The last Doctor Who reaction post I did was for Listen, and y’all may have noticed I didn’t do one for the episode that followed, “Time Heist”. There’s a reason for that, one that pretty much bubbled right up to the fore with this past weekend’s episode, “The Caretaker”.
Which is to say, I’m starting to really not like this season of Who. Dara, Paul and I all watched “The Caretaker” last night, and none of us liked it. Dara calls out her reasons why over here. And to what she has to say, I’ll add this.
As many of you know, I came into Who fandom with the new series. I’d been half-assedly paying attention over Dara’s and Paul’s shoulders when they watched the classic-era episodes on our local public access station, but when the series revived in 2005, Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper made me sit up and take notice. And yeah, I’ll say it right out: I really liked the relationship chemistry between Nine and Rose AND Ten and Rose. I’m a romantic sucker. This is known.
But I’ll also note that just because I am a romantic sucker and I greatly enjoyed the love story with Rose, this does not mean I am incapable of appreciating Who in a non-romantic context. I have since gone back to enjoy quite a great number of the classic-era episodes, particularly in the eras of Three and Four, with nary a love story to be seen.
Let me emphasize this: I do not need the Doctor to be a love interest for him to be interesting to me.
But with all due respect to the considerable acting powers of Mr. Capaldi, y’know what I also don’t need him to be? A screaming asshole to everybody in sight. Here is a short list of things I am now really tired of in this season of Who so far:
One, the Doctor’s rampaging anti-soldier bigotry, which appears to have exploded from out of nowhere. I speculate that this may be a leftover from his experiences on Trenzalore, but I don’t know, because we haven’t been given any justification for it so far. Dara points out correctly that the Doctor does have a history of being contemptuous to the military, but for me as a viewer, it seems like it’s been ramped up to 11 in this series, and for no good reason at all. It can’t just be a reaction to Danny, either, because he was starting this pretty much right out of the gate. “Into the Dalek” had it too, and the Doctor specifically, sneeringly denied Journey Blue a chance to come with him in the TARDIS because she was a soldier.
Two, the constant derisive remarks about Clara’s appearance. I’ve counted at least one per episode, and this is starting to become seriously NOT OKAY. Yes. I get it. The Doctor isn’t Clara’s boyfriend! But he’s supposed to be her friend, and friends don’t say shit like that about each other.
Three, the Doctor yelling “SHUT UP” at everybody. This has grown really tiresome, and it’s presenting Twelve as an arrogant asshole without something to legitimately balance it out. It’s making the Doctor come across as not giving a damn about anybody else having a voice in what’s going on–and that’s another thing, this whole notion of the Doctor “not caring”. I don’t like this idea of Clara as his emergency backup conscience. The Doctor’s supposed to be a champion of humanity, and while sure, there’s some amusement value in the snark of him calling Earth the Planet of the Pudding-brains, if he keeps this up, you have to start wondering why he’s still bothering to do anything on humanity’s behalf. “Because Clara is making him do it” doesn’t cut it as an answer to that, either.
Trevor on the Doctor Who Podcast, which Dara and I follow, has been talking in recent episodes about how in this season, he’s just not finding the Doctor heroic, and he’s really having a hard time understanding why Clara or anybody would want to travel with him. And I’ve got to back Trev up on this.
Because right now, the Doctor I’m seeing is not a Doctor I would want to travel with. I don’t care if he’s got a time machine and can go anywhere in the cosmos. If he said shit to me like what he’s been saying to Clara, particularly this past episode’s line of “you explained me to him, but you haven’t explained him to me”, I’d tell him to stuff his sonic screwdriver where the suns don’t shine. Because that, that right there, encapsulates the problem in a nutshell. My immediate reaction to that line was “hey asshole, she doesn’t owe you an explanation for her love life!”
And I really do not want to be thinking of the Doctor as an asshole. It makes me sad and it makes me cranky all at once.
I don’t need the Doctor to be a romantic lead. But I do need him to be a hero.
I need him to be the Doctor.
