Doctor Who Christmas Special 2011: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

[strange_complex]

So, the Doctor Who Christmas special, then. I am usually an absolute sucker for these, frequently believing them to be far better on the day of viewing than I later realise is really justified. But sadly this one failed to wow me even on Christmas day itself. swisstone has already covered most of the plot-holes and lazy clichés, thus saving me the trouble, and I agree with his basic thesis - that Steven Moffat is not really giving Doctor Who the attention it needs or deserves. So I will stick to noting a few things which particularly struck me as I watched.

The two stand-out aggravations for me were mystical motherhood and negotiable death. On the mystical motherhood side, I couldn't shake off an icky feeling throughout the story that someone had pointed out to Moffat some of the sexist tropes which have cropped up in his previous stories, so he decided to Do Something About It and redress the balance - but completely failed because he assumed that femininity is essentially equivalent to motherhood, and can only understand motherhood anyway by treating it as strange and mystical and quasi-supernatural. I thought while I was watching that I recognised this as a common trope by male writers who are trying to portray women positively, but still fundamentally viewing them from a patriarchal and reductive point of view. However, having typed a seemingly endless string of searches involving words like "trope" "women" "feminine" "motherhood" "mysterious" "mystical" and "magical" into Google, I still can't seem to track down a basic description of it or a list of other examples, even on TV Tropes. Surely I'm not making this one up, am I? More likely I'm just using the wrong search terms. Anyway, it's annoying.

As for the negotiable death, Moffat has done this so often now that it is intensely predictable, and I groaned with resignation at the inevitability of what was to come as soon as Madge started seeing visions of her husband's 'death' in the time vortex. That's annoying in itself, because it makes Moffat's stories less able to surprise or enthral, but I find this particular device repellent even if it is only used once. It undermines our ability to engage meaningfully with in-story deaths, so that any emotions which they provoke have to be regarded as temporary or provisional until we can be sure whether or not the death is 'real' - often much later in the story. And it toys with the viewer, dangling a hard-hitting narrative with a very powerful emotive force, but then just waving it all aside without working through its consequences properly. I would respect Moffat very much if he had dealt with parental death properly in the Doctor Who Christmas special, and equally much if he had chosen not to include it at all. But what he actually did smacks of wanting to have it both ways - maximum emotional impact and a fairytale happy ending - without being prepared to do the creative work necessary to make the two consistent with one another. In other words, it is lazy writing again - not to mention insulting to people who have had to deal with the utter non-negotiability of death in the real world.

Other than that, I also felt that we hadn't had enough time to get to know the family and their wartime lives before they came to their Uncle Digby's house, so that it was difficult to get any real sense of how fantastic the house might seem to them in comparison to everyday normality, or how badly they needed such a wondrous experience. Here, in fact, it would have helped if the children had known by the time they arrived that their father was dead, so that we could have seen them briefly being able to forget their pain and loss as they got caught up in the magic of what the Doctor had in store for them. As it was, all the Doctor's efforts seemed rather embarrassingly over-blown from their point of view. And although this in itself could have been been used to move the emotional trajectory of the story forward by tipping the children off to the fact that something more fundamental was wrong within their family, it wasn't.

Meanwhile, I'm sufficiently steeped in the work of Ray Harryhausen at the moment to notice how similar the design of the Tree King and Queen was to that of the wooden figurehead who comes alive and starts attacking people in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and to be very little surprised to come across yet another example of the extent of his influence:



But as for Doctor Who, I don't really have anything else to say about this story.

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Comments

[katsmeat.livejournal.com]

What you describe is an episode that's done to gender and motherhood exactly what the Magical Negro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_negro) archetype does to race. It seems to me to be all about the old thing of portraying men as the norm, and the male experience as neutral. Even though women (mothers) are portrayed as intrinsically better in some way, it still has the effect of making them "different" or "abnormal"

Well, at least Just Jane (http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/595435) got an outing. And presumably the trust that owns her got a wodge of cash from the BBC for filming, that will help her ongoing restoration to flying status.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's it. In the end, a rosy-eyed exaggeration of differences isn't really much better than a vilification of them.

