Doctor Who - Day of the Moon
I know we have new who in a day but I just couldn't let the clusterfuck that was last episode go. Word of warning - this reaction post really, really long. I mean really long. I sort of just intended to make a few points and then came to paragraphs later.
Look, everyone's gone over pretty eloquently how morally repugnant the Doctor's plan was. But what I want to explore? Is the ways in which it was just plain stupid.
* LIGHTNING HANDS. THEY HAVE LIGHTNING HANDS. Unless you have a gun in your hand and fire as soon as you see them, you're fucked. Because of FUCKING LIGHTNING HANDS.
* Even if they didn't have lightning hands, they're giant aliens! With claws! If you're weaponless/a kid/physically incapable of hand to hand combat/not trained in hand to hand combat/alone when there's a fuckload of of them there ... you're fucked. NOT ONLY DID YOU JUST COMMIT GENOCIDE DOCTOR, BUT LOGICALLY THE RESULT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE GENOCIDE OF THE HUMANS. Or at least a really bloody war they have little chance of winning.
* Hypnotic suggestability yeah? Whyyy don't they just say 'Don't kill me'. Doctor your plan can be immediately reversed.
* OK so 1 and a half billion people saw the moon landing according to the Doctor (wiki says 600 million). And people for a ... thousand thousand generations are going to see it? Really? (OK maybe in movies.) But even if we're talking about the ubiquity of television sets not being quite as certain as people seem to be assuming (Ireland apparently really didn't do television til the seventies, who knew?) I have a degree of skepticism regarding the possibility that every single country would be broadcasting that with breathless excitement. Did China or Russia? East Germany? Frustratingly I can't get hard data, but I'm doubting China a lot, from what I know of the period. Not even going near countries I don't know that much about. So, the Silence are defeated! ...in some places. A bit. Unless they reverse it. Yeah what?
Also both eps were just filled with oven logic about the Silence.
* Not even 'why have they been wearing the same slim-line suits for at least five decades' but how the hell did they get those slim-line suits on over their ENORMOUS HANDS?? Seriously. That. That doesn't. I don't. What? Are they sewn in? Current best theory is that it's crepe or seaweed - they're sushi, the white is the rice and oh god oh god I'm horrified.
* Following on from the above - when they're hanging upside down why don't their ties fall in their faces IT IS RIDICULOUS. YOU CAN'T HYPNOTISE GRAVITY.
* How do the Silence know what a spacesuit is if they don't already have the capacity to make one or have access to one themselves? Allllso they have spaceships why can they not do any of this shit themselves? Or go to a more technologically advanced society and leech off them?
Also re the lightning hands - this is a deathtrap either way from what I can see, but it goes one of two ways. Either they don't/can't use the lightning hands effectively (in that they told Canton they didn't have weapons/they had to get pretty close to that one lady they killed/they were pretty terrible shots against River and the Doctor, so you can probably extrapolate that it's primarily cultural/it's fallen into disuse as they don't really need to fight a people who can't remember them/it may need a lot of energy/buildup to use or drain quickly (see: Dead Lady)) in which case well done destroying a defenceless species Doctor, or they do have lightning hands and what the hell was that logic hole Moffat!?
OK that was getting into the morals a bit but. Really. Reeaaallly. How can you not? Fandom has really saddened me on this one. I know that someone was saying they handwave stuff they can't accept. Fair enough. I handwave Eight being half-human. But handwaving this? Or going from handwaving it to cheering for it? 'Yay the Doctor wiped out people with his head held high'?! What show have you been watching? What show do you people want?? As Erin reminded me, every generation apparently gets the Doctor they deserve and that .... that's depressing guys. That's just depressing. If we want our Doctor to espouse these virtues, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Frustratingly I expect that Moffat's going to turn around later and make it all about timey bs where at least one of the Doctors/other characters we saw were crossing their own timeline and therefore had information the audience wasn't privy to that justifies all of this. That's a bad way to tell a story Moffat. This is a clusterfuck.
