The Issues with Moffat Era Doctor Who

After the current series is done, Steven Moffat will be leaving Doctor Who. He’ll stop acting as the showrunner or writing stories, his chosen actors and actresses will step down with him, and finally, a reign started back in 2010 will finally come to an end.

And so far, it’s been one hell of a good ride. We’ve had some interesting monsters and characters. There have been storylines more creative than anything ever seen before. And with the BBC’s budget generally increasing, it seems like the special effects have moved on more than a tad since the days of RTD (or the bubble wrap clad monsters of the 90s).

At the same time though, there are some things I’m not a fan of. Some problems that I think are holding back the franchise at the moment, and that Steven Moffat has made worse. So here they are. Here are the annoying trends that have been getting a bit too common in the ‘Moffat era’…

1. Pacing Problems

Starting with the one episode problem that’s been bugging me ever since series 6. Put simply, it feels like the show cannot write a well paced story any more.

What do I mean by that? Well, here’s how I’d expect the formula to work in a show like this:

A: We introduce the Doctor and companion to the characters and setting (maybe 5–10 minutes)

B: They realise something strange/unusual is going on and investigate it (about 20 or 30 minutes)

C: Thanks to the Doctor’s intelligence (or that of his companions), they find a solution to the problem (about 10–20 minutes)

That never seems to happen in modern Doctor Who. Instead, what we get is more akin to this:

A: The Doctor and companion are introduced to the characters and setting (5–15 minutes)

B: Sod all of interest happens for the next two quarters of the story (about 30–35 minutes)

C: Suddenly, the villain is introduced, does some stuff, people die, things get resolved in record time (about 5 minutes)

Or perhaps if it’s a special:

A: The Doctor and companion are introduced to the characters and setting (5 minutes)

B: An absolute mad clusterfuck of random stuff happens at the speed of light (40–45 minutes)

C: Somehow a conclusion eventually comes out of it and something like a regeneration happens at the end(5 minutes)

Either way, it’s basically become a show that just cannot pace itself properly. You either get a story where everything dangerous happens in the last 5 minutes with minimal explanation (like in the Power of Three), a story in which you get no room to breathe (like the Time of the Doctor) or some weird combination of the two which just doesn’t feel thought out properly.

Above: A good special, but damn, you could probably present the entire thing as a trailer given how quickly everything comes and goes.

And that seems like a problem media in general has nowadays. It has AHDD, with an almost ridiculously tendency to flit from plot point to plot point at semi random.

A bit like the James Bond film Quantum of Solace really. You don’t quite know what’s going on, because the director seemingly wants to speed through as many scenes as possible in as little time as they can.

It’s like stories are designed for the YouTube trailers first, then summed up five minutes before a lunch break. Or perhaps created for an audience who cannot stay focused on anything longer than a Twitter post.

But pacing isn’t the only story related issue that’s become more common nowadays. Nope, there’s another one too…

2. Two Parters That Don’t Fit Together

Namely, a gradual increase in two part episodes where it feels like they were by completely different teams. For example, look at series 6. Did you notice anything odd about the storylines there?

Because I did. The mid season two parter felt like a completely disjointed mess. I mean, here’s the rough outline for a Good Man Goes to War:

The Doctor and his companions attack the evil army at Demons Run to rescue Amy and get her daughter back from Madame Kovarian’s forces.

And here’s the one for Let’s Kill Hitler:

The Doctor and co end up in Nazi Germany on the trailer of Amy’s daughter, who turns out to be River Song while stopping a robot doppleganger sent to kill the latter for murdering the Doctor.

Confused? Yeah, so is everyone else. These two stories literally have no connection between them, despite the latter appearing after the former and being set up as its conclusion.

And that’s kind of become a problem with the franchise now. Basically, every two parter ends up as two separate stories only loosely connected to one other rather than parts of a coherent whole. It’s frustrating, and to be honest, with only two episodes in a group at most (unlike the earlier show’s serials), it often makes it feel like the writers can’t quite conclude their own storylines properly.

Which when I think about it, ties quite nicely into another plot issue I’m having with the recent series of this show.

3. The Obsession with Dragging Out Plot Points Without End

Aka the very Moffat like problem of never wanting to conclude your own stories. I mean, look at the whole Silence/Time Field arc from series 5–6. It’s continued on through the entire Eleventh Doctor’s run!

And that’s become a problem with just about everything in the franchise now. Clara Oswald as a character is a good example here, since after her introduction in series 7B, it feels like the writers just weren’t prepared to let her leave the show in dignity. First she appeared in series 7, appearing to save the Doctor through his time stream in the final.

Then she ends up centre stage in both specials, including Day of the Doctor.

Before going along with the Twelfth Doctor in series 8, complete with her romance plot with Danny Pink taking up far too much of every story there.

And acting like a clone of the Doctor through series 9, because hey, the way to make a character people were lukewarm about popular is to turn her into a Mary Sue.

Still, she was killed off for real in Face the Raven right?

Oh never mind. She gets ‘saved’ from death by the Doctor two episodes later in Hell Bent, before going off with the immortal character Me (that’s another story) on a bunch of adventures therefore afterwards. It’s like Moffat just can’t get rid of the character despite her outliving any purpose she may have had in the show. She’s almost like Brock in the Pokemon anime. A filler character who’s only included because the writers can’t figure out a way to permanently get rid of them.

