just some black ink on some blue lines, and a shadow you won't recognize.

[intrikate88]

Just getting down some thoughts I've had for awhile about series 5 of Doctor Who and putting them here instead of muttering quietly about them in y'all's comment pages.

I wasn't expecting Moffat to approach characterization the same way as RTD, and I didn't want him to; I was kind of ready to see something new and maybe, in theory, ever be able to re-watch a season finale without ~traumatization. I mean, I love RTD's Who, don't get me wrong, but mixing it up isn't so bad either. As for Moffat, I know and agree with all the criticisms people direct at him: look he's a sexist douche and I'm not going to pretend his female characters, or his male ones, are beacons of enlightenment.

But I think I was just hoping for characters, at all. Because, see, I really like these characters.

Eleven is a bit of a mystery. He talks a bit, he's got a good sense of where he's come from, I think, and he's quite a lot more alien than Nine and Ten were, which I think is interesting-- I think RTD was trying to show the Doctor as human as he could be, and this is a contrast. I think I'm still waiting to see where the strengths really are in this approach to the Doctor. He does have his human moments, though, and they're just quieter: his trying to make up to Amy the life that she spent waiting, his empathy with Vincent, the anger at his impotence in doing something for the starwhale, the way he guards Amy's memories even when she can't hold them herself.

Amy, I love. She refuses to let anything break her down, even though her family has been taken from her, she has to leave her childhood home and live in a place that's alien to her, and the one time magic comes to life for her it disappears just as quickly. She holds so tight to who she is that she refuses to let go of her memory of the Doctor, and refuses to stop exploring and finding out about the things that interest her. However, this also extends to her not letting go of her childhood-- even though she grows up and tries to discard the past by changing her name from Amelia to Amy and putting on an "adult" costume, she'll still run away after magic adventures, and she still holds onto the boy that pretended to be the Doctor for her when they were kids, and she still believes that nothing has changed and everyone will still leave her in the end ("You think we'll still be together in ten years?").

Rory could probably be Eleven and Amy's babysitter, honestly. He's the one with both feet on the ground when neither of them do. He's not at all extraordinary, he's the sort to be dragged into an adventure rather than running into one, he can't add up to the Doctor that Amy always wanted so he became a nurse instead, and the thing is... he knows all of this. And I think there's something sneakily amazing about someone who is born to be ordinary and dream ordinary dreams who still steps up and does the best he can for this wild girl that he loves, and still stands up to the Doctor.

River is great. I think that her being the Doctor's wife is some sort of elaborate joke, to be honest, and that she basically strides through time and space being a badass and collecting jobs and degrees and titles and criminal convictions like some people collect beads at Mardi Gras. I guess I want her deal to be explained so she'll stop being all mysterious at people, but other than that I wouldn't care if she was never explained. She's just the bouncy ball of the universe.

I think these people are lovely, I think they have backgrounds and all that. BUT. There is a problem. I would like to have seen THEIR stories shown, rather than be told who they are and shown something... else. It's like Moffat decided on situations to put them in that showed nothing but the situation, and it was at the expense of, well, character-driven storytelling.

There is something really fascinatingly screwed up about Amy. This is a girl who so needed someone in her life that she became preoccupied for years with the one person who promised to come back for her. She's terrible with commitment but she's decided to marry the boy who dressed up and pretended to be the Doctor for her. She has no idea how to be an adult but she's walking around with a wounded child inside, too. Seeing this girl walk around the universe, working out who she was and who she is and who she'll become sounds like a story that writes itself!

... so instead let's just have a plot about Which one will Amy choose??!! Rory or the Doctor??!! BECAUSE THE ANSWER WAS APPARENTLY NOT FAIRLY FUCKING OBVIOUS.

