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novelconcepts · 2 years

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There is so much nuance to the ep 6 scene between KJ and Lauren, I can’t get over it.

the motion older!KJ makes as they walk out, reaching for Lauren, realizing just in time that they are, in fact, in her hometown in Ohio and cutting short before she can land what was probably going to be an instinctive kiss

KJ coming in hot with the world’s most polite “hello!” and managing to make what must feel lightly like small talk for thirty seconds before dropping her voice to this shy, slightly-terrified question

the inability to hold eye contact. the faltering, wordless noises. the way she blinks like she’s seconds from just passing out in the middle of this theater--that is exactly how it feels to come out to someone for the first time. the edges of your vision go a little fuzzy, your heart is in your throat, you genuinely feel shaky, and all of that is so present in this performance

the sense of mild defeat in how she just lands on “movies” instead of “girls”, like she’s embarrassed she can’t just say it

the gentle ah hah expression on Lauren’s face as she realizes what this petrified kid is trying to ask her, and how smoothly she doesn’t correct her--just rolls with this safe code word

KJ’s nod and very tiny “uh-huh” without moving like any part of her face. like she’s reverting to standing as still as possible, protective coloring coming up in every inch of her frame

Lauren actually taking a minute to think about it before answering. and and then not giving the answer KJ asked for--”how did YOU know”--but what KJ actually needs to hear. what any kid in her position would: not everyone will get it, but everyone’s journey is their own, and there is no rush

(again, this is why I’m so delighted they wrote it the way they did--KJ and Lauren, not KJ and older!KJ, because older!KJ would have a definitive answer to give. it might be “I always knew, in the back of my mind” or it might be “when I was eighteen and kissed a girl for the first time”, but whatever the answer, it would cement KJ back into a box. this is your future, immutable, and there is no journey you could take that I haven’t already gone on. I’m so fucking glad they didn’t do this, that they let her have the reassurance that any timeline is the right one if it’s hers.)

again, that flutter-blink/quick breath combo that looks like she’s gonna pass out--but this time, there’s relief in it. it’s less “how do I say this Huge Thing” and more “oh thank god, she knows what I’m asking, she knows without me saying, and she’s being kind”

It is beautifully put together, such a gentle way of saying to this baby gay, “Nobody can tell you who you are except you, but whoever that winds up being is so okay. Listen to yourself. Trust yourself. You will be happy, I promise you.” It is a critical bit of advice so many queer people just don’t get, and to write it into KJ’s story is one of the show’s biggest kindnesses.

#paper girls #paper girls spoilers #kj brandman #i love this scene so much. i love that lauren doesn't try to make it about herself in the least #she could tell her story here--but that isn't what KJ actually needs #so instead she gives her reassurance that there's nothing wrong with what she's feeling and that it really does feel amazing to be in love #even if that love isn't what she might have expected for herself #i also just love that lauren is in her early 20s and maybe has never HAD a young kid ask this before--and you can kind of feel it #in the hesitation and the slight fumble before she lands on what is most likely what she would have needed to hear at that age #admittedly--god love her--she clearly lacks a few passive perception points #because there are so many pictures of young KJ in her girlfriend's house that she HAS to have seen them #but we forgive her this observational oversight because she's so lovely in these scenes #and it really does a great job of painting the feeling that she's drawn to this kid--who is the child version of her girlfriend--#without EVER once being creepy about it. it's just 'oh this sweet kid i want to protect her'. a lesser show would have fucked that up #'ah she says she's KJ's cousin. they have exactly the same face at different stages of pokemon evolution but sure yeah that tracks'#'how can i help?'#again i LOVE the comics. i love them so much. but this is the same kind of gentle change as giving mac her brother for a while #it's screaming from the rooftops that these kids are not as alone as they feel #and i'm so soft about it

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dracotheocracy · 1 year

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there’s still half of a horse to beat to death. continue talking about james bond

you got it james since i got two asks about this i'm gonna divide my new content into two posts: this one is gonna be mostly an expansion on what i'd already touched upon in the first post, and then i'll answer another ask that goes into the thing that wasn't as prominent in the first 10 chapters

second post here

some housekeeping first- i made a typo in my first post. From Russia, With Love is 28 chapters not 38 and there was a big bit in chapter 9 i conveniently forgot about when writing the first post because idk i started writing that one at midnight or something surely one can forgive a supermassive oversight if i correct it in a later post. i'll get into it under the cut

