Entry tags:
Avoiding Work.
I'm supposed to be writing a script. So of course, I'm filling out a meme instead.
1. Who is your favourite Doctor, why?
Eleven. I am absolutely in love with the bow tie and the awkwardness and the weird, random attacks of hostility and assholishness--yeah, no, I'll stop being cute. (I actually do like Eleven! He's just not my favorite.)
It's Ten, of course. Why? Hm. I think because I feel that in this regeneration, both the writing and the acting took the character the furthest he's gone, so far, on the show. Ten's arc was all about exploring the Doctor as a character rather than a TV show hero; it addressed his faults and the problems this character would run into if the script didn't favor him week after week and write him out of the dead ends he gets himself into. Not that Ten wasn't favored by the scripts as well; of course he was, being the show's protagonist. But his actions had consequences, much more so than in any other regeneration of the Doctor, and I loved seeing the character become an actual person rather than an idea.
Second favorite is Seven. Because he's badass and blows shit up. I'm easy.
2. What do you think of the Daleks?
SO MUCH MORE AWESOME THAN THE CYBERMEN. Ahem. I like the Daleks. I mean, they're 60s SF villains, so they're a bit, uh. Unsubtle. And horribly incompetent. But they work, as villains, and I'd rather have the Daleks as stand-in villains than the show coming up with one cardboard cut-out pantomime villain after the other.
3. Your thoughts on RTD and Moffat.
Ahahaha. You're on my f-list, so I'M SURE YOU KNOW. I'm a card-carrying member of the RTD camp. Disregarding Who, he's my favorite television writer in general. I love his grasp on character development and the way he doesn't shy away from doing risky stuff on his shows. I am also in awe of his ability to run as tight a ship as he did with Doctor Who. It was his show, he set the tone, and made sure that nothing was ever included that he felt didn't match up with the rest. I've never seen any series producer manage this as well as he did with DW. It kept the show on track, and prevented it from falling apart as so many other shows do after a season or two. I feel that he took DW one step further, from an amusing, but rather generic monster-of-the-week show to a show that used its potential to the largest extent possible. He did end up making a few missteps--*cough*Rose*cough*--and he has a tendency to write plots that get bigger with every new episode, which did strain the format and required the suspension of quite a bit of disbelief. Personally, I wasn't bothered by that, though--I'm very much into stories for the character development, and he managed to keep the character development sound and solid throughout his entire run as an executive producer.
Moffat . . . yeah. No. He isn't any worse than most mediocre show producers, but the fact that he took over from RTD, who knew how to access the format's potential and to get it on screen as undiluted as possible makes Moffat's shortcomings stand out quite glaringly. He's failing to set a consistent tone, to narrow his narration down to the essential, important key events and plots, which made this season feel like a vague mist of unspecified thoughts and ideas. As a writer, I feel he does well as long as he's restriced to a 45-minute episode--and isn't required to do any character building, as this is something that he seems both completely incapable of as well as completely uninterested in doing. His forte are clever plots--but as with setting the show's tone in general, I felt that in season 5, he got bogged down in all his hints and details and failed both to make the individual episodes interesting as well as to make the overall plot hold together the way he seemed to be trying to do. Basically, season 5 felt like a first draft--some nice ideas, some clever bits and bobs, but still in need of a whole lot of work to make it tighter and more focused.
And then there's the bit where he's a sexist dick who seems to take great delight in showing his privileged straight ass in public, which isn't exactly something that endears him to me.
4. What is your favourite Christmas Special? Why?
Probably Runaway Bride. Why? Because it's got Donna. Duh. ;)
5. Your favourite companion?
Donna. Ace is pretty awesome, too. I've come to like Martha in season 4, as well. Oh, and the Brig, of course. The Brig sort of wins at life.
6. Least favourite companion?
Sorry to say that it's Amy. Not so much because of the character, but because of the way she's written and portrayed. I'd gotten used to having strong, fully-formed female characters on the show, and Amy was a pretty huge let-down in that regard.
