Geekdom Commentary: Who

Well, gentle readers, I have finally broken down and decided to discuss my favorite Sci-fi series of all time; Doctor Who.

FYI there will be quite a few spoilers with this series of commentaries and I will probably offend many as I drive a truck through some of the most recent plot holes.


So I usually try to avoid such fan-loved works as Doctor Who, because I know that such works are so loved that they can very often be hard to discuss critically. I have been a fan of Doctor Who for most of my life. I would watch reruns of the original series on PBS. Then RTD started with the 9th Doctor which was shown on the Sci-fi Channel (now Syfy). And now I watch the 11th Doctor on BBC America. I have always loved the character of the Doctor, in all his incarnations. I've loved the relationships he has had with the companions and the various villains. My favorite companions will always be Donna, Sarah Jane and Capt. Jack Harkness.

But now I will probably upset my readers by stating: As much as I like the 11th Doctor, Rory and Amy Pond, I have a hard time with the new series. Now my problems don't come from it being slightly darker, that is well done and sometimes Moffat does a great job of adding a horror element to the show. No, my problem with the 11th Doctor all stems from Moffat's breaking with cannon.
I was always impressed at the ways in which various incarnations of the Doctor could be both simultaneously individuals and still continue to maintain established cannon points. For fans like me, that attention to detail was greatly appreciated. That is not to say that over the course of the last 50yrs everything has been perfect, but the writers at least attempted to keep track. Moffat seems much more focused on telling the stories he wants, and if cannon details don't work, he just ignores them.

For example, River Song. I have kind of a love/hate view of River Song. I appreciate the strong female character that Alex Kingston has created, and I enjoy parts of her relationship with the Doctor. But then she can regenerate, but is not a Gallifrayan. She is Amy and Rory's daughter, who has to have had at least 2 regenerations by the time we meet her as played by Alex Kingston; one that we see where she goes from Black twenty something to Alex Kingston, and one before that when she is a white child in 1969. They attempt to fix this by saying that she was genetically created and has both human and Gallifrayan DNA, but she is not related to the Doctor. It doesn't really make much sense. At times it feels as if Moffat wanted to do as much of a reboot of the Whoverse as he did with Sherlock. Taking characters and thought processes that he liked, and then ignoring what didn't work. That is a severe let down after RTD era where Davies managed to keep his continuity not only within the Whoverse itself but also across his other series Torchwood.

Speaking of Torchwood, there is a particular lack of Jack Harkness in the new series. It was especially noticeable in The Doctor and the Astronaut when The Doctor is sending out envelopes to those he trusts the most, and it is only his most recent companions and a woman who the Doctor has never previously trusted 100%. It felt forced and created the impression that the 11th Doctor didn't really connect with the rest of the cannon. If Moffat couldn't get Barrowman back as Captain Jack, I understand, but your telling me that the Doctor trusts River Song, a woman in prison for a murder she never explains, over Martha Jones, a woman whom he had previously trusted to save the entire planet and reverse a paradox? It is stuff like this that makes me uneasy about the 11th Doctor.