Monthly Archives: September 2012

In the event that I write about Doctor Who on this blog, usually I’m complaining about something. That goes double since around 2010; I’ve made no secret of my dislike for the show’s direction under its current creative team.

The weirdest thing, though — some of the least offensive, by which I mean at least moderately creative, episodes are by writers who have in the past done little but annoy me. “The Lodger” and its slightly less successful sequel are the best things that Gareth Roberts has written for the show. Whereas MacRae’s 2006 Cyberman story was a big waste of time, “The Girl Who Waited” is probably one of the best episodes of the revived show. And now there’s the curious case of Chris Chibnall.

I have no doubt that I have written of him, or more specifically my views on his writing, before. I have said that he doesn’t seem to have an original thought in his head; that all he seems capable of is digesting other people’s work and then rearranging it in a less interesting or meaningful configuration. I also have said that, as with Gareth Roberts, all he seems to have to discuss as a writer is his affinity for other TV writing. He’s a professional fan, basically, let loose in a toy store with the full range of action figures. The result is some of the most abominable writing in Doctor Who’s history, by which I include the first two years of Torchwood.

So what do I make of this year’s crop of episodes? So far we’ve got one of Moffat’s worst scripts yet, and the worst of Toby Whithouse — one of the show’s least outstanding writers in any respect. Someone on a message board described his writing as painfully functional. I can be no more eloquent. Next week we’ve another Moffat script that promises more than I have faith in the writer to deliver. Interspersed amongst these dubious fruits are two Chibnall episodes, which it turns out are the highlights of the run.

I didn’t really comment on “Dinosaurs On a Spaceship”; it didn’t compel me to say much. It was adequate, which for Chibnall is an achievement. Considering its writer, and all of its associated problems in tone and pitch — the testicle jokes, the gun cocking, the pointless and wasted supporting characters — it is a great compliment to say that I didn’t hate it. The good parts — the gormless family member, the total rotter of a villain — were largely borrowed, and possibly successful for reasons outside the script itself, yet they did work. I also enjoyed a few things that almost suggested thought or imagination, such as the idea of Silurian arks launched way back in Earth’s history, when most of the race went into a deep sleep.

Then there was the Doctor’s reaction to the villain — actually, their whole dynamic throughout the episode. The Doctor can be ruthless, and when he is, then he just is. Where lesser writers like Whithouse (and increasingly, Moffat) go on about how old the Doctor is, how tired and bitter he feels, and how he’s capable of doing anything, writers like Davies just let him go merrily about his way until he stumbles across something that offends him — which he then steamrolls without a second thought. See Eccleston’s response to Cassandra in “The End of the World”; he sees that she is irredeemable, so he has no compunction about letting her explode.

Though there is reason to his response, it’s moments like this that make the character dangerous and unsettling — as he has been since the days of Hartnell nearly bashing in that caveman’s head with a rock. The Doctor is not a heroic figure; he’s a man who stumbles into situations that demand his involvement, often just to extricate himself. Often if he does good, it’s a side effect of his basic efforts to survive. He does have a deep moral core (at least, ever since Barbara drilled it into him), but it tends to take a passive role in his decisions. Actually, his most radical or startling decisions are often his most passive. Here as in many 20th century stories that escape me in the early morning, he simply allows things to happen. He lets the villain die. He watches it happen, then he turns his back and forgets all about it. All continues as normal. Which is all the more disturbing.

It’s curious that Chibnall is the one current writer who seems to get this part of the character, considering his previous record for character and motivation. Right now everyone else seems to write him as an ineffectual braggart, quick to threaten people on the basis of his reputation and slow to actually follow through.

So, that was a decent episode. Certainly Chibnall’s best script to date. And then there was yesterday, and “The Power of Three”…

Okay, parts of it are derivative. You can’t get around that with Chibnall. In basic shape and detail you could easily rebuild the script from pieces of “The Lodger”, “The Christmas Invasion”, “Army of Ghosts”, and “Children of Earth” — all Davies scripts, you will notice, except for the first one, itself a surprisingly original episode by a writer previously distinguished by his poor imitation of Russel T Davies. Also, the supposed “A” story — the invasion plot — doesn’t really hold together and is very rushed toward the end. After the basic idea is established, the script glosses over most of the development and resolution.

Otherwise — well, look at that. Chibnall is turning into a real writer now. I realize that I sound patronizing; instead of justifying it, let’s change the channel and throw him a real compliment. Out of the Moffat era there are really only about four episodes that stand out to me as exceptional. Preliminary to a second viewing, I’ll say that this makes five. There’s a level of ambition and a degree of awareness here that I have to respect.

The key moment for me is where the cubes cease to be a novelty, and the episode traces out the extent to which people have begun to take them for granted — using them as paperweights, as table decorations; filling the trash with them. The concept of the slow invasion is fine; it’s the kind of thing a person might think up on the toilet and think it sounds amazing. What impresses me is the extent to which Chibnall thought out its logistics and ramifications, in particular the human response. It’s maybe a small thing, but for a writer like Chibnall this awareness of human nature signals a big change. For once, here, he actually is writing about something. He has something to say. And it’s kind of interesting.

