burntlikethesun:

faceoutofplace:

I just found this quote from Steven Moffat about how Commander Strax died in A Good Man Goes to War and was suddenly alive again in The Snowmen:

“I did kill off Strax, and I’ve barely explained how he comes back to life - that will be a DVD extra, for those who are being pedantic - but Dan Starkey is just so bloody hilarious, you’ve got to have more of him.”

It’s as if he doesn’t even care about good story-telling

Wondering how a character dies and comes back to life is “pedantic”? God damn it Moffat.

strax is the absolute worst he’s not funny, why did he not just stay dead

i actually liked him in his first ep, and i thought his death was well done. but then he was brought back (the extra scene was literally him waking up and jenny and vastra being like ‘LOL YOU’VE BEEN ASLEEP FOR 2 DAYS NBD’, and in the snowmen eleven said a friend ‘brought him back to life’??? what is continuity.

Source: faceoutofplace

lettersfromthemargins:

Dear Steven Moffat,

Mr. Moffat, I would like to know, has any one ever called you boring? Having seen your Doctor Who and Sherlock episodes, I would doubt that. You don’t seem to like boring very much Mr. Moffat. You do everything in your power to make sure that your shows aren’t “boring” You fill them with explosions, action, and even dinosaurs. And you make sure that none of your characters are asexual. Because, as far as you’re concerned, Sherlock Holmes cannot possibly be asexual. Because that would make him boring.

You see, Mr Moffat, it is not very fun to be called boring. To be called too boring to be on TV. Many people have called me many things. They have joked that I am a plant, they have told me that I cannot call myself queer, they have told me that my orientation is not real, that I just want attention, they have said many awful things to me. And so have you.

Perhaps to you it may seem inconsequential, but it matters to me. And it matters to a lot of asexuals too. Because where TV is concerned, we do not exist. So many people have never even learned that my sexuality even exists. The Doctor cannot be asexual because he has to be in love with Rose and River and Clara. And that love has to be sexual. Sherlock cannot be asexual because…because it would be boring. Boring.

Well, Mr. Moffat, I am not boring. I live the same kind of exciting life as anyone else. And if it’s ~relationship tension~ you want, I have that in spades. I have relationship troubles. I spend hours worrying about the dissonance in my romantic and sexual orientation. I waste my nights worrying about whether the person I love, loves me back. I fret about my family and friends. I have just as much relationship tension as any detective.

There are many things about you, Mr. Moffat, that annoy me. Your sexism, your poor writing, your queerbaiting, your homophobia. But what finally made me stop watching your shows was when you told me I was boring. Doctor Who has meant a lot to me, but I cannot enjoy the show until I know the Doctor is no longer in your hands.

Mr. Moffat, you are a well known man. Your words carry weight and you can hurt people. You have hurt me Mr. Moffat. And you have hurt many other people with many of your words.

I am sorry that you are as ignorant as you are. And I eagerly await your departure from Doctor Who.

With much animosity,

-Mattie.

From: http://aceadventurer.tumblr.com/

A Valediction Forbidding Moffat

uncleoakenshield:

In response and elaboration to this post which critiqued Moffat and his handling of Doctor Who - for all of you who disagree with it, and continue to idolise Moffat, here is a much more general overview of why you really shouldn’t, with illustrative evidence from Doctor Who and Sherlock.

Read More

lauraxtennant:

grrr what really pisses me off is that people think that just because we criticise Moffat’s writing, we must idolise RTD. No. NO. There was lots wrong with RTD! I found certain things he has said/written repulsive. But he is not the showrunner any more. Yes, we have to still be aware of the things he did that were problematic, but it makes far more sense to put effort into critiquing the guy in charge currently, in the hopes that things can change. And for all the shitty things RTD did or said, Moffat is actually far worse, ok. He is. And the problems in his writing have been around since the beginning, not just recently, so people who say that he was such a good writer s1-5 and that it’s only recently that he’s been crap can stfu.

man I know I’m preaching to the choir here but it just really bugs me 

Warning: maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaajor geekery ahead!! A slightly closer look at Doctor Who ratings

kilodalton:

OK so I like math. Although I’m not a statistician, I am pretty good with math (which is lucky for anyone in the USA haha bc in a few short months I will be using said math to prepare intravenous drug compounds for hospitalized patients… tl;dr if I sucked at this, it would suck WAAAY worse to be you bwahahah XD)


ANYWAY! It should not have escaped anyone’s attention that Doctor Who ratings appear to be teetering a bit. Some people think “eh, it’s not a big deal” while some think that this is dangerous. I’m one of the latter group. And because I have a huge-ass assignment due tomorrow that I don’t feel like doing right now, I thought I’d explain why. (For simplicity’s sake, there are no Xmas specials or 2009 specials included in this data - just final BARB ratings from 2005-present).


