by Marcuse » Mon May 20, 2013 11:58 am
I hear you on that. I did enjoy the more coherent style of Davies in a way, but I feel like Moffat shares the joy of writing with the joy of viewing. I found Davies competent but there were times where I got really frustrated.
For example, the first couple of seasons (Eccleston and Tennant's first). Look at the locations, they were some combination of Earth (London), Earth orbit, Earth (Cardiff), Earth orbit, etc etc. With all of time and space to choose from, I found this to be unimaginative. Compare with the opening of Asylum of the Daleks which opens on Skaro. I like those kind of moments, even if some plotlines are a bit rushed.
Episodes like Midnight really showed off Davies' style and he wrote a great story there, but I found the comment on modern society to be a bit preachy in the end, and spent too much time the whole "people are the real monsters" thing for my liking.
My other bugbear with the series was repetition of certain phrases, such as "millions and billions of.." or "I'm so so sorry". These were obviously meant as a motif that characterised the Doctor, but I felt they began to be lazy fallbacks that the writers could use when something happens/needs to be amazing. Once you have heard something often enough it loses it's impact. Not that Moffat doesnt also do this, but less so.
Also, about the feel of the series. I agree that with Davies' series you felt like the companions did, discovering time and space without limits. That was probably the correct thing to do at the beginning of a new run of series, but I prefer Moffat's focus more on the Doctor.
In Davies' series the Doctor is presented as a sort of Godlike being with power and knowledge beyond our ken. He never does anything really wrong, and when he does he's stopped by companions (Eccleston's finale for example). This alters a bit towards the end (Waters of Mars etc) but for the majority of the time he's got very little depth in this respect.
Moffat's Doctor, by contrast, teeters on the edge of an abyss all the time. He has the same power, knowledge, and even judgement as Davies Doctor, but he isn't always right, he doesn't always do the best thing for his companions, and he seems to care a bit less when things go wrong. One of the catchphrases for the Moffat series has been "The Doctor lies". Which would never have been true for Rose, or Martha because they worshipped the Doctor.
Compare that devotion to the Doctor's speech in "Praise Him" when he willingly destroys Amy's faith in him by baldly stating the fairly selfish reasons why he brought her with him. As much as you could argue he's exaggerating for effect, there's a grain of truth there, something we never saw in Davies' Doctor.
I like Moffat's series because we get to see what happens to a 1000 year old being that has fought wars and struggled as the only member of his species. We get to see how much rage and hate he can have for his enemies, and how much it takes for him to hold that all back and still be the Doctor we all love. I like to see that mask slip once in a while because it is interesting character development and while I agree Moffat rushes some of the plot and doesn't build the reveals as much there is a lot to have fun with in his version of the Doctor.