Great grasp of theme, incredible (as far as the doctor is concerned) grasp of character, terrible grasp of plot.
Shown perfectly in the Christmas special, where he even telegraphs a satisfying, rush to the Tardis and throw the bomb into space ending, just to pivot to space magic.
Moffat was next to hopeless at actually producing interesting season long arcs. With that said I tended to think his finales were less bad than some of Russell's worst stinkers and I liked they were often more low key and character driven
I thought Matt Smiths overall arc was actually pretty clever - the crack, the silence, the resolution of the time war (all one big predestination paradox) was actually a pretty well thought through interconnecting way of moving away from some of the constraints of the RTD era.
It feels like he would always come up with the beginning of a mystery for the season and try to figure out what the ending was throughout writing the rest of the season, which means shit will just be there that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme and distracts you
these are both directly answered? the hybrid is the relationship between the doctor and clara, the two of them becoming so close as to metaphorically merge (and together pay off all the details of the prophesy)
and the doctor's name is 'the Doctor', the name he chose. His deadname doesn't matter.
To get into it would take more than a single tweet, but suffice to say that what we're told directly about the prophesy from Davros and the Time Lord General contradicts that answer.
If you have to outright lie to your audience, it's not a good mystery.
Moffat deliberately avoids ever telling us the actual wording of the prophesy. And by doing so, he can safely have characters say whatever they want about it and then contradict those characters later on by saying their knowledge of it was wrong. But that knowledge is all the audience has to go on.
"The Hybrid is a creature thought to be crossbred from two warrior races (1), which will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey (2). It will unravel the Web of Time (3) and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own (4)."
Moffat has some good writing, ruined constantly by the need to continuously have his characters say how clever they (and thus he) are and the want to have grand occurrences/set pieces that end up having very little effect on the wider universe or its characters.
I think people take the show very seriously in the wrong ways and not seriously enough where it matters. People these days seem to forget the silly whimsy of the UK to instead focus on the telly. But! I believe we have the Doctor to remind us!
I think the Beeb said NO! Exploding Cybermen on the anniversary of WW1 did not please Seething Wells. And the critics weren’t keen on his epic and intentional fails of the Bechdel test. I think we got an expurgated version of series 9 onward.
The Trenzalore Arc? Nah, that was… possibly unresolved.
Whole lot of missed marks and narrative goofs. Not sure it's really his fault, but he's clearly a better writer than he is a producer.
It's frustrating in hindsight seeing all the great chekov guns he set up (eg smiley face on Amy's apple) and then utterly failed to use for basically no reason.
Moffat episodes? Excellent, some of my favorite New Who moments. Moffat running the show? Wretched. So many interesting ideas that only disappointed me. He's one of those writers who just can't do longer stories that pay off.
When he's good, he's great, when he's bad, its cringeworthy. There's no mediocre with Moffat. But he certainly is the revivals best writer by a long way.
not to mention the idiotic Space Salvos and Cosmic Catholics - I ditched episodes and heavily edited some others that were worth saving to excise them.
As well as some of the dumbest dialogue (that Clara comment by 11) and some of the best plot resolutions committed to television (Husbands of River Song, Doctor Falls) as well.
Moffat is a man of great good and great evil lmao.
Better than the opposite - like in Chibnall era when whole species died in the Flux and it’s barely even mentioned. A character who should care about every person cannot exist in a universe where death is that casual without just being a mess 24/7, otherwise it’s a Bad Show(tm)
Friends of mine have adopted “Moffatting” as a verb, meaning “to repeatly switch between doing amazingly well and horrifically awful in quick succession”
My fiancée and I have had this convo on multiple occasions that Moffat is indeed a wonderful world builder in his writing, but has zero perspective on how big or small an idea should be.
He works well within limitations, but without them, it’s anyone’s guess if you’re going to get quality or shit.
My friend group is currently rewatching season 8 and this sums it up so much. In one episode the Doctor finally accepts he has to rely on Clara sometimes, he learns to trust someone else... Oh the 2D monsters? Yeah they are just resolved *handwaves*
He seems to follow the Chris Carter and JJ Abrams school of writing: come up with a really amazing concept and then hope nobody notices that you have no idea where you're going with it.
He seems to narratively paint himself into a corner then just do some Deus Ex machina stuff. The bloody parental instinct saving the day springs to mind
I appreciated his work on Coupling but .... the WHO years ... very mixed results that yielded less and less good things to say with every year he remained in charge ... Sherlock was unfortunately the same isssue: good start and then the "i am more clever than you" stuff manifests
I very much vibe with Moffat’s writing so I find I’m more forgiving than most, but that dude just kept (intentionally) writing himself into corners that he would occasionally resolve brilliantly but often resolve in a way that only sort of made sense.
It’s such a great line in a fab story, but it is cheapened somewhat by “everybody lives (kinda)” being the resolution to every Moffat plot from then right up thru Joy To The World! He can’t bring himself to consequence his characters.
World Enough And Time / The Doctor Falls is probably my favorite story across the entire franchise.
The rest of the Capaldi era felt to me like a lot of Moffat burn-out. Capaldi is probably my favorite Doctor, but his entire tenure is SO painfully average. Actively bad at worst.
Rewatching these and oh my do I agree.
Season 5 is alright, but it also hinges on plot resolutions following through, which they don't, at least adequately imo.
Coming up for Time of the doctor, which ties off seasons worth of plot in a line of dialogue that you could easily miss lol
I think the narrowed scope of RTD's arcs helps him a lot. When all you have to do is pepper a single phrase throughout your season and then explain it at the end, that's a lot easier than building an actual season-long time travel story.
So RTD makes it easier on himself and yet still can’t come up with better than “snag it with a rope”?
