Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized doctor who, donna noble, russell t davies 0 Comments

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bazingaholmes98:

bvdwolfrose:

honestly……… no more clara references……… that’s enough……………

And he could have literally reminisced about the fact that he did that to donna. it hurt him a lot a you know. Just for one second he realised how wiping Bill’s memories would affect him – can you imagine him having to go through all that again? I swear to shit when Bill told him to think about how he would feel, he literally thought about this exchange

“Donna I was just going”

“Yeah. see ya.”

i mean knowing moffat, he simply refuses make references to things that he didn’t create, so

but honestly that would’ve been a great Donna flashback.

Bill keeps begging him to not wipe her memory, and all of a sudden we flash to black and white, back to that moment between Donna and Ten, with no audio other than Bill’s pleads as the scene of Donna’s own pleads plays out.

we flash back to our current moment, and the Doctor quickly pulls his hands back. “get out”, he says quietly, trying not to let it known that his voice is quavering.

to be fair, the line was “imagine how you’d feel if someone did this to you”, as in if you had your memory wiped, so honestly clara’s theme did fit better than donna’s moment

im also convinced that for him to have considered wiping bill’s memory in the first place he had to have been blocking donna or something

actually, it doesn’t fit the situation better.

if my memory serves correct, twelves memory wipe was consensual, while donna’s was not. twelve wanted to wipe bill’s memory, and she begged him not to, much like how donna begged the doctor not to do the same.

and even when she says, “imagine how you’d feel if someone did this to you”, he CAN’T remember his own memory wipe, he DOESN’T remember it. so that moment was just to tug at the heartstrings of the viewers, and he doesn’t have the memory of clara and his own memory wipe in order to use that experience in order to decide not to wipe her memory. it JUST BARELY makes sense, if that moment truly makes sense at all.

it would have made much more sense if bill had continued to beg him to not wipe her memory, and the doctor had remembered how donna had begged the same, and how badly wiping her memory hurt him, which would make him decide against wiping bill’s memory.

so it’s an example of the situation not truly fitting, moffat refusing to callback to anything that isn’t 100% of his creation and/or design, and moffat not really making any sense.

12 does remember that his memory was wiped.

When something goes missing, you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara. I know we travelled together. I know that there was an Ice Warrior on a submarine and a mummy on the Orient Express. I know we sat together in the Cloisters and she told me something very important, but I have no idea what she said. Or what she looked like. Or how she talked. Or laughed. There’s nothing there. Just nothing.

He knows what it feels like to be missing something.

Whereas if he’d been comparing the situation to Journey’s End, he would’ve wiped her mind anyway then found some rain to feel sorry for himself in.

“Moffat refuses to reference things he didn’t create” is a really fucking weird thing to say about an episode that prominently features a photograph of Susan

Not to mention the Movellans, all the old sonic screwdrivers on his desk, and the out of order sign on the TARDIS.

All the callbacks Moffat has done that I can remember:

• Holograms of all the past Doctors in the very first episode Moffat did as showrunner
• Picture of the First Doctor on the Doctor’s ID card in Vampires of Venice
  
• Holograms of Rose, Martha and Donna in Let’s Kill Hitler
• Clara splitting herself in order to save all the previous Doctors, which formed the entire plot of The Name of the Doctor and featured Clara superimposed into old footage, rather a lot of effort to go to
• Wall of past companions featured in Day of the Doctor
• ….Most of what happened in Day of the Doctor, including appearances from all past Doctors, albeit sometimes badly CGIed
• The relationship between the Doctor and Elizabeth I, something RTD created
• Reference in Time of the Doctor to a Third Doctor story (”nicked it off the Master in the Death Zone.”)
• A variety of past Daleks (god, don’t ask me to name them all) seen in Asylum of the Daleks and The Witch’s Familiar
• The First Doctor and Fourth Doctor seen in The Witch’s Familiar
• Osgood’s Fourth Doctor scarf
• Osgood’s question-mark shirt
• Osgood’s surname
• The references to where the Twelfth Doctor got his face
• The Eleventh Doctor speaking in the Fourth Doctor’s voice in The Almost People
• The Twelfth Doctor speaking in the Fourth Doctor’s voice in Mummy on the Orient Express
• Reference to Sarah Jane in Under the Lake (”I should have known you didn’t live in Aberdeen” on the card)
• Reference to Rose and Martha in Before the Flood
• Flashback to Donna in The Girl Who Died
• Reference to Harry Sullivan in The Zygon Inversion
• The scene with the Doctor learning about the Brig’s death (that was a huge thing!) in The Wedding of River Song
• The Brig actually showing up (ditto) as a Cyberman in Death in Heaven
• The aforementioned picture of Susan
• The aforementioned Movellans
• The aforementioned sonic screwdrivers and TARDIS sign
• The return of John Simm’s Master, as seen in the trailer
• The existence of Kate Stewart

I am thoroughly convinced that Moffat has been using his tenure to rewrite / overwrite aspects of Russell T. Davies’ reboot of the Doctor (specifically, the character, and his relationships with his companions) with which he disagrees.

And even though his attempts at rewriting have often been baroque and awkward, I’m still grateful. Because Moffat has been using his power to do the things I wish I could do (except sit Davies down and give him a stern lecture on the writer’s covenant with the audience).

And of all the things Davies did, I’ve disagreed with nothing so violently (as in feeling slightly sick to my stomach every time I think of it) as Ten’s Mind-wipe of Donna.

The scene at the end of “Hell Bent” was a 90-degree turn away from that horror, because Moffat introduced the element of mutual consent (and the fact that the tables were turned as to whose mind actually got wiped). But the scene at the end of “The Pilot” was the other 90-degree that the Doctor needed to make to redeem his character.

Because he heard a woman’s “No!” and respected it.

Which is one example of why it frustrates me no end when I see fans complaining that Moffat “hates women.”

also you guys DO remember that Donna’s memory wipe was in order to save her life, right? it wasn’t for shits and giggles, she was literally going to DIE if he didn’t wipe her memory. still shitty that she didn’t consent, but at least they didn’t wipe her memory because her and ten’s friendship was too dangerous or whatever.

That’s not how it works. Fiction isn’t created in a vacuum. RTD didn’t sit down to write Journey’s End and go “Oh man! Donna has somehow gotten herself into a situation where her choices are mindwipe or death! Guess I have no choice but to mindwipe her whilst she begs for that not to happen, having clearly stated she finds death the better option.” Nope. He chose to put her in that situation and he chose to write her out of it that way. There were countless ways to write Donna/Catherine Tate out of the show. He could’ve had her take her new superpowers and go to live on a far-off planet, he could’ve had her join Rose on the parallel Earth, hell, he could’ve had her regenerate into a new body if he was that desperate. He didn’t do any of those things.

There is NO SITUATION, or none I can think of, where a ‘but’ should ever come after the words “She didn’t consent”.