Victory Of The Daleks

All right, I guess I'll revive this blog with an entry about Doctor Who, which is a subject I spend far too much time thinking about.

Three episodes of the new series of Doctor Who have aired, and while I have nothing but encomia for the first two episodes, written by Steven Moffat, "Victory Of The Daleks" is a precipitous drop into incoherence. I'm not going to rehash the plot holes (see gallifreybase.com if you're really interested), except to point out that although Moffat was reputed to be more soundly "plotty" than Russell T Davies, the reverse seems to be true with this episode. Alleged plot holes under Russell's regime usually turned out to be non-existent when you paid closer attention (admittedly this was, and still is, rendered difficult sometimes by the volume of Murray Gold's awful industrial-grade incidental music). There aren't actually any real "plot holes" in "Victory of the Daleks" - if you accept this episode's premises, nothing happens for no reason - but there is definitely some extravagant hand-waving going on. You have try hard not to think about certain things in order for even a basic thing like the time line of the episode to add up.

Everything we've been led to believe about Moffat would suggest that he could have thought up much more coherent and elegant solutions to the various plot issues of this episode. We learned from Russell's "The Writer's Tale" that he heavily rewrote almost every script. Gatiss' scripts in the past have been serviceable but not terribly original, provoking, or exciting. Presumably, any zip that his work possessed was imparted to it by Russell's rewrites. This time, zip is not in short supply, but I can't tell whether this script is a mess because Moffat took a hands-off approach - or because he didn't.

The larger question for me is, why is Moffat commissioning average writers like Mark Gatiss in the first place? Does he actually find his past work to be of such high quality, or does Gatiss' position in celebrity fan hierarchy have something to do with it? Is it actually so difficult to find five or six TV writers in the UK whose skills surpass mere competency? Sure, Gatiss is a fine comedian. His novel "Nightshade" was terrific, and the League of Gentlemen was a popular show with some merit (though I never found it that hilarious, and it certainly paved the way for the hideous idiot repetition of Little Britain with its "quirky character with a catchphrase" formula). In 2004, he would have seemed like a safe choice for a Doctor Who script, just as it would have seemed obvious to hire Paul Cornell and Steven Moffat, all three of them well-respected TV professionals and Doctor Who celebrity fans. But Gatiss' work doesn't have the slightly lunatic edge or the imagination that the best modern Doctor Who stories have. He's a journeyman. He's a placeholder. He's a guy to whom a producer would turn if he were on a tight deadline and had no chance of completing a script himself.

Coming up, we have Gareth Roberts - another guy who did some pretty good work a long time ago when Doctor Who was a series of novels, and who now writes workmanlike scripts. I've enjoyed all of his scripts so far in a mild way, just like Gatiss' - but now I'm wondering if those were watchable mainly because of Russell's input. And the example of "Victory of the Daleks" makes me think that Gareth's script might be a little bit subpar too. And then we have 2 episodes from the utterly dire Chris Chibnall, presumably another guy commissioned purely for his ability to turn in a professional-level script in time, rather than his ability to come up with an interesting story. I'll be interested to see whether, as with Gatiss and "Victory of the Daleks", these journeymen also fall short of the modest standard to which they previously attained.

So why is Moffat relying on B-level talent to such an extent in his first series? Was it just a matter of deadlines needing to be met? Or is it possible that he really finds their work inspiring? If so, does this mean we have years of unimaginative dreck to look forward to on this show?

It's amazing that these are the first negative thoughts I've had about this show since it came on the air five years ago. Maybe it's just because those new Daleks look TERRIBLE.