Edward
Bartender
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Interesting. Do you have a sense of when it went wrong for Moffat? Was his appointment wrong to begin with or did he go wrong at some point?
As I said before, Dr Who has been wildly uneven since the re-boot began. There have been great moments and the odd almost perfect episode, but often the stories were rushed, with a focus on elements that didn't matter much and everything resolved improbably in the last 5 minutes.
The 45 minutes, complete in one episode format is definitely responsible for some of the dumbing down and over-reliance on deus ex machina fairydust type endings. Moffat's problem was control - as old Karlie said, absolute power corrupts absolutely. He was fine when he was a staff writer, but as show runner he became far too keen first on putting his own stamp on everything, then latterly, as he seemed to lose interest in Who when Sherlock became big (and as he would later do to Sherlock), he seemed to enjoy baiting the fanbase and ruining things. Also, right from the start he insisted that it was and should be a kids' show, and then - as almost all middle-class kids' tv writers - proceeded to dumb it down and write down to kids. Couple that with the paradoxical need he has displayed in all his recent writing to impress upon us all just how terribly clever he believes himself to be, and, even with a star of the quality of Capaldi, you end up with this terrible mess. That the show had a significant recovery during Moffat's final season (I liked Bill Potts a lot as an assistant, and what they did to her was one of precious few examples of Moffat being able to commit to finality; also, her sexuality was far too well handled for a misogynist like Moffat to have been writing it) would suggest to me that there was a lot of truth in the rumour that Auntie had demoted Moffat to showrunner in name alone and imposed an editor over his head.
The Clara thing.... problem there was that she was an empty character. Fine as a plot device for a season, but Moffat couldn't let go and kept bringing her back. When she jumped into the vortex and was split into the multiple Claras that helped out all the Doctors, that would have been absolutely fine with me, a great plot point. Supposedly she was meant to leave then, but Moffat persuaded her to stay and kept her in. She was supposed to leave again at another point (I think when the drippy boyfriend became a cyberman), and then she stayed.... and even when the character was actually killed, Moffat still had to write in that stupid her going off on an adventure thing with Isulda(?). The cameo she did in the last Christmas special with the doctor being given back his memories of Clara was, I have no doubt, inserted purely as Moffat's final 'f*** you' to the fans that hated what he had done with it so much.