Post by burrunjor on Aug 10, 2024 13:56:29 GMT
This actually marks the end of my rewatch in general. I'm NOT watching the Capaldi era or the two parodies that came after. You think I'm going to sit through 3 years of "FAAAAM" and, "OH BAAAABES" you have another thing coming.
Overall the Matt Smith era holds up brilliantly for the most part. Better in actual fact than I remembered, though granted that might be because what came after was so f*cking terrible across the board. Still I found the Silence arc a lot better this time round. The resolution to it is a bit rushed, but it actually flows a lot better than you'd think over Matt's three years. I was expecting it to come over as just a complete "making it up as he goes along" but no it serves as quite a nice bookend for Matt, without taking over the bulk of his era. It's not like Trial or even the Key To Time where every story gets taken over by an arc to some extent. You can if you don't like the Silence just enjoy most episodes, and each series arc stands on its own with each season still having a different lead villain and a different focus. It also manages to incorporate and introduce a very wide variety of settings, characters, monsters and villains too.
In some ways the quality of writing went up from the RTD era. There's no denying in my opinion Moffat is just a better sci fi writer than RTD. He has a wider imagination, and has more of an interest in the genre, at times perhaps a bit too much, but I'd rather in a sci fi show a writer get lost in his imagination than soap opera.
Improvements? Greater variety of stories. Not anywhere near as many invasion earth stories, greater amount of exploring other worlds, the humour was also more subtle and fitting for the show. At times it went too far, like Matt slapping Clara on the bum, but in others I think it relied more on the natural eccentricity of the Doctor like the Williams era which is how you bring humour into DW. Other light eras like the early McCoy stories, or misfires like The Romans or the worst RTD era stories tried to make it funny by making the actual story and monster silly which I don't think is a good idea at all as it turns the show into a parody of itself. Plus Matt had better comic timing and a greater natural eccentricity than either Eccelston or Tennant. At times it just felt like he was improvising LOL rather than being overwritten and mannered. Compare Matt not being able to sit still in Vincent and the Doctor to Tennant pretending to be drunk for instance.
I also think this era was far more stunning visually. It's hard to describe the look of the Matt Smith era at times, it's almost like a combination of Ray Gun Gothic (a pretentious name for that classic 50s/60s sci fi look like the Hartnell era, Lost in Space, Star Trek TOS etc, when the inside of spaceships were cosey, technology of the future was giant and robots even if they were supposed to be scary were cute and chunky) and the Brothers Grimm like the planet in The Doctors Wife that is chalk full of old 50s style sci fi tech and creepy gothic ladies that look like witches from fairy tales, or the Pandorica or the Dalek Asylum or the Papal Mainframe. It's actually probably my favourite era of the show visually. The designs of certain planets and creatures like the Whisper Men also managed to at times be both beautiful and horrific.
Also no tedious soap opera baggage focusing on the companions families, or if there was it was worked into the adventure like Rory standing outside the box for Amy for 100000s of years. That's a romantic, schmoopy moment, but it's also a really cool fantastical idea that can make your imagination wander thinking about all he got up to in the 10000s of years he stood guard and how this world was different, unlike say RTD that will either have ridiculously thin sci fi ideas like the Meta Crisis Doctor to get to the romance, or just wallow in complete soap opera dirge to flesh out his companions.
Areas it fell short however? I didn't like River Song. To me she is the embodiment of the WORST traits of Moffat as a writer. She is nowhere near as strong as other supporting characters like Jack or the Brig. I don't hate her like Donna at her worst or Missy, but yeah she was annoying and episodes that revolved around her were always weak to awful like Let's Kill Hitler or Wedding of River Song. She was okay at best as a supporting character in episodes like the Weeping Angels two parter, but that's it. Also it must be said that Moffat is extremely weak as a writer in the following ways.
1/ He is mind numbingly pretentious in terms of dialogue. As I've said before there are so many times where it sounds like he is desperately trying to get an iconic "tears in the rain" type quote, without realiizing if you have every character talk that way it just becomes the writer trying to show off how clever they are with big phrases. Sometimes his dialogue can work well if it's natural like the 11th Doctor talking about life being like breath on a mirror. That's fine as it makes sense he'd talk like that when he is dying and it's quite poetic and thoughtful (and even made me think about my own mortality in a scary way for a second.) However other things like the Demons Run poem, River's barbarians speech to the Romans, or even phrases like Raggedy man drive me up the wall they are so overblown and unnatural.
