More Who Musings
Jun. 13th, 2010 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caz963I'd been planning to wait until after the finale to write a plot-related post, but what I'm going to say will probably have been Jossed by then, so I thought I might as well write and post it now.
While I think that things have definitely improved over the last couple of weeks and I'm looking forward to the finale, one of the things I've been saying in comments I've made here and there is that whereas with previous series, I'd be saying "oh, no, only two episodes to go!" at this point - in series 5, I've been anxious to get to the finale since about episode five, because I want to find out what the hell is going on. And that makes me a little bit sad. In one way, Moff and his team have done their job because they've hooked me in with the timey-wimey, crack-y plot, but on the other, I'm sad because I want to get to the end! - and I don't remember thinking like that before.
So being me, I've been trying to work out why; and I suppose it really boils down to things I've said before about depth of characterisation and character progression, both things I feel have been missing from this series. Of course it's subjective, and I know people who are utterly delighted with the direction things have taken - it's just that for me, there's still something missing. That's not to say that I'll be glad when the series is over - far from it! There's little enough decent telly produced in this country as it is, and Doctor WHo is well made and at its best - as shown by the last two episodes - can handle difficult ideas in a sensitive way and also celebrate the simple "ordinariness" of being human without descending to cheap jokes or cariacature.
But I've been thinking about something else this past week as well, prompted by other comments I've read, which is to do with the nature of the plot and the series-long story arc.
Even the most ardent of Rusty fans can't really argue that plots were a particularly strong point of his. Of course he could do it, but I think it's fair to say that his plots were more driven by where he wanted his characters to go rather than that he had his characters motivated by the demands of the plot - most of the time, anyway. Moffat has decided to do probably the one thing that RTD never did, and give us a series-long story arc. It's not an unfamiliar concept to a lot of shows, but it's not really been done in DW before. Classic Who was a series of separate stories that were split into (usually) 4 or 6 episodes, so they were more like weekly serials, although there was one series, The Key to Time in the Tom Baker era that had all the serials linked together by one overarching plot.
Thing is, I don't think it's quite worked here, because the plot device was made into A Very Big Thing very early on and it's had to be stretched out too much.
In S3, Rusty dropped in the odd reference to Mr Saxon - in The Runaway Bride, in The Lazarus Experiment (possibly others, but I've forgotten) - and then of course we had the fob watch in eps 8 and 9 which returned in ep 11 to set up the Master's return. That isn't a story arc as such, I know, but it worked well because it was all fairly innocuous, and only at the end of episode 11/start of episode 12 did everything finally fall into place, and even then, I didn't pick up on all the name dropping until I went back and rewatched. And it was a really great 'reveal'. But we're being hit over the head with the crack. And I wouldn't mind the lack of subtlety about it if it weren't for the fact that one week, it heralds impending disaster and then, the next week, never mind, let's go on holiday to Rio. At the end of F&S, the Doctor says that the fate of the universe hangs in the balance and that the most important thing is to get Amy sorted out. That was episode 5. But then he takes her and Rory off for a romantic weekend in Venice. Then they hang out for a bit and go to sleep a lot (!), and oh, the crack can wait while the Doctor takes them to Rio. Or not. And then, he's got time to spend being all extra nice to her because Rory's dead although she doesn't remember him. This week, he's tracking a time anomaly that is affecting the TARDIS (which I suppose could be significant). If it was so important to get Amy sorted - why wait for so long?
Yes, that is a rhetorical question.
I know it's because there are thirteen episodes in the series and you can't have every single one of them about the 'crack' plot because you'll use up all your plotty episodes in about three weeks. I know that the writers have been planting clues (and probably an enormous number of red herrings!) throughout each episode - but you can't put as much emphasis on the crack as has been placed on it and then put it on the back burner for a week or two when you feel like it.
