Doctor Who: For Those of You Too Lazy to Keep Up

I don't know if anyone has realized this yet or not, but I am a huge Doctor Who fan. Perhaps you can't tell from this blog, because the only real mention of anything Doctor Who related was the post about David Tennant. (But given that Tennant was the Doctor, I feel like that's a pretty big thing.) This past season has had a lot of interesting things happen, and by interesting things I mean confusing as hell plotlines in some episodes and complete irrelevancy in others.

With this new series (6, for those keeping track), split in two parts and given a stronger overarching plotline than any other season so far that stretches back to series 5, head writer Steven Moffat has attempted to make a clever plot that will keep the viewer guessing until the end and then make everyone think that he is the best and most clever writer ever. But in the mean time we've gotten nowhere near the plot and have figured out that Moffat does not actually have the same talent as previous head writer, Russel T. Davies, with regards to weaving in an overarching plot seamlessly with individual episodes (or with characters...or with not ending things with love as the solution...but I digress). So here's my recap of all the episodes of Series 6, right up until the penultimate episode. The last episode will probably determine how I feel about this series' episodes and set-up. It could ruin Moffat or make him into a good writer. So far here's what's gone down (SPOILERS):

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
(written by Steven Moffat)
Two part opener in which we're given a lot of questions and no questions answered from the previous season except this one: who are the Silence? And we find out that the Silence is a scary as hell alien that you forget seeing when you're not looking at it. There's a fantastic scene where Amy, deciding to mark her skin with tally marks to remember each time she's seen a silence, is in a dark abandoned house walking around. She's walking and then there's a flash of lightning and suddenly she's covered in marks, having seen the Silence dozens of times but not remembering any of it. That is the one really good part of the episode. Apparently the Silence have been influencing development on earth in huge ways, such as the Moon Landing, just so they could get astronaut suit technology out of it. And why? Because there's a person in an astronaut suit who's going to shoot the Doctor dead at the episode's beginning. We're given no other explanation for the Silence or the suit, there's some fun with Nixon, and also fun with filming scenes in Utah. Amy keeps seeing a lady with a metal eyepatch in the walls. River Song, who could be the Doctor's wife but also is probably way more important than that, has something to do with all this. And even though the Doctor is the only Time Lord around there's another Time Lord girl running about. She regenerates. End of story. If that seems like a lot of new things it is. Moffat has a lot of explaining to do. Particularly about the part where THE DOCTOR DIES. Because I'm sorry, but I don't want the show to end with Matt Smith, good as he may be. Or with Moffat. So then we move on to...

The Curse of the Black Spot
(written by Stephen Thompson)
Now why the hell would you put a pointless episode about pirates after a season opener that brings up so many questions? Especially when said episode does not answer any questions, the soul purpose is to see a sexy siren in action and Amy in a pirate costume waving a sword around, and the episode is supposed to be "fun" but is mediocre at best and is even more infuriating because of it's placement right after the most overarching plot heavy episodes of all time. Episodes like this should not exist when super heavy overarching plot action is at hand. But this one does. And I kind of hate it for existing. Oh...and Rory dies.

The Doctor's Wife
(written by Neil Gaiman)
That said, I should hate this episode too, since it doesn't answer any questions and perhaps is the most detached out of all the episodes of Series 6 from Moffat's Grand Master Scheme. And yet it is imaginative and well written and the characters are given more character development and emotion than in any of Moffat's episodes thus far. The TARDIS is personified, and we get to see the Doctor interact with the one being that has always been there for him, taking him not where he wanted to go but where he needed to. Amy and Rory also have some heartwarming moments in which through some excellent storytelling we see how much they love each other. The ending between the Doctor and his TARDIS is both heartbreaking, when he loses her as a person, and spirit-lifting, when he realizes the TARDIS will always be there for him. So for an episode that doesn't do anything for the overarching plot, well, I don't mind it being here.

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People
(written by Matthew Graham)
These episodes are interesting concepts. that copies of yourself called 'the flesh' and made of melty things can gain independence and want to live their own lives...or the lives of the people they're supposed to be. Rory is a badass. And Amy is not. Other than that the episodes, which are not as well written as they could have been, are really boring and long in places. The only really interesting bit is at the end, where after three long episodes of practically nothing Moffat finally decides to take pity on the poor audience and reveals that Amy is in fact one of these melty things, the eyepatch lady she keeps seeing is her midwife and, oh yeah, she's pregnant by the way and giving birth AS WE SPEAK and now the Doctor and Rory have to find her. So yes, Amy hasn't been real since the first two episodes. If you're wondering what is going on, so am I.

A Good Man Goes to War
(written by Steven Moffat)
"A good man" also refers to the person River said back in series 4 she killed. But many people think "a good man" can refer to the Doctor or Rory, both of whom go to war in this episode to get Amy and her child back. And both of who couldn't. Now this is where Doctor Who starts to get into "this will all be really crap writing if the resolution at the end is also crap" and it kind of veers into soap opera because the most ridiculous thing that could have happened, happens. Amy's baby is part Time Lord because it was conceived between her and Rory in the TARDIS and somehow the Doctor didn't know this, otherwise he would've warned all his companions to not have sex in the TARDIS lest they want their children to be a DIFFERENT SPECIES. Not only that, but, it gets better, Amy's baby is RIVER SONG. Who is part Time Lord (which, okay, we could have guessed that part.) Who's real name is Melody Pond but due to linguistic difficulties of other planets is translated to River Song. We still don't know why the Silence, who are behind all this, are doing what they're doing. Also, Amy's baby River/Melody/Time Person gets stolen right when they get it back. Or they were tricked. Either way Amy leaves babyless and Melody/River/Whoever is taken to be trained to kill the Doctor. Which leads to...