my recommendation to anyone interested in reading james bond is that it's best enjoyed if you're a hater. or you could just turn your brain off but ian fleming shows his and more broadly postwar england's whole ass in how he writes about... a lot... so i don't think you can do that unless you're like 12, in which case i politely ask you to not read james bond until later because i think that's like watching the anime kill la kill at the same age (<- note: op did actually watch kill la kill when he was 12. nothing bad happened as a result or anything but i generally consider it a bad decision because some of the things that flew over my head originally i really should've been able to recognize before watching it)

i think i'm gonna do a lot less quoting in this one because i'm pulling from just under double the amount of chapters

tw misogyny queerphobia

let me begin by correcting my oversight. i think rosa klebb might be ian's idea of a lesbian, actually, though i could still see her being bi or ace or aro... (she feels like all of them at once, honestly). i feel like you could show how the time period's brand of queerphobia (1950s for reference) really tended to conflate basically every form of queerness together and label it all, simply, "sexual deviancy," and villify that, using james bond as a case study. from my point of view there are a lot of probable interpretations of rosa klebb and none of them are straight, and these traits really were only tacked onto her character for the purpose of othering her more. far am i from an expert on queer history though, i am just some english major, this is an observation i'm making about the time based on the books as opposed to the opposite way around- i would advise you to take my extrapolation here with a grain of salt because i could do with grounding it in more evidence first

see i in my "it's currently 1am and i have class at 10am tomorrow" concern actually left out a portion of chapter 9 that i think bears mentioning. context for this scene: our novel's bond girl, tatiana romanova, has been called to the office of the head executioner of the russian secret service (who happens to be klebb) to be given her assignment ("seduce james bond so you can spy for us in london")

"With a squeak of pleasure, Rosa Klebb threw herself down in the caricature of a Récamier pose. She reached up an arm and turned on a pink shaded table-lamp whose stem was a naked woman in sham Lalique glass. She patted the couch beside her."

'Turn out the top light, my dear. The switch is by the door. Then come and sit beside me. We must get to know each other better.'

tatiana turns off the light and runs out of the room in terror after this. should be noted that klebb is wearing a nightgown at this point and has put on makeup, where she started the scene in her military uniform and then changed into all this at the end of the chapter. now i don't think it's difficult to guess that the intention in this scene is that, for whatever reason, klebb is trying to get romanova to have sex with her. i'm not sure how much i can continue to beat this particular dead horse but i'm sure i can write another 5 sentences on it- this is lesbophobic. it's very much a portrayal of lesbian sex as wrong and unnatural, because rosa klebb as a character is very much portrayed by the narrative as wrong and unnatural. if tatiana romanova is everything a woman should be (submissive, beautiful, heterosexual, prudish, naive/innocent), rosa klebb is the exact opposite (domineering in that she's a very high ranking officer in a particularly violent position in the russian secret service as well as the one that initiates this scene, ugly, queer, promiscuous, cold and calculating). regardless of how you interpret klebb's sexuality the message is fairly clear. women are supposed to have sex with men and be virginal in demeanor otherwise, there's no room in this ideal for female sexual freedom which is an expression of misogyny more broadly, but the allusion to lesbian sex makes this scene lesbophobic on top of just plain misogynistic

shoutout to ian for also describing her in this scene as "the oldest and ugliest whore in the world" also, that's a real quote. just reinforcing that aesthetic appearance is directly linked to morality in the james bond universe, because that will become relevant again in another post.

in the meantime ian is 1000% a tits guy and this is my proof

i read From Russia, With Love on the project gutenberg canada site which displays the entire novel on a single page. 13 results for "breasts" in 28 chapters so this is just under one mention of breasts every other chapter, and i read around for the context just to make sure- the one time he is not explicitly talking about a woman's boobs he's actually comparing the domes of mosques in istanbul to them i'm not joking:

"[T]he old European section of Istanbul glittered at the end of the broad half-mile of bridge with the slim minarets lancing up into the sky and the domes of the mosques, crouching at their feet, looking like big firm breasts."

i don't even know what to say about that really i just thought it was funny.

using this as a broader commentary on misogyny in the novel, three of the 13 mentions of the word breasts are used in reference to tatiana romanova- there was when he described her breasts in the chapter she was introduced in which i already pointed out, and then twice afterwards when bond saw and met her for the first time. ian made all of his male pov characters think about womens' breasts, first it was kronsteen with rosa klebb and then it was this:

"Had that been the prudery of a virgin? Bond thought not. There was the confidence of having been loved in the proud breasts and the insolently lilting behind--the assertion of a body that knows what it can be for."

