Please and thank you.
posts tagged "Yes to all of this"
Okay, so I know that there is quite a lot of people who don’t like Moffat because of things he says that are perceived as racist, sexist, etc. Personally I can’t really say anything about this because I don’t really care that much about Moffat - all I can say is he’s a great writer - so I don’t know whether any of the things he’s said are offensive, though by the sheer amount of people who think so it’s pretty clear that some things he’s said have definitely rubbed people the wrong way.
Basically, I don’t care what your opinion of Moffat as a person is, to be honest I’d care a lot more if all this hate was towards Matt, Karen, Arthur, David, Billie, John or any of the other actors, because I think they seem to be genuinely nice people. Anyway, I really don’t care what you think of Moffat, but I am getting tired of one thing, and that’s people saying that he’s ruining the show with his awful writing.
As much as you may hate him, saying that his writing is awful is just a load of bull. Moffat has written some of the best Doctor Who episodes of the new ‘generation’, including The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in The Fireplace, Silence in The Library/Forrest of The Dead, and the highest rated episode of new who, Blink.
If you’re a fan of doctor who, there is no way you can call Moffat a terrible writer after watching those episodes. And if you can truthfully say you don’t like any of those episodes (the storyline, not the acting), then go ahead and call Moffat a terrible writer. But most people can’t say that.
Okay, I’m done ranting. I’d just like to state that I don’t mean any offense towards people who don’t like Moffat, say whatever you like about him, this is just my personal opinion on people questioning his writing abilities.
hello I am here to say honestly that I don’t enjoy most of Moffat’s episodes
I don’t hate every single word he’s ever written, ever. I like most of the episodes he wrote in series 5, with “The Eleventh Hour” being probably my favourite thing he’s written for the show, full stop. But I do think rumours of his genius are greatly exaggerated and he has also written a lot of episodes that I think were quite bad. (See: most of s6.) I think he’s good at writing snappy lines of dialogue, but not very good at writing coherent story-arcs or developing his characters. And by “not very good” in many cases I mean “fucking terrible, IMO”.
The thing with this kind of stuff is you can’t really say “Moffat is a great writer and that’s just objective fact” because how people respond to art is subjective. As a writer, Moffat may appeal to a lot of people’s taste — and he does, which you can see from his ratings and his BAFTAs and all that. But that doesn’t prove anything except that he appeals to a lot of people’s tastes. He doesn’t appeal to mine, and I am sure there are many people out there like me who say they find his writing not good/bad/terrible precisely because for their tastes, it IS not good/bad/terrible.
Moffat isn’t the WORST writer, but I don’t think he’s particularly brilliant either. He’s shit with themes and character arcs and a lot of times he just throws a lot of stuff at the wall and hopes that something sticks instead of intentionally exploring a theme or idea.
He’s a sloppy writer and many of his plots fall apart if you try to think about the logically even just a little bit.
He’s a FUN writer, I think. His dialogue is engaging. But that’s just not enough for me to think of him as an especially good writer when he fails on the fronts that are important to me.
