why does steven moffat hate men? (spoilers from s6, warning)

before some of you go flying into full defense mode, i offer a well thought out explanation for my theory.

the first 2-parter that moffat wrote was for the 9th doctor. in it, the gas mask child almost takes over the world. who saves the day? not the doctor. the child's mother is able to love and talk the monster out of destroying the world. the hero was a woman.

for series 2, moffat wrote the girl in the fireplace, which introduced the who universe to madame de Pompadour, an intelligent, adventurous woman after the doctor's heart. even when the clockwork men threatened to take her brain, she was bold. the doctor saved her, but he would have been stranded in 18th century france had it not been for her. she saved the fireplace from her childhood, thus, saving the doctor.

blink, barely starring the doctor, was the vehicle for the confused at times, yet adventurous sally sparrow. larry, her soon to be boyfriend, could almost be called an early rory. dense at times, and cowardly, he depended on sally sparrow's courage to get him through the episode. even though it was the doctor who tricked the angels into staring at themselves, it was sally who gave all this information to the doctor in the first place, making her the hero after all.

in silence in the library/forest of the dead we are introduced to river song. she seems the doctor's equal in every way, almost out doctoring the doctor. at the end of this story, she sacrifices herself so that the doctor won't die.

finally, ladies and gentlemen, i bring you to amy pond. arguably the most self agrandizing companion ever on the show. sorry, i hate her. i'm not going to make any bones about it. she's more annoying than peri (don't get me wrong, i liked nicola bryant, but peri was annoying most of the time).

as you all know, the show has basically turned into Amy and friends. amy usually saves the day each episode (the beast below, etc), even using her memmory to reboot the universe. not only has she done that, but now she has done the most important thing in the who universe, given birth to river song. so now we have the two most powerfull women in the history of the show to save the show, while the men folk stand to the side.

look, i'm not trying to sound sexist at all. however, rory always has and always will be a joke to me. the only time he was ever heroic, is when he was the last centurian (and the only reason he was allowed to be heroic, was because amy was asleep the whole time in the pandorica). the 11th doctor is either confused sometimes, or just doesn't take action, and that's where amy comes along to save the day.

all these facts i have presented have lead me to believe that moffat has the buffy curse (where all men are evil or incompetant, and all the women save the day). nothing wrong with that, but i find that watching doctor who, i want the doctor to save the day most of the time. not idris, amy, river, etc, but the doctor. maybe i'm wrong. please, your thoughts are welcome.

He's no more of a feminist than RTD:
Rose is presented as a special love interest to the Doctor although she's a chav. She defeated the Autons with gymnastic skills that were never mentioned again. Rose and the Doctor treat Mickey like crud and rudely dump Adam. Rose becomes nigh-omnipotent from absorbing TARDIS energy.
Martha saves the Doctor by getting the entire world to wish him back to normal. She's the only competent agent of UNIT.
Donna had a huge sense of entitlement. She saved the day once she got a brain boost. She became too awesome for her body to handle. The Doctor also had a magic boobytrap installed in her head to protect her.
Wilf was only useful after Donna was brainraped to protect her.
The Doctor and the TARDIS didn't want to hang out with Jack after he became immortal for some sketchy reason.
Lady Christina was allowed to escape the law.
PM Harriet Jones thought she was a big deal.
Rich evil guys overwhelmingly tended to be males.

I find Amy's narcissism to be a charming character flaw unlike Rose who didn't have any as the bigger Mary Sue. The Doctor's companions are the luckiest folk in the universe and she's honest about it. Her childhood fixation on the Doctor explains this. Amy's derring-do seems appropriate because she feels like someone who is interested in fantasy and its tropes. She is important not necessarily for who she is but because she lived in the house with the crack in it. Her baby is only important because it was the first conceived on the TARDIS. Some people have said that Amy being kidnapped and replaced with a clone so Rory could be badass was misogynistic.

I like companions taking an active part in saving the day. If they're only there to be sounding boards and get kidnapped, they're not worth keeping around.

