Making sense of Matt Smith's 'Doctor Who' era
March 13, 2015 1:46 PM Subscribe
Pop culture website Cultbox has taken a stab at making sense of Matt Smith's tenure on "Doctor Who" by placing the events of the Eleventh Doctor's story in chronological order.
Smith was great. The scripts he got to work with were....frequently lacking, let's say, but he had a perfect manic-old-man-in-a-young-body take on the Doctor.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:07 PM on March 13, 2015 [28 favorites]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:07 PM on March 13, 2015 [28 favorites]
Man, all of that made sense to me as I was watching each episode, but trying to contemplate all of it at once just made my head explode. I'm generally a Moffat defender, but .... yeah, Eleven's plot arc is kind of a convoluted mess. Which is kind of a shame, since Matt brought a lot to the role of the Doctor.
posted by webmutant at 2:08 PM on March 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by webmutant at 2:08 PM on March 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
Oh god it sounds so much more implausible and stupid when its put this way. Can Matt Smith get a redo? Maybe a team-up with Colin Baker for a "We're sorry for the shitty storylines" tour? Because Matt Smith was perhaps my favorite Doctor and he deserved so much better than the convoluted mess he got for about two and a half seasons.
posted by charred husk at 2:09 PM on March 13, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by charred husk at 2:09 PM on March 13, 2015 [10 favorites]
Three out of four. Metafilter has spoken: Matt Smith was great but the scripts sucked.
posted by charred husk at 2:12 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by charred husk at 2:12 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
I thought the Smith-era scripts held together better than most of the rest of the NuWho series'. At least I felt there was some semblance of everything relating to everything else, which was not something I always got from the previous series'.
In the end, it's Dr.Who. This isn't Ibsen. "Timey-Wimey" pretty much says it all about most NuWho scripts.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:22 PM on March 13, 2015 [7 favorites]
In the end, it's Dr.Who. This isn't Ibsen. "Timey-Wimey" pretty much says it all about most NuWho scripts.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:22 PM on March 13, 2015 [7 favorites]
The part of Smith I loved was in his first season, the scenes of him that didn't make any sense which were later revealed to be him traveling backwards along his own timeline from the season finale. That was great.
The rest got too convoluted.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:43 PM on March 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
The rest got too convoluted.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:43 PM on March 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
I think that was the one big reveal of the Smith era that really paid off. His second season especially was rife with running plots that either fizzled or failed spectacularly when it came time to actually put the pieces together.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:47 PM on March 13, 2015
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:47 PM on March 13, 2015
The scripts were good and bad at different times, but Smith is my favorite NuWho Doctor, so I'm mostly down with the consensus so far. But I'm also going to cast a vote for timey-wimey is as good as you're going to get on trying to draw a straight line through the series' plot arc. There's a reason why this show has a Discontinuity Guide.
posted by immlass at 2:48 PM on March 13, 2015
posted by immlass at 2:48 PM on March 13, 2015
For those who'd like a similar guide to River Song's timeline, here's an infographic (which, looked at from one angle, resembles the world's worst subway commute). Matching hers up to the Eleventh Doctor's is even more complicated. But yeah, although Smith's first series had a satisfying finale for both the fans of clever plotting and those of emotional characterization, Moffat kept attempt to outdo himself in the subsequent ones, which led only to ostentatiously convoluted time travel conspiracies, absurdly overheated romances, and incredibly poor family planning.
What could really shake up the new Who for the better would be either to fully embrace the American "showrunner" model and hire a proper writers room or to return to the BBC model of a full-time script editor vetting, reviewing, and, when necessary, rewriting the scripts from diverse sources. While classic Who went through long stretches of excellence, awfulness, and passability, the new programme fluctuates wildly in quality from episode to episode. Compare Tom Baker's stinker-free run from Seasons 12 to 14 (and almost 15, except for "The Invasion of Time" at the end) to Smith's first (where "The Eleventh Hour" is followed by the bog-awful "The Beast Below" and "Victory of the Daleks", then climbs back up to the atmospheric "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone", etc., etc.). And Capaldi's first series turned out to resemble Smith's more than Baker's in terms of the elastically varying quality of the stories.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:21 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
What could really shake up the new Who for the better would be either to fully embrace the American "showrunner" model and hire a proper writers room or to return to the BBC model of a full-time script editor vetting, reviewing, and, when necessary, rewriting the scripts from diverse sources. While classic Who went through long stretches of excellence, awfulness, and passability, the new programme fluctuates wildly in quality from episode to episode. Compare Tom Baker's stinker-free run from Seasons 12 to 14 (and almost 15, except for "The Invasion of Time" at the end) to Smith's first (where "The Eleventh Hour" is followed by the bog-awful "The Beast Below" and "Victory of the Daleks", then climbs back up to the atmospheric "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone", etc., etc.). And Capaldi's first series turned out to resemble Smith's more than Baker's in terms of the elastically varying quality of the stories.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:21 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
I just assumed the show stopped after David Tennant.
