Doctor Who [10]

I think when you have made your position on the usage absolutely clear if someone still insists on reading it in a manner other than meant then they are simply willfully trying to find offense. And I have no time for that. Nor will I alter my usage of the word just to appease such a person. That way lies the madness of political correctness.

fuq sake

Well your love for political correctness is no greater than mine Figg.

And if I said Rory is a bastard for how he treats Amy (which of course I wouldn't say because its not true) you wouldn't have batted an eye or raised an objection on sexism grounds.

Yet if I say Rose's behaviour is bitchy I am being sexist. Bullshit.

I for one appreciate that the two of you are essentially keeping the Forum traffic alive with this single thread. That's worth something at least.

here to help

Ele as RA would say. Ele.

This made me laugh- from a blog about Rose-

'Rose is SUCH a dick to Mickey. You know your girlfriend sucks when you *choose* to move to a nightmare parallel universe filled with Cybermen.'

Hey- you changed your post- ah well as Ive already created this bloody list in response so I am going to post it anyway!!

In response to the accusation Moffat only writes sexist versions of women.

I think you have to have a very selective memory to even begin to view Mofffats writing this way. Because to demonstrate that Moffat is a sexual sadist when he writes woman you would have to show that this is a constant trait of female characters under his showrunnership. But you, nor anyone else I have ever read who accuses Moffat of similar ever takes that into account- they pick a few characters they think makes their case and claim it proves the point, and conveniently ignore every other female character in the show under Moffats stewardship because they don't fit the agenda.

Here's a list (by no means complete) of secondary female characters (ie non-companions) either written, co-written, or in episodes under his helm-

The Empty Child/Doctor Dances- Nancy.
Blink -Sally Sparrow.
Silence in the Library/Forest fo the Dead -Miss Evangelista
The Beast Below- Liz 10. Mandy.
Vampires of Venice- Isabella. Rosanna.
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood- Nasreen Chaudhry. Ambrose. Alaya.
The Lodger- Sophie.
A Christmas Carol - Abigail
The Doctors Wife - Idris.Auntie.
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - Jennifer. Cleaves.Dicken.
A Good Man Goes to War- Madame Vastra. Jenny Flint. Lorna Bucket. Madame Kovarian.
Night Terrors- Claire. Mrs Rossiter.
The God Complex- Lucy Hayward. Rita.
Closing Time- Shona. Val.
The Doctor, the Wido and the Wardrobe- Madge Arwell. Lily Arwell.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship - Queen Nefertiti. Indira.
A Town Called Mercy- Sadie.
The Power of Three- Kate Stewart.
The Bells of St John- Miss Kizlet. Angie Maitland.
The Rings of Akenten- Merry Gejelh.
Hide- Emma Graying.
The Crimson Horror- Mrs Gillyflower. Ada.
Nightmare in Silver- Captain Outhwaite.
Day of the Doctor- The Moment.Osgood.Elizabeth I.
Time of the Doctor- Tasha Lem. Linda. Gran. Marta. Colonel Meme.
Into the Dalek- Journey Blue. Gretchen. Courtney.
Time Heist- Ms Delphox. Saibra.
Kill the Moon- Lundvik.
Mummy on the Orient Express- Maisie.
In the Forest of the Night- Maebh.
Last Christmas- Shona. Ashley. Fiona.

So unless you can show that the majority of these female characters are all the work of a sexual sadist then I don't see how the accusation can hold any water at all.

simply writing a list does not prove your point. its just a list.

a lot of these women are interchangeable S & M femme fatales. All they need are whips and the look is complete. River, Missy, Delphox, Kovarian, Tasha, most of them sexually obsessed with the Doctor. They may look strong but their world centres round a man, who they flirt with want to destroy, but can never have. Its straight out of De Sade for Dummies. its funny how all these so called cliché dominatrix tend to get exterminated at the end.

Alternative you could describe those women as -

River- a self made Professor of Archeology and adventurer who had to raise and educate herself from the age of about 7.
Missy- a renegade Time Lord with an intellect equal to or greater possibly than the Doctors.
Delphox- the Head of the most powerful, influential bank in the universe.
Kovarian- the leader of a powerful branch of the most powerful church in the universe.
Tasha Lem- the Pope, Head of the most powerful religion in the universe.

I can clearly see how Moffat hates all women here.


