I tried to hold out judgment until the end and think that I managed to do so successfully, for the most part. Instead of a pounding sense of failure and sadness I just ran out this past season of Doctor Who with a dull sense of foreboding. And it only adds to the sense of disappointment that this season didn’t fail in any of its goals. Steven Moffat had a very specific set of themes and ideas he wanted to explore in his version of Doctor Who and I think he has. But his ideas are bad.
This has all happened before, and it will all happen again
First off, it was absolutely a mistake to structure the seventh season on the exact same frame as the sixth. It nearly guarantees that nothing will feel familiar. So let’s take a look:
- super-cute manic pixie dream girl as a companion
- companion turns out to be a mysterious key to a season long arc that often gets neglected except for a quick acknowledgment at the very end of the episode
- The Doctor is forced to literally face down his own mortality as a tie-in to why his companion is currently the most important person in the world other than him
- companion sacrifices herself for The Doctor which could be touching except for the fact that since the existence of the universe hinges on her decision the personal motives of an individual actually become inconsequential when the stakes are literally EVERYTHING.
Season 7 was just season 6 without the red hair. The season long arcs are so similar they beg to be constantly compared with each other. And while it was somewhat interesting to see what happened when The Doctor was confronted with someone more important than himself. Of course, he wasn’t always so important…
God among men? Man among gods? God among gods?
When Moffat got both Doctor Who and Sherlock I heard an interesting thing pointed out; Moffat was in the peculiar position to dissect importance and ego from opposing directions. That’s because Sherlock Holmes is a man trying to surpass that status and become an intellectual god. Doctor Who, on the other hand, is a cerebral god who aspires to be more human in his endeavors, at least in the new iterations. Unfortunately this seems to be too much of a literary bite for Moffat to chew.
The Doctor is now just like Sherlock Holmes. He’s brash, full of self-righteousness and considers himself utterly superior. But in the case of The Doctor, he is utterly superior. So what happens when you have a character with the powers of a god and the importance of a god? Their existence is the only thing in the entire universe that can create conflict. The Doctor is so crucial that there’s nothing that can oppose him. So there’s just his own life that comes under attack. By elevating him to a god the show has effectively lowered the stakes to just a single possible conflict with a “fill in this season’s villain” to step into the mad-libs blank. This time around it was the Great Intelligence but it could be anybody next time.
An adorable, wide eyed shaggy dog
That reminds me. The Great Intelligence was a bit of a throw away villain that doesn’t really hold much of an emotional heft. He’s new, apparently was never well defined in his abilities, and doesn’t really raise any personal stakes for The Doctor. Well, Clara is a bit similar.
We’re told that she’s the impossible girl over and over, when this literally can’t be true since she’s there. We’re made to wonder who this new person is who won’t go away this season. She’s the invited companion but also a reoccurring face that we randomly encounter. But then it’s revealed that she has modified the fabric of time by entering The Doctor’s soul and inserting herself over and over again into his life, to fight the influence of the Great Intelligence.
But why is she only showing up now? We’re never supposed to ask this because it’s a problem with the story’s construction. We see her finally inserted into The Doctor’s previous lives in the season 7 finale but this doesn’t work. Her impossible moniker hinges on the fact that he keeps encountering her, but it turns out he’s supposedly been encountering her for his entire lifetime(s). So why is he surprised to see her now? It can’t be because this is the first time his past is being rewritten. Were that true then he wouldn’t have seen her until modern day London, her having not been reborn in Victorian times and earlier/later.
What Moffat tried to pull off with Clara was a season-long magic trick. Unfortunately, placing so much scrutiny on her is akin to a slight of hand trick with no misdirection. The whole of season 7 turns out to be a slight of hand trick where the audience can clearly see when the coin is palmed.
I like my science fiction the way I like my gummy bears: hard.
But this isn’t all Moffat’s fault. It’s just mostly his fault. A large part of this is, as I mentioned before, the good Doctor’s rise from powerful Time Lord to what is now more just Lord. He’s a god with a magic wand. Yes, he calls it a sonic screwdriver, but he waves it at things and it tells him things or it fixes things or it breaks things and, well, there is absolutely nothing sonic about it other than the little wee-wee noise it makes. It’s a universal remote control, one that is set to control the universe. So at his strongest we have The Doctor running around as a god. But even when he’s powered down he’s been moving from alien to wizard with an alarming sense of direction.
I like fantasy. There’s nothing wrong with magic. BUT context is key. I also love science fiction and I take the science part of that seriously. Star Wars? That’s fantasy. Yes, there are aliens and space ships but they all operate in a universe where magic is a strong and reproducible force. If I want science fiction then I’ll turn to Star Trek. I like them both. But what’s unacceptable is when a world jumps from one set of rules to another. A perfect example of this is… Star Wars 4-6 compared to Star Wars 1-3. Love them or hate them, the prequels take place in a completely different and completely incompatible world than the originals and a lot of the backlash is that nothing you care about in the originals is necessary for the new films.
Doctor Who is walking dangerously close to this line. The science in Who has never been particularly “hard” but it has been science fiction. But more and more we’re seeing magic wands, the power of prayer, and the strength of faith in a savior . It’s gone from tiresome to insulting. What’s the point in having a character who’s championed for his intellect, thirst for knowledge, and ability to solve puzzles when all it comes down to more often than not is for everyone to have faith in him and make sacrifices? Is it really worth staying invested when the power of prayer will always be around to save the day?
When all is said and done…
I will still be here, watching The Doctor. Why? Certainly not faith. Hope. I’m a sucker with hope. If there’s a chance that the show can pick itself up, decide what it wants to do and figure at an interesting way to get there, well, I want to be along for the journey. And if it doesn’t then I want to see for myself so I can learn what not to do myself. I learned how not to write a mystery from Lost. I learned how not to structure goal oriented storytelling from How I Met Your Mother. Sometimes television is entertainment and sometimes it is a cautionary tale. For the sake of The Doctor, I hope that he learns to solve this puzzle and not expect my prayers to save him.
