A quick scan of the list of new series episodes confirms that Steven Moffat has written some of the best ones. (So far — part two, “Forest of the Dead,” isn’t on here until next week.) I hope he writes more — I vastly prefer his emphasis on gothic eeriness and the personal lives of the main characters to the heavy-handed moralizing and Doctor-as-Godlike-being jazz too many of the other writers indulge in. (Russell T. Davies, the current executive producer, is one of the worst offenders in the latter category. This is a person whose idea of subtlety is to put a song by some group called “The Scissor Sisters” on the soundtrack, and I’ll bet you somewhere in his closet is an “I hate Muggles” t-shirt. The fact that he’s written the last four episodes of this season already have me cringing in horrified anticipation. On the other hand, he did write “New Earth,” “Smith and Jones,” and “Gridlock,” which are three of my favorites.) Anyway, Moffat takes over as executive producer for the next season so maybe we won’t get as much of that “Guns are bad, mm-kay? But sonic screwdrivers that make things explode are A-okay…” business. We’ll see.
I’ll write more later. I will say that it’s rather cruel to create my dream planet (one giant library), and make it be haunted by flesh-eating shadows. It’s a good thing I’m not a kid watching this show now — I used to go to the library and run to the spooky, ill-lit stacks in the back at least once a week. Sometimes I wonder if “creative” people really think through the implications of their offerings. Oh wait — no I don’t.
11 Responses to “Doctor Who – “Silence In the Library” – snippets”
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June 20th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
The flesh-eating shadows weren’t half as creepy as the “ghosting” thing.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I found that sad rather than creepy. But then I used to be a goth, so…
June 20th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Smith and Jones? No shit.
The ones with Pete Duel or the ones with Roger Davis?
June 21st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Huh?
June 21st, 2008 at 11:10 am
Now there’s a cultural rift for ya – I’m pretty she doesn’t mean the pop tv Western from the 70’s, Skubie!
June 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Oh. Bummer. I really liked that show, too.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I mean, it’d make a terrific crossover episode.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Oh Gawd, I can’t stop laughing, just the idea is SO funny!
June 21st, 2008 at 8:50 pm
(Scratches head.) This must be one I missed while my sister was hogging the tv watching Love Boat. My sister, yeah.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I realize I’ll probably get a week in the stocks on bread and water for this, but…
I sure hope this is the end of that current side kick of his. She’s unappealing in every way to me.
I don’t mean her age or her looks. I mean her snotty arrogant attitude and her juvenile behavior.
The closer for me was, iIrc, the first eppi when she made her appearance in this season (or was it last season?). Where she’s storming out of the house and jumping into her mother’s car and driving off, while her mom is standing in the doorway yelling that she needs the car to get to work.
What a welfare douche. Living with mom and dad is no great sin… sometimes. But when living with mom and dad when you’re at age 40ish and behaving like a spoiled 16 yo is, always.
June 28th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I actually like her — especially in the first episode she was in (the Christmas episode from the previous season, with the giant spider), in an odd sort of way. I guess it’s because I’ve known women like that — unfocused, forty-ish, stuck living at their parents because of bad life decisions, desperate to marry the first likely bum that came along. Miami, where I lived until I was 36 years old, is full of women like that. I left because I was becoming one of them. (The only reason I didn’t live with my parents is because they were both dead.) In the first episode of this season she reminded me so much of this, even up to the yearning for a handsome man who offered a (sexless — by this time we were all tired of the whole love rigmarole) getaway. I tell you, up until the past two episodes (where we meet the Doc’s future girlfriend) I was afraid this was going to be the season where the Doctor goes gay, because cute men hanging around with fortyish women they don’t have sex with is such an indicator.
Anyway, I’m unusual in that I don’t mind Donna’s “abrasive” qualities. If you want a Doctor companion who could blast paint from the walls every time she opens her mouth, rent out one of the episodes featuring Peter Davison as the 5th doctor and his companion Tegan. Tegan was this Australian stewardess who somehow ended up on the Tardis, and good Lord what an irritating woman. Whiny, moaning about wanting to go home (which was always London, never Sydney, due to budget constraints, I guess), constantly complaining about losing her job — yep, when I’m traveling through time and space with a hunky nearly-immortal alien the one thing on my mind is going to be my sweet underpaid waitress-in-the-skies-of-one-planet career. Grant you, the actress who played her was a bit of mid-80s eye candy, but still… And then let’s not even get into Adric, the teen math genius. Let’s just not.
Anyway, back to Donna… I think, though, that the way they decided to tone her character down actually made her worse. They seem to have decided to make her the Doctor’s “conscience,” as if he didn’t have a big enough one of his own. Also, the writers keep giving her insights which even a higher-intellected human wouldn’t have. And then there are the squirts of “author consciousness” that the writers keep using her to inject into the show — whenever she cracks on the Doctor about his death-dealing ways (um, sunshine, sometimes giant man-eating spiders need killing), or the unnecessary-to-the-plot remark in Unicorn and the Wasp about the poor footman not being able to reveal he and one of the dead guys were lovers making the 1920s “the Dark Ages.” Yeah, we don’t care, get back to the monsters. I will say, though, that one refreshing change they wrote in for this character is her lack of jealousy towards his other companions. I got so tired of Rose’s and Martha’s insecurities about the other people in the Doctor’s life — I mean for God’s sake, he’s 900 years old, at some point he had to have met other people.
But this will make you happy: apparently Catherine Tate only wanted to sign on for one year, which means at some point (I don’t know if it will be in the season finale or in some future episode of next season which will consist only of three two-part episodes due to David Tennant doing Hamlet all this year) they will get rid of her.