There are some shows that have delivered multi-season arcs splendidly. I didn't watch Lost but I've heard that it managed to do it. Fringe is doing pretty well on that score, but the show that always springs to mind when I talk about story arcs is Babylon 5, which was probably the first show I ever got seriously fannish about. It had faults, and the final season was a bit of a mish-mash (not through the fault of the creative team though; they were pissed about by the networks) - but it delivered a five-year story splendidly and without too much head-smacking. And it did that by being subtle. Some of the plot points that were planted took a couple of years to play out, but I never felt frustrated by that - possibly because they were never had great big, fluourescent arrows pointing at them saying LOOK AT ME! I'M AN IMPORTANT PLOT DEVICE! and built up gradually.
So I was thinking that perhaps the DW crack-story might have worked better if the order of the two-parters (the Angels and the Silurians) had been reversed. Of course, some other elements would have to have been adjusted as well (like what happened to Rory), but it would have meant less of a gap between the Doctor realising that Amy needed to be sorted out and actually sorting her out! I also know that it would have meant Alex Kingston's guest spots would have been much closer together and I'm sure Moff wanted to have more time between them. But that way, we'd have had the crack in the first episode, and then we'd have thought no more about it until it suddenly appeared again in the last half of the season, which I think might have been a lot more effective than sticking it in here and there - on the back of the Star-Whale and in the wartime bunker, for example - just to remind us of it.
And we might also have had a bit more breathing space to get used to so much "newness" all at once. I've been going on about what I perceive to be a lack of character development this series - and which I still maintain is a fault with it, because while I've enjoyed the past couple of episodes, I'm still don't feel as though I know much about Amy and I'm still not fond of her (although she was better this week - possibly because she wasn't around so much!) and I'm only just starting to get a handle on Eleven. And we're (hah!) eleven episodes in. I know people who have stopped watching because they've found it difficult to "get into" the new series and characters, and while I'm sure there will be some that say "more fool them, they're missing the good stuff now", it's never a good thing when a show loses viewers. Not that the figures are bad, but still, if we want the show to be around for a while longer, it needs people to be watching and enjoying it.
I'm not a TV exec or a writer - which is probably just as well! And I'm not sitting here thumbing my nose and thinking I could do a better job, because I'm not and I couldn't. It's just the musings of a fan who's interested in what others have to say. So feel free to chip in.
While I think that things have definitely improved over the last couple of weeks and I'm looking forward to the finale, one of the things I've been saying in comments I've made here and there is that whereas with previous series, I'd be saying "oh, no, only two episodes to go!" at this point - in series 5, I've been anxious to get to the finale since about episode five, because I want to find out what the hell is going on. And that makes me a little bit sad. In one way, Moff and his team have done their job because they've hooked me in with the timey-wimey, crack-y plot, but on the other, I'm sad because I want to get to the end! - and I don't remember thinking like that before.
So being me, I've been trying to work out why; and I suppose it really boils down to things I've said before about depth of characterisation and character progression, both things I feel have been missing from this series. Of course it's subjective, and I know people who are utterly delighted with the direction things have taken - it's just that for me, there's still something missing. That's not to say that I'll be glad when the series is over - far from it! There's little enough decent telly produced in this country as it is, and Doctor WHo is well made and at its best - as shown by the last two episodes - can handle difficult ideas in a sensitive way and also celebrate the simple "ordinariness" of being human without descending to cheap jokes or cariacature.
But I've been thinking about something else this past week as well, prompted by other comments I've read, which is to do with the nature of the plot and the series-long story arc.
Even the most ardent of Rusty fans can't really argue that plots were a particularly strong point of his. Of course he could do it, but I think it's fair to say that his plots were more driven by where he wanted his characters to go rather than that he had his characters motivated by the demands of the plot - most of the time, anyway. Moffat has decided to do probably the one thing that RTD never did, and give us a series-long story arc. It's not an unfamiliar concept to a lot of shows, but it's not really been done in DW before. Classic Who was a series of separate stories that were split into (usually) 4 or 6 episodes, so they were more like weekly serials, although there was one series, The Key to Time in the Tom Baker era that had all the serials linked together by one overarching plot.
