my biggest problem with A Good Man Goes To War

[deird1]

The more I see of Steven Moffat, the more I admire Russell T. Davies. If nothing else, for his ability to get Moffat to write well.


For my issues with Moffat's Doctor Who as a whole, see Sherlock is Garbage and Here's Why. For most of my problems with the episode in question, see this review.

But my main problem with the episode is simple: it makes things less interesting.

There is only one real point to A Good Man Goes To War. It's not the plot, or the villains, or the clever timey-wimey whatevers, or any of the things that so many Doctor Who episodes are about. The point, as far as this episode is concerned, is THE BIG REVEAL about River Song.

That reveal being:
1) That River Song has been raised to assassinate the Doctor.
2) That River Song is effectively a Time Lord.
3) That River Song is Amy and Rory's daughter.

But...
1) Clearly, despite being raised to do that, she clearly no longer wants to.
2) Oh, so that's why there was a little girl regenerating at the start of the season? And not someone new? ...Okay.
3) Which means that Amy and Rory's baby, just stolen, (a) will get to adulthood safely, so we don't need to worry about that; (b) won't be rescued by Amy and Rory before she grows up, so we don't get to anticipate that; (c) is now kinda boring.

You see what I mean. There's no "Gasp! River Song is a secret assassin who wants to assassinate the Doctor!" Cause... no. And there's no "Gasp! River Song might be a Time Lord too!" Cause... who cares, really? And there's no tension about the very big conflict that was just raised in this very episode, because we don't actually need to be concerned about this little baby who's just been kidnapped to be brainwashed and raised as a ninja assassin ...eh, she'll be fine.

Even Amy and Rory - who, let us remember, have just had their newborn daughter stolen - never express any further concern about tracking her down and getting her back from the kidnappers. They just shrug and go "Well, River seems to have turned out okay." and get on with their Tardis adventuring. And if they, the parents, don't care about the baby, why should we?


I'm sure there are many worse episodes with many terrible writing issues. But this was the first episode that got me to actively stop caring about the show. And I never really got back into caring about it again.

Comments

[elisi]

The more I see of Steven Moffat, the more I admire Russell T. Davies. If nothing else, for his ability to get Moffat to write well.
It's very early, so I don't have time to read everything, but this made me do a doubletake. I guess a lot of this is just personal preferences, but I'll take Moffat over RTD any day. (Gimme that meta and the happy endings!)

Mostly though, what struck me was the idea that RTD had any influence over what Moffat wrote (beyond basic outlines). RTD was notorious for re-writing everyone, except Moffat, Chibnall and a couple of others. What Moffat wrote stands on its own, wherever it may be. :)

[beer_good_foamy]

Even Amy and Rory - who, let us remember, have just had their newborn daughter stolen - never express any further concern about tracking her down and getting her back from the kidnappers. They just shrug and go "Well, River seems to have turned out okay." and get on with their Tardis adventuring.

Yeah, that really bothered me too. Though it does kind of match Moffat's character arcs in general - see also how Rory and Amy get killed off written out; they're forced to live out their lives in the 1800s and die without ever seeing their families again, whatchagonnado, it's not like that's something you could fix with a time machine. Moffat is mostly interested in characters as representatives of whatever symbolism he's chasing at the moment, not as characters. Which is all the more annoying because he's great at coming up with both characters and monsters, but beyond the purpose he dreamed them up for, we're not expected to think about them.

[schneefink]

The way I interpreted it - and that was a while ago, to be fair - is less that Amy and Rory don't care about the baby, and more like, if you want to interfere in River's past, you really should ask River first - which don't get me wrong, they should have done - and River seemed fine with who she ended up being. It could have been a very interesting question, but instead it never came up.