OK first off, if you compare the OVERALL numbers from s1-s7, although s7 (in red) looks like it’s a bit low, there doesn’t seem to be much difference … right? Right???? And, truth be told, the only ~statistically significant~ differences (eg, where s7 really comparatively sucks balls) are when it’s directly compared to s1. But … this chart is a colorful mess. A colorful MEANINGLESS mess, because all I’m showing you is a bunch of lines without analysis. Six would probably proudly wear this chart as a coat it’s so fugly. Anyway, this is usually the data people are looking at when they glance at the ratings and shrug it off as being “not all that different.” This is not accurate.

image

So let’s clean it up a bit!!! To simplify things, I’m gonna compare apples to apples. All RTD-era episodes are accounted for by the blue line (“You said BLUE!!” … “I said NOT blue!!!”), the beginning of the Moffat era (s5-6) is the green line, and s7 is the red line. NOW things start to look interesting!!

OK this is not a calculus class but I hope this shows why math is kind of cool if you’re a total fandom nerd and you want to prove other fandom nerds wrong XD. Look at the pretty lines and numbers!!! Here’s what they mean: see the dotted lines with the equations? Those are ~trendlines~ for the graph. Basically what that means is it tells you, on average, where the hell your data is going. See the equations? Those tell you how fast viewers are flocking to your show (or, alternatively, turning it off bc it sucks and going to read fanfic or something lol idk). And see the (sorrysorry tiny font I knowww) “R^2” value? That tells you if you can trust your trends or not (lol @ those evil, untrustworthy trend bitches). The closer to “1” the better, and these are all pretty freaking close to one which means the trends are pretty strong. (So anyone who tries to respond and say it’s meaningless - look at the R^2 value and hush lol).

So what does this mean? Again this isn’t a calculus class so I’ll skip the lecture on how to calculate derivatives and try not to make this too boring (BUT CALCULUS IS SUPER COOL AND YOU SHOULD LOVE IT GUYZ), but essentially the first number (x^2) is saying “this is how fast viewers are coming/going”.

And this is where the RTD era is strong, s5-6 are a bit weaker, and s7 is in trouble. For the RTD era, the first number shows that yeah viewers were coming and going - but that there was a general trend back up. For s5-6, there are fewer people coming and going. And for s7, the number is negative —- that means there is a trend of people leaving. How reliable is this? Well back to the R-squared thingy I was telling you about - it’s pretty freaking close to 1, so the trend is pretty tight.

image

One of the big weaknesses here is that premieres and season finales tend to have more viewers, so in this next graph, I simply removed the premieres and finales (which meant I had to remove mainly s6-7 episodes from the data pool bc of the split season). Taking away those premiere/finale bumps in viewership looks even worse for s7 - the number of viewers leaving is even MORE negative now!!!! And s5-6 has a much flatter line too … viewers were pretty stagnant. Again, the RTD era had some swings, but at the end of the day, viewers were coming home. That’s not happening for the past few years, especially this year.

image

So what can we make out of all of this? Tl;dr, the numbers aren’t good. And they’re getting not-gooder by the season.

(AND CALCULUS ROCKS AND YOU SHOULD TOTALLY LOVE IT!!)

Under Moffat’s watch the Doctor has morphed from an alien who loves humans and feels their pain and experiences love and desire and empathy to a stunted, child-like and extremely bloody irritating space-goon who flaps about like an injured moth when other people’s emotions are making him uncomfortable. And makes sexist jokes about how women are scary. And wants his married companions to sleep in bunk beds. And can save human lives but does not seem to understand human feelings. Who would travel with this man? He might be zany and charming and have nice boots, but he is fundamentally cold and unrelatable.
x (via draculemihawks)

hardlyalec:

finalowen:

With the return of Madame Vastra this week, we really should praise the author who had the brilliant idea to create a lesbian Silurian who’s friendly with the Doctor.

