A Word or Two On Steven Moffat's Who

So, my first posts on this blog came about a year ago, on the subject of Doctor Who.  That wasn't my original intent.  But after the semi-hiatus of the split series, the excitement of the 50th anniversary, and the prospect of a new darker Doctor, to be played by an older actor, in a throwback to Hartnell, my anticipation was very high.  And the 2014 series frankly...sucked.  Instead of plunging this new Doctor headlong into new adventures, Steven Moffat squandered an entire year's worth of Doctor Who on pointless psychodrama and an utterly uninteresting love-triangle of sorts between the Doctor, Clara, and fuckin' Danny Pink.  Clara (a character who had already outstayed her welcome, Moffat having inserted her egotistically into the backstory of every single Doctor) started out in the first story childishly whining about the Doctor looking old and having wrinkles, and it took a whole series, before she got over her hangups with the Doctor's change, and before we had the chance to even start on proper stories for the Doctor's new actor, one Peter Capaldi.  Granted, the series did have its good moments here & there, but overall, for me, there was much more bad than good, and the whole thing is something of a write-off in my mind.  And then that fucker Moffat backtracked on the plans to write out Clara Oswald, more than a year too late already, with the Christmas-special, which I otherwise quite enjoyed...

A whole years' worth of Who down the toilet.  The show turned into a parody of itself, with the already over-hyped companion elevated to primary prominence, and the Doctor at one point reduced to the figure of a whimpering child, needing Clara's comforting hand to help stanch his tears.  Vomit !

Fast-forward to 2015, and this last series has been...yes...better.  With Danny Pink out of the picture (maybe), less focus on Coal Hill (don't worry, Moffat has a whole spinoff in the works for all of the five or so fans asking for that) & on Clara's psychological hangups, we almost got a decent series.  Of course, Moffat still did way too much of the writing himself, and much of the writing was sub-par.  Of course, Clara was still the egotistical greedy bossy attention-whore she ever was.  And a move away from single-episode stories was marred by the fact that the second story almost always inevitably fell short of the promise of the first.  But it wasn't wall-to-wall shite...

I watched last year every Saturday, desperately hoping & praying that the series would finally start to come together, and every time disappointed.  This year, I had much lower expectations, but still couldn't avoid those hopes, avoid getting emotionally invested in the outcome.  And if nothing else, I had Clara (finally) getting written out of the show to look forward to.  The whack-you-over-the-head foreboding of Clara's leaving was dragged out story after story, till finally, finally, in 'Face the Raven', she died.  But actually, no, Moffat lied to us.  Just as he did last year.  Just as he always does.

No, we find in the finale of the 2015 series, that Saint Clara cheats death after all.  A final fuck-you from Mister Moffat to all of the Clara-haters.  Alongside a fuck-you to all of the critics of the idea of a female Doctor, as he sought to finally enshrine the notion of gender-swapping Timelords.  And a fuck-you to all those who criticised the centrality of Saint bloody Clara, and the diminishment of the character of the Doctor, as we watched the Doctor ready to destroy the entire fucking universe for the sake of fucking Saint bloody Goddess of all Fandom Clara fucking Oswald, the Almighty !  But we're to believe that the other Timelords (including a resurrected Rassilon, brought back for fuck me if I know what reason) are the real monsters, right ?  Not the terrorist who is willing to destroy all of creation in the name of Clara the Exalted One ?...  Oh, and by the way, that crap about the Doctor + Clara being the hybrid teased throughout the series was one of the cheapest copouts ever.  Are you fucking me Moffat ?

I like Jenna Coleman.  I like Peter Capaldi.  I used to like, and still have some smidgen of respect for Steven Moffat.  But the man should have been gone years ago.  His ego has run wild the last few years, as he has rewritten the entirety of Doctor Who canon in his own image, largely via his alter-ego, the vastly over-rated and ultimately underwhelming character of Clara.  He's attempting to box in future 'show-runners', writers, and producers into his vision of Doctor Who, and his alone.  Not that of the older fans, not that of the younger, not that of all the producers and writers who came before (including Saint RTD, he of the ill-conceived idea of a 'Time War'), and not that of any who come after.  Doctor Who henceforth is to be Steven Moffat's Doctor Who™, and anyone who disagrees can go to hell.

And he'll get away with it.  Already is.  Already has.  Most of the fanboys daren't criticisise him.  Most of the actors, writers, producers, etc. who worked on Who in the past dating back to the 'sixties won't criticise him.  For that matter, they rarely, if ever, have the courage to criticise any aspect of Nu-Who or related projects, such as the works of Big Finish, whatsoever.  For many of them, it's their bread & butter, so in that regard, I can't blame them.  And many of those who were most critical of Moffat and his ridiculous elevation of the Clara character probably stopped watching last year (did I mention the ratings ?), or if they watch still, don't care enough to complain or criticise any more.