There are lots of other nice touches. I like the basic structure where the front-window story is actually just a backdrop to or catalyst for the real discussion — that of the Ponds and the consequences of living with the Doctor. Or more often, waiting for him. Or more rather, waiting for him to disrupt their lives. Or even more, putting their lives on hold because they never know when he will show up to disrupt things again.

Again we have some deeper thoughts and something approaching insight — in this case specifically about Moffat’s pre-established characters and their make believe world, but again filtered through and then reflecting observation about human nature and what I like to call the General Way of Things.

So, I don’t know how to get out of this discussion. Remember how I said that even the most dire of things are better than mediocre, as at least they provide something to think about? I’m starting to think that there is an added dimension in there somewhere. Something about great things having the potential to be awful and awful things having the potential to be great, but the mundane being beyond dynamic range and therefore beyond help. Five to seven years ago, Moffat had great things to say and Chibnall was a blight on the show. Now the positions look like they’re slowly flipping. Meanwhile writers like Whithouse just grind around in the dust, never bad enough to fail and never good enough to succeed.

This is about as tedious as the show has been since its return. Even very bad episodes can be entertaining in their way. Toby Whithouse… God, does he ever make a surprising or difficult decision? On purpose, I mean?

It’s not just that the plot is obvious, though that’s certainly true. It’s that it’s written on the most dim, simplistic level I can imagine and treats the platitudes that take the guise of themes as if they are deep and meaningful insight.

I mean, hell. Amy actually says (in whatever phrasing the script uses) “No, don’t kill him; you need to be better than he is!” As if there were the slightest concern that this would actually happen — which is another problem. Nearly every dramatic moment falls flat because there is nothing to back it up. There is no real peril, and the one casualty — the sheriff — just feels arbitrary. It looks like we’re meant to mourn his loss, but we’re never given anything about him except that he seemed to be a pretty good guy, and his death doesn’t come out of any kind of tragedy; it comes out of his arbitrarily throwing himself in front of a gun because That’s What People Do at moments like this in scripts like this.

Things happen not out of actual character or thematic development, but because those are The Things That Happen in scripts like this. People do things not because they actually make sense given their personalities and the present circumstances but because those are The Things That People Do in scripts like this. Dramatic situations arise not through the natural clash of characters and contextual conflicts, but through the insertion of stock dramatic concepts that the writer felt that the script should exhibit. And having made that decision, he didn’t — you know — try to integrate the concepts and explore them in an organic way; he spelled them out verbatim, as if he were actively leafing through his screenwriting 101 textbook. “Aha!” Whithouse yelped. “I will use that one!”

The end effect is that the plotting is obvious. Sure. Who cares; most plotting is. Who cares about plot anyway. What’s insulting is the presentation of all of this facile, half-assed, superficial garbage as something meaningful and original. It’s transparent. It’s cloying. It’s vapid. And the fact that this is essentially a kids’ show makes it even worse, as children’s entertainment should be better than this. It’s so insulting to fob off the kids on any old piece of shit because, hey, they don’t know any better. It’s so insulting. And the thing is, if kids know one thing they know when they’re being talked down to. Usually better than adults.

Under Davies (and nearly any previous era), even at the show’s most daft or bizarre I always felt that there was something of substance underneath. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures explored difficult, even painful concepts in terms that children could understand. To contrast, what is the takeaway from Whithouse’s writing? That… what, people aren’t always all bad or all good? That sometimes they have two stark, diametrically opposed aspects to them? Brilliant insight, there.

It’s a totally reasonable theme, but a theme like that needs more than lip service for it to carry more weight than a fortune cookie. The way that it’s handled here is so simplistic as to be ridiculous, and thereby — in this context — to render the question risible. There’s no gray at all, in a scenario that connotes an infinite monochrome spectrum.

It’s so weird. It’s like Whithouse took the yin yang absolutely at face value. Characters can be a mix of black AND white!

Something odd, and to me suggestive: just a few years ago one of Davies’ scripts made a really big point about the precise definition of “decimate” — so why does Whithouse make a reasonably big point of using it incorrectly? Unless by “decimating half the planet” he meant killing off 5% of the population.

It’s not just recent continuity, of course; the script also seems to forget its own premises, so it keeps boring us with scenes like the one where the Gunslinger storms into the crowded saloon and stomps around, assessing the townspeople. Is there supposed to be tension in that scene? We (again) know he’s not going to do anything, so why does it take so long?

For me another problem is that the script gives Rory almost nothing to do. Considering that he’s the only thing that I really enjoy about the show right now and that he’s going to be gone in two weeks, that kind of annoyed me. It’s just one more waste among many.

So. As usual for Whithouse, that was a tired lump of facile storytelling bulwarked by trite platitudes presented as sober insight — this time, infused with clumsy Holmesian pastiche.

Not terrible, but pretty boring. Actually a little insulting. Someone I know commented that until this series they never understood why people classed Doctor Who as a kids’ show. That’s about right.