Wednesday 14 October 2015

How To Ruin Dr Who

Sunglasses at night, call me Doctor Douchebag.  

I have to say it, I don't like television writer and producer Steven Moffat. You know how Old Knudsen gets when he doesn't like someone, there is probably a good reason for it. Like how yer loyal lab growls at some bloke but is ok about others, we know you know. Even though he is Scottish I just can't like him.


He's won several awards so you'd expect his work to be of a pretty high quality, well it can be. He wrote one of Old Knudsen's favourite Dr Who episodes 'blink' and while the whole idea of Weeping Angels is silly and easy to get around by blinking one eye at a time it was still a good story. Quiet, thought out and didn't depend on flashy special effects. 

Not much about his personal life on Wikipedia, I recall him saying how he'd sleep around a lot while working at the BBC and that he was going at it like a "mechanical digger". I don't know about you but I do not want to think of him having sex, especially after comparing himself to a machine. 

He seems smug and full of himself, not to mention his pube like head of hair. He did resurrect Dr Who and brought new life to a dead and dull franchise. He had the Doctor as a glib but tortured soul with a cruel streak and it was that bad boy image that attracted people to it. Then the Doctor went more hipster. After the David Tennant Doctor the show lost its way a little. The success changed it from a show with good writing and acting but not very flashy to a flashy show with mediocre writing and acting.  Glib one liners instead of depth of character.    


During the Matt Smith years the characters of Amy, River and even Rory were more interesting than the lead. Moffat's female characters seem to be quite similar but Amy and River made them more than Moffat's lad like wet dream. 
I think that the success of the show and other projects allowed Moffat to use other writers and not put in so much attention to it. 
Moffat was co-producing Sherlock with Mark Gatiss as well as working on the shite Tin Tin movie for Spielberg so standards slipped. Matt Smith was a decent enough Doctor and I do like The Pandorica opens and The Big Bang 2 parter that Moffat wrote. 


Now to tell you what I've noticed. Moffat took a young Matt Smith and made him dress old and uncool. A bow tie and a fez for comedy effect. The fangirls loved the Tennant and Smith years because the Doctor was younger, easier on the eyes as compared to Tome Baker. It was a formula that was working.
  

And there was the constant will they or won't they with the Doctor, Rose, Martha, Amy, River and Captain Jack. The Doctor was always that guy that you couldn't or shouldn't have dated and you shouldn't fall in love with him. That dynamic brought depth to the show and opened up the companions a little.

Did Moffat dislike the fact that girls drooled over the Doctor and shipped him in their fan fic? Was he all like, 'they aren't appreciating my writing enough, this has to stop?'  Aye probably. He didn't have to court the fans anymore, he was a big shot.

Torchwood the Doctor Who spin off was left to die after they ruined that. Captain Jack was a good character but they focused on his sexuality non-stop which is the opposite to what they do with the Doctor. Jack was supposed to be from the 51st century where sexuality wasn't so restricted to ghey or straight it was anything goes. John Barrowman who played Captain Jack is ghey in real life and the character also seemed to become totally ghey too thus wasting the wink wink nudge nudge comedic element of the bi-sexual time traveler.   
 

Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor. It seemed as if Moffat was a Capaldi fan and maybe wanted to return Dr Who to the good old dull days of the respectable older gent that has any ideas of sexuality taken off the table. Old people don't do sex and an old 400 year-old dude flirting with a 20 year-old was just wrong compared to a young 400 year-old dude.

He inherited the former Doctor's companion Clara Oswald and though Moffat tried to make her interesting as  'The impossible girl' as Amy was 'The girl who waited' Carla was important to the Lives of the Doctor but still went back to being a teacher. Moffat shouldn't let his mechanical penis do the casting.

Rose got the power of the TARDIS for a bit and Donna became the Doctor for a bit but what exactly did Clara do? It's all kinda bleh and easily forgotten all showed in a montage. Clara was flirty and argumentative and treated her boyfriend like shit .... yeah, she was a bloke. A dull bloke at that. It is like we are supposed to care about her and that she is so important but really she isn't.  She's just an adrenaline junkie now.

The Master got made female (and Scottish) probably because people were suggesting that the Doctor be a female. It's a little like James Bond and the need for something new to liven up a tired franchise. Female, black and teenage are options I'm hoping they don't do just for the sake of doing it on Dr Who.   

The new Master or The Mistress can get out of any situation and is boringly treated as a friend/rival than an enemy by the Doctor. Oh you killed some people out of boredom, I'll ignore that cos there are only two of us left.
This is the reason the Doctor needs to carry a gun and stop being a hypocrite. He'll kill people with explosions or drowning and he'll kill people by letting the baddie get away so just get a gun and shoot the Mistress until she stops regenerating, you'll be saving lives.

   

The plot device of the Doctor meeting characters as a child then again as a grown up keeps recurring. Does Moffat have 5 story lines he just keeps changing?

Capaldi is older but his clothes have become cooler. It's like Moffat is having his midlife crisis through the Doctor, remember the motorcycle? I like it when the Doctor dresses more Victorian than modern, it gives him more style. The sonic screw driver which has been used as a convenient and lazy way out of a storyline jam has been replaced by sonic sunglasses.

The fans are not happy. 

Now the Doctor can put on his Risky Business Ray Bans while indoors and be 'that' guy. The sonic screw driver is iconic, yeah lets turn the TARDIS into a red shiny convertible sports car. 

Moffat had the Doctor standing on a tank, wearing sunglasses at night while playing an electric guitar ... how cool is that? No, not very cool cos it's just too contrived to be cool.

Now Moffat is trying to make 'dad' cool. Hey lets get the Doctor a big diamond sonic ear ring next, maybe the Doctor is trying to cope with the fact that Clara doesn't flirt with him anymore or that he can't get the old vortex up any longer.

Clara has filmed her last scene already and there are rumours that Capaldi wants to leave too. What happened to him being a life long Dr Who fan? Ach let him leave.

 

Old Knudsen actually wanted Damien Molony for the role of the Doctor but Moffat knows best. I was impressed by Molony's acting in the BBC series Being Human which was created by Tody Whitehouse who wrote some shite Dr Who episodes. Molony is Irish, good looking and most of all can act. People would beg to travel in time with him. 

If the show is going to continue then it needs less Doctor on a tank, dinosaurs in space, dinosaurs in London. Less outrageous overly thought out gimmicks. It's like two teen stoners thinking what the coolest thing ever would be. There is already a movie being made called Cowboy Ninja Viking so quit trying for the wow factor cos yer just reaching the bleh factor.    

   

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