steven moffat

Capaldi and Coleman: Bigger Than a Joke

  • Reading time:8 mins read

I’m not so wild about Moffat; as a writer, he’d pretty much used up all his ideas by the end of 2007, and from then through 2013 mostly set about remixing them in increasingly self-aggrandizing ways.

But from 2014-2017, something rather astounding happened: he started to listen to people, and he started to look inward. He was still Steven Moffat, but he began to question how and why he did the things he did, and out of that came actual art. Some of the best writing, and best creative direction, the show has ever had; better than nearly anything in the previous 50 years of the show. Granted, this energy began to taper a bit after 2015 — understandably given that 2017 was a padding year, after he’d already resolved to go but before Chibnall was able to take the show off his hands, and that Moffat suffered some personal issues along the way — but his final series was still stronger than anything else he’d done outside of the previous two, and stronger than most runs of Doctor Who in general.

Before 2014, Doctor Who on television hadn’t really been big on character development. I don’t mean growth here; characters had grown, as far back as William Hartnell’s Doctor and particularly over Davies’ time. Even Moffat’s previous writing, stilted as it was on a human level, had characters increasing their RPG stats, if you will, as they went along. But this goes beyond the (wonderful) melodrama of Davies or the later Cartmel era. This is more out of literature: defining a character trait, establishing its logical dimensions, and then spending a book’s length exploring what that means, both in terms of the character’s inner life and behavior, and its consequences when applied to a world defined outside the character.

It’s kind of basic stuff for serious fiction, but it’s not really where Doctor Who has ever gone before. The show has always been too focused on the moment, and how to play up the brilliant, often abstract ideas (or, more likely, plodding base under siege) that it’s exploring right now, to spend much time on the, for lack of a better phrasing, philosophy of its perspective. Even Davies’ characters, as gorgeously as he maps out their minds and reactions and speech patterns, are defined as simple declarations that we’re meant to glom onto and just carry forward, nodding as events bounce off of their defined personalities in ways we can easily trace.

And Moffat has never really been much for psychology. He’s not interested in how other people think, in the way that Davies is. It’s a bit of a truism, yet still mostly true, that as a consequence he has mostly written ciphers. His writing serves to deliver sitcom jokes, often with plot revelations as the punchlines. He’s so manic about control over the narrative and the notion of spoilers for the same reason a comedian doesn’t want you yelling out the punchline before he reaches the end of his joke. That’s his thing. It’s always been his formula as a writer, and he’s only ever had so many jokes to tell. His first three series as showrunner were labored attempts at building bigger, more complex versions of those same few jokes, each retelling more tortured than the last as he tried so hard to cast the structure in a new light. In this model, Moffat’s characters are as two-dimensional as the foils in a vaudeville routine. They’re not meant as earnest explorations of the human condition; their function is vehicles to deliver jibes. Which is why in place of Davies’ carefully blended dialogue with Moffat we mostly get one-liners, put-downs, and pure exposition.

His run from 2014 to 2015 changes all of that. He’s still Steven Moffat, and he’s still carrying around his well-worn sack of tricks, but here he approaches the show from a different angle entirely. He’s more settled, more measured. More thoughtful. And somehow out of that convoluted, often tortured long-joke structure he carves room for meditation. A kind of meditation that hadn’t come before, from any writer or era; not at this kind of a length, not with this much time and control to keep on dwelling and prodding. And out of this we have the most psychologically complex Doctor and companion, and Doctor-companion relationship, in the show’s history. With this as the show’s new story and narrative baseline, Moffat is free to Moff off and toss his toys around the room, as in otherwise by-then trad scripts like “Listen,” and suddenly they take on a greater significance by the tricks acting in aid of a greater narrative cause rather than simply to conduct the story in their own right.

