Doctor Who Review: Is Every Episode Going to Be a Remake?

[Something Amyss]

Actually, most of the crew of the Teselecta escaped being beamed to a ship. I think maybe one or 2 crew bit it? Also, who cares about the Nazi's dying? In fact, I'd say the worst thing would be River uses all her regeneration energy to save him, which basically means she gave up a few lives to do it.

Who cares that Nazis die? It defies the "everybody lives" argument, so for this limited case, I do.

And I'm not sure River losing regenerations is a particular loss. We already knew that River Song dies and does not regenerate. It's sort of like that gaping plot hole from this episode where the Doctor is out of regenerations anyway, so ensuring he can't regenerate is pointless and his comments about regeneration are confusing. Or any other from this season.

 

[LittleWings]

Interestingly, early trailers, teasers and the like for Into the Dalek had me rolling my eyes at yet another rehash of old stuff, but once it started I found it actually very refreshing. I really don't like the suggestion that it's derivative of Dalek. Even if the basic concept is similar (which, tbh, it really isn't), the direction it takes is completely different and that's what's important.

I don't even really appreciate the suggestion that Deep Breath "borrowed" from Girl in the Fireplace, because they called out the fact that it was a sister ship. Is that a lame explanation and laziness for using the same monsters? Yes, but it's not stealing, it's more a poor, straight to video sequel.

 

[Jeroenr]

Actually I'd say the Doctor's OVERALL "Winning Streak" is over 100% If you take the individual stories, a life here or there is tragic, but the fact he's saved the Earth dozens of times, the universe many times, and all of Creation (our Universe and all the parallels and dimensions at least once, as well as taking a big risk to save Galifreay, than I'd say he's doing pretty damn well in the W-L category

having some trouble to call saving Galifreay a win.

The war doctor blowing it up was more a scorched earth tactic.
Locking it away in a pocked dimension was a Pyrrhic victory at best.

And it can't come back before all the time-lords enemy's are gone, or start a new time war.(not likely to happen)
so it may just as well have been blown up.

 

[Netrigan]

Peter Capaldi continues to be excellent, Clara is improving and the production values are better than ever. It's the stories that continue to let the show down. They're often either derivative or have a lumpy, unsatisfying structure; relying too much on meaningless technobabble to resolve the plot or on mind-blowingly 'epic' moments to carry the entire episode. Look at Moffat's earlier work: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead or to eps like Dalek/Midnight/The Doctor's Wife for examples of satisfying, well-rounded STORIES. Too often these days when discussing Who I notice people praising 'that scene' or 'that one-liner' - rather than the whole episode as a self-contained narrative.

You've got me wondering whether we, as fans, invite dumbed down storytelling. I can't help but think that the more fans work themselves up over what are showy (and sometimes cringe worthy) moments of Doctor-centric egoism, the more Moffat and other writers gear the narrative away from strong storytelling for the simple reason that they don't really need to do better. Are fans too eager to believe the best of their favourite show, or do the writers just think fans love everything they put on screen?

Either way, I think a trend toward one-liner stage setting has emerged and I'm keen for a return to the Eccleston or Tennant era approach of using the main protagonist to develop the story, not the other way around.

Honestly, if you take Moffat out of the Davies Era, the new series has always been a bit iffy when it comes to its plots. The Satan Pit two-parter is often held up as a classic, but nothing in the second part makes any sense. Why exactly would someone chain up the devil down a bottomless pit where he can never escape again, with cryptic instructions left for the Doctor on how to destroy the devil. Ummm, wouldn't it make more sense to just kill the devil yourself. Why go to all the trouble of imprisoning him in an impossible cell if you just have to drop him in a black hole to destroy him. Oh, and the TARDIS just so happens to be down there with him.

This kind of thing is almost as poorly plotted as the final acts of "The Hand of Fear" and "Pyramids of Mars"

I think Doctor Who has always been more about the vibe than well-constructed plots. The classic series is filled with padded run-arounds heavy on personality. Why exactly are the Daleks carving out the Earth to turn into a space ship (the Extended Universe has spent decades providing an answer to that 49 year old story)? How does Mondas make any sense in The Tenth Planet?

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

You've got me wondering whether we, as fans, invite dumbed down storytelling. I can't help but think that the more fans work themselves up over what are showy (and sometimes cringe worthy) moments of Doctor-centric egoism, the more Moffat and other writers gear the narrative away from strong storytelling for the simple reason that they don't really need to do better. Are fans too eager to believe the best of their favourite show, or do the writers just think fans love everything they put on screen?