7. Least favourite Doctor?
Four. Because I despise the way Tom Baker is using the character to showcase his unjustifiably high opinion of himself.
8. Favourite episode/arch/storyline?
Midnight is my favorite episode. My favorite arch would probably be End of Time. Not so much because of the actual plot in those episodes, but because I thought it portrayed the relationship between the Doctor and the Master in ways it's never been done before on the show--or rather, in ways that have been hinted at for years, but never actually executed. I very much appreciated RTD daring to step out of the usual constraints the show puts on the development of the main pro- and antagonist.
9. Your OTP/OT3/OT4? Why?
Doctor/Master. Because co-dependency is awesome. Doctor/TARDIS. For, uh, the same reason. Ten/Donna. Because Donna is the one single person I can see Ten actually having a good, healthy, productive relationship with, and the guy deserves a break now and again.
10. How did you get into Doctor Who?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
neery said I should join her in watching this awesome show about this alien who flies around in a phone box. That was back in . . . 2007, maybe? I didn't get into the fandom until just after season 3 finished airing, though.
11. If you could meet any of the actors/actresses/writers/directors/staff from DW who would it be?
Julie Gardner, RTD, David Tennant. Mostly, though, Julie Gardner. Because RTD and DT get enough credit for their work on Doctor Who, but JG did as much or more for the show, and I want to tell her that she's my TV business hero.
12. What do you think of K-9?
. . . he's a metal dog? I have no deep thoughts on K-9. Except that it took me ages to catch the K-9 pun. D'oh.
13. Do you watch the spin-offs?
Torchwood, yes. I gritted my teeth through season one and two and cried my eyes out over Children of Earth. I AM SO HYPED FOR THE NEW TORCHWOOD SHOW. It will be marvellous.
SJA, no. I watched one episode, and it bored me to death. So I skipped that one.
14. Classic/New Series?
New. I don't mind Classic, but everything up to Five is just too slow for my horribly short attention span. Six is, well, Six. I do adore Seven. But I'm mainly a New Who fan.
15. If you could be part of any episode (say for instance you were a companion) which episode would you like to be in?
Uh. I think I could handle Christmas Invasion. Except that I'm A positive, which means I'd've ended up on the roof. Most useful companion ever.
16. Favourite planet/time explored on DW?
Earth. Hur hur hur. I prefer the episodes set on Earth, because they usually focus more on characters. That's a very broad blanket statement, and probably not applicable in all cases, but it seems to be a tendency.
17. Favourite minor characters?
Jethro in Midnight. Christina de Souza in Planet of the Dead, but only because I RP her and have a pretty awesome backstory for her. Wilf. Is Wilf a minor character? If so, I love him to death. Jackie and Mickey are pretty neat, too. Oh, and ELTON. Elton is a Mike Warren character who doesn't squick me! Those are rare, poor Mike Warren.
I'm . . . alright? Busy. Senior year is busy. I did a week of work experience with a local independent TV company last week, and am deciding that I really would love to work in this business. It's silly. You spend your days trawling the internet trying to find ways of acquiring a sawn-off shotgun for cheap, and everyone takes it dead seriously. Because dammit, that shotgun is the most important prop in that reconstruction, and it might actually be in focus for ten seconds. So it's gotta be a good one. But we have no budget, so try to get it for free. It's awesome.
Happy Halloween! Not that I celebrate Halloween, but I suppose a few people on the f-list probably do? If not, just, you know. Happy 31st of October. How is everyone?
1. Who is your favourite Doctor, why?
Eleven. I am absolutely in love with the bow tie and the awkwardness and the weird, random attacks of hostility and assholishness--yeah, no, I'll stop being cute. (I actually do like Eleven! He's just not my favorite.)
