moffat

Twelve Thoughts

  • Reading time:10 mins read

I’m staggering into well-trod ground here, I realize, but bear with me. I’m going to lay out a series of thoughts, and let’s see where they may lead.

Thought #1: Steven Moffat has been on a mission lately to wrap up dangling story threads, from River Song and her screwdriver to Simm’s regeneration into Gomez, to the “missing” regenerations between old series and new, to generally resetting the show to its factory settings (as well as that’s even a thing) for the next show-runner to make use of at will — putting Gallifrey back in the sky, putting the Doctor on the run, returning major foes to recurring status. Not all of these threads are his own; some, he inherited from Davies. Some predate Davies, to an extent. If there’s a loop to close, late-era Moffat has gone out of his way to close it.

Thought #2: Moffat also has gone out of his way to cater to Capaldi’s whims. Capaldi said over and over how much he’d like to face off against the Mondasian Cybermen; how if he was to go out, how great it would be to be done in by one of them. Moffat scoffed, and he scoffed. But, look what happened. He’s been sending the scripts (e.g., the upcoming special) past Capaldi for review, taking on board minor and major suggestions, and altering them accordingly. In turn, Capaldi, being a fan since the show’s beginning, has his share of suggestions — not all realistic, but many well-informed and well-intentioned.

Thought #3: In wrapping up his era — in fact, the whole “revival” era of Doctor Who — Moffat is not only returning the show to its factory settings. He’s bringing Capaldi back to his own first memories of the show. Capaldi gets his own Mondasian Cybermen, which is fine — and then as he denies his regeneration he’s transported back to the Doctor’s first encounter with those same Cybermen, which is in turn the Doctor’s first regeneration. Dramatically, this is some good stuff: some by-the-book thematic mirroring, to draw clear metaphors and enhance semiotic coherence amongst far-flung events, creating a sense of epiphany and oneness. It’s kind of like Chekhov’s Gun, or advanced intercutting (a technique with which Moffat overtly experimented throughout series 8, e.g. in “Listen” and “Into the Dalek”), in terms of James Burke-ing a sense of holistic significance on the chaotic and often desperate causality that tends to define the show’s narrative.

Thought #4: Moffat not only hews to Capaldi’s whims; he also seems to take an impish glee in running with off-handed remarks that tickle him enough for Moffat to make mental notes, e.g. the Doctor’s electric guitar. There were no plans to insert an electric guitar into the show, but after the first series Moffat asked Capaldi what changes he’d like to see; Capaldi had no clue, so, being an ex punk rocker, he joked about putting a guitar amp in the console room. Of course that would be silly; he just didn’t didn’t know how to respond to the question, in that moment. So, for no reason other than to rise to the ridiculousness of the suggestion, Moffat did as he wasn’t really told. Likewise at a convention panel, in response to Moffat’s canned joke about Hartnell not returning his calls for the 50th anniversary special Capaldi fleetingly suggested they could have got David Bradley in. And Moffat had a Larry David moment, staring off into space and thinking, “Oh.” So, lo, William Hartnell’s impostor is the Fender Stratocaster of series 10.

Thought #5: There is one glaring, famous unresolved thread of continuity to this series that presents itself in every clip show, at the show’s every anniversary, that people tend to collectively pull up their collars and avoid mentioning, lest they stray into “Paul McGann is the Rani” territory. You just don’t go there, for some reason, like it’s an unwritten law. For someone of Moffat’s impulses and humor, that challenge must seem awfully tempting.

Thought #6: Moffat is not exactly known for the expansiveness of his toolbox. In Capaldi’s era he’s become more adept at using his few tricks more constructively to tell meaningful stories, as opposed to flashing them around at the audience to show how shiny his tools all are (see: the Matt Smith era). Still, his scripts are typified by a few concepts that he uses over and over again. For instance, out-of-sync relationships with extreme time gaps. We first see this with Reinette, where we meet her as a girl, then a few minutes later as an adult, then eventually the Doctor pauses too long yammering about the plot only to find her dead — that he just missed her by moments. The same concept is remixed a bit for River Song, is worked into a monster-based story for “Blink” (e.g., when Sally turns her back only for Kathy to turn up dead, her note for Sally as delivered by a relative echoing Reinette’s for the Doctor), becomes basically the entire basis for Amy Pond, nearly becomes Clara’s exit in “Last Christmas”, and has some of its final echoes in the way Capaldi’s Doctor misses Bill by just a few hours, as a result of getting distracted by exposition back at the top of the ship. Moffat has a half-dozen patterns that he uses over and over, but this one seems to be his favorite.

