sholio | Have now seen Doctor Who 5x01 & 5x02

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tv:doctor who

Have now seen Doctor Who 5x01 & 5x02

... so, huh. I saw a lot of squee around my flist but my response was decidedly ... not.

The writing is good. I'm just not getting much sense of a personality off these people! Eleven, to me, feels like a composite of Ten and some of the Eighties doctors; he doesn't stand out as his own person, with his own style. I was much more enthusiastic for him after seeing the preview than I am after watching two episodes of the show! And Amelia ... I'm equally unimpressed; Rose and Martha and Donna were such vivid companions, so there from their very first appearance, but again, I'm not getting that from Amy - I have no feeling for her as a person. I don't understand her; I don't know what she was doing all alone in that house by herself as a child, and while I like the idea of her as a small-town girl who knows everyone in her little town and wants to see the world, I don't get that at all from how she reacts to things - I just don't get her. Again, she feels like a composite of some of the previous companions, but not her own person (yet?). Like I said to my husband after watching, the whole thing felt very generic to me - like it's drawing on elements of the earlier incarnations, but the result is very Doctor-Who-by-the-numbers rather than standing out as each of the previous seasons has done. I don't think I'm going to be dl'ing any more. Maybe at the end of the season, if my whole flist erupts in OMFG! and LOOK WHAT THEY DID!, I'll give it another try.

(The one thing I did love was Queen Elizabeth 10. bwahaha, "I'm the Queen mate, I RULE!" With the guns! Oh, she was awesome. I hope we haven't seen the last of her. I'd take her over either of the actual main characters.)

ETA: I think half the problem (again, IMHO and all of that) is that I feel like we're retreading so much territory with these characters, whereas each previous season of NewWho has struck out somewhere different. Matt Smith is so similar to Tennant in demographic and general style; even his clothing style is not that different. And we've already had the "young working-class Companion, builds her whole world around the Doctor, fiance/boyfriend waiting at home" thing with Rose; Amy just feels like a sort of Rose/Ace/Peri/anyCompanion blend to me. Can't we have something different, for pete's sake? This is the fourth companion in a row from the UK in the early 21st century - it would have been nice to branch out a bit. There are other time periods out there, damn it.

ETA2: When I first saw Amy on the previews, I actually thought that they were going to revisit the character Zoe, in the same way that they revisited Sarah Jane, K-9 and other past characters in earlier seasons; the actress looked so similar to me, especially around the eyes. I was very startled to see her in the policewoman uniform in the first episode and realize it was going to be a completely different character!

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it would be neat if they actually had a guy companion at least once and for real. or someone not from our century.

LOL, I just ETA's one of my ETA's to basically say that (about the time periods, anyhow). It's just frustrating that they're not doing something different with the Companion this time. A guy would be fun (we've had Mickey and Jack in New Who, but not lately and neither for very long), and someone from a really different culture would be neat too! I'm just very, very "meh" about this particular Doctor/Companion pair; I feel like either one of them might be more interesting if combined with a very different, mold-breaking sort of other, but taken together, there is little that interests me about them - I feel like anywhere they could go has already been explored with other characters already.

Edited 2010-04-17 08:23 (UTC)

I hear you, what you're pointing out are the very same things I wasn't exactly happy about when the new doctor and companion were announced. I mean they got good actors/actress but it would have been nice to as you said, "break the mold."

I liked the general feel (and Liz 10!) of these first 2 eps, and Matt Smith & the Companion's actress are very, hm, earnest - but yeah, I'm not getting a really strong sense of personality from them. Some of that might be just the series needing time to find its own way...some of it, too, I suspect is writer; Moffat is rather plot-focused while RTD was very char-focused (at the expense of plot, oftentimes). Am going to keep going with it myself, see how it goes...

(but yeah, a not-Brit-from-21st-century would be cool! Like Leela - I should really watch more 4th Doctor eps sometime...)

