The Name of The Doctor
Sunday, May 19, 2013
If I say I'm underwhelmed by the season finale, it's because I regard it as a work in progress and a missed opportunity rather than as a fitting end to a season. I'm also annoyed at the writing.
Let's talk about Clara.
I know The Doctor likes Clara, possibly because he's had more time to get to know her than I have. The little I've seen of Clara hasn't been enough for me to work out whether I like her or not. She started well, and she showed some promise early on because it looked like instead of being a feisty, independent girl or a soft-eyed manic pixie troublemagnet, she might be a person. Sadly, she turned out to be feisty. Feisty is a word writers use when they don't have time to install a real character. Turning Clara into a feisty pixie girl has destroyed any chance I might have had to get to know her as a person and therefore feel any sympathy or worry for her. When she stepped into the Doctor's timestream and disappeared, I already knew she'd be rescued because she isn't a person. She's a plot device. She always has been.
And it's fucking tiresome.
The Doctor chases after her because he's got unresolved guilt issues based around apparently letting her die twice. He couldn't work her out, so he set out to solve her. Except you don't solve people and you don't treat them as riddles - well...you might if you're a thousand year old alien, but no matter how much we might want to pretend, the audience isn't The Doctor.
The problem we've got with Clara is that The Doctor is the audience identification figure. Because he's interested in Clara, we're supposed to be interested in her too. Pretty much whether we want to be or not. But making The Doctor our viewpoint character means we strip away a bit of the enigma from him. We get to know more about what he's thinking than perhaps we ought to. The production team are using the fact that the Doctor has been around for 50 years as an excuse not to write character - allowing for more Movie Idea stories in half the time they need to develop properly, I suppose - because the audience already knows him.
The end result is that I've just watched a character I don't particularly care about be promoted to glory. Now, the Doctor owes everything - even his selection of TARDIS - to Clara bloody Oswald. Whatever happened to the TARDIS picking The Doctor? Seriously, that was the best revelation about The Doctor ever, and the presence of a future companion has just kicked it into touch.
I wouldn't accuse the show of Lazy Writing, because it's clearly anything but. There were enough ideas in The Name of The Doctor to fill a slot twice that long. Which is rather the point. We didn't get the time it deserved. There was some excellent stuff on display.
There was also some stuff we've seen before. A Universe without The Doctor? Yeah. We saw that in Turn Left. Besides, Moffat didn't think this through.
If we didn't have the Pertwee Doctor, it's quite possible that Clara wouldn't exist. We definitely lose her because of a lack of 10th Doctor, and quite likely because of a lack of 9th Doctor too. No Clara means no one to save The Doctor when the Great Intelligence enters his time stream. Oh, but wind that back - with no Clara to point the 1st Doctor in the direction of the correct TARDIS, he gets one that works. He goes where he wants, is never forced to kidnap Ian and Barbara, is never forced to think of others before himself, never becomes the hero that the 2nd Doctor became and therefore never fights the Great Intelligence. Paradox. Or fanwank.
Anyway, that fannish discussion is largely pointless. Let's have another look at Turn Left.
Donna is someone we've had a chance to get to know, but we're shown what she would have been like if she'd never met The Doctor. By the end of the story, Donna recognises that she's got a choice - she can save The Doctor, but at the cost of her own life. She's terrified, she doesn't really want to, but she's seen what happened without him. Donna jumps in front of a car and dies to save a man she's never met because she chooses to, because the alternative he provides is so much better than the world she lives in. It's an example of The Doctor's influence - that the actions of one ordinary person can save a world - but it's underscored with tragedy. This Donna is as real as the one we already know, and she doesn't go easily.
Clara was born to save The Doctor. She doesn't decide to, she has to. She knows this because of destiny, fate, predestination paradox or some other bollocks. Clara The Plot Device steps into potential oblivion without a murmur because the story says she must. She doesn't have a choice. That cuts the legs out from under her decision, robs it of real impact and makes Clara a puppet. If Moffat was saying something about time making puppets of us all, or about the illusion of free will, then OK. But that's not what The Doctor has been about all these years. If anything, he's more about making the difficult decision and the hard choice. He's avoided the convenient way out, failed to turn away or pass by on the other side.
The one bright point in the story was the presence of John Hurt, the Doctor who did what he did for peace and sanity.
And this is where my blood starts to actually boil.
I feel like John Hurt was brought in to replace Eccelston. I would actually have preferred to see McGann standing there, if I'm brutally honest. As ideas go, there being another Doctor who fought the Time War and condemned the Daleks and the Time Lords who the other incarnations have disowned is interesting.
And it would be awesome if we hadn't dealt with this in the finale of Christopher Eccelston's season. It would be awesome if the 10th Doctor hadn't found a way to cope with his guilt, as he points out when he leaves the cloneDoctor in an alternate universe with Rose, and become a very different man. As it stands, it's irritating and the audience has already gone through some of this.
Why is the 11th Doctor going to be bogged down in his own survivor guilt and self recrimination for actions he was basically forced to take? What is it now?
With a bit of luck, we get to find out in November. For all the criticisms above, I will be watching.