Thought #7: Earlier, between the filming of series 8 and 9, a certain actor from the show’s past visited the current production and was shown by Capaldi around the TARDIS set. He said to that actor, oh, you need to come back, seriously. Then he went to Moffat, and said, oh, Steven, wouldn’t it be great to see them back? Moffat gave a non-committal response, as one does to that luvvie nonsense. Yeah, sure. Everyone should come back. Put them all in a boat with a single oar, and see what happens. We’ll broadcast it exclusively in IMAX at 2 a.m. Apply in the affirmative; nod and smile; yes, of course, let’s do it. Now let’s move on.

Thought #8: As further evidenced by the selling point of the forthcoming Christmas special, Moffat sort of a has a thing for screwing around with Hartnell’s continuity. He’s had Clara visit the Doctor as a young boy, then several hundred years later shown a splinter of her interfere with the Doctor’s choice of an escape capsule. Outside of the modern era, there’s no other part of the classic series that Moffat has shown such a significant and repeated interest in reinterpreting. This interest is starting to border on an obsession, and considering that Moffat is now brazenly dancing into the events surrounding Hartnell’s regeneration — something already fairly well-documented if one ignores that the episode in question is in fact missing — one wonders how deep this obsession will go.

Thought #9: Throughout series 10 — and here, if you’ve somehow been glazed over with my argument so far, you should be ready to groan — the Doctor has two photographs on his desk, representing the painful dangling threads of his family. One of those, Moffat took the care to resolve two Christmases ago, so for us her portrait is more of a recent, rather warm, reminder — though for the Doctor it’s a certain recent and raw trauma, as obliquely addressed in his Missy flashbacks. The other portrait is the one we’re not supposed to talk about, lest we look like total loons. And yet there it is, receiving regular camera focus — a recent continuity reminder, sitting with equal status beside what we must interpret as another deep-dive continuity reference, of the sort the show seems to do more and more under Moffat (e.g., Hartnell’s face turning up on that dingy machine in “Vincent and the Doctor”). Which is fine. Though, the camera really does like to focus there.

Thought #10: It has become something of a modern series cliche at this point that at the moment of regeneration the Doctor revisits the companions of his recent past. David Tennant’s narcissistic Doctor claimed his “reward” by visiting every major companion of his era, including threatening to bring on a paradox by visiting Rose several months before she ever met him — or, rather, met his previous incarnation. Smith’s Doctor had his weird “Head Amy” moment while Clara stared on. The recent trailer confirmed that Pearl Mackie is making one last round this Christmas, despite apparently having left in the previous episode, and well-informed whispers suggest that her predecessor has also put in at least a cameo.

Thought #11: At the start of the recent trailer, we were graced with a tampered Hartnell quote. It wasn’t the quote, the quote that you’ll always expect someone to use, for instance at the start of The Five Doctors (the previous time that Hartnell’s Doctor was recast with a not-quite lookalike); it was a moment from Hartnell’s final serial, into the final moments of which Moffat has chosen to insert his own final script for the show — in much the way that Hartnell’s visage weirdly morphs into David Bradley, to misdeliver his last few words. The quote used for the trailer was appropriate for its provenance, and yet because of its positioning and because of the expectations set about by prior art, it is conspicuously not the quote that we’re looking for. If anything, it seems to undermine that expectation. To read in some possibly unwarranted motivation, almost to misdirect from that expected quote — and by so doing, to create a dissonance that sets up a certain subconscious expectation.

Thought #12: In the recent past, Moffat has shown great willingness to bring back old characters when it suits the story, and to totally refuse to unless it does. In the forthcoming special alone, we’re already bringing back the (recast) first Doctor, and — to enormous surprise — a recast Polly Wright in some capacity. Clearly bringing back the two of them suits the story that he wants to tell about Capaldi’s Doctor. About facing the regrets and the pain and exhaustion that prevent him from feeling entitled to, or even to want, redemption. It seems to me there’s one deep regret that the Doctor has never addressed, that his fourth and twelfth incarnations may both share with a similar (if in one case more present) ache. If the Doctor is going to move on, and unreservedly accept a new, unburdened life, it may be some therapy to release that pain.

All of which is to say, the Doctor never did come back, did he. At least, not in dramatic terms, in the primary continuity of the television show. He made a bad call, and he knows it, and he’s been avoiding it ever since.

And, all things considered, it seems to me this may at last be his moment of catharsis.