Yet it’s not just Clara this happens to. Oh no, it also happens to everyone from River Song (the only character in the franchise to be part of five whole seasons without being a companion or villain) to Amy and Rory (they had a perfectly nice conclusion ruined by even more stories just so they could be killed off) to Ashildur/Me (this was a one shot character who didn’t need four appearances) and even Missy. Okay, I know the Master is a main villain here.

But come on, she had no purpose in the first two stories of series 9. She wasn’t particularly evil in it, didn’t have any real plans and basically just hovered around doing nothing of importance other than setting up a completely pointless last minute crisis for the Doctor and Clara. It was like Bowser’s appearance in Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door, minus the humour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfcel_z626k

Just let things end naturally already. Don’t constantly delay the inevitable.

Still, let’s move on for now, shall we? Onto an issue that’s been bugging me more and more over the last few seasons…

4. Every ‘Villain’/Monster Seems to be Sympathetic Now

Namely, the almost crazed need to make every antagonist in the show a flawed but redeemable individual. Seriously, just look at the monsters from series 10. Every single one seems to have been written so they’re ‘justified’ in their actions beyond just being malicious.

The Heather Creature from The Pilot: Just wanted friends, didn’t mean to stalk the Doctor and Bill throughout the universe

The Vardy/Emojibots from Smile: Thought grief was a disease, tried to cure the colony by killing anyone who was sad.

Thin Ice: The creature was merely a prisoner of the human villain, and didn’t want to hurt anyone

Knock Knock: The ‘monster’ was entirely sympathetic, and the creepy landlord was murdering people to keep her alive because she was his mother.

Oxygen: Corporate executives are greedy and keeping people alive cost money. Well, that’s kind of evil. But hey, they’re human, so that’s fine.

Monks Trilogy: The first appearance of genuinely evil alien villains in the series. Pity they’re like a bad copy of The Silence.

Empress of Mars: What do you know, both sides are sympathetic, except that one human villain who pushes for violent solutions.

Eaters of Light: Monsters are dangerous, but they’re arguably not malicious in themselves. Just animals.

World Enough in Time/The Doctor Falls: Second time with evil aliens (Masters and Cybermen), and the first time in the series it was done correctly.

It’s like (for the most part) that the writers seem to have decided that ‘evil’ or ‘monster’ is bad writing, and thought that only sympathetic villains make sense in a story.

Here’s the thing though: they don’t.

You genuinely can have a terrifying or logical villain that is acting as it does for selfish reasons. You don’t need to have every single antagonist given a sympathetic motivation.

The Joker is a terrifying antagonist for example, even more so in his darker appearances like the Dark Knight. His lack of ‘motive’ actually makes him a lot scarier to think about, a maniac who just want to watch the world burn:

Ganon is the one of the most beloved video game antagonists in history, and he’s basically always been a near remorseless monster (Wind Waker being the nearest to an exception):

Heck, Doctor Who itself knew this. It’s basically why the Master exists as a character:

But the show seems to have forgotten that. As a result, now the only villains which are allowed to be plain cruel/selfish are:

A: Recurring antagonists which are known for it, like the Master, the Daleks, the Cybermen and now the Weeping Angels

B: Entirely/mostly human

C: In stories written by Jamie Mathieson. Seriously, that guys stories include the Foretold (which was at least a serious threat on its own), the Boneless (who were actively malicious) and the Mire (see the entry before).

5. Deus Ex Machina is Too Common Now

Finally, I feel like the whole ‘deus ex machina’ issue has gotten a bit more… blatant since Moffat took over.

Yeah, I know. It’s been a problem with the show since it first appeared in the 60s, and it was equally bad in the series finales when RTD was involved with it. In that sense, it’s basically Doctor Who’s biggest weakness in the story department.

But in the Moffat era, it seems this issue has just raced to the foreground. Yes, it still appears in series finales (and arguably worse than ever, if the Doctor’s Pandorica escape and the non conclusion of series six are to be believed), but it’s also seemingly creeping into the normal stories too. You’ve got stuff like In the Forest of the Night, where the story is completely nonsensical in its setup and concludes with ‘the trees disappeared after the solar flare’. Kill the Moon, where the egg hatching causes the moon to be replaced with a new perfect copy of the egg. Hell Bent where stuff just kind of resolves itself off screen. And now Smile, where suddenly everyone’s fine with the killer robots because their memory doesn’t exist despite the latter having killed a bunch of innocent people for feeling sad and having the potential to accidentally learn to do it again.

It just feels like the stories keep being written into a corner, with a magic conclusion added at the last minute. Everyone writes the epic introductions and keeps building up the stakes, but no one can defuse the situation properly.

Still, don’t take this all as too negative. I may dislike a few issues with the Moffat era of Doctor Who, but for the most part I still think the series holds up really well today. The monsters and aliens certainly more inventive (and creepy) as the series goes on. The ideas are all there. And I can’t really fault the performances of Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi. Everyone does a good job in many ways.

It just feels like the actual pacing and story structure has taken a hit at the same time. Fix those issues, and the series could easily bring in the tens of millions of viewers like it used to.