What? You think I'd miss it? You're kidding. If I look after myself better, I'm in with a shot of being around when this show turns 100. I think it's in with a shot of making it there too.
Let's talk about Clara.
I know The Doctor likes Clara, possibly because he's had more time to get to know her than I have. The little I've seen of Clara hasn't been enough for me to work out whether I like her or not. She started well, and she showed some promise early on because it looked like instead of being a feisty, independent girl or a soft-eyed manic pixie troublemagnet, she might be a person. Sadly, she turned out to be feisty. Feisty is a word writers use when they don't have time to install a real character. Turning Clara into a feisty pixie girl has destroyed any chance I might have had to get to know her as a person and therefore feel any sympathy or worry for her. When she stepped into the Doctor's timestream and disappeared, I already knew she'd be rescued because she isn't a person. She's a plot device. She always has been.
And it's fucking tiresome.
The Doctor chases after her because he's got unresolved guilt issues based around apparently letting her die twice. He couldn't work her out, so he set out to solve her. Except you don't solve people and you don't treat them as riddles - well...you might if you're a thousand year old alien, but no matter how much we might want to pretend, the audience isn't The Doctor.
The problem we've got with Clara is that The Doctor is the audience identification figure. Because he's interested in Clara, we're supposed to be interested in her too. Pretty much whether we want to be or not. But making The Doctor our viewpoint character means we strip away a bit of the enigma from him. We get to know more about what he's thinking than perhaps we ought to. The production team are using the fact that the Doctor has been around for 50 years as an excuse not to write character - allowing for more Movie Idea stories in half the time they need to develop properly, I suppose - because the audience already knows him.
The end result is that I've just watched a character I don't particularly care about be promoted to glory. Now, the Doctor owes everything - even his selection of TARDIS - to Clara bloody Oswald. Whatever happened to the TARDIS picking The Doctor? Seriously, that was the best revelation about The Doctor ever, and the presence of a future companion has just kicked it into touch.
I wouldn't accuse the show of Lazy Writing, because it's clearly anything but. There were enough ideas in The Name of The Doctor to fill a slot twice that long. Which is rather the point. We didn't get the time it deserved. There was some excellent stuff on display.
There was also some stuff we've seen before. A Universe without The Doctor? Yeah. We saw that in Turn Left. Besides, Moffat didn't think this through.
If we didn't have the Pertwee Doctor, it's quite possible that Clara wouldn't exist. We definitely lose her because of a lack of 10th Doctor, and quite likely because of a lack of 9th Doctor too. No Clara means no one to save The Doctor when the Great Intelligence enters his time stream. Oh, but wind that back - with no Clara to point the 1st Doctor in the direction of the correct TARDIS, he gets one that works. He goes where he wants, is never forced to kidnap Ian and Barbara, is never forced to think of others before himself, never becomes the hero that the 2nd Doctor became and therefore never fights the Great Intelligence. Paradox. Or fanwank.
Anyway, that fannish discussion is largely pointless. Let's have another look at Turn Left.
Donna is someone we've had a chance to get to know, but we're shown what she would have been like if she'd never met The Doctor. By the end of the story, Donna recognises that she's got a choice - she can save The Doctor, but at the cost of her own life. She's terrified, she doesn't really want to, but she's seen what happened without him. Donna jumps in front of a car and dies to save a man she's never met because she chooses to, because the alternative he provides is so much better than the world she lives in. It's an example of The Doctor's influence - that the actions of one ordinary person can save a world - but it's underscored with tragedy. This Donna is as real as the one we already know, and she doesn't go easily.
Clara was born to save The Doctor. She doesn't decide to, she has to. She knows this because of destiny, fate, predestination paradox or some other bollocks. Clara The Plot Device steps into potential oblivion without a murmur because the story says she must. She doesn't have a choice. That cuts the legs out from under her decision, robs it of real impact and makes Clara a puppet. If Moffat was saying something about time making puppets of us all, or about the illusion of free will, then OK. But that's not what The Doctor has been about all these years. If anything, he's more about making the difficult decision and the hard choice. He's avoided the convenient way out, failed to turn away or pass by on the other side.
The one bright point in the story was the presence of John Hurt, the Doctor who did what he did for peace and sanity.
And this is where my blood starts to actually boil.
I feel like John Hurt was brought in to replace Eccelston. I would actually have preferred to see McGann standing there, if I'm brutally honest. As ideas go, there being another Doctor who fought the Time War and condemned the Daleks and the Time Lords who the other incarnations have disowned is interesting.
And it would be awesome if we hadn't dealt with this in the finale of Christopher Eccelston's season. It would be awesome if the 10th Doctor hadn't found a way to cope with his guilt, as he points out when he leaves the cloneDoctor in an alternate universe with Rose, and become a very different man. As it stands, it's irritating and the audience has already gone through some of this.
Why is the 11th Doctor going to be bogged down in his own survivor guilt and self recrimination for actions he was basically forced to take? What is it now?
With a bit of luck, we get to find out in November. For all the criticisms above, I will be watching.
What? You think I'd miss it? You're kidding. If I look after myself better, I'm in with a shot of being around when this show turns 100. I think it's in with a shot of making it there too.
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