No, the show stopped after Russell T. Davies. I can't even watch Doctor Who anymore. I managed to coast through a lot of the Smith tenure just on accumulated goodwill even though I couldn't make a lick of sense of any of it. But that's gone now and the show's just an unwatchable mess.
I feel really bad for Capaldi because it's not his fault. But Moffatt has just run it into the ground.
Not any of the actors' fault really. I just saw the adaptation of PD James's Jane Austen pastiche, Death Comes to Pemberley, in which Jenna Coleman proved herself the definitive Lydia Bennett. It's a role that's really hard to make something more than just a silly, fluttery, twit, but she really makes Lydia interesting. I was very impressed.
(On the other hand, I also saw Billie Piper horribly miscast as Fanny in a pretty bad adaptation of Mansfield Park too. I guess you casts your Doctor Who companion in Jane Austen and you takes your chances...)
posted by Naberius at 3:21 PM on March 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
No, the show stopped after Russell T. Davies. I can't even watch Doctor Who anymore. I managed to coast through a lot of the Smith tenure just on accumulated goodwill even though I couldn't make a lick of sense of any of it. But that's gone now and the show's just an unwatchable mess.
I feel really bad for Capaldi because it's not his fault. But Moffatt has just run it into the ground.
Not any of the actors' fault really. I just saw the adaptation of PD James's Jane Austen pastiche, Death Comes to Pemberley, in which Jenna Coleman proved herself the definitive Lydia Bennett. It's a role that's really hard to make something more than just a silly, fluttery, twit, but she really makes Lydia interesting. I was very impressed.
(On the other hand, I also saw Billie Piper horribly miscast as Fanny in a pretty bad adaptation of Mansfield Park too. I guess you casts your Doctor Who companion in Jane Austen and you takes your chances...)
posted by Naberius at 3:21 PM on March 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
I thought that Moffat's first few seasons were pretty great.
*Ducks*
posted by schmod at 3:23 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
*Ducks*
posted by schmod at 3:23 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
This isn't so much chronological order as causal order.
I've watched all the new episodes; I've found that most don't hold up well to a rewatch, and that goes for RTD and Moffatt eras alike. My general impression is that Doctor Who is more than the sum of its parts: any given episode is kind of rubbish, but the Doctor manages to transcend it. There's definitely some synergy at play.
posted by mcwetboy at 3:24 PM on March 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
I've watched all the new episodes; I've found that most don't hold up well to a rewatch, and that goes for RTD and Moffatt eras alike. My general impression is that Doctor Who is more than the sum of its parts: any given episode is kind of rubbish, but the Doctor manages to transcend it. There's definitely some synergy at play.
posted by mcwetboy at 3:24 PM on March 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
- a bunch of seemingly important stuff happens, leading to a seemingly awful crescendo
- it's rendered utterly unimportant because some waif says 'please' at the last second
- the end
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:34 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
- it's rendered utterly unimportant because some waif says 'please' at the last second
- the end
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:34 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Up to a point, I could accept the changing series. "Timey-wimey" was the construction of the coffin; the Riversong reveal was the nail in the coffin for me, and I haven't seen any 'NuWho' episodes since then. I have read some more recent episode summaries and I don't like what Moffat is doing with the series.
Troughton, Pertwee, Baker, Davison - these are the doctors of whom memories are made!
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 3:42 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Troughton, Pertwee, Baker, Davison - these are the doctors of whom memories are made!
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 3:42 PM on March 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
I also have no idea what you guys are talking about. Smith/Moffat were superb. There's a reason why the show exploded in popularity even greater than it ever had before, and it wasn't the extraordinary size of the hate-watching Tennant/Davies fanbase.
