The Thing About Steven Moffat
The thing about Moffat Who is that it's all based around concepts. Every single new episode is a concept. You'll begin to notice a change in the episodes after series 5 cause that's when Russell T Davies stopped writing it and Moffat took over completely. Moffat's credited for s5 but Davies was heavily involved cause I'm pretty sure those scripts were originally intended for Tennant. I don't know exactly how much involvement Davies had but I know he had some. But s6 onwards the episodes become incredibly conceptual because even the episodes Moffat does not write he is heavily involved in and is responsible for more or less all of the ideas behind each of the episodes in his era. Rather than just a good old war to stop or alien race to subdue they become far more about the actual concept of the episode. Which is fine for some episodes but when it's every single episode it gets tiresome. There are of course a few exceptions to this. S7 did not revolve too heavily around concepts and there is the odd episode here and there that does not stick to it. But mainly it does. And as a result we haven't really had any good creations that I particularly want to see return. Davies gave us the Ood and the Judoon and the Slitheen and the Racnoss and the Sycorax. What has Moffat given us? The only aliens featured in Moffat who I'd ever want to see return are those he took from the classic series and potentially the silence (but their arch is kinda finished now). The rest were pretty poor. Especially since most of them were not sentient creatures that could be reasoned with. The best episodes of Doctor Who are those that focus around a moral dilemma or where the Doctor has to use his ability to reason with his foe. Of course there should always be some monsters but ultimately the Doctor is not simply an action hero. Of course there should also be action, in the words of Jenny (The Doctor's Daughter): "love the running". But he should also be shown to be a hero for his wit and compassion. The best episodes are the ones with the best enemies. Period. Without a good foe it falls to pieces. Because he needs to demonstrate his wit and his ingenuity. Moffat revolves his episodes around concepts like running around a dolls house or a dream inside a dream inside a dream or being put in a shrinking machine and then put inside a dalek. Which are all fine and well but they do not make up for a lack of any sort of substance to the plot and the characters. Sometimes these work. But it is always the writers that save them. One such example is The Doctor's Wife, (Neil Gaiman), which worked wonderfully. It was revolved around a concept (the TARDIS being put into human form), yes, but the plot and the enemy were fleshed out and they worked. The God Complex, (Toby Whithouse), also worked. My point is that concepts are great and and all the rest of it but that does not make up for a lack of quality in the writing. You can't hang the entire episode on a concept and expect it to work. He does it with the characters as well. Ashildr and River are probably the best example. Two wonderful ideas with so much potential but they just didn't work. They are so two dimensional. Moffat writes plot devices, not characters. River is the doctor's wife, a fellow time traveller and as a result their time lines are scrambled. It's a wonderful and tragic story. But River has no character. That's it. She's the Doctor's wife, tragically getting closer and closer to the day that he does not recognise her every time she meets her because of their skewed timelines. But that's it. That's the only element to her character besides a few awful, sexist quips. There are no dimensions to her. Ashildr is literally just an immortal. That's the only "personality" she has, besides that which the wonderful Maisie Williams manages to squeeze out of such dry scripts. People don't just have one problem in their lives. There's a wonderful extract in a play by an American playwrite called Tennesse Williams. The play is called Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (you should read/see it it's good) and there's a part where one character asks another why he drink and Tennessee, as he does, breaks into a spiel about this very issue, (not to be performed or spoken on stage, just to give the actors some context and perspective.) There's always more than one thing going on in someone's life. He says that the problem they have been discussing "may be at the heart of the 'mendacity' that Brick drinks to kill his digust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent—fiercely charged!—interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis." what this is saying is that there is not always just one thing going on in life. Even in the face of crisis a person still has their own problems, their own life experience, their own fears that shape their thoughts and feelings and moods and opinions just as their being the Doctors wife or being an immortal do. Their personality is not confined to all we know of them and all that is going on at that second because everyone works differently and there's always so much going on. Moffat does not seem to understand this and as a result many of his characters are incredibly two dimensional, their only personality coming from the concept behind their character. I shall, as you have probably guessed, not be grieving Moffat following his departure from Doctor Who. All of this (and the sexism) simply have to go. Despite the sheer potential of some of his quite frankly wonderful ideas he has failed time and time again because he simply cannot write. As an ideas man: wonderful. As a script writer: sexist, clumsy and rather terrible. As a result what could be incredible story arcs completely drown. He lets his over active imagination get in the way of substance and quality. All I can say now is that I look forward to the wonderful writer of Broadchurch, Chris Chibnall, to begin his work on the most wonderful of show in the world and that I hope that the angel that is Peter Capaldi shall stay on for at least one series with his scripts.