It's very much what Tu said regarding why Moffat's a great writer to have on your team and a terrible one to have as Captain. Because he's a dude who cannot forget that the Doctor has a time machine. Not in a 'oh shit that's a plot-breaker better shrink it/get it stolen/have the Doctor stranded on Earth for a few years' way but in a 'ISN'T THAT FRICKIN' AWESOME!?!?' way. Which is great to play with once or twice a season? But not so fun to twist your entire season up in. Twice. And most eps you've written. And your Christmas Special. And that Seven short story. And even Curse of Fatal Death. Moffat really really needs to get his priorities in order, or this is not going anywhere pretty. And it's not going there fast.
On one final note, it's also making me incredibly sad to see everyone say 'oh well Seven did it, it's ok'. I really really hate to say 'you don't get it' because who am I to invalidate someone else's experiences/understanding, but I'm not trying to say I know a greater truth than anyone else. I'm trying to say that if you can really equate what Seven did (I'm assuming people here mean with the Daleks) and what Eleven did, you don't get what my problem is with what Eleven did.
There were three essential things, I think, that made me flinch and cringe at Eleven whereas with Seven I went 'BOOYAH'.
1. Attitude. Seven never enjoyed it. True, he played with Davros, his lifetimes foe. He joked about with people, as he's wont to in that and many incarnations. But we're shown repeatedly over Rememberance of the Daleks that he's struggling with this decision, that he's unsure. He knows how weighty it is and he's not sure it's right. That is tension, that is interesting. That's not Eleven having the time of his life with no reflection or doubt.
2. Enemy. The audience knows the Daleks. Even people who don't Who are vaguely familiar with them. They are the epitome of evil, the arch-nemesis of the Doctor and all that is good and right and free and living. We know, and had explained again to us in the episode, exactly what their goal is. The death and destruction of every living being not like them, even within their own species. We've seen, over six lifetimes prior, the Doctor attempt other solutions. In a way Rememberance is Seven paying for the sins of his Fourth regeneration's decisions. It's still not necessarily the right thing, but it's certainly not a situation where I can sit there going 'but what do these aliens want', 'what else have we tried first to stop them', 'why are we trying to stop them', 'how are they explicitly hurting us' and come back with 'I have no idea, and apparently neither do the protagonists', 'um. nothing. and actually this isn't a case where their backs are pressed against the wall and they're out of time for a better solution, the TARDIS keeps getting shoved in our faces and they have all the time. YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME DOCTOR.', 'I don't know, again, due to question one not being answered, and also because the answer to question four is:', 'um. they're not? I mean clearly by our own cultural paradigm this situation should be rectified because we value free will, but from what I can see they're symbiotes? they've been around since the wheel and we've survived, in fact they seem to operate by pushing our evolution forward and need us as much as we've been helped by them, so it sort of seems against their own best interests to kill us en masse and ... murdering them all seems a bit of an overreaction?'
3. Choice. Ironic, really. Aside from one person we see the Silence kill no one. It seems to be much more of a Star Trek-y 'FREE WILL AT ALL COSTS' (thanks tu) situation. Which, fine. But what did the Doctor do? He took that away. He took that away in a way that no other Doctor ever has done. And you can make all the bullshit little lists you want about how the Doctor fired a gun here or made a witty comment after murdering some people there or even, heaven forbid, committed genocide, but the reason last week's episode made me nauseous? Is not because he killed some dudes. The Doctor's a pacifist in his ideals at best, it's ridiculous to argue that he doesn't perpetrate violence. It's that in all those examples people have been giving? He either committed the act himself or, while acting like a catalyst, still gave people the choice. No Doctor before Eleven has ever done something so cold as to turn every human into a murderer, to give them no choice, and to never let them know. And that's disgusting. He shouldn't be laughing and crowing, he should be the man who can come up with the Dream Lord, and the audience should be able to see it.
Ok, um. That got vehement. Also another problem with being cryptic, why can't these dudes be treated the same as the Silurians? Why no cohabitation? They've been around millenia. All the things wrong with this are just so .... tiring.
And please fandom, please, can we get over Six strangling Peri? Seriously? It's dull now, and it shows a woefully poor reading of the text. Attempting and failing to spontaneously injure an individual whilst suffering heavy shock and out of your mind is in no way worse than, or even equivalent to, plotting and carrying out genocide through unknowing hosts whilst in full possession of your faculties. And enjoying it. Hell, I'd hardly say it's even worse than shooting a threatening alien in terms of what it says about your moral capability and culpability. So can we drop it? Yeah. That would be nice.