dude is like 10 inches away from writing a character breasting boobily down the stairs i swear. i think it's a little bit telling how often romanova's sex life comes up- ian makes a point of telling the reader that she's not a virgin in the chapter where she's introduced, and later when rosa klebb gives her the honeypot assignment rosa klebb asks her point blank if she's a virgin and if she would list the names of the men she's had sex with and at what points in her life. which isn't creepy at all btw, and of course when bond sees her for the first time two of the things he thinks about first when pondering the situation are "man she has nice tits and ass. she's definitely not a virgin." i think it speaks to the objectifying way the novel looks at women- romanova's role in the story is limited purely to falling in love with bond and having sex with him a few times so he falls in love with her too. she's a total pawn in the broader scope of the story and doesn't really have any agency- she encounters donovan grant at the same time that bond does and it's unclear whether or not she recognizes him but i think it's implied that she does and that she isn't at all comfortable with his presence. and she doesn't have to do anything about it but her just submitting to bond when he brushes aside her concern about him is. eh. it's in character but i think the fact that that is in character is emblematic of the fact that as a woman in a bond novel if you're not there to essentially sit there and look pretty you're a queer russian with a penchant for torture and you will be othered by the narrative

now being able to discern the wildest shit from peoples' appearances is a pretty well established james bond character trait- when he later encounters donovan grant he catches on pretty fast to the fact something is Wrong With Him and when he figures out grant is a russian spy he immediately goes "oh you're manic depressive aren't you tell me does the full moon make you act weird?" i guess manic depression just functions like that in the james bond universe- it's a mental condition reminiscent of the menstrual cycle in function, but instead of your own blood spilling someone else's does. referencing back to my first post when i talked about donovan grant, despite sexualizing him in the first scene i think between him being asexual and pretending that's what manic depression is, ian is attempting to emasculate the character. i mentioned that rosa is the opposite of the feminine ideal- donovan grant is the opposite of the male ideal, and inherent to ian's male ideal is a sex drive and a more dominating disposition, which donovan lacks because he's really just a henchman at the end of the day, follows his orders efficiently, also has to kill people every full moon, which is werewolf-y yes but i think the parallel to periods should've been mentioned in the first post too

that mostly wraps up any expanding i could do on the criticisms i already talked at length so sneak peek of my next post that i will spend 2-3 hours on: ian fleming is so normal about eastern europe :)

#but maaarrrsss!#trashfire media containment breach

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fandomsandfeminism · 7 years

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Weeping Angels and everything that sucks about Steven Moffat: The Full Text Transcript

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Video Part 2

Full text transcript below:

Hi. So, I normally talk about things I like on this channel, topics I have a positive opinion about. But today we are going to talk about Steven Moffat. So. Woops. All aboard the “pissed off” train I guess. I will do my best to stay calm as much as I can, but no promises. This was a really hard script to write and stay coherent. So If I seem rambly and ranty, well, I tried.

Let me begin by saying that I am not caught up on Doctor Who. I left the show right around the time that Clara started traveling with the Doctor, convinced that a new companion was not going to save the series in my heart. I have heard whisper and rumor of things that have happened since then, both good and bad, and I did watch the 50th special, but I am a Whovian on hiatus from Doctor Who. I blame Steven Moffat for this. (I also only made it 2 seasons into Sherlock before bailing and for a lot of the same reasons.)

You see, here’s the thing about Moffat, setting aside for now that he can’t write women or minority characters to save his life: Moffat, like many other writers, like George Lucas or Brannon Braga, with single episodes or heavy producer oversight, he can write some fantastic stories. The stories that Moffat wrote while Davies was showrunner are some of the show’s best. The Empty Child, Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Silence in the Library are all very strong, very interesting episodes. Flawed in their own ways, sure, but strong enough on their own to be fan favorites.

when put in charge of a whole show, when producer and editorial oversight begin to dwindle….all the flaws in the writing balloon out of control. We saw it in the Star Wars prequels, we saw it in Star Trek Enterprise, and we certainly see it in Moffat’s Doctor Who run. At least the seasons I watched of it. -

And look, before we go further, I’m not saying that Davies was a perfect show runner, or that his run was without fault. His run was very different in tone and execution than Moffats. Davies had a very episodic run, with his overarching plots (like Bad Wolf) hinted at very subtly and slowly building to finales. It was campy SciFi. And...well, Moffat likes BIG stories where the whole universe is at stake ALL the time. His stories in that first season with Amy and 11 felt more like a fairy tale than SciFi. His big plots were “MYSTERY” is big neon lights all the time. And which you prefer is a matter of opinion. And, well, my opinions will soon be very clear to you.

