An Open Letter to Steven Moffat

WARNING!!! This post contains spoilers for "The Snowmen," as well as previous episodes of Doctor Who. I don't care if River Song would disapprove.

Dear Mr. Moffat,

I say this with all the respect in the world, but still, it must be said: you're doing it wrong.

Now, I know that you are a many times BAFTA winning television person, and I am just a writer who hasn't yet finished her undergrad degree, but the point still stands. The last season and a half, at least, of Doctor Who has derailed a bit. And it makes my nerdy heart incredibly sad.

I was introduced to Doctor Who while I was in high school. And I loved it. I loved how zany it was. I fell in love with the Tenth Doctor a little bit (okay fine maybe a lot). I loved that it could be both funny and sad in the same episode. And I loved that it was thoughtful. Yeah, it was silly, and in the Russel T. Davies era I despaired wildly of the overly dramatic series finales, but there were so many episodes with something more at the heart of them. The idea that humanity is imperfect and yet wonderful, that no one is unimportant, really struck me. The episodes were cohesive, they were imaginative, and I loved them.

And then something happened. I was initially super psyched that you were taking over as the head writer for the show. Your one-off episodes in the Eccleston and Tennant eras remain some of my favorites - the "Empty Child/Doctor Dances" episodes are sheer brilliance, and "The Girl in the Fireplace" is probably part of the reason I am now obsessed with French history. But for the past season and a half or so, so many of the episodes have lacked that spark of something more. After watching - well, all right, sitting on the sofa - not behind it - and shouting at the television while it played - "The Snowmen," I asked my friend Sarah (side note: her name is Sarah Jane. She was named after Sarah Jane Smith. Seriously) what she thought of the episode. She said that it was "cute" and that she had learned not to expect anything more out of Doctor Who any more.

Yeah.

I don't know what exactly happened - and as a writer myself, I know just how hard it is to turn out quality things time and time again when the pressure's on (and pleasing a fandom must be some pressure). But it seems to me that the problem is that everything has gotten BIGGER in the last few seasons. That same ridiculous over-dramatic quality that I'd come to hate in the RTD series finales? It's seeped into the whole of the series, with the arcs hammered home repeatedly, sometimes for more than one series (The Silence, anyone? Why was it necessary to spread that arc out so long?). I think another thing that happened was that American television discovered this British phenomenon - after all, the characters have visited America what, four times in two seasons now? I get the sense that the show is now pandering to the American audience. Well, this American does not like being pandered to, thanks very much. Isn't the point of liking a British show is that it's, well, British? We don't want it to be like American television. We want it to be cleverer than that.

The other thing that has derailed is a sense of continuity. You, Mr. Moffat, enjoy making the rules and then changing them. Sometimes within the same episode. And it is infuriating.

The thing about writing science fiction and fantasy is that, essentially, there are no rules. That's the fun part. You don't have to stay within the established bounds of reality. You can do WHATEVER YOU WANT and it's fine. That's the point! You create the world.

Except it's not exactly that simple. Yes, you can do whatever you want. Yes, you create the world. But in creating that world, you also create the RULES of that world. And the one and only rule of writing science fiction and fantasy is this: create the laws of your world, and then abide by them. Otherwise the entire premise falls apart.

For example, I have a novel that puts werewolves in Revolutionary Paris. Obviously this did not really happen, but in my version of events, it did. That's cool. I can do that - that's the point of fantasy, to do things that aren't real. If, however, I suddenly added in a random dragon on page 200 of my book, without setting up any precedent for this dragon's existence, that would make absolutely no sense and would destroy the credibility of the rest of my book. If one random thing like that could happen, well, why can't there be unicorns and people who can fly too? If that random dragon appears just to ravage a town, why can't an equally random sorcerer magic the dragon away?

It turns into a ridiculous, weird mess.

I understand that Doctor Who is a little bit different - you're dealing with an entire universe, where there very well may be random dragons on different planets. Okay. I'll buy the idea that there's psychic snow if you want me to. But it's the other stuff that doesn't follow.

For example: when can you and can't you take the TARDIS across its own timeline? If the idea is that you can't move the TARDIS once you are part of events, then why is it that the TARDIS keeps crossing its timeline? If, in "The Angels Take Manhattan," Amy wants to take the TARDIS back at the end to rescue Rory (again) why can't she? They have already, within that episode, taken it somewhere the time stream didn't really want it to go, and everything was fine! It didn't explode. Besides, the paradox they set up wiped out everything that had just happened. If it never happened, why would going back in time again be crossing that timeline?

