Doctor Who 50th
Spoilers. Indirect kinda.
Reposted from the NZDWFC board...
It was very Moffat, of course, but unlike most of s5 and s6 it worked for me. I think the reason is that, unlike the last few seasons, he went into this story with a purpose. The time war was a wound at the heart of the show - and probably a necessary one, certainly a powerful and interesting one - but it was also a fissure that the show just couldn't escape. Returning to this dark action had been the core issue at the end of Eccleston's era and again at the end of Tennant's era, and obviously I had reservations about Moffat going to the same well at the end of Smith's era.
But Moffat's purpose was not to try, a third time, to heal the wound so the show could move on - bound to fail once again - but instead to unmake the act of wounding and give the show a new core. It was an audacious plan, rife with technical and thematic complexities, and that's the kind of challenge that plays to Moffat's strengths. He nailed it.*
And in doing so he opens up a fourth great movement of Doctor Who**. I'm excited to see what Capaldi does with the role, and what the role does with him. We just need to make it through the Trenzalore Silence Will Fall thing first, which, argh. My hopes are low.
* That said, he didn't navigate all the continuity complexities - that was never his strength. But Doctor Who doesn't really have continuity anyway.
** First movement: mysterious wanderer through space and time (63-69); second movement: antiestablishment ruffian shadowed by the power of his stentorian home (70-89); second-and-a-half movement: the breakdown and shattering of one narrative into many, the unmaking in order to be recreated (1990-2005); third movement: the wounded lonely wanderer endlessly seeking connection (2005-2013); fourth movement: the profoundly changed visionary on a hero quest to return to, and remake, his home (2014-?).
Reposted from the NZDWFC board...
It was very Moffat, of course, but unlike most of s5 and s6 it worked for me. I think the reason is that, unlike the last few seasons, he went into this story with a purpose. The time war was a wound at the heart of the show - and probably a necessary one, certainly a powerful and interesting one - but it was also a fissure that the show just couldn't escape. Returning to this dark action had been the core issue at the end of Eccleston's era and again at the end of Tennant's era, and obviously I had reservations about Moffat going to the same well at the end of Smith's era.
But Moffat's purpose was not to try, a third time, to heal the wound so the show could move on - bound to fail once again - but instead to unmake the act of wounding and give the show a new core. It was an audacious plan, rife with technical and thematic complexities, and that's the kind of challenge that plays to Moffat's strengths. He nailed it.*
And in doing so he opens up a fourth great movement of Doctor Who**. I'm excited to see what Capaldi does with the role, and what the role does with him. We just need to make it through the Trenzalore Silence Will Fall thing first, which, argh. My hopes are low.
* That said, he didn't navigate all the continuity complexities - that was never his strength. But Doctor Who doesn't really have continuity anyway.
** First movement: mysterious wanderer through space and time (63-69); second movement: antiestablishment ruffian shadowed by the power of his stentorian home (70-89); second-and-a-half movement: the breakdown and shattering of one narrative into many, the unmaking in order to be recreated (1990-2005); third movement: the wounded lonely wanderer endlessly seeking connection (2005-2013); fourth movement: the profoundly changed visionary on a hero quest to return to, and remake, his home (2014-?).