Subject: Eh, I think we are focusing on different things.
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Posted on: 2014-02-21 16:07:00 UTC

RTD had some pretty awful plots, yes, but what I think ticks me and Outhra off more about Moffat is the way he handles his characters.

In the RTD era his scripts were read by a certain Helen Raynor, which suggests that there was at least someone to object to truly outrageous things. Hence the watchability of his earlier episodes.

However, let's look at his female companions.

Amy Pond is a kissogram who's lost her parents to a time crack. Doctor first meets her as kid and comes back to find her grown up, on her wedding day. Adventures ensue, they recruit Rory after Amy kisses the Doctor, yada yada. They save all of time, reset everything (I'll get back to the reset thing) and Amy's parents turn up. Except then in the next seasons they are completely forgotten again. RTD companions had families that actively took part in the arcs for the companion's development, grounding said companion. Moffat-era companions have, like, drifting blob convenience-parents that are called up sometimes but forgotten in plot holes most of the time. Heck, how were we to know Arthur Weasley was Rory's dad until he randomly shows up in season seven?

Then there's the plot where she keeps on getting pregnancy scares, and it turns out that she's been kidnapped in order to give birth to a child (which is just freaky and awful and problematic on the feminist front on several different levels) who will become the Doctor's killer. And that is River Song.

River Song's first episode in the 10th Doctor series had so much promise. She was an archaeologist, a professor, a consummate badass who has a past with the Doctor somehow. And then we find out that hey, she was born to kill the Doctor. And she spends most of her life obsessing over him. And she happens to be the daughter and the childhood best friend of her parents, so she just names herself in the end.

Speaking of people born to do something to the Doctor, there's Clara. I could link you all once again that little short prequel that Moffat wrote, where the Doctor and Clara are talking about each other in a way that smacks of Suefic writing. Suddenly Clara, who had such a good beginning in Asylum of the Daleks and has this mystery of constantly popping up again -- suddenly that's explained as "oh, she was born to save the Doctor!" Her entire reason for existing is, once more, tied to a man. Her parents are also amorphous blob convenience parents that gain shape and form whenever the plot calls for it, and most of the time we aren't sure what the hell she's even doing outside of being the companion in the first place (she had a job as a... nanny? Au pair? And then during the Day of the Doctor she's... what, teaching? Her backstory is inconsistent at best).

(Liz One... oh man. It wasn't enough for the Davies era to crack a joke about the Doctor making her the virgin queen no more. Moffat had to dive into that, did he? Suddenly Liz One's only purpose ever is to get married to the Doctor. I feel like that's OOC to some degree, but I don't claim to be an expert on Liz One's character.)

All I'm saying is that RTD era companions were clearly human beings with families and lives outside the Doctor. Amy seems to have gone from kissogram to model, Rory's a nurse -- but those occupations just feel like shiny tack-ons. Heck, we inexplicably go from happily married couple to just divorced couple, and the only indicator that you would ever pick up about the transition there is through Pond Life. This reliance on mini-episodes to carry out relevant plot points is like if we all decided to develop our Agents in Interludes and have that explain why their personalities change between missions.

Clara's... something. She does nanny things and teaching things. We're never quite certain what job she does. We're never quite certain who her family and friends are. I can attest that writing Clara Oswald for the Blackout was one of the most difficult things I've had to do in the DW fandom, because there is just so little about her and her backstory that could be used. She's just a series of sassy remarks on legs. Who then happens to have her entire life defined by the Doctor.

I'm just saying, Moffat's plots might be a bit more exciting than RTD's, but at least RTD's companions weren't constantly on the brink of Canon Suedom.

Moffat wrote amazing things with the Weeping Angels, I'll give him that. He's good at monsters. But he's frankly awful at companions. And his tendency to conclude the seasons (as well as an entire episode) with things that reset the universe/timeline suggests that he's reluctant to have the Doctor deal with the consequences of his actions and/or doesn't want to have to explain why his episodes contradict previous ones.

As for the episodes themselves? At least I was genuinely terrified of his RTD-era episodes. Now I can sit through Zygons trying to take over the world by infiltrating UNIT without batting an eyelash. Moffat-era episodes have lost that element of fright to them in recent works in order to just continually glorify the Doctor.

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