A Deeper Pool

  • Reading time:7 mins read

The biggest problem with New Who lies in the writers pool. With the exception of the two showrunners, few unusually talented or original writers return after writing one or two scripts. With the exception of the two showrunners, every writer who has contributed more than two scripts has demonstrated a talent somewhere between mediocre and diabolical. Many of those have improved over the years; since 2010 Gareth Roberts has shown competence bordering on genuine artistic value. With each script, Mark Gatiss grows less disposable. Others, like Toby Whithouse, seem unable to think in terms outside of a writer’s course he took fifteen years ago. (Yes, lad. You would make Robert McKee proud. You nailed every item on that list, and failed to fall down the stairs along the way. Good job.) Yet every time there’s a fresh voice, offering a life perspective outside of the experience of a middle-aged white male middle class sci-fi fan with few other interests, he delivers one script, maybe two, then vanishes forever. (And yes, it has always been a he. The only female writer to date was on the diabolical end, edging toward mediocrity, and she was at the time the show’s primary script editor — so not exactly an outside perspective.)

What was rather distressing is that prior to 2014 the number of new writers seemed to diminish with each passing year. Over Moffat’s tenure the cast of characters became even more entrenched than in Davies’ era. Aside from a few glorious (often celebrity) one-shots like Simon Nye (Amy’s Choice) and Richard Curtis (Vincent & the Doctor), mostly we just see the same few uninspired names over and over — sometimes growing and improving their craft, sometimes not so much. Series 6, the year of Moffat’s horrifying sci-fi rape plot, was where the situation became really clear: this show is no longer about new or novel perspectives on life. It’s about dumb sci-fi nerds, and what they think is cool or surprising. At that point that status quo wasn’t much better than videogame or American comic book fandom.

The second half of series seven was a little better, thanks to the deeply ingrained efforts of Neil Cross — whose other show, Luther, has never quite clicked with me, but it’s a hell of a lot more literate than Life on Mars or Being Human — but the show was still treading water, relying too much on familiarity and gimmickry.

Then came 2014, and the show became something else. Moffat seemed to clue up to all of his own bad habits and tackle them head-on. In the first half of the series he took an active role in co-writing most of the old guard’s scripts, all of which manage a refreshing layer of character or thematic resonance despite the familiar nuts-and-bolts story material underneath. In the second half, it’s all new guys — plus Moffat’s ballsiest story ever. Most of the scripts are brilliant. The ones that don’t work are at least brave. They go for something bizarre, and if they don’t nail it — well, okay. At least they use their premises to ask interesting questions, make unusual observations. Kill the Moon has the worst understanding of grade school physics that I’ve ever seen, to the point that it makes me a little angry to think about — yet the basic idea is so bewilderingly strange that I applaud the effort, and it contains a couple of the best individual dramatic character moments that the show has ever presented. Peter Harness needed an editorial pass from a third-grader, but fuck if he didn’t bring something new and useful to the show. Jamie Mathieson came straight from screen-adapting Douglas Adams to write two of the best episodes of 21st-century Who — one on the basis of good ideas well explored; the other on exquisite control of his craft. Frank Contrell Boyce wrote some of the most observant, believable lines given to a child character in a TV show. If he also failed basic physics, he at least did it in the name of (seemingly sincere) poetry.

So, we now seem to know the script roster for 2015. It’s all two-parters this year, which means six stories of 90 minutes in length. The first and last are by Moffat, naturally enough. On recent form, I figure he’s got things under control. We’ve got a two-parter by Whithouse, which… I hope will be enough to convince anyone that his biggest successes have been flukes due to factors outside his actual authorial value. There’s an apparent two-parter by Gatiss, which I actually anticipate — maybe with that amount of space he will be able to explore the nuances of his perspective rather than just wallow in nostalgia and hit plot points.

That leaves two out of six stories, four out of twelve episodes to fill. Well, we know that one of them is split peculiarly between a Mathieson/Moffat team and Catherine Tregenna — Mathieson of the two series 8 stunners, and Tregenna of the absolute best Torchwood episodes to lie outside of Children of Earth. That may sound like faint praise, but Out of Time and Captain Jack Harkness are truly lovely, nuanced scripts and the only times that the show actually lived up to its ostensible premise. I always wondered why she never graduated to the main show — and now she has, granted in a peculiar script arrangement. So this should be interesting.