This is going to be harsh. I admit up from that Steven Moffat's storytelling drives me nuts. I don't think it is so much that Moffat hates men, but I think he hates The Doctor (I told you this was going to be harsh!).

I realize that all characters need to grow and change to remain relevant. But there is little in Matt Smith's version of the Doctor that resembles the character I fell in love with in the 80's (which is ashame, because Smith is doing a great job in the role).

I realized this in the Christmas Carol episode. The Doctor I grew up with had a special fondness for all humans. But in the Christmas Carol, The Doctor is only concerned about saving the ship from crashing because Amy is on board. He gives no thought at all to all the people frozen in Scrooge's basement. I believe that any previous incarnation of the Doctor would have figured a way to save the ship and all the frozen people. And in the season opener, he 'hypnotizes' the human race to become killers. Surely many of the humans perished when they tried to shoot the Silence. Again, I think that the Doctor, at his core, would have figured out a way to fight off the Silence without forcing humans to become killers.

I could go on, but I get so frustrated. If I was new to WHO, this Season would not interest me at all. It is only my years of fondness for the character that keeps me watching.

Or because a passenger spaceship crashing would kill ALL the people aboard and cause unneccesary damge to the planet and the ship. It also ends with the Doctor rubbing off so much on the Scrooge that he'll voluntarily release the frozen debtors.

good points to both of you.

as far as the x-mas carol episode is concerned, i too was hit with the doctor's lack of caring, but not for all the humans, but for the girl who was dying every time they took her out. he's called the DOCTOR. he could find a cure, save her, etc. instead, he manipulated her untill her last day, when he used to to sing to the shark. then he, amy and rory whent off, leaving her to die. that is what hit me the most about that story. how they could just let her die. i mean, he had already gone back in the past HOW MANY TIMES in that episode, he couldn't go back again and cure her? that's not the doctor i grew up with either.

evil monkey pope, you have good points about rtd, i just see it come through more in moffat's writing. his writing (and i left this out the first time i wrote this) almost always centers around women and children. children became so annoying to me by the beast below, that i couldn't stand that episode, the kids, or even the rhymes that he loves to seem to add to the beginning or end of episodes (for no apparent reason).

i think it's everyone's preference. some "classic" fans love moffat's writing, and see nothing wrong with it. some lambasted rtd every series. personally, i saw rtd's writing as a way of evolving the show, while keeping the geeky charm it originally had.

sure, he made it a romantic scifi show. rose was the doctor's true love, martha was the rebound girl, and donna was just the friend. if you look at it that way, rose had to save the day twice (for the man she loved), martha talked endlessly about him (which ended up saving him), and donna became his equal. all making sense in a wierd romantic comedy type thing.

as far as the male characters went, mickey evolved from a coward into a strong brave man. jack went from being a con man, into being a doctor protege/leader. adam, well, adam was the modern day adric (without being killed).

wilf, though, wilf was the most important of all. wilf was the doctor's father figure. without him, ten wouldn't have had redemption/salvation. sure, donna was a main character, but wilf was just as important. his interactions with the doctor, and donna, endeared him to the doctor. imagine if it was jackie tyler stuck in the box at the end of time? do you think ten would have saved her (i'm going to say if rose wasn't in the room, a big NO)? if wilf wasn't stuck in the box, and it was just that nameless security guard, the doctor would have left him, turning full evil. wilf was that piece of humanity that ten had lost when he lost donna.

maybe i'm romantic, but i liked all of rtd's women. he put them on pedestals. he worshipped them. moffat seems to make them more important than the main character. river was so "bad" that a dalek begged mercy from her. amy rebooted the universe, and brought the doctor back into existence. it's almost like anything that a man can do in the whoniverse, moffat's women can do 10 times better with blazing guns.

bret_owen99 wrote:

as far as the x-mas carol episode is concerned, i too was hit with the doctor's lack of caring, but not for all the humans, but for the girl who was dying every time they took her out. he's called the DOCTOR. he could find a cure, save her, etc. instead, he manipulated her untill her last day, when he used to to sing to the shark. then he, amy and rory whent off, leaving her to die. that is what hit me the most about that story. how they could just let her die. i mean, he had already gone back in the past HOW MANY TIMES in that episode, he couldn't go back again and cure her? that's not the doctor i grew up with either.