Speaking of love and choices, here's another situation that I'm not sure was a good idea: the whole ~True Love Waits thing. Personally, I have many people in my life whom I love deeply. Some of them I can't be with. And if any of them decided to put their lives on hold because I was otherwise occupied, you can rest assured that the first I asked them when I got back would be WHY IN FUCK'S NAME DID YOU DO THAT? Because them living their lives is what makes me happy, not them making their lives orbit around me.

So when the show sets up this situation where Amy shows she loves the Doctor because she waits all those years for him, or that Rory loves Amy because he sits around the Pandorica for a few millennia waiting on her, I'm not sure I like it. Just because... oh, how could Amy not love Rory after he did all that for her? She'd look like a terrible person, even if she discovered that... maybe she didn't love him and leaving him would be the right thing to do. She doesn't get much choice in the matter, after that.

Additionally, I guess some timey-wimey is cool, but I just think it shouldn't have been relied upon so much. The finale did so much leaping around that I'm not sure what any of the characters would have done if they'd had a chance to decide it for themselves, instead of having to try to make things from the future that they'd seen actually happen.

Maybe things will get better next series and I'll actually get to see these characters instead of some awkwardly construed situations that fit in with some plot idea.

Comments

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

You have put down in non-BUT-WHERE-DID-THE-SHOW-I-LIKED-GO-wounded-fan terms most of my problems with the new direction. Thank you :|b When I try to write about the new season, I end up going butbutbut I USED TO LIKE THE CHARACTERS and now we have plot pieces that could be characters and flailing. It isn't that I dislike any of the characters, it's that, for me, they aren't there to like. There's a template, and it's like I'm supposed to fill it in with the human being in my spare time. And since there aren't clear human beings to captivate me, I end up bitterly picking apart the plots and the tropes.

And, yes, about the waiting. If someone waited for me for 1,000 years, I would be very puzzled. Didn't you want to do anything else? Didn't you have relationships with anyone else? I sure hope you did.

The finale did so much leaping around that I'm not sure what any of the characters would have done if they'd had a chance to decide it for themselves, instead of having to try to make things from the future that they'd seen actually happen.

And this. If you let your characters pop about in the middle of the plot to that degree, there's no sense of risk. The plot is predetermined to be fixed—which viewers already know, on one level, as they're aware they're watching a constructed narrative, so making it more obvious through time tricks heightens that divide from the narrative. It makes it obvious that a story is a clever illusion, a sleight-of-hand by the author, and I'd rather forget that, while I'm watching.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Yes, to all of this. I really am fairly curious about these characters, but there's no meaty substance to them to sink my teeth into. It's all telling and little showing, and between that and the chronological narrative tricks that are being pulled, I just feel like it's very strange and amateurish for a writer and producer whose basic goal is to provide a fairly conventional Hollywood-style production. I mean, you COULD do something very artsy and have character depth with timey-wimey, like in The Time Traveller's Wife, where even though events are predetermined, the narrative is free to examine every aspect of the characters and how they live in what seems to be a predetermined world.

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

Short comment, since I'm about to get started on something at work and just want to throw one in here quickly, but continuing to agree. Particularly with:

It's all telling and little showing

It's constant, this. Like, with Amy. We're told she's a strange woman/girl with no past, we're told that there's something odd about her, but I never really felt like I was shown that. The only thing that made her odd was that the show refused to give her any real depth or backstory, no moments in her normal life when the Doctor wasn't around (beyond shots of her bedroom, if I'm remembering right)—and that's true of all the characters, this lack of showing any part of them not required to advance the plot, so it hardly felt remarkable for her. The Doctor just kept saying she was strange. It's like the duck pond without ducks line. Duck ponds without ducks aren't that strange—but the dialogue said OH HEY this is strange clearly things are STRANGE. Show me they're strange, don't shoehorn in lines that flag 'this is strange!'

