Beds and Wardrobes (1/2) Meta (contains spoilers up to TBB)
I had a strange reaction to TBB - well, I had more than one, but the one I’ve been thinking the most about was the feeling of surprise, “Hey, Moffat did emotion - and it wasn’t that bad!”
And I thought it would be interesting to unpack that a little bit...
I had a strange reaction to TBB - well, I had more than one, but the one I’ve been thinking the most about was the feeling of surprise, “Hey, Moffat did emotion - and it wasn’t that bad!”
And I thought it would be interesting to unpack that a little bit and ask myself when I got the idea that Moffat doesn’t do emotion - after all, he wrote, “Everybody lives!” and all the Reinette stuff and River Song was emoting all over the place in her two-parter. Even Blink, that pinnacle of cerebral Who, had a quiet but deeply moving scene where Billy died in the hospital, and Sally just went to the window and looked out at the rain for a minute. Well, it moved me.
But people have been saying, “I just don’t feel the emotional connection with Eleven/Amy that I did with Ten/insert companion of choice,” - and I know exactly what they mean. I feel bereft in exactly the same way, so much so that last night I stayed up late wallowing (there’s no other word for it, really) in lovely Rose/Ten fanart on DA, and got myself quite depressed. It might be early days, but I share that sadness. Really, I do. I was head-over-heels in love with RTD’s show and even when the first gloss of that love began to fade, I didn’t want to let it go. I still think back to the times it left me walking on air, like the end of TIP (oh God, that hug!) and, strangely, walking back from seeing Hamlet at the Courtyard Theatre in August 2008 (by then the distinction between David Tennant and Who was more than a little blurry in my mind).
RTD’s Who was an emotional wringer - I remember the extremes now, both good and bad and, you know what, I actually feel kind of relieved to be just enjoying Doctor Who again.
I want to stop a minute and compare RTD and SM - their visions, their techniques and their style. Please, let’s not start mud-slinging. I can see good - and bad - in both - and I salute both of them for the extraordinarily difficult job they’ve done/are doing, much better than any of us could.
It’s a bit like this - you’re on a diet and you make yourself a lovely healthy salad for lunch with loving care - something like spinach fresh from the garden and roast sweet potato with balsamic vinaigrette (it’s only your first day and you’re still motivated). You eat it slowly, savouring every mouthful and at the end, a tad self-righteously, you think eating good, healthy stuff is actually okay - you won’t miss the chocolate brownies at all if you make that sort of effort with every meal, and it seems like a no-brainer.
That’s Moffat’s Who. RTD’s is when you order the most decadent Death by Chocolate concoction on the menu and wolf it down and you can already feel the headache forming behind your eyebrows and you know you’ll feel shit tomorrow but boy, was it good, and it’s not as if you eat like that every meal, is it? If you did, you’d have a problem.
Okay, that’s an over-simplification, but you get the idea. RTD is a visceral writer. He revels in appetite and excess. His Master eats a whole turkey. His aliens are farting Slitheen or bouncy trampolines. He’s an adult who refuses to act his age a lot of the time and a tiny bit of us (the sort that relates to Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin) wants to be that warm and gross and uninhibited, or at least watch someone else being it. He does what he wants to do, the minute he wants to do it, just because he can. Ooh look, the TARDIS in a stained glass window! Doctor Dobby Jesus! Why? ‘Cos I felt like it. I wanted to.
He’s a child of the baby boomer generation - I want it all and I want it now. Deferred gratification? This is the man who’s still writing scripts the night before the first Tone Meeting and needed sixty cigarettes to get through editing The Poison Sky. He writes a beautiful, perfectly-pitched gut-puncher finale like Doomsday and then he can’t leave it there - his Doctor’s an emotional basket case for the next two seasons and then, just because it’s such fun to write, we get the ecstatic reunion scene and then more sledgehammer tragedy. It doesn’t have to hang together emotionally. It’s just what RTD loves to do.
I know this sounds like having a go but it’s not. I couldn’t hate the man who gave us the Doctor and Rose in love and all the joy that brought to me and many others. RTD is one of these people who makes all the colours brighter, the music louder, life more fun - watching his stuff is like being in the first mad throes of love, and it’s no wonder he wrote about Casanova and then got him to play the Doctor. Who wouldn’t want to eat Death By Chocolate or be head over heels in love? Even the bad bits afterwards are a perverse part of the joy of being involved in something so head-on.