Either way, I think a trend toward one-liner stage setting has emerged and I'm keen for a return to the Eccleston or Tennant era approach of using the main protagonist to develop the story, not the other way around.

I don't think the story telling is any weaker than it ever was. If I think back to the end of Tennant's reign, as in everything after the 3rd season other than the Silence In The Library episodes, I can't remember many decent stories, and the 2nd season also has it's fair share of weak episodes. It's not been perfect since Moffat took over either, seasons 5 and 7 both have a fair few weak episodes, but I actually think the show has gotten better.
I get that people liked it when the show was less about exploring it's own universe and character's and I guess tried be more grounded in ideas, but I don't really think Russell T Davies pulled it off that well. When he was head writer I felt the shows tended to overly focus on stuff like the human consequences of the Doctor's actions, or the Doctor's loneliness, or really weak attempts at ideas like like a werewolf being an alien the Lazarus Experiment. We always had to see the companion's families, a member of whom would always have to get worried and upset, probably cry, or we were hearing Tennant moan about being the last time-lord and being alone and having made mistakes, etc. Moffat's run, on the other, tends to do stuff like use time travel as an actual part of the story a lot more, which I quite like, and generally tries to explore the parts of the universe that make show unique. To me Moffat's run has taken a sort of fairly tale in space approach, which I prefer to the clunky attempt at being clever we often got with Davies' run. Plus the Moffat run has yet to produce anything as outright stupid as Fear Her, End of Time or Turn Left, to name a few, well besides Dinosaurs On A Spacship.

 

[Netrigan]

Moffat's run, on the other, tends to do stuff like use time travel as an actual part of the story a lot more, which I quite like, and generally tries to explore the parts of the universe that make show unique. To me Moffat's run has taken a sort of fairly tale in space approach, which I prefer to the clunky attempt at being clever we often got with Davies' run. Plus the Moffat run has yet to produce anything as outright stupid as Fear Her, End of Time or Turn Left, to name a few, well besides Dinosaurs On A Spacship.

I think Moffat's time traveling take has been a bit of a mistake. Nothing too major, but despite the TARDIS the show has never really been about using time travel as a plot device. Traveling through time is just how he gets to the adventures. And it's Moffat's biggest plot cheat. Davies always gave someone godlike powers to win the day in the finale, Moffat tends to just get a bit confusing with the time travel and declare victory.

But I think the big difference between Davies and Moffat is Davies was a much more militarized and xenophobic show. Since so many stories took place on Earth, they were constantly fighting off some alien invasion or the other and he had a very, very, very bad habit of turning former companions into paramilitary heroes who defend the Earth from alien invasion. Rose... head of alternate universe Torchwood and comes back packing a gun. Mickey... alternate universe freedom fighter. Martha... UNIT doctor who eventually hooks up with Mickey to be freelance gun-packing defenders of Earth. Captain Jack, head of Torchwood. Only Sarah Jane and Donna escaped that particular ending.

Moffat seems to go in more for misunderstandings and the hard road to peace. The Doctor was always trying to broker peace and often the tragedy of the ending was he failed. The Vampires of Venice refuse to accept his help is an example of that. A lot of stories are also quite personal such as Amy's Choice or The Girl Who Waited, where the sci-fi menace isn't at the heart of the story. See also The God Complex where the monster is to be pitied and the true danger was within.

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

I think Moffat's time traveling take has been a bit of a mistake. Nothing too major, but despite the TARDIS the show has never really been about using time travel as a plot device. Traveling through time is just how he gets to the adventures. And it's Moffat's biggest plot cheat. Davies always gave someone godlike powers to win the day in the finale, Moffat tends to just get a bit confusing with the time travel and declare victory.

To be honest I think if a show has time travel as one of it's fundamental concepts, it really should be an important part of at least some of the stories. I agree at Moffat's time travel rules being a bit iffy, but at least in episodes like Hide and Blink it was actually a part of the story, while, as you say, Davies just used it as a method to have the Doctor show up.

But I think the big difference between Davies and Moffat is Davies was a much more militarized and xenophobic show. Since so many stories took place on Earth, they were constantly fighting off some alien invasion or the other and he had a very, very, very bad habit of turning former companions into paramilitary heroes who defend the Earth from alien invasion. Rose... head of alternate universe Torchwood and comes back packing a gun. Mickey... alternate universe freedom fighter. Martha... UNIT doctor who eventually hooks up with Mickey to be freelance gun-packing defenders of Earth. Captain Jack, head of Torchwood. Only Sarah Jane and Donna escaped that particular ending.