Thing is, I don't think it's quite worked here, because the plot device was made into A Very Big Thing very early on and it's had to be stretched out too much.
In S3, Rusty dropped in the odd reference to Mr Saxon - in The Runaway Bride, in The Lazarus Experiment (possibly others, but I've forgotten) - and then of course we had the fob watch in eps 8 and 9 which returned in ep 11 to set up the Master's return. That isn't a story arc as such, I know, but it worked well because it was all fairly innocuous, and only at the end of episode 11/start of episode 12 did everything finally fall into place, and even then, I didn't pick up on all the name dropping until I went back and rewatched. And it was a really great 'reveal'. But we're being hit over the head with the crack. And I wouldn't mind the lack of subtlety about it if it weren't for the fact that one week, it heralds impending disaster and then, the next week, never mind, let's go on holiday to Rio. At the end of F&S, the Doctor says that the fate of the universe hangs in the balance and that the most important thing is to get Amy sorted out. That was episode 5. But then he takes her and Rory off for a romantic weekend in Venice. Then they hang out for a bit and go to sleep a lot (!), and oh, the crack can wait while the Doctor takes them to Rio. Or not. And then, he's got time to spend being all extra nice to her because Rory's dead although she doesn't remember him. This week, he's tracking a time anomaly that is affecting the TARDIS (which I suppose could be significant). If it was so important to get Amy sorted - why wait for so long?
Yes, that is a rhetorical question.
I know it's because there are thirteen episodes in the series and you can't have every single one of them about the 'crack' plot because you'll use up all your plotty episodes in about three weeks. I know that the writers have been planting clues (and probably an enormous number of red herrings!) throughout each episode - but you can't put as much emphasis on the crack as has been placed on it and then put it on the back burner for a week or two when you feel like it.
There are some shows that have delivered multi-season arcs splendidly. I didn't watch Lost but I've heard that it managed to do it. Fringe is doing pretty well on that score, but the show that always springs to mind when I talk about story arcs is Babylon 5, which was probably the first show I ever got seriously fannish about. It had faults, and the final season was a bit of a mish-mash (not through the fault of the creative team though; they were pissed about by the networks) - but it delivered a five-year story splendidly and without too much head-smacking. And it did that by being subtle. Some of the plot points that were planted took a couple of years to play out, but I never felt frustrated by that - possibly because they were never had great big, fluourescent arrows pointing at them saying LOOK AT ME! I'M AN IMPORTANT PLOT DEVICE! and built up gradually.
So I was thinking that perhaps the DW crack-story might have worked better if the order of the two-parters (the Angels and the Silurians) had been reversed. Of course, some other elements would have to have been adjusted as well (like what happened to Rory), but it would have meant less of a gap between the Doctor realising that Amy needed to be sorted out and actually sorting her out! I also know that it would have meant Alex Kingston's guest spots would have been much closer together and I'm sure Moff wanted to have more time between them. But that way, we'd have had the crack in the first episode, and then we'd have thought no more about it until it suddenly appeared again in the last half of the season, which I think might have been a lot more effective than sticking it in here and there - on the back of the Star-Whale and in the wartime bunker, for example - just to remind us of it.
And we might also have had a bit more breathing space to get used to so much "newness" all at once. I've been going on about what I perceive to be a lack of character development this series - and which I still maintain is a fault with it, because while I've enjoyed the past couple of episodes, I'm still don't feel as though I know much about Amy and I'm still not fond of her (although she was better this week - possibly because she wasn't around so much!) and I'm only just starting to get a handle on Eleven. And we're (hah!) eleven episodes in. I know people who have stopped watching because they've found it difficult to "get into" the new series and characters, and while I'm sure there will be some that say "more fool them, they're missing the good stuff now", it's never a good thing when a show loses viewers. Not that the figures are bad, but still, if we want the show to be around for a while longer, it needs people to be watching and enjoying it.
