obvious things that have been stuck in my brain so i decided to type them out

[prof_pangaea]

random whovian thoughts:

donna is the companion that ten never gets over. i mean, End of Time takes place at least a few years after the events of JE, and yet seeing her through a window and a short conversation about her with wilf is enough to drive him to tears. obvs the initial tears are linked to adelaide's death, but that is also linked to his loneliness and inability let a new companion into his life precisely because of how much he can't deal with what happened to donna. SitL/FotD tells us that he's still not got over it years and years later, because he's talked about it with river. more telling even than the tears is the fact that when wilf says, "you need her, doctor!" he nods, almost says something ("I need --"), stops himself, and then has to flee from the scene. because i think he was thinking, "i do need her, i bet if i tried i could fix her, and then we could be together again", and that scared him, because the last time he thought he could do anything he made someone kill herself.

god, ten was fucked up.

meanwhile, russell seems to really like stories where characters set up their own downfall in some way. this is usually only implicit in doctor who, so we watch s2 and think, "does he realise he wrote a story about how rose and the doctor create the very circumstances that lead to their being separated?", or we watch s3 and think, "when he wrote the master coming in and taking over the power vacuum that ten left when he deposed harriet jones, did he actually do that on purpose?" because these things don't get addressed directly by characters, they just happen. but when RTD wrote children of earth it is explicitly stated that jack created the circumstances that lead to the ianto's and stephen's deaths. he gave the 456 those initial sixteen children or whatever back in 1965, and the other characters are like, "why the fuck did you do that?? you're the reason they're back!" so i do think that we (the adult audience) are supposed to watch doctor who and go, wow, ten and rose, you guys really fucked yourselves by acting like arrogant jerks to queen victoria, didn't you? he just doesn't have another character come in and say that, because he's writing it for the childrens, and doesn't want to freak them out. it is telling that he originally had a line in The Sound of Drums or Last of the Time Lords where the master explicitly says that he was able to rise so easily to power because the doctor deposed harriet jones, but ended up cutting it (this info from a panel at chicago TARDIS a couple years ago, if i recall correctly).

it's weird because he can't stop himself from trying to make the stories darker and more complex than he thinks is appropriate for the audience, so he compromises and tries to shellac everything with a distracting layer of glee and fun, which... doesn't always quite work. until waters of mars happens, of course, and it's like watching all those previous years without the protective layering and it's rather scary. but also quite good. which i suppose points towards children's television as possibly not the best place for him to work, in general. maybe he's fine if he doesn't write it himself, since SJA always strikes a very good balance between some quite dark or serious storylines but always keeping it appropriate for The Kids.

Comments

[biichan.livejournal.com]

god, ten was fucked up.

Yes. Yes he WAS. (You're totally write about him never getting over Donna too.)

One of the more frustrating aspects of RTD era Who was that shellacing over darkness and complexity. Because it's still there and it's fairly obvious if you know what you're looking for, but the Pastede On Happiness makes it seem like it's an accident that it's there at all. (And there's certainly enough people who use the Pastede On Happiness as evidence that the darkness and complexity doesn't exist and we're just projecting or whatever.)

HAPPINESS WILL PREVAIL. I mean, that's basically the RTD era in a nutshell. The Shiny Happy exterior that's covering something very dark underneath.

(I don't know, man. I think I'd respect RTD more if he didn't try to cover up all his strengths with spectacle.)

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

I am with all of this (both Bii and Prof) as well. I'd make a Happiness Patrol joke here, but it's too obvious.

My major problem with RTD is that he can't really write SF--he sets up massive conundrums and then can't follow through with an equally clever and complex fix. Fortunately, Moff is much better at this, but I wanted better for Ten.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Thirding to the three of you. *hopes*

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i think RTD can certainly write sci-fi -- gridlock and midnight are two of my favourite episodes of doctor who, and although dw only sometimes qualifies as sci-fi i think those episodes count (something like the shakespeare code, not so much). what he arguably is actually shit at is epic -- he always, always goes for the emotional over the logical, and that can't be sustained with the kind of plot needed to support EPIC.

but anyway i was mostly posting because i felt satisfied that i'd resolved (for myself at least) that he wrote the themes i was seeing in s2 and s3 deliberately. cos that has long bugged me how there's all this brilliant stuff sitting there but then i wasn't quite sure if it was there on purpose or not. like how the doctor/master subtext with pertwee and delgado is probably not there on purpose, but the doctor/master subtext with ten and simm obviously is.