Tennant and RTD are a perfect fit. Though Ten doesn’t verbalise deep emotion (unlike everything else that happens to him), David Tennant is emotionally transparent. In fact there are usually so many emotions flying about on that ultra-sensitive face of his, you don’t know where to start. He doesn’t just show his feelings, he transmits them the way a nuclear bomb gives off radiation. You’ll burn up if you stand too close. His Doctor is Mister Farenheit burning at the speed of light and telling us all about it. Though he denies himself his hearts’ desire, there are many other occasions when he just leaps in and grabs what he wants and to hell with the consequences. Reaming out Harriet Jones, breaking the Laws of Time on Bowie Base, running off with Reinette and thinking he can bring her back for a TARDIS houseparty, viciously punishing the Family…impulsive, what? He steamrollers through life leaving horrible messes behind him for other people to clear away (Jack, for instance) - he can’t just regenerate, he has to blow up the whole bloody TARDIS. He’s a Doctor for the now generation, the first one to grow up believing they were entitled to a higher living standard and a longer retirement than their kids, the Silver Surfer’s who blow their kids’ inheritance, or more accurately, the Silver Surfer wannabees. He’s outrageous, extravagant in both his happiness and his anguish, and terribly high-maintenance but Gawd, how we love him.
And finally he’s gone, and we’re gutted and exhausted and perhaps a little relieved, and along comes Matt Smith and a very different Doctor - one that references the command-and-control generation with his tweedy elbow-patched jacket and his terribly British way of saying, “It was a bad day. I’d rather not talk about it.” And people cry, “But that’s the Time War he’s talking about - he can’t act! Moffat can’t write!” - forgetting that if the Doctor had ever told the Brigadier how he’d blown up Gallifrey, the Brig would have said, “Good Lord. Bad show all round, by the sound of things, old chap,” and that would not have meant the Brig wasn’t appalled and didn’t care.
I mentioned childhood. It’s hugely important to both RTD and SM and the way they envision the show’s appeal, but I think they approach it in very different ways. For RTD, the pleasure is that of being the kid in the toyshop, running around going “Ooh, shiny, let’s press that big red button!” It’s being grown up but retaining the appetite and the immediacy of a child - living in the moment, which leads to contradictory statements like “Basically, it’s a show about a man who just loves his life,” when we’ve all seen Ten seriously contemplate offing himself in six consecutive episodes. If you’re a big kid, both statements can be true, sometimes simultaneously.
Moff’s vision of childhood, however, is from the outside. It’s all about nostalgia and that fey, slightly creepy wistfulness that British fantasy excels at. Look at Amy’s world. Can you imagine Amelia (the very name’s old-fashioned) on a Play Station or even with a TV in her bedroom? No, she’s the introverted only child surrounded by books and make-believe, making her paper Doctors and dressing up. When Eleven re-encounters her, she really is dressed up, but in a slightly pervy way. She’s reached the Age of Not Believing, trying to affect an adult cynicism that doesn’t quite convince.
This little number from “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” is the perfect song for Amy:
When you rush around in hopeless circles
Searching ev'rywhere for something true
You're at the age of not believing
When all the "make believe" is through
When you set aside your childhood heroes
And your dreams are lost up on a shelf
You're at the age of not believing
And worst of all you doubt yourself
You're a castaway where no one hears you
On a barren isle in a lonely sea
Where did all the happy endings go?
Where can all the good times be?
You must face the age of not believing
Doubting ev'rything you ever knew
Until at last you start believing
There's something wonderful...
Truly wonderful in you….
(R Sherman)
See what I mean? But the Doctor will soon fix that. He’s grown-up enough for them both, and off they go:
Up you go with a high and ho to the stars
Beyond the blue!
There's a Never land waiting for you
Where all your happy dreams come true
Every dream that you wish will come true
When there's a smile in your heart
There's no better time to start
Think of all the joy you'll find
When you leave the world behind and bid your cares goodbye!
You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!
