The Worst Thing Moffat Did to Doctor Who (Video Essay) 

Nobody cares

didn't moffat write that line himself?

@@sauleiwanderapfelstrudel he did

@@keithscott4013 "trust nobody, not even yourself"- Steven moffat

River said the same thing hahaha

=XoD

Moffat's real problem is that he can't write.

@Reg Eledium I think that's unfair. He's a brilliant writer when it comes to singular episodes and wrote some of the most beloved episodes in modern Who - Blink and the Empty Child two-parter, for instance. He's a bad show runner, not a bad writer. There's a quite good comprehensive analysis in "Sherlock is garbage and here's why" by hbomberguy if you're interested.

Pandorica opens 2 parter ended weirdly but well.

@@BlueGangsta1958 you are right actually, I was harsh. He's good at one-shorts, but when he's in charge of a show, he fan-services himself, using and reusing concepts until they make no sens anymore. Everything turns into a fairy tale. Which can be nice but come one, if I wanted a miracle girl story I would just read fanfic.

RTD had the same problem. Al his finales had Deus ex Machina or anti-climax.

Cof Danny Pink cof

@@mayotango1317 oh hi, I've seen you bring this up before. As I said the only reason he lived was because he wasn't a companion. So he doesn't count. And his death wasn't even that good so it's not like there was much to ruin by bringing him back.

@@Ben-vf5gk He is more companion that the Fam.

@@mayotango1317 ??...aside from that not being true (he had much less screen time, his name isn't in the title sequence) it's just not relevant. Danny's only dead cause Moffat is on record as being against killing companions, Danny not being one made it acceptable in his eyes

@@mayotango1317No, Danny Pink is nothing compared to Yaz, Graham and Ryan.

Pretty much. The Silence were brought up in Eleven's first episode and were there in the background for hid whole run until the end where... a character we've never met before sorted it out off screen? They just stopped going after the Doctor because some previously unmentioned character had a word with them? What?

@@wendyheatherwood Moffat is in love with himself and thinks he's more clever than he actually is. He has that Rian Johnson mentality where he thinks blindsiding the audience in the here and now is more important than having a satisfying arc that makes sense when you look back.

So he's basically J.J. Abrams.

He reminds me of JJ abrams where they both set up cool and interesting mystery plots. But fail to deliver on that conclusion

Oh remember Heaven Sent? The best episode written by Moffat followed by Hellbent, which is basically an acid trip? The biggest hypekill ever

Even if it doesnt become a joke tbh. Rory coming back again and again and again is his thing because its his determination to save amy

@@mudawott it really could have been quite emotional, seeing him repeatidly battle through time and space to be with her, stopping for nothing not even death

@@sprice2344 yeah. And then nothing ever happens of it. Aaqaa

oh my God they killed Rory, you bastards! lol

Maybe if rory stayed plastic, which I still dont know why or how

That’s why we have big finish. To fix the mistakes of the shows I mean Rory has his own story now

Clara could easily come back. Either a different version of her in his timeline or a post-hell-bent Clara. Bill could come back as well.

AwesomeDavid2012 Those were the two characters who should have definitely stayed dead though. If we see this heavy scene where the companion dies right before your eyes, miraculously bringing them back undermines the story.

@@awesomedavid2012 I would love to see Clara come back.

@@nekograce7914 I don’t. She really annoyed me at the end.

Donna had the most tragic of endings and I'll die on this hill.

@@user-is7xs1mr9y yup

That's not even heartbreaking, The Doctor losing his memory about Clara is. And she's still need to face her death by the raven. It's like Clara doesn't exist. Imagine Rose Tyler doesn't exist!!!

My headcannon is that Doctor would visit Donna on her deathbed just to remind her about her adventures. That solves the pain. She still had to live though. Getting your soul ripped out, by avian personification of death is much worse.

@@crimsoncomet3756 Nope because she still gets time that other characters never will/did get before she dies.

Same like RTD is a CW soap opera.

@@mayotango1317 I've seen CW soap operas, that's a disservice to RTD. RTD is the total antithesis of those, he plans the whole season in advance, CW shows are written on the knee, literally as they go along.

