I was
curious about what sort of patterns emerge in how the Doctor and his
companion(s) tend to arrive at their adventures – how they most frequently tend
to happen upon some invasion that needs thwarting or some planet that needs
saving. I was also curious about what
effect outside-show forces may have on these patterns, i.e., whether the Doctor
and co. tend to travel differently between the RTD and Moffat years. So (very non-pointlessly,)
I divided new Who’s stories into
categories that emerged as I went along.
Yeah, new Who only – maybe
someday I’ll try and tackle classic Who,
but today is not that day.
What
surprised me most was how often the decision of where to go is made for our heroes. I don’t just mean the TARDIS taking the
Doctor somewhere other than where he meant to go, although that does make up a
tidy little subset of general time-and-space sightseeing – off-course
sightseeing. No, I mean instances where
team TARDIS is either called somewhere or forcibly brought there. On the latter front, this happens in all
sorts of ways – being kidnapped (“Bad Wolf” / “The Parting of the Ways,”)
falling through a tear in the universe (“Rise of the Cybermen” / “The Age of
Steel,”) getting yanked into a creepy dream state (“Amy’s Choice,”) being
hijacked by one’s companion (“Dark Water” / “Death in Heaven,”) and so
forth. The Doctor and his companions are
very prone to being dragged somewhere against their will, both accidentally and
as part of some evil plot. Just the
same, they’re also very prone to being summoned. This happens occasionally during the RTD
years but really ramps up in the Moffat era, in part because River makes her
home there and she loves having the Doctor at her beck and call, but also
because it just seems to be a device Moffat likes. From Churchill to Davros to a scared little
boy to a future version of the Doctor himself, everybody wants words with the
Doctor.
The other
most popular types of travel are specific sightseeing and aimless
flitting-about, both with the overall aim of seeing the universe. At times, the companion has something
specific they want to see, like Sherwood Forest, while at others, the Doctor
has something in mind that he’s eager to share with them, like the Globe
theatre, a space cruiser honeymoon, or the end of planet Earth (ah, angsty
Nine.) And of course, sometimes the
Doctor flings open the doors, anxious to show off, and finds himself cheerfully
the wrong time and/or place. The errors can
be slight (off by a continent and a few years in “The Idiot’s Latern”) or
significant (rural Wales instead of Rio de Janeiro in “The Hungry Earth” /
“Cold Blood.”) But while they often set
out with a destination in mind, there are other occasions where they happily
step out of the TARDIS with no idea when or where they are (“The Long Game” and
“The Impossible Planet” / “The Satan Pit,” for a couple examples.) I like that the show does this – because it’s
cool to see the iconic time periods, meet the famous historical figures, and
visit the Doctor’s favorite locales, but it’s also nice to remember that, more
than anything, it’s about the journey and the adventure, and they don’t need to
have a specific aim to enjoy themselves or
do some good in the universe.
RTD has a
greater tendency to open on the Doctor already on 21st century Earth
investigating something – that’s his go-to move for introducing new
companions. Rose, Martha, and Donna (as
well as Lady Christina) all meet the Doctor after something has already piqued
his interest and he’s looking into it.
RTD is also fond of home visits.
The Doctor and Rose in particular stumble across alien craziness several
times when Rose drops by to visit Jackie.
Neither of these devices are used nearly as often by Moffat. I suppose, since both Amy/Rory and Clara
spend at least part of their tenure on the show as part-time companions,
there’s no reason to make a special trip home to see their families (plus,
their families really don’t matter to the show in any meaningful way, so why
spend time going to see them?)
So what
else does Moffat like? Travel that has a
goal in mind, arriving somewhere due to a clue, a signal, or something else
that’s caught the Doctor’s attention.
Whether following something odd in a van Gogh painting or tracing an
alien device that shouldn’t be there, Moffat’s Who likes to open on “can’t resist a good mystery” scenarios. Within that, he’s exceptionally fond of
episodes where the TARDIS lands based on a hidden
agenda of the Doctor’s. It has shades of
Seven in it, with the Doctor subtly moving pieces into place or investigating
something his companions aren’t privy to.
We first see this when the Doctor is looking into the Flesh, it gets
used a lot with Clara and Eleven (in
“The Bells of Saint John,” “Hide,” and “The Crimson Horror,” all in service of
figuring out the Impossible Girl thing,) and it comes up a couple times in
series 8 – “The Caretaker” and “Mummy on the Orient Express” – mostly in
service of Clara’s “proof” that Twelve isn’t like the nice lovely Doctor she
had before (even though, as I just said, Eleven did the exact same thing with her multiple times, and he was actually
investigating her.) By and large, I don’t like these setups as
well, because they feels designed to make the Doctor seem “darker” when he
doesn’t need to be.
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