Moffat seems to go in more for misunderstandings and the hard road to peace. The Doctor was always trying to broker peace and often the tragedy of the ending was he failed. The Vampires of Venice refuse to accept his help is an example of that. A lot of stories are also quite personal such as Amy's Choice or The Girl Who Waited, where the sci-fi menace isn't at the heart of the story. See also The God Complex where the monster is to be pitied and the true danger was within.

I pretty much agree with this and the more I think about it, the more I feel that one of the main problems at the heart Davies' run was how lacking in optimism the show got. It started out well enough, with the first episode of Tennat's run trying redo the 'everybody lives' thing, but by the end of the season the show seemed to have dropped all of that in favor of an optimistic sounding rant from Tennant every now and then. I remember watching an Interview with Davies back when the Tennant run was starting, and he talked about how the show needed to demonstrate how these ridiculous, fantastical adventures would effect actual human beings (which I think is a fairly bad idea to start with). Yet when you watch the show, that idea only really materializes as the companions' families freaking out, or the companions themselves crying about having to leave the Doctor or them not saving everyone, or things like the concentration camps during the Master's arc and the family from Pompeii watching the city burn. Similarly, when we got the Doctor sticking with a group of people for an episode, like Midnight or The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit, it was always to show group of horrified, broken people, some of whom would die because of it. Even the ideas lost their optimism, a crew devolves into a bloody clone fueled war in only two weeks, the human race eventually ending up as mutilated, destructive psychopaths, but not before enslaving and selling an entire race by cutting out their brains. In fact I'd say the show had got a bit obsessed with it's own pessimism by season 4. Hell by the end Tennant seemed to have gone half mad with power and loneliness and unfortunately that seemed to be what Davies was most interested in exploring.

Also, responding to something the article said, other than the clockwork robots in the first episode and the appearance of a 'good' Dalek in this one, I really don't see any similarities between these episodes and any past ones. I find the assertion that the first one is a 'remake' especially weird, since that would insinuate that any time a villain appears again in an episode it is somehow a remake of the first time they appeared.

 

[Netrigan]

I think Moffat's time traveling take has been a bit of a mistake. Nothing too major, but despite the TARDIS the show has never really been about using time travel as a plot device. Traveling through time is just how he gets to the adventures. And it's Moffat's biggest plot cheat. Davies always gave someone godlike powers to win the day in the finale, Moffat tends to just get a bit confusing with the time travel and declare victory.

To be honest I think if a show has time travel as one of it's fundamental concepts, it really should be an important part of at least some of the stories. I agree at Moffat's time travel rules being a bit iffy, but at least in episodes like Hide and Blink it was actually a part of the story, while, as you say, Davies just used it as a method to have the Doctor show up.

It wouldn't be until mid-way through the Pertwee Era that the Doctor could control when and where the TARDIS landed. The focus has always been on the TARDIS being used as a way of getting to adventures. The Virgin novels in the 90s and the Big Finish audio plays got a bit timey whimey, but Moffat is pretty much the king of it. I don't think any other Doctor Who writer has used it more than he.

The problem is it ends up exposing the contradictions at the heart of the series, that he is both changing and not changing the course of history. Moffat gets a bit cute in doing both at the same time, which might be why he kind of gets away with it. We admire his cheek, but typically speaking, Doctor Who stories which use time travel as a plot device have a high failure rate. They can get hard to follow (Moffat uses this as a central joke) and it's real easy for it to seem like cheating as you ask "well, why doesn't he Bill & Ted his way through all of his adventures?" (i.e. help his past self).

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

It wouldn't be until mid-way through the Pertwee Era that the Doctor could control when and where the TARDIS landed. The focus has always been on the TARDIS being used as a way of getting to adventures. The Virgin novels in the 90s and the Big Finish audio plays got a bit timey whimey, but Moffat is pretty much the king of it. I don't think any other Doctor Who writer has used it more than he.

The problem is it ends up exposing the contradictions at the heart of the series, that he is both changing and not changing the course of history. Moffat gets a bit cute in doing both at the same time, which might be why he kind of gets away with it. We admire his cheek, but typically speaking, Doctor Who stories which use time travel as a plot device have a high failure rate. They can get hard to follow (Moffat uses this as a central joke) and it's real easy for it to seem like cheating as you ask "well, why doesn't he Bill & Ted his way through all of his adventures?" (i.e. help his past self).

It's done wrong sometimes, I agree, but I also think the show is one of the few platforms to tell stories like Blink or Girl In The Fireplace, and it actually doesn't do it all that much anyway. Besides, I also mean the way it's integrated into the story in smaller ways now, like the Doctor collecting everyone with the Tardis in Day Of The Moon, or River sending him messages on ancient artifacts and such.