Comments
13 responses to “Holding out for a hero”
After the wobbly first episode, I haven’t watched any of this season. The general sentiment has not been good and I’m waiting for reports that it’s somewhat watchable before actually doing it. I’m wondering if I should just delete them and wait for a new show runner.
Dara’s poised to make that same call, herself. 😐
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I wish it weren’t true… while I did enjoy the Christmas specials, and the 50th Anniversary episode was a serious tour-de-force… I think, oh so very sadly, that I left off watching the regular Who eps at the end of S4. Ten pissed me off the way he treated Rose(*), but he apologised, and did his best to make good on it… and I was okay with that. What I’ve read of the whole Amy-Rory-River timeline makes the BSG space opera look like light action, and Clara… yeah, no. Perhaps Jenna Jameson *chose* to leave the show because Moffat was being a prat? I dunno, but I know when a job ceases to be fun, it’s time for me to get the hell out…
Jenna Coleman is the actress who plays Clara, not Jenna Jameson. And we have no confirmation yet that Clara is leaving the series, as far as I know.
There certainly are a lot of rumours…
I’ve heard rumors, sure. But until the BBC actually up and says Clara’s leaving, rumors are exactly that.
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Yes. Yes. Yes.
I’m not an expert, but earlier doctors seemed to be opposed to warfare, but still saw soldiers as people. They were fiercely loyal to their companions. They were ill-mannered in many ways, but not disrespectful.
My son is (was?) a dedicated Whovian and I’ve been watching one episode out of three or four over his shoulder. It’s a weird premise and it’s sometimes hard to understand the story when you’re not following it closely. But I couldn’t fail to notice that Nine, Ten, and Eleven were passionate, dedicated, principled persons who were gentle and caring to their friends (with a hint of endangerment) and fearsome adversaries to their enemies (with a hint of mercifulness). In short, a unique breed of hero but unquestionably a hero.
This one? None of that.
How about whimsical, quirky, and infuriating then? Not much of that either. He feels like he’s just going through the motions, and he’s intolerable rather than infuriating, which isn’t really a good trait for a TV show leading character.
If I understood that scene correctly, they had to bring in Eleven to confirm that, yes, this one really is the Doctor. Frankly, I think Eleven was mistaken somehow.
Yeah–Dara as well as commenters on the Mary Sue have noted to me the Doctor’s past history of being contemptuous to the military. I grant that. This season, though, he just seems outright hateful, and that really seems un-Doctorish to me. It was particularly odd in “Into the Dalek”, where the soldiers in question were trying to hold out against the Daleks, and you’d think that the Doctor would have a touch more sympathy for that than Twelve showed. o.O
And yeah, the tail end of “Deep Breath” had Eleven calling Clara to confirm that yes, this is indeed Future Me.
Thank you for the confirmation. When my son was watching that, I first interpreted the scene as Eleven warning Clara about an imposter, but then I realized he was saying the opposite.
May I ask how you feel about *looks them up on the wiki* Vastra and her maid slash battle companion Jenny suddenly being married? I usually applaud shows defying heteronormativity, but in this case the relationship felt a little tacked-on. Maybe it’s just that I hadn’t followed their character arcs, but earlier they seemed more like sisters-in-arms than being romantically involved. It felt like visiting Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin with Modesty proudly showing off her wedding band.
(Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape, or form opposed to marriage outside the category that conservatives like to call “traditional”.)
Yeah, the whole point of Eleven’s phone call to her was to reassure her about the regeneration, pretty much. Also, I daresay, a sneaky way to get Matt Smith in there for a few minutes.
Vastra and Jenny being married doesn’t bother me in the slightest; it was obvious to me from the get-go that they were intended to be a romantic couple. I have other issues with them that have nothing to do with their being married and more that Moffat in general seems to have issues with portraying female characters, and Vastra and Jenny are no exception, even though I really want them to be awesome.
Well, that’s a relief, actually. It bothers me when I feel characters are being re-purposed for no good reason. In this case it seems I just missed the clues and that I should be careful about forming strong opinions about a show that I’m only half-following. 😉
Thanks!