I'm not a TV exec or a writer - which is probably just as well! And I'm not sitting here thumbing my nose and thinking I could do a better job, because I'm not and I couldn't. It's just the musings of a fan who's interested in what others have to say. So feel free to chip in.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 06:07 pm (UTC)Then again that's my opinion; you brits probably think different; and I would love to hear why.
Personally, I think the way the series-long arc has been managed is an improvement this time. Not that I have anything against the way Bad Wolf and Torchwood were prepared, but to have them more articulated in plots seems more organic.
What has been sort of worrying me is the number of things that have been left open so far. You have the crack in time, the silence that will fall, the disappearance of Rory, the engagement ring, River Song's return, River Song's murder of the best man she had ever known, the Daleks escaping, the Dream Lord reflection in the TARDIS console, maybe even Prisoner Zero... Even though some of those may be connected, that's a lot of stuff to tie up in the finale. I hope everything will turn out OK, but I wouldn't want to see them spending a two parter in tying up stuff rather than pushing forward a real story.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if they skipped the Daleks this time and saved them for the next series finale. That would make them special again, after having been overexposed in the previous series.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 07:20 pm (UTC)Hm. I suppose what I mean is that there's little in the way of major drama that appeals to ME. *g* There are a lot of police/detective shows, hospital dramas... which are generally well done, but not things I would purposely switch on my TV to watch. That said though, there's not a lot I do that for anyway. I also agree that the BBC and C4 generally produce high-quality programmes, it's just that it takes quite a lot to get me hooked on something these days. I loved Ashes to Ashes, but Luther which was shown recently, starring Idris Elba which was the latest major drama, was basically another police procedural. (And pretty violent from the reviews I read). I'm looking forward to Sherlock (by Moff and Gatiss) and will obviously be glued to whatever telly David Tennant does in the future!
But the majority of the evening schedules on the major channels (BBC, IT, C4 and 5) are taken up with soaps and reality shows of one type or another (some better than others, admittedly).
I like the idea of the story arc, but like I said, I think the crack was given too much importance early on. I think it would take an entire episode of Matt Smith talking to the camera to explain everything they've been feeding us this series, and I do think there will turn out to have been a lot of red herrings, because Moff clearly knows how the fans think and likes to mess with us!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 11:00 pm (UTC)Not true: RTD did have season-long arcs each year, as well as the (admittedly anvilicious) Lonely God character arc. The S1 and S2 arcs felt more-or-less slapped together, yes. I think RTD admitted that with the S1 arc. The S3 and S4 arcs were integrated into the plots of the episodes.
E.g. I think every episode in S3 except the Dalek 2-parter had an arc element. The first mention of Saxon was all the way back in "Love and Monsters" in S2. (Just as Torchwood popped up first in "Bad Wolf" in S1.) "Smith and Jones" had a couple spoken references and the campaign posters; "Gridlock" had the You Are Not Alone foreshadowing (which comes up again in the watch voices in HN/FoB), and the Doctor talking about Gallifrey. "The Lazarus Experiment" had the age-reversal trope. In "42" the Saxon people monitored Martha's calls to Francine. Even "The Shakespeare Code" discussed how words and stories and names had power.
TBH I think RTD's arcs were subtler and, at least in S3 and S4, more organic. At least they didn't shout "look at me!" the way the cracks are doing this season. *g* The S5 emphasis on memories and dreams is a far more effective thematic arc for me.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 11:50 pm (UTC)I suppose what I should have said was that we're being given a more OBVIOUS arc now (with the crack) - although of course it could all turn out to be a massive diversion from something else which has been subtly foreshadowed all series!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:47 am (UTC)Getting Amy to confess to Rory that she loved him I thought was the part of sorting her out. And she hasn't done that yet.