It's Ten, of course. Why? Hm. I think because I feel that in this regeneration, both the writing and the acting took the character the furthest he's gone, so far, on the show. Ten's arc was all about exploring the Doctor as a character rather than a TV show hero; it addressed his faults and the problems this character would run into if the script didn't favor him week after week and write him out of the dead ends he gets himself into. Not that Ten wasn't favored by the scripts as well; of course he was, being the show's protagonist. But his actions had consequences, much more so than in any other regeneration of the Doctor, and I loved seeing the character become an actual person rather than an idea.
Second favorite is Seven. Because he's badass and blows shit up. I'm easy.
2. What do you think of the Daleks?
SO MUCH MORE AWESOME THAN THE CYBERMEN. Ahem. I like the Daleks. I mean, they're 60s SF villains, so they're a bit, uh. Unsubtle. And horribly incompetent. But they work, as villains, and I'd rather have the Daleks as stand-in villains than the show coming up with one cardboard cut-out pantomime villain after the other.
3. Your thoughts on RTD and Moffat.
Ahahaha. You're on my f-list, so I'M SURE YOU KNOW. I'm a card-carrying member of the RTD camp. Disregarding Who, he's my favorite television writer in general. I love his grasp on character development and the way he doesn't shy away from doing risky stuff on his shows. I am also in awe of his ability to run as tight a ship as he did with Doctor Who. It was his show, he set the tone, and made sure that nothing was ever included that he felt didn't match up with the rest. I've never seen any series producer manage this as well as he did with DW. It kept the show on track, and prevented it from falling apart as so many other shows do after a season or two. I feel that he took DW one step further, from an amusing, but rather generic monster-of-the-week show to a show that used its potential to the largest extent possible. He did end up making a few missteps--*cough*Rose*cough*--and he has a tendency to write plots that get bigger with every new episode, which did strain the format and required the suspension of quite a bit of disbelief. Personally, I wasn't bothered by that, though--I'm very much into stories for the character development, and he managed to keep the character development sound and solid throughout his entire run as an executive producer.
Moffat . . . yeah. No. He isn't any worse than most mediocre show producers, but the fact that he took over from RTD, who knew how to access the format's potential and to get it on screen as undiluted as possible makes Moffat's shortcomings stand out quite glaringly. He's failing to set a consistent tone, to narrow his narration down to the essential, important key events and plots, which made this season feel like a vague mist of unspecified thoughts and ideas. As a writer, I feel he does well as long as he's restriced to a 45-minute episode--and isn't required to do any character building, as this is something that he seems both completely incapable of as well as completely uninterested in doing. His forte are clever plots--but as with setting the show's tone in general, I felt that in season 5, he got bogged down in all his hints and details and failed both to make the individual episodes interesting as well as to make the overall plot hold together the way he seemed to be trying to do. Basically, season 5 felt like a first draft--some nice ideas, some clever bits and bobs, but still in need of a whole lot of work to make it tighter and more focused.
And then there's the bit where he's a sexist dick who seems to take great delight in showing his privileged straight ass in public, which isn't exactly something that endears him to me.
4. What is your favourite Christmas Special? Why?
Probably Runaway Bride. Why? Because it's got Donna. Duh. ;)
5. Your favourite companion?
Donna. Ace is pretty awesome, too. I've come to like Martha in season 4, as well. Oh, and the Brig, of course. The Brig sort of wins at life.
6. Least favourite companion?
Sorry to say that it's Amy. Not so much because of the character, but because of the way she's written and portrayed. I'd gotten used to having strong, fully-formed female characters on the show, and Amy was a pretty huge let-down in that regard.
7. Least favourite Doctor?
Four. Because I despise the way Tom Baker is using the character to showcase his unjustifiably high opinion of himself.
8. Favourite episode/arch/storyline?
Midnight is my favorite episode. My favorite arch would probably be End of Time. Not so much because of the actual plot in those episodes, but because I thought it portrayed the relationship between the Doctor and the Master in ways it's never been done before on the show--or rather, in ways that have been hinted at for years, but never actually executed. I very much appreciated RTD daring to step out of the usual constraints the show puts on the development of the main pro- and antagonist.