And I still want to know how he managed to stick his hand in a shark and keep his arm, in the Christmas Special.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thirty2flavors/]

lol I agree so hard about the duck pond line. SOMETIMES DUCKS FLY AWAY?? TO FIND FOOD AND STUFF IDK? Same with the "your house is too big" -- um... maybe her aunt was wealthy? Her aunt moved out? It used to belong to a bigger family but they died/moved? It is really not something that would signal "OMFG WHAT" to me.

Well, okay, I agree with the whole comment really. I remember all the press describing Amy as "enigmatic" and I spent 12 episodes thinking "no she's not". I didn't think she was partcularly well-written, but "enigmatic"? Nah, most of her actions were reasonable and easy to follow or whatever. And then in Big Bang we get Eleven being all "YOUR LIFE DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!" and I am left going "wait, doesn't it?"

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

It is a Law. A duck pond must have ducks in it. ALL THE TIME. If you have to weight the ducks so they stay in it, you go that extra distance, dammit.

Now I'm seeing Eleven tying ducks up near ponds :|

Yes to that about Eleven's YOU DON'T MAKE SENSE. It was like he occasionally forgot she didn't make sense and then had to come out with a blatant line to remind the audience that she didn't make sense. Because the story was failing to show her lack of sense. If she'd had moments now and then where she smacked up against blank walls when, say, talking about her home or her family or her life or had personality tics or habits she couldn't remember where she'd picked them up and people called her on that, or something. It could have been done smoothly!

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

BUT ~THE WIMMENZ, THEY DON'T MAKE SENSE, THEY CAN'T MAKE SENSE! WHERE WOULD WE BE IF THEY MADE SENSE????

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thirty2flavors/]

I am on my phone so apologies if there are random misplaced words or something, I blame autocorrect. But I agree with a lot of this post. The most disappointing thing about s5/Amy Pond for me is that there is SO much potential in her character and story, but very little of that potential was explored. I think the whole crack plotline was terrible, to be honest, because the result was that rather than have Amy as thus fascinating, damaged person, she wound up jut being "he girl who didn't make sense" and that was used as a shortcut around characterization. Like, her parents -- that could have been so interesting but wound up feeling like just an excuse to not write her family, and their restoration in the finale was empty to me because we never see Amy miss them because she literally can't. Idk.

Re: waiting, yeah. In rory's case he was also ~protecting her, but I wish the show had dealt more with how badly the Doctor messed up Amy's life by disappearing like he did. I dunno, it all just seems like a waste to me, because Elevenh Hour set up so many interesting things and most of them were never explored in any depth.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Eleventh Hour set a ton of things, and frankly if I had been writing the series (it is ridiculous how many times I have had to say that over the past year), I wouldn't have been able to stay away from those possibilities.

I guess basically just the whole season fell into the crack, lol. And now that time has been rewritten there's no need to bother with exploring Amy's inner traumatized child, how lucky for us all! :|

I DO NOT THINK IT IS ILLOGICAL OF ME TO WANT TO REWRITE THIS SEASON

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thirty2flavors/]

Right? How do you NOT want to explore those things? Humph.

LOL I understand this desire completely, when you see a good idea that you think isn't executed to its potential and you're like "UGHH JUST LET ME REDO IT I CAN DO IT BETTER". (Note: I am not, in fact, sure I could write a whole tv season better. BUT.)

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

Yeah, agree. :( I was ready for a change from RTD, but I was apprehensive from the beginning, because I think Moffat's strengths are cleverness and dialogue rather than, you know, plotting and characterization. He just can't do it on his own!

I loved the idea of Amy as this completely insane stalker-type in disguise as the kind of waif the Doctor has picked up throughout the new series (which is another issue but let's not go there), but it's like they've decided her insanity needs to be either caused by something or smoothed over. Like mind_the_tardis said, they're templates, or placeholders. And everything about Amy and Rory reminds me SO much of the characters in Blink (obsessive, pretty girl; patient, dorky guy). The whole point of Moff was getting something new, but instead we're getting the same stuff we already saw, only WORSE.

