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Doctor Who – Prettier on the outside – Stupider on the inside

The 2014 Christmas special was the last straw. I do not normally join forums or post comments but after reading reviews of this episode from sentimental apologists, I felt I had to speak up. I have been watching Doctor Who almost my entire life from the first episode with the first Doctor (William Hartnell – 1963). The original concept of the show was to be a children’s’ science show. As it matured, Doctor Who became the thinking person’s sci-fi show. It had almost no budget and no special effects but it did have incredibly good writing with meticulous internal logic. This is what saved the show from its reliance of tinfoil and toilet plungers.

Now the show appears to be in the opposite situation. The reboot of Doctor Who (2005 to present) has all the resources of modern CGI technology, a decent budget and enough time for the actors to establish and perfect their performances. However, the writing for the past four years has been desperately in need of a toilet plunger. Episode after episode, logic is thrown out into the vortex leaving massive plot holes in the fabric of space and time. Situations that could be explained logically in one or two lines are simply left unexplained or attributed to vague miracles, mysteries or happenstance. Characters repeatedly die and come back as if they were soap opera stars. Why the absence of coherent plots? Why the lazy short cuts? Why write the show into crazy corners in the first place? One needs only to go back and watch a few episodes of the Troughton or Pertwee or Tom Baker or Tennant series to appreciate how the writing was mostly consistent with the show’s canon and the characters.

Under Moffat’s leadership there hasn’t been a single episode that has been free of logical gaps, implausible twists and unbelievable resolutions. The key to good fantasy/science fiction is helping your audience suspend their disbelief. I’ve tried really hard to be carried along by the story and the superb acting performances but the clumsy writing and jarring plot holes keep throwing buckets of water on my suspended disbelief bringing it crashing to the ground. In contrast, the seasons helmed by Russell T. Davies (2005-2010), though not without flaws, were consistently logical. The 9th and 10th Doctors (Christoper Eccelston and David Tennant) explained the science (or imagined science) behind even the most complex and bizarre situations – often at lightening speed. Belief was not only easy to suspend it was positively buoyed up by the combination of well-crafted scripts and brilliant performances. Then Davies left and took his beautiful, logical, lightening prose and gave it to Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes (2010 – 2014). Doctor Who has been a tongue-tied, fumble-footed shadow of its former self ever since.

Most recent case in point – the 2014 Christmas special. The mash-up of Alien/the Thing/Inception/Miracle on 34th Street – self-consciously acknowledged in the leaden dialogue – featured face-hugging dream crabs that drink your brain while placing you in a dream state within a dream state within a dream state. There was no effort made to explain the basic premise of the episode: there are dream crabs – only six of them – on earth – on Christmas day. What are these dream crabs? Where did they come from? Why did they suddenly show up on earth and why did they attack only these six people? None of this is ever explained. The season finale before this special saw the grand villain, Missy, revealed as the Master – in the form of a woman (a sop to those disappointed in the casting of yet another white male Doctor) transferring the consciousness of the newly dead into cybermen (wow – that never gets old, does it?). How the Master survived his/her apparent destruction several seasons back was never explained. He/she apparently was destroyed this time but who knows – maybe it was all a dream-crab induced fantasy.

After the end of this episode I was curious to know what others thought. I read review after review of the Christmas special pointing out the problems with the plot and yet saying they liked it anyway for the sentiments it expressed. The cognitive dissonance was deafening! Is it that people have simply given up expecting any logic from Doctor Who or from any media in general? Is it that people are so easily impressed by rich visual content that they are willing to overlook the sloppy writing? Or are people so distracted by their various devices and their need to tweet and blog and FB their every waking moment that they simply don’t notice the disjointedness of poorly thought-out plots. I suspect that they assumed they missed something while texting during the show and didn’t want to admit it.

Well, I’m here to say that some of us are paying attention. Some of us are just plain offended by the sub-standard writing and by the waste of the talents of Capaldi and Coleman and the many excellent guest stars and supporting cast. The question is why has the show been allowed to disintegrate to this point? The reason Doctor Who became relevant was because the plots were so strong and the premises were airtight. It stood the test of time because the internal logic was respected. What the show has gained in techno-wizardry it has lost in essential good sense and plausible scientific foundations. It is coasting on the fumes of bizarrely uncritical fan adulation.

Moffat has offered good scripts in the past under the direction of Davies. Is he stretched too thin as the director and show-runner? Is he farming the scripts out? Or has the show been purposely dumbed down to appeal to a more mainstream (i.e. North American) audience? Perhaps Moffat has been attacked by mysterious dream crabs and is incapable of writing himself out of the dream state.

Here’s a new year’s resolution for Steven Moffat that I hope he will take to heart: Hire a serious writing team and bring back the science and logic of Doctor Who.

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