I know everyone’s giddy to find out who she is, but whatever. I’m not invested in her because I don’t have a good reason to be. She’s literally the definition of someone who’s “just there”. She hasn’t done a single thing.
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I think the issue here though is that ‘lazy’ is obviously a subjective term - certainly in this context. Absolutely if you’re coming from a place of experience you are going to react differently to other viewers but as other people found the ‘ordinary people’ aspect to be an acceptable, in some cases very satisfactory, way of tying up the mystery then it’s good to know it has worked for some viewers. My wife was very disappointed by the conclusion with a ‘is that it’ on the mother’s reveal whereas I wasn’t bothered and found it narratively fine.
There was much else in the episode I don’t think bears a lot of scrutiny but I’m always wary of putting the issues on to the writing when I’m very aware that what I bring to the writing often has a huge influence on how I react to it and just because I don’t chime with something doesn’t mean someone else won’t.
I’d be fascinated to know, for example, how real life ‘foundlings’ felt about the reveal? Christel Dee is definitely someone I would want to hear from as she has already had a little article in DWM about her reaction to Ruby’s adoptive status being adopted herself.
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When Sutekh’s Dust of Death starts going around the world I am sure that a fair few folk thought of Infinity War right?
I think the production team missed a golden opportunity not to show just a wee clip of 14:
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I guess it could have been worse. Imagine if Ruby was from early 22nd century Earth. Her mum could have pointed at this sign…
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I wouldn’t have put it past Moffat to have considered making this the reason Melody changed her name…
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Agreed. The usual argument that an episode (or book) has lazy or bad writing always irks me because that’s such a subjective thing, and is usually the catch-all criticism when someone doesn’t like a story in question. Jane Austen is generally considered a masterclass in writing, but there are tons of folks who get no enjoyment out of her books and, to them, her writing could be considered “bad”.
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I do suffer from viewing Doctor Who academically sometimes rather than simply as a viewer, although from the incredibly divisive reaction this episode has produced, I think there’s some validity in that. Doctor Who, to me, has always aspired to be more than just a family show that’s on on Saturdays with big explosions; the writing, in my opinion, has always been a central part of those aspirations. The way it can tell much more mature stories than perhaps its set dressing would allow. Of course, it succeeds as often as it fails, but I always respect when I can see a writer or the show trying to surpass those boundaries and use the format to create something that transcends it. The excitement I felt from 73 Yards and Dot And Bubble was very real; to me, that’s what a new direction for Doctor Who looks like, because it’s taking some of our modern genre staples and applying them to the show that hasn’t seen them. Russell crashed Doctor Who into The Magnus Archives, the SCP Foundation AND Black Mirror, and not only that, he did it successfully. So to go back to RTD Business As Usual for the finale was just a bit of a crushing disappointment. My displeasure isn’t coming from the fact that the finale didn’t do enough for me; it’s the fact that, not an episode prior, RTD proved that his writing has developed and he can tell those stories (although I will also say that the director for those two eps also just crushed it entirely, and that when we changed directors for the finale, you really felt a reversion to like, very basic techniques) and yet he still can’t finish the thing.
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Well, no.
Jane Austen is an excellent writer but her books are difficult for people to read because her narrator speaks in the language and vernacular of her time. That can be a bit of a difficult approach for people who are more used to modern language. Same thing happens with Shakespeare. People dismissing these things as bad often comes from a lack of understanding or inability to see it performed live (in Shakespeare’s case.) It’s a fundamental disconnect between the consumer of art and the person who created it, but in the Austen example, it’s a gulf of years and the moving on of the language that I feel creates a lot of that disconnect.
Russell has no such excuse. And again, I am not just pulling this accusation out of my arse; in the same way that a contractor can come into your house, point at all the corners that were cut and go “You’ve had a cowboy in here mate”, I can watch this finale and see, with my eyes and experience of evidence, the places where narrative coherency has been sacrificed, either for the sake of moving the plot forward to where he thinks it needs to go, or to shoehorn in a specatcle scene to justify it to Disney. I’m not calling him lazy because I didn’t enjoy it - he is the writer. It is his job to write, and whether we like it or not, a lot of problems with Doctor Who start and finish with the words on the page.
Let’s talk about the whistle, because frankly the whistle is the biggest problem. See, you’ve got Sutekh in the TARDIS. His harbinger is in the TARDIS, and the TARDIS has been manipulated against The Doctor (what evidence do we see of this? Very little. Heck, we got more evidence of how the TARDIS felt about the Paradox Machine [although I imagine when you’ve built a whole shiny new set making it all crummy to show the corruption might have been a tall order]. But we need the TARDIS for the conclusion, because our conclusion is dragging a doggo on a leash through the Time Vortex!! (I 100% believe that this was one of the earliest ideas. See, that’s my issue, is that I think Russell has great ideas for scenes; he probably has them come to him in flashes like a lot of writers do, but then he has to write backwards to get to those scenes.) So we need a way to get Sutekh out of the TARDIS.
But of course, that might take a bit of thought. How do we have the Doctor puzzle that one out, eh? What cleverness might he use?
Oh, we just drop a random whistle out of the Memory TARDIS? And then that whistle controls the TARDIS perfectly at a distance? Oh, and that also switches on a laser-beam trap? OK then?..