… No, no, I don’t mean Steven Moffat, I mean Paul Cornell, who did the idea 14 years before Moffat. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sanki

#I still like Vastra as a character #But it really is funny how often Moffat’s ideas seem to come from the authors he praises in DWM. #Empty Child and The Holy Terror anyone?

(via andrastesgrace)

Source: finalowen

Why Resetting Time is Annoying and Bad Writing

brilliantfantasticgeronimo:

everyonehatesstrudel:

In last night’s episode of Doctor Who, The Doctor managed to save the day by resetting time and making sure the episode never happened. Hooray! Or, not really. Because resetting time isn’t just a way to make sure everybody lives and everything becomes okay; its a way to make sure there was no point watching the episode at all. 

In this episode, Clara learnt the Doctor’s name, discovered the inside of the TARDIS, and learnt about herself and her past (and future) incarnations. I was relieved because maybe with this knowledge, Clara would slap the Doctor and tell him to treat her as a human being, and not as a mystery. Clara would finally have the same information as the Doctor. They would be closer, and more equal in their relationship as the Doctor wouldn’t be holding this extra information about her from Clara. But Alas, the day was saved and Clara lost any new information and relationship growth we momentary gained from the episode. In short, this episode was a complete waste of time. And I was beginning to enjoy it too. 

This hasn’t been the only time its happened in Doctor Who. In the New Series here is when the universe being reset has been a plot resolution (please tell me if I’ve missed any):

  • Last of the Time Lords
  • Turn Left
  • The Big Bang
  • The Girl Who Waited
  • Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

The technique can be effective once or twice. But 5 times? Its happened once every series in Moffat’s reign! But there is a difference between Last of the Time Lords and Turn Left and the  resetting episodes in Moffat’s reign: the main characters remember what happened.  

Basically, they keep their character development. Martha learns thats she’s fantastic in her own right, the Doctor remembers that he is once again Alone in the Universe as the Master refuses to regenerate. In Turn Left, Donna remembers that she is special, she is capable, she remembers Rose. I’m still not 100% clear if Amy remembers anything that happened in series 5, even if the Doctor does, apart from the Doctor himself. The Amy that gained character development in The Girl Who Waited, Old! Amy, is murdered, so Young!Amy can continue being young, hot and a damsel in distress who relies wholeheartedly on the Doctor.  

Its become a lazy cop-out for the writers on Doctor Who. It ties all the loose ends up into a neat little bow, all plot holes never existed. Brilliant, don’t have to worry about annoying things like character development, relationships, new information. Screw any ramifications, screw the aftermath of the episode. The Characters have forgotten it! It never even happened! They can stay the two dimensional  cardboard cut-outs they were at the beginning!  But if this continues, the audience won’t care. Why should they? No point in rewatching that episode - it didn’t happen, it won’t impact later episodes. What’s the point of this episode, nothing changes. The characters, the relationships stay frozen in exactly how it was at the beginning. The audience feel dissatisfied. They think ‘I shouldn’t have bothered’. They think ‘whats the point’ 

There should always be a point for the episode, other than ‘its a cool idea’. It should develop characters, bring about confrontations that are necessary for the character arcs.  It shouldn’t make the audience feel like they saw some cool things, it was fun, but in the end it didn’t even matter as it won’t change anything.

Overall, there was no point to The Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, and if this keeps on happening, there will be no point in watching Doctor Who for the reasons I enjoyed it in the first place -  the Characters. Writers, I beg you to thing about the how the characters change, develop and grow before you think of the clever episode titles.  Flashy sets, clever ideas and dazzling situations will only get you so far, if the characters stay the same, it will just make watching the show an -albeit fun - waste of time. 

I’m so over the time-resets. There were 2030498320894 ways the plot in JttCoT could’ve been resolved that would’ve been more satisfying and that enabled the doctor and clara to keep their memories. If they had it would’ve helped their relationship grow stronger for the next episodes too. But nope, we are still stuck with wibley wobly timey wimey holey plottey.

it’s innevitable we’ll get time resets every now and then since it’s a show about time travel, but c’mon man, if you abuse it and leave it with no consecuences it’s becomes as bad as saying “it was all dream!”.

