By popular demand, my opinion of Day of the Doctor.
This is the first Doctor Who episode I've seen since the 3 episodes I've seen from s6 - I have not seen the show regularly since The Big Bang. And y'know what? I felt like I've already seen this episode 3 times.
It's the law of diminishing returns. You see this in long television shows without an arc-plan where the same creative team stays on for years and years. I should know, I am/was a Stargate fan. There comes the time when the writers simply exhausted everything they had to say about a certain world, certain characters, certain situations. There are a lot of ways of countering it. Sometimes they add characters, kill old ones, make a radical change in setting... You see this in Doctor Who so much. Change the Doctor. Change the companion. Change the setting - is he stuck on Earth or having a setting? Are we doing episode of the week or is there an arc? Is the Doctor happy-go-lucky or PTSDed or bored or having a meltdown? That's why Doctor Who has been so incredibly successful even after years and years. It's so easy to change everything.
And there comes the time when even that isn't enough. There comes the time when the head writer needs to realise the problem isn't the format, or the characters, or the setting. It's him. There comes the time when the writer needs to be honest with himself and realise that he's said and done everything he ever had in mind for the show. And it is time for him to move on from it.
Because the show isn't bad. That's the thing. That's the most awful thing about it all. It's not bad. Steven Moffat has not driven it to the ground. It's not atrocious, or the acting ridiculous, or the setting boring, or the characters uninteresting (well, this was my first encounter with Clara and she came off as the a one-note Feisty Moffat Companion (TM), but let's focus on the Doctor here). It really isn't that. It's that he's not even trying anymore. There is something admirable in going for something completely ambitious and falling on your arse. But that's not what Moffat is doing. He's foregone ambitious. Now he's just telling the same old story, again and again and again. Using the same old tricks, again and again and again. The thing about using a formula is that you know that it works. But as long as you use the formula, you can't try anything else. You can't fail - but you can't shoot higher than what the formula allows you to. Steven Moffat comes off as a writer who is too afraid to fall on his arse. He's too afraid to shoot for something completely different and fail. He's being complacent.
The show isn't bad. It's just stagnant and mediocre. Which is worse than bad.
My opinion of Day of the Doctor? Dear Steven Moffat, it's time for you to leave Doctor Who and go pursue something completely different. Give the show to someone else. Someone with their own ideas and dreams, someone with their own ambitions, someone who will dare try, even if it means they might fail.
It's the law of diminishing returns. You see this in long television shows without an arc-plan where the same creative team stays on for years and years. I should know, I am/was a Stargate fan. There comes the time when the writers simply exhausted everything they had to say about a certain world, certain characters, certain situations. There are a lot of ways of countering it. Sometimes they add characters, kill old ones, make a radical change in setting... You see this in Doctor Who so much. Change the Doctor. Change the companion. Change the setting - is he stuck on Earth or having a setting? Are we doing episode of the week or is there an arc? Is the Doctor happy-go-lucky or PTSDed or bored or having a meltdown? That's why Doctor Who has been so incredibly successful even after years and years. It's so easy to change everything.
And there comes the time when even that isn't enough. There comes the time when the head writer needs to realise the problem isn't the format, or the characters, or the setting. It's him. There comes the time when the writer needs to be honest with himself and realise that he's said and done everything he ever had in mind for the show. And it is time for him to move on from it.
Because the show isn't bad. That's the thing. That's the most awful thing about it all. It's not bad. Steven Moffat has not driven it to the ground. It's not atrocious, or the acting ridiculous, or the setting boring, or the characters uninteresting (well, this was my first encounter with Clara and she came off as the a one-note Feisty Moffat Companion (TM), but let's focus on the Doctor here). It really isn't that. It's that he's not even trying anymore. There is something admirable in going for something completely ambitious and falling on your arse. But that's not what Moffat is doing. He's foregone ambitious. Now he's just telling the same old story, again and again and again. Using the same old tricks, again and again and again. The thing about using a formula is that you know that it works. But as long as you use the formula, you can't try anything else. You can't fail - but you can't shoot higher than what the formula allows you to. Steven Moffat comes off as a writer who is too afraid to fall on his arse. He's too afraid to shoot for something completely different and fail. He's being complacent.
The show isn't bad. It's just stagnant and mediocre. Which is worse than bad.
My opinion of Day of the Doctor? Dear Steven Moffat, it's time for you to leave Doctor Who and go pursue something completely different. Give the show to someone else. Someone with their own ideas and dreams, someone with their own ambitions, someone who will dare try, even if it means they might fail.