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jjporIs it just me being a curmudgeon, or is it a bit early to be crowning Jamie Mathieson showrunner-in-waiting just because he wrote two good scripts in a row? Are people that eager to be rid of Moffat? (And before you scoff at my naivety, I do glance at Tumblr from time to time nowadays and know that yes, yes quite a lot of them are).
[trollishness]Anyway, isn't that Gatiss's job to refuse, given his close links to Der Moff?[/trollishness]
It also seems that Mathieson may have been tapped up by France (yes, the entire country).
So yeah, don't really want to rain on anybody's squee, but while I really enjoyed Flatline - like, really enjoyed it rather a lot - for me it didn't scream "instant classic elbowing its way to the front of my top ten list". Same, really, for the mummy story last week. Both really good stories, don't get me wrong, but even confining it only to NuWho stories, no Blink or The Doctor's Wife from my point of view. Again, from my point of view, because I am very aware by now that everybody's favourite Who story is somebody else's most hated, and vice versa. And it could well change on subsequent viewings. The first time I saw The Unicorn and the Wasp I was sort of going "oh, what a mildly amusing way of passing 45 minutes", whereas these days I increasingly regard it as some sort of grievously unsung City of Death of NuWho. I'm funny like that.
I very much liked the Sapphire & Steel vibe I got from the living graffiti and people reduced to 2D diagrams (which was only appropriate considering the good supporting role given to Christopher Fairbank, eldritch tambourine man from the Beyond "Johnny Jack" in the final assignment of said series - the supporting cast this week, btw, were uniformly excellent, especially the actor playing "Rigsy", and especially in that train scene). Of course, Sapphire & Steel would simply have had the victims disappearing off-camera rather than sinking into rugs or snatched by shadowy giant hands (loved the shot where the hand first appeared in the distance while the characters in the front of the shot did their best to distract the viewers from noticing it...until it was too late!), mainly for reasons of budget but also because it was the kind of show that did things like that. It probably wouldn't even have been explained what the 2D antagonists were or what they were up to. But that's just Sapphire & Steel. Doctor Who is, of course, Doctor Who and should ever remain so. Plus, those creepy-crawly almost stop-motion 2-and-a-half-dimensional zombie-things were dead cool.
Very interesting relationship stuff between the Doctor and Clara (and Danny) too, especially that exchange at the end of the story. I might pick up on all that stuff when Series 8 is at an end, but they're really doing good work on that aspect. If it feels a little bit samey to the stuff with Eleven and Amy/Rory in the first half of Series 7, I think that was the first draft - this time they're doing it right without annoying me. Provided they stick the landing in the series finale two-parter and don't repeat the horrific (for the wrong reasons) The Angels Take Manhattan, that is. Although one thing I will say for Moffat; whatever Tumblr thinks, he does learn from his (rarer than some people would have you believe) mistakes.
In any case, to return to my original point, I don't really understand the ecstatic reaction these past two episodes seem to be getting from some corners of fandom, like they represent some new dawn in the fortunes of the show or something like that. As said, I really liked both of them. I thought they were better than the two episodes that came before them, the somewhat underwhelming but thought-provoking Kill the Moon and the frankly rather confused The Caretaker (and it pains me to say that as a fully paid up admirer of Gareth Roberts and all of his other works). Best stories since Series 5 or whatever I've seen some people saying, though...? I don't know about that.
Mind you, it's a point that extends to the whole of Series 8 so far, which I have held off talking about on my LJ up until now not because I'm not enjoying it (I am, very much indeed) but partly out of consciously trying to chill out a bit about fandom and people being wrong on the internets, and also because my thoughts on the really interesting aspects of it (the fact that the programme seems to be aiming itself at a slightly different audience now, or perhaps the same audience a couple of years older, or the aforementioned relationship stuff and, linked to that, the characterisation of Twelve) are ones I'd like more time to go over in my head before I risk pontificating on them. I'm really liking Series 8; it's had a couple of dodgier stories (probably predominantly the two I single out in the previous paragraph), but overall the standard is high and consistent. Most of the really vehement criticisms I see, of which some are definitely valid and some are definitely not, are usually born out of real life socio-political concerns, personal preference, or sheer fanw*nkery rather than saying anything about the quality week to week of plotting/dialogue/acting/directing/design/etc (although for what it's worth, I agree wholeheartedly that the tin-eared abortion subtext in the moon-egg episode was unfortunate at the very least, even if I think the subsequent furore perhaps highlights a cultural difference between the UK and some other English-speaking audiences, and also that while colour-blind casting is something every series trying to represent real life in the present day should aspire to, casting directors should give more thought as to whether putting a particular actor in a particular role carries the risk of conveying unfortunate, and I would certainly hope unintentional, implications to the audience).
