(This ended up longer than intended--my apologies. But obviously this issue drags up a lot of related stuff and seems to be a continual sticking point between different groups of DW fans. I find it a very interesting division myself, and have been avoiding a lot of the reaction posts and such out of a desire not to get into wank.) Anyway, you asked:
Out of interest – what are the more pro-Moffat-DW-than-I people saying about it?
Well, about the first thing I wrote in reaction to it was "It's like he read the fic! <3"
I found it to be an enormously self-aware, self-referential little confection of meta-ness (in most everything it did, including the skirt stuff). Because what fan hasn't noticed the short skirt/glass floor issue? Or the related Amy floating in outer space where the Doctor can see straight up her nightie issue? And it seems like everybody and their mother has commented on it. And then half of those people went on to write fic that touched on it in some way. Now either Moff can go on politely pretending like this would never happen, or he can make a joke about it himself.
And I actually found Moff's handling of it to be a lot more tasteful than most of what I've seen from fans. A guy had a moment of distraction because he caught a glimpse up his wife's skirt. That's half-sweet. And the Doctor's immediate reaction was to get on Rory's case about it, not Amy's.
I'll give you that the skirt/floor joke together with the driving joke and the two Amy's flirting with each other all in less than ten minutes is probably pushing the bounds a bit. And, no, I don't think it's really the best thing Moff's ever written. But take each component separately, and I do find everything that happened to be very much in character. And within the broader context of the season as a whole, the full scope of who these characters are, and the way their relationships have been developed, I don't find any of it to be particularly disempowering or demeaning.
So at any rate, I'll say that I (and as far as I've seen, most of the pro-Moff camp) took it as a bit of in-joking between Moff and the fans. It's not the first time Moff's taken the sexual subtext of the show and addressed it head-on (most especially in that second "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" scene). I rather appreciate that he's willing to bring this stuff up to light and make the Doctor address it and maybe shake people up a bit over it. I find it a far more honest way of dealing with sexuality than to have all the characters shuffle their feet around bashfully and pretend like these things don't go through people's heads.
(Not coincidentally, none of what I said above would be worth a damn if I didn't think that in the fundamentals of equality and empowerment in relationships, Moff gets it absolutely right in a way I've rarely seen anywhere else. The very way the Doctor/River relationship is structured and set up makes it, I think, an extremely poetic, concretely-realized, scifi reflection of how strong relationships should work, theoretically. I wrote once here about them: "A marriage composed entirely of “yes”: two equals, unbound by any recognizable force of society or social expectation or dependency, returning freely to each other again and again and again through simple, affirming choice." I find any niggles I might have over short skirts to be extremely inconsequential in comparison to an ability to imagine that sort of fundamental balance and equality and mutual support and choice in relationships.)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-03-22 05:15 pm (UTC)Out of interest – what are the more pro-Moffat-DW-than-I people saying about it?
Well, about the first thing I wrote in reaction to it was "It's like he read the fic! <3"
I found it to be an enormously self-aware, self-referential little confection of meta-ness (in most everything it did, including the skirt stuff). Because what fan hasn't noticed the short skirt/glass floor issue? Or the related Amy floating in outer space where the Doctor can see straight up her nightie issue? And it seems like everybody and their mother has commented on it. And then half of those people went on to write fic that touched on it in some way. Now either Moff can go on politely pretending like this would never happen, or he can make a joke about it himself.
And I actually found Moff's handling of it to be a lot more tasteful than most of what I've seen from fans. A guy had a moment of distraction because he caught a glimpse up his wife's skirt. That's half-sweet. And the Doctor's immediate reaction was to get on Rory's case about it, not Amy's.
I'll give you that the skirt/floor joke together with the driving joke and the two Amy's flirting with each other all in less than ten minutes is probably pushing the bounds a bit. And, no, I don't think it's really the best thing Moff's ever written. But take each component separately, and I do find everything that happened to be very much in character. And within the broader context of the season as a whole, the full scope of who these characters are, and the way their relationships have been developed, I don't find any of it to be particularly disempowering or demeaning.
So at any rate, I'll say that I (and as far as I've seen, most of the pro-Moff camp) took it as a bit of in-joking between Moff and the fans. It's not the first time Moff's taken the sexual subtext of the show and addressed it head-on (most especially in that second "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" scene). I rather appreciate that he's willing to bring this stuff up to light and make the Doctor address it and maybe shake people up a bit over it. I find it a far more honest way of dealing with sexuality than to have all the characters shuffle their feet around bashfully and pretend like these things don't go through people's heads.
(Not coincidentally, none of what I said above would be worth a damn if I didn't think that in the fundamentals of equality and empowerment in relationships, Moff gets it absolutely right in a way I've rarely seen anywhere else. The very way the Doctor/River relationship is structured and set up makes it, I think, an extremely poetic, concretely-realized, scifi reflection of how strong relationships should work, theoretically. I wrote once here about them: "A marriage composed entirely of “yes”: two equals, unbound by any recognizable force of society or social expectation or dependency, returning freely to each other again and again and again through simple, affirming choice." I find any niggles I might have over short skirts to be extremely inconsequential in comparison to an ability to imagine that sort of fundamental balance and equality and mutual support and choice in relationships.)