2/ He can't write women and is too thirsty. It's hard for me to admit this as I used to sneer at the STFU Moffat crowd (does anyone remember them?) To be fair I do think some of their criticisms were still a bit too full on, like accusing Asylum of the Daleks of promoting killing mentally ill people (seriously) or even just calling him a misogynist. He obviously doesn't hate women, but he definitely tends to write them as his sassy dominatrix fantasy girls who at some point force themselves on the male heroes and almost every word out of their mouths has to be a flirtation or innuendo or reference to bondage of some kind, and he thinks that making them empowering is just having them insult men in stereotypical ways like boys and their toys or saying men are sex obsessed, he also tends to write the men around them as being jack the lads who are still henpecked, yet he also tends to make his female characters story arcs revolve entirely around getting off with the hero and he is very unoriginal with his female characters too. Amy's story is basically the same as Madame De Pompadour, whilst Clara's arc is in turn the same as Amy via the mystery the Doctor wants to solve, whilst River, Missy, Irene and Tasha are all the exact same character as each other, with the exact same arc. I remember when Time of the Doctor aired everybody thought that Tasha was supposed to be River and Alex Kingston was busy, so they just changed River's name to Tasha, but no she was never meant to be River. He really was that unoriginal.
3/ He is too obsessed with time paradoxes and ties himself up in knots.
The third of those is at its worst in the Matt Smith era, whilst the former two I'd say are at their worst in the Capaldi era, but they are still present in Matt's time too.
Still the greatest advantage this era has is ultimately Matt Smith. He is by far and away the best of the new series actors to play the part. He is arguably the best Doctor of them all in some ways. Like I said he is the only one who embodies the three overall styles for the Doctor across the franchise. He embodies the old Professorial, alien qualities of the classic ere Doctors in so many ways. (Even little things like his costume fit in more with those Doctors.) At the same time there is still a touch of the more romantic, conflicted, emotional Doctors from the revival era in him and finally he even captures the best aspect of the Cushing Doctor from the two movies, the characters affinity with children which honestly I don't think any other tv Doctor ever did. In some ways I think Matt was wasted as whilst he had a good solid era, he could have gone on for at least another three years. I'd so much rather Moff leave in 2013 than Matt. To me Matt Smith was as well cast as the Doctor as Kevin Conroy was as Batman.
Meanwhile other highlights and low points of the era.
Best companions: Whilst I loved Matt and Jenna's chemistry and even shipped them, at the end of the day the Ponds are the companions for Matt. All three just worked together so perfectly, (though I wasn't keen on that awkward love triangle between them, thankfully that died down quickly and was gone completely by Amy's Choice.)
Best supporting characters: The Paternoster Gang by far. Loved every episode with them in it and they complimented Matt so perfectly. To me they are the classic example of something that only DW can do, to take characters from so many different eras and genres together and it seem perfectly natural. I love the way they are like a family with Strax being the annoying son and Jenny and Vastra the parents and the Doctor the uncle that plays with the mad son and encourages him a bit too much at times haha.
Best new villains: The Silence. They had a wicked design, were a cool concept and again their arc holds together better than you think. I guess I'm still bugged by the big plot hole that them blowing up the TARDIS was enough to destroy every universe. It kind of makes them look incompetent that in trying to stop a war on a little planet, they destroyed all of reality. Also how is a type 40 TARDIS blowing up powerful enough to do that? Still good villains overall and a welcome addition to the series.
Best Classic era villain: I think probably The Great Intelligence. Hard to say really. I loved all the Dalek romps, Vastra and Strax were cool new twists on the Sontarans and Silurians, but overall as a villain the Intelligence had the best arc and Richard E Grant was fantastic.
Best episodes: In no particular order (apart from Vincent and the Doctor which is number 1.) Vincent and the Doctor, The Pandorica Opens, Amy's Choice, Vampires of Venice, The Angels Two Parter, 11th Hour, The Girl Who Waited, The God Complex, A Town Called Mercy, Asylum of the Daleks, Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John, Cold War, Rings of Akhatan, A Christmas Carol, The Doctors Wife (Neil Gaiman can piss off though.) The clone people two parter, The Day of the Doctor, The Name of the Doctor, The Crimson Horror,
Best writer: Surprisingly NOT Moffat. Toby Whithouse. All 3 of his scripts for Matt were brilliant. Furthermore I feel he gets the show and the character of the Doctor more than Moffat. He doesn't turn the Doctor into his own avatar, he writes him as the mysterious, alien scientist who can be both compassionate and ruthless, he also wrote the best supporting characters. Rita is the best companion that never was, Jax from A Town Called Mercy is one of the most genuinely grey villains in the series and the late great Helen McCrory's villain in Vampires of Venice was similarly one of the better villains of the week, though granted that was probably because of her, but even then the script gave her a lot to work with. Jesus when you compare Whithouse's female characters to Moff's it's tragic LOL. Honestly he should have been showrunner from 2014 on with Matt in the role.
Episodes that are a mess but I liked them anyway: Time of the Doctor, The Big Bang, Nightmare in Silver, the season 6 opener.