Leela was probably my favorite Companion until Martha and Donna came along! :D I was actually really surprised to look her up and discover that she was in so few episodes - just a handful, really - because apparently she made a much bigger impression on me. ... I never saw a lot of Who prior to the new series; PBS has been showing it since basically forever, so we first started watching it 15 years ago or so, and would just watch it whenever there was nothing else to do - it's possible that I saw more Leela episodes than most of the others by random chance.

Anyway, yeah - there's just so much time and space to explore, and so much more they could do with the Companion role! I liked the idea, when we first saw Amy, of the Companion being a little child for a change - why not? So many things they could have done - it was disappointing to me that they went with something so conventional. *vexes*

Moffat is rather plot-focused while RTD was very char-focused (at the expense of plot, oftentimes)

*nods* RTD's plots were quite often sucktastic, and I liked most of Moffat's eps a lot, so I was excited to see what he'd do with the show. But I'm kinda worried, based on these eps, that Moffat might not have the ability to do character to the depth that we've previously gotten from the series. It's a worrisome possibility that the Moffat eps of the previous seasons were so good because he and RTD complemented each other's weaknesses as writers really well, and now it's like a wagon that's lost a wheel - he can write RTD's characters, but he can't develop his own. (I've noticed that with a couple of writers whose fanfic I like but not their original fic - they can do other people's characters just fine, but aren't so good at developing a world of their own.)

I know that the first few eps are probably going to wander a bit, and need some time to find their "voice"; still, I was far more engaged by the first two Nine/Rose eps than by the first two Eleven/Amy eps - so if it is Moffat's weaknesses as a writer showing, I really hope they have a few character-focused writers for future episodes! ^^ It will probably also help if they develop Amy's friends and family a bit; it looks like that might be planned since we saw so many of them in the first ep, so perhaps having a little Scottish village will help with the show's lack of groundedness so far.

I never watched old-school Who when it was originally on, but when we went back and watched a smattering of Old Who after getting into New Who, Leela was my favorite old-school Companion of those I saw. That the Doctor was the brains while she was the brawn - I've got a thing for that particular gender-role-swap, I must admit. ^^

I can understand the point of wanting a modern character to be the audience's POV, and wanting a female char to balance the male Doctor. What I don't get is why can't they follow old-school Who and have more than a single Companion at a time? For more than a couple eps, I mean.

It will probably also help if they develop Amy's friends and family a bit; it looks like that might be planned since we saw so many of them in the first ep, so perhaps having a little Scottish village will help with the show's lack of groundedness so far.

Yeah, one of the reasons I liked RTD's chars from the get-go is that they all had other relationships, too; you got a strong sense of who they were and how they fit into their lives right away. That kind of character establishment is one of RTD's strengths as a writer, and I think it's because that's what he cares about; he feels to me like one of those writers who writes because he loves the chars he writes about. Moffat comes across more like he's interested in characters only so far as he can use them to say clever lines and tell the stories he wants to tell, less like he actually cares about the characters themselves. And while I can appreciate the skill of the latter, I tend to naturally prefer the former style, since it matches my own...

Yeah, one of the reasons I liked RTD's chars from the get-go is that they all had other relationships, too; you got a strong sense of who they were and how they fit into their lives right away. That kind of character establishment is one of RTD's strengths as a writer, and I think it's because that's what he cares about; he feels to me like one of those writers who writes because he loves the chars he writes about. Moffat comes across more like he's interested in characters only so far as he can use them to say clever lines and tell the stories he wants to tell, less like he actually cares about the characters themselves. And while I can appreciate the skill of the latter, I tend to naturally prefer the former style, since it matches my own...