But yet again you are doing the same thing- you pick a few names that you think justifies your position but it only works (and even then it doesn't work) if you ignore every single other female character on that list who doesn't conform to your idea of a Moffat woman. Its completely selective.

not really as Moffat didn't write all of those female characters. and I am discussing the main assistants not secondary characters with 2 lines of dialogue.

See selective. You just want to use the ones you think support your argument and ignore all those who dont.
And they have more than a few lines. Many of them are the main character outside the Doctor and the story revolves around them or they are incredibly important to the plot or the audience- characters like Abigail or Rita.

And no he didn't write all of them or every one of them- nor did RTD with Rose or any other of his characters- but Moffat is the showrunner- he sets the agenda, he comes up with plots and story arcs and he approves the scripts. He often cowrites scripts too, credited and uncredited as all showrunners do as well as writing several episodes every series.

And I don't see the evidence when you take his work on Who as a whole, what he has overseen, the scripts he has approved and written that he has some sexist agenda or hatred of women or is a sexual sadist.

Take the the last xmas episode, it has 7 central characters including Clara and the Doctor and 5 of them are women. And who is in charge of the group, is it either of the men? No its one of the women.
Only one person dies in that episode- is it one of the 5 women? No its one of the 2 men.

You know I am amazed on this evidence Moffat isn't out attacking women in the street

She gained a happy marriage with the man she loved and they adopted and raised a child.
She also got to see some amazing stuff and some incredible sights, and yeah some very bad stuff came out of it at some points, but she survived and grew stronger from them and it never made her mean or nasty (like a certain flower named person) it didn't taint her love for Rory. And overall she loved being with Doctor and living that life. But she was ready to move on she just couldn't bring herself to let go, nor could Rory.
This is part of the subject matter in Power of Three, choosing between real life and Doctor life, and the realisation they rather like real life too.
The Ponds era is a fairytale, and like all good fairytales it ends when you grow up. Which is what Amy and Rory do. (in the very first episode of series 5 Amy gives as her reason for stopping believing in him as 'I grew up' to which the Doctor replies 'I can fix that.' The Doctor is what prevents Amy from growing up, its why she leaves with him on the eve of her wedding, that symbol of being a grown up, her adventures with the Doctor are what make her understand who she is, what she is capable of, who she loves and the life she really wants, the grown up life. It all comes full circle.)
I am also of the opinion they raised young River and then sent her to live in England to be with their younger selves.*

And going on Amy's final letter to the Doctor they were very happy in their lives.


*just to justify that River regens into toddler Mels whilst in New York in 1969 and is raised by her parents there.

Amy and Rory get zapped back in time to New York in 1938.
They knew about River and they knew she regened into a toddler in New York in 69.
By that time Amy and Rory would be in their late fifties or  early sixties some thirty years before they died in their eighties.

Amy was born in 1989, twenty years after they would have started looking after Mels, before sending her to live with their younger selves.
This also explains how Mels knew where to find her parents and probably explains how she was looked after, enrolled in the school, where she lived, how it was paid for ect when she did not have any parents- I would figure there adopted child as the likely person to be acting as her guardian.

This also fits with the weird way aging seems to happen with Time Lords, as they seem to have an extended early stage that lasts a long time, then look like teenagers for a long time.

Romana when she traveled with the 4th Doctor was in her last years at the Academy and was 125 or possibly 140 as both ages are given (the actress they cast was 21 but looked more like a teenager- thought the Academy school uniform she often wore might have added to that).

And for me the clinching evidence is when Amy is zapped back in time. She asks the Doctor if it will send her back to the same time as Rory and the Doctor answers, and seems genuine in it, that he doesn't know.
Bu River immediately responds with an emphatic "Yes! Yes it will."
This is her mother, if she isn't absolutely right on this then she is condemning her parents to an awful future life and they cant help them. But River is absolutely certain in her reply.
The only way she could be that certain is if she already knew the result because she was there in New York growing up with them.

It also adds more meaning to her line "see, it all worked out in the end, you got to raise me after all" in Lets Kill Hitler.
They did, but typically of Rivers life they did it in opposites- older Amy and Rory raised young Mels, and younger Amy and Rory older Mels. Mimicking the way her adult life is moving backwards in time in their life.

pretty sicko stuff. Amy would have been much happier if she had dumped the pair of them. that's not love, she was suckered.

I don't see how she was suckered into loving Rory.

Rory's role in the fairytale is her Prince, her heroic defender, who even when spurned forgives and loves and protects.
The Doctor even pretty much says it outright in the Wedding of River Song-

"The loyal soldier, waiting to be noticed. Always the pattern. Why is that?"