Let's Kill Hitler
(written by Steven Moffat)
This episode title gave me doubts. And it is doubtful. Hitler appears for 5 minutes and gets punched in the face by Rory before being locked in a closet. I could have used that for 45 minutes for a good laugh but instead we get 40 minutes of crap writing. Turns out that Amy and Rory had a best friend, who we've never heard of before this point despite having been in their hometown before and having had a series and a half gone by, who got them together and is actually River Song ensuring her parents become her parents. She was known as Mel back then and looked different, obviously, but regenerates to become the River we all know and are confused by. Who then tries to kill the Doctor because that's what she's been raised to do. The episode ends in some heartwarming idiotic resolution in which River, having poisoned the Doctor to death, saves him (because he already died in the first episode so he can't die again) by giving him all her lives so she can't regenerate again. Amy and Rory are appalled at their daughter, who is older than them. And looks it. It's weird.

Night Terrors
(written by Mark Gatiss)
I'll write this episode off as having nothing to do with River Song or anything important. There are creepy dolls, an alien kid who needs to know he's loved, and the Doctor saves the day.

The Girl Who Waited
(written by Tom MacRae)
Finally, finally after two and a half seasons we get some character-focused episodes for Amy and Rory, who are the most plot-deviced and least emotionally/at all developed companions in the new series so far. And now we see what Amy would be like if the Doctor and Rory couldn't save her--a bitter woman who hates the Doctor and who wants nothing more than to live, who is so hardened to reality that she wouldn't save her younger self because that would mean the her who wasn't saved would no longer exist, and she doesn't want to lose that memory or herself. It's heartbreaking and brilliant. Rory's love for Amy is shown so well, especially with lines like "I'm not upset that you got old. I'm upset that we didn't grow old together" (that's paraphrasing but it's really close). The Doctor shows a bit more alien harshness when he lets older Amy die after lying to her. Any actual overarching plot progression? Hell no! But like Neil Gaiman's episode this one is good enough for me not to care all that much.

The God Complex
(written by Toby Whithouse)
Also brilliant, in a depressing philosophical way. A monster that feeds off faith, requiring the Doctor to break Amy of her faith in him if he wants her to survive. We also find out that Rory has lost faith in anything, apparently. And that the Doctor fears something about a TARDIS. I liked that whole concept, especially Amy losing faith in the Doctor. But even more heartbreaking and also PLOT MOVING FORWARD is the Doctor saving Amy and Rory by leaving them back in England to live out their normal lives. Because traveling with him is dangerous. For about the one millionth time in the new series he's realized this, but this is the first time he's been the one to bring a companion home because of it.

Closing Time
(written by Gareth Roberts)
Without Amy and Rory the Doctor goes back to my least favorite temporary companion, Craig, who's two stories both seem to be solved by the power of love. Urgh. Lazy writing if I've ever seen it. And don't even get me started about the laziness of having this main story end and tacking onto the episode a three minute start of the next episode showing River Song being put in the astronaut suit so that she can be the astronaut person that killed the Doctor at the beginning of the series. It answers one question and jump starts the next episode, which I assume will answer many questions, but in such a sloppy way I'm not even too thrilled about it.


So in order for me to not write off Moffat as a head writer for Doctor Who, next week's episode, with the title "The Wedding of River Song" (the title is juicy enough to draw people in even if nothing happens, naturally) had better be extremely well written, clever, GOOD (with good character development) and wrap up all the questions and mysteries Moffat has been flaunting before his audience for two years. Otherwise...Moffat should leave and stick to writing Sherlock. Which he is clearly much better at.

Telling a Story in Three Different Ways

These past two weeks have involved a lot of work, and a good chunk of that work has involved learning how to tell stories. As someone who wants to be a writer I should be extremely happy for the opportunity to be learning three different modes of storytelling, but when those three different things are in the same week it can be kind of stressful. And writer's block doesn't help and always comes at the worst times.

This past week I've had to come up with two and a half different stories to tell in three different ways. One was a short story for my fiction writing class, one an episode of a television show my screenwriting class is the 'staff' of, and a short film that was more for experimenting with a camera than for story telling but at least had to be interesting.

All of these projects except the video are still in progress in some way, mostly through still being written, rewritten, or critiqued. And coming up with ideas is hard. Which is why the first draft of my story failed miserably, because I had no idea where to go with it.

But that is, as I've learned, the benefit of being in a class. Other people have ideas, and their ideas are usually better than mine, or at least they know what I meant to think of before I had the chance to think of it. Either way, the advice is like inspiration; it gives me an idea of how to write. So next week I'll have many new ideas to rewrite my short story and start writing my screenplay with.

Both of these things could end up complete failures. And because all the writing I do leads (or doesn't lead) to advancement there is a lot of pressure to do well. So hopefully...that doesn't happen.

Attribute any lack of coherency to a lack of sleep.

I forgot to mention that I also get to tell stories through photography because I'm on the school paper's photo desk. But...that was not nearly as hard so I'm not going into detail about it. In fact, it was awesome. That is all.

When All Attemps at Free Time Fail

School started not too long after my last blog post, and now I'm surrounded by stacks of books and papers and camera equipment. This is what class does to me. So I haven't quite had the time to review the rest of the plays like I wanted to, let alone read anything new. But hopefully in the next few weeks I end up with more free time to do more literary things.

I am in a literature and medicine class. Which should, in theory, lead to more literature and some interesting discoveries (on my part at least, because I'm not a doctor) about the medical world. I'm also in two creative writing classes. So there is still some literaryness in me yet! Despite all the work.

More to come. Maybe not Shakespeare, but more.