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

See, except for the mood patches. Gridlock didn't impress me, but that's beside the point...

I do believe it's deliberate, though I don't think it was necessarily deliberate from the get-go--the whole 'ushers in a Golden Age' bit about Harriet Jones in S1 is utterly fucked by the Doctor in TCI, and I don't think that the whole Master bit had come to mind for RTD and the writers by then.

As for the themes, though, hasn't he said something about Ten's massive hubris, that his good intentions always go south? (Or am I confusing that with someone's meta journal entries?)

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i actually bet he had the master at least tentatively planned from the pretty near the beginning - "daleks for s1, some other overarching villain for s2, and the master for s3, if we get it!" the master is the kind of villain you'd plan to bring back, because he's so well-known, but not right away, because they'd done the daleks already, and weren't quite sure how the public were going to be about bringing back old characters/monsters. if the public hadn't liked that stuff i'm sure he would have scrapped the master and done something different. also, he definitely had the toclafane (name and everything) planned out as the bad guy monsters for the s3 finale when they were still writing s1 (you may have heard about how they lost the rights to the daleks at one point, and shearman had to compleetly re-write dalek with the toclafane instead. and then rewrite it again when they got the rights back). so i think it's possible he had a vague idea of how the doctor would find the master at the end of the universe and bring these spheres back with him to take over the earth.

so later, when he was actually writing it, he might have been, how can i tie this in more... haha, i have it.

As for the themes, though, hasn't he said something about Ten's massive hubris, that his good intentions always go south?

that would be interesting if he had. i don't know.

[shobogan.livejournal.com]

I don't think he's bad at scifi as much as...he thinks it's an excuse to use cop outs. "This is unrealistic, so this can be too!" and all that. His plots don't need to be coherent, it's scifi!

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

yah, that is true. i will never get over DNA being transfered through lightning, btw. never.

[shobogan.livejournal.com]

oh god the magic human lightning.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Argh, "right" not "write." DAMN HOMOPHONES.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

It's funny, but being an American viewer I forget DW is a "children's show" in the UK until reminded otherwise.

I'd like to think RTD didn't make some of these things explicit because he's not spoon feeding the audience. But you make a compelling argument that he somehow imagines protecting children viewers from lifelong pessimism by not connecting the dots for them and creating a patina of "sometimes stuff just happens".

He might just be preternaturally enamoured with Greek tragedy. And we do know he's got a playfully sadistic streak (e.g. knowing full well that naming a character Rani on SJA would make the fans mental).

So much about the Ten/Donna storyline resonates with me that even reading your description makes me a little teary. But avoiding turning this reply into ALL ABOUT GINA, I will say I agree 1000%, that Ten is completely fucked up, and that the emotional scars are deep and enduring, and this is just one of many reasons why I am ready for Eleven. Or at least had enough of Ten.

[starshipawesome.livejournal.com]

meanwhile, russell seems to really like stories where characters set up their own downfall in some way

This also happened in S1 with the Satellite 5/Game Station arc, and I believe Nine actually mentions this. He causes his own demise/regeneration by getting involved, and in a way causes Jack's immortality by telling Rose about the heart of the TARDIS.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

ahaha, yes! you're right! and he even has nine say, "but i did that."

s4 is the weird one. dalek caan breaks the lock on the time war because ten didn't kill it before it did that emergency temporal shift in daleks take manhatten. but it's not as straightforward as the others. the theme at the end there doesn't seem to be, "i did x, then y happened", but more "i go through the universe trailing destruction in my wake no matter what i do. *emo tear*". maybe if we look at the specials as being the real end of s4? er, but then we would have to try to find coherency in EoT. hmmm.

[starshipawesome.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of "doctor/companion does X, and Y happens" moments in DW, but some of the time it's more of a chicken-and-egg thing, such as the case with Blink. The Doctor knows what to do in 1969 because he got it from Sally, who got it from the Doctor himself.

... Yeah, I don't really get it either, but hopefully this will explain it a bit better (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Temporal_paradox)

[shobogan.livejournal.com]

It wasn't even just getting involved, it was getting involved and then just leaving without seeing it through - which he does constantly, and it was nice to see some consequences there.

[starshipawesome.livejournal.com]

Oh, for sure! A lot of the time, you assume that after the Doctor goes gallivanting back into his TARDIS, that's it, he's solved everything, life goes on happily ever after. So that's why it's nice to see the consequences of these things. For instance, Voyage of the Damned, when Wilf mentions how nobody goes out at Christmas anymore, because of all the alien attacks that have been happening.

