In which mediocre is worse than bad
Nov. 16th, 2015 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiCan we talk about this week's Doctor Who?
Can we talk about how utterly meh it was?
In fact, can we talk about the fact that other than one thirty-second moment in the middle, and one (admittedly awesome) image at the end, it was the most useless and unnecessary hour of TV in ages?
There have been plenty of worse episodes, of course (the first two Capaldi ones are dreadful pieces of shit, and "The Angels Take Manhattan" is the worst thing Moffat has ever written, and that includes things he did when he was three years old), but those have usually been tempered by being relevant to the larger story. And there have certainly been awful standalones (remember the two-parter in the Matt Smith run with the clones made of gloop?).
But what was fascinating about this week's episode was that it simply had no reason to exist. None. It was Who Standalone Trope #35, in which a group of folks are stranded and being picked off by a mysterious force. That's cool, and has been the trope behind some episodes I've really enjoyed, including "42" and "The God Complex."*
But those episodes gave us a bunch of really good characters to worry about. This episode gave us no one. There were a handful of interchangeable humans, one of whom was mission leader, one of whom hated the Grunt, another of whom was the grunt, and a fourth one. Three of them died, two after seemingly getting to safety, and there was no impact. The entire subplot in which the one who hates the Grunt gets saved by the Grunt was overlong and pointless in a way that failed to even be nihilistic. The leader had no personality at all. The Doctor and Clara connected with none of them (compare that to "42," where Martha and Riley bonded, and which featured the similar plot device of a door that required some ridiculous 20th-century piece of knowledge to open).
As for the overall plot, it actually made less sense than "The Angels Take Manhattan" or even "The Time of the Angels" (which also follows Trope 35 -- I actually think it's probably Trope #2 or 3). But it didn't even do so in a way that made me want to throw a remote at the screen (or at Moffat). It just made me want to get to the end so I could watch something better.
I won't spoil the two bits I referred to above, but neither is enough to make the episode worth watching.
To be fair, I've been on board with the current season in general. The only other weak episode this year ("The Girl Who Died") basically exists as a prologue to the incredibly strong "The Woman Who Lived," and otherwise, while I don't have a clue where Moffat's going overall**, he's been doing some good stuff, aided by two leads who work well together and some solid guest stars. But this episode was so clearly phoned-in half-assed filler, and that's even more disappointing than at least swinging for the fences and trying to do something interesting.
*It's also the trope behind the terrible "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS," which at least was memorably awful.
**Which, I suspect, makes me very similar to Moffat himself.
Can we talk about how utterly meh it was?
In fact, can we talk about the fact that other than one thirty-second moment in the middle, and one (admittedly awesome) image at the end, it was the most useless and unnecessary hour of TV in ages?
There have been plenty of worse episodes, of course (the first two Capaldi ones are dreadful pieces of shit, and "The Angels Take Manhattan" is the worst thing Moffat has ever written, and that includes things he did when he was three years old), but those have usually been tempered by being relevant to the larger story. And there have certainly been awful standalones (remember the two-parter in the Matt Smith run with the clones made of gloop?).
But what was fascinating about this week's episode was that it simply had no reason to exist. None. It was Who Standalone Trope #35, in which a group of folks are stranded and being picked off by a mysterious force. That's cool, and has been the trope behind some episodes I've really enjoyed, including "42" and "The God Complex."*
But those episodes gave us a bunch of really good characters to worry about. This episode gave us no one. There were a handful of interchangeable humans, one of whom was mission leader, one of whom hated the Grunt, another of whom was the grunt, and a fourth one. Three of them died, two after seemingly getting to safety, and there was no impact. The entire subplot in which the one who hates the Grunt gets saved by the Grunt was overlong and pointless in a way that failed to even be nihilistic. The leader had no personality at all. The Doctor and Clara connected with none of them (compare that to "42," where Martha and Riley bonded, and which featured the similar plot device of a door that required some ridiculous 20th-century piece of knowledge to open).
As for the overall plot, it actually made less sense than "The Angels Take Manhattan" or even "The Time of the Angels" (which also follows Trope 35 -- I actually think it's probably Trope #2 or 3). But it didn't even do so in a way that made me want to throw a remote at the screen (or at Moffat). It just made me want to get to the end so I could watch something better.
I won't spoil the two bits I referred to above, but neither is enough to make the episode worth watching.
To be fair, I've been on board with the current season in general. The only other weak episode this year ("The Girl Who Died") basically exists as a prologue to the incredibly strong "The Woman Who Lived," and otherwise, while I don't have a clue where Moffat's going overall**, he's been doing some good stuff, aided by two leads who work well together and some solid guest stars. But this episode was so clearly phoned-in half-assed filler, and that's even more disappointing than at least swinging for the fences and trying to do something interesting.
*It's also the trope behind the terrible "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS," which at least was memorably awful.
**Which, I suspect, makes me very similar to Moffat himself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2015-11-16 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-11-17 12:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-11-17 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-11-17 02:43 pm (UTC)