Sorry, but... Katarina survived in Big Finish, she was saved as some kind of ghost in a crystal and helped River and the Doctor's companions to fight The Nine (kleptomaniac incarnation of a timelord with multiple personalities).

@@MrSukram777 I know who the Nine is.

@@DanTheMan2150AD yeah, just saying because people often refer to the Doctor as Nine, Ten, etc.. Did you already know that they kind of brought her back (she only appeared for a few seconds though)?

Personally Lucy I think Clara should've ended at the end of S7 as her character arc was done, the Impossible Girl question was answered and her quest was done. What came next was Clara becoming the star and the Dr becoming a passenger in his own show, don't get me wrong I did like Clara it just all became rather tedious towards the end.

I didn’t like Clara all that much. As in I would have been glad if she just died in S7. But Series 9 was personally, the only time her character was consistently properly written, so I’m glad she went out on the year where she was an interesting character versus the first two years where she sucked

I feel like they should have given Danny the immortal plotline Clara or Ashildr were given. So we could fix the issue of Orson (him being just a family member was meh). Make Danny stay as Cyberman or make Doctor save him with chip. We could have happy timeline in modern times, but as Danny stays alive he could became a disguised villain who ultimately leads to Clara's tragic death (which robs past Danny of life with her, leading to his villain route). Then the whole storyline of bringing Clara back and her leaving for finale adventures with future Danny would be at least more reasonable.

but we saw a lot of her grieving process in last Christmas; at first she's drained and depressed, and the light that would normally shine from her has temporarily faded. but the doctor coming back helps her regain her faith in the universe and fairytales and impossible things. it's in last Christmas that she learns to let go of danny. of course she'll miss him, for those 5 minutes a day, but for the rest of the time she gets on with it. she keeps going, living life to the fullest and taking in every breath, not wasting a single minute. at the very end, when he invites her to go with him once again, she gets her spark back and excitedly runs to the tardis with her hand comfortably in his. it's actually really beautiful. i think it took her a little while to realise that she isn't the type of person who can live a normal mundane life on earth. she loves her job and being a teacher, and her students seemed to love her too so i bet she was a cool one, but her real home was the tardis all along. she was always a traveller, a dreamer, and a hero of her own story. you may be thinking "how did she save herself if she got herself killed?!" but what i mean by that is, she was the one who chose to be brave right up until the end. she even said herself: "maybe this is it. maybe this is why i kept running. maybe this is why i kept taking all those stupid risks, kept pushing it." the doctor claims it's his own fault, to which she responds; "this is my choice." what made her a hero is the fact that she recognised what her reckless behaviour had led to, took full responsibility for it and faced the deathly consequences. that IS someone to look up to. someone who doesn't run away from their mistakes or pin the blame on someone else. and considering how she was once terrified death, like most people are, it's some amazing character growth. i know i probably wrote quite a bit there, but i just love her very a lot

For me, it comes down to "Clara, in the absence of compelling Earthly connections, becomes too much like the Doctor, and that negative influence eventually backfires" is seriously the only completely good Clara storyline and the only one that utilizes the Jenna Coleman as an actress (in her introductory episodes she is framed as someone who can keep up with the Doctor intellectually and is primed for the kind of co-dependent narcissist relationship she and the Doctor eventually have ... but for two nearly two they stripped that away and made her really bland. Only at the very end of S8 does the show get back to what Jenna Coleman is good at). I can take or leave anything that happened with Danny Pink or those kids she was babysitting. I'm glad Clara didn't go quietly because for all the missteps that happened with her, she's the companion who conceptually deserved to go out with a bang

The word consequences sent me back to the episode with that Mexican city Truth or Consequences and now I'm wondering what they could've done if Hell Bent ended up taking place there and maybe it wasn't even the time lords (was there ever any genuine payoff to the whole hybrid thing? We got like fifty different answers - The doctor said "the hybrid is me" making viewers think he's talking about himself, but then he's talking about Ashildr and she suggests it's something to do with humans and river was probably mentioned but did anything happen besides them talking about who it is? Or did we just waste a whole season on a meaningless storyline *again*?) but about the Doctor getting too involved with his companions and unable to let them go/protect them properly. Maybe it was a former Doctor (or a future one, if we're feeling timey-wimey) who wanted the Doctor to deal with his grief and learn something to prevent this from happening again. Some Doctor who thought "alright, everyone (almost) keeps dying nowadays, I'm going to have to teach the Doctor to be more careful" and then we could abandon the fake deaths and write food drama.

