Doctor 11 is not as Doctor Who

Okay, well I have seen every episode released so far of Doctor 11 and I can still say (cus I've been saying it for a while now) that I just don't like him as much as 10.

I have lots of reason but it basically boils down to this, he doesn't inspire anything in me. I don't want to travel with him. He seems very ho-hum about the wonders of the universe. I do not expect him to be bouncy or manic but he should still be interested in the world around him. Instead he seems to be dragged around from adventure to adventure by other sources. He never really wants to do anything himself. At least, not as much as 10 did.

Also, I have terrible trouble trying to attach to Amy. She's too fearless, too headstrong, and too independent.When she was almost vivisected the episode with the dinosaur people, she was barely one foot out of the door of her escape when she decided she wanted to explore the ship. C'mon. I mean she doesn't have to be crying or screaming but that response was far too tame. She was almost cut apart alive.I get this feeling a lot in Moffat's writing. He gets so wrapped in the story that there isn't time for the emotions and reactions. RTD was too emotional but Moffat is not emotional enough. Between the two I prefer the overly emotional.

I know that Amy is not very an emotional character, neither is Rory or 11, but the emotional range of the characters is so toned down that when they do emote, I don't believe them. It just doesn't feel like Doctor Who. They should be overacting like hell. Moffat is trying to make the story darker, sexier and more serious but Doctor Who is supposed to be campy. When a story is presented to me as a mystery and a serious topic I want to take it seriously but Doctor Who is not meant for that. Human-dinosaurs is never going to be serious. Also, when a story is presented to me in a serious manner it's a huge disappointment when it's easy to figure out what's going on. I saw what the Pandorica was for a mile away. It was easy to guess. If Moffat hadn't been SO super serious about what was inside the Pandorica then it wouldn't have been such a huge disappointment. In the previous season even the dumbest episode, for example The Unicorn and the Wasp, was fun because it was never treated as a serious thing. It's a giant alien wasp and it's not a mystery. We see it. A giant alien wasp. Moffat's trying to make things serious, less campy, and it just brings everything down.

Finally, the acting. It's not as good. Period. I know Tennant is a hard act to follow but I just don't believe Smith as the Doctor. He doesn't seem old, he doesn't seem wise. He feels like a smart college kid who knows tons of stuff but doesn't really know anything. When the doctor was crying in the episode, The Doctor's Wife, I didn't believe him. And it’s not all Smith’s fault. Moffat was so interested in making it clever, "oh my thief, my thief" (which was embarrassingly easy to figure out) that he never took time to write in an emotional moment before the climax. A perfect time to do that would have been when the Doctor and the Lady are working on trying to build another Tardis. The Doctor should have spared her a glance, he should have watched her work. I need to see that he is thinking out this, about her. Tennant was a master of this. He wove in the subtle looks, the sidelong glances, the smiles and frowns that made him feel real to me. RTD’s writing was overly emotional but it felt real. Like real people. Moffat’s writing feels exactly like that, writing.

As a body of work, I prefer RTD’s overly dramatic, camp-fest to Moffat’s dark, trying to be serious stories. It’s not as Doctor Who for me.

The Beast Below

Be forwarned, there are spoilers for the Doctor Who Season 5 episode, The Beast Below, well... below.

I have to say I am disappointed in this episode. Moffet's writing was not what I expected it to be. The behaviour of the characters was inconsistent, the story was convoluted, and there was no message.

Without going into too much detail, I have to say I was sorely disappointed in the doctor's line mentioning that after paralyzing the starwhale he'd have to get a new name. Good grief doc. He has committed numerous unthinkable atrocities and he freaks out because he has to spare some poor creature intolerable pain? Where did this wishy-washy dolt come from? And I cannot believe Amy, a woman so strong she's willing to sacrifice thousands of lives on a hunch, would hit the "forget" button. It didn't seem consistent. And recall the little kid shot down into the stomach of the beast because he got a zero? Is that a direct order of the Queen? The Queen had been making all the rules, right? Is she sending the kids down there because she knows the beast likes them? Or is she just a heartless, callous, monster? If that's the case, then why have the "oh my poor subjects are being fed to a beast," malarkey?