Look, everyone's gone over pretty eloquently how morally repugnant the Doctor's plan was. But what I want to explore? Is the ways in which it was just plain stupid.
* LIGHTNING HANDS. THEY HAVE LIGHTNING HANDS. Unless you have a gun in your hand and fire as soon as you see them, you're fucked. Because of FUCKING LIGHTNING HANDS.
* Even if they didn't have lightning hands, they're giant aliens! With claws! If you're weaponless/a kid/physically incapable of hand to hand combat/not trained in hand to hand combat/alone when there's a fuckload of of them there ... you're fucked. NOT ONLY DID YOU JUST COMMIT GENOCIDE DOCTOR, BUT LOGICALLY THE RESULT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE GENOCIDE OF THE HUMANS. Or at least a really bloody war they have little chance of winning.
* Hypnotic suggestability yeah? Whyyy don't they just say 'Don't kill me'. Doctor your plan can be immediately reversed.
* OK so 1 and a half billion people saw the moon landing according to the Doctor (wiki says 600 million). And people for a ... thousand thousand generations are going to see it? Really? (OK maybe in movies.) But even if we're talking about the ubiquity of television sets not being quite as certain as people seem to be assuming (Ireland apparently really didn't do television til the seventies, who knew?) I have a degree of skepticism regarding the possibility that every single country would be broadcasting that with breathless excitement. Did China or Russia? East Germany? Frustratingly I can't get hard data, but I'm doubting China a lot, from what I know of the period. Not even going near countries I don't know that much about. So, the Silence are defeated! ...in some places. A bit. Unless they reverse it. Yeah what?
Also both eps were just filled with oven logic about the Silence.
* Not even 'why have they been wearing the same slim-line suits for at least five decades' but how the hell did they get those slim-line suits on over their ENORMOUS HANDS?? Seriously. That. That doesn't. I don't. What? Are they sewn in? Current best theory is that it's crepe or seaweed - they're sushi, the white is the rice and oh god oh god I'm horrified.
* Following on from the above - when they're hanging upside down why don't their ties fall in their faces IT IS RIDICULOUS. YOU CAN'T HYPNOTISE GRAVITY.
* How do the Silence know what a spacesuit is if they don't already have the capacity to make one or have access to one themselves? Allllso they have spaceships why can they not do any of this shit themselves? Or go to a more technologically advanced society and leech off them?
Also re the lightning hands - this is a deathtrap either way from what I can see, but it goes one of two ways. Either they don't/can't use the lightning hands effectively (in that they told Canton they didn't have weapons/they had to get pretty close to that one lady they killed/they were pretty terrible shots against River and the Doctor, so you can probably extrapolate that it's primarily cultural/it's fallen into disuse as they don't really need to fight a people who can't remember them/it may need a lot of energy/buildup to use or drain quickly (see: Dead Lady)) in which case well done destroying a defenceless species Doctor, or they do have lightning hands and what the hell was that logic hole Moffat!?
OK that was getting into the morals a bit but. Really. Reeaaallly. How can you not? Fandom has really saddened me on this one. I know that someone was saying they handwave stuff they can't accept. Fair enough. I handwave Eight being half-human. But handwaving this? Or going from handwaving it to cheering for it? 'Yay the Doctor wiped out people with his head held high'?! What show have you been watching? What show do you people want?? As Erin reminded me, every generation apparently gets the Doctor they deserve and that .... that's depressing guys. That's just depressing. If we want our Doctor to espouse these virtues, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Frustratingly I expect that Moffat's going to turn around later and make it all about timey bs where at least one of the Doctors/other characters we saw were crossing their own timeline and therefore had information the audience wasn't privy to that justifies all of this. That's a bad way to tell a story Moffat. This is a clusterfuck.
It's very much what Tu said regarding why Moffat's a great writer to have on your team and a terrible one to have as Captain. Because he's a dude who cannot forget that the Doctor has a time machine. Not in a 'oh shit that's a plot-breaker better shrink it/get it stolen/have the Doctor stranded on Earth for a few years' way but in a 'ISN'T THAT FRICKIN' AWESOME!?!?' way. Which is great to play with once or twice a season? But not so fun to twist your entire season up in. Twice. And most eps you've written. And your Christmas Special. And that Seven short story. And even Curse of Fatal Death. Moffat really really needs to get his priorities in order, or this is not going anywhere pretty. And it's not going there fast.
