musings on The Next Doctor: Moff vs RTD (significant spoilers)
i think this might be the best Xmas special thus far, and i think it's because Rusty has finally learned something from The Moff- namely that the best Doctor Who episodes, at least in my opinion, are the ones that are set up with a mystery to solve from the very beginning. Something incongruous is slipped in, some anachronism, that doesn't seem to jar with the secondary characters' perceptions, but alerts ours (and usually the Doctor's, at least eventually) to the idea that "hey, something is up."
as usual RTD doesn't quite get it up to Moff Standards-- the reveal seems to come too soon, and the mystery that is set up is resolved with more of a twist than a proper "reveal." for a good comparison see Blink's resolution as opposed to, say, Utopia's-- both are fine episodes, with interesting plot progression and fantastic reveals that keep viewers interested. RTD manages to almost attain that same feel in the last few minutes of Utopia that Moff achieves with Blink, but with Blink we don't get the monsters' true identity, or the whole story, revealed until quite near the end. With Utopia, on the other hand, a man becomes the monster, taking a fairly safe and tame venture that seemed to be trotting towards and easy resolution into a totally new direction. This seems to be the main difference between the writers as far as plot progression: Moff sets up a mystery and RTD just creates insane twists.
with The Next Doctor we get the mystery up front, just like in a Moff episode, and it's indeed passed off by all characters in the time period as "normal." Well, as normal as a guy running around pointing a screwdriver at monsters can be considered. However, near the beginning Ten gives himself a convincing rationalization as to why Morrissey's character exists that ends up being completely incorrect. This is RTD once again leading us down the wrong path, ready to twist it just as we're sure where the story is heading. While we still have the presence of the Cybermen and the absence of The Next Doctor's memory to explain, these are resolved with little more than small, obvious and off-hand reveals-- things we could almost have assumed as viewers even if not told.
Moff almost seems to dip into the Rusty Method with his latest go, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. This is a typical mystery setting straight from the beginning, but the Moff Method is deviated from when Ten identifies the monster far too early on for us to really have time to wonder what is happening. The Moff does add in additional mysteries such as why the Vashta Nerada are hanging out killing library patrons, who the hell River Song really is, and the significance of the scenes with the little girl; however, the reveals are not satisfactory for some reason. Certainly the answers don't have the same appeal as those in The Empty Child, where we find out that the monster is created by retarded nanogenes, or in The Girl in the Fireplace, where it's revealed that the reason the ship wants Mme. du Pompadour's brain is because it bears her name.
i think ultimately why that is, what makes a good Moff story in the end, is that we can't imagine what's going to happen next. And the mystery is such a huge consequential chunk of the story that without it we could not make heads or tails of what was going on to begin with. This is what RTD lacks-- he tends to have the Doctor figure it out preternaturally fast and then sets us up for some small pot twist or heavy ironic loss.
certainly this makes up the bulk of Doctor Who anyway but I far more enjoy the mystery set-up sorts of plots. One that's always stuck with me is The Face of Evil. For those who don't remember or have never seen it (shame), this is an adventure where Four travels to a planet made up of two warring tribes-- Sevateem and Tesh, which live in oblivious mutualism with technology that seems at odds with their primitive surroundings. They claim to serve the god Xoanon, who turns out to be a computer Four tried to fix ages ago and accidentally drove insane. As it turns out, these two tribes are really part of the same originating expedition-- one part was the Survey Team and the other the Techs. Get it? But the way the episode is set up you have to take the long path to get to figuring that out, because all you're really given is the abject violent ignorance of either side and no time is really given to ask questions-- not that anyone has the capacity to answer anymore.