They need to keep the original to update the image (e.g. aging) so there's still the original and Zygon Osgood.

Turn left gotta be one of the best and most creative recap episodes.

I'm glad Jenna Coleman decided to stay. I wouldn't have watched Season 9 at all without her, even if I had known that Julian Bleach (who is a criminally underrated actor) was returning as Davros in the first two episodes. Peter Capaldi was much too sociopathic for me to see him as the Doctor in Season 8. Since I've watched clips of the Valeyard in recent years, I think he would have been far better suited to replacing Michael Jayston in that role. He really needed somebody to carry him until he reached a point where I could say to myself "okay, this guy is the Doctor" and Clara Oswald fulfilled that role. When Matt Smith was being socially awkward, it was like watching someone on the autism spectrum (trust me, I'm autistic so I know what I'm talking about). When Capaldi was doing it, it was like watching a sociopath PRETEND to be on the autism spectrum to excuse his behaviour. A boiling point for me is one of the most overlooked parts of Dark Water which is the fact that Capaldi was READY for Clara's betrayal. That means 1 of 2 things. Either Capaldi was INSANELY paranoid about the woman who threw herself into the Doctor's time stream to save his ungrateful ass a million times over. Or he was DELIBERATELY pushing Clara to her breaking point in some kind of sadistic test. Either way, it reflects worse on the Doctor than it does on Clara when you take the full context of Season 8 into account. Without Clara, Peter Capaldi's era would have crashed and burned within his first season. We wouldn't have even needed Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker to come in and destroy Doctor Who because Capaldi was doing a stellar job of ruining it on his own, which would no doubt break his heart if he realised it because he's a lifelong fan. I think being a lifelong fan was actually part of the problem. He thought of himself as being under incredible pressure, despite his role being child's play compared to Patrick Troughton, John Hurt or Matt Smith. Troughton was the first test of regeneration, Hurt was retconned into existence and shared an episode with the 3 most popular Doctor's of all time (yes, the Curator counts) and Smith came directly after the only Doctor who rivalled Tom Baker in terms of popularity whilst also having no safety nets to catch him if he screwed up. Capaldi had multiple safety nets in case he failed, with Clara's presence being the main one, so he could actually afford to relax, which he did in Season 9. However, he was so scared of getting it wrong in Season 8 after dreaming of being the Doctor for 5 decades that he tried to be every Doctor at once, including the Valeyard, and stretched himself too thin in the process. This worked when he was trying to be William Hartnell, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and John Hurt but he couldn't manage Patrick Troughton, David Tennant and especially Matt Smith. Whenever Capaldi was doing a script that was clearly written with Smith in mind, such as Robot of Sherwood, he was visibly out of his comfort zone whereas Smith would have thrived in that kind of story. Jenna Coleman really doesn't get enough credit for carrying so much of Capaldi's era on her shoulders. Ultimately, I think Peter Capaldi was a supporting actor who was cast in a leading role. Even he knew he wasn't ready to play the Doctor because he auditioned as a companion. The man needed the larger part of 2 seasons to reach a point where he felt like leading man material, never mind Doctor material. Chris Ecclestone, David Tennant, Matt Smith and John Hurt never had that problem. Heck, even Colin Baker didn't have that issue despite the shitty writing he was given. John Hurt in particular proved that he could act circles around Capaldi and fully deserved his reputation as a legendary actor. The Doctor was the first and only major role that I've seen Hurt in - Ollivander didn't leave much of an impact and his role in V for Vendetta was just a lot of shouting - and it was nice to see that his reputation hadn't been exaggerated. The man was the real deal because he was under more pressure than any Doctor in history, yet slipped into the role as though he'd been playing it all his life. As for series arc payoffs, I still stand by Hell Bent being an incredibly underrated episode. Even after all the retconned deaths that Steven Moffat did before that, I found it both uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time. I finally believed that Peter Capaldi really was the Doctor, something I had been slowly and reluctantly been coming around to throughout Season 9, and Clara's departure had me smiling joyfully whilst watching it before falling into outright ugly sobbing after the episode ended. It was an experience that I doubt I'll ever have again, so Hell Bent is always going to be a special episode to me.