On one final note, it's also making me incredibly sad to see everyone say 'oh well Seven did it, it's ok'. I really really hate to say 'you don't get it' because who am I to invalidate someone else's experiences/understanding, but I'm not trying to say I know a greater truth than anyone else. I'm trying to say that if you can really equate what Seven did (I'm assuming people here mean with the Daleks) and what Eleven did, you don't get what my problem is with what Eleven did.
There were three essential things, I think, that made me flinch and cringe at Eleven whereas with Seven I went 'BOOYAH'.
1. Attitude. Seven never enjoyed it. True, he played with Davros, his lifetimes foe. He joked about with people, as he's wont to in that and many incarnations. But we're shown repeatedly over Rememberance of the Daleks that he's struggling with this decision, that he's unsure. He knows how weighty it is and he's not sure it's right. That is tension, that is interesting. That's not Eleven having the time of his life with no reflection or doubt.
2. Enemy. The audience knows the Daleks. Even people who don't Who are vaguely familiar with them. They are the epitome of evil, the arch-nemesis of the Doctor and all that is good and right and free and living. We know, and had explained again to us in the episode, exactly what their goal is. The death and destruction of every living being not like them, even within their own species. We've seen, over six lifetimes prior, the Doctor attempt other solutions. In a way Rememberance is Seven paying for the sins of his Fourth regeneration's decisions. It's still not necessarily the right thing, but it's certainly not a situation where I can sit there going 'but what do these aliens want', 'what else have we tried first to stop them', 'why are we trying to stop them', 'how are they explicitly hurting us' and come back with 'I have no idea, and apparently neither do the protagonists', 'um. nothing. and actually this isn't a case where their backs are pressed against the wall and they're out of time for a better solution, the TARDIS keeps getting shoved in our faces and they have all the time. YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME DOCTOR.', 'I don't know, again, due to question one not being answered, and also because the answer to question four is:', 'um. they're not? I mean clearly by our own cultural paradigm this situation should be rectified because we value free will, but from what I can see they're symbiotes? they've been around since the wheel and we've survived, in fact they seem to operate by pushing our evolution forward and need us as much as we've been helped by them, so it sort of seems against their own best interests to kill us en masse and ... murdering them all seems a bit of an overreaction?'
3. Choice. Ironic, really. Aside from one person we see the Silence kill no one. It seems to be much more of a Star Trek-y 'FREE WILL AT ALL COSTS' (thanks tu) situation. Which, fine. But what did the Doctor do? He took that away. He took that away in a way that no other Doctor ever has done. And you can make all the bullshit little lists you want about how the Doctor fired a gun here or made a witty comment after murdering some people there or even, heaven forbid, committed genocide, but the reason last week's episode made me nauseous? Is not because he killed some dudes. The Doctor's a pacifist in his ideals at best, it's ridiculous to argue that he doesn't perpetrate violence. It's that in all those examples people have been giving? He either committed the act himself or, while acting like a catalyst, still gave people the choice. No Doctor before Eleven has ever done something so cold as to turn every human into a murderer, to give them no choice, and to never let them know. And that's disgusting. He shouldn't be laughing and crowing, he should be the man who can come up with the Dream Lord, and the audience should be able to see it.
Ok, um. That got vehement. Also another problem with being cryptic, why can't these dudes be treated the same as the Silurians? Why no cohabitation? They've been around millenia. All the things wrong with this are just so .... tiring.
And please fandom, please, can we get over Six strangling Peri? Seriously? It's dull now, and it shows a woefully poor reading of the text. Attempting and failing to spontaneously injure an individual whilst suffering heavy shock and out of your mind is in no way worse than, or even equivalent to, plotting and carrying out genocide through unknowing hosts whilst in full possession of your faculties. And enjoying it. Hell, I'd hardly say it's even worse than shooting a threatening alien in terms of what it says about your moral capability and culpability. So can we drop it? Yeah. That would be nice.