I agree with all of this. And it's kind of sad, because I was looking forward to getting new blood in the creative department, and since Moffat's a sharp idea guy, seeing what fresh and interesting ideas he'd bring to it. But the result has been a Who that's much flatter and less interesting than RTD's version, to me at least, and I think what you've said above is precisely why - I'm a character viewer, have always been, and the way that RTD developed his complicated, flawed and likable characters and their friends and family really worked well for me, despite my issues with his writing in other areas. But I think you're absolutely right that Moffat is a plot writer, not a character writer, and while it worked fine when he'd come in and move RTD's vivid, unique characters around on a canvas, when he's the one who has to come up with the characters from scratch - it's not working so well.

I hope that the flaws will iron themselves out and the characters will become more vivid once the writers develop their "voice" and the actors are able to settle into their roles. But if characterization isn't one of Moffat's priorities, then it doesn't give me a lot of hope that the show will develop in a way that's really going to work for me ...

Yup, I agree that new blood was needed - I personally loved RTD's run on Who, but he was totally right in thinking it was time to move on. (really, I don't think any writer should stay heading a show more than 5 years, it rarely seems to work out!)

But RTD, for all the criticisms leveled against him, is a really good writer, and a hard act to follow. I kind of wish Paul Cornell (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0180280/) had gotten the gig - he only wrote a handful of eps, but he's an old-school Who-er like Moffat, only I think he has a stronger grasp of character. Don't know if he was at all interested, but it would've been interesting to see what he'd do with it. (I know he wrote Who novels and I've been meaning to check them out, I know some old school fans like him a lot...)

so perhaps having a little Scottish village
It's actually a little English village, with Amy the displaced outsider who's kept her accent all these years. But yeah, I like the village and its people.

Though, again, that reminds of another case in which the audience has to bring the tools. The Doctor tells the beefcake guy — Jeff? — that this is his moment to be fantastic and wow the world's geniuses ... and we only see him typing and talking in mute after that. Sure, how he rises to the occasion isn't plot-relevant, but in that case, why include it? Once again, don't just tell me the Doctor inspires people to be their best.

It's actually a little English village, with Amy the displaced outsider who's kept her accent all these years.

... woops. XD Well, that would certainly explain the accents, which I'd wondered about. I'd thought the BBC was being awfully careless with their casting ...

I also gotta say, Moffat's got an irritating quirk that I hadn't picked up before, that he likes to point out how clever he is - like having the Doctor comment that "Amelia Pond" is an amazing fairytale name (like River Song and Sally Sparrow - he follows Oda's pattern, name the women after birds or water!)) or having Amy explicitly draw the parallel between the Doctor and the space whale so many times to make sure absolutely no one missed it. It's really...erm...obnoxious. :P

Oh, yes, that's a very good point. I do hope someone reins him in on that "hey, look at me!" tendency. (Though I will say that the bit about Amelia's name was redeemed a bit, in that the later callback gave Amy a chance to counter that she "grew up" — one of the few cases in which he put a little bit of subtlety on a motif, the "you abandoned me" one in this case.)

I definitely see what you're saying... like, I'm bobbing along, enjoying the episodes, but I still think they need to find their feet and that these characters need to find individual voices. It surprises me, because the characters on Coupling, while cartoonish, each had very distinct voices and I found them all quite lovable. Then again, Moffat's in a tricky position... wanting to put his own stamp on the show, yet not wanting to fuck up what RTD built, which was a smashing success and definitely had a particular formula. Personally, if I were in his shoes, I'd be cowering somewhere in a ball crying. So, I'm willing to wait and see, but like you, I'm not as bowled over and filled with childlike glee as I want to be.

Personally, if I were in his shoes, I'd be cowering somewhere in a ball crying.

... bwaha. :D

Yeah, they're not bad eps, and they're fun; they're just very, very generic-feeling. Perhaps, like you and some others have said, it's just that Moffat is really playing it safe and trying not to alienate viewers, and it'll be stronger once he gets his storytelling feet under him and finds a unique voice for his tenure on the series.

