and would be the most natural choice to be the focus character in the series right now, but he's not, for some reason. So we're lost.

Very well-analyzed. I'm glad you said it, because I was going to - the problem I'm sensing from Moffat's Doctor Who has absolutely nothing to do with ongoing plot lines or complexity of plot. The first few seasons of Lost are brilliant, Deep Space Nine was brilliant, the first few seasons of X-Files were brilliant, and I'm a big fan of David Lynch's last two incomprehensible movies. No, having ongoing complicated plotlines does not cause a viewer to disinvest in the characters or the action (in fact, the success of Lost and X-Files would suggest it does precisely the opposite.)

Nor is this false binary at all useful: Moffat is complicated, Davies was simple. No way. There is nothing simple, or brainless, or empty, about Father's Day, Dalek, The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances, Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Impossible Planet, Gridlock, Human Nature, or Midnight. Those were all aired under Davies' watch, and they're fantastic episodes, with mature, adult themes.

No, I think what this last poster said is right - there is an inability to identify with any of the characters right now, and that's relatively unique in Doctor Who history (except for perhaps the awful pairing of the sixth Doctor and Peri.) This Doctor, while a very interesting and well-performed character, is aloof, and distant, and weird, and we never know what he's thinking. That leaves us Amy, into whose mind we can also never enter, and Rory, who should now serve as us, but doesn't.

I think that problem is compounded by the fact that we are never sure where we are, time-wise. We miss months at a time with these characters, and so we don't feel connected with them. In order for all this time travel nonsense to work on us, we need to feel grounded at least with the characters. That's why Blink works - cause we love and care about Sally Sparrow. That's why Back to the Future 2 works - because we care about Doc and Marty. We as viewers are perfectly okay being confused or even lost, and we can wait whole seasons for questions and mysteries to be answered, provided we are at least grounded with characters we feel we know and care about. Mulder and Scully got us through the most frustrating mysteries in those first few seasons of X Files, and the wonderful cast of Lost got us through most of those seasons.

So, I think Moffat needs to let us into these characters' lives and minds and hearts a bit more, if he's going to get us to be willing to jump into all this craziness with him. Otherwise, we just feel indifferent. None of it feels real, or relevant to us.

 

[DAK]

Moffat is making the show grow up a bit and am all for it, real real complicated threads in one giant story arc. RTD did the same but Moffat is taking it to the next level no doubt.

This is exactly how I feel. I think we will have episodes that will work as stand alones, or not be "arc heavy", and I also think once the season finishes we'll look back on it as one hell of a story. There's only so much you can do in one 45 minute episode, and Moffat obviously has a much more epic story he wants to tell. I for one am very much looking forward to it.

 

[davejames]

I certainly felt a bit of that disconnect at the beginning of the previous series, but by this point I'm absolutely loving being in the company of these characters.

Even if we don't always know what they're thinking (like we usually could with Rose or Martha or Donna), these still feel like very human and relatable characters to me. Whether it's Rory's feelings of inadequacy or the excitement and thrill Amy clearly gets from being around the Doctor.

And yeah, the Doctor is wacky and strange and unpredictable, but he's also fun and intriguing as hell to watch-- which I think kind of sums up the Moffat years as a whole. We may be watching the show from a bit more of a distance than before now, but that's more than made up for by how incredibly inventive and twisty and fun to watch these stories ARE.

It's a tradeoff, and a bit of an adjustment, but I think it's a perfectly worthwhile one.

 

[Starkers]

Maybe we'd just be happier if River's name was a cunning anagram of I Am the Rani!

I still don't quite see how Rose/Martha etc had deeper characterisation than Amy and Rory but maybe that's just me.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Maybe we'd just be happier if River's name was a cunning anagram of I Am the Rani!

I still don't quite see how Rose/Martha etc had deeper characterisation than Amy and Rory but maybe that's just me.

I have no problem with the characterisation of any of the people on the show. In fact, as I said, last series was my favourite of the lot. I like the character work, the plots aren't difficult to follow, it's just this second part has really thrown me and felt really flimsy.

 

[Starkers]

I think I felt more like that about the first part, although the last few minutes of Day of the Moon might be swaying me somewhat!

I think Moffat, like RTD, has a tendency to not let plot logic get in the way of telling a good story, and neither man seems keen on giving us what we expect (neither of these things is inherently a bad thing, but the downside is on occasion they can be).

Also I think the split series this year seemed to have added hype and expectation to the show that maybe wasn't always there before. When there's 13 episodes in a row its easier to accept a few run of the mill episodes, but, even though the show will only be off air a couple of months, it feels like a short season now, like every episode has to be super dupa, has to be an EVENT, and they won't be.

Sad to say I'm not hugely looking forward to the pirate episode, I'm already looking beyond it to the Gaiman episode. Of course that said sometimes the episodes you don't expect to be brilliant turn out to be great (seriously aside from Moffat having written it, who expected Blink to be as good as it was?)

I think the show's lost some impetus with all the shifting around the last few years; we had the (not)specials year, then back to a 13 episode series, now we have the split series, the show just seems all over the place--and I do feel a hypocrite for saying this because I always argued that RTD's series were far too predictable, but we seem to have gone from too predicable to too unpredictable...

Now if anyone wants me I'm going to be sat in the chair that feels just right, eating the porriage that isn't too hot or too cold, and then I might have a nap in baby bear's bed...