Doctor Who: mixed feelings, and a question
Oct. 3rd, 2011 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerThe Wedding of River Song
Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did it wrap up the Amy/River plot arc? Sort of. Did it work as an exposition of time travel. Um, I have serious doubts.
Steven Moffat still doesn't quite seem to have decided what counts as a 'fixed point in time'. Some things, the Doctor can change; some other things, he can't. OK, we can accept that. But it also appears that there are some points in time he can go to, and others that are forbidden to him.
The most egregious example of this is the short scene - doubtless inserted to acknowledge the death of Nicholas Courtney - in which the Doctor, having gleefully explained how having a time machine means that he is not and indeed cannot ever be late, tries to call the Brigadier, only to be told that the Brigadier had passed away a few months earlier.
Just think about this. What does 'earlier' mean? What, indeed, is 'now' for the Doctor? He seems to have a Tardis Phone that can call or be called by any era in history, so why is it that on this particular occasion the call is to a point in time slightly too late? More particularly, why is it late just when the Doctor has explained to us all that time has, in his words, never caught up with him?
This is the sort of little scene that is meant to have an emotional impact. The impact is meant to come from the Doctor realising that he is wrong about a central aspect of his way of life, and wrong in a way that means he will never be able to see a much-loved friend again. Yet as presented it not only makes no sense but seems to contradict itself. The Doctor says 'my life works like X' and then X is shown to be wrong. Come on, the Doctor is (at this point in his personal timeline) 1,100 years old and a Time Lord to boot. He must surely know the rules of how time works for him by now!
What this scene is, in fact, is an example of what I don't like about Doctor Who: the tendency to throw in plot points that just make no sense in the wider context of the programme purely for their immediate dramatic impact. The result is fun and engaging, but it's not science fiction.
Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did it wrap up the Amy/River plot arc? Sort of. Did it work as an exposition of time travel. Um, I have serious doubts.
Steven Moffat still doesn't quite seem to have decided what counts as a 'fixed point in time'. Some things, the Doctor can change; some other things, he can't. OK, we can accept that. But it also appears that there are some points in time he can go to, and others that are forbidden to him.
The most egregious example of this is the short scene - doubtless inserted to acknowledge the death of Nicholas Courtney - in which the Doctor, having gleefully explained how having a time machine means that he is not and indeed cannot ever be late, tries to call the Brigadier, only to be told that the Brigadier had passed away a few months earlier.
Just think about this. What does 'earlier' mean? What, indeed, is 'now' for the Doctor? He seems to have a Tardis Phone that can call or be called by any era in history, so why is it that on this particular occasion the call is to a point in time slightly too late? More particularly, why is it late just when the Doctor has explained to us all that time has, in his words, never caught up with him?
This is the sort of little scene that is meant to have an emotional impact. The impact is meant to come from the Doctor realising that he is wrong about a central aspect of his way of life, and wrong in a way that means he will never be able to see a much-loved friend again. Yet as presented it not only makes no sense but seems to contradict itself. The Doctor says 'my life works like X' and then X is shown to be wrong. Come on, the Doctor is (at this point in his personal timeline) 1,100 years old and a Time Lord to boot. He must surely know the rules of how time works for him by now!
What this scene is, in fact, is an example of what I don't like about Doctor Who: the tendency to throw in plot points that just make no sense in the wider context of the programme purely for their immediate dramatic impact. The result is fun and engaging, but it's not science fiction.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-04 09:30 pm (UTC)The problem is that this story was yet another one that was simply one element after another after another. Putting lots and lots and lots of things in a pot doesn't make a good stew.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 12:24 pm (UTC)Compare this with Moffat's "Blink" and the very tight plotting of "Coupling".
no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 12:35 pm (UTC)I admit I'm not a great fan of complex arcs and would prefer strong and distinctive stories-of-the-week. Having said that, the fairy tale flavour of last season worked particularly well for me, and I've enjoyed this season's nods to Indiana Jones.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 01:23 pm (UTC)I think Russell T's great addition was complex arcs, but now they are being overdone, almost there for the sake of being there. For example, the end of the last episode was merely a head telling us what the next arc was going to be.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 01:38 pm (UTC)