Meanwhile, however, Peter Capaldi is absolutely killing it every week as Twelve, as you would expect of an actor of his calibre, making excellent writing sparkle just that bit more and making functional writing look better than it is (you know, the way Troughton used to) and so is Jenna Coleman. With more focus on Clara as a character rather than a plot device, Coleman is equalling and bettering the excellent work she did as the not-really-Claras in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen rather than the slightly neglected Clara of the second half of Series 7.
The thing is, though, if you'd asked me to assess Series 7, certainly the first half of it, or Series 6, I probably would have said much the same things about those stories and about Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill. As I said when I was reccing on Calufrax a couple of weeks ago, I don't really buy the narrative that I've seen in some quarters that "it was time for a change", that there was something fundamentally wrong with the second half of the Eleven era that could only be solved by moving on to the next Doctor. I think overall Series 8 so far is more consistently good than Series 7, but I don't really think the difference is as great as some people would have you believe. Matt Smith wanted to leave for career reasons, as far as I can gather, and fair enough, the boy done good while he was on the show; I wish him nothing but the best. Doctor Who has that sort of change built into its premise and can easily weather it. The idea, though, that there was some sort of crisis or drop-off in quality and that the show has now been saved and if we could just get rid of that no-good Moffat the good times would really be back again...nah, I don't really see it.
I mean, Moffat did at least one thing right. He hired Jamie Mathieson. ;)
[trollishness]Anyway, isn't that Gatiss's job to refuse, given his close links to Der Moff?[/trollishness]
It also seems that Mathieson may have been tapped up by France (yes, the entire country).
So yeah, don't really want to rain on anybody's squee, but while I really enjoyed Flatline - like, really enjoyed it rather a lot - for me it didn't scream "instant classic elbowing its way to the front of my top ten list". Same, really, for the mummy story last week. Both really good stories, don't get me wrong, but even confining it only to NuWho stories, no Blink or The Doctor's Wife from my point of view. Again, from my point of view, because I am very aware by now that everybody's favourite Who story is somebody else's most hated, and vice versa. And it could well change on subsequent viewings. The first time I saw The Unicorn and the Wasp I was sort of going "oh, what a mildly amusing way of passing 45 minutes", whereas these days I increasingly regard it as some sort of grievously unsung City of Death of NuWho. I'm funny like that.
I very much liked the Sapphire & Steel vibe I got from the living graffiti and people reduced to 2D diagrams (which was only appropriate considering the good supporting role given to Christopher Fairbank, eldritch tambourine man from the Beyond "Johnny Jack" in the final assignment of said series - the supporting cast this week, btw, were uniformly excellent, especially the actor playing "Rigsy", and especially in that train scene). Of course, Sapphire & Steel would simply have had the victims disappearing off-camera rather than sinking into rugs or snatched by shadowy giant hands (loved the shot where the hand first appeared in the distance while the characters in the front of the shot did their best to distract the viewers from noticing it...until it was too late!), mainly for reasons of budget but also because it was the kind of show that did things like that. It probably wouldn't even have been explained what the 2D antagonists were or what they were up to. But that's just Sapphire & Steel. Doctor Who is, of course, Doctor Who and should ever remain so. Plus, those creepy-crawly almost stop-motion 2-and-a-half-dimensional zombie-things were dead cool.
Very interesting relationship stuff between the Doctor and Clara (and Danny) too, especially that exchange at the end of the story. I might pick up on all that stuff when Series 8 is at an end, but they're really doing good work on that aspect. If it feels a little bit samey to the stuff with Eleven and Amy/Rory in the first half of Series 7, I think that was the first draft - this time they're doing it right without annoying me. Provided they stick the landing in the series finale two-parter and don't repeat the horrific (for the wrong reasons) The Angels Take Manhattan, that is. Although one thing I will say for Moffat; whatever Tumblr thinks, he does learn from his (rarer than some people would have you believe) mistakes.
In any case, to return to my original point, I don't really understand the ecstatic reaction these past two episodes seem to be getting from some corners of fandom, like they represent some new dawn in the fortunes of the show or something like that. As said, I really liked both of them. I thought they were better than the two episodes that came before them, the somewhat underwhelming but thought-provoking Kill the Moon and the frankly rather confused The Caretaker (and it pains me to say that as a fully paid up admirer of Gareth Roberts and all of his other works). Best stories since Series 5 or whatever I've seen some people saying, though...? I don't know about that.
