Geek Syndicate Issue 9 March 2014 | Page 24

Geek Syndicate

Image © BBC Worldwide

Yes Moffat’s beloved phrase that he has often been used
in the show to explain away his plot holes and continuity
(or lack there of). But the idea that The Doctor meets future companions and the like did not originate from him.
Take Mel in Trial. The trial examines the Doctor’s influence
by showing a story each from The Doctor’s past, present
and future. In The Doctor’s future we meet Mel, The Doctor’s future companion. We never see an on screen meeting of The Doctor and Mel before she travels off with The
Doctor at the end of the season. Unless we are to assume
that he met her through the trial where he saw his future
and then went travelling leading to the adventure they
had just seen. If that isn’t timey wimey and indeed wibbly
wobbly, then I don’t know what is! Moffat is obviously the
king of this and likes to use this device more and more.
The Twelfth Doctor appeared before the Eleventh regenerated and Clara appeared twice, having integral parts to
play before she truly ‘debuted’.

... and They All Live Happily Ever After
Something a lot of people I know (including myself) have
a problem with Moffat’s Who is that no-one really dies. Yes
they die - but they pop back up again five minutes later,
devaluing the death and the meaning it had. Just look at
Rory. You need a counter in the corner of your screen the
amount of times he had apparently died.
I think Who fans were spoilt as they had such a fantastically character led series with Russell T Davies where he
seemed to (for the majority of the time) use the idea that
when you die you are dead. To go from this to the polar
opposite might have been jarring for some fans, but it is
not a new element to Doctor Who. In Trial it is believed that
Peri dies a horrific death, where her essence is taken over
leaving nothing of her to be remembered. Yet in the final
scenes of the final episode, The Doctor is told that Peri
lived happily ever after.

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Further, originally Holmes and Saward intended to have
The Valeyard and The Doctor fighting, falling down a spiral of eternity, leaving the show in a state of flux. Holmes
died before he could finish the script and producer John
Nathan-Turner did not want his series, that was already
facing the chop, to end in such an ambiguous way with
the Beeb having the perfect ammo just to kill it believing
The Doctor was dead anyway. This led to a hurried script
change (by possibly the worst possible choice of writers)
in which The Doctor survived and bested his future evil
manifestation in no uncertain terms.
So yes no-one dies in Moffat’s Who, the Time War that was
The Doctor’s greatest fall from grace has been re written
and The Ponds (where it would have made more sense to
kill them) were stuck in a New York that for some reason
The Doctor cannot visit by getting a boat from a different
country. Yes it might be an annoying part of the show but
it is not new and it is not all Moffat’s fault. Also in retrospect are all deaths the right answer?

Image © BBC Worldwide

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

As stated above Holmes wanted the series to end ambiguously. Yet this could have led the series to never come
back and be the success it is today. At the end of the day,
I see Doctor Who very much like comics: everything can be
reversed and for that reason we should not let it annoy us
and accept that this is just one man’s vision out of many,
many different visions of the show.
All in all Moffat’s Who continually pays homage to Trial of
a Timelord, a series that was hated at the time, panned by
the Beeb and ultimately lead to the show’s downfall. This
similarity could possibly explain why so many have a problem with Moffat’s Who. But at the same time, Doctor Who
is not just alive but thriving under this template.

Luke Halsall