"You know my name."
Jun. 8th, 2008 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksI should really have liked this more than I did. It's not that it's not entertaining, mind, but the second part hasn't really changed my opinion about the first. It's Moffat by the numbers. Oh, there are clever touches, but it all seems a bit hollow compared to his earlier efforts.
Into The Forest of the Dead, then.
Predictability has been my main bugbear throughout this fourth series, and to be fair, part of the problem is that if you're familiar with the basic tropes of the series, you can pretty much tell what's coming. So, tick off the expected outcomes: Donna, and the other 4,022 survivors, have been literally "saved" into the computer system. River Song heroically sacrifices herself. Dr Moon and the Girl are the computer programs. The clever bits: saving River via the sonic screwdriver, Miss Evangelista becoming Miss Exposition, the "Doctor Moon" pun, the forests of the Vashta Narada being the books themselves and the general badassery of the Doctor making the Vashta Narada back down by telling them to look him up.
But the paint peels. After the adrenaline rushes of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Blink, and the poignancy of The Girl in the Fireplace, Moffat tries to go for both and neither comes out quite right. Donna's story would have been stronger if she had come out of the dream on her own rather than being yanked out of it (compare to Superman's waking up from his own perfect world in both the comic book and animated series version of "For The Man Who Has Everything" — both heart wrenching and a show of strength) and stronger still if she had been the one who noticed the problems rather than being shown by a spirit guide in widow's weeds. Similarly, River Song's story might have been stronger if we could have spent a bit more time, and more moments with the Doctor that would have elicited more of the "Oh, I like you" lines. But having to do all that... the emotional content here that he was trying to drive at suffered, despite the best efforts of the cast. Say what you want, RTD is the king (or queen) of creating real, emotionally believable interactions between characters.
The problem at the heart of this two-parter isn't structure: Moffat is always strong on structure and plot, and it all tied in. The dead people's faces leading to, of course, a dead person at the heart of the planet. The data ghosts leading to the eventual solution to the mystery. The importance of family, of knowing (or not, as the case may be) the future, in all its forms, whether it's a future companion, wife or husband or just generally skipping to the end of the story. The problem was one of pacing. It stopped and started, stopped and started, and lost momentum quite a number of times. The more I look at it, the more I think that what Moffat should have written, given the new series format, was a 60-minute script — a Christmas Special — instead of a 90-minute two-parter.
That being said, it was still the best story of the season so far... which says a lot more about the rest of the season than it does about this story. But from the Moff... well, I expected a bit more.
Into The Forest of the Dead, then.
Predictability has been my main bugbear throughout this fourth series, and to be fair, part of the problem is that if you're familiar with the basic tropes of the series, you can pretty much tell what's coming. So, tick off the expected outcomes: Donna, and the other 4,022 survivors, have been literally "saved" into the computer system. River Song heroically sacrifices herself. Dr Moon and the Girl are the computer programs. The clever bits: saving River via the sonic screwdriver, Miss Evangelista becoming Miss Exposition, the "Doctor Moon" pun, the forests of the Vashta Narada being the books themselves and the general badassery of the Doctor making the Vashta Narada back down by telling them to look him up.
But the paint peels. After the adrenaline rushes of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Blink, and the poignancy of The Girl in the Fireplace, Moffat tries to go for both and neither comes out quite right. Donna's story would have been stronger if she had come out of the dream on her own rather than being yanked out of it (compare to Superman's waking up from his own perfect world in both the comic book and animated series version of "For The Man Who Has Everything" — both heart wrenching and a show of strength) and stronger still if she had been the one who noticed the problems rather than being shown by a spirit guide in widow's weeds. Similarly, River Song's story might have been stronger if we could have spent a bit more time, and more moments with the Doctor that would have elicited more of the "Oh, I like you" lines. But having to do all that... the emotional content here that he was trying to drive at suffered, despite the best efforts of the cast. Say what you want, RTD is the king (or queen) of creating real, emotionally believable interactions between characters.
The problem at the heart of this two-parter isn't structure: Moffat is always strong on structure and plot, and it all tied in. The dead people's faces leading to, of course, a dead person at the heart of the planet. The data ghosts leading to the eventual solution to the mystery. The importance of family, of knowing (or not, as the case may be) the future, in all its forms, whether it's a future companion, wife or husband or just generally skipping to the end of the story. The problem was one of pacing. It stopped and started, stopped and started, and lost momentum quite a number of times. The more I look at it, the more I think that what Moffat should have written, given the new series format, was a 60-minute script — a Christmas Special — instead of a 90-minute two-parter.
That being said, it was still the best story of the season so far... which says a lot more about the rest of the season than it does about this story. But from the Moff... well, I expected a bit more.
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Date: 2008-06-09 12:39 am (UTC)And the look and the sound isn't the only thing, as you well realize from your own remarks. You say: "The character had specific attributes that have not been carried over, the lack of which make him, to me, not the Doctor." But that just isn't the way he looks, or the TARDIS looks, which is interchangeable, and has always been. It's not about looks and sounds. It's about character.
I mean, if your objection is that he's not heroic, that's all right. If your objection is to the hanky panky in the TARDIS, that's all right, too. If it's about plot holes and inconsistencies, well, I'd just simply point out the gaping holes in lots of stories in the classic series, but that's also all right. We're just differing on the points of view, because to me he's still the essentially eccentric, heroic hero figure who rights wrongs and flies through time and space. But to keep on about posh accents, or how the TARDIS looks (which has also changed over the years) is to me missing the point.
And to say that these people don't care about the show or the series or its heritage is horribly unfair, because they do.
ETA: And another area that I probably look askance at is the idea that there is this huge divide between the classic and new series. Your charge of unfunny silliness was leveled at Graham Williams, for example. The unvarying ages and genders was a characteristic of the sole young, pretty companion since, oh, Jo Grant, really, all the way up to Adric. To me, it's just another producer's tenure on the exact same series.