A Christmas Carol

[teyla]

. . . the hell.

I went in hoping it would be halfway decent. Since it's a standalone episode, and Moffat used to be able to do standalones quite well. Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, they have their issues, but they're enjoyable enough.

The fish were fun. And the Christmas shark was amusing. The Doctor getting constantly distracted by Christmas-y type stuff was a nice touch. The whole thing about him going through the chimney BECAUSE IT WAS THERE was very Eleven in a good way.

But.

Since when is it okay to go back in your personal timeline?

There's a reason that time travel rule was introduced into the show. Because if you have a character who can go back in time and fix everything by changing the past, you have a super-godmode-y character who's just entirely uninteresting. Because he can fix everything. And he gets as many tries as he wants, because he can always go back and try again. Every conflict becomes redundant, and seems imposed on a meta-story level. (Which this one definitely did. Why the hell couldn't the Doctor just break the weather machine? He could have always fixed it again afterwards. One of my favorite scenes in Who was always Mickey in School Reunion pulling the the big computer array's plug. It's a machine. It uses external power. You can always pull the plug.)

What the Doctor was essentially doing was breaking the laws of time. Sure, it's been done before in the show, but this is post-RTD era. And in the RTD era, it was established that breaking the laws of time = PROBLEMATIC. It was one of the central themes of the entire 4.5 seasons that breaking the laws of time should never be done lightly. You can do it as a last resort, but if you fuck it up, Oods show up and predict your death. And only one season later, Eleven goes and casually breaks the laws of time because he feels like it? That de-values every conflict that happened in earlier episodes that was based around the fact that some things can't be done, or shouldn't be done, in time travel. (Father's Day, for example, to name an episode that wasn't written by RTD.)

The other big thing that bothered me about the episode was that . . . why was it that only Abigail could do the singing? I mean. Maybe I was missing something, but as far as I understood, all the Doctor needed was someone singing so he could amplify the sound waves and use them to break the cloud layer. Why did it have to be Abigail? I mean, obviously it had to be Abigail in order to make for a neat, clean, Christmas-y bittersweet ending, but aside from that? No reason somebody else couldn't have done it.

There were a ton of little things that bothered me, and I'm not even going to address the blatant sexism, because--well, because then I'll never shut up. But the two big things that I felt broke the episode's consistency were the laws of time thing, and the thing about the singing. The entire episode just didn't hold together. Which was unfortunate, because the idea was neat. And I liked the fish.

ETA: Also. I just realized. That episode described a society based on poor people selling their relatives to be stored frozen in a basement, and . . . nobody had a problem with that? That is very upper-middle-class. Complete with the whole "yes, they're poor, but they're still happy!" cliché. Ugh, Moffat.

Comments

[topaz_eyes]

The minute I saw the shark, I thought immediately of "jumping the shark." Because I am just that petty. :-D Though I'd love to have cloud fish.

if you have a character who can go back in time and fix everything by changing the past, you have a super-godmode-y character

Yep, this is exactly what RTD examined, and more importantly rejected. But Moffat's always thought of the Doctor as a benevolent savior.

I think Moffat's too reliant on timey-wimey, time-can-be-rewritten, and it shows. I did like that Eleven's interference changed Sardwick Sardick too much, so that the isomorphic controls didn't recognize the old man anymore. So--there was a consequence. But it was glossed over.

It had to be Abigail so she'd have something to do in the episode other than be the love interest. :-P There was a comment made earlier that Abigail's voice was the exact frequency needed to control the cloud resonance, or something hand-wavy like that. Plus the shark already knew her singing.

We were just going "uh, okay" here. Though yes, the fish were awesome.

(edited for spelling fail)

[teyla]

Hee, yeah. Jumping the shark; it crossed my mind, too. But most of that scene I spent flailing at the screen going BUT BUT BUT two minutes ago the shark was going to eat them, and now they've domesticated it to use it as a sled-shark? What?

It did make for nice imagery, though. I just wish it had made sense.

But Moffat's always thought of the Doctor as a benevolent savior.
I think I would be fine with that. If he examined it in a realistic way. As in, story-realism, not factual realism. But he doesn't. The Doctor does things one moment that he says are impossible to do the next. Moffat keeps referencing RTD's episodes on all levels--dialog, catch-phrases, set, design, structure--but then he goes and undermines big, essential things like the "don't go back in your personal timeline" thing. It's horribly confusing.

I did like the fact that Sardick had changed too much to use the machine, too--but I felt it was too little, too late. Because . . . he was still going to let those people die just moments earlier. And then he had a weepy moment with his younger self, and the machine could pick that up? Basically, I didn't feel like I was shown the change in the writing, I was just being told Sardick had changed. Clearly, he had, since the machine wouldn't let him use the controls anymore! That made me go . . . dammit, Moffat. Show, don't tell.

If it was only about getting a specific frequency, then you could have produced that sound using the TARDIS. :| That was the moment in the episode that made me flail the most. Because it was so cheap. Let's randomly sacrifice the female love interest, because hey, that's what you do with personality-lacking, bland female love interests. And then the reason for her getting sacrificed didn't even hold up to the vaguest of examinations. It bothered me.

Also. Illnesses don't come with a countdown, and if you're ill and close to death, you usually don't look quite that perky. Unless she had a bomb on a timer in her stomach, that bit made no sense, either.