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I came to this conclusion a while back too. The reason Torchwood (after the wackiness of season 1) and SJA are so much better is he can go straight dark in Torchwood and do the feel good in SJA and no one will let him do too scary, or he doesn't feel the need to, or something. Doctor Who had some bad emotional whiplash and dissonance going on because he keeps flipping between dark and happy.

The really unfortunate part, and the reason I started getting irritated was it makes it seem like the Doctor can't learn. He keeps going on about how lonely he is, and how only he can make the big decisions, and then keeps pushing everyone away, and making mistakes because he has no perspective outside of what he wants that minute. He doesn't let anyone in enough to let anyone call him on shit. Sarah Jane even *tried* to call him on it in Journey's End, and he still manged to shut everyone out before the end of the episode. And then wandered off alone into the specials until he went extra crazy in Water of Mars.

Hopefully Eleven will have learned from Ten's mistakes, finally?

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

YUS. It has long got to me that he doesn't learn. Or if he does he learns the wrong thing, like "I must not openly love Martha or she'll end up like Rose" or the like. And he gets either rewarded (Rose comes back anyway) or it simply doesn't matter (Donna doesn't fancy him, so he has no need to change his hot-and-cold behaviour).

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

I feel like Donna was pretty good at side stepping his defense mechanisms, actually. She really was good for him. I about cried in "Partners in Crime" when he was panicking and she demanded point blank he tell her what he needed and stopped him panicking. She did the exact right thing to get him to acknowledge Jenny's existence. And again I also about cried in "Joruney's End" when the Doctor freezes when he hears Davros's voice and she was smart enough to realize he was in the middle of goddamn PSTD flashblack and needed to talked out of it.

I read a study once, long ago in college, which concluded there's actually more people than you'd think who haven't actively tried to hurt themselves who do try to hurt themselves just after beginning seeking treatment for mental disorder than you might logically think. The writer of the study seems to think that people would begin to a bit of hope and then be so terrified of loosing that bit of hope, it backfires. I look at end of season 4 and...yeah, I think of that study.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Donna is great, she really is. But she doesn't fancy him so he never has to alter that aspect of his behaviour. He doesn't learn how to handle it, he just gets given a companion where it isn't even an issue.

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

I...don't think someone fancying him was going to fix him, ever. At least RTD's version of romantic love, the sort that idealizes it's object. I'd glad he had someone not blinded by him. So, I guess I'm just less upset about that.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

It could have made him be like "Right, this is not going to happen. But ILU, only not like that in the shagging way."

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

The really unfortunate part, and the reason I started getting irritated was it makes it seem like the Doctor can't learn.

it is what disappointed me most with EoT -- he never learns, he never finds peace, he just dies. it actually really upset me when i watched it. three had to die to learn not to fear death, and to throw off the last bits of his exile, but we see him accepting that before he does actually die. and ten doesn't. :(

[skipthedemon.livejournal.com]

I keep waffling about him actually going back for people in EoT counts as learning. It's not....running away and trying to never look back? Also, choosing to die for one person who in Water of Mars he would have called 'the little people' should have been learning. But he threw such a fit about it, I don't think it worked. :-( Again, maybe Eleven will remember and learn.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

donna is the companion that ten never gets over.

Yus.

i mean, End of Time takes place at least a few years after the events of JE, and yet seeing her through a window and a short conversation about her with wilf is enough to drive him to tears.

Are we sure it's that long? I have always wondered.


god, ten was fucked up.

Very.


so i do think that we (the adult audience) are supposed to watch doctor who and go, wow, ten and rose, you guys really fucked yourselves by acting like arrogant jerks to queen victoria, didn't you? he just doesn't have another character come in and say that, because he's writing it for the childrens, and doesn't want to freak them out.

I hope so! Otherwise it's just awful writing and surely he's not that bad?

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i don't believe the doctor when he says he's 906 in EoT, but the number means rusty intended at least a year or two to have passed since JE (if we go by how his age increases every other season of new who he should have been 904 when he was travelling with donna).

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

EPIC LOVE. All that time alooooone poor Ten.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

he misses his donna. :( and was also afraid of fucking up more peoples. ten is like a study in grief and loneliness and how not to handle it.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

russell seems to really like stories where characters set up their own downfall in some way

I can never work out whether that's accidental - or incidental - or not. The two instances you cite are obvious when you think about it, although I imagine that the majority of DW viewers aren't as ... er... obssessive prone to meta as some of us are.