Spoiler warning for...all of Doctor Who basically. At least the new stuff. And some of Sherlock.

There’s...a lot here to dig through, and I could rant about Moffat for days. But let’s stay focused, for now, on The Weeping Angels. I think they are an easy place to start.

The Weeping Angels are fan favorite monsters, and this makes sense if you look at their first episode: Blink. But as time went on, as Moffat took over the show, the Weeping Angels got...sucky. And sucky in a way that I think really demonstrates some of the biggest flaws in Moffat as a writer. The Weeping Angels have 3 major appearances in Doctor Who, along with a smattering of smaller cameos. Blink, Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone, and the Angels Take Manhattan. So Let’s dig in.

Blink is Series 3, Episode 10. This is Still in 10s run, with Martha as the companion. It’s fun to watch. the Doctor and Martha only make small cameo appearances. Instead our focus is on Sally Sparrow, our heroine for the story, and the mystery of monsters themselves. The Doctor has gotten separated from his Tardis and he and Martha are stuck in 1969. Sally Sparrow must figure out what monsters are in this house and find a way to help the doctor, using clues, all while not getting grabbed herself.

This is a REALLY fun episode. The mystery is good, time travel is used to enhance the story in really interesting ways, and the Weeping Angels are legitimately scary and cool. Now, there are some weird race and gender things going on. The whole scene with Kathy getting dropped in the past and then having her future husband basically badger her is a cringey way to portray the beginning of a relationship.And the stuff with Billy, the only black guy in the episode, getting murdered for the drama is not ideal. BUT if you are just watching this episode in isolation, these are easy to overlook. They only get really uncomfortable if you start noticing trends. We’ll come back to that.

But what makes this episode work is that the Angels make SENSE. The Angels are ALIENS. They turn into stone when they are observed as a defense mechanism. They can only move when unobserved (The Doctor describes this as a Quantum Lock). They pull people back in time to feed off the potential of the lives they left behind. This is all established and stays consistent through this episode.

Now, let’s look at the next appearance of the Angels: The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone. We’re into Moffat’s run now, but back when it was still setting up plot points and was, well...watchable. The Doctor and Amy get recruited by River Song to help deal with a group of Weeping Angels that are starving and holed up in a maze near the wreckage of a space ship.

This was River Song’s second appearance, back when we knew almost nothing about her, when she still seemed pretty badass and mysterious and interesting. Sadly, these are all traits that would....diminish the longer Moffat wrote her. We’ll...yeah, we’ll come back to that later. This episode is before all that. River is still cool and smart and it’s fine. River is still a promising character in this episode.

And Amy does get put in mortal peril, again, because Moffat loved putting Any in mortal peril for some reason. Sigh. Poor Amy.

But ok, we’re talking about the Angels. This is where the Angels start to get screwed up. The Angels here are starving, which apparently allows them to override their Quantum Lock thing? And Move even when observed? Because hunting overrides defence in their starving state. Sure. And they are killing people now instead of dragging them back in time. Why? And when they move, they are still made of stone? I thought they were only stone when they quantum locked?

Like, they give a reason for why they are breaking the rules here, but this is only the second time we’ve seen the Angels! So this doesn’t feel like we’re spicing things up and changing a well known rule. It feels like Moffat only had one idea about the Angels and after he used that up, he had to change how the Angels worked to get another story out of them. It just doesn’t work as well. -

What REALLY messes things up is this bit though: The Doctor is reading a book about the Angels and notices it has no pictures. He reads "Whatever takes the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel." Again, The Doctor reads this in a book about the Angels. So this is not just a “starving angel” thing. This is apparently something that is true for all of them forever. Put a pin in that. We’ll come back to that.

[Break between videos]

Hello! Welcome back to my Moffat rant. We are going to pick up where we left off and start talking about the Angels Take Manhattan. Sigh. Ok, at this point, I was starting to burn out on Doctor Who. The Asylum of the Daleks was a really bad episode and really left a sour taste in my mouth about how Amy’s infertility was handled. We’d gotten a whole bunch of River Song episodes that revealed a lot of information about her, and really fumbled her all around. So I was, ya know, not being as forgiving any more. But let’s go on.

We find ourselves in New York. Rory gets grabbed by Angels and is dragged back to the 1930s where he finds River. The Doctor and Amy have to find him. There’s a guy keeping an injured Angel captive. The Doctor and River flirt a lot. There’s this whole thing about the adventure being recorded in a book and they have to not get spoilers because that makes paradoxes.

