#Moffat era and all

[expectiations]

text posts: Doctor + River version [2/?]

time to cleanse my mind, body, soul, spirit, life, etc. of the takes I've been seeing of my blorbos on a daily basis lately. and it's still wednesday.

[synthient]

they start you off with "she's a doctor mirror because she's a genius and self-centered and arrogant and flirts with everyone and maintains a shield of whimsy against the horrors." and then they smack you over the head with "she's a doctor mirror because she's actively trapped herself in a fantasy where she's the fun flirty whimsical genius hero and everything's fine, rather than face the psyche-obliterating truth of what she's lost and what she's become"

[thespianwordnerd]

I think my favourite thing about 12 being so quickly established as Scottish in his first episode is that you later find out he knows perfectly well he's not actually Scottish in the typical ways, because, of course, he's still a Gallifreyan with a bad temper ("I'm not Scottish, I'm just cross"). But his era has a running theme of identity being something you choose and describe for yourself - especially names and genders (that quote about timelords being "billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes" has aged like the finest of wines). So we can safely assume that 12 discovered he'd regenerated into a body with a Scottish accent, grey hair and attack eyebrows and just decided, so help him, he was going to commit to that fucking bit. At least for a while. And that is the most stubbornly Scottish thing of all.

[casasupernovas]

i love the way the timelords were portrayed in the series 4 specials. they seemed completely batshit and told me all i needed to know about the doctor and the master.

[phaedo]

people are soooo mad about the new sonic screwdriver not having an element of thirteen's sonic and saying thirteen era is going to be erased or whatever as if thirteen ever mentioned anything that happened in twelve era despite having literally just lost like all her friends...

[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

[derrygirlstrash]

You're so right about Steven Moffat. Favorite Doctor Who era, for sure!

Thank you, it is something I completely stand by! Glad to speak for others! This fuckass website just doesn’t get it sometimes.

[masterreborn]

the overarching narrative of eleven’s era is honestly phenomenal, and it hits harder every time i watch it. the doctor has been burdened for so long by the weight of his decision to destroy gallifrey — a decision he made out of dire necessity, but that went against the very core of his being and everything he’s ever stood for — and he’s been fighting ever since to balance the ledger. (how many worlds do you think his regret has saved, do you think?) but despite every victory, he can’t escape his grief and guilt, and they inevitably begin to turn him into someone he never wanted to become. (a nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. the most feared being in all the cosmos.) all of this leads him to TDotD, where he comes face-to-face with the single greatest regret of his life — and realizes he has a chance to change it. he makes a new decision, and every version of himself that’s ever existed comes together across space and time to try to save gallifrey instead of destroying it, because that is who the doctor is. (never cruel or cowardly. never give up; never give in.)

and in saving gallifrey, he saves himself; it doesn’t rewrite the centuries of pain that brought him to that moment, but it allows him to heal and move forward with renewed understanding of his identity and purpose. the name he chose was a promise he made, and he’s kept that promise. all the threads woven slowly throughout the plot come together after that — the cracks in the universe, the silence’s plan to kill him, the looming shadow of trenzalore and the question that must never be answered. and after trying to outrun his fate and cheat death for so long, he finally stops running. when he reaches trenzalore he dedicates what he believes are the final years of his life to defending a tiny village on this unimportant little planet, because he knows with more certainty than ever that he is the doctor, and this is what he stands for. (every life i save is a victory. every single one.) all that time, the question is repeated over and over, for hundreds of years — the oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight, and when the answer is spoken at last, it’s exactly what we’ve known from the very beginning. his “true” name, the secret he’ll take to his grave, has never mattered. what matters is the name he chose, and the promise he made. (his name is the doctor. all the name he needs, everything you need to know about him.)

when it’s time for him to go, it feels triumphant; the eleventh doctor was born in an inferno, with a youthful face and a flashy, silly personality made to conceal an ocean of pain beneath, but now he’s finally at peace. now free from the grief and remorse he carried for so long, he lays his pretense of childlike insouciance to rest, and the twelfth doctor emerges with a new lease on life and an old, weathered face — one that was chosen as a perfect culmination of the journey that brought him here. (i know where i got this face, and i know what it’s for: to remind me. to hold me to the mark. i’m the doctor, and i save people.)

[mayasaura]

Recently started watching White Collar! More interesting than its reputation gives it credit for, but if the network were being at all honest with us, Mozzie would be trans and either a furry, a drag queen, or both

[shinelikethunder]

back in the Superwholock days there was this post getting passed around my corner of tumblr about "teflon writing vs velcro writing," ostensibly as a nutshell summary of why fandom reacted so differently to Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies as Doctor Who showrunners: slick and polished and easier to admire (when done well) or coolly assess its flaws (when botched) than to get a grip on or pull apart & tinker with, vs. messy and prickly and grippy and tinkering-friendly and prone to getting its hooks in you whether or not you ever wanted that

and that's very funny to look back on with the distance of hindsight, because to this day--a full decade after peak Superwholock--RTD-era Who and Kripke-era SPN remain THE most insane, crazymaking, irreversible-brain-damage-inducing, "compelling in the way where they make me INCREDIBLY ANGRY and ITCHY TO FIX THEM because i am so stupid-invested that they still have me by the balls, even when my engagement is just picking apart the frustrations of how and why they SUCK" turbo-examples of velcro writing i have ever encountered in my LIFE

hell, they aren't even so much like velcro as they're like snagging the folds of a lace circle skirt on a whole branch of actual cockleburs and trying to wash the shrapnel out with fucking gorilla glue