Thanks for this - still trying to decide whether to watch this New Who. I liked Amy, but then, I'm easy with regard to companions and have never not loved any of these girls or boys (I liked Mickey, for Christ's sake, and wanted to slap the doctor). I tend to be character-focused, which is definitely something that RTD indulged, but in a less than critical way - the problems I had with the Last Who were always plot- and story-based, had to do with bad writing, skeevy messages of gender and race, and terrible props.

Be at once interesting and a possible waste of time to check out less fully-formed characters, a Doctor and companion on the road to finding themselves - as you say, man, even though Rose had to find her journey, she definitely had found herself a long time ago. And both Martha and Donna were 110% themselves. God, I miss Martha. :(

*nods* Yeah, I'm a character-focused viewer as well; the plots on the previous seasons were sometimes terribly frustrating, and Moffat frequently did the best eps out of the bunch, so I was fairly eager to see what he would do with the new series. But it feels like character creation might be his weakness, which could be a big problem for me if that's the case. Like I said in response to one of the other comments, I've sometimes encountered fanfic writers who wrote great fic but whose original fic was flat - they could write other people's characters wonderfully, but were not nearly as good at creating and developing their own characters and worlds. Hopefully Moffat doesn't turn out to be like that. (Of course, it may simply be a personal-taste thing - not that these characters are flawed, per se, but just that I haven't connected to them. Perhaps Moffat's general character style is not as much to my taste as RTD's was. I can't rule that out.)

as you say, man, even though Rose had to find her journey, she definitely had found herself a long time ago. And both Martha and Donna were 110% themselves. God, I miss Martha. :(

Me too! It's definitely true that "character has to find out who they are" is a very different arc, with a very different feel, from "fully realized character has adventures". I just wish that I had a better sense of who these characters are now, even if they still have a journey to become who they're going to be.

The writing is good. I'm just not getting much sense of a personality off these people!

EXACTLY.

Word. I feel NOTHING and no sense of who he is. Thank you for saying it. I didn't manage to finish 5x02 at all because I didn't understand these people. I don't understand what they want, or what motivates them. I am not falling in love the way I did with every companion of new who from the start. It seems rehearsed, like the show is telling us what we are supposed to feel: oh look, we should feel wonder like Amy does, we should feel fear like Amy does, etc.

Thank you; I'm glad it's not just me! And yes, exactly. When we first met Rose, and the Doctor took her to the end of the world, I felt her wonder and awe, right down to my toes. This ... it feels very paint-by-numbers to me; it's fun, and there are some neat ideas (Britain-in-space was hilarious), but like you said, it feels like we're more being told about the characters' wonder and awe and fear than experiencing it for ourselves. And a big part of the problem for me is that I'm having a hard time getting inside the characters' heads and relating to them as people.

Yup, you are pretty much reading my mind here.

I still remember Rose's wide eyed look at the idea of a Christmas that had already happened once, and it's gone, and the way she stepped on the snow.

To elaborate, I also felt like she immediately tried to relate to the Doctor as a person, noticing that it's probably "better with two". That moment where she looks at him and essentially realizes he might be lonely, is a lot more powerful than the moment where Amy is stating all the things that are problematic with the Doctor's life while looking at the screen. The way that the eyes of the Nine and Rose met there was a sense of connection. Here they are hardly looking at each other, it's like they are not interested in each other enough to look. The best part about the companions for me has been their ability to make the Doctor "watch" them, and he was always focused on Rose, Martha and Donna. And they were always focused on him, aware of where he was at all times. I just don't get that sense of a connection between Eleven and Amy. And so I find it difficult to relate.

I loved the first episode, but the second one was very, very meh for me. Felt like a mesh-up from some new Who episodes with a touch of Torchwood now with even more plotholes.

I like Eleven and Amy, but Eleven really isn't that different to Ten in his early seasons and I really hope that we will get some better episodes soon.

Yeah, I was unimpressed when I first saw the casting; then I saw the previews and thought, "Ooh, this guy can pull it off!" - but now that I've seen a couple of episodes I'm back to being kinda unimpressed because he's just SO like Ten in so many ways! I do wish they'd broken the mold a little more. And I hope the show finds its own "voice" soon - some of the problem, I guess, is that it's basically just playing it safe right now, and retreading old familiar ground.