Your list is missing the s6 finale lol. Jfc s5-s6 have the same exact resolution. TWoRS makes me even angrier for how it treats the Ponds (let’s have alt!Amy KILL SOMEONE (!!!!) and not have any more thouhts about it ever again (!!!!)), at last TBB2 was sort of fun. If series 7 ends with a time reset or a time loop as to explain everything I am gonna-

Source: everyonehatesstrudel

inloversmeeting: daguchna: inloversmeeting: sometimes I wonder if moffat realises that the people who watch doctor who are human beings who are hurt by his sexism, racism, heterosexism, and general bigotry Sorry, but I couldn’t resist to reblog. Sexism? Racism? Bigotry? HETEROSEXISM (lol, I see that Tumblr fighters invented new -ism)? Lol, where? Stop blaming him for things that don’t exist or exist only in your heads, okay? I see posts blaming all DW writers (even Classic ones) for these “issues” and it’s just getting ridiculous. You can hate me, but in my opinion these things are only excuses to blame a writer for things that some people can’t accept. Moffat is not sexist. Moffat is not racist. Moffat is not heterosexist. Moffat is not a bigot. Moffat is just a bad writer sometimes and only fandom is looking for all -isms in his run. Thank you very much. I’m now waiting for your hatemail :P right okay so either you are speaking from a position of privilege or you have internalised all kinds of isms hooray!  probably a combination of the two. don’t apologise when you are clearly not sorry. let’s see he’s a misogynistic asswipe who reduces the women in his shows (not just dw but also in sherlock - irene adler is a prime example there) to plot devices and damsels in distress, and is openly disparaging about women. his racism is evident first of all in his overwhelmingly white cast (which has been an issue since the reboot and likely since the start of the show but has gotten worse in moffat’s run in comparison to rtd’s) not to mention his placement of poc as antagonists - or in melody’s case, going from a cute little innocent white girl to a rebellious and violent black teenager. heterosexism is a thing.  google next time. moffat consistently writes “queer” characters into heterosexual little boxes and then claims to be running a progressive show.  he actually said that “there is a huge lack of respect for anything male” which underlines his lack of understanding of the world and his own male privilege (as well as his white and cis and straight privilege).  there’s a whole lot more where that came from. oppression actually does exist.  it is something that affects billions of people in a variety of ways ranging from being bullied at school to being denied jobs and health care to being raped and murdered. grow up and educate yourself.  nobody needs or wants your inane and ignorant opinions.
View Separately

inloversmeeting:

daguchna:

inloversmeeting:

sometimes I wonder if moffat realises that the people who watch doctor who are human beings who are hurt by his sexism, racism, heterosexism, and general bigotry

Sorry, but I couldn’t resist to reblog.

Sexism? Racism? Bigotry? HETEROSEXISM (lol, I see that Tumblr fighters invented new -ism)? Lol, where? Stop blaming him for things that don’t exist or exist only in your heads, okay? I see posts blaming all DW writers (even Classic ones) for these “issues” and it’s just getting ridiculous. You can hate me, but in my opinion these things are only excuses to blame a writer for things that some people can’t accept.

Moffat is not sexist. Moffat is not racist. Moffat is not heterosexist. Moffat is not a bigot. Moffat is just a bad writer sometimes and only fandom is looking for all -isms in his run.

Thank you very much. I’m now waiting for your hatemail :P

right okay so either you are speaking from a position of privilege or you have internalised all kinds of isms hooray!  probably a combination of the two.

don’t apologise when you are clearly not sorry.

let’s see he’s a misogynistic asswipe who reduces the women in his shows (not just dw but also in sherlock - irene adler is a prime example there) to plot devices and damsels in distress, and is openly disparaging about women.

his racism is evident first of all in his overwhelmingly white cast (which has been an issue since the reboot and likely since the start of the show but has gotten worse in moffat’s run in comparison to rtd’s) not to mention his placement of poc as antagonists - or in melody’s case, going from a cute little innocent white girl to a rebellious and violent black teenager.

heterosexism is a thing.  google next time.

moffat consistently writes “queer” characters into heterosexual little boxes and then claims to be running a progressive show.  he actually said that “there is a huge lack of respect for anything male” which underlines his lack of understanding of the world and his own male privilege (as well as his white and cis and straight privilege).  there’s a whole lot more where that came from.

oppression actually does exist.  it is something that affects billions of people in a variety of ways ranging from being bullied at school to being denied jobs and health care to being raped and murdered.

grow up and educate yourself.  nobody needs or wants your inane and ignorant opinions.

Source: confessionsofacompanion