Setting aside the idea that a city on the back of a giant monster floating in space is overused, the original part of the story was far too convoluted. Why cover a powerful core story with over-hyped, scary tripe such as the elevator scene? Why have the "smilers?" It's not necessary. None of it. What was the point in having the queen character turn out to be so old? If it was it to show that even she, someone who (supposedly) cared about her people, would keep making the same bad choices over and over again, it was a very long winded and confusing way to go about it. And what was with the brief and underplayed democracy theme? It seemed like it was going to go someone but never made it. The story was overflowing with tons of ideas that were never fully realized, it's as if Moffet finally got the right to play in the kitchen and threw everything imaginable into the stew.

And my biggest complaint, there was no message. The humans who created this awful war, escaped by torturing the starwhale, and essentially terrorized their populous for hundreds of years, got away scott free. No one changed, no lesson was learned. The humans are the same at the end as they were in the beginning. There was no punishment, no consequence for their actions. So what's the message?

Thoughts on New Earth

I have to say I was very disappointed in Davies' writing in the Doctor Who episode, New Earth. Davies introduces a fantastic and complicated plot but just cannot continue it through to the end. It feels rather like he is trying to cover a four inch stab wound with a small band-aid. You just cannot wrap up the deep issues this episode brings up with the weak ending he gives us. I don't think Davies has the sophistication to pull this story off.

For those of you who haven't seen New Earth but for some odd reason are reading this anyway, it's about a future Earth where a group of "nuns" grow thousands of pseudo humans in order to inject every known disease into them so they can cultivate catch all cures.

Well, right off the bat we see the story-line start to fall apart. We are told that the the flesh (the nuns refer to the infected as flesh) carry every known disease simultaneously. Yanno, I'm no doctor but I have this tiny sneaking suspicion that no living organism can survive having every single known disease at the same time. Setting aside any real diseases of today (because it could be argued that these are "future disease") let's examine what we are presented with by the writer. In the hospital ward we have a man who's body is turning into stone, which apparently is a slow and painful process while next to him is a another man with a disease which we are told kills you in under ten minutes. How can the flesh have both these conditions when they clearly are at odds with each other? I suppose it could be argued that they host every known disease but only express a few, (bubonic plague by the looks of it) but I feel as if this is a cop-out argument anyway. Unless I am missing something, if your main plot point is completely inconceivable, that's just bad writing.

Settings aside the argument that Davies spends way too much time on Rose's side story and not enough on the main plot, we come to my second big disappointment of this episode, Casandra. She spends the entire episode fighting to stay alive and then, mysteriously, decides it's time to die. Why? Did I miss something? How did she change so quickly? Davies loves to do this to us. On Waters of Mars Brooke spends every moment since she discovers her tragic fate, trying to survive. Then, quite mysteriously, when she is saved she turns around and kills herself! Why? We are not given even the slightest indication by Davies that she has changed her mind let alone why she has done so. This is bad writing, pure and simple.

As a small side, Casandra mentions that Rose is genetically 100% human but that line is wasted because that idea is never brought up in the story. Instead we have a five minutes scene of Rose basically feeling herself up. -.- I like Rose, I really do, but Davies concentrates on her too much and makes her too romantic toward the doctor while Moffet makes her kinda.. well.. unattached. Poor Rose.

My third and final point, the ending. After introducing a complicated issues with huge moral implications Davies wraps it up very weakly. The flesh escape and the Doctor (I don't blame you poor man...err time lord) mixes up every known antidote together (of which there are ten mind you) and sprays them over less than six infected people who, in turn, touch each other and magically pass it along to the other, oh I dunno, ten thousand people!? Really? C'mon Davies! Come on man! You gotta do better than this! I mean, you have no choice! This is bad writing. This is worse than fan fiction! Are the nuns going to be punished? How will society feel about these less intelligent human race? Are you going to address anything that matters other than Rose!?

I would have written this episode completly differently. There must be some consequence to the actions taken by the nuns. I would have ended with the doctor having to burn down the locked hospital or maybe having the flesh spread to the outer city kill everyone but themselves but then, like the nuns wanted, create a race of people immune to everything. There should be, there has to be something to learn. There has to be something to take away.