I agree that he was a great episode writer but a poor series writer. Thats a problem that extended to Chris Chibnall who was an OK episode writer (and sometimes a great one) but a _terrible_ series writer.

It would've been so funny if that was the episode someone finally told Moffatt to either kill characters off or don't and then that's just their ending.

For me the worst thing he ever did was create Clara in the first place! I loathed her and all her splinters. My love for Doctor Who took a nosedive once she was introduced.

That’s Donna Noble and no one else can replace that :(

No more so than Amy her first season.

Agreed. Trying to make her outspecial everyone else in the introduction was a bad idea. If the finale of season 7 wasn't Moffat trying to convince everyone that she is better than everyone else the Doctor has ever met, I don't know what else it was. It involved Classic Doctor Who out of nowhere with an arc that involved mere half season. Had he had taken the time to show her as a fleshed out character instead, I don't think she would have gotten so much hate. She was a smart, strong person with her own life and human flaws like arrogance. The first impression I got from her when we met real Clara in season 7, it was that she was special, confident, and that she was a nanny. With 80% of the emphasis on 'special', even though that quality doesn't really count as a personality. Moffatt later on tried to connect this quality with other arcs, but it wasn't so convincing.

@@esc5798 ngl loved Clara when we were seeing the splinters before the real one. It was a good mystery of why this girl is in Victorian London and also in the dalek home world in the future. I just wish they made it like while yes she is vital to saving the doctor but she does die in actuality being torn apart by the doctors timeline. it would keep with the continuity of merging with the doctor or the TARDIS is fatal to anyone if they don't get a memory wipe or the doctor doesn't absorb the energy to save them ie the DoctorDonna and the bad wolf.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in detail, it was a good read!

I agree with everything you have said here, thank you for putting it so nicely.

Agreed. If only because her timeline was inverted. We knew how her story ended before it began, which created a sense of impending tragedy. This also gets tied up at the end of “The Husband Of River Song”, where she tells Capaldi’s Doctor she expects him to find a way to save her. With River, I don’t think it would have made sense for the Doctor to know her death was coming and not spend all that time trying to stop it.

It does her body is dead but the body isnt who you are its the personality the memories her mind is in the machine so not dead

Yes and no, the doctor says the memory imprint of her in the library should have faded when he talks to her on Trenzalor, it seems he thinks that she wouldn't really live but it seems he somehow does, possibly because of her timelord nature.

Yeah, the whole tragedy of River is that the Doctor gets increasingly attached to her knowing the whole time, one day, he will never see her again. That is untrained unless some idiot takes her out the computer so she can play with the 15th Doctor or something. But so far Husbands of River Song held strong as her send off for 6 years

the river in the compter is the personality of river, but its not river- its effectively a clone and the original is still dead

Moffatt writes good episodes and adaptations, but he's rubbish at series writings. Sherlock got bad when they ran out of Conan Doyle's material.

Just like RTD....

Even I, a hopless romantic, preffer the dinamic of the Doctor with Donna, pure friendship.

I can't be the only one who finds it just a tad creepy that an alien who's centuries old gets into relationships with young humans right? Like, you can justify him travelling mostly (always, in modern Who, excluding River) with humans by saying their youth means he can show them more, but the underlying dynamic is just awful. It's entirely dependent on the Doctor being a good person and not exploiting them and that's just .. yikes. He's got almost nothing in common with them either. Yeah, they have adventures together, but they don't know shit compared to him so it's almost inherently a teacher-student relationship.

