It seems
that, once I got started looking at “Who
data” and examing trends within the show, I couldn’t really stop. I’m back for more today, this time looking at
aliens/antagonists on the series. As
usual, I’m looking at new Who only
(classic Who just has way too much
raw material,) looking for patterns between the show’s time under RTD and
Moffat respectively. (Note: I’m aware that, when I do posts like this, it
often comes down unfavorably on Moffat, and it’s no secret that I’ve been over
his showrunning for a while. It’s not
that I set out to prop up RTD and pull Moffat down – goodness knows RTD had his
problems as a showrunner as well, but the flaws of both magnified the longer
they were around, and I’ve been in the weeds with Moffat a lot more recently,
so that’s what I’m seeing. Give me three
or four seasons with Chibnall, and I may very well be waxing nostalgic about
the good old Moffat days.)
Anyway, I
first started pondering the subject of today’s post (even if I haven’t gotten
around to it until now) back during the “Monks” arc last season. I had a difficult time assessing them as
baddies because a) what they do is a little all over the place, b) we know what they’re doing but not why, and c) we know next to nothing
about them as an actual species (including, what are they even called? I presume it’s not “The Monks.”) But in thinking about that, I backtracked
over the season and realized there really weren’t any fleshed-out alien races – “let’s see, we’ve got killer
spacesuits, alien wood mites, an alien sea creature, emoji robots, and…
sentient engine oil?” But having gone
this far, I wasn’t going to stop at just this season, and sure enough, a lot of
my general hypotheses about the trends for the show’s baddies bore out.
Both eras
of the show are pretty similar in terms of bringing back aliens from the
classic series. RTD’s seasons
resurrected slightly more, just because it came first and so snatched up a lot
of the iconic ones, like the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and so forth. Moffat’s Who
has continued to use all of these (except the Macra, although, even in
“Gridlock,” they felt more like your basic giant alien crabs than actual
Macra,) in addition to bringing back foes like the Great Intelligence, the Ice
Warriors, and the Zygons.
Where the
two showrunners really differ is in introducing new aliens races to the
show. For better or worse (*cough!*
Slitheen,) RTD’s Who gave us a lot of
new aliens. Much like Moffat, he has his
preferences – aliens that look like Earth animals, such as the Judoon (rhinos)
or the Vespiform (wasps); aliens that inspired Earth mythology, like the
Haemovariform (werewolf) or the Carrionites (witches.) However, his era, I feel, also took its time
in setting up new aliens and telling us about them: their names, their “deal” (i.e., Krillitanes
are genetic scavengers, the Sycorax use blood control,) and their motivations
for why they’re doing what they’re doing.
That last one is important – whether they’re looking for profit, seeking
to conquer, or wanting to feed, there’s usually a reason attached to their
baddie behavior, and there’s usually at least one head honcho for the Doctor
and co. to talk to and (unsuccessfully) attempt to reason with. Foes like the Family of Blood are more
mysterious as to their origins, but the execution on them is still quite
detailed and specific.
Moffat’s Who, in contrast, has introduced very few new aliens to this extent. Just in general, he introduces far fewer alien races (more on what he does
introduce later,) and those that he does aren’t as fleshed out. Take the Silence: we learn that they’re actually a religious
order rather than a race (and we never learn what their race is called,) and
their place on the show alters dramatically between their debut in series 6 and
“The Time of the Doctor.” The Monks are
very similar. For me, the only
Moffat-era new aliens that feel relatively complete the same way many of the
RTD-era aliens do are the Saturnine (a.k.a. fish vampires,) the Mire/fake
Vikings, and the Tivolians, they of the most conquered planet in the galaxy.
So what does Moffat prefer? Generally, I can break it into three
categories. First, there’s technology,
both technology functioning as it ought to (the Cloister wraiths, the
Tessalecta robot) and malfunctioning/unable to cope with a change in its
environment (the Siren/“AI doctor,” the emoji robots.) There are aliens that, while shown to be
sentient, communicate very little if at all and are basically just animal-like
predators eating people (the invisible Krefayis, the dream crabs.) And finally, there are assorted varieties of
monster, often working under the control of someone else; they don’t tend to
talk, either (George’s nightmare dolls, the gross “sleep dust” monsters.) Less opponent, more menace. If they have a motivation, it’s usually
hunger, and they’re not likely to have a dramatic standoff with the
Doctor. I have to say, though, where
they succeed is usually in being extremely creepy.
Not that
RTD’s era doesn’t use any of these categories, because it does. He includes dangerous tech (the Host on the
Titanic,) basic predators (the planet-eating alien stingrays,) and straight-up
monsters (whatever Dr. Lazarus turns into.)
But for RTD, these are outliers, maybe one or two in a season. For Moffat, they’re his bread-and-butter –
it’s the well-rounded aliens that are the outliers. In a way, Moffat most often uses horror
conventions within sci-fi wrapping, all-but-mindless monsters in exorable
pursuit. I’m not saying one way is good
and the other bad, although I prefer more of the alien stories myself, but when
you start laying out the comparisons between the two methods side by side, the
contrast is really apparent.
No comments:
Post a Comment