This is the Pond’s farewell episode. And it’s...awful. Like, it makes no sense if you stop to think about it at all. Let’s start with the Angels.

First of all, The Weeping Angels now look like or...can...infect preexisting statutes? Since when? They always looked the same before. And they aren’t REALLY statues. They are aliens that LOOK like statues when they quantum lock. Except now they also look like cherubs? And other statues? And the Angels are sending people back in time and imprisoning them? To send them back over and over? But...why? Why does that work? The Angels feed on the lost potential of that person’s original life by pulling them back in time. Do they get more time potential or whatever after they have been dropped somewhere? Why don’t ALL Angels do this then?

And the Statue of Liberty. We have to talk about the Statue of Liberty. Because this is just Moffat thinking something looked cool and not thinking about it at all after that. Because 1. The Statue of Liberty isn’t made of STONE. So even if the Angels can now...infect normal stone statues? Why can they infect a COPPER statue? And the Statue of Liberty is HUGE. The angels are still quantum locking in this episode. So how did the STATUE OF LIBERTY stroll through Manhattan without anyone noticing!? And hey, remember "Whatever takes the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel."? Yeah, unpin that one. Because there are now millions? Billions? Of movies, postcards, posters, and tourist photos that are DEADLY ANGEL BOMBS. This is like the Ring, except with 5 billion tourist selfies.

Look, it’s fine to introduce new information about recurring monsters. But this makes no goddamn sense!

And, ok, so at the end. They paradox-jump off a building which does a big ole reset on the adventure, but Rory gets grabbed by an angel anyway (Why? How? I thought the paradox would poison all the angels and they die?) and they see his tombstone so the doctor and amy can’t go save him (Why? You just did a whole paradox thing? Why cant you do another) so Amy lets herself get pulled back too and the Doctor can’t go get them because doing so would screw New York up forever. Because of paradoxes?

So, question. 1. Why can’t you go back in time, grab Rory, and then just….buy a tombstone to put in the cemetery? Then it’s not a paradox. Or just grab Rory and then when he dies, bring him back to be buried there? That makes at least as much sense as the shit with the Robot Doctor getting “killed” in The Impossible Astronaut and The Wedding of River Song. Also, ok, how far does this “no more Paradox bubble” extend? Like geographically and in time? Can the Doctor NEVER go back to New York? What about New Jersey? Why can’t Amy and Rory take a vacation, then in 5 years hop on the train to Phili and get picked up? Buy a tombstone to be placed in that graveyard while you're there!

Like god dammit. I know it sucks having to leave companions, but it needs to make sense when you do it.

So, this all highlights a few of the major problems Moffat has with his writing. He’s really bad about continuity and following rules, he doesn’t actually like killing characters off but he likes to threaten to, and he really struggles to write women.

Like, Moffat doesn’t know if a paradox is something that will kill all the weeping angels (except 1 very plot convenient one) and save everyone, or blow up New York, or do….nothing? Like, how is saving Gallifrey in the 50th special not the universe’s biggest paradox?

Moffat is also awful about killing characters. Like, when the Doctor declares “Today nobody dies” in the Empty Child, it was a beautiful moment because so often the Doctor can’t save everyone. That Doctor, fresh from losing Gallifrey, celebrating not losing a single person, is lovely. But then it just...keeps happening. River Song? Nah, she gets uploaded into the Library. The Ponds? They got to live out the rest of their lives in the past. He brought back GALLIFREY. Which….ugh. And The Master, apparently? Mistress? Missy? Whatever. Also apparently he really dragged out killing Clara? I had stopped watching long before then, but, you hear things. Even look at Sherlock: couldn't let go of Moriarty for seasons. Faked us out about Irene. Faked you out about Watson. Ultimately, if everyone is always in mortal peril, but characters he likes never really die, it kills all of the dramatic tension. You can show me Watson getting shot all you want, Moffat. I don’t believe you.

And women. Moffat and women. We could talk for a long time about all the weird, shitty stuff he’s SAID about women. But for the sake of time, let's just focus on his female characters today. I mentioned briefly that Blink has some “harassment as romance” stuff. And we need to talk about River Song Her character just got more convoluted until her first appearance in Silence in the Library is nearly unrecognizable. Eventually she falls into this whole “Women fling themselves at Moffat!Protagonist and revolve their whole lives around them” thing. She goes from this cool time traveler, equal to the Doctor if not better, to just...a mess of tired, weird tropes. She goes from “Super mysterious time traveling badass” to “LITERALLY A BABY that Doctor failed to save, whose entire life revolves around the Doctor, and she became an archeologist so she could find him and they get married” which….yuck.