Face of Evil is almost a little like The Doctor's Daughter, except there there is no real mystery we're meant to solve and nobody really seems to care why the war really exists. It's only some idle discovery of Donna's that really makes a difference at all, and we could do happily without the knowledge. In Face of Evil such knowledge is paramount to really getting any satisfaction out of the episode. The question at heart, in fact, is "how did these people end up this way?" These are the kinds of questions I prefer, and that seem to require a significant amount of creative world-building, a delicate and more refined knowledge of cause and effect, that RTD usually lacks. I'm glad he seems to be taking a step in a new direction with the show, even if it is at the eleventh hour.
as usual RTD doesn't quite get it up to Moff Standards-- the reveal seems to come too soon, and the mystery that is set up is resolved with more of a twist than a proper "reveal." for a good comparison see Blink's resolution as opposed to, say, Utopia's-- both are fine episodes, with interesting plot progression and fantastic reveals that keep viewers interested. RTD manages to almost attain that same feel in the last few minutes of Utopia that Moff achieves with Blink, but with Blink we don't get the monsters' true identity, or the whole story, revealed until quite near the end. With Utopia, on the other hand, a man becomes the monster, taking a fairly safe and tame venture that seemed to be trotting towards and easy resolution into a totally new direction. This seems to be the main difference between the writers as far as plot progression: Moff sets up a mystery and RTD just creates insane twists.
with The Next Doctor we get the mystery up front, just like in a Moff episode, and it's indeed passed off by all characters in the time period as "normal." Well, as normal as a guy running around pointing a screwdriver at monsters can be considered. However, near the beginning Ten gives himself a convincing rationalization as to why Morrissey's character exists that ends up being completely incorrect. This is RTD once again leading us down the wrong path, ready to twist it just as we're sure where the story is heading. While we still have the presence of the Cybermen and the absence of The Next Doctor's memory to explain, these are resolved with little more than small, obvious and off-hand reveals-- things we could almost have assumed as viewers even if not told.
Moff almost seems to dip into the Rusty Method with his latest go, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. This is a typical mystery setting straight from the beginning, but the Moff Method is deviated from when Ten identifies the monster far too early on for us to really have time to wonder what is happening. The Moff does add in additional mysteries such as why the Vashta Nerada are hanging out killing library patrons, who the hell River Song really is, and the significance of the scenes with the little girl; however, the reveals are not satisfactory for some reason. Certainly the answers don't have the same appeal as those in The Empty Child, where we find out that the monster is created by retarded nanogenes, or in The Girl in the Fireplace, where it's revealed that the reason the ship wants Mme. du Pompadour's brain is because it bears her name.
i think ultimately why that is, what makes a good Moff story in the end, is that we can't imagine what's going to happen next. And the mystery is such a huge consequential chunk of the story that without it we could not make heads or tails of what was going on to begin with. This is what RTD lacks-- he tends to have the Doctor figure it out preternaturally fast and then sets us up for some small pot twist or heavy ironic loss.
certainly this makes up the bulk of Doctor Who anyway but I far more enjoy the mystery set-up sorts of plots. One that's always stuck with me is The Face of Evil. For those who don't remember or have never seen it (shame), this is an adventure where Four travels to a planet made up of two warring tribes-- Sevateem and Tesh, which live in oblivious mutualism with technology that seems at odds with their primitive surroundings. They claim to serve the god Xoanon, who turns out to be a computer Four tried to fix ages ago and accidentally drove insane. As it turns out, these two tribes are really part of the same originating expedition-- one part was the Survey Team and the other the Techs. Get it? But the way the episode is set up you have to take the long path to get to figuring that out, because all you're really given is the abject violent ignorance of either side and no time is really given to ask questions-- not that anyone has the capacity to answer anymore.
Face of Evil is almost a little like The Doctor's Daughter, except there there is no real mystery we're meant to solve and nobody really seems to care why the war really exists. It's only some idle discovery of Donna's that really makes a difference at all, and we could do happily without the knowledge. In Face of Evil such knowledge is paramount to really getting any satisfaction out of the episode. The question at heart, in fact, is "how did these people end up this way?" These are the kinds of questions I prefer, and that seem to require a significant amount of creative world-building, a delicate and more refined knowledge of cause and effect, that RTD usually lacks. I'm glad he seems to be taking a step in a new direction with the show, even if it is at the eleventh hour.