 |
| An excellent Doctor in need of a decent producer. |
The Death of Doctor Who
(As Engineered by
Steven Moffat)
by Cynthianna
After viewing Doctor
Who’s final episode of the season, Death in Heaven, my
husband said he could write a review of it in two words: Train wreck.
I told him I could use only one:
Ugh.
Okay, okay I’ll
explain myself: After eight months of anticipation brewing, we, the
venerable sci-fi/fantasy show’s fans, eagerly looked forward to
spectacularly talented actor Peter Capaldi gracing our television
screens in the title role. Alas, many of us found ourselves rather
disappointed in the twelfth Doctor’s rather weak presentation to
the world in his debut episode (read my I Got the Doctor Who Let Down Blues).
We didn’t lay the blame for its failure to inspire on the great
actor or our beloved series’ basic premise, however. It was all too
obvious the weak script poor Peter and company had been given to work
with was to blame. I felt that the actors and craftspersons involved
honestly did the best they could do with the material, but you could
sense they were struggling at times.
 |
| One of the better episodes not written by Moffat. |
Holding our breath
(some might say our noses), we, the long-suffering fans, continued
watching the remaining episodes of the season hoping the quality of
scripts would improve. After a few rare glorious moments, many fans
felt we had caught glimpses of the magic from the earlier Doctor
Who era—particularly in strongly-written episodes such as Mummy
on the Orient Express, Flatline, and In the Forest of
the Night. Huzzah! So, you could well imagine the crushing
feeling fans like my husband and I experienced when we turned on the
series’ two part finale… ugh. Not only had the beauty and
strengths of the original source material and cherished characters
been denigrated, but our hopes for a long run of the revived Doctor
Who series have flagged.
Once again, my husband
is right in saying our disappointment can be summed up in only two
words: Steven Moffat.
Mr. Moffat is the
show’s producer, to put it in American terms, or “show runner”
to use the Beeb’s vernacular, and that makes him the person
responsible for making editorial decisions. As a published author and
editor myself, I know that responsibility for the success or failure
of a creative venture rests with the person in charge of its
editorial content. It’s up to the editor/producer to put his or her
foot down sometimes and say, “We’re not going there.”
Intelligently choosing scripts and hiring good scriptwriters to
produce story lines is a big part of the job, in other words. It’s
not a task to take lightly, especially when producing the fifty-plus
year television milestone which is Doctor Who.
 |
| Alternate title: Mary Poppins Flies Again! |
I’m not really the
type of fan who has either the time or inclination to go around the
Internet griping about the producers of Doctor Who (I’ve
encountered fans who do), but I have to agree with quite a few of my
fellow Whovians this year. We’ve been let down by Mr. Moffat.
There’s not much positive one can say about the situation. There
aren’t words enough to express how sad one feels watching what was
promised to be a revival of the series’ special something, that je
ne sais quoi, being flushed down the drain. And yes, it’s
emboldened me to speak out before it’s too late.
For there is one other
word that springs to mind apart from ugh to describe my
reaction to Moffat’s Death in Heaven:
Disrespectful.
There’s a niggling
sense of fan disrespectfulness in many Moffat-written or co-written
episodes of Doctor Who, but perhaps they’re not all fully
realized until this season’s finale. The fans’ sensibilities are
once again taken for granted as the Cybermen’s genesis and
motivations are co-opted in order to do a remake of Marvel’s Iron
Man. Throw some
very poor science into the science fiction—the part human/part
cyborgs can now “grow” out of “pollen” that is “planted”
into dead bodies—and one gets the feeling that Mr. Moffat doesn’t
take the genre seriously at all. Zombies are all the rage now? Throw
them into the mish-mash along with Iron Man!
 |
| “Look they can fly like Tony Stark can!” |
You can almost hear Mr. Moffat
laughing in the background… “Research? Bah humbug! Those silly
Doctor Who fans don’t care about well-crafted
sci-fi/fantasy. I mean, if they’ll believe a newborn space dragon
can lay an egg the size of the moon a few minutes after it hatches
(the premise of Kill the Moon) then they’ll believe
anything. They’re all thick! They’re adults watching a
kid’s show! We can do whatever we want and they’ll buy it.”
It’s a disrespectful
attitude and insulting. Yes, another one word review: Insulting.
Whatever the failings
of classic era producers and scriptwriters at least fans didn’t
feel as if they were being talked down to, belittled or openly
scorned for loving a family-friendly, sci-fi/fantasy television show.
Yet Death in Heaven goes on to new heights of insulting fan
sensibilities by turning the Doctor’s archenemy the Master into
childhood icon Mary Poppins complete with the big hat and flying
umbrella—because somehow ripping off recent zombie hits and Iron
Man wasn’t enough. For the record, I’m not against the Master
changing genders at all, but I am against a non-original and sexist
interpretation of the beloved villain from the classic series. Which
leads me to another one word charge that many, many female fans have
leveled at Mr. Moffat:
Sexist.
 |
| "Love me--please?" (Or co-dependency is cool.) |
There’s a great
scholarly article on Sexism in Doctor Who
(http://rebeccaamoore.com/2014/05/29/university-study-on-sexism-in-bbcs-doctor-who-infographic/)
that I won’t reiterate here, but the author makes a very strong
argument that many of the Moffat-written scripts fail
the Bechdel Test—and fail it miserably. For the most part women in
the classic series (1963 – 1989) were presented as strong,
intelligent, reasoning individuals with distinct personalities, equal
in ego-integrity to the Doctor. In other words, worthy companions.
Sure, some female companions screamed at a monster now and then, but
so did quite a few of the Doctor’s male companions. Nasty things
jumping out from the shadows or dark alleyways can do that to a
person of either gender.
