What's Wrong (and right) with Doctor Who

When it was announced that Capaldi was playing the Doctor at the ripe old age of 55 people were going crazy because they thought that the role should be played by someone that was in their 20’s or 30’s. Someone with crazy hair, and someone with a lot of energy. Basically someone like David Tennant or Matt Smith. I loved it when people went all crazy saying that they weren’t going to watch the show because the Doctor was an old guy. Good, if you’re the sort of person who watches a show based on someones aged then bugger off. Doctor Who has survived without you and will survive without you again.

This is the problem when something becomes mega popular, it attracts the sort of fickle riff-raff that can sink a show. These are the sort of fans that will go onto forums and start bitching about an episode saying but not attacking Capaldi directly but instead Steven Moffatt.

Considering the show is about a 2000 year old Timelord that travels through time and space, its amusing that people get het up about a 55 year old playing the Doctor.

I think that Steven Moffat has been a positive influence on Doctor Who. The problem that I have had with the Russell T Davies era of the show is that visually it didn’t really feel like Doctor Who. It didn’t have the seriousness that I wanted and whilst watching the Moffat era, I have felt like this is the Doctor Who that the show should have been producing from the very beginning.

Occasionally though, Steven Moffat has gone off road a bit and there have been a few mistakes that he has made that whilst not terrible are slightly frustrating. Here are somethings that has driven me mad since Moffat took over the show in 2010.

1)      Too Much Clara
If there has been one recurring theme in the first five episodes of the series is that Clara has featured too much in the story with the Doctor taking on a supporting role. Sometimes I think that too much of something isn’t always a good think and they would be good to row back on the Clara stuff.

2)      Story Arcs

Ok so this is a fault that RTD should take responsibility and it’s something that occurs in pretty much every TV drama but I wish Doctor Who would just go back to have weekly stories that didn’t have a story arc to it. I am currently watching an episode of Doctor Who a day and at the moment I am watching the Key to Time story and if you watched just one story from this series then there are things that don’t make sense and you have to watch the entire series to make sense of it. People who don’t watch Doctor Who should be able to watch an episode and not need to know much about whats going on.

3)      Too complicated

Again this is a critiscm that could be laid at RTD’s door but I think sometimes Moffat stories are too complex. With the RTD era, I found the whole Bad Wolf story to be a bit of a mystery (nine years on I still don’t get it). With Moffat it seems like he enjoys winding people up with a story that makes them think. If I want to have to think about what I see on screen then I will watch QI. I want to watch Doctor Who to see a bloke in a Police Box going to alien worlds and fighting the bad guys.

4)      Companions having a destiny

When a companion joined the show, they didn’t have a destiny or a mystery that the Doctor needed to solve. They were just a girl or guy and was in the search of an adventure. Nowadays the companion’s future seems to be entwined with the Doctor’s and this means that the stories are going to be built around them. Sarah Jane didn’t become one of the most popular companions because she had a destiny or a back story that the Doctor would be intrigued with, she was just a normal woman and that’s why the show was fun during the classic era.

To show that I am not one of the Moffat haters, I am going to come up with reasons why Moffat is better than RTD as Head Writer.

1)      More grown up tone

The show did have a bright and shiny feel to the RTD era even though it got less bright and shiny towards the end of the Tennant era but when Steven Moffat took over, the one thing that I immediately noticed was that it seemed more grown up and I liked this very much. For the first time since the show returned in 2005, I was able to enjoy the show and it felt more serious like other dramas on TV.

2)      Weeping Angels

Ok so this was introduced during the RTD era but it was Steven Moffat’s story and he bought them back in style during Matt Smith’s first series. One of the best things of the new era has been the creation of the Weeping Angels and on a side note, some of the aliens created during the Moffat era have been better than farting aliens that squeeze themselves into human skins.

3)      50^th Anniversary and dealing with the lack of Christopher Eccleston

Like most fans (even just of the new series stuff), we were hoping that Christopher Eccleston would return to play the role he played for just 13 episodes in 2005. Sadly Eccleston’s refusal to do this simple task meant that Steven Moffat had to think on his feet and came up with an alternative that I think actually works better than if Eccelston had returned. John Hurt is a superior actor to Eccleston and whilst Eccleston is a solid actor, he doesn’t have the back catalogue that Hurt does and whilst the introduction of the War Doctor does complicate things in the number of Doctor it doesn’t change that the 50^th Anniversary special didn’t fall apart without Eccleston’s involvement.

4)      No silly romance between the Doctor and the companion

Right now I know that Matt Smith’s Doctor married River Song (not technically a companion) but he never had a romance like the one that Rose had with Eccelston and Tennant’s Doctors. Amy might have had feelings for the Doctor and vice versa but they didn’t become overbearing like Rose’s. Clara might also have feelings but they are sort of hidden in the background. Moffat realised that people were watching Doctor Who for the drama first and not for the romance. He also realised that it helped the show but that it needed to play second fiddle to the main stuff.

The think about this show is that there are going to be people who want to just enjoy the show for what it is. There are also people who just love to knock the show and these people are what is wrong with the show. There is nothing wrong with saying you don’t like an episode or a series or even that you don’t like the state the show is in. But sadly these people are drowned out by those that probably haven’t seen much of the classic series and yet think that the new series is better.