@@BlueGangsta1958 Except they also made it canon that he's HALF human himself which not sure how that works since with his mother being human would have had more human traits instead of Gallifreyian then they retconned it all on 13 so she's not even Gallifreyian

​@@BlueGangsta1958 Yeah I definitely prefer the non romantic companions like Donna and Bill. I do like Rose and Amy, but Rose is literally a teenage girl and the Doctor having a romance with her is all kinds of squicky, and Amy is basically trying to commit adultery. Even with a young actor like Matt Smith that line about Clara being squeezed into a skirt that's just a little bit too tight is creepy AF.

@@krchecotah In terms of the doctor being creepy nothing beats him and Clara showing up naked to her family gathering

That's an interesting thought!

That was my take too, actually. And the irony is they didn't really die, they went onto the past (that's what weeping angels do--they send you into the past to feed off the temporal energy) and lived out their natural lives then.

The Doctor is always complaining that immortality is awful. I would love an episode where the Doctor has to confront how he's forced these humans into eternity.

IIRC wasn't Series 9 originally written and conceived as a companion-less season of two-parters? And then Jenna Coleman decided to continue so it ended up being rewritten.

I'd never sacrifice Heaven Sent for lesser Clara. The Ponds, yeah their last moment should have been the end of series 6 Christmas special, with the Doctor getting a family. Then they could have been one off companions like Jack and Craig.

I really enjoy the Capaldi era - it's probably the era of New Who which I enjoy most consistently. Even so, there are a few things I might change... I like Clara but I personally feel she's a bit over-exposed (although I think this might've been due to her getting a bit of a false start in Series 7 and Jenna and/or the writers wanting to compensate for that). Of course, the big dilemma, as you mentioned, is that we still want to keep "Heaven Sent." So here's what I'd do... Clara leaves in Last Christmas. Bill enters in Series 9 (from there, you could have essentially the same stories, maybe just trading them around here and there. Imagine Pearl Mackie playing Bonnie). And then "Heaven Sent" is about the Doctor mourning Bill, and is also Twelve's regeneration story. Perhaps the Doctor is already dying when he enters the confessional dial, so he uses that to his advantage (similar to Six in Big Finish's "The Brink of Death).

@Scom Tott That's just the thing - you wouldn't have to. There would only need to be slight rewrites to have "Heaven Sent" follow from "The Doctor Falls." It might change a few things about those stories, but the core elements and even most of the content would be the same.

@@IISCOOL67 I don't really like Bill as much as Clara, but I don't think that would work even if I did. Their dynamic is completely different. Bill and the Doctor have a professor-student dynamic while Clara and the Doctor have a toxic trust and commitment to each other. They will go to any lengths to save each other and push them beyond their limits. There's a hint of romance too as confirmed by Moffat, Capaldi and Jenna. And I don't think Missy's Redemption would work with Heaven Sent.

The same is also true for Sherlock. Like the finale of Sherlock makes very little sense and he burnt all the credibility of the show for something that made zero sense and sucked in the end.

@@DioBrandoWRYYYYYY thinking about Sherlock just makes me angry. He had everything. The cast was perfect, the story was there all he had to do was make those chapters into episodes but he fucked that up. I only like BBC Sherlock due to the amazing job done by the actors, the writing sucks.

1000% agree with him being a better episode writer. Series 5 was good but each series deteriorated as he just progressively wrote increasingly complex arcs and was so far up his own arse with his love for grand and epic storylines and long winded speeches by the doctor it just bored me to 😭

I just finished watching Torchwood and I have to say, going in, I was not prepared for this many main character deaths.

@@sasodoma Torchwood is good at making your heart feel so good and then ripping it out

@@zeallust8542 That reminds me of Stubagful's rewatch of all of Chibnall's Torchwood and Doctor Who along with his discussion of series 11 with 5 Who Fans "Obvious question: is Billy crying yet?"

I like thta though I think the Davies era were a bit annoying with using the red shirt trope. I'm sorry but loads of deaths of non roccuring chaaracters in sci fi is something I never understood. Fantasy doesn't have every villager the main characters meet dying, crime fiction doesn't have every client the character takes on dying so why can't sci fi let go of that trope? I think the main reason is the sci fi genre that ended up on tv is closer linked to pulp sci-fi than to the great sci fi masterpieces. And Pulp sci-fi is more space horror than sci-fi.

