Well, remember that 50th special I hated so much? (see my 50 things wrong with the 50th special post here) After watching this Christmas Special I now look back on the 50th special fondly. I'm serious. At least it had John Hurt and Billie Piper and Ten - wonderful Ten. They made that episode bearable. And let's not forget the Stewart at the head of UNIT who - next to the characters we had in the 50th is so mature and real it's heartbreaking to think about. No, in this Christmas Special we had none of that. All we had was Eleven and Clara trying to "tie up" all the loose ends Moffat has left over the years since his first episode as show-runner: The Eleventh Hour.
While in the 50th special Moffat was looking back (and wreaking havoc) on 50 years of the show, and RTD's masterfully written and mysterious Time War, in this Christmas special he was looking back (and wreaking havoc) on his own time as show runner and the result made me want to headdesk repeatedly. I don't even have it in me to be disappointed anymore. There's just no point in the show anymore with Moffat at the helm.
And I'm tired of people saying that those who complaining just "don't get" or "aren't paying attention" or whatever. The show isn't getting "complicated" - it's just getting messy and nonsensical. you can try to explain it away all you want, but the bottom line is that the writing is lazy and has no internal logic, even within a single episode, anymore.
The eighth season isn't going to be saved by Capaldi, because Moffat is still going to be the show-runner, that's what this episode has taught me. I really can't give details without SPOILERS though, so don't read anymore unless you've seen it or don't care about spoilers.
You have been warned.
SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON
Ok, where to begin. First of all, the Doctor being Clara's pretend boyfriend for Christmas. It's completely unnecessary, very stupid, just juvenile. I'm not sure why Moffat thought the whole Christmas dinner - need to cook turkey sub-plot would be at all amusing. It wasn't. But that wasn't the worst of it.
Someone please explain to me why I had to put up with the stupid nude references, jokes, digs, reminders every five seconds. This is one of the clearest examples of the way this show is being dumbed down before our eyes. It was painful to put up with.
But before you have time to be angry at this you get Tasha Lem - the head of the church that requires people to be nude and so on. Suddenly, even though the Doctor hasn't had good experiences with them (see Madam Kovarian and the Silence) he's all happy to see them and friends with this Tasha Lem person, who is, by the way a bad rewrite of River Song, proving once again that Moffat knows how to write only one woman (and not a very believable one at that).
This episode had a lot of monsters that only existed so they could be further stripped of their frightening qualities and some new characters and a town that we were supposed to care about without being given any reason to care. Also the crack in time showed up... again, only to act as a way of bringing back the Time Lords and to create this pointless non-dilemma where the doctor has to worry about either bringing them back and starting a new time war or keeping them locked up in there and... living in this town for the rest of his days so he can shoot lone Cybermen that show up occasionally... because the people there can't be bothered to figure out how to do that themselves and must rely on the doctor to do it forever and ever and ever.
Moffat brought back literally everything that he's introduced to Who in the past few years, from Amy Pond to fishfingers and custard, to the Weeping Angels, to the silence and the crack in the wall. It was all in there. But somehow, he forgot to squeeze in a little heart, a little characterization, a little consequence. Nothing on this show means anything anymore.
The weeping angels touched Clara but she stayed put. Why? Why were they even there for those five seconds in the first place? The Doctor suddenly out of the blue knew that he was on his last life and had run out of regenerations, but we all knew the Time Lords were sitting in the crack in the wall to conveniently give him a new set, so what was the point of that whole plotline? Spaceships of all the known spacefaring races were camped outside the planet waiting to shoot and the Doctor had to literally waste away what remained of his life protecting this town from them only to in the end destroy them with a couple of huge bursts/explosions of his regeneration energy. If it was that easy, and the Time Lords were waiting for the Doctor on the other side of the crack this whole time, why didn't he just make some kind of deal with them? More to the point why didn't he just bring them back and watch them destroy all those spaceships with bursts of their own regeneration energy?
I should stop because the episode makes less and less sense the more I write.
The bottom line is that this episode wasn't just a mess, it was a mess of very arbitrary things that had no meaning or consequence at all for the viewers or the characters. While I was watching it I felt like I was in detention or something. I didn't fall asleep like I did with some of the stand alones in season 7, but it was a painful process.
And the regeneration? Like I said, I was looking forward to that. I had hoped that the change from Matt Smith to Capaldi might herald a new age for Who. And then we had the twelfth Doctor's first line.
He has new kidneys apparently.
*headdesk*
Capaldi could be the best actor in the world, but he can't save this mess. The writing is what it comes down to and the writing is terrible. I fear that with one more year at the head Moffat could sink this ship and bring Who to another cancellation, another long, long hiatus.
Someone please fire Moffat now. Please.
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