(Lyrics by Sammy Cahn)
And there we’ll leave Amy for now, whizzing through the stars in her nightie evoking more childhood memories than I can count…until tomorrow, when I’ll say a bit more about her and her Doctor.
And I thought it would be interesting to unpack that a little bit...
I had a strange reaction to TBB - well, I had more than one, but the one I’ve been thinking the most about was the feeling of surprise, “Hey, Moffat did emotion - and it wasn’t that bad!”
And I thought it would be interesting to unpack that a little bit and ask myself when I got the idea that Moffat doesn’t do emotion - after all, he wrote, “Everybody lives!” and all the Reinette stuff and River Song was emoting all over the place in her two-parter. Even Blink, that pinnacle of cerebral Who, had a quiet but deeply moving scene where Billy died in the hospital, and Sally just went to the window and looked out at the rain for a minute. Well, it moved me.
But people have been saying, “I just don’t feel the emotional connection with Eleven/Amy that I did with Ten/insert companion of choice,” - and I know exactly what they mean. I feel bereft in exactly the same way, so much so that last night I stayed up late wallowing (there’s no other word for it, really) in lovely Rose/Ten fanart on DA, and got myself quite depressed. It might be early days, but I share that sadness. Really, I do. I was head-over-heels in love with RTD’s show and even when the first gloss of that love began to fade, I didn’t want to let it go. I still think back to the times it left me walking on air, like the end of TIP (oh God, that hug!) and, strangely, walking back from seeing Hamlet at the Courtyard Theatre in August 2008 (by then the distinction between David Tennant and Who was more than a little blurry in my mind).
RTD’s Who was an emotional wringer - I remember the extremes now, both good and bad and, you know what, I actually feel kind of relieved to be just enjoying Doctor Who again.
I want to stop a minute and compare RTD and SM - their visions, their techniques and their style. Please, let’s not start mud-slinging. I can see good - and bad - in both - and I salute both of them for the extraordinarily difficult job they’ve done/are doing, much better than any of us could.
It’s a bit like this - you’re on a diet and you make yourself a lovely healthy salad for lunch with loving care - something like spinach fresh from the garden and roast sweet potato with balsamic vinaigrette (it’s only your first day and you’re still motivated). You eat it slowly, savouring every mouthful and at the end, a tad self-righteously, you think eating good, healthy stuff is actually okay - you won’t miss the chocolate brownies at all if you make that sort of effort with every meal, and it seems like a no-brainer.
That’s Moffat’s Who. RTD’s is when you order the most decadent Death by Chocolate concoction on the menu and wolf it down and you can already feel the headache forming behind your eyebrows and you know you’ll feel shit tomorrow but boy, was it good, and it’s not as if you eat like that every meal, is it? If you did, you’d have a problem.
Okay, that’s an over-simplification, but you get the idea. RTD is a visceral writer. He revels in appetite and excess. His Master eats a whole turkey. His aliens are farting Slitheen or bouncy trampolines. He’s an adult who refuses to act his age a lot of the time and a tiny bit of us (the sort that relates to Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin) wants to be that warm and gross and uninhibited, or at least watch someone else being it. He does what he wants to do, the minute he wants to do it, just because he can. Ooh look, the TARDIS in a stained glass window! Doctor Dobby Jesus! Why? ‘Cos I felt like it. I wanted to.
He’s a child of the baby boomer generation - I want it all and I want it now. Deferred gratification? This is the man who’s still writing scripts the night before the first Tone Meeting and needed sixty cigarettes to get through editing The Poison Sky. He writes a beautiful, perfectly-pitched gut-puncher finale like Doomsday and then he can’t leave it there - his Doctor’s an emotional basket case for the next two seasons and then, just because it’s such fun to write, we get the ecstatic reunion scene and then more sledgehammer tragedy. It doesn’t have to hang together emotionally. It’s just what RTD loves to do.
I know this sounds like having a go but it’s not. I couldn’t hate the man who gave us the Doctor and Rose in love and all the joy that brought to me and many others. RTD is one of these people who makes all the colours brighter, the music louder, life more fun - watching his stuff is like being in the first mad throes of love, and it’s no wonder he wrote about Casanova and then got him to play the Doctor. Who wouldn’t want to eat Death By Chocolate or be head over heels in love? Even the bad bits afterwards are a perverse part of the joy of being involved in something so head-on.
