So, Jodie Whitaker’s taken the stage, and the Twitterverse
is aflame! Following those comments is making me more nervous than the episode
itself.
Before I watched the new one, I wanted to say a few more
words about the old one. Not the Doctor, but the creative force behind it – the
enigmatic Steven Moffat.
True, the memory has faded and the moment has passed, and no
one cares anymore (if they ever did). Nevertheless, I feel obliged to say a few
words for old times sake.
Moffat was not universally loved. “Bring Back the
Real Daleks!”, a facebook group I once belonged to, was largely a portal of
anti-Moffat memes. Russell T. Davies never got nearly so much animus, though,
to my mind, deserved it far more. I suspect folks didn’t know what to make of
Moffatt, always toying with the audience, winking at the camera, and just
generally upending reasonable expectation. His approach struck me as the
inverse of Davies’: whereas Davies was routinely simplistic, juvenile and
anti-intellectual, Moffat was frequently too clever by half, serving up
absurdly overcomplicated, hyper self-aware meta episodes, more often about
himself than any of the characters.
Yet, if it all seemed convoluted, it came from a
refusal to underestimate the intelligence of the audience, and an insistence
that Doctor Who could indeed be high
concept. If it was occasionally exasperating, even infuriating, it could also
be uplifting and enthralling, even elevating, in a way Davies never could
manage. I look at it as a three stage process: Davies started out facing a
skeptical world, won it ever, then squandered the good will. Moffat started
with all the good will in the world, squandered it, and slowly, painstakingly
won it back. He pissed me off, no question. But before he left, Doctor Who had never been better.
It was clear right from the get-go, Moffat wanted
to shake things up. Even before his season started, the interviews bespoke seismic
shifts on their way: faster! Crazier! Scarier! Indeed, Matt Smith’s debut was a
bewildering kaleidoscope of jump cuts, edits, and non-linear plot twists.
Murray Gold’s soundtrack was more intrusive than ever. It was hard to make any
sense of it, and to be honest, hard to love. My main take from that period was
motion-sickness.
 |
| Misshapen, asymmetrical, and gaudy, the new paradigm Daleks were just awful. |
Bringing in the youngest Doctor ever - the vicenarian Matt Smith - was surely a sop to this ultra modern approach. Smith certainly captured the ADD of the age, at times scarcely finishing a sentence before embarking on the next one. He tackled the universe with a hyper-fidgety curiosity, delivering impatient, breathless monologues vaguely reminiscent of Peter Davidson. On paper at least, he was a direct contrast to David Tennant: less conventionally attractive, much more nerdy, more introspective and introverted, more moody, and far less fashionable (bow-ties and fezzes indeed). But his lithe physicality and absent minded "quirkiness" all too closely paralleled Tennant's, and the one-liners that came from both their mouths were unmistakably Moffat's. I always wondered if this didn't alienate some of Tennant's younger fans, who might have felt they were being fed more of the same
but with something missing. I myself was able to appreciate Smith's subtly different take, but honestly think he would have fared better if he had followed Capaldi rather than Tennant, as the narcissism of small differences is nothing to shake a stick at. . .
As we followed him into this new hard-wired age, Moffat showed himself to be a revisionist and re-inventor of
Soviet intensity – he changed the Daleks, changed the Silurians, changed the
Ice Warriors, even changed the timeless Delia Derbyshire theme- song, burying it
underneath some Murray Gold melodrama. The Sontarans were reimagined as comic
relief. He even took the piss out of his own creations, the marvelous Weeping
Angels, reduced to ridiculous grotesqueries. Not one of these alterations were
improvements; each was a case of fixing what wasn’t broken, struck
me as pointless. Why resurrect an old monster if it didn’t suit the current
story’s needs? The Daleks were clearly a marketing gimmick from the BBC’s
merchandizing (re: toy) department, but the others? If they wanted to make
Alien on a submarine, why use the Ice
Warriors? If they wanted a more “human-like” monster, why dig up the Silurians, who were never even close?
There seemed no creative necessity for it; only to break with the past for its
own sake, with an unmistakably personal stamp.
For a time Moffat seemed keen to put out his own show rather
than an established franchise. The Madam Vastra/Strax/Jenny trio got the lion’s
share of screentime/plot relevance any time they appeared, apparently intended
for a spin-off series.
Riversong
[i],
gun-slingin’, time travellin’, dashing archaeologist adventurer, often made Matt
Smith’s Doctor seem superfluous.
That “hello
sweetie” business tended to cut Smith’s Time Lord down to size, which seemed a
strange thing to do to your hero. Only when Peter Capaldi took over did the doc
apparently regain his mojo.
River Song was at least likable in her own right, which is
more than I can say for Clara. Of all the bizarre, weird, head-scratching
moments of the Moffatt era, the character of Clara Oswald (bravely endured by
Jenna Coleman) baffles me the most. She got many of the “best” lines
[ii]. Many
plots hinged upon her (she saved the day in
Rings
of Akhenaten, not the Doc). She also carried much of the moral weight -
speaking authoritatively while the Doctor just listened. She even got her own TARDIS in the end. For all intents and
purposes, it became her show, complete with her own title sequence at one point.
One wondered why they bothered with Capaldi. . .