Worst supporting character: River Song. Already been over this. The distillation of everything I hate about Moff's writing. His inability to write female characters, timey wimey paraodxes that make no sense and so much of her dialogue is pretentious and overwrought.
Worst new villain: Madame Kovarian. I didn't think Frances Barber was very good in the role. Good actress and Jenny Mutant was a good sci fi role for her, but yeah let's just say Whithouse got more out of Helen McClory than Moff did Barber. She also didn't really have much of a backstory and whilst A Good Man Goes To War did make her seem formidable, her arc wasn't really resolved. She wasn't atrocious. I mean it's not like she was the Slitheen or anything, but yeah underwhelming as the head or face of the Silence.
Worst classic era villain: Once again the poor Cybermen come off badly here. On the plus side they don't get undermined by other foes. Indeed this era fixes a lot of what was wrong about their portrayal in the RTD era in that it has them be an intergalactic force in the universe again after being earth bound, establishes them as being on the level of his other enemies etc. However they still get nerfed in a lot of ways and turned into jokes like the Doctor blowing up a fleet of them in the intro just to send a message, James Corden's baby beating them up and the atrocious line "I blew the Cybermen up with love" one becoming a comedy sidekick to the Doctor (though I did find Handles adorable.) Also they don't really take part in any huge arcs and their one off episodes are pretty poor. Closing Time is the worst Cyber story apart from the season 8 finale and the Timeless Children, whilst Nightmare in Silver is fun, but a total mess with the single laziest ending of any DW story ever made, where it turns out that Warwick Davies could have saved them at any point but just didn't because? Also Matt Smith's performance as the Cyber planner is f*cking awful. His worst by far.
Worst writer: Gareth Roberts: Let's leave aside all the controversy surrounding him. I'm sorry but Gareth just isn't a very good who writer based on his tv work at least. His episodes are like the worst of RTD, focusing on tedious soap opera with the barest of sci fi elements. The Lodger is only saved by Matt being a one man show. The actual sci fi is as poorly thought out as you can imagine.
Worst episodes: Closing Time, The Power of Three, The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe, Let's Kill Hitler, Wedding of River Song,
Overall I'd give the era a 9/10
Well that's me finished my rewatch of New Who now. 7 seasons done and dusted. I'm glad I did not only because it was enjoyable, but because I'm glad I can put new who in perspective now and see what the problems with it really were. Basically as I've said before it works better as a reboot than a direct sequel, though I do think that the Matt Smith era bridged the gap between the old and the new and it may have been possible to link them during his time. If Capaldi had been a proper classic era style Doctor who'd faced off against a proper classic era style Master and they'd moved on then yes. New Who and old could have just about existed as one big happy show together, with the out of characterness of 9 and 10 being as a result of the Time war, but now that was fixed it could just be a weird one off period in the Doctors life like when he was exiled to earth.
Sadly however we all know what they did instead during Capaldi's time.
Still for a while at least thanks to the Matt Smith era it did to me at least feel like DW was back and I'd like to personally thank Matt as ironically I feel he was the most responsible for that. As I've said before, despite claiming to be super fans, I don't think David Tennant, RTD, Moffat or Capaldi have watched DW in years. I think they all loved it as children yes, but grew out of it, and have some nostalgic affection for it, but haven't actually returned to it in years and probably look down on it. Therefore when it came to writing and playing the Doctor they did it from vague memories from their childhood, but didn't actually care if they got a lot of it wrong as in their mind the whole thing was stupid and contradictory anyway. Matt however being a newcomer, who hadn't grown up with "official fandom" and all its insecurities and so on, went back and did actually watch the classics to get a handle on the character. Hence why he picked out the more Doctorish costume, had a more alien persona etc. He actually cared about following on from the classic era. It's also very telling that he was the only one who made Tom Baker feel welcome on the set of the 50th.
"Matt Smith is a darling young man -- he made me very welcome," Baker said. "[But] he was the only one who welcomed me -- I drove through the night to Cardiff, and Matt Smith came seeking me out, so full of joy and so happy to see me! He made it very, very easy acting with him, and I'm so glad he's going on to tumultuous success. Nobody else bothered with me at all. I was a bit nettled about that."
He was the best ambassador of the show in the 21st century. For all the overhype about Tennant, the pseudo intellectual pretentiousness about Capaldi being the thinking man's era and Jodie and Ncuti being the supposedly groundbreaking Doctors, Matt was the one who took it around the world a second time and is most beloved by classic era fans too and therefore I think will have the biggest legacy.
Well question is what do I watch next? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to have an abridged watch through of classic who. Only thing is I did that last year, so maybe it's too fresh in my mind? I might watch another early 21st century British sci fi, fantasy classic in the same style. Being Human? Merlin? Or Primeval? Whatever the case I've enjoyed New Who and I am sad it's done.