I'm rapidly falling into the latter category, already was in fact before this latest series.  This whole rant here is, I suppose, a matter of catharsis, more than anything else.


The Five Stages of Grief:

1. Denial  Split series, Anniversary*
2. Anger  Last year
3. Bargaining  N/A really
4. Depression  Last year to this
5. Acceptance  Current moment

And why should I care really ?  When the show came back in 2005 under Russell T Davies, there was so much I didn't like/disagreed with, and I was so much more invested in the Who of Big Finish (before much of their output went to shite.  Yeah, I said it), that I was willing to write off this new Who as a different product for a different generation.  Even as David Tennant took over from the ill-cast Eccleston, as some of the writing got better, as the show got closer to its roots, and further away from farting aliens and the likes of Cassandra (ugh,  Zoë, you deserve so much better).  Even as RTD, he of the ill-conceived idea of a 'Time War', finally left, to make way for a new 'show-runner.'  And then that evil bastard Moffat introduced me to wee Amelia Pond, and her 'Raggedy Man', and I wanted to believe again.  Fucking shite !

Here's my (generous) off-the-cuff ratings for the stories this year.  Probably the first time I've ever done this, and, almost certainly the last.

1. The Magician's Apprentice (6/10)  Great imagery, Missy was superb, sets up an intriguing cliffhanger.  Enough already with the fucking guitar !
2. The Witch's Familiar (7/10)  Needs more Missy !  Clara in the Dalek-casing closest I ever got to caring about Clara, since probably when she was a governess.
3. Under the Lake (9/10)  Closest to scary as the series got, great suspense, chilling ending.
4. Before the Flood (4/10) And then this utter shite.  Absurd monster, comedy alien, and all the nonsense about bootstrap-parodoxes aside, makes no logical sense whatsoever.  Even the Doctor basically admits as much at the end.
5. The Girl Who Died (4/10)  This idiotic nonsense would be the throwaway of the series, except it gets us invested in the idea of Ashildr, the ever-hyped 'Hybrid' of the whole series.  Except...she isn't.
6. The Woman Who Lived (3/10)  Ditto.  The question of fitting infinite life into finite human memory was clever & poignant.  Otherwise, this was pointless utterly missable filler.
7. The Zygon Invasion (5/10)  Well, the whole idea of Britain voluntarily admitting masses of Zygons was nonsensical, every single character behaved irrationally throughout, and the thing reeked to high heaven of political correctness, but it was well filmed and augured well for...
8. The Zygon Inversion (3/10) The Doctor in a Union-Flag bedecked parachute a la James Bond !  Should have shut off then.  And the Doctor's great speech ?  Preachy pablum and platitudes.  I struggled to stay awake, it was so boring.  Supposedly, this was the moment that Capaldi came into his own as the Doctor.  Bullshit.
9. Sleep No More (8/10)  Didn't care for or fully understand this on first viewing.  It rewards a second viewing, and I applaud Gatiss for the experiment.  Didn't quite work out in practice, but one of the boldest efforts of the series.
10. Face the Raven (5/10)  Who the fuck actually wanted Rigsy back ?  Really, who are you ?  And Why ?!!  But we got to finally see Saint Clara die ! (kinda, sorta, not really...)
11. Heaven Sent (8/10)  This is the kind of experimental story that really belongs in fan-fiction, or an audio, rather than on the teevee.  Interesting, but not entirely original idea.  Bit too obvious premise, and dragged out to anoyance towards the end.  Capaldi excellent as always, almost no Clara, and best CGI of the series, the moving walls of the castle aside.**
12. Hell Bent (3/10)  Very cinematic direction and effects.***  Liked the parts w/Peter & Jenna in the diner.  Otherwise, this was the very epitome of everything I hate about Steven Moffat and what he has done/is doing to Doctor Who.  Perfect end to the series in that regard.  Managed to refrain throwing my remote.

* I liked An Adventure in Space and Time.  Moffat to the best of my knowledge had nothing to do with it.

** They made this work in Harry Potter, and the rest of your CGI is excellent.  Why was this so ridiculously fake ?

*** Meant to say something here; can't remember what now.  Aw, fuck it.


Update: xx. The Husbands of River Song (4/10) Greg Davies was cool, Matt Lucas alright, wrapped up some of the threads of River Song's story, and had some decent one-liners.  Other dialogue was cringe-worthy, story was shit, made no sense, and bored me to tears.  More useless filler, justified largely on the basis on fan-service, rather than telling compelling interesting stories.  Next...