Now we know the final author — and it’s our Moon Dragon Man. Peter Harness is back to alternately infuriate and inspire. Given the scope of his last script (in which the Moon is revealed as an egg — and then when it hatches, threatening the entire planet, the Doctor deliberately runs off to force Clara into deciding for herself how to handle the situation), I am curious what he will do with 90 minutes. This seems like an experiment worth undertaking. How whacked-out is this going to be, and how will it use that to explore characters and consequences? And how simultaneously unsubtle and confusing will its metaphors be, this time around? I don’t really like his last script, but I respect his voice — and I want to see more of it. It’s so strange, and what it lacks in logistical rigor it more than makes up for with human insight. Which is what the show has substantially lacked under Moffat, and up until last year.

So, yes. This year looks like it will be interesting. An experimental structure, which simultaneously brings us back to 20th century Who and offers a chance for unusual breadth and consequence and exploration of topics promised in the previous series, with its long lingering scenes and extended conversations, that thanks to its development environment 20th century Who mostly only hinted toward. We’ve got fewer writers than most years, yet a good balance of dull and pointed and more space for each to make its case, use its voice to do something distinctive. I know to only expect four episodes of tedium, and even then with all of the pressure of filling 90 minutes of screentime they can’t possibly be throwaway stories. So even that will be curious to see.

I’m with it. I think this will turn out well.

Cappin’ All Dese

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Rewatched Death in Heaven on the way to work. Enjoyed it even more the second time — though those last 15 minutes are interminable. And if there is a logic behind the bracelet and Danny’s last wish, the script makes no effort to establish it. I could do without that whole beat. It’s bad enough to nearly undermine the previous two episodes’ worth of loveliness. Nearly a Doctor Dobby/clap if you believe in David Tennant moment. But it’s small enough to mentally blink while it passes. Whatever.

Otherwise, this is probably the strongest series finale yet — both unto itself and as a conclusion to the previous eleven episodes of character and thematic development. For all its missteps, the show is working on another level now. Rather than glib and facile, it feels brave and confident — ready to use its format to explore notions outside itself, instead of spiraling into a shrinking well of self-recursion. I’m excited to see where it goes next, now that the transition is done.

Lord, I don’t know what Moffat was doing the last four years, but it looks like we’re out of the tunnel now. I’m still astonished how fresh this all feels, considering how much is built with familiar pieces, by familiar hands.

Clouds and Grenades

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Okay. That was way better than I expected. The resolution with the crying was… typical recent-era Moffat. Which is to say, disingenuously twee. Otherwise — well, hell. Way to step up your game, man. It feels like Moffat spent way more time on this script than any since the first two episodes of last year. And this may well be his best script of his era as showrunner, though I’d have to watch it again to make any conclusions.

Not going to recount everything good here. I will mention that subtle as they are, the changes to the theme are appreciated. I figure if they’re going to do an original take on the theme they might as well go for it and stop clinging to Ms. Derbyshire’s soundbank, and the main riff is finally distinct. I like its thin, fragile sound and the way that the notes pitch-decay after a phrase. It’s probably my favorite rendition of the theme since the show’s return — though I am fond of the final Davies-era theme, with its rockabilly overtones.

Conceptually the intro is the first with some actual thought behind it since the McCoy sequence. Recently the narrative has just been: 1) stock time tunnel effect; 2) stock CGI TARDIS model; 3) credits. Whatever you can achieve within those narrow conceptual boundaries and technical resources, it’s golden.

Here we don’t even see the TARDIS for most of the intro; we pull out of it at the beginning, and then we swoop into it again at the end. In between we’re dragged through various celestial phenomena — planets, galaxies, nebulae, plasma clouds. We get the current doctor’s face in the dust, then the voyage pulls to a halt with the logo — at which point the screen begins to spark and fizz, and explodes into a rather different and to my eyes more appropriate interpretation of the time tunnel. All plasma and distortion and so forth. Only there does the TARDIS reappear and pick us up again to continue the adventure.

In execution I still feel like I’m drowning in cheap Photoshop filters, as I have since the start of this series. There’s some ugly use of color, and the individual elements feel flimsy and incongruous. They’re just sort of thrown in there and don’t really cohere all that well. Still, there’s more to it than just the last-minute reuse of stock elements.

And yeah. Nice TARDIS interior. Unsure about the (literally) over-the-top Gallifreyan scripting, but whatever. Good to see they haven’t thrown out that bit of design, as I always rather liked it.

Overall — I guess I just appreciate how different the episode feels, while also being of an unusually high quality (for this era) in and of itself.

