Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

Somebody on OG has expressed pretty well the problems I have with Amy:

My issue with Amy is that Moffat has created a good skeleton for a character arc. The young girl obsessed with the Doctor who never really grew up, who now faces a choice of growing up or continuing to live in her childhood fantasy. That's a pretty good story, it can take you to interesting places, and in theory it should be great.

The problem is, it's as if Moffat just couldn't be bothered to fill in the rest. He left it as a structure, a skeleton. Between the points of her character development across the series, she just wanders around spouting off one-liners, not seeming particularly engaged with her surroundings. So while the structure is there, the actual character isn't.

Character is more than just a backstory, or a structured "arc". It's writing someone who is believable as a living, breathing person, who reacts to things, who has hopes and dreams, opinions ... who just feels real (see Rose, Martha, Donna). And Amy doesn't feel real. Away from the character arc, she seems little more than a character designed to appeal to the most basic likes of sci-fi fans - "wit" and a short skirt. Dull dull dull.

Also some others have looked at her dialogue and it's something like 70% questions, 25% zings and 5% for the rest, and most of that is whinging at The Doctor because he's done something that inconveniences her.

I wouldn't surprised if those ratios were pretty much the same for other companions, though, surely? Donna was like 90% zings and she was awesome. I mean,

Amy's sassy bluster > Donna's sassy bluster

is just nonsense. Donna clearly couldn't give a fig about most of what the Doctor was on about, which gave her this enormous leeway to just be unimpressed by him, which, when you're talking about someone as self-regarding as the Doctor, guarantees instant hilarity (AND makes the Doctor have to try to explain better to her - and to himself - why things matter).

Anyway, there's no accounting for taste in companions so I'll leave my save-a-Donna efforts here for the moment I guess.

I don't particularly care that Amy has a great backstory that's just been left in a rucksack by the door (I didn't give a shit about Donna's backstory, or Martha's, or Rose's). I think what bugs me about Amy is that if Moffatt "couldn't be bothered to fill in the rest", it's the actor's job to do that, to make the character feel real.

What does it seem like Amy wants?

What's her response to the fact that a magical character she spent her entire childhood writing stories about has turned out to be real?

Sassy zings?

Realised a massive fuck up in last night's - they start drilling because of the blue grass, which is caused by the Silurians drilling upwards. Except the Silurians don't start drilling until after the humans have, because it's that that wakes them up. Oops.

Deleted scene here: http://blogtorwho.blogspot.com/2010/05/hungry-earth-deleted-scene.html

btw, no fucking way is that "dressed for Rio". She was wearing tights! and a wool jumper!

This was the first episode where I understood the dislike for Amy, she was really bloody annoying. I don't get her relationship with Rory at all.

xpost WIBBLY WOBBLY TIMEY WIMEY!

Old school Silurians were weirder and creepier. This was generally fine though, if a tad unimaginative. A definite Pertwee vibe - reminiscent of The Green Death as well as its obvious precedents. The final reveal was good.

Old school Silurians also went and hid in an emergency shelter station in Derbyshire because they thought an asteroid was going to hit the Earth. Not in a giant fucking city a hundred miles or so away.

This series hasn't quite lived up to its promise for me. Nothing has topped the first episode. None of which is Smith's fault, incidentally, he's doing a great job.

That may be partly down to Moffat's general superiority tho - I rate the Angels story as highly as the opener now.

Matt DC OTM about Amy and that's why I find her less annoying than Donna in terms of behaviour, background and purpose. I never really care about the companion that much tho (and the specials last year pretty well without the usual regular companion dynamic) so in a way am glad that Amy's deal hasn't been explored in more detail so far despite the strong foundation being laid by Moff at the start.

A lot of the time my favourite bits come from when the Doctor is on his own having the inevitable spar with the villain or talking to the minor characters. Companions 'humanise' and ground situations which is fine and probably necessary but not why I watch. RTD often seemed more interested in the companions than the Doctor and liked to mess with the heroism hierarchy accordingly. He gave Rose and Donna greater powers than the Doctor in the most crucial situations and I never really liked that (maybe just because it was pretty desperate DEM) and sometimes their stories/issues were just too overblown and clogged things up rather than enriched proceedings.

