rampancy: Even the infamous episode "Love and Monsters"? (Which I, for the record, thought was kinda cute.) :P
"Love and monsters" is one of the episodes of which I had seen just a few scenes, before I tried to truly watch the series. So, it contributed to my anti-Who prejudice.
But seeing it in its entirety, and in context (within the series' established tone and characters and all), well, yeah, I love that episode just as much as the others ! It's a cool episode as far as I'm concerned.
rampancy: Funnily enough, I actually
disliked them for the same reasons that you liked Moffat's writing -- an insanely convoluted plot relying on Deus Ex Machinas.
Let's split both. I adore overly convoluted plots (you know, the PK Dick's Doctor Futurity style). And I dislike Deus Ex Machinae. But I think that Deus Ex Machinae are a bit obligatory in Doctor Who (you cannot build up to terrible situation AND resolve them in under one hour without cheap childish tricks), and I rarely take the plots seriously enough to care. So, I'm used to that sort of flaws.
My position being : Deus ex Machina = flaw. Convoluted stories = qualities.
rampancy: I've never fully gotten where all of the rage has come from over this. We had plenty of heavy-handed socio-political messages in SF/F shows such as Star Trek (across TOS, TNG and DS9 to name a few), as well as Babylon 5 and Stargate: SG1.
It's the way it's done. Having glimpses of a future where homosexuality is not stigatzed at all is fine (heck, the kittens couple with the Father Ted guy in "Deadlock" was fantastic). But some stuff are just too in-your-face. Like, that "Flatline" episode, about street art being cool and people who don't respect street art being absolute bigotted racist moron with a lack of imagination that even shortcuts psychic papers... I mean street art
is cool (okay, there's street art and street art but whatever), and indeed cannot be reduced to vandalism, but still, the characters there were just huge caricatures. I do not like it when fiction "illustrates" a thesis through strawmen characters, pointing and begging for boos at the right places. It's cheap and cheapening, it's insulting, it's unfair to humans, and I'm not sure it helps. For me, it's not much different from, say, a reagan-era vigilante fiction with evil ghetto black drug dealer rapists supported by crypto-communist laywers who all get eradicated by a white ex-vietnam hero applying righteous capital punishment throughout the streets. It's the same "see, in that fiction that my party wrote,
these guys were
blatant bad guys, so, there is a lesson there". I become more and more intolerant to that sort of rhetorical device, whatever the ideology. And some Dr Who episodes look too much like humanist-sided "jack chick tracts".
That being said, I've been drifting away from fiction and more into documents and essays, for that specific reason. It's too easy to make your point through an invented world crafted around your own representation of reality.
But really, this is linked to the next point :
rampancy: I couldn't agree with you more on this. The Day of the Doctor was something I found absolutely insulting in that it basically invalidated one of the most compelling characteristics of modern Doctor Who. All of that character development over three actors and seven seasons, just gone. The Doctor was able to get his cake and eat it too.
Yes, and this have-cake-and-eat-too is sometimes at the service of an ideological message. Quite often "should we risk everything in order to uphold a kantian imperative (risk the crew to save spock) or should we soil our souls to maximise positive consequences (sacrifice spock for the crew)". It is a real philosphical problem, underlying many political, ideological polemics (although these are perverted by the subjective weight attributed to different outcomes : "should i sacrifice my comfort/symbol/landscape to potentially save a stranger life", etc). And this issue is shortcutted by the outcome decided by the writer. Because the "good answer" is defined in retrospect, through the outcome.
Like, if you don't murder that person, there's a 78% chance hat something bad will happen to these ten other people, and 22% chance that nothing bad will happen. What is the righteous response here ? Well, let's watch the end of the episode, and depending on whether the outcome turns out being the one that had most chances to be, or the one that had fewest chances to be, we'll know whose policy proponent was the good guy or the bad guy. And we'll remember the lesson for any other real life dilemma.
The lesson depending entirely on the writer's arbitrary decision. While in reality, the outcome (positive or negative) is independant from the question of whether it was the right thing to do or not.
There's a fine line between informative/educative/though-provoking, and straigztforward blatantly manipulative. And quite often, fictions such as Dr Who merrily hop above that line. It pretends to be clever or thoughtful, but actually skips the real dilemma and its actual stakes, for the sake of supporting one general stance. The recurring "keep the Doctor's hands clean by having grey characters do the dirty work, and have them chastized by the Doctor" plot device is typical of that. It doesn't really delve in the issue itself, it just kinda comforts a position without nuancing it. I see such cop outs as hypocritical ways to legitimise a moral stance without actually arguing in its favor - and
when it argues, it's too often through an overly caricatural exemple. It's less intelligent than it claims to be (cause there's
a lot of empty talks around such situations, within that series).
