Eh, a few more thoughts on The Time of the Doctor, and s7b in general. Like I posted last night, the special felt like it was begging and pleading me to FEEL FEELINGS without going to the trouble of earning any emotional investment from me whatsoever over the course of the season.
This sort of pissed me off. And I’m thinking back on why in the Xmas special, this didn’t come across as just a shrug-worthy absence of feeling, but rather why I was completely annoyed by it. I think that in part it might be due to what felt like a bunch of wannabe parallels with the RTD era throughout s7b, including last night.
There have been tons of memes about Rose/Clara parallels in s7b. For example, Clara’s face trapped in the TV, and the cinematography of the scooter scene in The Bells of St. John are ~reminiscent~ of Rose Tyler’s face trapped in the TV in The Idiot’s Lantern. Clara Bad Wolfs herself in The Name of the Doctor in a way ~reminiscent~ of Rose in Parting of the Ways, et al ad infinitum. Now granted, Moffat has a reputation as a one-trick pony, but that’s usually recycling his own plots and tropes. Here, examples like this never struck me so much as “parallels” but a lot more like me-too-ism, because Rose is still the most popular companion, whereas Moffat’s own companions have not attained nearly the level of fandom allegiance that Rose has attained even 5+ years after being off the air. So these “parallels” always struck me as more Moffat trying to ride RTD’s coattails by reusing his tropes rather than being any sort of genuine tribute in and of themselves.
Onto last night’s special, which similarly rehashed a ton of shit – not only thematic and cinematographical elements as in the above examples, but also comedic elements. In TTOTD these mainly seem to have been ~borrowed~ from The End of Time. Hey, why write your own swan song when you can try to borrow one and rubber-cement your own dropped plotlines on top of it?
Here’s a partial list:
- The Dirty Old Lady – it was funny when Minnie Hooper pinched Ten’s bottom in TEOT, so let’s have grandma wanting to play naked twister in this ep!!! And wouldn’t it be even FUNNIER if we have a Mother Superior also have blatant sexual innuendo as well!
- A portal/homing beam of sorts to Gallifrey – which is essentially what the cracks have been retconned as, n’est-ce pas? They’re a slightly less CGI’d version of the homing beam from the white-point diamond in TEOT. The Time Lords are dangerous and war and the-end-of-all-things will ensue if they are brought back. So let’s not really bring them back, but threaten it, because that added a lot of emotional drama in TEOT.
- Avoidance of death followed by self-sacrifice – it always struck me that Moffat seemed like he wanted to replicate the fact that Ten’s avoidance of death was so compelling by trying to do the same, by making Eleven’s time avoiding death much longer. You have Ten who essentially lived for 4+ years and who ran away from his fate post-WOM for a month? or two? until he came back and gave his life up to save that of a single old man …. and ok, so it was vaguely annoying that we hid away 200+ years worth of Eleven’s character development in s6 to have Eleven try to escape his own death during that time. But now, Moffat has added even more centuries on top of this with the duration of Eleven’s stay in Christmas. So now we have Eleven who has been around for what … close to 1000 years now? This essentially doubles the Doctor’s canonical age at the start of the Moffat era. So Eleven avoids death for even LONGER and then essentially grows old and sacrifices himself to save EVEN MORE PEOPLE than Ten did.
- The Explosion To End All Explosions – when Ten regenerated, it essentially exploded the TARDIS — flames shot out through the windows. So, in a thinly-veiled attempt at comparing lengths of sonic screwdrivers, when ELEVEN goes boom (the first time), let’s have him explode the whole building — no, the whole village!! His ~explosion~ is so big that it touches the freaking sky!!
- Removal of The Definitive Article of Clothing – Ten throws his coat over the strut in TEOT in what is filmed as such an insignificant action that it might not register at all to some people. It’s emotional precisely because it is so understated – Ten doesn’t even seem to know, nor care, that this is the last time he’ll probably ever wear that coat. Contrast this with Eleven who slowly unties and drops his bowtie, practically screamed from the rooftops “I AM REMOVING MY BOWTIE NOW SEE I AM DYING AND I WANT MY ADENOIDS TO BE COMFY JUST IN CASE THE NEXT ME HAS A BIG THYROID OR SOMETHING.” You pratically have time to take a bathroom break, grab a beer and nuke some popcorn in the time it takes Eleven to remove it. (This is what I mean by attempts at emotional manipulation).
- The last face this face saw – hey, there was a lot of emotional resonance when the first person Ten saw — Rose — was also the last one he wanted to see, so hey, let’s recycle it with Eleven (except this time wouldn’t it be neat if he hallucinates Having A Moment with her while the companion he ostensibly ~cares~ for, who just admitted she fancies him, is Standing Right There Worried About Him).
- Being “sung to one’s sleep” – in TEOT, we had Ood Sigma – whose presence (and whose premonition of Ten’s death) was woven through multiple episodes in s4. In TTOTD we got Amy, for no particular thematic reason (other than as stated above, as an attempt to echo Rose’s presence at the start and end of Ten’s life). Although, tbf — technically in TTOTD, Amy didn’t do any singing – just cradled Eleven’s face and stared longingly at his lips (and forgive me here while I mentally go on a
ranttangent about how Moffat kind of outdid himself in this episode by implying ships not only between Eleven and Clara… but Eleven and Tasha Lem, Eleven and River, AND Eleven and Amy).Now I’m sure there are more. I have no doubt. Including Moffat’s attempt to draw some sort of parallel between Rose’s being sent away once in POTW, who responds actively — by fighting her way back — vs. Clara’s being sent away TWICE (SEE HOW MUCH MORE ELEVEN PROBABLY CARES FOR HER?), who responds passively — by … holding a turkey and looking vaguely miffed until the TARDIS comes to get her (I posted about that here as well).
I feel like I should give Moffat a “You Tried” star for this. Except it’s not so much that he TRIED … it feels like what he was TRYING to do all along was to recapture something in the show that evaporated from it the day RTD left.
//done
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