Ah, this will be a well-reasoned and respectful response, I can tell.
If it gets the general mood across, why not.
No, we're suggesting Capaldi would have been better if Moffat had written him better, and not as an asshole. The Ninth Doctor's attitude towards Mickey was bad enough. Twelve's attitude towards Danny Pink was worse. Twelve has a few personality transplants after that, but they feel like abrupt changes rather than growth or development.
"You" lot then need to get the story straight. Its one thing if you find the development of the character not to your liking, its another to say that he was badly written, isn't it? Because I never got the impression that Peter Capaldi, comfortably the best actor to anchor the show ever, would perform such outrageously, by your writing, material without airing his share of input. But beyond that, nobody disputes Twelve was a difficult incarnation of the Doctor, not even me. You are arguing that he's a terribly written one, which is preposterous and not supported by either the actual writing or the actual performing.
So decide if what you actually dislike was the direction that Moffat and Capaldi took the Doctor in, or you just had enough (like A LOT of fans have had, and I should know cause I've been around) of his writing in general.
Dark Water/Death in Heaven was a nonsensical mess of pure fantasy with some revelations about how death and the afterlife work in the Doctor Who universe that we'll probably never hear about again.
Except its git emotional depth, a powerful dynamic between the Doctor and Clara with notably their most iconic confrontation in the former, and its bold exploration of death, identity, and morality encapsulate Moffat's fantastical take (which, hilariously, is a lot less pronounced than its been in Matt Smith's first season) with the dread and foreboding of the Base under Siege era. It features strong performances (notably by Capaldi and Michelle Gomez), a chilling twist with the Cybermen, and a morally complex finale that challenges the Doctor’s ideals. Is it perfect? Frankly no - the Cyber Brigadier is a bit much - but its still an emotionally notable one that tries to explore a Doctor who's just come to terms with his own Time War by, literally, embracing his soldier self and finalizing his long journey to becoming the Doctor as he once was (until of course, RTD2 decided that he still needed a LONG therapy time-out with Donna, but that's another story).
Kill the Moon was also pure fantasy with an obvious abortion subtext that seemed to surprise its creators when people commented on it.
Because, clearly, the creators didn't intend for it. To put it this way: it was not written with the subtext in mind, or the consciousness to address the said issue, even if the said issue fits it as an interpretative translation of the text. The fact, however, that you still latch on the abortion reading (which I never had, btw) despite knowing its not the definitive, or indeed the intended one says much more about you than about the episode or its creators.
The Capaldi era's nosedive in the ratings has been attributed to young fangirls missing Matt Smith, but the way the Doctor and his stories were written seem likely to have been a factor as well.
While the first half is undeniably true (and the secret sub-reason the show's just not been as popular as when Tennant/Smith were starring in it) but the second remark conjecture at best, like much of your facile and perfunctory remarks about series 8 (and only series 8, mind)
For most of the first two seasons, what Chibnall was offering was a series of largely standalone Doctor Who stories that weren't part of some timey-wimey arc. It was going back to an older approach in Doctor Who storytelling, where you're getting a complete story this week and then it's another one next week.
But none of that equates to either an improvement or a detriment, at the face of it. Whether you liked the story arcs on NuWho or not, the fact of the matter is that those arcs largely operated on a level that delivered the desired result. Unlike, say, the RTD2 finales, which feel like they were undercooked and needed a firmer rewrite to get both the messages across and improve on the pacing and character dynamics better, the Moffat finales of the Capaldi era were consciously character-driven pieces based on the Doctor's pure devotion and frankly love for the people his travels with, and Clara more than anyone else. BEYOND that even, the real issue with Chibbie's era is that the standalone nature of it was not the issue - but the overcrowding of the TARDIS, the mixed messaging of several episodes, and the genuine sense of a lack of direction other than, as season 12 proved, of the ultimate fanwank reveal, makes the era as vacuous and insipid as the combined Eric Saward era - and even then, we got stories like
Kinda,
Enlightenment, Caves of Androzani, Vengeance on Varos and even the multi-Doctor specials, stories that tried to do something without confessing to the showrunner's creatively bankrupt vision for the show ("my idea of Doctor is, I want to make the Morbius Doctor canon, and Doctor Who as the God of All Things!!")
So spare me your sanctimonuous preaching about the "bad writing" of Moffat's era, which was so ahead of what was coming, he actually mocked
The Timeless Children before it was even made in
Hell Bent, which makes the episode all the more heartfelt and special.
Flux was obviously different, but due to Covid, the Flux we got wasn't the Flux Chibnall originally planned. He had to deal with the kind of behind the scenes crisis that Moffat and Davies never encountered, so it's not surprising it was a mess.
Its funny how, unlike Moffat in the above instance, you have been more forgiving AND given more leeway to Chibster, despite the obvious fact that even under the best of conditions Flux would still have had made as much sense (which is very little) and worked exactly as it did.
By my estimation, the only production that was severely hindered by any meaningful way was the Sea Devils one, as I can't imagine wanting to make such a dreck and not work on almost any level.
Moffat making fun of lore is an interesting perspective, considering he built a lot of it.
