Thoughts on the most recent season of Doctor Who
I have to admit, I haven't been as impressed as I had hoped I would be by Moffat as the show runner. Don't get me wrong, I still find the show entertaining. However, I wasn't blown away by any of the episodes until The Doctors Wife, written by Neil Gaiman. Nothing else was as memorable, or as fantastic. (How could an episode written by Neil not be either of those things?)
The most recent episode, "A Good Man Goes to War," was fairly impressive, and really quite unexpected. I don't feel that the Doctor has fallen further than ever at this point, but that's not really what I'm getting at here.
What I am getting at has to do with two brief, throw-away characters. As most of you know, one of the major complaints many fans have about Moffat's Doctor Who is that it does not display the diversity that the show had during RTD's tenure as show runner. There really aren't any non-heterosexual characters, or persons of color. There was a brief mention of one male character wanting to marry a black man, but it was at the tail end of the episode, and played for laughs to boot.
The two characters I referred to above from Saturday's episode don't even have names. "We're the fat and skinny gay married marines! We don't need names!" The "fat" one then proceeds to go off to be killed.
Those nameless characters are obviously Moffat's way of flipping the upset members of his audience the bird. Their existance serves no real purpose, other than to show someone being converted to the order of Headless Monks, which could have been done with any throw-away character. The fact that he felt the need to make a point of them being gay and nameless is pretty insulting, I think. "Oh, you want more diversity? Well, I am the ALMIGHTY HEAD WRITER, and here's what I think of your cries for diversity!" Could it be any more obvious?
It's only a matter of time before the mediocre writing that has been the hallmark of Moffat's Doctor Who is no longer enough to make up for such blatant insults. One day, the fan base will have had enough, they will stop watching, and the show will be cancelled. If things continue as they are, it's inevitable. And it will be a damn shame.
Which brings me to my main point: Obviously, Moffat is doing this on purpose. Now, it may be that I have been a Terry Pratchett fan for way too long, and it may be that I've spent too much of my day reading the Wild Mass Guessing section of TVTropes, but I don't think my theory is unreasonable...
Steven Moffat is The Master, and he's trying to get The Doctor's television show cancelled in such a horrible way that, eventually, the people of Earth will no longer believe in The Doctor, and he will cease to exist. Or be weakened enough to defeat. Or something.
We've already seen that The Doctor can take power from people's belief in him, from that time when he was Dobby Jesus trapped in that cage and Martha saved the day. Losing belief must therefore weaken him, no?
On a completely different note, did anybody else crack right the hell up when they saw that the next episode title is "Let's Kill Hitler!"? No? Just me? Thought so. ::snickers::