At least Moffat’s arcs have ambition. They fall short sometimes but never for lack of trying
RTD seems like he succeeds best with his ambitious but contained stories (Wild Blue Yonder, Dot and Bubble, Midnight), while crashing and burning with the much simpler overarching plots, which feels paradoxical but seems consistent anyway
Midnight and Turn Left i think were his two best, to me. I do think WBY was excellent as well. I think that the less emphasis he puts on a story, the better it turns out. When he's trying to write something big and "important," it turns out terrible.
He is one of my favorite writers and least favorite show runners.
That dude couldn’t land a plane in an emotionally satisfying way if the universe depended on it.
In a novel about landing plane, it would be 300 pages of set up and rising conflict then end with “and then plane landed because of love”
But the landing would be a crash landing where the passenger whose life we've been following dies horribly and with the most moving music you've ever heard, followed three ticks later by the revelation that there was no crash and everyone lived.
The thing that gets me is that it would be an alternate version of Rory who is living far in the future to the current one. That would essentially lead to him manipulating events to save himself and Amy in earlier stories, and could have made him the man in young Amy's house. And what Moffat is...
not to be rude about your fic, but it sounds like your more feminist version of moffat's doctor who is based on killing off the female lead and having the men fight over her body for revenge. like i'm sure that could be good, but you're pitching a fridging epic as *less* '80s magazine misogynist'
All I'm doing is playing off the existing storylines that he did, but getting rid of the lack of consequence that he insisted those stories have. No sudden resurrections and everyone's alright.
If you really want to reduce it that much, it can be seen the way you're portraying it, but that's you.
Yes! This was so frustrating! It broadly knew the right beats but getting there was wildly disconnected from anything in the progression of the actual scenario.
is it bad that I never looked close enough or noticed at all to care about this? I feel like I should, lol. Like even when point it out I still can't find anything wrong with the writing like they just seem normal to me.
It’s such a weird run because it’s very deeply flawed in so many ways, but it’s also the closest Doctor Who has ever come to being the show I wanted it to be. I genuinely don’t know if that statement is praise or criticism.
As Hbomberguy said. Moffat is really good at writing short stories with satisfying conclusion (that one episode with weeping angels from Doctor Who). But give him something with a longer more elaborated run and he fumbles (Sherlock). He constantly foreshadows but it never lands satisfyingly.
Comments
Shown perfectly in the Christmas special, where he even telegraphs a satisfying, rush to the Tardis and throw the bomb into space ending, just to pivot to space magic.
*Zombified bf flies off into the atmosphere in a robot suit to explode himself*
13 episodes later;
"I have gag about the Doctor being nude!"
Like, ultimately what was the hybrid? We had a bunch of possible answers provided, one or two debunked, and...?
What's the Doctor's name? Guess it doesn't matter.
and the doctor's name is 'the Doctor', the name he chose. His deadname doesn't matter.
To get into it would take more than a single tweet, but suffice to say that what we're told directly about the prophesy from Davros and the Time Lord General contradicts that answer.
If you have to outright lie to your audience, it's not a good mystery.
This is not one of those times.
100% agreement!
Where’s the ranty opinionated fruitbat we’re all used to ¿
The Trenzalore Arc? Nah, that was… possibly unresolved.
It's frustrating in hindsight seeing all the great chekov guns he set up (eg smiley face on Amy's apple) and then utterly failed to use for basically no reason.
This is what the soldiers of WWII were-
I'll see him at Gallifrey One next month, I can give him your messages!
Moffat is a man of great good and great evil lmao.
'Just this once everybody lives!' had so much impact when the Doctor said it in his first story because usually - no.
Now it's meaningless because 'everybody lives' is the default.
Anybody that does a Superman Proxy Christmas special with Dragon Ball Evolution Goku as his redemption arc has to be doing something right.
And many moments of utter ridiculousness.
He works well within limitations, but without them, it’s anyone’s guess if you’re going to get quality or shit.
She was so annoying in my personal opinion
The rest of the Capaldi era felt to me like a lot of Moffat burn-out. Capaldi is probably my favorite Doctor, but his entire tenure is SO painfully average. Actively bad at worst.
Season 5 is alright, but it also hinges on plot resolutions following through, which they don't, at least adequately imo.
Coming up for Time of the doctor, which ties off seasons worth of plot in a line of dialogue that you could easily miss lol
At least Moffat’s arcs have ambition. They fall short sometimes but never for lack of trying
Sometimes I'd rather see an ambitious story fail catastrophically. Sometimes I'd rather see a simple story told well.
I think the absolute worst resolution RTD ever had was Last of the Time Lords, and i think that's below anything Moffat did.
I actually got my hopes up a couple years back for the Dracula 3-parter - and part 3 was just the worst and least satisfying resolution possible.
That dude couldn’t land a plane in an emotionally satisfying way if the universe depended on it.
In a novel about landing plane, it would be 300 pages of set up and rising conflict then end with “and then plane landed because of love”
Imagine a world where the loss of Old Amy leads to an ageless Rory leading the Silence against the Doctor, who he's always identified as dangerous.
If you really want to reduce it that much, it can be seen the way you're portraying it, but that's you.
Where? When??
Inferno (1970) to Earthshock (1982) is the standard by which I will always judge Doctor Who.
1. Pandorica Opens was 100% baller thru and thru
2. His miniseries Jekyll was really good
Even his series Coupling was SO GOOD seasons 1-3 and 4 was like "did the writers fall asleep"
"Everybody Lives Rose. Just this once. EVERYBODY LIVES!"
"I'm The Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the Universe. Look me up."
"The Doctor is no longer here. You're stuck with me now."
And my favorite:
"Amelia Pond: get your coat!"