Scrooge had her in Cold Storage for how many decades and for all his wealth couldn't find a cure for her either. Matter of fact, she even commented on how old he was, how he'd been "saving her all for himself" rather then letting her out earlier.

This was a woman who was content to pass on, and rather then simply sit at home and wait to die, her last week (by her reckoning) was filled with adventures, laughter, and pleasant company. She lived more in those 24 hour increments then most of us will live in a life time.

Was it sad that she was ultimately fated to die? Yes. That's the whole point of that particular character arc. The whole point she even volunteered to be set aside as "debt" in the first place. Assuming the Doctor could have cured her of her ailment, there's no guarantee that she and Scrooge would have ever met because she likely wouldn't have been the one to go into storage.

I know the Christmas Special wasn't the best in terms of story (Though at least this year it felt like a Christmas story rather then just a random adventure that happened to take place on Christmas), but it bugs me when folks point out the girl as the fatal flaw when she's the portion of the episode that works flawlessly. It also helps keep the timeline stable, since Scrooge's motivations altered from merely being a a-hole to being jealous and selfish and wanting to keep her for himself. But it still means the opening works and occurred as intended despite the Doctor's tampering in Scrooge's time line.

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i think it's everyone's preference. some "classic" fans love moffat's writing, and see nothing wrong with it. some lambasted rtd every series. personally, i saw rtd's writing as a way of evolving the show, while keeping the geeky charm it originally had.

I've got no qualms with either writer but after getting some history with the classic show I will say I do miss The Doctor being the main character rather then the companions. Admittedly it's better then being driftwood like so many of the Classic Companions, but I still miss The Doctor being the star.

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as far as the male characters went, mickey evolved from a coward into a strong brave man. jack went from being a con man, into being a doctor protege/leader. adam, well, adam was the modern day adric (without being killed).

I wouldn't say Adam was Adric. Adric ignored the Doctor in an effort to save the ship. Adam ignored the Doctor in an effort to be selfish and change history to his benefit by bringing back knowledge from the future.

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wilf, though, wilf was the most important of all. wilf was the doctor's father figure. without him, ten wouldn't have had redemption/salvation. sure, donna was a main character, but wilf was just as important. his interactions with the doctor, and donna, endeared him to the doctor. imagine if it was jackie tyler stuck in the box at the end of time? do you think ten would have saved her (i'm going to say if rose wasn't in the room, a big NO)? if wilf wasn't stuck in the box, and it was just that nameless security guard, the doctor would have left him, turning full evil. wilf was that piece of humanity that ten had lost when he lost donna.

Not really. The whole point of "Wilf in a Box" (Step One: Put your Wilf in a Box...I'm sorry.) was a continuation of the events of Waters of Mars, where the Doctor makes the off hand remark about saving "Little People" and the Commander tears him a new one over it.

The Doctor had to save whomever was in that box, to remember that every life is important and precious. Even Wilf told the Doctor to leave him, that he wasn't important. That's what the Doctor had to remember: Everyone is Important.

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maybe i'm romantic, but i liked all of rtd's women. he put them on pedestals. he worshipped them. moffat seems to make them more important than the main character. river was so "bad" that a dalek begged mercy from her. amy rebooted the universe, and brought the doctor back into existence. it's almost like anything that a man can do in the whoniverse, moffat's women can do 10 times better with blazing guns.