Like, The Doctor also met Amy as a little girl and they make out eventually? Also Oh and Clara kissed the Doctor too (Which...the Doctor did meet Clara as a little kid too?). And let’s not even start on “Irene “I’m Gay but I’m gonna fall in love with this dude” Adler” in Sherlock and all the gross there.

Plus this whole thing that Moffat has about girls whose whole lives revolve around his protagonists? Like, Amy’s whole life is warped from childhood by the Doctor and the cracks in her wall. River is literally kidnapped and brainwashed to be obsessed with the Doctor. That’s not healthy

Speaking of issues with women, we need to talk about The Girl in the Fireplace. Another Moffat episode where a CHILD who meets the Doctor, grows up and ends up romantically into the Doctor (what the hell, Moffat. Like, for most of these “Doctor kisses a girl he met when she was a child” scenarios, they can be explained as less creepy with context, but Moffat keeps writing it. What is his deal with kissing ladies the Doctor meets as children? Weird?) And Madame de Pompadour definitely counts as “entire life gets wrapped up in the Doctor” thing

And, I’m sorry, I know this is a little off topic, but This episode also has the most infuriating use of time travel. Like, Doc, you know that fireplace jumps DECADES when you use it. So WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE HER AND GO BACK THROUGH the fireplace if you just want her to pack for a few minutes? JUST WAIT. Just wait for her to pack and go through the fireplace TOGETHER. (Or I dunno, write a female character who isn’t willing to throw away her entire life to get some Doctor action. That could work.) Is it Because the ManPain is more important than making sense? Moffat? Is it?

And, ok, let’s jump back to the race thing. We need to talk about the really shitty joke the Doctor makes in that episode, right? When Rose tells him that he can’t keep the horse and the Doctor replies “But I let you keep Mickey.” Like, bro, Rose’s black boyfriend hanging out is not the same as you wanting to keep a literal farm animal on a spaceship. what The hell. And just...Moffat doesn’t write non-white people. Think about it. At least in what I saw of his work, people of color maybe show up for one episode, and it’s a miracle if they don’t get killed. In the RTD episodes Moffat wrote, the black companions tended to get ignored or sidelined. Martha and Mickey barely show up in Moffat’s scripts from that era. Sherlock has its own set of race issues, mostly the use of stereotypes in the minor characters. Like, the entire Blind Banker episode was a dumpster fire. Lots of stereotypes running around there.

And we haven’t even touched Moffat and LGBT+ stuff. Like Irene Adler, identifying as gay but falling in love with Sherlock that I mentioned before. And Oswin dating a girl being described as a “phase.” And I believe Moffat dismissed the idea that Sherlock could be asexual in an interview by saying it would be “boring”? Vastra and Jenny are cool, but then there’s the bit where the Doctor kisses Jenny against her will in The Crimson Horror. Which is supposed to be funny, but is actually gross for several reasons.

Sigh. Look, I haven't seen anything with the 12th Doctor. And I know the Moffat’s run on Doctor Who is coming to a close. So my complaints, based mostly on Moffat writing the 11th Doctor’s run, are both outdated and soon to be doubly so. I’m beating a dead horse here.

But, there. I deeply hope that the 12th Doctor was written better than 11 was. Because all the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey nonsensical bullshit was exhausting for me. And I hope the next writer does better. I hope the new companion, who I believe is going to be a black lesbian woman, will be amazing, and well written, and respected by the narrative. I want to come back. I want to love this show again. But I don’t trust Moffat to write it.

And whatever Moffat moves onto next, can we please make him stop writing little children as potential romantic partners. It’s creepy.

#steven moffat #moffat #doctor who #sherlock #the weeping angels

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fandomsandfeminism · 7 years

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Opinions? Here is the rough draft for my Anti-Moffat video. Is it easy to follow or does it get too ranty and rambly?

So, I normally talk about things I like on this channel. Up to now, I’ve tried to stay pretty positive and stick to topics I have a positive opinion about. But today we are going to talk about Steven Moffat. So. That’s not gonna happen. All aboard the “pissed off” train. I will do my best to stay calm as much as I can, but no promises.

Let me begin by saying that I am not caught up on Doctor Who. I left the show right around the time Clara started traveling with the Doctor, convinced that a new companion was not going to save the series in my heart. I have heard whisper and rumor of things that have happened since then, both good and bad, and I did watch the 50th special, but I am a Whovian on haitus from Doctor Who. I blame Steven Moffat for this.