Of particular note is series 8. On top of the sudden focus on character development, there’s this excited shift in narrative structure, with a mix of nonlinear scene editing (e.g., that whole sitcom sequence in Into the Dalek where Danny fails to ask Clara out on a date) and longer scenes with more dialogue, a pair of minor innovations that play out to their logical extremes early on, in “Listen,” but then continue throughout the run. And then there’s the way it revels in recurring thematic beats, in a way I’m not sure the show has before. Nearly every episode, leading up to the finale, involves one or more of the following:

  • Soldiers
  • Cyborgs
  • Cyborg soldiers
  • A companion who wasn’t, possibly for one of the above reasons

That’s off the top of my head. When I was watching the first time I had a longer list of things the scripts kept riffing on, prodding from different angles, lending the whole run of episodes an unprecedented sort of thematic unity. But I’m sure it’s clear what character and story elements the above serve to reflect.

That’s the thing about a good story: however complex it may be, it tends to be a fractal, with any part representing the whole and the whole representing any part. Again this is fairly basic when we’re talking about literature, but — well, Doctor Who has never really aimed for literature before. It’s been doing its own thing, often rather well. Here, Moffat takes aim with his golden arrow and nails that space ship right in the bull’s eye.

Series 9 is an astoundingly good sequel, exploring the fallout of everything that drives series 8, and the two of them make a greater whole, but series 8 is where most of the hard work happens. It’s where Moffat learned to listen. So that’s the one that really stands out to me as a revelation.

(Although Series 10 is in more ways than one Moffat’s hangover series, and both stretched thin and disjointed in a way the previous two aren’t, it’s also often the most refined culmination of Moffat’s artistry, and individual moments over these twelve episodes are some of the best moments of the entire show. It’s an afterthought, but also a worthy coda.)

It helps that at this time Moffat also found a new backing band; a more sympathetic stable of writers, interested in pushing the show to new extremes and exploring its creative fabric more than the ultra-trad fan contingent on whom Moffat had largely relied to that time (when he wasn’t chasing down one-off celebrity writers). The likes of Dollard and Mathieson embody Moffat’s own shift in priorities, and their earnestness mixed with roiling creative insight give the show the added boost of energy to really develop it into its own thing. It’s interesting to see that even as the first half of series 8 mostly uses “safe hands” to pedal in the new Doctor, Moffat still co-writes nearly every script, shaping it to be a bit more than it would otherwise be. This is unprecedented for him, and it shows the extent to which he actually had a vision for the show, that none of the familiar writers were of much help in capturing.

None of this is new from me. I play my own familiar tunes. But I really think the last three years have been a creative renaissance of the sort we haven’t seen since Andrew Cartmel. But it’s all the more remarkable, because it’s more like Andrew Cartmel had never existed, and instead somehow those last three years of the 1980s had been Saward all along, after some major revelation, and they had turned out exactly as they did. I’m not sure we’ll see a progression like this again, and it’s a pretty damned interesting case study.

The Moment

  • Reading time:2 mins read

For those still confused about how to resolve The Day of the Doctor with The End of Time, it’s actually all pretty clean and tidy.

The Time War is sealed away so (in principle) it can’t be undone; we’ve now seen two different stories set in part on the exact same day; the final day of that war. The two stories give different perspectives on some of the same events.

Notably, both stories involve characters — Rassilon and the Moment — puncturing the Time Lock to try to avert Gallifrey’s destruction.

Rassilon did it the dumb way. He tried to pull Gallifrey out of the Lock, to continue the war. Shortly after, the Moment pulled the Doctors in, to end it.

In The End of Time they state that the Doctor has just taken hold of the Moment, and intends to use it. Ergo, the events of The End of Time occur in direct response to John Hurt’s actions at the start of The Day of the Doctor and take place while he is walking across Tattooine with Rose Tyler slung over his shoulder.

Of course Rassilon’s plan is crazy, dumb, and a failure — so in The Day of the Doctor a minor character later dismisses those events in a throw-away line. Rassilon’s failed plan is a minor thing that happened on that day, off-screen, involving power-mad characters who don’t factor into reality.

Then the Doctors all swoop in to save the day, sort of. Meanwhile, one presumes, Rassilon and the Master are still busy hopping all over the High Council chambers, shooting lightning bolts at each other.

