Russell T Davies yes/no
- Thread starter Bones2
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Some people decry Russell T. Davies' script writing from around Series 3 onwards as degenerating into unsubtle fanwank and felt that Tennant Doctor went into character development stasis. What do you think? RTD was always a fanboy writer (Meet the Dalek Emperor! Daleks vs. Cybermen!), which both led to great initial success but kinda made him lazy/overconfident by the time of Series 4, but there has been no genuine damage to popularity of the series. I'm not sure about the Tennant Doctor being stagnant, but Tom Baker famously outstayed his welcome by 1980.
The Doctors been around since 1963. What's left to develop?
I think that, when we die, every whiny fanboy complaining about the guy in charge of the TV show he professes to love goes to a special purgatory where he gets kicked in the crotch a couple of times by John Nathan-Turner.
You know, Matt Smith pulled that off with such fun glibness that I'll let it pass. Although, the story is kinda muddled by the conflicting time travel logic. You've got both mutable & immutable timeline aspects. River knows the Doctor from a series of meetings that they haven't had yet. This works great as a predestination paradox. Yet, at the same time, the Doctor can be in danger of being removed from history before the point where River met him. So the Doctor can witness the results of future events that may never happen.
I think that, when we die, every whiny fanboy complaining about the guy in charge of the TV show he professes to love goes to a special purgatory where he gets kicked in the crotch a couple of times by John Nathan-Turner.
Which is why I tend to stay positive. The stories have to be pretty stanky before I'll bitch about it. Cuz hey, you never know.
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My own personal tally:
Rose - yes
The End of the World - yes
Aliens of London/World War Three - no
The Long Game - yes
Boom Town - no
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways - yes
The Christmas Invasion - no
New Earth - yes
Tooth and Claw - yes
Love and Monsters - no
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday - no
The Runaway Bride - no
Smith and Jones - yes
Gridlock - yes
Utopia - yes
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords - yes
Voyage of the Damned - no
Partners in Crime - yes
Midnight - yes
Turn Left - no
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End - no
The Next Doctor - no
Planet of the Dead - yes
The Waters of Mars - yes
The End of Time - no
So out of 25 RTD stories, I liked 14. I thought it would be less than that until I ran down the list.
Rose - yes
The End of the World - yes
Aliens of London/World War Three - no
The Long Game - yes
Boom Town - no
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways - yes
The Christmas Invasion - no
New Earth - yes
Tooth and Claw - yes
Love and Monsters - no
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday - no
The Runaway Bride - no
Smith and Jones - yes
Gridlock - yes
Utopia - yes
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords - yes
Voyage of the Damned - no
Partners in Crime - yes
Midnight - yes
Turn Left - no
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End - no
The Next Doctor - no
Planet of the Dead - yes
The Waters of Mars - yes
The End of Time - no
So out of 25 RTD stories, I liked 14. I thought it would be less than that until I ran down the list.
I think that, when we die, every whiny fanboy complaining about the guy in charge of the TV show he professes to love goes to a special purgatory where he gets kicked in the crotch a couple of times by John Nathan-Turner.
Which is why I tend to stay positive. The stories have to be pretty stanky before I'll bitch about it. Cuz hey, you knever know.
I think what's funny about this is that if it were true one day RTD and Moffat will probably both get the crotch treatment as I get the impression both have been whiny fanboys in their day
Frankly, I would think the very concept of the regeneration would lend itself to character development, since no two Doctors are exactly alike. There will be commonalities sure, but their primary personality characteristics tend to be quite different than the predecessor (and there are so many more than 12 personalities in the history of mankind).
Yeah but essentially its the same man, so you can't vary his personality too much, it's a fine line to do something different yet for it clearly to be the same man, but they've managed it on every occasion (imo) even Doctor's I'm not fond of are clearly still The Doctor.
They're all clearly still The Doctor, which is the point -- there can be a lot of variety in one person, but regeneration is a way of exploring that variety. The Sixth Doctor is quite different from the Eighth or Tenth Doctors, for example. The show would have ended in the 60s if Troughton's Doctor couldn't sell such a radical departure from Hartnell's Doctor to the audience.
I never said Moffat was a Knight in Shining Armor. Ever.
I have felt nothing for Amy, Rory, River or Eleven. That isn't to say I wasn't entertained, I just felt a cold lack of attachment to the characters (or lack thereof). Eventually by the end I was not entertained and was determined to find out why. Which is why I've settled on my conclusion that Moffat's Who is lacking in humanity.
Amy is not as well realized or written as Rose, Mickey, Donna, Martha or Wilf were. Amy is not like anyone I know. Amy is repeatedly acting contrary to the best interests of the only character the audience is given to relate to: Rory.
To say that RTD's who lacked emotional maturity as The did isn't enough to merit a counterargument. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's immature. I think that a lot of what RTD wrote in DW has kind of gone unremarked by fans on message boards such as these. Wheras Moffat hasn't really written about things that affect real people thus far in Series 5. A Christmas Carol is the only story that ever really explored a character, and even then I felt it was fascile and superficial.
RTD gave us people who couldn't make rent, families that were divorced, unemployed protagonists, people who wanted to be in love but were victims of broken hearts. In short, real people. And these were not limited to the companions. RTD was such a good writer, I could tell you what Tish Jones' motivation was in The Lazarus Experiment but couldn't even tell you what Amy's Aunt whats-her-name was after in The Big Bang. The reason is because . . .
Moffat is only concerned with twists. The Eleventh Hour was good but TWIST Little Amelia is now Amy.
Twist: The Pandorica is a prison.