Sigh. The more I think about that episode, the more I realize how it made no sense at all.

[topaz_eyes]

In interviews Moffat kept saying the special was meant for an audience already half-gone from celebrating, so we're not supposed to think about it. I think he got that right. But seriously, ITA with you. I found this special...too manipulative? Too in love with its conceit? Too self-aware? I don't know.

Illnesses don't come with a countdown, and if you're ill and close to death, you usually don't look quite that perky.

They didn't need to use an illness: a better argument for Abigail's impending death would have been that multiple freeze-thaw cycles denature and eventually destroy proteins. (After all, you can't refreeze defrosted food without breaking it down further.) That's depressing because the implication makes things a lot worse than they already were for Abigail. *quietly seethes*

[teyla]

In interviews Moffat kept saying the special was meant for an audience already half-gone from celebrating, so we're not supposed to think about it.
. . . that. No. No, sir. Does he have any idea how television works, these days? At least 20% of his audience wouldn't have watched the special on Christmas Day. Television isn't tied to a fixed schedule anymore, Moffat! Even I know that, and I'm just a stupid TV student. Argh.

Disregarding the fact that this is the age of the BBC iPlayer and illegal downloading (and I don't know how you can disregard that, as the executive producer, since Doctor Who and Torchwood are always used as examples for shows that are being watched on the iPlayer by a large part of the audience), it also ignores the parts of the audience that don't celebrate Christmas. The UK is a pretty multi-cultural country, with a rather large non-Christian population. So Moffat isn't writing his show for them? Apparently. He's only writing it for the people who celebrate Christmas, and celebrate it exactly the way he celebrates it. SIGH, MOFFAT. I really sort of want to hit him with a stick.

a better argument for Abigail's impending death would have been that multiple freeze-thaw cycles denature and eventually destroy proteins
That would have worked. But then Abigail dying would have been the Doctor's fault! For unfreezing her. And we can't have that, since it would make the decision difficult and ambiguous and things wouldn't be neatly black and white anymore, and the poor audience might get confused. Although knowing Moffat, he would have probably simply ignored that implication. Since that is what he seems to do with plotlines and implications in his episodes that he doesn't want to deal with.

[pulangaraw]

a better argument for Abigail's impending death would have been that multiple freeze-thaw cycles denature and eventually destroy proteins.

See, that's what I thought at first. And then he went and made it all bloody melodramatic. And he took away the reason why Sardik would have been mad at the Doctor. There was no point.

I admit, I did enjoy the ep on a superficial level, but Moffat's writing still makes me seethe when I start thinking about implications... :/

[blackletter]

Yes...the gender stuff... Abigail was *literally* "The Woman in the Refrigerator."

I liked bits of it, but the uber-normative gender relations and sexism is sad and disappointing.

And I'm going to shut up now, too, or else I'll never stop.

[teyla]

Abigail was *literally* "The Woman in the Refrigerator."
And the Doctor was totally okay with that. Wooh, a basement full of frozen people! Let's . . . unfreeze one of the pretty ones and have her be your Christmas girlfriend. Eleven = Patrick Bateman? :/

Also, Eleven is not being written as asexual. At least not intentionally. In the light of this episode, with all the references to marriage and the Doctor going "I wish I could get some, but I can't, because I'm a dude in a box", that claim doesn't hold up anymore. Which means that Moffat just eradicated the last tiny bit of queer representation in his version of Doctor Who. Sigh.

[sirdoctoroftardis]

Exactly. Why can Eleven break the laws of time? Why can people suddenly touch their past selves without causing disaster? I really hope Moffat isn't establishing a precedent here, because I don't know how there can be any point to the show if the Doctor can just rush back in time in any situation and change things to his liking. Too easy. Not to mention that changing things to his liking seems like "Waters of Mars"-ish arrogance (except at least Ten's goal was to save everyone, not just a select group, because I can't seem him ignoring the frozen people), yet here he's applauded for it, with no consequences. It makes no sense. :|

I actually noticed the thing about the singing, too. And the fact that her illness couldn't have any physical manifestation so that she could stay pretty and able to sing~*~.

[teyla]

I really hope Moffat isn't establishing a precedent here
Well, he already did establish a precedent, essentially, in his season finale, when the Doctor went and rewrote Amy's life entirely. The whole "time can be rewritten" thing is very present in Moffat's episodes--but it was never before as blatant and unapologetic as it was in this Christmas episode. I . . . don't know what he's thinking. I'm assuming that he's probably going to go about it the same way he went about the angels in Flesh and Stone--giving them different attributes and ways of functioning in every scene, always according to what is required for the plot to work. Which is stupid, lazy writing. But it seems to be what Moffat tends to go for.

The bit about the singing just made me flail. Epically. Because dude, you don't just randomly decide to cause someone to die! You try everything else before you do that, and I couldn't see the Doctor trying. He just went, oh, we need someone to sing. Let's unfreeze your girlfriend and cause her to die. Wooh! (Besides, why did they not just put her back in the box and freeze her again once she was done with singing? She was very much alive and perky when she went shark-riding with Sardick in the end; they could have just stuck her back in the box and kept her around, frozen, until they'd developed a cure. MAKES NO SENSE.)