Pre-Hu Rant

Part of me avoids saying what I might about Nu-Who if only because its audience is largely that of millennials & younger, even if created by those my age and even older.  And fuck, they already outnumber us...

But, this 'Class' nonsense....MUST DIE !!!

DIE NOW !  IN A BURNING INFERNO !

Unless it has been thought up solely as a project with which to totally remove one S. Moffat's attention from Doctor Who (with a properly appointed successor in play) and/or it includes the involvement of one J. Whitehall and one M. Gomez.

And I Do Not Want to Hear that the several Coal-Hill-based eps. of the last dire series were in fact wilful pilots for this nonsense.  I hate Mister Moffat quite enough already thank ye much.  I need no reason to further despise the Barstard.  I was in fact trying to work my way into seeing a redemption in the latest series, till the bastard BBC dropped this latest turd on ev'ryone's head.  Fuck ev'ryone involved in this shit !

An even-worse companion than Clara ?

I'll Take This as a Good Omen

A Calm and Considered Request for Closure

Had a post half-written a fortnight back on my attempt to re-watch the first episodes of Nu-Who (G-d it was awful), but thought better of posting it.  But with the news that Jenna Coleman is finally (two years too late) leaving Doctor Who, I just have one thing to say to Steven Moffat:

CLARA OSWALD MUST DIE !

No seriously, give us a death-scene.  Something horrific preferably.  It's the least you can do.

Possibly an even worse contribution to canon than the 'Time-War'.

* I suppose it's theoretically possible that the character will improve with the new series.  But I can never un-see that last squandered soap-opera of a series*.  Such a waste.

** Check out that original title in the URL.  Drama-queen much ?

River Song Returns

Alex Kingston to reprise River Song for new Doctor Who audio plays

By Morgan JefferySaturday, Jun 27 2015, 5:00am EDT
River Song (Alex Kingston) will cross paths with the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in a new series of Doctor Who audio plays.
Kingston will reprise her role as the time-traveling archaeologist in Doctor Who: Doom Coalition 2 from Big Finish Productions.

Best known for their audio plays based on the classic Doctor Who series, Big Finish have recently begun branching out into new series material with the upcoming box-set UNIT: Extinction starring Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart) and Ingrid Oliver (Osgood).
Doom Coalition 2 will be released in March 2016 - with Kingston joined by McGann, plus Nicola Walker and Hattie Morahan as the Doctor's companions Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair.
River will then return later in 2016 with her own spinoff series - Doctor Who: The Diary of River Song, a four-hour adventure which will again feature McGann in its final installment.
Further 2016 efforts from Big Finish based on the new series will include Doctor Who: The Churchill Years - with Ian McNeice reprising his role of Winston Churchill to narrate a four-hour saga, recounting the indomitable Prime Minister's unseen encounters with the Doctor.
Meanwhile, Doctor Who: Classic Doctors, New Monsters will pit the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors against creatures invented for the new series.

Well, I for one welcome the return of River Song, although I understand why some might not like the character.  And interesting how they're slowly slipping in elements of the new series.  Not so likely to get Eccleston of course, but maybe in a one-off recording one day...

<rant>Only thing I don't like about this is...blasted box-sets again.  It's such a stupid format for a digital era, hasn't exactly encouraged the best writing in the past, and accelerates the splintering of BF's offerings to such a degree that it's difficult for fans to keep track of it all, never mind afford them (single-releases, at least they can dip in and out, one manageably long story at a time).  But Briggs & Co. have made it clear that the box-sets are where everything's going, like it or not.</rant>

“The idea of River meeting previous Doctors was actually proposed by Steven Moffat,” says producer David Richardson, “and it's just irresistible, isn't it? Alex embraced the idea of returning to the role, and so she will be starring in no less than two box sets next year. And yes, we are still pinching ourselves!”

Yeah, lucky buggers.

'Arya' on the Who

Having landed back in the UK fresh from touring the US, today Maisie Williams sets foot on the Doctor Who TARDIS to take up a guest role in the hit BBC One show that returns to our screens this Autumn.

Huh.  Cool.

That is all.

10th Anniversary of Nu-Who

Huh, so I guess I missed the tenth anniversary of Nu-Who.

Peter tells us how he felt when he first saw #Rose. Tell us what made you squee when you first saw it... #DoctorWho http://t.co/H7ZO1mrcgQ
— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) March 26, 2015 

Squee.  Really, 'squee' ?