@@DaDunge I'm not a big fan of red-shirting either - and in a show like Doctor Who, where time-travel is possible, merely killing off a main character like in any other show always strikes me as being a bit unimaginative. To me, the fates of the Ponds, Clara and Bill were a lot more engaging than a simple death would have been! I have the same scepticism to the idea of a surprise mid-story regeneration; for example, the people think that Journey's End would have been improved if 10 had died at the end of The Stolen Earth. I just don't understand that logic at all ... it seems like the least satisfying sort of storytelling. Not every show needs to be like Game of Thrones or what-have-you!

Same.

Oh my god new nightmare unlocked. Please no 😭😭

Lmao she probably will which I'm co with she was my favorite companion.

Oh I'd be pissed. And my sister would be hella confused because when I rewatched the show with her and we came to the end of Heaven Sent I just told her "we're skipping the next episode, that didn't happen, don't ask why"

In Twice Upon a Time, Testimony has a glass avatar of Clara, which means she's dead and won't come back.

Oh yeah, I love the Hybrid arc, don't get me wrong. But Face the Raven is still the end of Clara's individual arc, since the Hybrid arc is shared between them, so I count them differently, personally

Quite honestly I don't care how it's justified within the story, it happened the way it happened regardless of whatever else was going on in the plot. It felt incredibly cheap to a lot of people especially if you were someone getting tired of the character.

I can get behind the Doctor trying to bring her back because he refused to accept it. If it ended with them taking her back to Face the Raven again with the Doctor learning to accept it I could get behind it. I can’t get behind Clara continuing to wander around happy as Larry with no consequences for the fact that she is dead. If she’s allowed to keep going then what’s to stop the time lords from just resurrecting everyone? We are told that bringing people back from the dead is wrong, but there don’t seem to be any real consequences for this.

I mean, I do love Strax, but you right. His death was solid. As a Sontaran, he thought it was what he wanted. But having been pulled away somewhat from his people's core beliefs by nature of being made a nurse, he realized at the end "Wait, no, this kind of sucks actually?" and that was pretty great. Strax had more character development in that single story than even most legit companions get. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He's been turned into Kenny from South Park pretty much.

Nah the main problem is that some fans can't pay attention enough to understand a complex plotline. That's the sad reality

@@hothemeep1219 overly convoluted and (sometimes) poorly executed =/= complex

@@sad_tbh well you illustrate perfectly my point so thanks I guess ?

@@hothemeep1219 yeah I didn't express that very well, but while I personally enjoyed the seasonal arcs, I can also appreciate their flaws, and that season 6's in particular was rather poorly executed.

@@sad_tbh in what way ?

I think he loved canon, but he wanted desperately to leave a lasting impression on it in a way that RTD had before. Unfortunately he did it by making the Doctor the central mystery of the show in a way he never had been before. I mean, yes, we learned more about him with the speed of a tar pitch experiment, but that wasn't what we were there for. Moffat made the Doctor into the most special boy in the universe, with prophesies and Eternal Questions and... we will learn His Name! Except I never really cared about any of that. It wasn't the point until Moffat made it so.

I head the books and audios, and the 8 Doctor is the Life Champion.

Paul McGann couldn't have pulled off the War Doctor. Night of the Doctor was a good swan song for him but he simply doesn't have the demeanour of a warrior.

He's one of those writers who honestly needs an editor who thinks very little of him and will take a machete to his script and send it back telling him "less self indulgence next time, please, dear Steven"

@@DioBrandoWRYYYYYY yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking. Just somebody over his shoulder to say "you can stop now."

Do you know, until this video and this comment reminded me, I had actually managed to erase that bit where she was saved yet again. I recall thinking her death in Raven was perfect for her character arc, not least because I was sick to death of The Clara Bigger Than The Doctor Fashion Show Soap Opera by then, so sorry Clara fans but goodbye good riddance I felt, and if they’d resurrected her character once again, no more tears and soaring strings for me I’m afraid, I was done, so I guess I erased that final bit of ClaraFanService from my memory. I know it’s meant to be escapist and fun for the kiddies (any ‘important social justice issues’ mid-story lectures not withstanding), but if they utterly undermine death, then where’s the peril, why are we worrying, why struggle to save anyone Doctor, sod it, put your feet up and let the planet explode, let the Master blow up Gallifrey, third times the charm, who gives a toss, if we can just slap the ‘bring em back button’ it doesn’t matter, nothing matters. If the big Sonic criticism, that it removed any peril, was ever valid, then wth is this doing to the script. They should’ve left her dead and as far as I’m concerned they did.