To say anything else puts you in the camp of people that thought the early 70s were the height of filmmaking, before Spielberg came along and fucked it all up by making, you know, blockbusters.
Scoreboard don't lie.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:55 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
To say anything else puts you in the camp of people that thought the early 70s were the height of filmmaking, before Spielberg came along and fucked it all up by making, you know, blockbusters.
Scoreboard don't lie.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:55 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
I thought that Moffat's first few seasons were pretty great.
I thought his first series was great -- a welcome break from Uncle Rusty's Magic Jesus Elf. Then...it kind of went to pants.
Did Capaldi's first season get any better? I love him as the Doctor, he is the best* Doctor, but I can't. I just cannot with Moffat anymore.
*excepting Paul McGann's radio episodes. His Doctor is my Doctor.
posted by kalimac at 5:42 PM on March 13, 2015 [5 favorites]
I thought his first series was great -- a welcome break from Uncle Rusty's Magic Jesus Elf. Then...it kind of went to pants.
Did Capaldi's first season get any better? I love him as the Doctor, he is the best* Doctor, but I can't. I just cannot with Moffat anymore.
*excepting Paul McGann's radio episodes. His Doctor is my Doctor.
posted by kalimac at 5:42 PM on March 13, 2015 [5 favorites]
There's a reason why the show exploded in popularity even greater than it ever had before
I dunno about worldwide, but in the UK at least there's been a moderate decline in viewers year-on-year since Moffat took over. And I definitely don't think his approach has been to make the show more accessible to casual viewers.
Not that either of these things are necessarily related to quality, but I don't think the idea that Moffat came along and Spielberged up Doctor Who stands up to much scrutiny.
posted by sobarel at 5:48 PM on March 13, 2015
I dunno about worldwide, but in the UK at least there's been a moderate decline in viewers year-on-year since Moffat took over. And I definitely don't think his approach has been to make the show more accessible to casual viewers.
Not that either of these things are necessarily related to quality, but I don't think the idea that Moffat came along and Spielberged up Doctor Who stands up to much scrutiny.
posted by sobarel at 5:48 PM on March 13, 2015
My main beef with the Moffat years as of late is that the plots of many of the shows are *really* good... on paper. In execution, they are frenetic and rushed. It's like he's trying to cram 5 episodes worth of plot and character development into 45 minutes each week, and there's only 10-14 weeks' worth of episodes a year these days. A slightly slower pace would do wonders for the quality of the show, in all honesty.
posted by surazal at 5:54 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by surazal at 5:54 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
I've loved Doctor Who since I was a little bitty babby and chanced across an episode on PBS circa about 1980, and I think Matt Smith may be my favorite. And his first year was even pretty well-written! But after that, it was really just him bringing it to a show that wasn't at his level.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:55 PM on March 13, 2015
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:55 PM on March 13, 2015
(On the other hand, I also saw Billie Piper horribly miscast as Fanny in a pretty bad adaptation of Mansfield Park too. I guess you casts your Doctor Who companion in Jane Austen and you takes your chances...)
Naberius, you should consider watching Penny Dreadful, Billie Piper is cast just perfectly. And I say that as someone who didn't really like her as a companion. I cannot wait for Season 2.
posted by Fizz at 6:18 PM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Naberius, you should consider watching Penny Dreadful, Billie Piper is cast just perfectly. And I say that as someone who didn't really like her as a companion. I cannot wait for Season 2.
posted by Fizz at 6:18 PM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
For some reason I read all that in Patton Oswalt's voice.
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 7:26 PM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 7:26 PM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh wow. Putting it in order like that actually gives a good story reason as to why River song and Mother Superious act like they're the exact same person. When Kovarian created River's conditioning, she only had one example of someone the Doctor was attracted to: Superious.
No way do I think this was intentional on Moffat's part, but man that stumbles backwards into itself so nicely.
posted by greenland at 8:30 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
No way do I think this was intentional on Moffat's part, but man that stumbles backwards into itself so nicely.
posted by greenland at 8:30 PM on March 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
"Naberius, you should consider watching Penny Dreadful, Billie Piper is cast just perfectly.""If you can ignore her attempt at a Belfast accent..."