You see, here’s the thing about Moffat, setting aside for now that he can’t write women or minority characters to save his life: like many other writers, like George Lucas or Brannon Braga, with single episodes or heavy producer oversight, he can write some fantastic stories. The stories that Moffat wrote while Davis was showrunner are some of the show’s best. The Empty Child, Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Silence in the Library are all very strong, very interesting episodes. Flawed in their own ways, sure, but strong enough on their own to be fan favorites.

But when put in charge of a whole show, when producer and editorial oversight begin to dwindle….all the flaws in the writing balloon out of control. We saw it in Star Trek Enterprise, we saw it in the Star Wars prequels, and we certainly see it in Moffat’s Doctor Who run. At least the seasons I watched of it.

And look, before we go further, I’m not saying that Davis was a perfect show runner, or that his run was without fault. His run was very different in tone and execution than Moffats. Davis had a very episodic run, with his overarching plots (like Bad Wolf) hinted at very subtly and slowly building to finales. It was campy SciFi. And...well, Moffat likes BIG stories where the whole universe is at stake ALL the time. His stories in that first season with Amy and 11 felt more like a fairy tale than SciFi. His big plot were “MYSTERY” is big neon lights all the time. And which you prefer is a matter of opinion. And, well, my opinions will soon be very clear to you.

Spoiler warning for...all of Doctor Who basically. At least the new stuff.

There’s...a lot here to dig through, and I could rant about Moffat for days. But let’s stay focused, for now, on The Weeping Angels. I think they are an easy place to start.

Blink is Series 3, Episode 10. Still in 10s run. It’s fun to watch. the Doctor and Martha only make small cameo appearances. Instead we focus on Sally Sparrow, our heroine for the story, and the monsters themselves. The Doctor has gotten separated from his Tardis and he and Martha are stuck in 1969. Sally Sparrow must figure out what monsters are in this house and find a way to help the doctor, using clues and not getting grabbed herself.

This is a REALLY fun episode. The mystery is good, time travel is used to enhance the story in really fun ways, and the Weeping Angels are legitimately scary and cool. Now, there are some weird race and gender things going on. The whole scene with Kathy getting dropped in the past and then having her future husband basically badger her is a cringey way to portray the beginning of a relationship.And the stuff with Billy, the only black guy in the episode, getting murdered for the drama is not ideal. BUT if you are just watching this episode in isolation, these are easy to overlook. They only get really uncomfortable if you start noticing trends. We’ll come back to that.

Now, let’s look at the next appearance of the Angels: The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone. We’re into Moffat’s run now, but back when it was still setting up plot points and was...watchable. The Doctor and Amy get recruited by River Song to help deal with a group of Weeping Angels that are starving and holed up in a maze near the wreckage of a space ship.

This was River Song’s second appearance, back when we knew almost nothing about her, when she still seemed pretty badass and mysterious and interesting, traits that would...sadly...diminish the longer Moffat wrote her until her first appearance in Silence in the Library is nearly unrecognizable and it falls into this whole “Women fling themselves at Moffat - Protagonist and revolve their whole lives around them” thing.We’ll...yeah, come back to that. This is before all that. River is still cool and smart and it’s fine.

And Amy does get put in mortal peril, again, because Moffat loved putting Any in mortal peril for some reason. Sigh. Poor Amy.

But ok, we’re talking about the Angels. This is where the Angels start to get screwed up. The Angels here are starving, which apparently allows them to override their Quantum Lock thing? And Move even when being observed? Because hunting overrides defence in their starving state. Sure. And they are killing people now instead of just dragging them back in time. Why? And when they move, they are still made of stone? I thought they were only stone when they quantum locked?

Like, they give a reason for why they are breaking the rules, but this is only the second time we’ve seen the Angels! So this doesn’t feel like we’re spicing things up and changing a well known rule. It feels like Moffat only had one idea about the Angels and after he used that up, he had to change how the Angels worked to get another story out of them. It just doesn’t work as well.

What REALLY messes things up is this bit though: The Doctor is reading a book about the Angels and notices it has no pictures. He reads "Whatever takes the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel." Again, The Doctor reads in a book about the Angels. So this is not just a “starving angel” thing. This is apparently something that is true for all of them forever. Put a pin in that. We’ll come back to that.

Ok, so, fast forward to the Angels Take Manhattan. Sigh. Ok, at this point, I was starting to burn out on Doctor Who. The Asylum of the Daleks was a really bad episode and really left a sour taste in my mouth about how Amy’s infertility was handled. We’d gotten a whole bunch of River Song episodes that revealed a lot of information around her, and really fumbled her all around. So I was, ya know, not being as forgiving any more.