And in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship there is the following exchange-

NEFERTITI: You and the Doctor, are you his Queen?
AMY: No, I'm Rory's Queen. Wife. Wife. I am his wife.

Rory is the man who waits 2000 years protecting a box his wife is held within from any harm out of love., devotion and loyalty.
Having been set up within the fairytale narrative of the Pond years Amy has to get the Prince at then end or its not a proper fairytale. Their story is all about fairytale- sometimes its quite explicit, like the bio forest on the spaceship with Amy in her little red coat going through the forest trying not to get caught by the big bad wolf (Weeping Angel). Or The Girl Who Waited with its magic mirrors and its twist on Sleeping Beauty- what would happen if when the Prince turned up a hundred years later the Princess had aged instead of slept.

But its a modern fairytale, so Amy doesn't just fall for the Prince because he is a Prince. Moffat gives Rory no airs or graces, he is not like Martha studying to be a doctor, he is  a nurse, and happy and proud to be one, and he is a good one- we are told that in the first scene we see him in by an actual qualified doctor. Moffat pulls the Jesus card here- you want him to be sacrificial in his love for others but you don't want him to seem to high above everyone. So instead of a carpenter he is a nurse, not a doctor, clearly skilled but a bit bumbling, awkward. Not outwardly strong or heroic but in time he will save worlds.
Rory's strengths are there form the start; compassion, dedicated to his job and to helping other and protecting them from harm. His love of Amy. But they are not expressed yet like an adult, he lacks the confidence, he is not ease with himself.
Its not until he goes with Amy, at first purely out of love and to be by her side to protect her and watch out for her, and because he doesn't trust the Doctor. Not out of any desire to go with the Doctor or leave home or run a way from anything like Amy. Yet its only through his need to be with her that he too beings to grow up and be comfortable and accepting of who who he is. And he gains strength by that- nicely demonstrated by his occasional right hook. Almost impossible to imagine of Rory of the opening episode. She brings all that out in him and helps him to grow up. She helps him to have the confidence to fight for what he believes is right with equal passion to the empathy he shows for those who are in pain. As shown in the Almost People with the Flesh.

But at first Amy is uncertain, she loves him but she doesn't want to grow up. She has never let go of her imaginary friend from childhood.
The Doctor- fairytale role the wizard. And when he turns up again, she doesn't have to grow up any more, and even better, he has a Time Machine, she can go back to the night before her wedding any time she wants, its the first thing she checks with him before agreeing to go- now she can never grow up for as long as she wants.

But its a fairytale and every fairytale needs a wicked witch to spur everyone on to their destiny- enter black clad, black lipsticked, eye-patched Madame Kovarian.
And dark stuff happens- because name a decent fairytale where dark stuff doesn't happen.
The heroines baby is stolen from her by the wicked witch- a classic of fairytale. The baby snatched.

River as well as the surface role of being their daughter and the Doctor's wife also gets the fairytale role of good witch.
She comes and goes into the story, sometimes highlighting flaws in the main characters- such as at Demons Run, or heralding future events, as in Time of Angels and her teasing of the Pandorica or telling Amy upon losing her baby that she will be alright in the future because she knows that.
And at the start of the same episode, her first appearance in 11's run and under Moffat as showrunner, she flies in through the open TARDIS doors like the classic witch arriving on the wind.

Amy's love for Rory lets him grow up, and Rory's love for Amy lets her grow up. And when they have both grown up she chooses to leave the wizard and his exciting magical adventures, the wicked witch has been defeated, their child is alive and well and someone they like and love, and Amy can finally make her decision- to be with her Prince and live in a far land (well time anyway) happily ever after.

So I don't think what happens to Amy is any worse than what normally happens in fairy story, and I don't think their love for each other is anything other than pure and genuine. No one was suckered into anything. Amy chooses at every turn of the way how she reacts to what happens to her. Its all part of her fairytale.

Its clearly a fairytale,its full of fairytale imaginary, fairytale character roles.
Yes it's filtered through the mesh of Doctor Who- companions get put in peril Doctor has to save them, nasty monster try to kill them most weeks or kidnap them, or blow everyone up. That's what the show is, always has been.
But its dark when its dark because the thematic thread running through it all is that of a fairytale. And it deliberately follows the basic structure and tropes of one.