Hope Moff isn't planning similar thing with Amy ie giving her godlike status if only temporarily. For now surely the point with her is that she doesn't know what she wants, and she doesn't necessarily know how she should deal with the Doctor coming back - her believability comes thru this well enough imo and she's as solid/foreground as I prefer a companion to be.

The problem is, it's as if Moffat just couldn't be bothered to fill in the rest. He left it as a structure, a skeleton. Between the points of her character development across the series, she just wanders around spouting off one-liners, not seeming particularly engaged with her surroundings. So while the structure is there, the actual character isn't.

I can see the first part, that she's just a skeleton, but I actually don't mind if a character is a cipher. It's the latter part -- "not seeming particularly engaged with her surroundings" -- that's wearing thin on me. In small doses, Amy as an obvious plolt device, with the zinging and the whatnot, is fine, but if it carries on too long, she just becomes this disengaged free-floating Hand of the Writer creature -- too unintentionally meta, I think. At the very least, I'd like a change of pace.

I'm guessing that since Amy was dissapeared for most of this episode, presumably to give Karen Gillian some time off, there will be much more Amy next episode and much less of the Doctor. It's a shame if this is the way they are handling breaks for the actors because I really enjoyed "Blink" and "Love and Monsters".

I read elsewhere this wasn't actually the Amy-light episode (even though she wasn't in it as much as she could have been), there's one of those coming up later. Also read that there isn't going to be a Doctor-light one, which is a shame, because Turn Left did excellent things with Donna, and we could maybe do with an Amy-centric one to do similar.

think Amy's Choice did that to a fair extent - only companion to get into an episode title after all.

i liked the novelty of the Doctor taking a second TARDIS trip within the episode and with a passenger.

Am I the only one who thinks that Ambrosia or whatever the boy's mum's name is will be the one to kill the Silurian? Her weapons gathering moment with the Doctor felt like a signpost, plus the fact that Silurans have taken her husband and her son...I get the feeling she's gonna blow her top. Not that any if them except the boy were terribly interesting to begin with.

Re Amy: my biggest problem with her is she is either a) glib or b) flirtatious. Alone in the forest with the weeping angels was as close as she came to being a sympathetic character to me. But I don't think it's the fault of the actor... She does well with what she's given, I just think it's kind if crap to have writers that are some how afraid or not interested enough in her to make her smart and exciting. They're too worried abt scaring the kids to care, I guess. But they're bloody good at that so I guess Amy is the tradeoff?

she's pretty smart for a kissogram tbh

Lol

Amy's Choice told us little about her though because it was a dream, except she realised she loved Rory then this week she was all "we're still together in 10 years, wtf?" again.

only companion to get into an episode title after all

Er, Rose got into Rose.

Am I the only one who thinks that Ambrosia or whatever the boy's mum's name is will be the one to kill the Silurian?

Yeah, I thought this was signposted too, but so much that it's unlikely to be the actual end result, it'd just feel a bit obvious now.

Am I the only one who thinks that Ambrosia or whatever the boy's mum's name is will be the one to kill the Silurian?

Her name was Ambrose, which really annoyed me, because that is a man's name. Yes, that was the thing that annoyed me.

ambROSE do you see etc etc etc

To be honest, can't see how there was anything important in that deleted scene that we didn't already know--the Doctor's already said 'Time isn't fixed'. Is there something I'm missing? (It would help if they'd just show the bloody scene, rather than 7-second bits of it intercut with crew waffling on)

Ambrose *is* a dumb name. Unless you are Ambrose Bierce.

ILX disagrees - maybe due to existence of onetime British poster Ambrose.

Oops... meant dumb name for girl.

Realised a massive fuck up in last night's - they start drilling because of the blue grass, which is caused by the Silurians drilling upwards. Except the Silurians don't start drilling until after the humans have, because it's that that wakes them up. Oops.

It's not necessarily a fuck-up. That's exactly the sort of thing that causes Matt Smith's Doctor to start smacking his head and going "gah why didn't I think of that before?!" though.

^^^^winning screen name.

Agreed - but geologists digging only to find a life form they're not expecting makes them slightly less culpable than driller-uppers who are coveting the surface knowing full well what/who is up there.

