Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Series

[Mr Awe]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

For example, In the Rings of Akhaten, a monster the size of the sun is defeated by showing it a leaf. From an emotional perspective this makes sense -- the lost life of Clara's mother is important to our characters. However, from a logical perspective, it's completely nonsensical. Most Fairy Tales operate the same way -- they make no god damn sense, but the problems and solutions, insane as they are, serve the moral tale.

I haven't read the article but agree with above representation. That's one thing I really dislike about modern Who, both RTD and Moffat.

For instance, I hate the magical endings such the one we just got in Time of the Doctor where the regeneration energy obtained by Clara talking to the crack just resolved everything!

Mr Awe

 

[Photoman15]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

I hate that the companion is part time. The Doctor picks her (them) up, has an adventure, drops them off home. All the companions from the beginning up to Donna stayed in the Tardis. Amy (and then Amy & Rory) did until the end of season 6. Until that garbage stops, you won't get companion character development as before.

 

[RoJoHen]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

I hate that the companion is part time. The Doctor picks her (them) up, has an adventure, drops them off home. All the companions from the beginning up to Donna stayed in the Tardis. Amy (and then Amy & Rory) did until the end of season 6. Until that garbage stops, you won't get companion character development as before.

I think the Doctor is doing this intentionally in an attempt to "save" Clara. He's tired of losing people. If he has an adventure and then takes them home, he feels better knowing that they're safe.

 

[DWF]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

I hate that the companion is part time. The Doctor picks her (them) up, has an adventure, drops them off home. All the companions from the beginning up to Donna stayed in the Tardis. Amy (and then Amy & Rory) did until the end of season 6. Until that garbage stops, you won't get companion character development as before.

Moffat IMO seems to misunderstand the idea behind a companion, they're meant to be us the audience, by taking the companions out of the Doctor's day to day life it takes us out it as well.

 

[DWF]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Double post.

 

[Skellington]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Ooh, "‘good at it’ is the enemy in the end." I like that.

I'm wondering if the new Doctor's evident memory loss is more than the kind of post-regenerative temporary amnesia we've seen before.

You forget that Capaldi was seen in the anniversary special and he did seem to know to pilot the TARDIS, so I'd say it's only temporary.

All of them seemed to know how to pilot it.

--> Capaldi's first line in 2014 could be "Only kidding! I'll have us out of this in a jiffy!".

Memory loss could be part of the reason for Moffat putting him on Trenzalore for 900 years, though. The new Doctor could be in a position of having to pretty much relearn everything from scratch, meaning that the series has undergone a reboot of sorts (and that, regardless of the new life-cycle, this Doctor may be a bit more vulnerable).

 

[Christopher]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

And obviously we don't know how far in Capaldi's subjective future that scene from "Day of..." will fall. It could be years or decades later, from his perspective, than the scene we saw on Christmas Day.

 

[Mr Light]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

I would be interested to see a Doctor who lost most of his memories and abilities, where Clara is the authority figure.

 

[Tom]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

New Direction! That's must mean Moffat is quitting! Then again...maybe not.. oh well lol

 

[Starkers]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

I hate that the companion is part time. The Doctor picks her (them) up, has an adventure, drops them off home. All the companions from the beginning up to Donna stayed in the Tardis. Amy (and then Amy & Rory) did until the end of season 6. Until that garbage stops, you won't get companion character development as before.

Cough: Tegan: Cough (plus Liz, Jo for a while and probably Sarah Jane and Harry during the UNIT period)

To be honest the notion that the Doctor drops his companions off and picks them up again makes more sense than them staying in the Tardis all the time? I mean the point of having a vehicle that can go anywhere and anywhen in space and time surely means that picking them up and dropping them off is completely logical.

Frankly I never like the notion we had with both Rose and Donna that they imagined they were going to travel forever with the Doctor, I didn’t find it remotely believable. I think the majority of people would either want to travel part time over a long period, or else would quickly get weary of the Doctor’s life and want to settle down have a life/raise a family etc.

Personally I preferred it when people travelling with the Doctor had no choice because either he couldn’t get them back (Ian/Barbara, Tegan) or else they had nowhere to go back to (Nyssa).

The trouble these days (under both RTD and Moffat) is that it’s so easy to go back to a companion that you have to actually engineer some ultimate reason why they have to leave. Whilst I think at times companions were too disposable in the classic era, sometimes I think modern Who’s gone too far the other way, and Martha aside no one just says “You know what, Doctor, I’ve had enough.”

 

[Mr Light]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Didn't the Classic Companions usually join because they were ostracized from their society for helping the Doctor, or their family was killed, or things like that? Like Leela or Adric or Nyssa?

 

[Christopher]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

To be honest the notion that the Doctor drops his companions off and picks them up again makes more sense than them staying in the Tardis all the time? I mean the point of having a vehicle that can go anywhere and anywhen in space and time surely means that picking them up and dropping them off is completely logical.

If you know how to steer it.

The trouble these days (under both RTD and Moffat) is that it’s so easy to go back to a companion that you have to actually engineer some ultimate reason why they have to leave.

The problem with the Ponds is that Moffat came up with a perfectly plausible character-based reason for them to part with the Doctor -- they were growing up, moving on with their lives, and he didn't fit with them anymore -- and then reversed it for about two weeks and tacked on the completely ridiculous "I can never visit you at any point in the remaining decades of your lives in the New York of the past" thing. It was so totally unnecessary.

Didn't the Classic Companions usually join because they were ostracized from their society for helping the Doctor, or their family was killed, or things like that? Like Leela or Adric or Nyssa?

