It's not just me, then...

[caz963]

I read something today which reminded me of a comment I'd made concerning the current series of DW.



It was in a comment I wrote to a post by chloris67 about The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People

DW was, in its first incarnation, a weekly "serial"; half an hour each week ending with a cliffhanger of some sort, but there are problems with trying to do something similar in the current format. The biggest of these is, IMO, sustaining the story throughout thirteen forty-five minute episodes where the brains behind it doesn't write every episode. I wrote a post about S5 wherein I posited that the way the main "cracks in the universe" arc stories were presented to us just didn't work - I mean, it was obvious that the ones [stories] in between were fillers; and the same thing is happening this series. Granted TDW was fabulous and I wouldn't have missed it for the world, but otherwise, we all know we're treading water until the next Moffat episode which will advance the series arc.

Today, I was reading the reviews of 6x05, 6x06 and 6x07 in the current issue of DWM, and I was interested to see that the reviewer (Graham Kibble-White) had reached a similar conclusion. At the end of his review of AGMGTW, he says:

I think I stumbled upon the curse of Doctor Who. This year, the show just hasn't quite felt like Doctor Who when it's been scripted by someone other than Steven [Moffat]... The series has a new voice now which is brilliant, but idiosyncratic.

Personally, I'm not sure DW has felt like DW when when SM has been writing it, but that's a different argument altogether.

But it's definitely one of the reasons why I think that S6 isn't really hanging together as a whole - so far. Steven Moffat IS a fabulous writer and he has a very individual voice - but perhaps that's not such a good thing when you can't write every episode of your show and when you want or need to write the "important" episodes yourself. And I'm not criticising him for that, because I can understand why it's the case; he knows what he wants to do and how he wants to do it and I'm sure, were I in his shoes, I'd do the same.

And I'm in no way saying that RTD doesn't have a very individual voice, because he does; it's just that the way he structured each series - around a THEME rather than an overarching PLOT - seemed to work better in the current format. I'm also not arguing here that those themes were always particularly well seeded, but they were there, principally in the background, which meant that it was easier for other writers to 'fit in'. All the stories felt like standalones which (sometimes) included references to the overall theme, whereas now Moffat's episodes are all linked together and the others stand outside that 'inner circle' and can never really belong.

Comments

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I think writer and show-runner are two fundmentally incompatible roles. It isn't only the volume of work, it's the fact that writers tend to want to impose a vision but everyone on the production side has to be flexible and figure out a way to keep the show on the road and protect the brand, given the resources available at any given time.

I get the feeling that SM is not a people person, that the qualities required to team build and motivate staff do not come naturally to him. The rumours of trouble behind the scenes have the ring of truth. One of the many things i learned from "Writers Tale" was that RTD was eternally grateful to the quiet but vital work of Julie G and Phil C - he trusted them completely and they knew how to nurse him through his many crises and take the day-to-day stuff off his shoulders so he could write.

It seems to me that regardless of his claims that DW is the job he always wanted, SM actually works much better on Sherlock. I'm speculating here but I wonder if that is because Mark Gatiss is one of the few people he has a level of trust in similar to RTD's in JG and PC?

[caz963.livejournal.com]

I've nothing to say really, other than that I agree with all of this. I confess I've not really heard the rumours of dissent in the ranks, although I remember there were rumblings when Piers Wenger announced his departure which didn't happen when Phil went to Corrie. I imagine the fact that RTD had worked with JG before must've helped, but the fact that they're still very much a working team out in LA shows that trust, I think. I can imagine Rusty could be a complete and utter creative diva at times and it seems to me that Julie has the knack of calming him down, but also of telling it like it is when necessary.