If someone asked me whether there was one thing that distinguishes Steven Moffat’s TV work, I would say it’s his extraordinary ability to create complex stories that come together leaving no raggedy loose ends or extraneous bits. Each word, each movement, each scene is important in building up to the story’s climax. The Palm d’Or winning episode of Coupling, the one about Lesbian Spank Inferno, is the perfect example of this. A friend on Twitter compared Moffat to M. C. Escher, creator of precise, mind-bending puzzles of art. I think he has a point. I warn you now, there are spoilers ahead for this whole season of Doctor Who so if you haven’t seen it then I advise you stop reading.
I don’t follow the Doctor Who fan boards, but I know plenty of people who do. I also follow quite a few fans on Twitter and checked in on the #doctorwho hashtag after many of the episodes. Facebook friends, and their friends, often also gave a bit of an indication of what people – fans and the more casual viewer alike – were thinking about each episode as it aired in the UK, USA and Australia. So I had a bit of a feel for the types of plot holes and continuity errors people were talking about. Things like why the Doctor had his jacket in one scene, but not the next, and it was back again. Sloppy TV making that, surely…
Until you watch The Big Bang and you discover that it was a clue! I haven’t done the exhaustive research (I have a busy enough life as it is, thanks), but I think most if not all of those “continuity errors” or “plot holes” were explained by these last two episodes. And in a way that roused quite a few laughs and a chorus of “oh, of course!” at the party I was at.
Moffat has always loved mucking about with timelines in his story-telling. Press Gang was riddled with stories that started with the climax and worked backwards and forwards so the audience could see how we got to the climax. Doctor Who, being about time travel, is rich in opportunities for such mucking about with narrative structure. What has puzzled me for a long time was how Doctor Who tended to shy away from it. The time travel was to get to a point from when to start an adventure, just as the space travel was to get to a point from where to begin. The story then takes a simple trajectory from A to B. Not The Big Bang. It started at C, went back to A, then B, then C, then… well, I think Christmas might collect up a few apparent strands and link it all up even more.
The Pandorica, the “great silence”, Amy’s crack … the obvious three strands weaving together through the whole season. Like Bad Wolf in the 2005 series, the added bit of fun was spotting where it was in each episode, and trying to work out what each new clue might mean.
I think this is a division point for some fans. Me? I like playing around with the ideas and then seeing how they fit when the picture from the puzzles is revealed. Others seem to be annoyed when the final picture is not what they have constructed from the clues. It upsets their investment in the story telling process. It’s like they can’t cope with a diversity of scenarios that might fit the same clues.
Moffat knows this stuff. Moffat plays with it. Hence, the Pandorica is truly not what it seems.
Which is actually one of the fascinating themes of this whole series. No one and no thing is quite what it seems, even when you think you’ve got the new reality sussed. I love this game when it’s played well. Doctor Who has often played it, and I think it’s that which has consistently appealed to me. When things are too obvious, then my interest wanes. And I’m writing now about it’s 47 year history now, not just the 2010 series.
Doctor Who has never really been about characters. There’s a fair bit of writing out there about how the female characters are ciphers. They are there purely to move the adventure along, a sounding board for the Doctor and other male characters to explain the incomprehensible to the audience, and to create a spot of danger. That’s why Romana wasn’t overly effective, according to this view; she was the Doctor’s equal intellectually. While I think there is a lot to it, I don’t think it is quite as simple as that. For a start, the chaps were just as unlikely to have any form of character development, were just as likely to get into trouble (for the Doctor and others to rescue), and just as useful to receive a lecture about what’s going on.
Ace was the first time the TV series tried any form of character development. Looking back on those stories now, they are perhaps not the best. But, the attempt was there. The Virgin New Adventures tried to shift the balance of plot-driven story telling to character-driven, which succeeded to a point. I think one of the simple reasons why Professor Bernice S. Summerfield was able to take on a life of her own was because the writers and editors in the main understood that and developed it when she spun off to her own series.
The 2005 series took that legacy of Ace and the books, as well as developments in television writing that took place during the 15 or so years since “Survival” was first aired. That’s why Rose, Martha and Donna had families who recurred as characters. That’s why Mickey and Wilf blurred the distinction of who is a companion and who isn’t, but yet travelled with the Doctor. I think it also drew on a much older heritage. The very first Doctor Who stories back in 1963 and 1964 might not have been so concerned about character development, but the creation of a family atmosphere was there. And there was a willingness to experiment a bit as the “rules” were being established. Hence, why Katarina and Sara Kingdom exist in that strange zone of are they companions or not that some fans get so fixated upon.
The presence of real family in the Doctor’s life during Russell T. Davies’s tenure as show runner was what enabled Moffat to create an unsettling factor in his first year: the fact that neither little Amelia nor grown-up Amy Pond had a family.
Which gets us neatly to what I think has been the main motif through the 2010 series: love and loss, two filaments woven together to make one strong thread. What happens to the Doctor at the end of The Big Bang makes emotional sense when you think of Rory, and Rory’s relationship with Amy. Fascinating parallels there with Amy’s relationship with the Doctor. There’s the uncertainty of the reality of the relationships at the start: is Rory just a bit of a joke? Does the Doctor even exist? Amidst all the adventures, we the audience learn along with Amy that these two men in her life are complicated characters; and she loses both. It’s through that we get to know Amy’s specialness; and that betrays an awkward objectification of her, the putting her up on a pedestal rather than ever grappling with her as a person. To some of my friends, she was more a cipher than a character, and while I personally wasn’t so fussed because I was distracted by Karen Gillen (Shallow? Me? Well, yes, at times…), I do get the point my friends were making. Thinking about it now, it’s obvious that this affected the full emotional impact of these episodes that had nothing to do with Gillen’s acting ability.
No. The strands aren’t all tied up at the end of The Big Bang, and nor should they be. We have Christmas and next year to look forward to. There has to be more about River Song, and I’m not convinced we’ve seen the last of staircases that shouldn’t be there in houses.
I have hugely enjoyed this series of Doctor Who, some stories more than others, but overall it’s been great fun. Matt Smith has been absolutely right for the part, and I see what Moffat must have seen him when he walked into the audition.
Above all, though, I love the fact that kids love it. That, as ever, Doctor Who has found itself another audience for whom these will be their years.
One last note about The Big Bang. I personally loved how the whiz-bang new primary coloured Daleks were rendered in this story. Cheeky.
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