Fannish 5: 5 happy endings that you don't like

[selenak]

A challenge after my own heart. :) Bear in mind that one person's deserved and wonderful happy ending is another person's out of character travesty and/or unearned easy fix, mileage will vary, etc., etc. Also, before Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars would have been on the list, but now it's not, due to the AtA revelations later. Now, let's have a go

Comments

[10littlebullets]

I think "unearned" is a perfect word to describe most of the emotional payoff of s6 (in the cases where Moffat did try to come through with emotional payoff instead of setting up an interesting situation and never developing it). Plus, you know, "_______ for Doylist reasons without Moffat bothering to come up with a Watsonian explanation" is pretty much the summary of the whole season--even when the Doylist reasons are awesome, the lack of development keeps it from feeling like a story instead of a glorified plot outline with cool whiz-bang ideas shoehorned in.

Ironically, though, I found myself much more engaged with s6 than with s5, which is technically much better-written. The Doylist machinations in s6 are more interesting to me than the ones in s5, plus its very flaws make it easier to grapple and engage with. It reminds me of this blog post about Teflon Writers and Velcro Writers--RTD is the ultimate velcro writer, even and especially when I want to punch him in the face, but up until this past season Moffat has always been pure Teflon for me, even when he was turning out amazing stories.

[selenak]

Now that's a good post, and I agree about the Moff and RTD assignations!