Shutting Up

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Further on what I say below, whereas Davies’ version of Who was all about people asking the right questions, never mind the answers — the answers don’t matter — Moffat’s Who is all about these supposedly grand truths, facts, that the scripts dangle just outside the viewer’s grasp. It’s all about the answers; the answers are all that matters, and we won’t tell you what they are.

And also… and maybe this is just me, but I’m astonished with just how often (it’s very often) characters in Moffat’s Who tell each other to “shut up”. It seriously seems like at least once per episode.

I grew up in a household where everyone kept telling everyone else to shut up, and it was not a healthy place to be in. No one talked to anyone, or was interested in what anyone else had to say. Since I’ve gotten older and gotten around a little more, I get taken aback when I hear people say this. It’s just so incredibly rude, and arrogant.

The production and structure of Moffat’s show may follow very closely from Davies’, but its ethos is almost the opposite. It’s not about curiosity and reason; it’s about being quiet while someone else tells you what to think. And I don’t like it.

Wrapping it Up

  • Reading time:5 mins read

While we’re all talking about Doctor Who and various contrived plot threads, has anyone noticed the shift in last few years in the construction, content, and emphasis of the show’s finales?

Here’s Davies’ string of finales:

1) Daleks return… and they’re crazy! Also, the Doctor dies.
2) It’s Cybermen versus Daleks! Also, Rose leaves forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3) Holy Hell, it’s the Master! And he’s crazy! Also, the Doctor chased another one away.
4) It’s Davros! And wow, is his plan ever crazy! Also, is the Doctor dying? Also, aw, poor Donna.
5) It’s the Time Lords! And they’re crazy! Also, the Doctor dies.

Here are Moffat’s finales:
1) Stonehenge turns out to be a trap created by a bunch of the Doctor’s previously established enemies who think the Doctor will destroy the universe, but in closing the trap they actually allow the TARDIS to explode, thereby destroying the universe — except somehow the Doctor previously created a predestination paradox, allowing him to rewrite the universe without himself in it, until at her wedding Amy somehow remembers him on a conscious level, which makes everything okay. Also, Rory survived non-existence in the form of an Auton by Amy remembering him on some subconscious level — and when the Doctor rebooted the universe he was alive again for real. And when Amy remembered the Doctor, that somehow caused Rory to remember being an Auton, even though he never had been. Meanwhile, what caused the TARDIS to explode? Who planned all of this? Moffat will explain later.

2) Amy and Rory’s daughter, having been groomed from a very young age to assassinate the Doctor, was therefore essential to a totally different scheme from the one in the previous series finale, even though she had long since decided not to involve herself. So a bunch of obsessed people put her in a space suit that moved on its own, to force her to kill the Doctor in a specific place at a specific time. Except she figured out to stop that from happening, which interfered with a predestination paradox, which in turn caused time to end… until the Doctor contrived a wedding ceremony where he revealed that he was wearing a previously established shape-changing miniaturized space ship and then convinced River to kiss the space ship — which put time on its normal course again. Also: DOCTOR WHO? DOCTOR WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

3) Who is Clara Oswald REALLY? Also: DOCTOR WHOOOOOO? DOCTOR WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

What I’m seeing is that Moffat has moved the focus. Where before the draw came from spectacle and recognition factor, now the show sells its finales on their plot content alone. And those plots… well. They’re a little convoluted, they tend not to actually resolve their key questions, and they tend to reuse their ideas.

Obviously Davies found his formula as well, but in his case it was simple and generally effective: Here is something new, something big, something cool (that you probably wanted to see all along) — and it has big consequences!

The appeal of Moffat’s conclusions is predicated on caring about his plot machinations in their own right. How does the Doctor get out of his predetermined death? Who is Clara? Who is River Song? What is the First Question? These aren’t organic things that come out of the material; these are puzzles that he sets up, to build toward a big one-time shock of revelation. Then once that factoid is out of the way, things tend to continue more or less as they were. There are no long-term consequences. There’s not even a real resolution. There’s just a hint at further puzzles.