We find ourselves in New York. Rory gets grabbed by Angels and dragged back to the 1930s where he finds River. The Doctor and Amy have to find him. There’s a guy keeping an injured Angel captive. The Doctor and River flirt a lot. There’s this whole thing about the adventure being recorded in a book and they have to not get spoilers because that makes paradoxes.

This is the Pond’s farewell episode. And it’s...awful. Like, it makes no sense if you stop to think about it at all. Let’s start with the Angels.

And the Statue of Liberty. We have to talk about the Statue of Liberty. Because this is just Moffat thinking something looked cool and not thinking about it. Because 1. The Statue of Liberty isn’t made of STONE. So even if the Angels can now...infect normal stone statues? Why can they infect a COPPER statue? And the Statue of Liberty is HUGE. The angels are still quantum locking in this episode. So how did the STATUE OF LIBERTY walk through Manhattan without anyone noticing!? And hey, remember "Whatever takes the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel."? Yeah, unpin that one. Because there are now millions? Billions? Of movies, postcards, posters, and tourist photos that are DEADLY ANGEL BOMBS. This is like the Ring, except with 5 billion tourist selfies.

Look, it’s fine to introduce new information about recurring monsters. But this makes no fucking sense!

And, ok, so at the end. They paradox jump off a building which does a big ole reset on the adventure, but Rory gets grabbed by an angel anyway (Why? How? I thought the paradox would poison them all?) and they see his tombstone so they can’t go save him (Why? You just did a whole paradox thing?) so Amy lets herself get pulled back too and the Doctor can’t go get them because doing so would fuck up New York forever.

Like god dammit. I know it sucks having to leave companions, but it needs to make sense when you do it.

Moffat is also awful about killing characters. Like, when the Doctor declares “Today nobody dies” in the Empty Child, it was a beautiful moment because so often the Doctor can’t save everyone. That Doctor, fresh from losing Gallifrey, celebrating not losing a single person, is lovely. But then it just...keeps happening. River Song? Nah, she gets uploaded into the Library. The Ponds? They got to live out the rest of their lives in the past. He brought back GALLIFREY. Which….ugh. And The Master, apparently? I’ve been told? Also apparently he really dragged out killing Clara? I had stopped watching long before then, but, you hear things. Even look at Sherlock: couldnt let go of Moriarty for seasons. Faked us out about Irene. Faked you out about Watson. Ultimately, if everyone is always in mortal peril, but characters he likes never really die, it kills all of the dramatic tension. You can show me Watson getting shot all you want, Moffat. I don’t believe you.

And women. Moffat and women. Let’s not even talk about all the weird, shitty stuff he’s SAID about women today and just focus on his female characters. I mentioned briefly that Blink has some “harassment as romance” stuff, and that River Song goes from “Super mysterious time traveling badass” to “LITERALLY A BABY that Doctor failed to save, whose entire life revolves around the Doctor, and she became an archeologist so she could find him and they get married” which….yuck. Like, The Doctor also met Amy as a little girl and they make out? Oh and Clara kissed the Doctor too (Which...the Doctor did meet Clara as a little kid too?). And let’s not even start on “Irene “I’m Gay but I’m gonna fall in love with this dude” Adler” in Sherlock and all the gross there.

And let’s talk about The Girl in the Fireplace. Another CHILD who meets the Doctor, grows up and ends up romantically into the Doctor (what the fuck Moffat) This also has the most infuriating use of time travel. Like, Doc, you know that fireplace jumps DECADES when you use it. WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE HER AND GO BACK THROUGH IT? JUST WAIT. Just wait for her to pack and go through the fireplace TOGETHER. (Or write a female character who isn’t willing to throw away her entire life to get some Doctor action. That could work.) Because the ManPain is more important than making sense? And can we talk about the really shitty joke the Doctor makes? When Rose tells him he can’t keep the horse and he replies “But I let you keep Mickey.” Like, bro, Rose’s black boyfriend hanging out is not the same as you wanting to keep a literal farm animal. The fuck.

Look, I havent seen anything with the 12th Doctor. And I know the Moffat’s run on Doctor Who is coming to a close. So my complaints, based mostly on Moffat writing the 11th Doctor’s run, are both outdated and soon to be doubly so. I’m beating a dead horse.

Now whatever Moffat moves onto next, can we please make him stop writing little children as potential romantic partners. It’s creepy.

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