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.)

[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.

[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]

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?

[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.

[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.

[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.