And yet, Rory is gaining traction as one of the most popular companions of the new series. If we want to talk romantic, how about waiting two thousand years for the woman you love?

ok, we've got a real barn-burner discussion going. good. ok, i won't rehash the x-mas episode, but i completley disagree.

second, or b, there were many stories that adric acted like adam. wouldn't listen to the doctor, got them in trouble. sure, i was making a brief comparison, but adam was only in 2 episodes, right? in the first one, he left rose to get killed by the dalek. in the second, he tried to steal future tech for himself. i could see adric doing both of those things.

trois, i would have to argue the whole "wilf in a box" concept ( i love the joke, though). i argue, that because it was wilf, and no one else, the doctor was saved. it is my opinion of the tenth doctor(evil and good as he was), that he would have left anyone else to die (just like captain jack sacrificed his own grandson in children of earth). wilf was very important. the woman in white knew that, and she set the whole thing up (giving wilf the gun, talking to him at strategic moments, and the key phrase "the doctor life can yet be saved"), but it had to be saved by wilf. anyone else would have begged for their lives, and that was the point of wilf, he didn't. he said go away, he said he was old. even though the doctor had to save the "every man" to be redeemed, it was wilf who had to embodie the everyman to save the doctor.

baker, as far as rory goes, i don't get it. maybe it's because he's sensitive. he let's his girlfriend/wife run around with the guy she's been obsessing about since she was a child. he let his wife give his child HER last name (a straight kick to the tardis if you ask me). and i brought up the last centurion thing before. the only way he got to be the hero, is because she was boxed up for 2000 years. even when the flesh had amy, he was almost more of a hero.

i know in a sinking ship women and children go first, but in moffat's stories that's what seems to come first. men, the doctor (heck, even continuity), come afterwards.

bret_owen99 wrote:

ok, we've got a real barn-burner discussion going. good. ok, i won't rehash the x-mas episode, but i completley disagree.

Fair enough. Though I would like to add that sometimes the Doctor saving people isn't always the best course of action. See Love and Monsters. Seriously, talk about a living heck of an existence.

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second, or b, there were many stories that adric acted like adam. wouldn't listen to the doctor, got them in trouble. sure, i was making a brief comparison, but adam was only in 2 episodes, right? in the first one, he left rose to get killed by the dalek. in the second, he tried to steal future tech for himself. i could see adric doing both of those things.

My only exposure to Adric is Earthshock so I'll take your word for it.

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trois, i would have to argue the whole "wilf in a box" concept ( i love the joke, though). i argue, that because it was wilf, and no one else, the doctor was saved. it is my opinion of the tenth doctor(evil and good as he was), that he would have left anyone else to die (just like captain jack sacrificed his own grandson in children of earth). wilf was very important. the woman in white knew that, and she set the whole thing up (giving wilf the gun, talking to him at strategic moments, and the key phrase "the doctor life can yet be saved"), but it had to be saved by wilf. anyone else would have begged for their lives, and that was the point of wilf, he didn't. he said go away, he said he was old. even though the doctor had to save the "every man" to be redeemed, it was wilf who had to embodie the everyman to save the doctor.

Okay, I see where you're coming from. At the same time, I think the way the episode was written it still wouldn't have mattered. That being said, I do see your point and it really can be argued either way.

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baker, as far as rory goes, i don't get it. maybe it's because he's sensitive. he let's his girlfriend/wife run around with the guy she's been obsessing about since she was a child. he let his wife give his child HER last name (a straight kick to the tardis if you ask me). and i brought up the last centurion thing before. the only way he got to be the hero, is because she was boxed up for 2000 years. even when the flesh had amy, he was almost more of a hero.

Nah. For me Rory was cemented as a awesome companion when he wasn't afraid to clock the Doctor. That ranks right up there with Jamie shanking a Sontaran.

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i know in a sinking ship women and children go first, but in moffat's stories that's what seems to come first. men, the doctor (heck, even continuity), come afterwards.

Continuity in Doctor Who has always been fast and loose. As for the Kids...it is still targeted towards kids and families. And really, that isn't something I've seen change very much. Take Power of Kroll for example. Everybody dies except the primitive, simple, child like natives.