Doctor Who 50th

[mr_orgue]

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

Comments

[mashugenah]

For me the central problem with the new Doctor Who? has always been the reliance on the general hand-waviness of it, especially its utter reliance on deus ex machina. It became an artistic construct that couldn't resolve any of its storylines or objectives without the authorial voice intervening - to try and hide their reliance on that crutch, they began to view the Doctor himself as a god. The Day of the Doctors places the intervention of the supreme being at the start, in the form of the sentient weapon, who provides more than a helping hand in pushing the Doctor toward the exit option. Almost all of the new series has resolved its plotlines with the Doctor going from a state of despondency to a state of hyper-active victory in the space of a few seconds, with the barest nod to the problems he's supposedly overcoming. This episode has all of those structural problems, but by putting the deus ex machina at the beginning rather than end, it tricks you into thinking it doesn't. The special was precocious and charming, but ultimately I think that by once again simply hand-waving away a problem, it avoids the kind of emotional key-change that you want it to make.

[mr_orgue]

As I was typing this post I included "narrative" along with continuity as another thing that Moffat couldn't do. I deleted it because "narrative" wasn't the right word for what I meant. But I was thinking of the same kind of stuff you talk about here. It's definitely a big weakness of both showrunners.

But - I don't think this weakens the emotional key-change, as you put it. The point is never the plot detail, it's always the emotional arc. And while it'd be better if they were both in play - MUCH better - I'm on board with handwaving the former to give more space to the latter. In this case, it didn't matter that the solution was a bit silly and basically the same as what the bad time lords were up to in the End of Time; what mattered was that the Doctor was too trapped in his/their guilt to get perspective on the situation until an external fresh perspective jolted him out of it (itself prompted by seeing something redemptive in the Hurt Doctor); and then that the solution needed the help of his/their former selves to complete the redemption of the lost Doctor. For me that stuff worked just fine.

[mashugenah]

We're well and truly into "emotional reaction" territory here, so there's definitely room to differ in conclusion without disagreeing on the observable inputs.

[mrteufel]

Hurt Doctor
Physician, heal thyself