...I admit I still haven't finished watching the fifth season.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

You're so right. I had thought that when Moffat had a whole season to manage he could even out some of his inconsistancy issues, since maybe doing one-off episodes was a bit limiting, but clearly that didn't work out.

I hadn't thought abot the Amy/Rory and Sally/Larry (?) parallels, but very true. Moffat just has these tropes and if he feels that he HAS to keep replaying them, I wish he'd at least find a new way to show them, or some new aspect to look at, rather than just having a toolbox of five characters and seven plot devices that he mixes and matches at random.

How far did you get? Some eps are better than others.

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

Huh, apparently I was wrong, I did finish the season. I just haven't seen the Christmas special yet.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

It's a very pretty episode, but I'd pick a day to watch it when you have other things to use up brainpower on. It's the usual recipe of clever lines + shiny imagery + same old tropes + a few giant plot holes. Stir vigorously, and bake for an hour.

[mrv3000.livejournal.com]

Interesting meta.

You have a greater love of the characters than I do. I don't hate them, but the shift away from character-driven stories has left me not really caring about them. I'm not craving missing details about, say, Rory since I really have no attachment to him or anyone else. Obviously the fix to this it to have more character-driven stories, but I'm so apathetic towards them I'm not hoping for it.

So when the show sets up this situation where Amy shows she loves the Doctor because she waits all those years for him, or that Rory loves Amy because he sits around the Pandorica for a few millennia waiting on her, I'm not sure I like it. Just because... oh, how could Amy not love Rory after he did all that for her? She'd look like a terrible person, even if she discovered that... maybe she didn't love him and leaving him would be the right thing to do. She doesn't get much choice in the matter, after that.

I never really pondered that. I think it could potentially be troublesome, but since it was clear Amy loved (and chose) Rory before the Pandorica, it skirts the obligation issue.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thirty2flavors/]

Also, when Amy marries him in TBB, neither of them remember that ever happening.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Very true. And I think for the sake of Amy/Rory I'm glad that time got rewritten, because it means that they can restart their relationship and begin their marriage from a much healthier place.

[mrv3000.livejournal.com]

Right! Right! So it really isn't a factor in either timeline.

[lady_songsmith]

You've articulated a lot of my frustration with the new set. I pretty much had to give Moffat the season early on, as a "ok, this is where you shout really loud that you're not RTD, got it." After that I enjoyed the ride more, because I'd stopped expecting him to do more than the writer's equivalent of "Nyah-nyah-nyah, Russell!" Next season is going to have to do better, because I am not watching this show for a meta-level dick waving contest.

Also, I believe River was the Doctor's wife. For all of 5 minutes, and then they woke/sobered/saned up and had a complete WTF did we just DO?! moment and had a nice amiable divorce and agreed to never speak of it.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Haha or maybe they got married for tax reasons or something. I know I'd be very HELLO SWEETHEART I AM HOME, WHERE IS MY MARTINI if I married someone for tax reasons.

I'm so with you there on the meta-level dick waving contest. I just want Moffat to settle down a little bit- he has these tropes (the stone angels, the girl that waits for the Doctor, the timey-wimey, the fundamental male/female disconnect) that were kind of okay when he was doing one-off episodes. When you've only got 50 minutes to do your thing, it's alright to cram it all in. But he's got an entire show now, he can stop cramming it in already and just focusing on telling ONE GOOD STORY AT A TIME.

[lady_songsmith]

My other theory about the wedding involves alien cultures and -- do you do Babylon 5 at all? If I say 'the little red fruit'? -- unfortunate gaps in knowledge.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about Babylon 5, but I suspect this is the plot device where two people are wandering around a foreign planet, do something random, and find out that that means they're married according to the traditions of that planet now.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I love the music. I love the Doctor and his fez and these characters who are always taking him down a peg, including Amy, River, and Rory. They all become bigger, better, stronger characters not because of him exactly -- but because his problems and lack of insight and understanding make them compensate and become bigger.