9. Your OTP/OT3/OT4? Why?
Doctor/Master. Because co-dependency is awesome. Doctor/TARDIS. For, uh, the same reason. Ten/Donna. Because Donna is the one single person I can see Ten actually having a good, healthy, productive relationship with, and the guy deserves a break now and again.
10. How did you get into Doctor Who?
neery said I should join her in watching this awesome show about this alien who flies around in a phone box. That was back in . . . 2007, maybe? I didn't get into the fandom until just after season 3 finished airing, though.11. If you could meet any of the actors/actresses/writers/directors/staff from DW who would it be?
Julie Gardner, RTD, David Tennant. Mostly, though, Julie Gardner. Because RTD and DT get enough credit for their work on Doctor Who, but JG did as much or more for the show, and I want to tell her that she's my TV business hero.
12. What do you think of K-9?
. . . he's a metal dog? I have no deep thoughts on K-9. Except that it took me ages to catch the K-9 pun. D'oh.
13. Do you watch the spin-offs?
Torchwood, yes. I gritted my teeth through season one and two and cried my eyes out over Children of Earth. I AM SO HYPED FOR THE NEW TORCHWOOD SHOW. It will be marvellous.
SJA, no. I watched one episode, and it bored me to death. So I skipped that one.
14. Classic/New Series?
New. I don't mind Classic, but everything up to Five is just too slow for my horribly short attention span. Six is, well, Six. I do adore Seven. But I'm mainly a New Who fan.
15. If you could be part of any episode (say for instance you were a companion) which episode would you like to be in?
Uh. I think I could handle Christmas Invasion. Except that I'm A positive, which means I'd've ended up on the roof. Most useful companion ever.
16. Favourite planet/time explored on DW?
Earth. Hur hur hur. I prefer the episodes set on Earth, because they usually focus more on characters. That's a very broad blanket statement, and probably not applicable in all cases, but it seems to be a tendency.
17. Favourite minor characters?
Jethro in Midnight. Christina de Souza in Planet of the Dead, but only because I RP her and have a pretty awesome backstory for her. Wilf. Is Wilf a minor character? If so, I love him to death. Jackie and Mickey are pretty neat, too. Oh, and ELTON. Elton is a Mike Warren character who doesn't squick me! Those are rare, poor Mike Warren.
I'm . . . alright? Busy. Senior year is busy. I did a week of work experience with a local independent TV company last week, and am deciding that I really would love to work in this business. It's silly. You spend your days trawling the internet trying to find ways of acquiring a sawn-off shotgun for cheap, and everyone takes it dead seriously. Because dammit, that shotgun is the most important prop in that reconstruction, and it might actually be in focus for ten seconds. So it's gotta be a good one. But we have no budget, so try to get it for free. It's awesome.
Happy Halloween! Not that I celebrate Halloween, but I suppose a few people on the f-list probably do? If not, just, you know. Happy 31st of October. How is everyone?
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Yeeeeah. It's like . . . I remember you fangirling your heart out over season 2 Ten. And now you're posting rants saying you wish you'd never watched s2-s4.5? What the hell. It's this weird misconception that fandom has that you can only truly love something new if you hate the old version of it.
I also feel that a big part of the fandom isn't interested in seeing the Doctor explored as a character. Which is a damn shame, because he's a great character; so flexible and multi-layered. I get really bored with him just being "the Doctor" and spazzing out and doing magical deus-ex-machina things with his TARDIS. I mean, sure, that's part of it, but if that's all there is, the character becomes distinctly uninteresting to me.
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I'm happy happy happy since my second opinion, did you see that??
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I don't think it can get riskier than taking the Doctor dark side, if only for a few minutes. Plus, giving companions families, exploring the consequences of actions, writing characters with real flaws...
I am also in awe of his ability to run as tight a ship as he did with Doctor Who.
RTD did that and ran 2 other full-length shows at the same time. Moffat ran Doctor Who and ran 3 episodes of Sherlock. Take that, Moffat. *g*
He's failing to set a consistent tone, to narrow his narration down to the essential, important key events and plots, which made this season feel like a vague mist of unspecified thoughts and ideas.
