anedumacation:
shaelephant replied to your post: shewalkslikethunder replied to your post: ugh the…
you have to admit, though. rtd actually paid attention to the emotional impact of events on his characters. the way i see it, we’ve breezed on through 2 seasons of amy pond not getting the chance to respond to everything that’s happened to her.
oh my lord, he paid too much attention to the emotional impact of events on his characters. Ten, in particular. Bad things happened to him, very bad things happened to him, but he went off the fucking rails in the last few specials. And his constant moping about, staring into space like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his back…. yes, it was great character development. And David Tennant is affecting, and he played it all brilliantly. It was heavy as hell. And they had the space to play around with it, because the plot was so thin, practically non-existent, because RTD simply didn’t care about any details that were not related to the emotional space of his main characters. Everything else fell by the wayside, and he always had ample space to fill it all up with the soap opera.
I’ll grant you that each runner’s focus was different; RTD focused almost exclusively on character development — but Moffat tried to do everything; plot and character and world-building and interesting villains and timey wimey and big conspiracies and large arcs and small arcs.
Moffat’s failing is that he tried to do too much. I think where he really fails is the fact that he has a major case of J.J. Abrams syndrom — he asks HUGE questions, and bluffs in order to cover the fact up that he doesn’t actually have the answers. Or, when the answers are given, they’re always less interesting than the question. (I still think the River Song reveal was pitch perfect — everything that came after that, very anticlimactic, and the finale was a blatant disappointment).
Characterization did fall by the wayside, because there simply wasn’t as much room devoted to Amy and Rory’s story, after the mid-season reveal. The Ponds became less and less important; their presence became about the Doctor’s internal struggle over keeping his companions safe (which, again, is a rather boring Who-trope). The Doctor’s anxiety about River and his impending death is what takes center stage. That’s one of the problems with season six; it stopped being the companion’s story, and the Doctor became caught up with problems of a non-human nature.
But as to the criticisms that Amy’s character in particular was shafted because she never had time or space to deal with the loss of her child….
People react to trauma in different ways. Amy didn’t even know she was pregnant, for most of that period she was locked up. Amy thought she was out there with the Doctor and Rory, having adventures. Amy didn’t have any sort of chance to bond with her kid. Amy lost her baby, but then her baby was right there in front of her, a grown woman, holding her hand. It was all very confusing, and I honestly think there are a number of ways a woman could react to this sort of thing. Amy reacted with anger, and she wants nothing more than to fight. She’s not a very emotional person, she doesn’t really know how to feel sad, the way others do; she is action and goal-oriented. She loves and protects her family fiercely, and she’s very, very strong. Rose, or Martha, or even Donna would have reacted differently, but I don’t think Amy in the second half of season six was OOC.
Basically: Doctor Who is a science fiction television show. It deals with time travel. Television shows that have time travel built into the narrative device have a fucking moral duty to be interesting with how they use time travel.
RTD never made use of timey wimey. Moffat did. I greatly appreciate it.
what you have to consider, though, is exactly what narrative ideals are important to you. this is the way i see it. doctor who, among everything else, is at its core very much a story about heroism and what it means. there are a myriad of angles with which to approach this theme, and both moffat and rtd have made use of it in differing ways. the journey of so many companions from “ordinary people” to defenders of the universe, the idea that as the last of his kind the doctor has nothing but his own moral compass with which to direct his actions, the immensely, horrifyingly difficult decisions made when someone is given the power to be important. and to me, this theme needs to be relevant for everyone in the show. it’s what makes it so evocative. an alien looks over the human race without question or hesitation and the same humans give back to him by making sure he doesn’t overextend his authority. we see it happen a few times at least; while accepting his hero status and doing what he can to make the universe better, is still knocked down a few pegs by human beings whenever he might begin to get too cocky.