Twist: Amy is in the Pandorica, not the Doctor
Twist: Rory's an Auton
Twist: Starship UK is a Space Whale
The twist was great in The Empty Child when you had a mother accept responsibility. Or in The Girl in the Fireplace when The Doctor was thought he found someone who understood him only to lose her. Also in Silence in the Library when a future version of himself enabled him to save everyone through data ghosts. But there were real characters and real emotions that stood out in these episodes and I watch weekly to feel something again. I hope I do next Series.
That's not necessarily the show's failing.
Surely this is one of the most useless posts ever contributed to Internet discussion. How does it lead to productive to discussion to suggest that if there's an aspect of a show one doesn't like, then there's something wrong with the viewer? Okay, discussion over.
Since I'm a fan of the show, and trying to rationalize WHY I do not feel, empathize or sympathize with these characters it would be more constructive to tell me why I should? I think I've articulated as best I can why I think I feel nothing for them when I felt gobs for Moffat's characters when RTD was the producer.
Ok!!! Next discussion. What do you think is The Doctor's favourite Cheese??
Hmm, interesting. See in many respects I find Amy more real than Rose because she does act contrary to the best interests of Rory, because that's what real people do. Too often RTD defined people's personalities less by who they were, than by events around them. Hence Rose's personality is that she lost her dad, has an embarrassing mother and a loser boyfriend. One thing that always annoyed me about RTD was his character short hand, hence when Martha came along what did we have, again, a character with an overprotective mother and a useless/vacant dad, and whilst the death of the actor who played Donna's dad was obviously never part of the plan, clearly we, again, have a character with an overprotective mother and from what I recall of The Runaway Bride a henpecked mouse of a husband. And then there's Maria in Sarah Jane who, oh look yet again has an overbearing, embarrassing mother (although credit to RTD he at least gave her a dad who wasn't an idiot for once) then Maria was replaced with Rani (overbearing, embarrassing mother). Of course Clyde's mum is surprisingly normal, but he does have an absent father...
I'm not necessarily claiming that Moffat is that much better at developing character, but he does at least show rather than tell, RTD just isn't subtle enough for me so his characters too often come off as caricatures hitting you over the head with their 'personality' which too often is just their back story. Contrast Amy with Rose, both are affected by events in their past, but whilst with Rose that seems all there is to her, Amy is more layered, the career choice, the flirtiness, the inability to commit to a man we know she loves. and let’s be honest here, in terms of which character feels more real, for an adult woman Amy's attempt to jump the Doctor's bones is far more real than Rose or Martha's 12 year old's sexless puppy love for the Doctor.
RTD does have his moments, whilst Love and Monsters is incredibly flawed, RTD's writing of Jackie in that episode is brilliant, and for the first time she actually becomes a real person, not a caricature, similarly with Wilf in the End of Time (before then, as great as Cribbens is, all he is is friendly old granddad) but too often its all just a bunch of cardboard cutouts wandering around whilst Murray Gold tells me what to feel.
And sometimes that’s good. Tennant’s goodbye made me tear up, but so did Eleven’s quiet goodbye to Amy when he was sat in the Pandorica, or him sitting my little Amelia’s bed saying another goodbye a few minutes later.
Really the attitude of the two men to writing characters is the same as them writing anything else, RTD is often too simplistic and obvious, Moffat is often too subtle and overcomplicated.
I'd go for the opposite there - Rose seemed to be genuinely and realistically selfish. She always had in mind going to see her Dad, her reaction to Mickey joining them at the end of School Reunion etc. I wasn't a huge Rose fan and was glad to see the back of her but I could see the good and bad in her.
Amy is like no one I've ever met or want to meet. She's treats Rory like dirt to the point that when we do see them together it's not believable at all and she seems to spend most of her time sulking or shouting. Yes she's actually sexual which is a first on Who but the jumping on the Doctor stuff just seems crass and tiresome because she's so unpleasant the rest of the time.
She would probably work well as a character on Coupling but on Who she's just a pain.
I would agree that RTD writes a lot of Mothers and doesn't seem to want to write Dad's - which is something we see in his non Who writing as well. Whether that is partly due to the loss of his own Mother I don't know.
Amy is like no one I've ever met or want to meet. She's treats Rory like dirt to the point that when we do see them together it's not believable at all and she seems to spend most of her time sulking or shouting. Yes she's actually sexual which is a first on Who but the jumping on the Doctor stuff just seems crass and tiresome because she's so unpleasant the rest of the time.
She would probably work well as a character on Coupling but on Who she's just a pain.
I would agree that RTD writes a lot of Mothers and doesn't seem to want to write Dad's - which is something we see in his non Who writing as well. Whether that is partly due to the loss of his own Mother I don't know.
I know someone like Amy, strangely she's Scottish too!
I can see that Amy is unpleasant some of the time, but not all the time, and sometimes she can be sweet/thoughtful. I suspect she treats Rory like dirt because he secretly likes it that way!
rose wasn't even consistant. One minute she's jealous of Sarah Jane and of Mickey joining them, the very next episode she barely seems ruffled by the fact that the Doctor is actually in love with somone else. (That's probably Moffat's fault however!)
I can see that Amy is unpleasant some of the time, but not all the time, and sometimes she can be sweet/thoughtful. I suspect she treats Rory like dirt because he secretly likes it that way!
rose wasn't even consistant. One minute she's jealous of Sarah Jane and of Mickey joining them, the very next episode she barely seems ruffled by the fact that the Doctor is actually in love with somone else. (That's probably Moffat's fault however!)
That's got to be one of the best, most precise critiques you have ever written. Flawless. Couldn't agree more on each and every point. Very well done!