5 things you never knew about #Rose #DoctorWho #10YearsofNewWho pic.twitter.com/GcZRxYDpYv
— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) March 26, 2015

1. Which set a terrible precedent
2. Possibly the worst idea in the history of 'Who'.
3. One good thing about launching in 2005 I guess.
4. Huh.
5. Okay.

Anyways, I just hope Moffat redeems himself with the new series currently shooting and gives us the 'proper' Capaldi/Coleman series he denied us last year.  Not sure I can ever warm to Clara again though.

Big Finish 162: Protect and Survive

Big Finish stories of recent years generally aren't what they used to be, but there's still the occasional rare gem, and Protect and Survive is one of these.  Since the end of the cold war, most, in the west at least, have been happy to forget the period as if the potentially world-ending conflict between East and West never happened, and the cold war has over time become a less and less common subject for popular fiction.  That this trend may now be coming to an end, as evidenced by the like of the recent BBC series 'The Game' is a sad reflection on our contemporary politics, as the idiots who run our foreign policy, seemingly desperately hungry for a new cold war, if not worse, go out of their way to seek confrontation and discord with Putin's Russia.  Strange how soon we forget, even seemingly those of us who lived through the sixties, seventies, or eighties.  How we once grew up somehow having to be reconciled with, or in denial of, the fact that we lived under constant threat of nuclear holocaust.  The threat never truly went away, and may even be greater today than it was then, but somehow with all the weight of history behind us, and all the knowledge previous generations lacked (such as just how close we really came to annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis), we'd still rather forget the uncomfortable truth of the recent past.  And as for the near-religious belief in the US in the ultimate victory over Communism, in the 'American Century', in the 'single Superpower', in 'American Exceptionalism', well that particular mindset seems bedded in for a generation or two at least.  And in the interim, as we shift political power from the generation of the Cheney's and Rumsfeld's to that of the millennials, who have grown up blissfully ignorant of the still very real nuclear threat hanging over the planet ?  Well, we're fucked, aren't we ?

Protect and Survive plunges Ace and Hex right into the very apocalypse many of us grew us fearing, and keeps them there in one of the tightest, more claustrophobic, and most atmospheric releases of recent years.  The title is taken from a remarkable series of public information films and pamphlets that were genuinely produced in the UK in the 80's with the intent of reassuring and pacifying the public in the event of a nuclear attack from the USSR.  Most Americans of a certain age are probably at least vaguely aware of the 'Duck and Cover' pieces of the fifties and sixties, but we're talking about the nineteen-eighties here, and trying to convince modern Britons that taping up their windows and hiding in their cellar for a few days would somehow protect them from the awesome explosions and fallout of the Soviet Union's most powerful weapons, each of them exponentially more powerful than those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Protect and Survive does a fine job of both capturing the ultimate futility of such efforts, and imagining the horror of facing the desperate reality of the 'survivors' of a nuclear attack, and in the case of Hex and Ace doing so over and over and over again.

This being modern Big Finish, it is unsurprisingly part of a three-part 'trilogy', and the larger story here regarding the Elder Gods frankly isn't much to get very excited about, but while the focus remains on Ace & Hex and the elderly couple whose shelter they share, the drama and tension is some of the best one could expect from Big Finish.  Sylvester McCoy's Doctor remains hidden in the shadows for much of the story, being eventually revealed as much more of the spider at the centre of the web, in keeping with his history on TV, and reflecting a theme of abandonment by the Doctor that seems increasingly common with Who, both on audio and TV, in this case giving Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier that much more opportunity to bounce off one another and to shine in the Doctor's absence.  Sound design and editing throughout are excellent.  Would that it were financially possible for BF to return to an era of far fewer ranges, and one in which each of the main monthly releases could reach this level or better...

If you truly want to add to your nightmares, the original Protect and Survive videos are available at the Imperial War Museum (http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060022098) and elsewhere, and remember that this was our actual very recent history, and part of an imagining that could still reflect our very imminent future...or lack thereof.  Stupid humans !

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/protect-and-survive-330

The Clara Oswald Hour

Below was originally written some weeks ago, before the 'Christmas Special.'  After which I feel no reason to rewrite or retract any of the same...