when davies writes about the doctor, as i discussed before, he doesn’t forget the emotional importance of the people who surround him. you’re very right in saying that his weak point is spending too much time here (even i with all my ten love get aggravated with his drawn out regeneration). but spending a great deal of time in his story arcs ensuring that the companions are an integral part of the show’s function is important because it levels emotional impact on the viewer that might otherwise go unnoticed. the doctor brings about change and improvements to their lives and spirits, and in turn they keep him in check. donna is a perfect example, and is one of the reasons why i love her story so much. i had a friend once who talked with me about relationships in doctor who, how they don’t follow typical standards and oftentimes exist without labels. people are important to each other, but it’s for far more relevant reasons than simply being a significant other or acquaintance. together, the doctor and donna are best friends, bickering siblings, two halves of the same whole.
wilf says it best. “she was better with you.” the particular phrasing of this line has always struck me. if it had been worded “you made her better,” it would have been something i might expect from a lesser show, one without respect paid to every character. it would imply saviorhood on the part of the doctor rather than equal status. instead, wilf tells the doctor that donna was better simply by being with him and he was better for being with her. i’d take a risk and say that this kind of acknowledgement isn’t commonly found with the doctor. like you said, he spends a great deal of time worrying about how to keep his human counterparts safe, but throughout rtd’s run, he begins to truly understand the fantastic nature and skills of humans. and i just wish they’d run with that a bit more. for donna, he did what all true important people do for each other in their lives; he opened doors for her that wouldn’t have been opened, he helped her to see facets of herself that she might not have otherwise experienced, but he did so without being a god. one of my favorite moments is when the doctor really does realize who donna is under all her shouting, that she really does believe she’s not worth it. for a whole season, we have followed the two of them and see the profound effect they have on one another as an audience. one might think a time lord would be observant of this. but no, the doctor’s frame of reference is too large to understand simple human-being armor. so he has managed to work through donna’s tough exterior to solidify her confidence without even noticing it. and when he does notice it, he doesn’t view it as weakness, he views it as vital. i feel like this is lost somewhat when we get to amy, and rory, especially.
davies’ who is a show with countless levels of emotional intimacy, most of which don’t fit into the cultural labels we expect from relationships. we have companions who lead their own storylines, sometimes not even related to the doctor’s at all. we have moments in which the doctor believes all is lost and these humans, these seemingly insignificant humans, are what keep him from giving up or giving in. they are the humans responsible for keeping him alive. and they are heroes in their own definition, as well. rose is the defender of the earth. martha jones walked around the world in the year that never was, telling everyone the story of the doctor so he could be remembered. donna noble, the doctor donna, was the most important woman in the whole wide universe. and these things are accepted unquestionably. davies allows the doctor to be stunned by the brilliance of his followers and unafraid to admit that they are his peers rather than lesser beings. they have gut instinct that he will never possess, no matter how brilliant his brain is. and he knows well enough to step back and let them be glorious, because it’s what they deserve for all the help they’ve ever given to him. there is a clear give-and-take relationship, and it reminds us that heroes are not constructed from people larger-than-life and grandiose but by real human goodness. and that, to me, is a hugely relevant message in doctor who.
i could, and have at some point, written endlessly more paragraphs on how this idea of human heroism is so appealing to me and so important to my stance as a who audience member. but basically, my problem with moffat’s doctor is this. moffat has a big writer-boner for how invincible the doctor is. his relationship with his companions morphs into something created to mirror his brilliance. they follow him loyally but we never see direct evidence of his impact on their lives that makes him deserving of their hero worship at all. amy’s childhood is essentially emotionally devastated by the doctor. even amy’s romantic entanglements revolve entirely around the doctor. amy and rory are so different from, say, mickey and rose. while rose started her journey still attached to mickey, it was clear from the start that he wasn’t what she needed or wanted, and letting him go was a large step forward for her. amy and rory’s relationship is presented as something timeless. something so important and vital to their lives that it is undeniable. and yet they still need to explore the idea that she might have a romantic attraction for the doctor? there’s no solid footing in this idea, and psychologically it doesn’t make much sense to me. then, amy lives out thousands of years inside a locked box, unconscious. rory waits for her to emerge, never faltering in his duties, assisting the very person who has kept the love of his life away from him for so long. why do they do this? we don’t know. we can’t see why because it’s never been illustrated to us why the doctor is deserving of this loyalty in relation to these characters. we don’t know enough about amy circumstantially to even begin to understand why the doctor is so important to her. all we’ve seen him give to her is dysfunction and instability. and yet somehow it takes rory waiting centuries for her to hold a candle up to the fantasy who abandoned her in a vulnerable childhood moment. it doesn’t make emotional sense for her to feel indebted to him enough to sacrifice what she does, because we miss the part where the doctor gives her something important as well.