Mind you, it's a point that extends to the whole of Series 8 so far, which I have held off talking about on my LJ up until now not because I'm not enjoying it (I am, very much indeed) but partly out of consciously trying to chill out a bit about fandom and people being wrong on the internets, and also because my thoughts on the really interesting aspects of it (the fact that the programme seems to be aiming itself at a slightly different audience now, or perhaps the same audience a couple of years older, or the aforementioned relationship stuff and, linked to that, the characterisation of Twelve) are ones I'd like more time to go over in my head before I risk pontificating on them. I'm really liking Series 8; it's had a couple of dodgier stories (probably predominantly the two I single out in the previous paragraph), but overall the standard is high and consistent. Most of the really vehement criticisms I see, of which some are definitely valid and some are definitely not, are usually born out of real life socio-political concerns, personal preference, or sheer fanw*nkery rather than saying anything about the quality week to week of plotting/dialogue/acting/directing/design/etc (although for what it's worth, I agree wholeheartedly that the tin-eared abortion subtext in the moon-egg episode was unfortunate at the very least, even if I think the subsequent furore perhaps highlights a cultural difference between the UK and some other English-speaking audiences, and also that while colour-blind casting is something every series trying to represent real life in the present day should aspire to, casting directors should give more thought as to whether putting a particular actor in a particular role carries the risk of conveying unfortunate, and I would certainly hope unintentional, implications to the audience).
Meanwhile, however, Peter Capaldi is absolutely killing it every week as Twelve, as you would expect of an actor of his calibre, making excellent writing sparkle just that bit more and making functional writing look better than it is (you know, the way Troughton used to) and so is Jenna Coleman. With more focus on Clara as a character rather than a plot device, Coleman is equalling and bettering the excellent work she did as the not-really-Claras in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen rather than the slightly neglected Clara of the second half of Series 7.
The thing is, though, if you'd asked me to assess Series 7, certainly the first half of it, or Series 6, I probably would have said much the same things about those stories and about Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill. As I said when I was reccing on Calufrax a couple of weeks ago, I don't really buy the narrative that I've seen in some quarters that "it was time for a change", that there was something fundamentally wrong with the second half of the Eleven era that could only be solved by moving on to the next Doctor. I think overall Series 8 so far is more consistently good than Series 7, but I don't really think the difference is as great as some people would have you believe. Matt Smith wanted to leave for career reasons, as far as I can gather, and fair enough, the boy done good while he was on the show; I wish him nothing but the best. Doctor Who has that sort of change built into its premise and can easily weather it. The idea, though, that there was some sort of crisis or drop-off in quality and that the show has now been saved and if we could just get rid of that no-good Moffat the good times would really be back again...nah, I don't really see it.
I mean, Moffat did at least one thing right. He hired Jamie Mathieson. ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-10-20 09:54 pm (UTC)I am finding Season 8 more of a roller coaster than you, but for me it has more to do with how badly I reacted to "The Caretaker" and "Kill the moon" (and how oddly I felt the writing had been done in "Listen," which was much better than the aforementioned two) and less with any true thought I've taken about the season as a whole. I need to sit down and really think about it. One of the problems is that I seem to forget the episodes almost as soon as they're over, with the exceptions of the ones that bothered me. While this could be fobbed off on my advancing age and senility, I worry that my not being able to remember individual episodes the way I've been able to do with previous seasons, is indicative of something that I, personally, feel is missing from the mix.
Now I've gone on too much I agree that Capaldi is an excellent Doctor, but I hope he can recover some of the joy he used to feel as Eleven (and boy, did I ever mash Doylist and Watsonian points of view in that one sentence!).
ETA: I forgot to say (how could I forget this?) how much I appreciated you pointing out points of congruence with S&S. I hadn't thought about that, but once you talked about it, I couldn't not see it. I love S&S, thanks to
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 06:44 pm (UTC)I saw all of the strong reactions those two episodes inspired in people, and I can definitely see where people are coming from and what some of them didn't like about those stories. On the other hand, there was one high-profile blogger claiming that he thought Kill the Moon was the best Doctor Who story of all time or something equally unlikely. And then there was the other perhaps not quite as high-profile blogger who gave it a positive review at first and then, when he saw the mood in a lot of fandom, recanted like a craven little wretch and apologised for his initial response...which would seem to me to defeat the object of anybody ever giving an honest personal opinion about anything of this nature.
I didn't personally have any strong reaction one way or the other to those stories, but again I think that's a personal response. I know what you mean about not really having much memory of some stories after you've watched them, but I think that's something I've noticed about some stories since the beginning of the new series in 2005; it doesn't seem to be becoming more frequent for me.
I really need to re-watch "Listen" because I thought it was good, but again I don't why some people seemed to think it was an instant classic. I'm not even entirely sure I understood what was going on in the story once I'd seen the final "reveal".
I think Twelve is more like Eleven in some ways than we might think at first glance, as well as obviously being very different in other ways. That might be one of the things I comment on when the series is over in November.
Sapphire & Steel is great. I too was turned onto it by lost_spook, even if I'd had a slight nodding acquaintance with it beforehand, and have had no regrets at all. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 12:11 am (UTC)Heh, I saw someone online who thought the ep two weeks ago was the Best Thing Ever, but hated the following ep with a passion. Which seems to be his usual reaction to nearly every episode, tbh. Fans and fandom and Who-ness = unfathomable. *g*
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 06:13 pm (UTC)You are right, though - there ain't no accounting for fandom.