I see this most with the characters. It was hilarious when fans complained about uneven characterization in RTD's era, because the episodes least in line with established characterization... were always written by Moffat. The writers this season, with possibly the exception of Gatiss, seemed to lean more toward RTD's characterization style. Whithouse, Chibnall and Roberts wrote in the RTD era of course, and Nye and Curtis are very character-oriented writers anyway. Maybe Moffat should have polished their scripts to bring them into line with his style of characterization; at least it would've been consistent.
Watch me stick my foot in my mouth now. Wrt characters, Moffat took 2 huge risks with Amy and River. He wrote Amy as an incomplete person and is presenting River's story out-of-order. IMHO both are actually bold character choices. OTOH they needed to be written very carefully, in a show-not-tell manner. I don't think he succeeded, at least for me. "The Beast Below" set the pace with tell-not-show, so it sunk any faith I might have had in Amy's characterization. Yet Moffat did so well with Amelia.
Do you notice how only Moffat gets to write River? I think River is the character Moffat really wants to write about, not Amy. She's a better character, I think, though not because she's written better. Out-of-order really means show-not-tell, Moffat, did you get the memo? Luckily Alex Kingston is a strong actor so she can layer the performance. I wonder how other writers would handle her character.
RTD wrote "Death of the Doctor" for The Sarah-Jane Adventures, which I watched a few days ago. I felt more of a connection with RTD's Eleven in 2 (25 minute) eps than I had with Moffat's Eleven in 8 (45 minute) episodes. Mainly, there was the sense of character continuity that had been missing for most of S5. Moffat's Ten always felt out-of-step with the RTD era, yet RTD's Eleven felt right in line with Moffat's era.
Re plot, Moffat's trying a multi-season arc, so some ideas have to remain unexplored in the short term. That said, you're right, I think he's juggling too many balls. Sometimes I wonder if he purposely uses all the shiny, clever concepts as a distraction, to call attention away from the plot holes.
And Julie Gardner is definitely an unsung hero.
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I do feel that it was glaringly obvious in season five that Moffat did no editing whatsoever on the episodes that weren't his in the first place. I think this played probably a pretty big part in the quality drop in the overall writing of the season--and there definitely was a quality drop, not in regards to character-centered writing vs plot-centered writing, but in regards to tightness and consistency. It's impossible to get all episode writers on exactly the same page where characters and tone are concerned--which is why I feel it's so important to have one central creative "engine". RTD set the tone for seasons 1-4.5--sure, people who didn't like his tone probably ended up getting very little out of the show, but I don't feel that failing to set a consistent tone will solve that problem. If you don't like an exec's style, you're simply better off not watching their work, no matter if they edit all scripts or not. Moffat did set a tone, but he failed to edit the other writers' scripts to adhere to that tone, which made the writing this season seem vague and inconsistent. I'm sure that if he had edited the scripts, the overall writing would have been better--still maybe not my cup of tea, but of a higher quality objectively.
IMHO both are actually bold character choices. OTOH they needed to be written very carefully, in a show-not-tell manner. I don't think he succeeded, at least for me.
Agreed on all three points. If he'd done well on these character choices, they could have been brilliant. He didn't. So they ended up being unsatisfying. To me it felt like he wasn't even aware of the fact that he was taking a huge risk with both of his main female characters (which, in itself, raises some concerns), which seemed part of why it didn't work. He didn't know what he had to do in order to make sure to give those characters solidity despite the fact that he was breaking down their consistency, because he wasn't even aware that he was taking risks at all. Or that was how it looked to me. Which is disappointing. Because it implies that Moffat has no interest in character development at all, which--well. This is a personal opinion, but I've always been hard-pressed to show any interest at all in stories that contain no or very little character development.
Yet Moffat did so well with Amelia.