But, I don't tend to overthink Dr. Who much, I'm afraid. I love River because of her red high heel shoes and outrageous wardrobe and the great lines she gets. I love Rory because he's the ordinary man, as you say, who loves in extraordinary ways and I love Amy because she is damaged and flaky and is NOT IN LOVE WITH THE DOCTOR even if she does want to have sex with him. Because, seriously, I don't like companions shipping with Doctors and I'm practically the only person in existence who got really tired of Rose really fast.

So, I'm not terribly coherent or insightful where the Doctor is concerned. I enjoyed most of the season a great deal and did not concern myself overly with the meta. Doctor 11 pushed all my right buttons -- which I knew would happen from the moment I saw the first promo shots. I appreciate being pandered to and it worked and I liked the dynamic much better when there were three or four of them, rather than just Amy and the Doctor.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Sounds like most of my shows. I think I only write meta for things I write fic for; but then again, my fic ends up being meta in itself, sort of. I too am surface, though: right now I am watching a show called Lost Girl basically just for the femslashy goodness and girly bromance.

I like your view of Eleven and the people that travel with him. :)

(Oh, I forget- did you watch "Death of the Doctor" yet?)

[kilodalton]

I. Adore. This. Commentary!!!

I wish I could see Amy like you do. I would like Amy how you describe her ... I just see too much of a "sexist douche" fantasy about how young women behave. If it were written by anyone other than Moffat, I would be able to give more of a benefit of the doubt.

Maybe things will get better next series and I'll actually get to see these characters instead of some awkwardly construed situations that fit in with some plot idea.

Did you see SJA: Death of the Doctor starring Matt Smith? It was written by RTD. In that 1-hour long two-parter, I really felt like I got a better handle on Eleven's characterization than in all of s5 put together. But then again, I'm a huge RTD stan fan, so ymmv.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

That's very valid. I made a decision a while back that while I very much disagreed with the way Moffat viewed and wrote women, Doctor Who is a show that I still love and I'm not going to stop just because of that sexist assclown, I'm not going to let him have the power to make me decide what I do and don't like. If I have to decide that reader-response criticism is the only lens with which I can view the series and that the truth of the narrative belongs to viewers now, then that's what I'll do to enjoy the show and characters. Moffat may have invented Amy, but she's what people decide to make of her now, in my opinion.

But that's just me, and I know I have to make up a lot of my own reasoning to make that work, which is the mark of a bad writer. And he is a terrible writer who I'm pretty sure could not have had much success with this show if he didn't have a forty-year-old fanbase handed to him wiht it.

I am a huge SJA fan! I did see that, and it was a delightful hug-fest of an episode. I wish Amy could have shown up in that episode too, because I would like to see what RTD would do with her, but I suppose we've already had the Current Companion Meets Sarah Jane episode already. I'm a pretty huge RTD fan too, but I also think he has a few issues he could work on, to strengthen his writing.

[dictionary00.livejournal.com]

(Here from who_daily)

What a wonderful summary! I understand better now the iffy feelings I've had about Season 5 for a while. Amy in particular, because while I love her in RP portrayals and in fic, I never know how to feel about her in the TV episodes proper. Bits of her story keep poking through, but that history never seems to affect her.

And now that I know Amy's forgotten half the important people in her life for the entire series, I'm inclined to write off her characterization before The Big Bang as fake and hollow and start over with the next series. Because I'm a big believer in the people around you making you who you are, and no wonder Amy is a blank slate if all her memories involving her parents just disappeared.

...possibly all this overthinking will be jossed in the first episode of S6, since the Silence plotline isn't over yet.