And yeah, I’m also curious as to why the Doctor only just seems to remember the Great Intelligence. Is this a reference to all of the deleted episodes from the 1960s? On a metatextual level am I to infer that when a Doctor Who episode is lost or destroyed, a bit of the Doctor’s history vanishes from his memory?

At first I thought I was missing something — that it had turned out that the GI that we know wasn’t behind this after all, and that this was just a random phenomenon masked by a familiar name. But… no, I guess this really is the Great Intelligence? And… well, I guess we’ll see what’s up. I like the idea of an origin story, though (if that’s what this is), and I like the idea of using the GI as a major recurring threat.

Post-credits, I was surprised how many good, original designs flashed by toward the end of the “coming soon” trailer. In broad visual concept that faceless toothy gentleman one has been done before; just in the revived series it’s similar to both the Silence and the Trickster, then there are things like Buffy and the Mouth of Sauron. Even so, hey. Nice variety. Combined with the preceding episode, I’m actually rather looking forward to the rest of the series — for the first time in a while!

In the Dollhouse

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Okay. Mark Gatiss is capable of writing an episode that I enjoy. So far so good for the second half, here. If Tom MacRae can impress me, and Gareth Roberts keeps up to his level last year, this last stint may well redeem the show for me.

Someone I know made the comment that this episode is more or less “Fear Her” done right. It also strikes me as Gatiss trying to do his own “Girl in the Fireplace” insofar as it boils down and narrates the show’s themes as a fairy tale from a child’s perspective. Also, the awkward porcelain-faced antagonists from a window reality. Considering “The Doctor’s Wife”, which was overtly a pastiche of “Fireplace”, I guess this year we’re seeing the Moffat Style Guide in full force.

Come to think of it, from a distance MacRae’s episode also seems to draw on Fireplace themes — popping into a girl’s life at various times, while she rapidly ages and confronts awkward… not porcelain but opaque white antagonists. Hmm.

As with last week very little here stands up to the slightest analysis. A logical breakdown seems beside the point of the episode, though. Smith is on the best form since “The Lodger”. Decent direction, though I could lose a few of the horizontal wipes.

Anyway. A weird sort of status quo, executed well.

Don’t Kick the Hive

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Rather than comment on the substance of Moffat’s mid-season finale, I’m going to dwell on a minor detail from the introduction.

In Doctor Who terms, the Cybermen are in principle my favorite recurring foe. Their only problem is that no writer has used them particularly well. Often, particularly from 1975 on, the Cybermen are used as random monsters. They stomp around and proclaim and try to conquer, and then the Doctor defeats them using their one weakness. They’re silver men who are allergic to gold. That’s their thing.

It’s only in the 1960s that the writing much tries to speak to the actual themes or dilemmas that the Cybermen represent. Of those stories, Tomb of the Cybermen probably comes the closest. The set design establishes an ominous atmosphere. The Cybermen are portrayed as something horrible looming just out of reach, if you’re foolish enough to bother them. Kick the hive and you get what’s coming to you. They take you and doom you to the same perpetual undying that you have disturbed.

The Cybermen are unknowable, and to even try to know them is dangerous. Best just leave them to their devices and hope that they don’t become aware of you.

The other good example is perhaps more controversial. Although the script and costume design are both ridiculous and tawdry, the Torchwood episode “Cyberwoman” actually hits more thematic targets than any other televised Cyberman story. It focuses on the psychological and body horror of conversion, and portrays the Cybermen as an infection. You can contain it, and that’s fine, but if it spreads then good luck trying to stop it.

Outside of these two examples, and a few clumsy examples of lip service here and there, the thematic and conceptual elements of Cybermen are largely neglected — that is, until 2010.

I am supremely bored with Steven Moffat’s version of Doctor Who. I just — I’m ready to give up on it. The biggest highlights so far have been his two brief sequences with the Cybermen — first in the 2010 finale and then in the opening to this past Saturday’s episode. Each of those examples is more of a setpiece than a real scene, and the Cybermen serve no important story value, but each is amongst the most effective uses of the Cybermen since the 1960s.

Moffat’s Cybermen feel more themselves than they have done since 1968 or so. These are quiet, reserved planners who can be reasoned with only when it comes to survival of the group.

There’s always been something a bit sad about Cybermen, and that comes up here. Granted they’re probably up to no good, but in this story the Cybermen are more or less minding their own business, observing a portion of space, when Rory barges into their hive, kicks it apart, and demands information that they had no use for in the first place.

