Don't turn your back, don't look away...
...and don't blink.
Dear Russell T Davies,
Your work in resurrecting Doctor Who as a bankable TV franchise has been invaluable (your work in inventing Torchwood considerably less so, but still). Some excellent things have been done with that programme - some wonderfully moving, intellectually stimulating and compelling stories have been told in that wonderful 45 minutes that you wrested from the evil, encroaching hands of reality television. None of them by you, though.
Well, okay, that's too cruel. You've entertained me, certainly. Never above a certain level, but you've got a good sense of a silly, fun monster plot. However, man cannot live on fascist rhino-people alone. That's a scientific fact whichever way you look at it. The fact of the matter is that however fortunate ratings-wise your Who has been, it could be much better. Not just in specific episode cases, but in terms of overall tone. Too much time is spent on making the Doctor a hip, fanciable fellow and making the assistant fall overtly in love with them. Too much effort is expended making the show accessible to the poor wretches who aren't looking for science fiction in Doctor Who, and instead happened to turn on at the wrong time for Eastenders.
Of course, one doesn't want Doctor Who to be Star Trek. That would be rubbish. Doctor Who works because of its humanity. It's all about seeing the wonderful world of the Doctor through the eyes of the assistant, and about the emotional realities of the horrors, tragedies and wonders of travelling in space and time. So where do farting aliens fit into that remit?
"Hey guys! Heh heh, guys, check it out!" BRRRAATTT.
It's the emotions evoked in the viewers that matter, and much of the time, none are evoked at all. The plots that supposedly guide the overall arc of the series have been, thus far, totally tedious. Your programme also suffers, in its worst moments, from the curse of speaking down not just to children, but the entire audience. In your scripts in particular, the assumption seems to be that if the episode does not involve sexual innuendo, a clunky CGI monster or a sonic screwdriver, nobody's going to have the attention span to follow it.
"Ewh, duuude, did you see that wicked-sick Who last night?! He unlocked a door with a glowing vibrator!"
Bollocks.
There are good stories, as I've said. So far in this series, there have been several. The Shakespeare Code, despite occasionally assuming an unsettlingly minimal amount of literary knowledge in the audience, was very enjoyable. Paul Cornell's two-parter, Human Nature and The Family of Blood, on the other hand, was truly fantastic. It was full of compelling pathos, excellent character writing and genuinely impressive use of a sci-fi programme. While not perhaps invoking fear, exactly, it was nonetheless exciting, with its eponymous Family of villains being resolutely creepy, and its sequence of revelations compellingly surprising. The biggest surprise, however, is that it wasn't written by Steven Moffat. Blink, tonight's episode, was. And despite Cornell's achievement, it made his episodes seem almost lacking.
"Beaten?! In a week?!"
As I say, the two-parter was the best of the series at that point, and it really deserved to hold onto its crown for a little longer, but even so, Blink's ascendancy wasn't an immense surprise. Moffat has proved himself the ideal all-around Who writer (Whriter?). With this episode, Moffat has tackled the crucial task of writing a good Doctor Who villain hands-down. In previous series, he mastered the historical Who epic (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter, first series) and then delivered a delightfully off-the-wall 'fun' episode which still managed to be packed to the seams with ideas, and well and truly broke my heart (The Girl in the Fireplace, second series). Steven Moffat is unquestionably the best writer working on this series, as he proved in tonight's seat-edging, teeth-clenching, nail-biting episode. Why on Earth does he only get two episodes of a series, at best?
It's not as though his talent is debatable. His episodes do what the other writers' episodes do; except the plots are better, the characters develop more believably, and the funny lines are funnier. He's on a perpetual roll, it seems, whether he's writing entirely new material, or working from a previously published short story from years ago (as in the case of Blink). His plots are so intricate and plausible that the viewer's mind is working out causal significances long after the episode is over. His stuff does what all truly exceptional genre fiction does - achieves a sense of real literary maturity and even profundity just by being really, really good. He even first wrote Captain Jack, back when Jack was an exuberant spacefaring con-man rather than a brooding, Cardiff-locked twonk.
So why the hell isn't he writing the entire series?
"I don't get it either!"
Okay, perhaps a bit of a tall order. But why isn't he lead writer? Is it just because you want to do it? Come on, Russell. You've had your go, and you did alright. Well, not bad, anyway. Why not even script editor? It's not as though Helen Raynor (writer of pansy-Dalek-'em-up Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks) is doing an irreplaceably phenomenal job, is it? Don't get me wrong, at times, you're a very good writer, but you could really, really benefit from somebody else editing you. You might have got the public's attention, but Moffat gets you your BAFTAs and your respect. Reward him. What, is Jekyll occupying his time so utterly that he can't take on the dream job of being head writer on Who? No? So what's your excuse?
Come on, Russ. You've found an excellent Doctor and, at last, an excellent assistant. Make the most of it.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Kindred
----
'Beat' Nick did, in fact, enjoy tonight's episode of Doctor Who.
Your work in resurrecting Doctor Who as a bankable TV franchise has been invaluable (your work in inventing Torchwood considerably less so, but still). Some excellent things have been done with that programme - some wonderfully moving, intellectually stimulating and compelling stories have been told in that wonderful 45 minutes that you wrested from the evil, encroaching hands of reality television. None of them by you, though.