The Waiting For Someone thing wouldn't bug me so much if we didn't already go through this with Jack Harkness. It was horrible for him, and he only waited for a hundred years! Rory's two thousand year wait should realistically have changed him beyond recognition. It's the sort of creeping trauma that I think Moffat will end up completely ignoring, though perhaps the mini-universe memories will fade since they come from a dead timeline. I hope so, for Rory's sake.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

It was like after setting her up in Eleventh Hour, nothing had to be done with Amy ever again. She's just there with pretty hair and big eyes. And you know, maybe it's just me, but the reason you set up a story is so you can actually explore that story. (This sort of misdirection is becoming one of my biggest pet peeves, along iwth thoroughly unprofessional people, of which Moffat is one, good god my irritation has few bounds.)

And you're right. All her characterization has been retconned, because she's not a broken little girl with a whole bunch of walls and quirks holding her together after everyone in life has or will leave her. In fact, I don't know why she's still got her Scottish accent- the Doctor even said that she's the sort of girl that holds onto things, holds on to who she is, holds onto that accent after ~18 years in an English town, because that's who she needs to be. And she doesn't need to be that person. So what is that?

Waiting through that much history for someone is a psychological clusterfuck, no two ways about it. I wrote some fic about it (http://intrikate88.livejournal.com/268708.html), but it's a little one-shot that's nowhere near as in-depth as it could be.

Between RTD and Moffat's types of writing, I'm really wondering if the DW writing staff has ever heard of story editors. Is there nobody but us pointing out these holes? Is it just a giant circle jerk in there? (It is, isn't it?)

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

Hi, I was just reading through your ''steven moffat stupidity'' which is why I'm responding to an entry from February.:D

I agree with you, basically. Except on River, because Moffat is pretty predictable and hackneyed when it comes to writing romance in the show and I'm rather dreading the Tearjerker Final Farewell scene that River talked about in FotD. I'm just so sick of the Truest Love Ever trope and you just know that they're going to be gushing about how the Doctor has ''never felt this way before'' in the Confidential. The man's a thousand years old: surely he's had other people that he was just as deeply in love with. I just wish they'd reflect that aspect (she's one of many) more in this particular relationship, but I have a feeling they're not going to. ''Girl in the Fireplace'' sure didn't give me much hope in regard and we both know how Moffat loves flogging the same poor horse to death (and beyond!).

Also, I'm not sure I'd necessarily describe Eleven's ''softer'' moments as ''human'' as there's no evidence that Time Lords were incapable of softness in general (Romana showed so-called ''human'' traits, too).

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Well, my feelings have changed a lot since last Saturday, let alone February, so I can't really say that any of my thoughts here are still constant, but anyway. Back before Moffat took over I figured he had a few more stories in him, but it appears not. I expect that tearjerker farewell will be a clusterfuck, just like the big reveal last episode was.

... oops, my current bitterness at this show is showing.

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not going to be watching that particular episode because I have a feeling it'll be in the vein of ''Oh, my lonely angel!''

Eh, yeah, sorry about the random commenting. I might have been slightly drunk.XD

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Oh drunk commenting is the best. ;)

On the bright side, as River's story has already been drawn out this far/way too long for anyone to care, it'll probably be a long time until we have to watch that particular picnic. And in the meantime she'll just lock herself back in her jail cell in between the Doctor taking her places for her birthday, like the Spunky Independent Woman she is!

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

HDU! Moffy's, like, totally a feminist!111!

If we really do see Eleven blubbering over River I hope somebody creates a manip with the Forever Alone face pasted on yay. Or better yet, paste Crying!Dawson Leery's face on. They do have very similarly shaped heads, after all.:D

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

ALL BY MYSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELF, DON'T WANNA BE ALL BY MYSELFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

I mean it really all makes you wonder why Eleven goes ALONE on this picnic with River. Actually, wait, no, he is enough of a jackass to not bring Amy and Rory along for goodbyes to their own daughter if he could somehow miss that whole bit where he didn't tell Amy she was preggers in the first place, nvm.

Amy if you had just married Van Gogh and had a million ginger children none of this would have happened.