Tennant and RTD are a perfect fit. Though Ten doesn’t verbalise deep emotion (unlike everything else that happens to him), David Tennant is emotionally transparent. In fact there are usually so many emotions flying about on that ultra-sensitive face of his, you don’t know where to start. He doesn’t just show his feelings, he transmits them the way a nuclear bomb gives off radiation. You’ll burn up if you stand too close. His Doctor is Mister Farenheit burning at the speed of light and telling us all about it. Though he denies himself his hearts’ desire, there are many other occasions when he just leaps in and grabs what he wants and to hell with the consequences. Reaming out Harriet Jones, breaking the Laws of Time on Bowie Base, running off with Reinette and thinking he can bring her back for a TARDIS houseparty, viciously punishing the Family…impulsive, what? He steamrollers through life leaving horrible messes behind him for other people to clear away (Jack, for instance) - he can’t just regenerate, he has to blow up the whole bloody TARDIS. He’s a Doctor for the now generation, the first one to grow up believing they were entitled to a higher living standard and a longer retirement than their kids, the Silver Surfer’s who blow their kids’ inheritance, or more accurately, the Silver Surfer wannabees. He’s outrageous, extravagant in both his happiness and his anguish, and terribly high-maintenance but Gawd, how we love him.
And finally he’s gone, and we’re gutted and exhausted and perhaps a little relieved, and along comes Matt Smith and a very different Doctor - one that references the command-and-control generation with his tweedy elbow-patched jacket and his terribly British way of saying, “It was a bad day. I’d rather not talk about it.” And people cry, “But that’s the Time War he’s talking about - he can’t act! Moffat can’t write!” - forgetting that if the Doctor had ever told the Brigadier how he’d blown up Gallifrey, the Brig would have said, “Good Lord. Bad show all round, by the sound of things, old chap,” and that would not have meant the Brig wasn’t appalled and didn’t care.
I mentioned childhood. It’s hugely important to both RTD and SM and the way they envision the show’s appeal, but I think they approach it in very different ways. For RTD, the pleasure is that of being the kid in the toyshop, running around going “Ooh, shiny, let’s press that big red button!” It’s being grown up but retaining the appetite and the immediacy of a child - living in the moment, which leads to contradictory statements like “Basically, it’s a show about a man who just loves his life,” when we’ve all seen Ten seriously contemplate offing himself in six consecutive episodes. If you’re a big kid, both statements can be true, sometimes simultaneously.
Moff’s vision of childhood, however, is from the outside. It’s all about nostalgia and that fey, slightly creepy wistfulness that British fantasy excels at. Look at Amy’s world. Can you imagine Amelia (the very name’s old-fashioned) on a Play Station or even with a TV in her bedroom? No, she’s the introverted only child surrounded by books and make-believe, making her paper Doctors and dressing up. When Eleven re-encounters her, she really is dressed up, but in a slightly pervy way. She’s reached the Age of Not Believing, trying to affect an adult cynicism that doesn’t quite convince.
This little number from “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” is the perfect song for Amy:
When you rush around in hopeless circles
Searching ev'rywhere for something true
You're at the age of not believing
When all the "make believe" is through
When you set aside your childhood heroes
And your dreams are lost up on a shelf
You're at the age of not believing
And worst of all you doubt yourself
You're a castaway where no one hears you
On a barren isle in a lonely sea
Where did all the happy endings go?
Where can all the good times be?
You must face the age of not believing
Doubting ev'rything you ever knew
Until at last you start believing
There's something wonderful...
Truly wonderful in you….
(R Sherman)
See what I mean? But the Doctor will soon fix that. He’s grown-up enough for them both, and off they go:
Up you go with a high and ho to the stars
Beyond the blue!
There's a Never land waiting for you
Where all your happy dreams come true
Every dream that you wish will come true
When there's a smile in your heart
There's no better time to start
Think of all the joy you'll find
When you leave the world behind and bid your cares goodbye!
You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!
(Lyrics by Sammy Cahn)
And there we’ll leave Amy for now, whizzing through the stars in her nightie evoking more childhood memories than I can count…until tomorrow, when I’ll say a bit more about her and her Doctor.