And if you can ignore the fact that even consumptive prostitutes were able to move their face above their top lip…
posted by Pinback at 8:50 PM on March 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
where "The Eleventh Hour" is followed by the bog-awful "The Beast Below"
I actually liked "The Beast Below". It was a little clunky in places, but it still seemed to fit with what I had expected of Moffat up that point: it was a scary but not gratuitous story based around an interesting concept which concluded in a satisfyingly unexpected way. It was by no means the "everybody lives!" from "The Doctor Dances", but you can't be that good all the time.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:56 AM on March 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
I actually liked "The Beast Below". It was a little clunky in places, but it still seemed to fit with what I had expected of Moffat up that point: it was a scary but not gratuitous story based around an interesting concept which concluded in a satisfyingly unexpected way. It was by no means the "everybody lives!" from "The Doctor Dances", but you can't be that good all the time.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:56 AM on March 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Of the new Doctors I've seen (I only saw one Capaldi episode but gave up on the series having been a life-long fan after that) Matt Smith was the one that for me, had the most potential but in summary, understanding the Matt Smith era is simply a great potential doctor, utterly awful stories. The show could actually be shown on a major American television network and be successful, that's how bad it is.
posted by juiceCake at 6:33 AM on March 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by juiceCake at 6:33 AM on March 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Jesus, this is so much bullshit. Incomprehensibility != Complexity != Quality Storytelling. All of this is a goddamn mess that makes no sense, and sill fails to explain the junk about the Silence (now revealed as being a space travelling, time-travelling race) need humanity to invent the astronaut suit, or whether or not Rory was ever an Auton, or how the hell a message to "all of space and time" makes any sense, or why the Doctor himself is so incurious about these events, or HOW the TARDIS was blown up, or why two regular Earth people fucking in a TARDIS makes a Time Lord, how the Doctor can never visit Amy and Rory again (not that I want him to) because NYC of the 1930s is all futzed-up time-wise and it's not like they can GO SOMEWHERE ELSE, or any of the other piles of damp nonsense we endured for three years. Ever played action figures with a five-year-old? You'll get the same amount of "complex, nuanced, chronologically-altered" storytelling, of the same quality.
Moffat clearly had no one to tell him "no", to make sure this shit made any kind of sense. He threw out this big loud stupid junk as he went along, then used the half-assed "timey-wimey" excuse to "fix" it, not knowing or caring if the solution actually made any sense. And meanwhile people loved him for it because he had such squeeable, animated-GIFable moments and made things ever-so-"complex" to help his audience feel terribly smart for riding along with it all.
After the absolutely dire Name of the Doctor I attempted to give up, despite being a lifelong Doctor Who fan and liking the reboot up until season 5. This wasn't a show I was interested in watching; it was clearly Not Intended For Me. I waited on the Capaldi run to see if it was worth my time or just more of the same. After I was assured it was much better, I watched it and felt it was okay, not great, with some good episodes, but the two part ending was another Moffattian pile of horseshit. I am now at the point where I would happily give up "The Doctor Dances" and "Blink" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" if it meant this guy had never been associated with the show at all.
For those who love all this shit, I'm glad for it, because at least someone is getting something out of it. But it's not me. I'm done.
posted by Legomancer at 11:14 AM on March 14, 2015 [7 favorites]
Moffat clearly had no one to tell him "no", to make sure this shit made any kind of sense. He threw out this big loud stupid junk as he went along, then used the half-assed "timey-wimey" excuse to "fix" it, not knowing or caring if the solution actually made any sense. And meanwhile people loved him for it because he had such squeeable, animated-GIFable moments and made things ever-so-"complex" to help his audience feel terribly smart for riding along with it all.
After the absolutely dire Name of the Doctor I attempted to give up, despite being a lifelong Doctor Who fan and liking the reboot up until season 5. This wasn't a show I was interested in watching; it was clearly Not Intended For Me. I waited on the Capaldi run to see if it was worth my time or just more of the same. After I was assured it was much better, I watched it and felt it was okay, not great, with some good episodes, but the two part ending was another Moffattian pile of horseshit. I am now at the point where I would happily give up "The Doctor Dances" and "Blink" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" if it meant this guy had never been associated with the show at all.
For those who love all this shit, I'm glad for it, because at least someone is getting something out of it. But it's not me. I'm done.
posted by Legomancer at 11:14 AM on March 14, 2015 [7 favorites]
I made the mistake of clicking through on your "Moffatian pile of horseshit" link because I had finally managed to forget how much I hated that second episode. The show would be so much better if Moffat weren't convinced that he's so goddam clever.
posted by johnofjack at 11:56 AM on March 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by johnofjack at 11:56 AM on March 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
I actually liked "The Beast Below". It was a little clunky in places, but it still seemed to fit with what I had expected of Moffat up that point: it was a scary but not gratuitous story based around an interesting concept which concluded in a satisfyingly unexpected way.