Of course Davies’ consequences can change whenever he feels like flipping the switch — but in the moment at least there is catharsis. There’s the catharsis of the big momentous events that shake up the characters’ worlds and expand the show’s format (Wow, a standoff between Daleks and Cybermen! How did this never happen before?!/I didn’t realize the TARDIS could do that, but of course it can!/Now that the Master’s back, what does that mean?!), and then the second catharsis of their fallout. The world changes, the show changes, and so does the new normal. Eccleston leaves, Piper leaves, Agyeman leaves, Tate leaves. It builds up, creating the sense of evolution, of passing time.

We’re over halfway through Smith’s third series. By this point it felt like Tennant had been around forever; had been on a long, long journey. Smith, I only feel like he has just made it through his first act.

Part of this can be attributed to the lack of cast turnover (as compared to the revolving door behind the scenes) in Moffat’s era. To me, part of it is that it just feels like the show has been stringing the audience along since 2010, biding time with riddles and parlor tricks rather than dealing with things as they come. The show has become less dynamic in every sense.

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!

Asylum of the Daleks

  • Reading time:3 mins read

New episode; new series. Half-digested mental notes.

Distinctly not for me. I liked the basic premise of Oswin being in the dalek, though I… kind of figured it was something along those lines from the moment the first eyestalk popped up through the snow. Otherwise… um.

The Dalek humans were a bad idea, very poorly executed. To borrow some parlance, the image of the eyestalks and guns emerging from foreheads and palms, where there was no space to emerge from — nope. Doesn’t work. Oh, wait. I meant to say it was daft.

Amy and Rory’s problems were sold poorly, and I’m tired of the whole facile “love will save the day” trope — even if it was sort of undermined here in that she didn’t need the saving.

I was looking, and I don’t recall even seeing a classic Dalek. Not a big deal, except — well, I was looking. And their presence was well advertised.

The new typeface and logo look like they were knocked together in half an hour. The intro is otherwise the same, with a bad color filter laid over the top.

The thing moved too quickly, was of little to no substance, and then just ended. One of my least favorites in an era that I don’t like too much!

So. Whee.

EDIT:

This episode is a summary of everything that bothers me about Moffat’s stewardship. I’m trying to think of something that I liked about it. The slow build-up with Rory and the deactivated Daleks — that was nice. Anything involving Rory was at least watchable. The one recurring character with a touch of realism, and he’s on his way out.

In his place is… Oswin. I thought that Amy got on my nerves; this is worse. Somehow she’s even more flippant and removed from comprehensible human response. Moffat doesn’t do characters, or dialog. All he does is puzzle boxes with several missing pieces.

The almost universal response I’m seeing is that Asylum is one of the best Dalek stories ever. Er. Well. Let me put it this way. Given a choice between Moffat and Helen Raynor, I’ll take Helen Raynor. Never thought I’d long for that mess; now I’m starting to appreciate it. Her story has some of the same basic ideas; it’s clumsier; yet there I can feel a few twinkles of insight or humanity. There’s nothing to Moffat anymore except empty surprises and fan service.

EDIT 2:

To me, here’s how the Oswin thing looks:

Official press has already been suggested that the “correct” Oswin (which is to say, the ongoing companion) is a computer expert; that’s enough for me. This is the same character.

We’ve seen her “death” already, or the after-effects thereof. It’s basically a recycled River Song situation, reinforced by the well-signaled element that the transformation destroys a person’s memories, starting with the most recent.

This Christmas we’re going to meet her earlier on. Then she’s going to travel with the Doctor, he all the while knowing her fate.

Having seen her performance I’m tempted to believe the extra convolution about Weeping Angels, too. To wit: rumors have it that she is from the modern day, and in all of the nonsense around the Ponds’ departure she is sent back to the Victorian era as well.

It’s living and traveling with the Doctor that strengthens her modern-day “computer skills” (and oy to that TV trope; what does this even mean?) to the level that allows her to hack into the Dalek hive mind and all of that nonsense.

I’ll be surprised if this turns out much differently.