Well, let's see.

Susan: Fled Gallifrey with him.
Ian, Barbara: Swept away by accident.
Vicki: Orphaned, nowhere else to go.
Steven: About equal parts accident and refugee.
Katarina: Refugee.
Sara: Ostracized/nowhere else to go.
Dodo, Ben, Polly: Accident.
Jamie: Fugitive/invited along.
Victoria: Orphaned/invited.
Zoe: Volunteer.
Liz: Never traveled in TARDIS.
Jo: Assigned assistant.
Sarah Jane: Accident at first, later voluntary.
Harry: Invited on brief jaunt, gets stuck aboard for a while.
Leela: Volunteer.
K9: Adopted with consent of original owner.
Romana: Assigned by White Guardian.
Adric: Stows away to see the universe.
Tegan: Accident.
Nyssa: Refugee.
Turlough: Volunteer (with ulterior motive); later, outcast.
Kamelion: Refugee of sorts.
Peri: Volunteer.
Mel: Unknown.
Ace: Volunteer.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Moffat IMO seems to misunderstand the idea behind a companion, they're meant to be us the audience, by taking the companions out of the Doctor's day to day life it takes us out it as well.

I think Moffat's companions fit his vision of using them as a proxy for the audience just fine. Picking them up every week from their everyday lives and whisking them off on some adventure is just what we do when we tune in for a new episode.

We don't know what the Doctor is up to between adventures; by dropping them off, his eccentricities and oddball experiences become more acceptable (i.e. remain bewildering) to a companion if they AREN'T day-to-day for them. Plus, as has already been mentioned it keeps them from getting too clingy, which the Smith Doctor certainly didn't want to happen.

Mark

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Weekend companions serve another function. They allow the Doctor to age on a time Lord scale in between. He is away for decades at times between visits from his perspective.
Having a normal aging human along ALL the time pretty much results in him burning through all his regenerations in a couple of decades at best.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Having a normal aging human along ALL the time pretty much results in him burning through all his regenerations in a couple of decades at best.

True -- especially in the early seasons when there was no in-story gap between one serial and the next. There are really very few periods in the original series where the Doctor could've had decades' or centuries' worth of adventures between times when he was with normal-aging human companions. Let's see, there would be:

• "Season 6B" between "The War Games" and "Spearhead from Space," if you accept its reality
• Between "The Green Death" and "The Time Warrior," perhaps, although in this period he tended to return to UNIT pretty regularly between trips "abroad"
• Between "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Face of Evil"
• Between "The Invasion of Time" and "The Ribos Operation"
• During his travels with Romana #2 (since the Key to Time missions were presumably consecutive)
• Between "The Ultimate Foe" and whenever he met Mel for the first time from her perspective
• Between whenever Ace left and the TV movie
• Between the TV movie and "The Night of the Doctor"

Let's see, I said "the original series," didn't I? I'm already well past that, so I'll stop there.

 

[Skellington]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Weekend companions serve another function. They allow the Doctor to age on a time Lord scale in between. He is away for decades at times between visits from his perspective.
Having a normal aging human along ALL the time pretty much results in him burning through all his regenerations in a couple of decades at best.

Those pesky humans are the kiss of death, aren't they?

 

[bigdaddy]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

I hope the series goes into a new direction. Like RTD or not, at least his stories were easy to follow. In the Moffat Era, we've had 3 seasons of this over arcing narrative which was hard to follow and the long breaks didn't help. There was some good material in the last few years, but most of it was a mess.

I have no clue what you re talking about. I understand the show perfectly fine. RTD storminess made very little sense. They had this loose build up to a finale and then the finale was a horrible mess.

Moffat has fix the mess that DW had become by the time RTD left. It's time for another change, but still I rather watch Moffat DW than RTD any day.

 

[davejames]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

As much as I really loved Moffat's wacky fairytale style (and thought it was a perfect fit for Smith's wacky fairytale Doctor), I do think it's probably time for a shift back to something a bit more serious and adult.

And no, that would not be the RTD style. His tone was just about as goofy and cartoonish as Moffat's, with the only difference being that the writing was a lot more straightforward (and a lot less clever).

What I want is a return of the mystery and moodiness of the early black and white years, where the characters would actually take their time to explore a place, and where the Doctor didn't need to talk a mile a minute or make a witty remark every 5 seconds.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

A happy Eccleston-esque Doctor, Mark II. Except not so PTSD moody. Inasmuch as Tennant and Smith were cut from similar cloth (whether purposefully or not), Eccleston nailed what a "more serious Doctor" should be, IMO. If there's any of that cloth left, Capaldi can easily take some into his interpretation. In 2013 Capaldi was in a Leonardo da Vinci biography and was incredible to watch - I know he'll be amazing and surprise us all regardless.

A commonly-seen sig tag here compares our three nuWho doctors to a Tiger, Tigger, and an uncoordinated housecat. Capaldi's skill as an actor means he can be, and IMO should be, a frickin' rampant lion.

Mark

 

[Starkers]

Re: Steven Moffat Talks About The "Raw", "New Direction" For The Serie

Something akin to Nine would be great, Eccleston played it spot on for me, veering effortlessly between joyful, scared (a shame all Doctors aren't that scared of a single Dalek) dark, funny, serious...he was a lot quirkier than people remember as well, not Ten/Eleven quirky, but he wasn't remotely as serious as people had expected him to be.

Nine with less angst would suit me fine. Given I believe Pertwee is his favourite Doctor however we may see something akin to the third.