Rest assured, the
Moffat era of Doctor Who has put women in sci-fi firmly in
their place—right where they belong beneath the men! Young,
good-looking females are depicted as simply “girlfriends” who
suffer from hormonal fluctuations of emotions which make them
constantly fret about whether the Doctor is still their boyfriend or
not (if he ever was) and occasionally even slap him. Careers? For women? Get real! It’s not deemed
important to show the current crop of female companions as successful career women.
The female companion’s career takes a backseat to all the worrying
and fretting about the Doctor and her human lovers she is forced to
do because of her inferior biology, just like it does for most
twenty-first century women, right?
Angst-riddled dialogue
and silly arguments abound among the romantic couples in Moffat’s
Doctor Who, bringing back memories of the good ol’ days of
seventh grade crushes and break-ups in the junior high cafeteria.
Female companions need never mature to an emotional age of beyond
twelve or thirteen it seems in Moffat’s fictional world. Ditto for
their male lovers. The new era of Doctor Who has become an
adolescent packed space opera—or is it simply a soap opera? Original Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert had it all wrong! (She was only a woman, you know.) Who
needs intelligent characters working on solving problems
intelligently using the scientific method?
 |
| A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down...and down... |
This is particularly
true if you’re a brilliant male scientist and you find yourself
regenerated into the body of a woman. The Master, formerly depicted
on screen as a capable, dedicated and determined evil genius, once
converted over to the female gender gives himself a girlie nickname
like “Missy” and dresses up like every little girl’s favorite
Edwardian nanny, Mary Poppins. He/she still wants to take over the
world, but now she does it while wearing bright red lipstick and
trying to stick her tongue down the back of the Doctor’s throat.
How grown up!
Moffat seems to be
giving a wink and a nudge to all the sexist male fans, intimating
that once a mad scientist has lost his masculinity he certainly
wouldn’t want to impress people that he was still an evil genius by
acting like…well, like an actual genius. A person with a brain and intelligence and a plan...but hey! Once you’re wearing
a dress and lipstick you can’t act any smarter than a seventh
grader, right? Must be those girlie hormones!
 |
| Sarah Jane's bravery and intelligence--awesome to watch. |
No wonder fans of the
classic series of Doctor Who despair. Where are ace scientist
Liz Shaw, investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith, and master
teacher Barbara Wright when you need them? Thank heavens for those of
us who can receive the Retro-TV channel in the U.S. Episodes of the
classic series are broadcast five nights a week, and you can see
these strong feminist role models there, a breath of fresh air compared
to the twelve year old antics of Moffat’s female companions.
Thank heaven
indeed—which leads me to another word that describes Death in
Heaven: Tacky.
Perhaps tasteless would
work as well as tacky. At one point in the story, the Doctor tells
the U.N.I.T. team that they don’t want Americans involved with
dealing with the Cybermen crisis because all Americans do is “drop
bombs and pray.” Asking for Divine Guidance is a big no-no
apparently since only stupid people (women?) would ever think it was
a good idea. And perhaps attracting and maintaining American viewers
isn’t at the top of the BBC America’s list of profitable things
to do, either?
Tacky jokes cracked about the vast majority of TV
viewers’ faith in a Supreme Being shows rather poor judgement on
Moffat’s part. Sure, he can be atheist and anti-American, but he
doesn’t have to be mean-spirited about it, does he? Didn’t political
rhetoric, which insulted the conservative-minded BBC chairman, get
the original series cancelled back in the 1980s?
 |
| R.I.P. Brigadier |
My husband found the
idea of “resurrecting” the late Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in
the graveyard to be in extremely poor taste. Even if you don’t
believe in an afterlife or heaven, why would you condemn a righteous
and moral character such as the Brigadier to become a mindless
cyborgs puppet for all eternity? There’s that ugh factor
creeping in… Tasteless and tacky shouldn’t be words associated
with a family-friendly show, but in this day and age of nasty
trolling and snarky musings, I guess it was bound to happen to Doctor
Who, too. So sad that Mr. Moffat couldn’t rise above it for the
good of the series.
Because, in the end, it
appears that Mr. Moffat wants out of Doctor Who. Why else
would he risk insulting folks with tacky and tasteless quips,
repeatedly show female characters in a stereotypically sexist light,
and show outright contempt of the classic series and disrespect for
the intelligence of the sci-fi fan base as a whole? Why would he do
any of these rash and insipid things unless deep-down he wants the
program to be canceled? Moffat’s production of Sherlock has
done well in the ratings, and perhaps that’s where his heart lies.
Certainly writing for a character such as his version of Sherlock
Holmes, an autistic, emotionally-stunted savant, seems to fit better
with Moffat’s outlook on life. He can express himself creatively
there.
Disrespectful,
insulting, sexist, tacky… ugh. I won’t even bother to
point out plot holes, heavily-telegraphed plot points, and others inconsistencies in Death in Heaven.
Nick Frost as Santa Claus—or should I say Father Christmas?--will
probably fill them all in in the holiday special and tie things up
with a nice big bow in a neat little package, right? For an atheist like
Mr. Moffat to put so much faith in a saint (St. Nicholas) to perform
such a miracle of scriptwriting during the one the holiest seasons
of the Christian calendar is too bizarre to contemplate.
 |
| Time to move along, Steven. |
Steven Moffat should
depart Doctor Who and move on to pastures green, and he should
do so now before the show loses any more support from the fans. Peter
Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor deserves a chance to shine away
from the dross of the Moffat era. Doctor Who deserves fresh
air, fresh ideas, and maybe even some female writers and
producers this next time out?
Are you listening, BBC?