But he didn't add lore for the sake of it, like Chippie did. If he'd had Clara just be present in the barn in
Listen and just bluntly told him to not to worry, fear is normal, bye, taht'd be one thing. What Moffat did do, though, was have Clara instill the Doctor the comfort that being afraiid and always listening is not only okay, but is a vital source of strength, something to overcome and become at and with. Moffat takes lore and uses as a backdrop for character stuff, which is what you're missing because, like most fans (including myself at the time), we thought the Doctor coming back to Gallifrey was gonna be this monumental event. After all, Moffat himself set it up in Day of the Doctor's final scene - the journey home, the long way round. We might even see the Doctor repeat the scene from
Day of the Doctor! But Moffat also realizes that the essential problem with lore is that just fan-tastic and not very interesting. He would probably look at Ian Levine's reconstructions of
The Eight Doctors or his fan-fic recreation of
Yellow Fever and shudder and groan relentlessly. Because he realizes deep down that lore is meaningles without a strong foundational character dynamic to drive it. So yeah, the Hybrid arc is window dressing. Its decidedly pointless, because it means nothing to the Doctor. It means a lot to the Time Lords, and they're the stand-ins of fandom and lore fanatics who want to know more about the Doctor's past. Not the Doctor though - all he wants is to reset his grief, and save Clara for his own selfish reason. The story then becomes the toxicity of the Doctor and his love for his companion, which is again, something that I can say about
Hell Bent and not about Flux or, in fact,
The Power of the Doctor.
I was reading the thread on "
How Would You End Doctor Who for Good," and after sitting with it and thinking for ten, fifteen minutes, I decided, with both reluctance and certainty, that "The Big Bang" -- yes, the finale to Series 5 -- was the perfect ending for
Doctor Who. Oh, I'd miss a lot that came after it, like Capaldi, like "Day of the Doctor," but had
Doctor Who ended with Amy remembering the Doctor back into existence, I would have been content. And then maybe around now, the BBC would have found some new producer to give the concept a refresh and a new life.
While I basically agree with the notion, I however am of the stance that the Doctor's story, practically, never end. We never saw his journey start, after all. Why should we see it end?
I'm not Steve, but yes, I think Capaldi would have better off without Series 8 or 9.
Disagreement #1.
And Smith would have been better off without Series 6 and 7.
Disagreement #2
That's not to say that there aren't good moments in those series, because there are, and I would miss them. I'd miss Danny Pink. I would miss "The Name of the Doctor." But these series are less than the sum of their parts. Back in 2013, The Atlantic argued that the wrong man was leaving in "The Time of the Doctor" -- Smith instead of Moffat -- and I can't disagree. I think of the argument I've made about Moftis' (Gatfat's?) Sherlock a number of times -- it would have been a brilliant one-series-and-done, I'd think of what might have been had it gone only two series, but after three I no longer cared, and after four any affection I might have had burned on a pyre. Moffat can make a great first album, and after that is a series of difficult second albums, and thirds, and fourths....
Suffice to say, and I can't say strongly enough, but I vehemently disagree. While I do feel series 7 was his lowest ebb by far, and his creative juices, concept-wise, peaked on a season-arc scale in series 6 (nobody in the world could write that series' arc other than Moffat, and the only one who could've done it better is Lawrence Miles), I nevertheless consider Moffat's fine tuning to DW to a fantastical take (the Eleventh Doctor will never not be the "fairytale Doctor") to be an original and important take for a show that went on for so long that gradually became an insitutional show for the BBC and UK in general. Basically, yes, I do think his best strenghts outweigh his nefarious shortcomings (which do include a lack of commitment to long-form story-based arcing, flippancy of tone, etc) because those strengths emboldened the show in a genuinely exciting direction. It was a genuinely time when Moffat was showrunner, even when we didn't always agree with his choices, but I always knew to give things time to see if they can work in the long run, and Moffat's does. 100%
she was always, effortlessly Doctor-ish.
Whereas, I feel, she rarely ever was. She was never disappointing but she was always lacking, and I feel it was not until
War of the Sontarans that all the stars aligned and finally had the script, actor and everything else finally finessed to a point where her Doctor *clicked* in a real, meaningful way.
I think I get what Chibnall was going for -- his era feels very CW, very Berlantiverse to me and targetted at that audience -- and it generally works for me in that way, but I can see how that wouldn't work for a lot of people.
No offense, but that's about the worst example imagineable. The Berlantiverse, as a whole, is a bunch of garbage. And even I wouldn't go that far to call Chibnall's DW that offensively stupid or idiotic.
My genuine impression of the Chibnall has been of a funsy-type procedural in space and time with the Doctor and her friends as a kind of British, posh version of "Scooby Doo and friends" but without any jokes..
Moffat seems to have conceived of the twelfth Doctor as the New Adventures Doctor, a manipulative and dangerous asshole. (Series 8 makes a ton of sense viewed through the NA prism.) Capaldi seems to have conceived of the twelfth Doctor as "Matt Smith but old," and eventually Capaldi was able to bring Moffat around, but it took time.
I actually agree with all of that (especially since I started reading the NA and they're daaark). He's basically the Sixth Doctor if he was written consistently and constatnly by the Virgin Publishing bookline.