The very basic fairytale being told in series 5,6, and the first half of 7 is-

Prince (Rory Williams), Princess (Amelia Pond), Wizard (The Doctor), Bad Witch (Madame Kovarian), Good Witch/Seer (River Song).

Bad witch screws up young Princess's life with the crack in the wall whose magic is to steal those around the Princess away along with her memories of them (its a magic mirror).
Its not unusual in a fairytale for the bad witch to put a spell, or some enchant, or a curse upon the hero of the story whilst they are young. Implant the seed of the later plans.

The wizard arrives and he is chaotic, as wizards in fairytales even good wizards usually are, he disrupts her life completely and takes her away on an adventure that puts her in peril.

The Black Witch causes the seeming death of the Prince. And steals away the memory of him from the Princess through the crack in the wall magic.

The Black witch tries to kill the Princess and the Doctor, she blows up their magic machine, but the wizard uses his magic to reverse the effect and save everyone and restore all the people Amy had lost and her memories of them.

The Princess marries her Prince.

They conceive a child.

But the Bad Witch snatches the child from them and hides her way.

The Wizard tries to seek out the child, but he cant because his magic cannot undo the Bad Witches magic, the child has already grown up and become a seer, a prophetess, or the good witch depending on which fairytale you wish to compare it too. She knows all their futures and she is connected to death.
Both because the Bad Witch has used magic and the Seer is foretold to be the one to kill the Wizard, and because the Wizard has already seen her death.

The wizard and the Prince and the Princess get their child back, but as the adult Seer they have known all along.

The wizard disguises himself using magic and fakes his own death to throw the Bad Witch off their scent.

The Princess kills the Bad Witch using her own magic against her.

The wizard and the seer marry.

Princess and Prince go off to a distant land and live happily ever after.

The wizard is grief stricken by their departure (for some reason in fairytales  and the like the wizard often has to suffer some penance at the end for some reason- think Merlin).

And that very simply, is the underlying fairytale Moffat tells.

But I would say the Pond years were thematically most definitely a fairy tale.

ding ding! Amy Pond Wars. Round Two.

Petty O
Figg 500

Petty definitely has some catching up to do, then.

{{{ }}}

That essay would have given you an A+, Petty. I was reminded of the Norwegian fairy tale "Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon" (White-bear King Valemon). "Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon" (White-bear i.e polarbear King Valemon).

I still don't like the Pond area one bit. RTD was both brilliant and a pile of shit, but there was always something that made you FEEL something. And there was Donny. Dear, dear Donna. Amy is like a mix of Donna and Rose, and it's not working. She's the postergirl for Moffat's "RTD did it first, now look at ME and how much better I can do it!"

I cry at the drop of a hat, but I watch Clara hug her robocop and I think 'hm, this is meant to be sad, I guess" and wonder when the ep is over. Amy doesn't matter to me, I don't feel for her, I look at her and don't believe her.

That essay would have given you an A+- Amarie

What do you mean 'would have'?

Obviously I cant change how you feel about Amy- I felt plenty for her, her tale is one of triumph over tragedy. Of responding with strength and compassion and remaining true to yourself even when very bad events happen to you in life which you have no control over.
I think like all good fairy tales it touches on human fundamentals.

And I am fan of the manner in which Moffat scripts- he doesn't like to join up all the dots and present you with the finished puzzle, he likes to lay out all the pieces for you and let you put them together.
At its strongest this produces episodes like Blink, but it can at times go the other way and the pieces are too much pieces of the puzzle- Clara's character in series 7b for example.

Every show runner has their tropes they stick to- RTD for example was never very bothered about the scifi elements of the show, they were always in the service of the emotional elements, which is why many of the plots don't bear up to much scrutiny in that department. He also wrote companions in a similar manner to each other.

They had families that were part of the story something you never used to see (we have never seen a single member of Sarah Janes family) and they were in some fashion defined by the Doctor. With Rose it was her total love and devotion to him, with Martha it was her love for him being rejected because the Doctor was still obsessed with Rose, Donna it was the whole Doctor-Donna thing. And all of them their families featured and played significant roles in their lives.

Its a repetition of ideas, which is to be expected as they all come from the same source and style. This is equally true of Moffat.

You liked RTD's more emotional based, earth grounded drama, where the scifi elements and the secondary characters were all in service to that, so were simple and on the surface because they were not the point.
And I prefer Moffat's style of hidden meanings, clues and twists, and where the plot is interwoven into the characters narrative, rather than just the backdrop to it.