Comments | fauxkaren: Women and Their Stories in Doctor Who

fauxkaren

Women and Their Stories in Doctor Who

Oct 09, 2011 02:46

So, I ended up getting into a really great discussion with therealycats about RTD's Women in Doctor Who vs Moffat's Women in Doctor Who over in this post and while replying to her comments, I realized that I was basically writing the meta that I'd been toying around with writing, so I edited my comments together to create this post. If you want to see my ( Read more... )

meta, doctor who

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Re: I looked up Moffat fauxkaren October 10 2011, 08:36:03 UTC

I'm still not quite sure what you mean by "thinky"? If you mean exploring deeper themes, look at "Gridlock" for an example of an episode that examines human nature and faith. Or "The Last of the Time Lords" which again has a lot of religious symbolism and ideas about belief and forgiveness. Or maybe look at "Midnight" which is a brilliant look at mob mentality. Or perhaps "Turn Left" whuch again deals with human nature and how we can turn on each other in bad times, but also shows moments of hope. Or perhaps go all the way back to series 1 and consider "Dalek" which asks what makes the Doctor better than the Dalek if he is so single minded about killing them. Or maybe look at "The Long Game" for some thoughts about how news and media dictate society. For a something a bit more lighthearted, "Bad Wolf" is an amusing spoof on our culture's obsession with reality TV.

As far as character development goes, if you look up and read the sections I wrote about Rose, Martha and Donna, I think that those are some good examples of the ways in which these rich characters were explored and developed. The Doctor himself has a lot of excellent character development throughout the first four series. Without going into too much detail, he starts out the show as a man who is broken by the Time War. Through his relationship with Rose, he learns how to be a bit more human and how to let people in. After losing Rose, he shuts himself off again, which is why he is kind of jerk to Martha sometimes. Then in series 4 he becomes BFFs with Donna only to lose her again. So he decides to travel alone. He's so sick of caring about people to only lose them. This culminates in "Waters of Mars" when the Doctor, so sick of losing everyone, refuses to abide by the fixed point in time and watch the Mars explorers died so tries to change history.

Re: I looked up Moffat alexandral October 10 2011, 08:42:36 UTC

Re: I looked up Moffat kilodalton November 5 2011, 16:26:28 UTC

I think we will have to leave it at "I think I am watching a different show because all I can see in the majority of Dr. Who episodes is campiness, so I sort of wonder what on earth are people talking about and wonder if they are serious with long serious discussions or are just pulling my leg". It was especially bad during Ten times who was the Mister Campy Bad Acting for me , so I didn't see none of his character behind the shouting and silly face-making. Sorry.

We're not pulling your leg. The head writer for s1-s4 (Rose, Martha, Donna) in fact gave many video commentaries and in fact wrote a 700+ page book detailing how he thought out his stories and character arcs. It was never about "being campy" for him.

I am sorry you are not seeing in the scripts what he intended, and what we see.

Re: I looked up Moffat alexandral November 5 2011, 16:48:46 UTC

I could see the potential and some really serious stuff in the season 1 (so I am not really blaming the writer here), but David Tennant's bad acting was so BAD that any of the following seasons didn't do anything for me more than slapstick sense (and I tried to love it, I really did!). I think for me it was difficult to see any subtle or serious stuff when the face-making of Nine was so in your face and the first thing you notice.. I don't know what to compare it with.. variety show?

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