And in "The Snowmen," why did Clara fall to her death? It has been shown before that the Doctor can catch people with the TARDIS (River Song in "Day of the Moon," for example), so why in heaven's name can he not catch Clara? Also, if you establish that it is highly unusual for a character to die multiple times (Rory Williams), that is fine. It irked me a bit that Rory died all the time, but that was kind of what happened to Rory (my favorite part of "The Angels Take Manhattan" was that he acknowledged that he always came back to life, miraculously). To have that miraculous regeneration happen to another character, however, smacks of nothing more than a lack of creativity. I want to like Clara, I really do. I think given a good storyline she could be really interesting. But right now, she just strikes me as more of the same. She's young and cute and in love with the Doctor (see also: Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Amy Pond, any number of one-off companions); she talks a mile a minute and can outwit the Doctor sometimes, and banter right back at him (see also: River Song, Captain Jack Harkness); she can die once per episode and still manage to come back and keep going (see also: Rory Williams, Captain Jack). I was SO EXCITED for Clara to be a person from the 1800s traveling in the TARDIS - that would have been new and different and really cool. But then she died, again, in what seems to me to be nothing more than an overly dramatic and unnecessary push for people on tumblr to make sad gifs and tag them with "MY FEELS," and came back as a young woman from the present day. Sigh.

I love Doctor Who. I love what it can be. I love that it's a chance to explore what humanity is capable of on a landscape that stretches across the stars.

But the most important part of storytelling is, of course, the story. The greatest premise in the world, Mr. Moffat, doesn't make up for a story that's patched together, or that simply doesn't make sense. Fancy sets or locations or special effects don't make up for it either. Continuity matters in order to keep that story held together. Characters who can hold their own and hold our interest matter, because they drive that story.

The story is the most important thing, Mr. Moffat. Everything else falls away.

Best wishes,

Caitlin, a sad and disappointed fan who may have to stick to just the Neil Gaiman episodes for now

Fantasy Please?

Hello, blogsphere! I'm back in Ithaca! *dances* Classes may very well drown me with homework this semester! *stops dancing and hides*

Anyway, I've been mulling this post over for a few days and I should finally just sit down and write it (before all that homework falls on me). I seem to have a habit of watching movies a LOT right before I go back to school. The summer before freshman year I watched half a dozen Disney movies on YouTube in a kind of "lalala I can't hear you I'm not leaving home what is this nonsense lalala" way.

This summer, however, I rewatched some of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition, of course) and some of the special features. I was reminded why I was so completely obsessed with LotR in middle school (seriously, I dressed up as a Ringwraith for Halloween in seventh grade), but it also made me think.

Why is fantasy never taught in school?

Okay, okay, I know one of the major reasons - fantasy is LONG. I mean, if you need twelve hours of movie time to cover the subject material of a book and there's significant stuff that got left out, that's a pretty long book and probably not good for an English class setting.

But... have you looked at how long Hamlet is? You can't get away with not teaching Hamlet, even if it is long!

When Ella and I went to the panel discussion hosted by Neil Gaiman in New York City, one of the writers, Kat Howard (who I believe is studying for her teaching degree?), mentioned to her colleagues that she wanted to teach a Shakespeare play as a fantasy. Her colleagues all looked at her as though she had three heads and said "but Shakespeare is good."


Implying, of course, that fantasy is inherently not good.

Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare and I think there's a lot to learn from it. But I also think there's a lot to be learned from fantasy. After all, there's no better genre to showcase the importance of symbolism, allegory, metaphor. Fantasies of all kinds are just chock full of that.

Again, take LotR. I know Tolkien did not intend for it to be an allegory of WWII, but it can be read that way, and I think that's a very interesting angle to consider. And if you look at the Scouring of the Shire segments, it's got an environmental twist to it - the old-style, natural beauty of the Shire is threatened by orcs and industry at once.

I suppose some people might ask about the relevance of teaching about books where people run around in armor casting magic spells at each other, but if I can bring up an environmental concern in a book published in 1954, then I think there is a lot of relevance in fantasy, no matter what the setting. I think there are a lot of ideals in fantasy worth teaching. Isn't Sam's big speech in The Two Towers all about the good in the world that is worth fighting for? I think that is a noble ideal - why is fantasy not even discussed when so often that is the central crux of the story?

To a lesser extent, sci-fi is also ignored in English classes, but you do get some of that, whereas fantasy isn't represented at all. People read 1984 and Brave New World in English class - I even had an English class last semester that was ALL sci-fi (but that's college, which is decidedly more awesome than high school). Why can't fantasy edge in? How cool would it be to read The Golden Compass for English class - doesn't that have just as many "coming of age" themes as some of the classics we read in high school?

The Golden Compass also has one thing that almost every book I read for class in high school lacks - a female protagonist. Now, I know that fantasy (unless it's YA fantasy, which often makes a deliberate point to put girls into the spotlight) also usually has male main characters, but unlike books like A Separate Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front, girls are actually, you know, present. Which is nice. Eowyn kills the Witchking - and does it because she is a woman and not a man. How awesome is that?

So, I think English classes should stop ignoring fantasy. I think English teachers should take on a book like The Golden Compass (which you could probably teach without needing to read the second two books in the trilogy) and see what happens. Maybe doing something different from the usual lineup of classics would actually get more kids interested in reading. Even if it doesn't, I think there is a lot to learn from fantasy and that it should not be relegated solely to the realm of nerds who read for fun (which is a good place, don't get me wrong). I think everyone could benefit from a healthy dose of fantasy.

What do you think?