#Moffat Era Rewatch

[besidesitstoowarm]

so i'll talk about this more tomorrow when i put up my "amy's choice" write up but i am thinkingggg about moffat's characterization vs davies

like with rory and mickey. rory is obviously the mickey, the back-home boyfriend getting ditched in favor of the doctor. but the thing with mickey is like... he's a good reason to leave, not to stay. he's kind of a loser, implied in the first episode to be cheating (telling rose not to check his email) before she even meets the doctor! he's the tin dog, mickey the idiot. he represents everything rose is tired of. she straight up never seems to care about him ever, and the doctor openly mocks him, and even the narrative doesn't seem interested in giving him interiority or sympathy

vs rory. rory is a legitimately good option: good career, kind, gentle, intelligent, handsome (mickey was also handsome, to be fair). he's the antithesis of the doctor, but he's not presented as the worse option, just very different. he has the doctor dead. to. rights. immediately! "you make people a danger to themselves" and that will carry on, past "you forget that not every victory is about saving the world" he's like the Reasonable One

the potential danger of traveling with the doctor is treated as an inevitable minor footnote in the davies era, i feel like. it's always there but it's rarely Real. rose was so borderline suicidal i'm amazed she only got trapped in another dimension, martha dipped cause his ass was pathetic, donna was literally railroaded and never had a real choice. but amy? amy feels like she's in real danger of losing rory, she does lose her daughter, she DIES in the end. and clara dies. and bill– like the consequences are real. they make their choice, and their choice makes them. obviously all of them are in danger in any given episode but it feels like the moffat companions really play that out to the inevitable conclusion

and i feel like his companions have faults and traits that actually... matter? like with davies companions we do learn a lot about their lives in terms of jobs and skills and family, but less about deep character flaws, about ethos. i do love them but halfway through s5, the obvious impact on the story that amy's abandonment issues have feels genuinely unmatched by earlier companions. she's savage! she's nasty! she is given a trolley problem and chooses murder suicide bc either her life is a lie or her husband is dead and life isn't worth living. it's deranged. in the davies era it felt like i was piecing together characters and arcs on my own, picking up my own observations, it feels far more passive than it does with amy so far. amy is deliberate, her character arc and growth is very active. clara and the doctor get so codependent she tries to kill him and then dies horrifically. like it's insane

none of this is meant to shit on the davies era. i enjoyed it a lot and love all his companions (except adam but he doesn't count) and obviously the moffat era couldn't have been what it was without davies preceding, but i'm really remembering why moffat's era is my fave. it feels so intentional, so rich, it is exactly what i personally want out of a story. i love s5 so much

[wwillywonka]

☆GET TO KNOW ME♡: [5/?] Favorite Shows

Doctor Who (2005-Present)

Winning? Is that what you think it's about? I'm not trying to win. I'm not doing this because I want to beat someone or because I hate someone or because I want to blame someone. It's not because it's fun, and god knows it's not because it's easy. It's not even because it works because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it's right! Because it's decent! And above all, it's kind. It's just that. Just kind.

[macbethz]

[aq2003]

i saw a post saying boom was good bc it feels like it could be done with any doctor/companion duo and honestly that was one of the things i felt was wrong with it

[robiniswriting]

my toxic trait is that my favorite doctor changes by the day depending on my mood, the position of the stars, how hot my tea was this morning, and whether or not mercury is in retrograde

[phyrexian-lesbian]

moffat: had some sexist writing in his first season and got criticised.

moffat: acknowledged he made mistakes and immediately improved on them.

chibnall: was told his politics were on the nose and that there weren’t enough references to past seasons.

chibnall: improved immediately on these mistakes.

rtd: couldn’t kill characters, wrote boring tropes, treated his black characters wrong, did fake progressive things.

rtd: did it all again but worse.

and who’s meant to be the saviour of doctor who again?

[nicholasmoorethetwittermigrant]

Something I’ve come to appreciate watching RTD1, Moffat, and Chibnall’s eras in such quick succession (with RTD2 airing as well) is how much each era really feels like it’s own show, but also the same show.

Doctor Who is just such a tonally, stylistically, aesthetically malleable show and it doesn’t really hit when you’re watching it spaced out over decades.

[gnougnouss]

Finally getting around to watching that "Sherlock is garbage and here is why video" and hearing him say that "ultimately he was just a guy" about the doctor in RTD era is a REVELATION. THAT'S where all of you get your stupid ass takes I see.

Foud the culprit. The popularity of this video has done untold damage to the dw fandom on this website istg

[musical-chick-13]

Sometimes I think about the parallel between "More than every living thing in the universe?" "Yes" and "Not one living thing is worth you" "Or you" and then I simply lose my entire mind.

[camellcat]

girl in the fireplace is so funny to me. just seeing different people's reactions (and mine) to it. like, here's how I break it down:

if you love rose tyler and timepetals but maybe not as crazy for the doctor himself, this is the worst episode ever EVA!!!!! like hell on EARTH WHYYYY OH MY GOD ROSEEE MY GIRL I'M SO SORRY YOU'RE BEING TREATED LIKE THIS!!!!! DOCTOR go save ur girl goddamn don't just leave her so uncertain and feeling betrayed like that!!!! and don't PROUDLY KISS OTHER WOMEN 😰😰😰!!!!!

if you're a bigger doctor lover but still enjoy rose and maybe timepetals but eh it's whatever, this episode is very interesting and a fun exploration of the doctor, if a bit sad to see rose almost sidelined like that. ultimately one you quite enjoy

if you just care about the doctor and not rose or timepetals, this episode is the SHIT OH it's so good it's SO good oh my god yes please dive more into the doctor's fucked up psyche and life grahhHH!!!! ough. this man is FUCKED UP!! YEAHHHH!!!

[trustmy-rage]

you know, after the chibnall era I actually started liking the moffat era episodes more. Sure a lot of his story arcs are rlly misognystic, but at least i cared for the characters!!!

[besidesitstoowarm]

just came across the most deliciously deranged redditor who left three full comments, like 28 paragraphs worth, of absolute rambling about how chibnall's run is "objectively" awful with "objectively" nothing good about it and if you disagree you're a blithering moron who probably doesn't even watch the show, and now it's all extremely stupid because of woke or something. it was like sighting a rare bird, you truly don't get that kind of cornfed crazy just anywhere. it was the kind of tjlc-style rant you haven't seen on here in about a decade. imagine thinking the problem with doctor who recently is that it's "too stupid" i'm sorry but much like star wars, doctor who is good when it's good and great when it's bad. and if the show being stupid was new, or if stupid episodes were bad, then "the space museum" wouldn't exist and wouldn't be so goddamn good

[mushroomofficial]

bought myself a post-surgery present. im gonna be so insufferable when my adhd lets me actually read these

[variousqueerthings]

I feel like I've said a lot of mean stuff about moffat, and also in his last season (and sort of building to that even) there was quite a big change in how the show operated under him as showrunner. I wonder where that came from, but for sure bill potts was an amazing character and one that I would never have expected from a moffat show, and it laid the groundwork for genderbending timelords to come. for now though, in the timeline I'm in (that is, doctor who circa end s2/beginning s3) still a prat who made a fuss because he wanted a horse to come through a mirror and overworked the vfx department to make it happen, and really really bad at writing romance

[sp00ky-scary]

does doctor who just age actors or smth because why does everyone look so young in their first series compared to their last

[ebenelephant]

oh it's so bad but all I remember from late 11/early 12 era is that I really disliked clara. don't know why, just did.