Something that bugged me about future Romy waving at them was that I thought there was going to be a twist that the people waving were actually Ambrose and someone else, esp. since the jacket that Ambrose was wearing looked like something an older Amy would wear.

Romy

ugh please don't do this

It is clever and you hate fun.

wld endorse Mira Sorvino as new additional companion (and then they lez up)

Ambrose *is* a dumb name.

I just called her "Welsh Felicia Day" because that's who she looked like.

It is clever and you hate fun.

works better than Jedward at least

Nothing works better than Jedward.

Samanda > Jedward

it's a shame Rosicky never took off

http://idoitforfootball.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/rosicky.jpg

I feel like posting the Jedward commercial but that would probably result in a sb.

"There will be no battle here today" - McCoy ref?

Decent episode. As usual in this season, definitely fun when plot is moving too fast for most of the characters to keep up. As said above, kid nightmare stuff = A+ execution. Don't get the Amy hate at all, frankly, (and Donna was/is probably my favorite companion of the new series, I don't see the conflict - I mean every companion was at least a little sassy), and I think she's already got a ton of background info/character development - we'll probably see even more as this series ends. And we don't even know if she's coming back next year or not (at least, I don't, so don't tell me).

BBC ethnicity conspiracy junkies ahoy today, can't refuse Meera Syal a shot in the TARDIS.

I really like the quieter Who episodes, the ones with less running around and yelling and dramatic music, so "Amy's Choice" worked really well for me. The strength of this new doctor is that he can embody a subtlety and dry humour I don't think the last guy was capable of. This last episode was very good though. Not too too much action, I thought.

The Meera Syal thing was about the small-ish Who fan faction (certainly smaller than Season 6B hypothesis, or Eighth Doctor is not canon) who believe that the BBC have an agenda to place ethnic minorities in positions of power wherever possible - it started with Hannah Barbera in Battlefield then was a consistent gripe throughout the RTD era (at times even stronger than the GAY AGENDAR clamour, although it's part of the same noise to me TBH).

She gets told no to coming into the TARDIS by the Doctor who looks REALLY angry about the idea of her coming in at one point, but eventually concedes. I thought this would have kicked off the conspiracy brigade, but the only people bothered about it seem to be RTD fans going SEE IT'S NOT JUST HIM HOOT!

(For your reference, Meera Syal is a famous British comedy actress - which is probably why she gets so may joeks and gets to be funny - and would have been considered Stunt Casting if this was the JNT era.)

See, that's just idiotic. Kind of shows a lack of understanding about the BBC in not acknowledging they'd use some of their biggest in-house stars, who happen to be from ethnic minorities - if anything, the producers are only guilty of using award-winning actors whenever possible, whether the actor is Sophie Okonedo or Toby Jones. Also LOL at complaining about Syal and Nina Wadia playing Asian doctors/scientists - like there are NONE OF THESE in Britain.

I was one of the people going YUSSSSSSSS whenever RTD went gayagendar because SCIENCE FICTION IS CAMP AS FUCK ALREADY. I am also short with people who whine about deus ex machina, having watched what is essentially a god in a machine change faces/solve shit for 47 years. UNHHHHH.

Deus ex Machina is just bad writing more than anything else, there have hardly been any in this series, which has been much more creative as far as resolutions go. They were really blatant in the second half of the RTD era.

Then again I am still fuming from the Lost finale so my tolerance of such things is at an all-time low.

so in short, there are Doctor Who fans on the internet who are also racist dimwits

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2007/Sir_Patrick_Moore.jpg

who believe that the BBC have an agenda to place ethnic minorities in positions of power wherever possible

I'm sure they do. I don't see why this is a problem, though. (I know you're not saying you have a problem with it.)

"Positions of power" = eh not really. "Positions of visibility" yes.

I think "positions of power" means onscreen: doctors, prime ministers, scientists, etc.

There was that black President in the last Rusty story...

That seems a bit paranoid to me. I'd imagine the producers just select the most capable and interesting actors available with little regard for ethnicity (as regards Who). 80% of the show takes place in the future – they've got the ability to explain away any casting decisions they wish to make ('that's what it's like, then!') so I'd imagine they have a more free hand to cast according to whims and whiles than those shows aiming for contemporary or historical accuracy.

Making the future Queen of England a black woman was inspired. Take that racist fanboys and Daily Mail readers!