into series 6, this continues to happen. never before had i seen the doctor be this reckless with the emotions and needs of his counterparts. they operate in so many ways as pawns for him to emerge victorious and again and again be seen as a savior. seriously, rory dies, like, one million times. i know it’s a funny joke but it makes me so angry that his moments of badassery are so few and far between in comparison to the doctor’s. and it is so petty and immature that the doctor is so dismissive of his existence. it’s like amy pond is his plaything rather than his friend, and he’s a naughty child who doesn’t like to share. it’s taken me a long time to get used to a doctor with which i can no longer really feel a human emotional attachment. his childish egotism runs a bit unchecked, and is often lauded as being genius or intelligence, when in fact it is responsible for a huge amount of emotional damage done to his companions.
not to mention the fact that we lose the idea of the doctor’s relationships existing outside cultural specifications. we meet river song, a character with an immense amount of potential as an independent, and in the end, it turns out that amy’s, rory’s, and river’s lives are all inextricably wound around the fact that the doctor needs a wife in order to not die. everything that previously made river who she was; her pride in her degree in something the doctor finds trite, her own adventures as a time traveler, even her mysterious identity, are then used directly to prevent the doctor’s demise. this doctor who, again, we have yet to see do anything truly unselfish, as other doctors may have done. let’s look at it chronologically. river spent her entire childhood being brainwashed as a weapon against the doctor (for a war that still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me as an audience member), then she escapes and spends more of her life ensuring that her parents will be emotionally involved enough to get married and even produce her. she attends their wedding to present them with the notebook so the doctor can return. she does all this for the doctor. her narrative, and the narratives of her parents, are significant in the end only to save the doctor, because they converge on his death, his inability to accept it, and, in the end, how they keep him from harm. when i watch this show, i don’t see characters with agency and independent growth. i see characters being utilized as plot devices, and that’s so much less of an appealing show to me.
i think moffat essentially counts on the fact that his audience is going to hero-worship the doctor as much as necessary to make any of his plots important. they all, in the end, revolve around making sacrifices for the doctor to keep existing. in the beginning, the doctor wasn’t the only relevant soul in the universe. in the beginning, we remembered why the “little people” mattered, and deserved our kindness and compassion, and that was what made doctor who beautiful. we got to see humans like us encounter things we will never encounter and grow and change in definitively good ways as a result of their interactions with the mad man in the blue box. now, the humans in the storyline exist primarily as pedestals on which the doctor’s triumphs are glorified. and i love the doctor, but not enough that i want to watch a show in which he’s the only thing that matters to the story.
in short: rtd > moffat; see: donna noble.
(this is not to say that i’m not in love with all doctor who ever. because oh god oh god i am i just want to give them all hugs and snuggles and jelly babies but sometimes there are things that bother me.)
So this is…. wow. This is really good. And shit, you have some serious points about River.
I seriously, seriously disagree about Amy and Rory. Like, so much I can’t even. I need to write a post on that, after I have my tea.
I think that’s one of the problems with season six…. building the Doctor up to be a demi-god, and then not following through with the promise of that idea. We are told he’s important, and we are never shown why. Again, we all come into this show with certain biases, certain preferences — this bothers me a hell of a lot less than it bothers you — but gotta concede that point.
