In which Moffat has a Thing

[zeborah]

(I've been pondering this a while but got around to it tonight after reading annathepiper's review of S6ep1.)

Moffat has some harmless and indeed interesting thematic refrains going on, one about eyes and sight and such, and another about forgetting and remembering and such. I rather like these things.

What I'm less happy with is his compulsion to store sick girls in boxes so that his boys can take them out and play with them when it's convenient.

(Contains spoilers through to season 6 episode 1 of Doctor Who, though I've added a cut tag/extra warning before that one just in case (ETA: No I didn't, that turned out to be impractical after all, so be warned.). Please don't spoil me for anything beyond that, not even rumours.)

• The Girl in the Fireplace: The title says it all really. Reinette is trapped in the fireplace; the Doctor runs in and out as he likes, oblivious to the passage of time, sure of her adoring welcome, until he's thwarted by her illness and death.
• Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead:
  
  • CAL/Charlotte Abigail Lux is stored inside a virtual reality to protect her from dying of an incurable disease (physically she's in a room deep deep in a planet that's been quarantined from the rest of the universe). Unlike Reinette, Amy and River, she never even gets to grow up.
  • During the episodes, Donna and Miss Evangelista are similarly "saved". (We see some men saved in the same way, but the only one we see much focus on, for most of the episode we don't know if he's even real. All the focus is on the women.)
  • The episodes finally conclude with River being given the same treatment, as a permanent solution which we're supposed to see as a wonderfully happy ending. River Song, relegated to a simulation of domesticity and happy about it. Really?
• The Eleventh Hour: Amy is stuck in her timeline while the Doctor pops in and out at whim. For a change, it's not portrayed as good for her and she even gets to call him on it.
• The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone: River Song is removed from prison to carry out this mission, and at the end of it she's returned to prison.
• The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang:
  
  • River continues to be stored in prison with time off to take a message to Our Hero.
  • Then she gets trapped in a time loop in the Tardis until the Doctor wanders in.
  • Amy gets stored in the Pandorica to heal her from being mostly dead. (To be fair, the Doctor later puts himself in a similar situation -- but then that's mostly to save the universe, not to save himself.)
• A Christmas Carol: This is the episode that started my thoughts moving in this direction. Abigail-- Wait. Same as CAL's middle name above? Really? That begins to make me suspicious about "Amelia" too. --Anyway, Abigail is stored in stasis mostly because otherwise she'll die in a few days. Kazran and the Doctor pop in once a year, sure of her adoring welcome; take her out, play with her, and put her tidily away. Eventually they're thwarted by her illness and impending death.
• The Impossible Astronaut: River's still stored in prison but ready to leave the moment the Doctor summons her. Later we get the explicit parallel drawn between her and Amy as young impressionable girls who have the Doctor popping in and out of their lives and loving it.... I can't help fearing they'll do something box-like with the girl in the spacesuit either.

If it was just the Doctor storing girls in boxes for their own good, that'd just be the Doctor being the Doctor. But it's done by all sorts of other people too; it recurs so often in so many (minor) variations, and the girls and women are always portrayed as content to be in the box and ecstatic to being taken out and played with, and it's getting increasingly disturbing.

If I get through my current fanvidding project (been dragging on since at least September) I'll be rather tempted to skip all my other ideas and go straight to Living Doll. If I only had the time...

Comments

[ide_cyan]

It's an ugly pattern when it's all laid out like that.

And it resembles Joss Whedon's.