Some few weeks ago, a lot of hot air was vented about the trailer for the New Star Wars movie.  Now personally, I think the controversy over a black stormtrooper is just about equally as stupid and ridiculous as putting lasers on the hilt of a light sabre, but then again I never actually watched the trailer...or any of the post-ROJ films for that matter, and nor do I intend to.  Fact is I don't really give a shit about Star Wars, or even Star Trek for that matter. I like them well enough, but I don't really have any emotional investment in them. Doctor Who is a different matter.  Like so many, I grew up with Doctor Who. It was a part of my life as long as I can remember and it was an established cultural institution well before I was born. I still resent the fact that the BBC cancelled it, and I still see as an act of cultural vandalism the wiping of tapes that took place in the sixties and the seventies. When Russell T Davies brought the show back in 2005, I didn't care for many of his choices, but I stuck with it, and it got better as David Tennant was brought in, as we lost the chavvy companion, as old enemies returned, and as writers like Steven Moffat gave us the occasional compelling stories like Blink.  I was initially sceptical of the casting Moffat chose as he took over the reins of 'showrunner' from Davies, but little Amelia Pond quickly won me over as did Karen Gillan as her older self, Arthur Darvill as Rory, and Matt Smith as an impossibly manic childlike Doctor. I thoroughly enjoyed Moffat's early tenure and even as the writing faltered over the two previous half-series, I wouldn't want to miss an episode.  And then we had the fiftieth anniversary (with ridiculous number of special this, that, and the other) , followed by the revelation that Moffat was to give us a new darker more alien Doctor, played for the first time in decades by an older actor in Peter Capaldi, a throwback to William Hartnell's original. Brilliant !  So why, so long after the 'eighth' series of Doctor Who ended back in November can I still not get over how impossibly shite it all was ?

Not everyone would agree of course.  Some people loved it.  Many, more I suspect, hated it. It was if nothing else...divisive.  So what you may ask did I dislike about it so much ?  Was it Capaldi ?  Nope.  Jenna Coleman or Sam Anderson ?  Nope.  Was it the crap opening sequence (Hey, how can we symbolise time in a way that will be culturally relevant to millenials ?  I know, antique clockwork timepieces, geddit ?!) or the shit theme tune ?  That's not it.  The cheapo budget, the almost total lack of multi-part stories, the refusal to use any of the characters created by Moffat's predecessor ?  Not really.  The writing, it must be the writing, right ?  No, at this point, the substandard writing goes without saying, though this series did certainly produce some real stinkers (thinking of you, Kill the Moon).  I know, it was Clara, right ?  You think it's been turned into 'The Clara Oswald Show, guest starring the Doctor' ?  Well...yeah, but it's more than just that.

See, I believe that as a rule, if you want an audience to invest emotionally in a character of yours they have to be either a)Interesting, b)Likeable, or preferably c)Both.  Having created a character in Clara Oswald/Oswin/whatever that previously served merely as a sort of cipher, or arguably even a Macguffin, Moffat faced a lot of criticism over the lack of depth or character development in Clara.  And he decided to follow up by making the next series of Doctor Who ALL ABOUT CLARA...ALL THE TIME.  He turned the show into a sort of soap opera, with a central cast of just three (four, if you count Missy, blech), revolving around Clara Oswald and the conflicting relationships she had with the two men in her life: her new boyfriend Danny Pink and the Doctor.  Forget spending more time exploring this newly mysterious and unpredictable Doctor, forget the monsters and the adventures, what we really need is a thorough exploration of the thoroughly toxic relationships between these three characters who spend much of the series lying to one another, threatening and insulting one another, and generally being assholes to one another.  Moffat took a character in Clara Oswald who was ('Impossible Girl' not withstanding) not particularly interesting and mildly likeable, and gave us a character who was still not particularly interesting, and over the course of the series increasingly actively unlikable.

Last Christmas: It was all a dream, again, and you're stuck with Clara Oswald, and me Steven Moffat, like it or not, losers...

Please God, no !?  That asshole Steven Moffat has determined to afflict us with another year (or more ?) of Clara fucking Oswald ?  Against all odds, I tried again to give Moffat 2.0 Who a chance, and really really wanted to like this Christmas Special; was yet again willing to give the show a chance.  I could overlook ripping off Alien, ripping off Inception, ripping off Big Finish (hello, why do you think the show was able to come back to TV in the first place ?), but fuck !...  And I never even published (maybe I still will) my rant about how much the obsessive and soap-opera-ish focus on Clara (to the extent of all else) ruined the last year's worth of Doctor Who.  But it's Christmas, so I suppose I should say...something nice.  Well,...I really appreciated seeing the lovely Natalie Gumede as something other than the psycho-bitch girlfriend of Tyrone on Corrie.  Wouldn't mind seeing more of her as anything other than Kirsty Soames.  And hell, I dream of the day that I can see Jenna Coleman without immediately thinking of that growing stain on Doctor Who that is Clara 'Greatest Fucking Companion of all Time and Space' Oswald.  The 'Moff' just added a year or more to the date of our eventual liberation.  Damnit !