Well, okay, that's too cruel. You've entertained me, certainly. Never above a certain level, but you've got a good sense of a silly, fun monster plot. However, man cannot live on fascist rhino-people alone. That's a scientific fact whichever way you look at it. The fact of the matter is that however fortunate ratings-wise your Who has been, it could be much better. Not just in specific episode cases, but in terms of overall tone. Too much time is spent on making the Doctor a hip, fanciable fellow and making the assistant fall overtly in love with them. Too much effort is expended making the show accessible to the poor wretches who aren't looking for science fiction in Doctor Who, and instead happened to turn on at the wrong time for Eastenders.
Of course, one doesn't want Doctor Who to be Star Trek. That would be rubbish. Doctor Who works because of its humanity. It's all about seeing the wonderful world of the Doctor through the eyes of the assistant, and about the emotional realities of the horrors, tragedies and wonders of travelling in space and time. So where do farting aliens fit into that remit?
"Hey guys! Heh heh, guys, check it out!" BRRRAATTT.It's the emotions evoked in the viewers that matter, and much of the time, none are evoked at all. The plots that supposedly guide the overall arc of the series have been, thus far, totally tedious. Your programme also suffers, in its worst moments, from the curse of speaking down not just to children, but the entire audience. In your scripts in particular, the assumption seems to be that if the episode does not involve sexual innuendo, a clunky CGI monster or a sonic screwdriver, nobody's going to have the attention span to follow it.
"Ewh, duuude, did you see that wicked-sick Who last night?! He unlocked a door with a glowing vibrator!"Bollocks.
There are good stories, as I've said. So far in this series, there have been several. The Shakespeare Code, despite occasionally assuming an unsettlingly minimal amount of literary knowledge in the audience, was very enjoyable. Paul Cornell's two-parter, Human Nature and The Family of Blood, on the other hand, was truly fantastic. It was full of compelling pathos, excellent character writing and genuinely impressive use of a sci-fi programme. While not perhaps invoking fear, exactly, it was nonetheless exciting, with its eponymous Family of villains being resolutely creepy, and its sequence of revelations compellingly surprising. The biggest surprise, however, is that it wasn't written by Steven Moffat. Blink, tonight's episode, was. And despite Cornell's achievement, it made his episodes seem almost lacking.
"Beaten?! In a week?!"As I say, the two-parter was the best of the series at that point, and it really deserved to hold onto its crown for a little longer, but even so, Blink's ascendancy wasn't an immense surprise. Moffat has proved himself the ideal all-around Who writer (Whriter?). With this episode, Moffat has tackled the crucial task of writing a good Doctor Who villain hands-down. In previous series, he mastered the historical Who epic (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter, first series) and then delivered a delightfully off-the-wall 'fun' episode which still managed to be packed to the seams with ideas, and well and truly broke my heart (The Girl in the Fireplace, second series). Steven Moffat is unquestionably the best writer working on this series, as he proved in tonight's seat-edging, teeth-clenching, nail-biting episode. Why on Earth does he only get two episodes of a series, at best?
It's not as though his talent is debatable. His episodes do what the other writers' episodes do; except the plots are better, the characters develop more believably, and the funny lines are funnier. He's on a perpetual roll, it seems, whether he's writing entirely new material, or working from a previously published short story from years ago (as in the case of Blink). His plots are so intricate and plausible that the viewer's mind is working out causal significances long after the episode is over. His stuff does what all truly exceptional genre fiction does - achieves a sense of real literary maturity and even profundity just by being really, really good. He even first wrote Captain Jack, back when Jack was an exuberant spacefaring con-man rather than a brooding, Cardiff-locked twonk.
So why the hell isn't he writing the entire series?
"I don't get it either!"Okay, perhaps a bit of a tall order. But why isn't he lead writer? Is it just because you want to do it? Come on, Russell. You've had your go, and you did alright. Well, not bad, anyway. Why not even script editor? It's not as though Helen Raynor (writer of pansy-Dalek-'em-up Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks) is doing an irreplaceably phenomenal job, is it? Don't get me wrong, at times, you're a very good writer, but you could really, really benefit from somebody else editing you. You might have got the public's attention, but Moffat gets you your BAFTAs and your respect. Reward him. What, is Jekyll occupying his time so utterly that he can't take on the dream job of being head writer on Who? No? So what's your excuse?
Come on, Russ. You've found an excellent Doctor and, at last, an excellent assistant. Make the most of it.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Kindred
----
'Beat' Nick did, in fact, enjoy tonight's episode of Doctor Who.
1 comments:
As I said to you on Saturday, I don't think Blink was Moffat's best episode, although it was very good, and I'd probably rate it as the third best of the current series. Third best after the two-parter of the previous weeks, which was absolutely fantastic.
I think Blink suffered from having such a small cast - it was small enough to give them all some depth in the short time we had to get to know them, but it meant that when the real peril began with only Sally and Laurence left, we knew both of them were going to survive. It robbed it of a lot of tension it could have had if there were a few more characters with equal prominence who were there to be killed, ramping up the tension just as Alien did, as you wouldn't be sure who'd survive.
'Course, that's impossible in 42 minutes. It was still an excellently scripted and shot episode, and I didn't think "How silly" at any point. Along with Human Nature and The Family of Blood, Blink is one of only 3 episodes this series to be so for me.
And yes, Steven Moffat as head writer hell yes oh yes.
Post a Comment