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| Matt Smith in final performance as The Doctor |
Alas, this speaks to me:
The Captain Kirk Problem: How Doctor Who Betrayed Matt SmithI hesitate to say Tennent is overrated. I do like Tennant, but I'll always be an Eccleston girl. He sold the reintroduced Doctor as a troubled soul having lost all in the increasingly "plotty wotty" Time War, reconnected to his favorite planet. Tennant's success and appeal are because of the foundation Eccleston laid. And Tennant kept the energy of the rebooted series going with raw energy.
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With last week’s Christmas episode of Doctor Who, the bow tie has fallen to the floor of the TARDIS and we’ve said our final good night to the Raggedy Man. What is a fitting epitaph for Matt Smith, now that his run as the show's title character has ended?
I keep coming back to a sentiment that’s been cropping up for a while now: He deserved better.
The writing and plotting shortcomings of Doctor Who have been so glaring for the past couple of years that the 50-year-old BBC sci-fi show’s growing popularity in the United States (even as its ratings have sagged a bit in the U.K.) has to be attributable to something other than the stories. Most notably: the energy, charisma, and likability of the show’s leading man. After his somewhat stretched-out three-season-plus run, Smith tends to come in second in “Favorite Doctor” polls, behind his immediate predecessor, David Tennant.
Because it wasn't due to the plotting and writing. The Doctor destroys the career of Harriet Jones, not because she's wrong, but because he can? Rose yo-yos back and forth: she's lost forever, wait no she's not...wait, yes she is. For real this time. Probably. Donna, one of the most rocking companions ever, doesn't get this out. In fact she gets robbed of everything. If they wanted to write out her character sympathetically, why didn't they have her reconnect with that guy from the Library? Instead she was used as a plot device...shades of future plots to come.
It took me a while warm to Smith as the Doctor. Honestly I baulked at his youthful casting(yes, I've been among the fans mocking the casting direction, sardonically speculating Justin Beiber's casting as the12th Doctor). It didn't help that Karen Gillan was cast as his new very youthful companion, giving the preview of 5 series an Afterschool Special feel. Needless to say they all won me over in the end...Amy and Rory are awesome. But again, it was down to the actors acting their hearts out, not solid writing.
Someone ran out of ideas and the companions as plot devices took hold. It started with Donna's disposal, then Amy, and Oswin. Even River Song, my personal favorite character of the reboot, got this treatment, starting off solidly as a mysterious force of her own from the Doctor's future, then being reduced to a plot device to kill the Doctor.(Though I did enjoy her antics in "Let's Kill Hitler"). Kissell examines Moffat view of the Doctor and finds it disturbing:
All incarnations of the Doctor have been at least a little bit arrogant, but they’ve also tempered that arrogance with varying degrees of humility, selflessness, and a sense of wonder. But if Moffat were running things, the Doctor would swagger, dammit.I think Moffat's bravura heavy interpretation of the character goes hand in hand with his treatment of companions as plot devices. It's as if he's taking the idea that the companions humanize the Doctor's experience and running with it to the extreme: the Doctor needs horrible, complicated things to happen to his companions to keep him in touch with his "humanity"(Galifeyinity? ). Does Moffat see the Doctor as a "big damn hero" who needs a "damsel" in distress? Because the series seems to be sliding in that direction.
Once Moffat took the reins, swagger he did—looking pretty sexy doing so, thanks to Smith’s performance. The first season rings with the sound of the Doctor telling people how awesome he is, and how scared they should be, because he’s awesome.
To the Atraxi in his first appearance: “Hello, I’m the Doctor. Basically, run.”
To the Weeping Angels: “There’s one thing you never put in a trap. If you’re smart, if you value your continued existence, if you’ve got any plans about seeing tomorrow, there’s one thing you never, ever put in a trap. … Me.”
And then, of course, his signature barrage of bluster, the “Hello, Stonehenge” speech from “The Pandorica Opens.” Since we, the audience, know that he’s ultimately going to prevail, these repeated instances of the 11th Doctor bragging on himself to a sky full of alien menace (which happens again in his farewell Christmas special) come off as bullying.
In spite of 60's television drama devices(screaming dramatically as the episode ended in a cliff hanger) Doctor Who has always had spirited companions who were people in their own right. Remember Barbara Wright running Daleks off the road in a big damn truck? Or Jamie, one of the best studies in culture shock. Then there was Tegan who could not be shut up. This isn't counting the more well known companions like Leela and Sara Jane(who also could not be shut up). They weren't "plotty wotty" devices.
Why to I keep using that phrase? Blame Ted, who apparently invented it(and I so wish I had beat him to it):
The entirety of Season Six is when Moffat’s fascination for plot twists and open-ended mysteries (in our house, we describe this unfortunate tendency as “plotty-wotty”) took over the show, and the whole product suffered.Perhaps Moffat thought by building companions into the plot he was making them more interesting. Sadly all it does is reduce them to objects to be manipulated by the Doctor's well meaning whims.
What's disappointing is this plotting comes from the man who gave us my favorite Nu Who eps, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. After the bland resolution of Season Six (which started strong and full of promise), I can only conclude that Moffat, as talented as he is writing single stories, does not have equal ability with story arcs.
Or perhaps he just doesn't understand the Doctor. While there are as many interpretations of the character as there are fans, I agree with Kissell the tone of Moffat's Doctor is out of step with the characters' history as humanitarian (sentientarian?): irascible, stubborn, egotistical and, yes, on occasion arrogant, but all for the cause of justice.
And, for all the limits of Moffat's plotting, Matt Smith's performance nonetheless was able to communicate the Doctor's humanitarianism. As dubious as I was about his casting, he won me over in the end.
Farewell.
