Feel a bit cheated of genuine shock and horror in last night’s Dr Who.

You may very well be aware that I am very harsh, but completely correct, in my contempt for Russell T Davies and all the despicable things he did to Dr Who whilst bringing it back.  I honestly think I could forgive Tony Blair for Iraq before I forgive RTD for Dr Who.  That’s how I feel about it.  However, this is not a snidey blog to go over once more a list of every failing I feel the show has, nor do I want to get an argument going about whether the old one or new one is the best or anything like that.

I want to complain about how I have been cheated out of an OMG moment that I should have had.

I naively thought that when Moffat took over he would revolutionise the show and innovate it and improve it and make it what it could (and I feel should) be.  I don’t really know what that is, if I am honest, but I know it isn’t anything like RTD Dr Who at all.  So it was quite a disappointment to me to find out that it is still like RTD Dr Who just occasionally better written, a bit funnier and finally filmed by people who understand where to put a camera and the narrative of editing.  I was despondent about this because it was the 4th disappointment I have faced with Dr Who:-They’ve cancelled it: BOO!
They are bringing it back: YAY! 
It’s an American TV movie and he’s half human now: BOO! 
They are bringing it back and RTD is writing it: YAY!
They’ve brought it back and RTD has written it: BOO!
RTD is leaving and Moffat is taking over: YAY!
It’s just the same as before and now he’s a child: BOO!

I was bemoaning the fact that I don’t like it and trying to come up with brilliant ways they could improve it and my friend pointed something out that genuinely upset me.  He pointed out that it will never improve or change or get any better because everyone already thinks it’s brilliant. 

I, however, believe that it has taken them three goes to, at best, achieve mediocrity,

That’s fine though, I have come to terms with that and I have moved on. It took a while, but I really have overcome with this.  It will never be the show I want it to be and it will never be the show I loved.  I have accepted I will in all likelihood never see another episode of Dr Who and then run around punching my fist in the air overjoyed at enjoying it like I used to.  I am fine with that, really.

The point I am getting to in a round about way is that whilst Moffat’s series hasn’t been completely shit like RTD’s ones, it hasn’t really upped it’s game like I hoped it would and it still feels like all the bullshit RTD put into place is mostly still there.  It’s still the shit RTD Dr Who, just done slightly better (but not actually well) and because of this I expect the worse from everything as nothing has yet happened to make me feel it will be any different. 

But it appears last night was meant to change that…

Last night Rory died.  I like Rory and he died.  This should have been shocking, unexpected and very sad, but it wasn’t, because RTD has cried wolf too many times in the past.  In all the RTD Dr Whos no-one ever died and stayed dead, no one ever got banished and didn’t come back.  Rose, The Daleks, The Cybermen, The Master, Mickey, Catherine Tate’s Memory all a testament to either lazy writing or contempt for the audience, legitimacy of drama and plausibility.  And I am not just saying that because I couldn’t stand the characters of Rose, Mickey or Donna and looked forward to them dying and never coming back, no.  It completely undermines any drama or tension if you know no one is really in any peril and even if they die they will come back.  I mean, how many times are last of the Daleks going to be eradicated and wiped out completely only to be seen again a fortnight later?  It’s not just RTD Who to be fair, it has happened in proper Who as well.  Over the years Only Fools and Horses is probably the only thing to have been needlessly and improbably brought back more times than the Master.  However, RTD brought him back twice with no good reason or explanation so he is still at fault.

Last night Rory died and rather than be sad or interested in this development, my first thought over this well performed and appropriately pitched death scene was “Christ, you’re milking this, aren’t you?  He’ll be back in the last episode, get on with it”.  And that was how I felt.  I felt like it was a cheap trick to fob us off with another death of assistant just to add some drama to excuse none being present in the preceding Silurian episodes that would then ultimately fold in on itself and prove to be false drama in the final two-parter of the series where everyone gets to come back for one last hurrah before everything is made alright and everyone lives happily ever after.

Then everyone started tweeting and blogging about how sad and shocked they were that Rory had died.  And that got me confused and the thought started creeping in: “Hang on, is Rory actually dead dead?  No one is EVER dead dead in Dr Who.  Is this like some out of left field attempt at doing stuff properly for a change?”I know It’s Moffat, as everyone keeps saying when I question anything suspect in season 5, as if that is some sort of catch all for excusing anything that happens. 

The problem is that it is still too much like RTD for me to think anything different is going to happen in resolution and, remember, three episodes in the fucking Daleks were back AGAIN.  But Rory might actually be really, properly dead.  And if he is, that is a really great, OMG moment and one I feel cheated out of due to Moffat’s insistence on keeping things the way RTD did it.  Moffat’s Who may have just killed a likeable character, erased him from history thus preventing Amy crying and looking out of windows the whole time and saving us a load of maudlin boredom a la RTD and all I could think was “What bullshit do we now have to endure to explain how he comes back at the end of the series?”

I don’t really have a conclusion to this other than Moffat’s tenure is occasionally doing things I want to happen like mostly being in space and having adventures with Aliens and no one crying about how lonely they are the WHOLE FUCKING TIME but because it’s still, basically, nothing more than a consistently slightly better version of RTD Who, it will always be a bit shit, because RTD Who was shit.  So when Moffat and his team do things that are interesting and unexpected they are wasted on an audience (or maybe it is just me) that expect a RTD denouement and resolution and, therefore, can’t really get the full benefit of what Moffat is trying to do (if indeed he is trying to do anything and I am not reading too much into Rory’s Death) if he insists on clinging to the wholly unsatisfying way RTD did things. But if he still wants to impress us with what he is doing with it then he needs to have the balls and the courage of his convictions to say “Fuck all that shit that happened before, this is how it is from now on.  I’m not gonna betray the new and loyal fanbase, but it will now be different, and it will better.  Because this is Dr Who and whatever stage you came to it, it’s the best show on TV and you deserve better”  And until he does that, things like Rory’s death will be a damp squid as Moffat hasn’t done nearly enough yet to show us he is different in a good way.

Lord Reith was once asked of his intentions for BBC content “Are you going to give the public what they want?” His reply was “Oh no, we’re going to give them something far better than that”. This is Dr Who, a beloved show, finally released from the clutches of an imbecile and we really should be getting something far better than that. 

We aren’t. 

So, I suppose what I am saying is that Rory, assuming he is actually dead (which I really struggle to believe), died in vain because the impetus on genuine drama & tragedy as well as comedy hasn’t been made clear enough in season 5 and the impact was almost totally softened because of this.

Still, I do like the way Matt Smith plays The Doctor.