All this may have been tolerable if Clara hadn’t been completely insufferable. Smug and snide and downright rude, she struck me as one of
those obnoxious class-president types, utterly full of herself because she figured out early on how to game the system. Such folk are never as gifted as they think they are, but thrive in an environment constructed with their kind in mind. Of course, they never need to develop humility because everyone
keeps telling them how wonderful they are. This was Clara. She would have made a great OFSTED inspector.
My thoughts on Clara were crystalized
during her exchange with Jac (played by Jaye Griffiths), during the otherwise awesome
Zygon Invasion:
“ You’re middle-aged (no offense!). Everyone middle aged thinks
the world’s about to end. It never does.”[iii]
To which Jac could justifiably have responded. “Fuck you kid. It’s your god-damned latte-swilling-iphone-fucking generation that thinks it’s something special. When you rack up some
life experience, then you go ahead and lecture me about the world. Capice?”
But of course, neither she nor anyone else ever did. Know-it-all
Clara presumed to lecture the universe, and never got her comeuppance. At least
in real life, we can tell these types where to stick it. But no one on Doctor Who had the guts to do it. Not-even
the two-thousand year old doc ever challenged her. Because Moffat created a
universe where she was proven right again and again. It was agony to watch.
Even while bending
over backwards to show how fallible the Doctor was, Moffat gave us a mortal
human who was practically infallible, and wouldn’t let us forget it. Trouble
is, she wasn’t that clever. None of her insights (see above) were very
insightful. She could act damn foolishly at times, like when Missy lured her
into a Dalek casing. To be fair, Missy could manipulate anyone. But what does
Clara do when she finds the Doctor can’t hear her real words? Keep shouting “it’s
me! It’s me!”, because that worked so well
already. Maybe she was panicking and couldn’t think straight, but it hardly
went with the ultra-genius we’d been asked to accept.
The TV team at
The Guardian called the Capaldi era
"frustratingly inconsistent.", and I’d be inclined to agree. For every good or great one, there was a clunker. These were maddening, but puzzling as well: how could someone of Moffat's talents allow such plot holes or lapses in internal consistency?
How was "Lie of the Land" allowed to conclude "Extremis", or "Hellbent" "Heaven Sent"?
It has been said that Moffat was a better writer
than a producer – that his individual stories were better than his mythos
building. Indeed, the grand story arcs of his era didn’t
usually amount to much - the crack in the wall was a bit of a non-event, the Mr. Pink saga irritating, and don't get me started on Ashildr (a contemptible villain treated like a lovable companion). Like Davies, he was better at setting up scenarios than resolving them. Even so, these felt more like missteps than deliberate hack jobs. Even at his worst, Moffat never resorted to the infantile inanity or crude religiosity of Davies, and certainly didn't rely nearly as much on lazy
deus ex-machina. If his mythologies were spotty, Moffat's single episodes could still knock us dead. I
maintain the Silence to be his finest creations, even more so than the Angels.
But I think it was with the 50
th Anniversary Special
Day of the Doctor that Moffat truly made
up for his missteps and proved his worth.
"Day of the Doctor" was truly magnificent, a celebration of
all that was and is great about the program.
It pulled off the near impossible
feat of bridging old and new, funny and scary, wise and innocent. An old
monster is resurrected and perfected. Old Doctors do make their appearance, and
new ones hint at theirs (it’s even better that we know who Capaldi is. Time
travel for real!). If Smith’s Doctor suffered for having too
closely mirrored Tennants, they play beautifully off each other here (literally in some scenes). And
bringing John Hurt into it as a hypothetical “War Doctor”, a Doctor between McGann
and Eccleston so traumatized by what he had to do, that his future selves
banished him from their memories, was a stroke of genius. Everything worked.
Finally, Moffat quit playing games. Perhaps he understood the gravity of his responsibility
– this was the 50
th Anniversary, it was not about him, it was about something that transcends any individual contributor.
This newfound humility served Moffat well. As long as he stopped
treating Doctor Who as his personal
plaything, and placed himself at its service, rather than the other way around,
the show went from strength to strength. Smith’s swansong “Night of the Doctor”
was possibly his finest story, and if Capaldi got off to a rough start, he was
ruling the roost by the time “World Enough” rolled around.
To be sure, there were still annoyances – Clara would
continue to wreck almost everything she touched.
But it was also mesmerizing. Most of the early excesses were curbed. We got the
themesong back. We got the real Daleks back. We got the Ice Warriors back. Murray Gold scaled back his string section.
Clara took a walk, and we got Bill instead. Best of all, we got Peter Capaldi,
the Rockin’ Doc, whom I’ve already explained here. I should stop saying “we” when
I really mean “I”. For a very brief time I got the show I wanted. Things that
mattered to me were given precedence. For the first time since the eighties, I
felt this was my show again. More than
anyone, I have Stephen Moffat to thank for that, and I can’t possibly thank him
enough.
So long Steve! I know we quarreled at times, but you won in
the end. Don’t let anyone tell you different!
[i]
Alex Kingston made a great Lady Macbeth opposite Kenneth Branaugh if any of you
care. . .
[ii]
By which I mean lines meant to be clever. Whether they were or not was another
matter.
[iii]
To be fair, a couple minutes later, Clara does concede “I think you were right”.
Thankyou Ms. Smartypants!