See what I mean? That’s about as literal a deus-ex-machina as you can get, because we need to get to the Time Vortex, but it felt like Russell forgot that Sutekh has the TARDIS. Now, if you’d bothered to seed the whistle a couple of episodes ago, then suddenly, this is a narrative tying together, that has been thought out, and justifies the attention you pay to it. As it stands now, the whistle falling out of the ceiling of the TARDIS isn’t the Doctor’s cleverness solving the problem. It’s none of the Doctor’s traits solving the problem, actually. If that whistle hadn’t fallen out of the TARDIS ceiling, the climax of the finale would have been impossible. We’re supposed to buy a very sudden, rapid, plot critical development with no build-up, and we will buy it because it’s followed by ten minutes of breathless visual effects and bombastic music. It’s the RTD playbook, and yes, maybe it’s bad to call it lazy if its his technique, but I don’t think it’s over analytical to criticize the writing of a man who has written over 3/4 of the current run.
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I do think sometimes that the way fans can over-analyse the show is something we need to be very wary of (and I can be as guilty of that as the next person - I’m an English Lit graduate after all).
Yes, there is lots of Doctor Who which can work on many layers and there are excellent writers doing some very clever things. But, for me, the bottom line of Doctor Who is always what Terrance Dicks said. The main aim for many of the production teams was to get something on the TV so they didn’t have the show the test card.
Doctor Who has to be, first and foremost, a fun adventure in time and space. If every story was a 73 Yards or Dot and Bubble it wouldn’t be Doctor Who but likewise if every story was a grand overblown finale like Legend/Empire or Stolen Earth/Journey’s End or World Enough/Doctor Falls, it wouldn’t be Doctor Who either.
Doctor Who is all of these things and more.
And actually, I had a thought about the ‘that’ll do’ take you have on the end. I don’t agree with that. I fully believe that was always RTD’s plan and it wasn’t about him writing himself into a corner. If there was a problem (and I do think there was as I said further up) it was with what he did in between which strayed from his overall plan and some of that maybe more to do with him getting ideas like the snow and the hooded figure and running with them rather than thinking about whether they fitted with his original plan.
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You can dislike the episode if you want, but I think it’s a stretch to say RTD rushed it as the deadline was approaching, when he was the one who decided to come back, he had been away from Doctor Who for over 10 years, and then had a long time to think of this story, in fact he has said in interviews it’s something he’s been thinking about ever since he first saw Pyramids of Mars.
I just don’t think it’s helpful to take your negative opinions and conclude “this must be bad because he ran out of time and fudged something together”.
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That’s subjective. There are people who genuinely may not find her characterization or way of setting up stories “good”, just like there are people who don’t care for how Shakespeare writes—being able to watch his plays performed live will not instantly make someone like them. To you they may be excellent writers, but there are plenty of people who think the opposite.
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A little off-topic, though I will say that the two directors who really impressed me this season (and both were a revelation in different ways) were Ben Chessell and Dylan Holmes Williams. Both really brought something special to the table and I’d love to see either of them back in the director’s chair.
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Just because someone has been thinking of an idea for a very long time doesn’t mean they can deliver it in a completed fashion, and we all know that Doctor Who isn’t a stranger to scripts having to be very fast bodge jobs. It’s why The War Doctor exists at all.
I’m not concluding that he fudged something together because my opinions are negative, I’m concluding that he fudged a script together because the script feels fudged together. It’s also disingenous to think that just because somebody took the job and wanted it, that they’re incapable of also not meeting a deadline.
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The War Doctor is incredible, I wouldn’t call that bodged together at all!
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But it WAS. They couldn’t get Nine, they barely had any Doctors for the anniversary, Moffat had to throw something together to make sure we got anything at all. Moffat is a better writer than RTD, and I’ll say it with my whole chest, so the quality was good, but objectively, that script was hurled together in a massive rush to save the anniversary.
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I know it was literally a “rushed job” but it was genius. I think it turned out better than it would have if they had Nine back. Don’t get me wrong I love Eccleston but the reveal and the mystery and the idea of the War Doctor was even better.
And it’s proof that “done quickly” doesn’t mean bad, just as bad doesn’t mean done quickly.
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Genius is a strong word. It worked.
Like, clearly I’m not going to convince anybody of anything here, but I also sort of take issue with my points being rendered “subjective” when clearly I’m not the only one who has this issue with the way the finale played out. Toxic positivity can extend a little too far, and yes, Doctor Who can be everything and that’s fantastic, clap clap clap, but my criticisms are valid.
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Just shows that people can have vastly differing opinions on things, which is why it’s best to not jump to conclusions like “I don’t like this episode therefore it was lazy, or it’s because Disney did it, etc”
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Did I ever once say “I didn’t like this episode, therefore it was lazy?” You’re vastly misrepresenting my criticisms, in a way that kind of makes me want to call you lazy also.
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I do have to say, the “they didn’t explain the snow” thing is really annoying because there was an explanation in the story. Ruby’s infant memory + the desire for Ruby to find her birth mother = the creation of a moment in time so powerful and fragile that when Ruby is in a high emotional state it will bleed through to the present.
Is it an explanation that makes a ton of sense in universe? Not especially. However, it is an explanation and it thematically works for Ruby’s story. She’s special because she’s ordinary. Her birth mother is special because she’s ordinary. Think about some of the most iconic companions in the series: Ian, Barbara, Jamie, Jo, Sarah Jane, Rose, Donna. They are all, on paper, just ordinary people who get thrown into extraordinary circumstances and rise above them to prove that you don’t need to be a god-like being of indescribable power. You just need to be kind, strong, and brave, characteristics that Ruby has shown all season. Companions do not need to be more special than any other person on this blue ball we call our home, but they do need to prove themselves to be the best of us. This is a very common thread through the entire metaseries and I think that’s where this is leading us.
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