.....and then there's BBC Sherlock. which was neither velcro writing nor teflon writing but an elaborate many-year con, targeted at the EXACT kinds of people who maintain a secret good Supernatural that lives in their heads, whose one neat trick was to bait its marks into collectively hallucinating a brilliant show so that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss never had to put themselves to the trouble of writing one.

[dilfdyke]

i truly do not understand the "moffat can do stories just not characters" take bc moffats stories to me Do start getting a little repetitive at points but im usually invested enough in the characters that it doesnt matter. rtds characters on the other hand usually boil down to "has a job"

[bardinthezone]

I cannot express in words how exhausting Moffat's who is so far

Like his women are 1 dimensional, the doctor is weirdly aggressive and thoughtless and not in a well-written or engaging way, the quips are fucking exhausting and don't get me started on the goddamn plot mess. I literally just watched it and I still don't get Demon's Run. Like who is Madame Kovarian, who are the Silence, why are they so obsessed with killing the Doctor, where did the significance of Demon's Run come from, why should we care about any of this? And past that, how did Mel get away from the Silence? How did she end up growing up alongside Amy and Rory? Moffat doesn't slow down and allow us to slow down and process anything, which means all this shit he's throwing at us just feels hollow and unearned. He's got some cool ideas that could be really enjoyable if they were slower paced and better explained. The Doctor being weirdly aggressive and self-important would be interesting if it weren't portrayed as him just being a genius action hero. Amy being dismissive of/talking down to/insulting Rory would be more tolerable if it wasn't played for laughs most of the time. Hell, River secretly growing up alongside the Ponds could've been really cool if it was better explained, better foreshadowed, and not just crammed into "two episodes containing at least half a season's worth of content." So many of these ideas have a lot of potential and ZERO payoff.

I wanted to make a tier list of every RTD and Moffat episode but tbh I don't think I'll make it past Angels Take Manhattan. I just can't do that to myself. I can make it to Angels and then I need a very long break

[clairedelune-13]

Ok, it’s irritating when I make a positivity post on my favorite show and someone trods along and reblogs it with an anti in the tags.

I post the positivity for a reason, if it’s reblogged with an “anti”, its now a tainted post and that really sucks.

There’s enough negativity on here, can we table it to bring some joy? Please???

[expectiations]

"The companions are important!

So stop constantly whining about how River should not be considered as a mere companion!"

Oh, I am thankful we got at least one mention of River during 13's era. But in that context? Like, how is Yaz on the same level as River? Companions are important, yes, but...

...but the Doctor doesn't marry their companions, dress up just for their date nights, preen before going out to meet them, consider them their queen and therefore, equal, tolerate (barely, but it's still there) their tendency towards guns and archeology (and stealing and murdering and marrying others for fun and whatnot), pop-up every time they're called, offer to rewrite time for them, engineer an entire planet just to have more time together, settle down (like actually settle down domesticity and all), and tell them their name

[aq2003]

my verdict on the day of the doctor novelization is that the plot is still so stupid to me but at least i can live my life knowing moffat can write ten marginally correctly but he only keeps it in a novelization where nobody is going to see it. (my personal highlights under the cut)

him. aroace

this is a really good take on the ten and river dynamic, they're acquaintances and ten purposefully keeps it that way. the "time can be rewritten maybe her horrible death that happened in front of me can be prevented if i stay away from her" really goes well with how he's left after the events of journey's end

"he had to stop thinking before it tore him apart!" is THE most ten narration i've seen in my life. i need to eat rocks

this part just makes me really really sad. the dissociation between the tone and what's actually happening (him getting tortured. for months). how he's so clearly not acknowledging what's happening to him (he won't describe the screaming as his own). how he latches onto the only other presence there and focuses on charming her and making her laugh??? this also makes the hinting at a romance between ten and elizabeth that moffat does, extremely fucking upsetting because you can see how ten is just so fucking lonely and on instinct attaching himself to anyone who has any amount of regular presence to him. even if. well. you know. the torture.

like this. see. i need to be shot

you will hear from my lawyers steven.

[coughs up blood]

the "over and over". i need to be put in a blender

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[sprnklersplashes]

and maybe this is just me being petty af but cloning the tardis really didn't sit right with me. like its a small thing but we've just established season after season and even in these specials that the tardis is more than a spaceship, she's a sentient being and the doctor's oldest and most dear friend and companion, the one who always watches out for them, its her and them against the universe, and the show just going BONK here's an exact other with little more than a whispered "sorry" like... yeah it just doesn't sit right.

russell go rewatch the doctor's wife (2011)