I get the impression, from what I've read of The Writer's Tale (not finished it yet!) that it's a mixture of both - some things he had in mind well in advance and others just sort of happened along the way. And I can believe that, actually. I'm in no way putting myself in the same bracket as a writer, but I do find that sometimes, when I'm writing things just "happen" which, when I read it back later are somehow referencing things or events that were absolutely not at the forefront of my mind while I was writing - but which I suppose must have been lurking around in the depths somewhere. And for someone so steeped in the world of DW, as Rusty would have been, I can well believe that there's a lot of "stuff" in the show that wasn't actually intentional, but which, when we look back and poke it with a stick analyse it suggests that it was written "with intent". If that makes any sense whatsoever!

Oh, and -

donna is the companion that ten never gets over. i mean, End of Time takes place at least a few years after the events of JE, and yet seeing her through a window and a short conversation about her with wilf is enough to drive him to tears.

Yes. THIS.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

yah, of course. i wasn't really referring to him setting up stuff like "and then dalek caan broke back into the time war!" so much as "s2 really is all about hubris".

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

which i suppose points towards children's television as possibly not the best place for him to work, in general.

Agreed. He's made some great telly, but it thrives on underage sex and killing Jesus. For a family audience, he doesn't just tone it down - he does an ugly impression of conservative populism. It's perfectly possible to do progressive, interesting family TV, but it would seem his talents don't stretch that far.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

He's made some great telly, but it thrives on underage sex and killing Jesus.

obviously i was watching the wrong part of his oevre when i gave up on bob and rose halfway through.

meanwhile, i don't actually hate RTD. or his run on doctor who. is there something about my post which is mistakenly giving this impression?

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

True, that one is pretty lite. But The Second Coming and QaF are gold.

I don't hate either. But it's politically dubious, and clunky as long-term storytelling. He ran a good show, and wrote a few good stories, but he had trouble addressing his own subtext and story arcs. I tend to blame his inexperience running a show of this nature; multiple seasons, lots of continuity, family audience etc. Especially when crossbreeding it with modern telly, it is a big ask.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

now that the RTD era is Officially Over i am finding myself able to look back on it like i would any other era of the show, and enjoy it for the good parts and more or less ignore the not good parts. i was even watching bits of JE and EoT and going, "awwww" at the cack instead "gahh!!". sort of like being able to look back on "the five doctors" and go "awww" when sarah jane twists her ankle on a slight incline and the cybermen are defeated by the stupidest dance move ever. JE in particular really upset me when it was first broadcast because the last fifteen minutes destroyed so many characters so thoroughly, especially the doctor. except... it didn't. we've got eleven, and then we'll have twelve and thirteen, etc. so i've been feeling quite fluffy towards RTD, because even though there were a lot of problems with his years on doctor who, he got the important stuff right -- he brought the show back, he made sure it really was a continuation of the old show (when almost everyone else thought that was insane), and made it successful enough that it's going to keep going for a long, long time.

so ten dies awash in his own emo ears, just as six died falling off of an exercise bike. thus shall the lolarious legacy of doctor who be continued.

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I always found it weird when people were flailing about Rose ruining the Doctor/companion relationship "forever," because there'd always be a new showrunner and a new OTP. Change, my dear!

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

Also if you haven't seen The Second Coming, it's a great glimpse into Rusty's vision of The Messiah minus the family audience. I need a Lesley Sharp icon, she is fantastic...

[shobogan.livejournal.com]

That does make sense.

I think my main problem is that, because he doesn't directly address these issues, the characters never do either, learn from them. So if you do see the subtext, it's ultimately unsatisfying. And if kids do realise the Doctor's at fault for some things - because some will - they also see him never getting explicitly called out on it. I think it would be better to make it obvious the Doctor made a mistake, and show him facing that and being better for it.

[kels.livejournal.com]

You know, I still sort of have trouble believing that the new series of Doctor Who is for kids, because as you said, it is so very dark sometimes! If I had watched it as a child, I would have been freaked the fuck out (of course, I was also the kid who screamed her head off when I saw a Sesame Street skit with Burt and Ernie exchanging face parts when I was two years old).

Anyway, I found your comments to be spot-on and I would completely agree with how you've resolved the different seasons.

Now I'm wondering even more how different the show is going to be under Moffat.