Moffat’s writing has been suffused with character; character is what he does. Plot is just what they ride on. He gets, like Whedon and disconcertingly few others, that when things happen to a character then that character is changed and that to change a character, things need to happen to them.
But his theme, returned to time and again from Press Gang on is how utterly devastating being lonely is even when, sometimes, there are things that we must face alone. And that it is our friends, our fellow travellers, our companions that give the strength to face that, in all their infuriating, bloody-minded and contradictory ways and their brass-bound audacity to talk back to us, to speak truth to our power.
“I’m here, but you don’t see me” said Bill to the Doctor, who said it to Clara. But that formula can be transformed more than one way. You don’t see me, but I am here. The Doctor, wished back to life in The Doctor Falls not just by Amy this time, but by all of those he travelled with, because every one left a mark on him.
That’s the other thing he does, of course. Revisits ideas when he sees more to do with them, or another angle to show. Or shows us the light side of the dark. The Nethersphere: stealing people at the point of death to use as a slave army; Testimony: taking people and – for one vital moment – giving them a damned good listening to.
Random jottings:
* Really nice touch from Chibbers to have the ring fall. Still a bit concerned about him, but not at all about Whittaker. Not even slightly;
* Anachronism alert: The British troops actually sang The First Nowell (as was then spelt) back at the Germans and then Oh Come all Ye Faithful. Silent Night was not especially popular in Britain at the time. But the rhetorical flourish makes that easy to accept. The men above Lethbridge-Stewart’s ranks on both sides made sure it never happened again;
* Speaking of whom, is it possible to be majestic and sublime at the same time? Because that was Gatiss as Lethbridge-Stewart Snr. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in more command of a role;
* Clara put back in his head. That settles that argument once and for all;
* Wrong size windows;
* “Me Too!”; “Good Lord!”;
* “Because I’m scared.”
* Apparently every fuckwit on Twitter thought they were being oh-so-original with their “crashes the Tardis. Women drivers, eh?” joke and they get really cross when you cough and say “Matt Smith”;
* Also the pillock on the Guardian who referred to Rusty as “the hugging Dalek”. Presumably nicked from another short-attention-span peabrain on Twitter. People who don’t pay attention really shouldn’t be allowed internet access. Or out;
* And it is a bleak statement of our times that the Testimony – surely influenced by Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation – turns up in the very week in which fascist scum on Twitter have tried to appropriate the term Shoah – one of the most sacred in Judaism – for perverted ends, when Twitter bans the hateful pigs. If you see it, report it for hate speech and help them to their banning.
Kid’s show, eh?