@@Lumibear. Absolutely. Say what you want about RTD. RTD was a gigantic cornball but he at least had the sense to cut the chaff and deliver endings.

Actually it was the other way around. Capaldi was MUCH crueler to Clara than she was to him. She put up with him acting like a sociopathic arsehole throughout Season 8 and after the way he treated her in Kill the Moon, I wouldn't have minded if she had actually gone through with her threat to slap him into his next regeneration.

Face the raven was very sad but to this day it frustrates me how he cheapened that by bringing Clara back 2 episodes later. It felt pointless as well to bring back Gallifrey just for it to be background. I almost think it would have been better if he’d just been imagining Clara in the last episode

@@tomnorton4277They were an honest married couple then…mean and kind to one another.

​@@michaelloparco2173 Which just goes to show that Peter Capaldi didn't deliver the performance he intended. He made it very clear in his first episode and in interviews that his Doctor wasn't supposed to come across as Clara's husband. After her "dashing young gentleman friend" died on Trenzalore, Clara's feelings towards the Doctor became platonic. She looked at him like he was somewhere between a father and a big brother, not a romantic partner. She got nervous about him meeting Danny Pink, just like a daughter who's scared that her father may not like her boyfriend, and she went out of her way to annoy him in Flatline, just like a little sister who loves to get under her big brothers skin for fun. Peter Capaldi was supposed to come across as platonic as well. Instead, he acted like a man who was desperate to impress Clara whilst trying to pretend that he wasn't interested. He was meant to come across like William Hartnell's stern but loving grandfather, not a spiteful, jealous ex-boyfriend. I would kill to see John Hurt do Seasons 8 and 9. Clara's relationship with him would have actually balanced out like the scripts intended. John Hurt was one of Britain's best so he wouldn't have been completely outshone by Clara, as well as Missy and Davros, like Peter Capaldi was. On paper, the Doctor and Clara were equals but in practice, Clara left Peter Capaldi in the dust.

"They don't feel challenged enough" : amy's child being kidnapped, her waiting for 36 years, becoming sterile. Bill becoming a cyberman, clara losing his boyfriend, being killed by bravery. Rory being transformed into plastic and waiting for amy during 2000 years

That's the same I think .... about the Fam.

@@mayotango1317 true! The 13th doctor especially seems to overcome any problem with relative ease

@@hothemeep1219 I agree with the big stuff. However, Amy's baby wasn't explored properly and Rory waits almost entirely off screen. The big problems they face are overcome by factors outside their control. River comes back, the doctor brings Clara back, and Heather makes Bill immortal - most things are magically fixed. Then Clara especially in the day to day running of the show seems unphased by most threats (Bill and Amy are far more measured). For example, in Dark Water she's so quick to pretend to be the doctor in front of the cybermen she doesn't even look scared which lowers the stakes.

I think Martha Jones went through the most hardships in the new series.

I think the same about Chibnall.

yeah i feel that - i actually cannot remember a large chunk of some seasons despite watching them recently and some of moffat's overall plot arcs were so convoluted i actually don't know what happened

@@moistpolenta1717 it's the one thing i'll always give russell t davies over moffat and chibnall. Every episode at least felt fresh, no matter the quality of the writing.

@@erosion271 I want the forget the whole Tenth Doctor Rose romance melodrama. Is so annoying.

@@moistpolenta1717 Ah, you like the Chibnall era. The pale imitation of the RTD era.

This is my favourite comment yet.

I really want to see a version of Earthshock with that ending. Still have the silent credits, still have Davison and the others looking sad but just play it over Mathew Waterhouse in a parachute.

@@Ben-vf5gk We must make this happen.

Reminds me of how RTD wrote a poem giving Harriet Jones an escape hatch and a motorbike!

That is Chibnall fault.

