okayophelia:
witnesses of the end of the world
#it’s the difference in their Doctors; it’s the difference in their arcs #everyone says that Clara looks like a mirror image of Rose #and perhaps in a lot of ways she is - but it’s a horror story #the Doctor leaves her alone in these nightmares time and time again #she sees the end of the world and she is horrified at his - lack #his cheery apathy #towards the deaths of the ghosts that live around him #For Rose and Nine though #the end of the world is melancholic - yes #but it’s also full of life and joy #the knowledge that mankind will go on; has stretched across the stars #and ultimately they watch the world end together #they make it a beginning #a personal intimate moment #strangely beautiful #about the endlessness of the universe and how very very small yet so so important humans are to its stars #it’s the start of healing and love #Clara and the Doctor have nothing like that #because while Nine was damaged - Nine was present #fully #and Eleven is just slipping away behind his impossible girls and his love stories hidden in a ghost mansion #he’s about the puzzles and the hidden things#never the emotions #never the people #Clara is already beginning to suffer for it #she realizes that though she said it - ‘I don’t want to be compared to a ghost’ - there’s not much else people can be to this Doctor #just fun spicy diversions he pops off to see in his little blue box (neverfeedthesarcophagi)
ALL OF THAT.
And that is such a huge part of my problem with where they’ve taken Eleven’s characterisation, because I am just not capable of believing that Moffat is going somewhere with it, you know? Like I just can’t make myself believe that he’s actually trying to say something about the Doctor having gone too far or become too damaged; I think Moffat is just incapable of writing the Doctor in a way that enables him to actually emotionally connect with anyone. It’s not like anyone is really calling him on it. Clara has told him she won’t compete with a ghost but has he really paid attention to that? I don’t think he has at all. Everyone remains a shiny puzzle to him, a toy. Say what you will about the things Nine and Ten put their companions through, but Rose and Martha and Donna were never toys or puzzles or playthings.
And also I don’t think a Doctor who can’t emotionally connect with anyone is true to the spirit of the show. For fifty years this show has been about how much the Doctor has loved humanity (/other humanoid species) and how he has expressed that love by genuinely connecting to individual human beings (/members of other humanoid species), and now that’s just… not what it’s about.
Then again, I think if there’s anything Moffat’s recent comments about the 50th Anniversary have shown us, it’s that he neither understands nor respects the history and story he’s been entrusted with, so. There’s that.