Yeah, I'm pretty torn. The first ep was pretty good, I thought, in pulling me in, especially when it had to overcome my annoyance at the overlong tasting scene ... but it's hard to point to what I liked rather than what I didn't. I did like that Amy wasn't especially quick (well, in the show's terms) to forgive him for abandoning her. It kept moving, but at the same time there were a few places where the path ahead was patently obvious (of course he won't be back in five minutes! Especially not now that he's promised a little girl! Of course the aliens mean the whole planet! How did they not get that the moment they heard the transmission from the ice cream truck?) and yet the script sloooowly dragged out the reveal. I got a Ten vibe off of Eleven several times, and no real sense of who he was outside that.

It was the second episode that really fell apart in the "telling over showing" problem. Amy chose to forget to spare the Doctor having to choose between many humans and an alien ... when he's only properly confirmed he's alien that same episode, not long at all narratively, and the only thing she's ever seen him do is defend humans against aliens? They didn't just have her state the parallels between the whale and the Doctor over and over and OVER, they had her state character traits she really had no reason to have processed yet. (And all she's been told is that objecting/abdicating will dissolve the ship, isn't it? So how does she know that actually means "oh, we expect the whale will try to break free and that will break the ship"?) Like a souffle, the collapse of the plot arc left me with little benefit from the episode. I did like that we had to keep guessing who was "good" or "bad", though — that was quite effective — and Liz Ten was fantastic until we learned just what she'd done (which made her actions that much more devastating).

But yeah, the characters need something to distinguish them naturally. Eleven needs to be more than a less shouty, less stable (!) Ten. (Thanks to a posted macro, I do wonder if he's capable of turning to his right without instead twirling around to his left, which isn't enough to define a character but is amusing.) Amy needs to be more than Rose's small-town dissatisfaction plus Donna's fiesty compassion. They all need to trust the actors more and rely explicit dialogue less.

And OMFG, if I never see another bleeding Dalek again it'll be too soon.

Ooh, wow - I think you nailed a lot of the things about the second ep that I hadn't really picked up on consciously, but seeing it here, it makes a lot of sense. I suppose one of the problems is that Moffat's basically inherited the opposite problem that RTD had in the first episode - in that case, RTD had the challenge of introducing a whole new generation to the show, so he opted to do it through a very young and naive character, for whom everything would be new - thus giving him a reason to explain everything while not alienating long-time viewers. But what Moffat has to cope with is the fact that his viewers are pretty well versed in the world by this point - they know a lot more than Amy does. And, especially since Moffat's used to working with established characters, maybe that's why the show is floundering so much - he's not really selling us on Amy as a character because he's having her act as if she's a lot more jaded and familiar with the universe than she really ought to be. And now that you've pointed this out, looking back on both eps, I think a lot of my difficulty at "reading" Amy as a character is, basically, this - she doesn't act like a kid or young adult encountering mind-boggling concepts like aliens and spaceships and 900-year-old Timelords for the first time, but she also doesn't read as enough of a serene and emotionally-grounded person to be having as little reaction as she is. I could believe her taking the whole thing in stride, or being emotional and excited, but she flips back and forth, and I'm having trouble figuring out who she is because of it.

And OMFG, if I never see another bleeding Dalek again it'll be too soon.

Hee! A bleeding Dalek might be interesting!

Edited 2010-04-17 21:35 (UTC)

(Snerk. I think they bleed green slime, so maybe not so much.)

Ah, and you've now actually pulled those details into something coherent. Yes, it's hard to know whether we're supposed to sympathize with Amy because she and we are new, or sympathize because she and we have a handle on everything, or feel parental as we watch her learn what we know, or be impressed that she's handling what we don't know so smoothly ... because she bounces around. (Sure, real people are complex, but characters tend to be built on fewer axes, and this goes down even to the basics of dealing-with-aliens.)