He does well with kids. I'm not sure why. Maybe because he has kids of his own? But yeah, whenever he ends up writing kids, I feel he does well with them--sometimes more, sometimes less, but I've never seen this utter lack of character consistency in any of the kids he's written that I see in most of his adult characters.
Alex Kingston is, imo, the only reason River's character isn't just as off-putting and disconcerting as Amy. >_> I adore Alex Kingston, and think she's a very good actress, and she's working really hard to give River some sort of consistency and solidity. Until Moffat dresses her up in a dress and high heels and has her using hypnotic lipstick, sigh. Even Alex Kingston can't act around that one.
Death of the Doctor! I need to download and watch that. I would love to see Matt Smith getting a chance to actually develop his character and do some acting, rather than just having to spazz out in front of the camera for 45 minutes week after week. Because I feel I could like Eleven, if they'd ever given him any background--other than "bowties are cool" and "geronimo". 9_9
Sometimes I wonder if he purposely uses all the shiny, clever concepts as a distraction, to call attention away from the plot holes.
. . . I felt he pretty solidly proved that with Flesh and Stone. That episode made no sense. It had a lot of pretty concepts, but none of them had been properly worked out to the point where they made sense in a consistent way. Same with Amy's plot--if her relatives and friends were decimated by the crack in her "first" life, she would have ended up being a completely different person in her "second" life, the one she lived without the crack eating her parents and friends. People are shaped by their environment, and the second time around, Amy grew up in an entirely different context than the first time around. She wouldn't have been the same person. But hey, who cares, the concept is shiny, right? /bitter
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I actually had that d'oh moment in public. I was standing at a San Francisco bus station, chatting with an American, and one of those police vans for dogs drove by, with "K-9" on the side. And I asked the American "Why's the dog unit called K-9, anyway - OH." I still think it's ridiculous that the official police force uses that pun.
Uh. I think I could handle Christmas Invasion. Except that I'm A positive, which means I'd've ended up on the roof. Most useful companion ever.
Lol I think I would have spent that episode running around shouting at people and tying all the A pos. people to a rope. Which would not have solved the bigger problem, I guess, but I still think it would have been a sensible thing to do. ;)
I'd be an awful companion anyway, though. It requires way too much running around in the dark.
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Ahahahaha. I . . . didn't know they did that. That's kind of painfully funny. But yeah, you don't really catch it until you say it out loud. And then you go . . . oh.
Lol, well, it definitely sounds like a sensible thing to do. You could at least have commandeered Mickey and Jackie off to do it, while you're dealing with the actual threat, or something.
I'd be an awful companion as well. Not so much because of the running around in the dark, but because of generally the running. I don't physically qualify as a companion. :|
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10. is hilarious, because I just looked back through my tagged posts and I got into it right at the beginning of New Who in 2005 (damn if I remember how it went exactly and who clued me in - I didn't even know neery back then and I think I got her into DW). But I'd always thought that you're so much deeper (and longer) in the fandom than I ever was. Lol.
17. Jethro? This is surprising as a first answer. I mean, I have had nothing but Colin Morgan on my mind for the last two months, so it's understandable to me. ;)) And it's your favorite episode, apparently, but what's so special about Jethro?
p.s.: It's great to hear from you, I've noticed your absence on my flist. Glad to hear you're having a good time in your senior year!
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I dunno, whenever someone asks me who my favorite minor Who character is, my brain goes for Jethro. I do like the character very much; I feel that considering the fact that he's only around for 45 minutes, his character has surprisingly many layers and nuances. And Colin Morgan did a very good job on that performance--better, I'd say, than his Merlin portrayal. Maybe because Jethro is a more solid character than Merlin. >_>
And then there's the fact that I've watched Midnight just about 20 bajillion times. I remember vaguely hoping for Jethro as a companion for a while--because sigh, I really do wish we could have a male companion for once.
Not that that's ever gonna happen with Moffat in charge.And I know, I'm sorry about being so absent! I joined a role play community, and it's eating up all my online time, so I never get around to actually posting a proper entry anymore. I'll be dropping soon, though, so I'll be back. ;)