Meta: Loss in Doctor Who

[ibishtar]

Discussion and critique of The Day of the Doctor:

[Spoiler (click to open)]From 2005, Doctor Who has been the story of a man who did something terrible and lost everything, and learns to recover thanks to the friends he makes and by never giving up and saving lives and bringing peace where he can. In the 50th anniversary episode that was changed to be the story of a man

Comments

[papilio_luna]

Just basically a world of "yes, this."

I have always seen so much in RTD's story of the Doctor and the Time War about surviving the AIDS crisis (survivor's guilt, the loss of a way of life, the loss of people who maybe you didn't like very much but now that they're gone it still hurts because of what that loss represents), and it feels so thoughtless for this straight, cis, white man to swan in and torpedo that in the name of happy endings. The AIDS crisis did not have a happy ending for the people who lived through it (I'm old enough that I remember it, and lost some adults in my life that I greatly admired to it, and have friends now who have been living with HIV for 30+ years). That survivor's guilt is a real thing, and can be a truly destructive thing (see RTD's struggles with drug abuse) without the hope and humanism that is found through stories like the Doctor's. To erase all of that and relegate it to a pocket universe that isn't our "real" universe, to make the Doctor suffer for 400 years with a survivor's guilt that is a lie, it's just unspeakably cruel.

And I don't think that Moffat sat down and thought, "You know, I would really like to erase this story that in many ways represents the real loss and regret experienced by the author as a gay man during the AIDS crisis. Queer history be damned lololol!" I just think he didn't think at all. He has his own ideas about the Doctor and figured he's got a time machine, we can just go back and undo all that stuff I don't like and replace it with stuff I do like! Yay! After all, it's only fiction, it doesn't really matter. It's just a kid's show, it's not really important.

But it was important to me.

[ibishtar]

I got choked up reading your comment. I completely agree, and I think RTD always had an awareness of his audience's feelings (you see that a lot in The Writer's Tale) that Moffat seems to lack completely, like the way he dismisses criticism of his empty writing for his female characters with a 'but it's the Doctor's story!!!' When I think how hurt little girls who love the show must have felt by certain lines of dialogue, I feel my stomach turn to lead.