Moffat would have to disagree with you as that episode is easily his least favourite—he calls it, with unusual understatement, "a bit of a mess". The story is something of a space whale Aesop fable like Star Trek IV, with its theme hammered home several times by the end. As far as fitting into the canon, it's unrecognisable as a companion piece to "The Ark in Space" and "The Sontaran Experiment". Nevertheless, it manages to be pretty popular among new Who fans, not unlike the way someone's least favourite Doctor is always someone else's "My Doctor".
Moffat clearly had no one to tell him "no", to make sure this shit made any kind of sense.
That would normally be the job of a script editor or the function of a writers' room. Until the programme gets one or the other, we can expect quality control from episode to episode to be about as reliable as the TARDIS's navigation, lurching from the likes of the excellently creepy "Flatline" to the ludicrous "In the Forest of the Night", etc., etc.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:05 PM on March 14, 2015
Moffat would have to disagree with you as that episode is easily his least favourite—he calls it, with unusual understatement, "a bit of a mess". The story is something of a space whale Aesop fable like Star Trek IV, with its theme hammered home several times by the end. As far as fitting into the canon, it's unrecognisable as a companion piece to "The Ark in Space" and "The Sontaran Experiment". Nevertheless, it manages to be pretty popular among new Who fans, not unlike the way someone's least favourite Doctor is always someone else's "My Doctor".
Moffat clearly had no one to tell him "no", to make sure this shit made any kind of sense.
That would normally be the job of a script editor or the function of a writers' room. Until the programme gets one or the other, we can expect quality control from episode to episode to be about as reliable as the TARDIS's navigation, lurching from the likes of the excellently creepy "Flatline" to the ludicrous "In the Forest of the Night", etc., etc.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:05 PM on March 14, 2015
Frankly, years ago, I gave up on Dr. Who ever making any sense.
A science fiction time travel show that has lasted this long starts to grind down under it's own weight after a while. (cf Leland Chee of the Star Wars canon). Also, time travel immediately predisposes me to accept a certain amount of shenanigans. Lastly, the age and pedigree of Dr. Who never really set me up to expect a terrible amount of ultra-quality. British sciene fiction of history has been, at best, a rather mixed lot...
posted by Samizdata at 6:38 PM on March 14, 2015
A science fiction time travel show that has lasted this long starts to grind down under it's own weight after a while. (cf Leland Chee of the Star Wars canon). Also, time travel immediately predisposes me to accept a certain amount of shenanigans. Lastly, the age and pedigree of Dr. Who never really set me up to expect a terrible amount of ultra-quality. British sciene fiction of history has been, at best, a rather mixed lot...
posted by Samizdata at 6:38 PM on March 14, 2015
Is this the thread where I say how much I liked Matt Smith's Doctor and how much I have hated Peter Capaldi's? There have been multiple times this past series where I have actively rooted for Clara to shiv him just so he would regenerate into someone - anyone else.
posted by fremen at 8:29 PM on March 14, 2015
posted by fremen at 8:29 PM on March 14, 2015
Or how the hell a message to "all of space and time" makes any sense
This one shits me to utter fucking tears.
Everybody else in the universe throughout time: 'Hear that? DOCTOR WHO? What's that mean, then?'
Time Lords in the universe throughout time: 'What? We can't hear anything.'
Everybody else: 'Are you sure? Because it's from you. Shouldn't you be worried? Maybe something happens in the futu...'
Time Lords: 'We can't hear you because these large collars block our ears la la la.'
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:40 AM on March 17, 2015
This one shits me to utter fucking tears.
Everybody else in the universe throughout time: 'Hear that? DOCTOR WHO? What's that mean, then?'
Time Lords in the universe throughout time: 'What? We can't hear anything.'
Everybody else: 'Are you sure? Because it's from you. Shouldn't you be worried? Maybe something happens in the futu...'
Time Lords: 'We can't hear you because these large collars block our ears la la la.'
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:40 AM on March 17, 2015
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posted by Fizz at 2:01 PM on March 13, 2015 [8 favorites]