By Rory’s standards the Cybermen aren’t really worthy of individual consideration, and that probably goes for them, too. They’re just collectors — of information, of hardware, of drones. They don’t even appreciate what they collect; they just soak up all that they touch. Everything is a piece of the collective. To extract anything from that collection means threatening the whole. There’s no other circumstance where they’d let a piece go.

Properly portrayed, Cybermen are a little pathetic and desperate yet simultaneously resilient. The whole is so very hungry for survival, but the pieces are empty and rickety and helpless. Maybe not physically, but separate a Cyberman from the collective and he’d probably just bumble around, confused, looking for anything to give its life (or perpetual undeath) meaning. It would go insane from loneliness, more or less.

There is some deep metaphor to draw from here, particularly in regard to modern life, and it’s strong enough that you don’t need to hit people over the head to make a point of it. It’s just that no one has bothered to characterize the Cybermen in ages — until now, obliquely and to no real purpose.

As much as Moffat is wearing on me, I would like to see his idea of a full, proper Cyberman story. I don’t want it farmed out to Mark Gatiss or some other third-string puppet author. I want to see Moffat’s own exploration of the creatures. Based on the last couple of snippets, I’ve a feeling he’d do them full justice.

Otherwise, I can hardly be bothered to think about his show.

Cyberman catch phrases through the ages:

1967: “We… Muzzt… Survive…”
1982: “Ex-cellent!”
2006: “Delete!”
2012: ?

Better than Who

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Bored is a good adjective for me and the Moffat years. Whereas I can hardly wait for the new season of Torchwood, with every episode of its parent show I feel less bothered. Given the writers in the second half (Gatiss, MacRae, Whithouse, Roberts), this autumn should be even less involving.

Even at its worst, with Davies’ Who I was always entertained. I nearly always felt that the stories were about something more than themselves. Even if the plots made no sense and the sentimentality was sometimes smothering, there was a certain minimum quantity of glee and love at play; optimism about everything constructive, balanced by cynicism about the things that need scrutiny.

I don’t feel that the show is about anything anymore, or that it serves much purpose. The plots don’t make any more sense than they did, the show has somehow become even more smug, and it just feels like it’s being done for posterity or fetish rather than because someone has something important to say through it. Worse than smug, the show has become glib, to the point where I wonder why I’m needed in the audience.

It’s not bad. It’s just… lifeless. This is the same problem I have with the ever-so-popular Hinchcliffe years and the early 1980s under Eric Saward. The former script editor was concerned mostly with pastiche of whatever horror film was popular in the cinema at that moment, and the latter just wanted to make a gritty space opera.

Although “The Rebel Flesh” is boring, and in plot and detail about as lazy as you can get, it is one of the few times in the past two years that it felt to me that the writer was trying to go a step beyond the obvious. Instead of just being about plotting and the mechanics of the show itself (which is as well, since the plot was so tedious), it made a small effort to examine the questions raised by the story’s premise. And then it shrugged and had the hothead charge in and move the story along again.

So we’re not at the level of Davies’ Who; more like the thinkier parts of Troughton’s run. But I did appreciate that. I guess it’s that which brings the rest of Moffat’s era into contrast. This is hardly hard-hitting stuff, yet thematically it feels so much more substantial than we’ve got since 2009.

I guess I just prefer a show to reward curiosity, rather than rote obsessiveness. And for that reward (however slight) to be a broader outlook on life (however slightly), rather than a cheap surprise twelve weeks down the road.

How might I apply the existence of a regenerating little girl to my life? Well, I guess it will make me wonder what will happen next in this particular TV show. How might I apply even so apparently fannish a moment as the Doctor’s restaurant conversation with Wilf, or the reactions of the passengers in “Midnight”, or the facile Dahlian satire of the Slitheen in Eccleston’s series? It’s commentary on identity, on mob mentality, and on the motivations of the people who we blithely assume are there to take care of us.

It’s all simplistic, and no, it doesn’t provide any answers — but it gets an audience accustomed to asking questions. It encourages one to look at the world with a healthy skepticism for the order and hierarchy presented to us through most culture. Aside from a few key eras, Doctor Who has always presented the audience that outsider’s view of life and its workings. It’s simple, clumsy, and in the end it has a narrative goal to reach, but in some small way it fosters an ongoing sense of wonder and attentiveness.

This is a right and a healthy message, and it’s a message that Davies both saw in and extrapolated from the show’s history, then developed into something much more pervasive and deliberate. That’s a part of who he is, I guess — Second Coming, Queer as Folk, and all. He can’t help tweaking people who he sees as intellectually or spiritually lazy. But that’s not really a priority anymore, and I miss it.