Lunchtime Legend

Why I love Stephen Moffat’s Dr Who.

 

 

I recently had an interesting three-way “twitchat” with some twitter pals (hat tip to @penners_ @saxbend and @ishbroken) about the new series of Doctor Who and whether or not it was any good. I am a massive Who fan and have been for as long as I can remember. What surprised me though was that my absolute adoration for the direction the series is taking under the oversight of Stephen Moffat isn’t shared by all…. horses for courses I suppose.

 

Despite that though, I for one am a massive fan of said direction, it has been blowing me away and I thought I’d write a blog about the reasons why I love Doctor Who under Mr Moffat.

 

1. It is SCARY!

I mean it is often pants-wettingly frightening. I don’t mind admitting that during the scene upstairs in the orphanage I was cowering behind a cushion having stood up and walked to the back of the room. Moffat has created most of the best terrifying moments of the new Who cannon, the Gas Mask Child, the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the clockwork things in ‘The Girl in the Fireplace”.

 

Doctor Who ought to be scary; it ought to leave kids terrified, because that is what they and (let’s be honest) we want from Doctor Who. I remember being in tears through fear as a kid, but I still begged to watch it the following week. Moffat really gets that Who should scare the bejesus out of us and is showing outstanding commitment to the cause. Any Who fans (and the manufacturers of night lights for children) ought to be rejoicing that Who is properly scary again!

 

2. Story Arcs.

I am a big fan of the way the best American TV dramas use story arcs, such as J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5, or the novel-like structure of shows like The Wire or Mad Men. I remember being really pleased prior to watching “Rose” when I read an interview with Russell T Davies in which he talked at length about using story arcs in New Who.

 

Whilst I welcomed what RTD did on this I always felt his story arcs were a bit of a letdown, that they felt like a bolt-on added extra. Torchwood, Bad Wolf and Mr Saxon were all in the end a slight disappointment (at least for me) that was more about giving a verbal nod to a theme than being a carefully constructed part of an overall story arc.

 

Contrast this to what Moffat did in the last series. The “cracks in time” were carefully woven into the plot devices of most individual stories. They worked well as stand-alone episodes, but something else motivated the characters and formed the situations in which they found themselves. The cracks in time were important to the plot of almost all the episodes rather than just being something tacked on the end.

 

And then the pay-off in the final episode, the scene where the Doctor goes back to the blinded Amy in “Flesh and Stone”, a scene that suddenly made so much more sense. All sorts of things clicked into place. The story arc had been incredibly well constructed. Its clever nuance made me dance with joy. For me that scene, when seen for the second time, was the single best bit in any episode of new Who!

 

Little things in the last couple of episodes are going to be really important and pay-off down the line (who was that woman with the eye patch in the door?). I expect even more great little things in Moffat’s 3^rd or 4^th series that pay off from the first couple of episodes.

 

3. Matt Smith as the Doctor.

When the TV show announcing the new Doc was on telly I was really excited. Who was it going to be? I personally was championing Patterson Joseph principally on the strength his performance as the Marquis De Carabas in the criminally underrated Neverwhere. At the very least I was sure that Moffat would arrest the trend of ever younger and younger actors playing the Doctor.

So it was fair to say that I was incredulous, and more than a little worried, when it was revealed than an actor I had never heard of, in his bloody twenties, was going to play the Doctor. My mother (a fellow massive Whovian) and I had an earnest phone conversation in which we expressed our doubts about the new guy. How on earth could the guy playing the Doctor be younger than me? (I know this worry is normally about Coppers! 😉 ). However on the strength of Blink, The Girl in the Fireplace, The Empty Child, etc., we were prepared to give Moffat the benefit of the doubt.

 

I didn’t expect just how wonderful that bit of casting would become. First, Matt Smith’s looks suit the role. He has a slightly odd (in the nicest possible sense), otherworldly look about him. I think this is really important for a character that must oscillate between seeming familiar, even well known, and reminding us he is different, alien and unknowable.

 

Smith’s the youngest actor ever to play the Doc, yet his greatest asset is how well he plays being old. The Doc’s great age is important – it was basically the principle plot device of “The Beast Below” – and Smith handles it really well. Smith also does the mood gearshift thing much better than David Tennant did, at least for my money. In the “The Impossible Astronaut” Smith’s Doc was suddenly serious when explaining to River why he didn’t trust her; and the shift into more familiar banter with Amy swearing on “Fish fingers and custard” didn’t feel in any way forced.

 

I always think with shows like Doctor Who there is a massive incumbency bonus to the current occupant of the office, and I am massively prone to hyperbole. But for me Matt Smith is by some distance my favourite of the Doctors in the new Who.

 

4. Interesting 3D supporting cast.

 

This is one that probably only really sneaked in as a result of the end of “Day of the Moon”. Probably my biggest criticism of the series under RTD was the prevalence of boring characters I didn’t care about one jot. I didn’t so much resent the “soap opera” stuff being in Dr Who, but it left me utterly bored and unconvinced. None of Rose’s family interested me at all, nor did Martha’s. Captain Jack was OK, if a little pantomime. The only genuinely interesting, three-dimensional recurring character RTD came up with was the excellent Wilfred Mott (and may I say just how much I hope we haven’t seen the last of him!).

 

I think that River Song is a genuinely interesting character and a welcome addition to the Who cannon. I really want to know more about her story and her arc and how it is going to affect the Doctor. I was initially pretty sceptical about Rory as a character (and I did wonder if we might have a bit of “too many cooks” syndrome), seeing him as another identikit boring comic relief character, no different to Mickey. But as his journey has progressed, he has become increasingly nuanced and interesting – the definition of a good 3D character. The scene in the “Day of the Moon” in which Rory briefly talks to the Doctor about the two thousand years he spent guarding Amy in the Pandorica hinted at both real character depth, and some interesting plot devices to come. (Rory is now older than the Doctor remember!)

 

Oh and if we are talking about supporting characters may I just say that another reason why I love Moffat’s Who is Amy blooming Pond, now I surely don’t have to explain the reasons why do I fellahs? '=P~'

5. Time Travel as a plot device.

Probably the most interesting thing about Time Lords is that they can travel in time. Time travel is bloody ace, but all too often in Doctor Who, time travel is just a Macguffin to move the plot forward; here is an episode with Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Depression-era New York, and so forth. Now some of my favourite Who episodes are “period” pieces, but time travel offers so many richer possibilities in terms of story telling than just wearing different costumes and name checking historical figures.

 

Since Moffat took over, the paradox inherent in time travel has grown more important. The clever nature of the relationship between River and the Doctor is well worked and beautifully written. They move differently in time through their relationship, making my head hurt a bit as the best time travel stories should. I am looking forward to seeing how exactly the time Paradoxes being created are going to pay off down the line.

 

 

 

So there are my 5 reasons why I am loving Doctor Who under the stewardship of Stephen Moffat. Some fans are expressing understandable worries; the plots are getting awfully complicated and “head hurts” tastic. Radox the Green on h2g2 said “Imagine if that was the first Doctor Who you had ever watched.” I can see how that could be a concern, but I would be astonished if Doctor Who isn’t still a mainstay of the BBC1 Saturday night schedule for years to come. And I for one want Stephen Moffat to be at the helm. Outstanding stuff, Sir!

 

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Many thanks to @Jannamark for subediting this and making it much more readable!

02. May 2011 by Ralph Ferrett
Categories: Films TV & Video Games | Tags: Doctor Who, Dr Who, Matt Smith, RTD, Russell T Davies, Sci Fi, Stephen Moffat, Television, Whovian | 2 comments