The lack of stakes is why I can't stand Clara. When Donna was told she was the most important person in the world by Rose because she's the one who gets the Doctor to stop and thus saves him, she almost can't handle that kind of responsibility and almost has a breakdown over the information, as many normal humans would with something so utterly overwhelming. Clara saves his ass time and time again and it's just...how things are. Not a big deal in the slightest. It took all the drama out of the show for me because don't worry, Queen Perfect will fix everything! I was also mad that she just nags the TARDIS into letting her in and also she knows how to fly it, I guess? Or the TARDIS just took her where she wanted to go because it was just annoyed with her? Either way, I was a bit miffed. Whereas, by comparison, Rose and Mickey had to tear the console open with a truck to get it to do what they wanted. All sci-fi shows and movies are bad about overusing deus ex machina, but I feel like Moffat was especially fond of it, and once Doctor Who began relying too heavily upon it, I lost interest. A lot of people seem to be dishing out Chibnal hate, but I can't speak to that, as I stopped watching mid-way through season 10, and seasons 7-9 were a chore to get through for me. I will probably never watch the show again :/

@Beth Rubiano I hate what they did to Clara as much as the next person but the Doctor definitely taught her how to fly the TARDIS - we saw him do so in the beginning of the episode where the TARDIS gets taken in by these three dudes looking for valuable space trash where the TARDIS almost gets destroyed. I think that's enough setup to make it an acceptable conclusion that he kept teaching her and that she would be able to fly it afterwards. I don't remember where it was chronologically, but I think it was in her early time with 11. I seem to remember that was also the episode where he got all in her face with "Just tell me. What are you? A trick? A trap? Dalek asylum there was a girl named Oswin saving my life and She. Was. You." and that must've been something that happened before he built a connection with her. She definitely got a lot more "Doctor-training" than most companions - she even got to cosplay as him during Flatline which indicates that she has at least some idea how the Sonic Screwdriver works. I'm not sure what you mean with making the TARDIS let her in.

Amy and Clara outlasted Rose. But when those characters were first written off, they stayed off the show for good. Rose and Martha came back repeatedly for full episodes

@@TheJadedJames Marha *could* come back though as she left by choice. Rose was trapped in an alternate universe, which was heartbreaking for the doctor, for Rose and for the fans. Every time she came back cheapened that original tragedy

The Moment doesn’t count she wasnt Rose.

@@nekograce7914 The Moment appears as Rose. I am aware she is not actually Rose (although The Moment knows the form it is taking is Rose Tyler), rather my point was that she as a character keeps returning - even if The Moment isn’t strictly Rose per se, it was still a character returning in some form

I do think the last Tennant episode would have been fine if Rose didn't come back in previous episodes? As I think the emotional reunion would have a bigger impact.

I agree, for me the most important character should always be the main companion (when there is one) because they are supposed to be the most important person for the current doctor. The "Fam" felt not as important any main companions, even when the Doctor said they are her "Fam" it feels meaningless. That's why I like that 12th saved Clara even if shouldn't have, because she was his companion for the longer period of time (from the doctor point of view) and she saved him by asking the time lords to help him.

Hmm I think the problem is that Moffat shouldn't keep writing characters dying over and over again in the first place if he isn't willing to commit to killing them off. Like what the video said, characters like Martha and Donna have their permanent goodbyes with the doctor, and it makes sense that they wouldn't interact with him again (Martha was over the doctor and wanted her own life, Donna's memories were wiped). If Moffat wrote the characters out in a way where they leave because they are locked in another dimension/timeline, or they just want more stable lives, or stayed on earth to be with their loved ones, etc, then deaths wouldn't be cheapened in Doctor who and it would still be family friendly. That way, there are still bittersweet endings for the companions and the audience will believe it next time a character dies in an episode.

I thought that wasn't actually the real Reinette, but the computer of the ship believing it was Reinette.

Yeah, they really need to stop doing that. There are three characters that nobody will ever believe is dead in this show. The Doctor, The Master and Davros. Never show any of them dying because even if the showrunner intends it to be permanent, there will always be a future showrunner to bring them back.

Yes, Moffat's writing is extremely contrived.