I also meant to comment on the "yet another attractive young woman from the 21st century UK" thing. Historically, the show had the Doctor as an authority figure, and both male and female companions were included as character sympathy figures. With One, in fact, they included Ian so that there'd be a young manly man for all the lifting and toting and heroic running about. As the Doctor got younger and younger, though, they started seeing the male companion role as redundant, because male viewers could identify directly with the Doctor; the female companions remained in part as female viewer identification, but also as eye candy for the dads. That says a lot sociopolitically, most of it unflattering or downright skeevy. I get that they've established a dynamic for the new series — youngish-looking but wordly wise male Doctor and young modern female companion — but it doesn't make it right to continue it. I found Rory kind of interesting, actually, if milquetoasty (and the actor isn't anyone I know but looks really familiar); he could be fun as a companion, maybe. And how fantastic would it have been for Wilf to be a companion for more than that one episode?

I hadn't quite picked up on the telling vs showing thing - I caught that it happened, but I didn't realize how prevalent it really was until you pointed it out. But yes, definitely the case...

I've heard that Moffat has said he's trying to direct the show more at kids in particular, bring it back to its roots - maybe that's part of the problem, that he thinks kids needs to be explained things, that they won't get that the Doctor & the space whale are alike without being repeatedly told? (I don't think that's true, myself; kids are going to interpret things differently than adults, often enough, but things they don't understand they'll just come up with their own explanations for. You don't need to tell kids practically anything to get them to enjoy a story; it's adults who want explanations and rational behavior and motivations...)

I've heard that Moffat has said he's trying to direct the show more at kids in particular, bring it back to its roots

Oh, that's interesting, and explains another thing about the show, which was why it had felt so young to me - especially the first episode, somewhat less so the second. Ironically (considering that it's his idea), that might result in Moffat writing against his strengths, because his episodes were always some of the darker and more adult of the series - which was one of the best things about them! Maybe the show feels out of balance because he's not only trying to juggle character with plot, but also trying to write a kind of show that isn't what he does best, which doesn't bode well for the rest of the season ...

Hmm, I don't know if Moffat did the more adult episodes, really - darker in that they were scarier, yes, but thematically Moffat tends much more toward morally simplistic and happy endings. "Blink" is scary as hell, but I don't know that it's particularly more mature. RTD did the more adult eps, emotionally speaking - "Midnight" or "The Waters of Mars" were much darker than anything Moffat's written for Who.

In that, I think the situation with the space whale is the most morally dark thing Moffat's written for Who? And that was resolved a lot happier than, say, Pompeii...

--Erm, which isn't to say that I disagree that the new series feels younger - it totally does! But I feel like that's always been an aspect of Moffat's eps...

(I've had issues with Moffat after "Blink", because while he's really good at what he does - nifty scifi concepts, clever lines, spunky girls, genuinely scary make-you-jump stuff - he didn't seem to me to have much range beyond that. And the current shows seems to be bearing out my concerns...)

You nailed it, as far as I'm concerned. :)

Yay, I can finally comment! :D Just finished watching the premiere, so now I fully get where everyone is coming from ;) As for myself, the show was, as usual, fun, but I wasn't exactly blown away. For me, I felt Amy a bit of the cliche TV female character: tough, no-nonsense, but not much in the way of a personality I could grasp. I much preferred her as a little girl and thought it would have been awesome if the little girl ended up as the companion rather than the adult.

The Doctor, however, though I wasn't particularly impressed with him, I felt more lenient toward him. He really did channel a lot of 10th Doctor. But the way I figure it, he's in a transition stage. Both actor and character still need to establish themselves, and I hope that is indeed the case, and that the new doctor develops his own personality rather than relying on Ten's personality (because seeing hints of the 10th Doctor had actually made me a tad melancholy.)

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Have now seen Doctor Who 5x01 & 5x02

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