Interesting about the plane, though - and I hope you're right about the financial benefits for it.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

But honestly the only possible way ladies can be fulfilled is if they have children ;-)

And I think you've hit the nail on the head Harryhausen-wise, I knew there was something the wooden people reminded me of :-)

As I think I may have already said I heard child actor bratty type voices and so opted to do the washing up in the kitchen instead, after about 10 minutes Mr Pops called me from the living room to say I had made a wise choice.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

The kids weren't too bad, actually, but Mr. Pops was still right about your choice. ;-)

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

The idea of dominant ideology undercutting/framing/essentially messing up attempts at subversion of said dominant ideology pops up in pretty much everything I read for the PhD, so I think you can definitely call it a trope, even if it's not on Google. :P

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I'm so sure I have come across people specifically talking about the habit of portraying motherhood as mystical and magical in a rather icky patriarchal way before, though. Kind of linking in with all the hippy stuff about Earth Mothers and the mystical feminine - you know, the idea that women are particularly 'in touch' with nature and the Earth and the seasons and so on, because of how they are all magical like that. I'm honestly quite thrown to find that it isn't dealt with on TV Tropes, but I really can't find it there.

mystical mother woo-woo

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

I know this as a German (of course!) early twentieth-century trope based on the work of Bachofen, with a smattering of Carl Jung thrown in. Bachofen argued (I think!) that all cultures were based on a mystical matriarchy until the patriarchal Abrahamic religions came along and destroyed them.

Angela Carter's essay 'The Sadiean Woman' is absolutely rocking for demolishing crypto-feminist myths of Mystical Mothers, and you should totally check it out.

Re: mystical mother woo-woo

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Actually, thinking aloud, isn't the trope also connected to Rousseau and his mythification of motherhood and breastfeeding?

Re: mystical mother woo-woo

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are a whole bunch of anthropologists who believe(d) in the mythical prehistoric matriarchal paradise you're referring to, especially in the late 19th and early 20th century. Not just Germans by any means - Robert Graves was at it, for example, and Marija Gimbutas was perpetrating it right up to her death in the 1990s (and still has many devotees, too). I've no doubt you're right about Rousseau, too, and of course it is inherent in the Catholic church's treatment of the Virgin Mary, so has been around for a very long time. This is what makes me so astonished that I can't seem to find a simple, straightforward description of it on a site like TV Tropes.

Re: mystical mother woo-woo

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Yes. I've run into that sort of thing (I could tell you a story, but I'll tell you offline). What surprises me is how people don't realise that the very idea of a prehistoric matriarchy is itself a patriarchal construction.

[kernowgirl.livejournal.com]

Re TV Tropes, the closest thing I could find is this:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MotherNatureFatherScience

But it still isn't quite what you're looking for.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes - that does get into some of it, though. Cheers!

[kernowgirl.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just watched this and enjoyed it very much, although I fully understand your issues with it.

The only defence of the mystical mother trope I can offer here is that Dr Who has a tendency to make just about everything mystical sooner or later especially in Christmas specials. (And honestly, in fiction, it's always refreshing to see the mother figure be the active role; usually the father figure is dominant and mothers are more of a nurturing background figure).

That said, while I felt that there were some very strong notes hit on the whole concept of motherhood, I also felt that a lot of it was heavy-handed. For example, I remember when the doctor was talking about why it hurt for Madge to see her children so happy, saying it was because they would be so sad later. And I thought: "No, it's because she's jealous of them!"

Clearly, that would have made Madge a less sympathetic figure... After all, mothers are supposed to be ultimately selfless. But selfless characters tend to lack depth--in many ways, we're defined by our desires. So there's an all too common portrayal of motherhood as subsuming the female character. She is living only through her children.

That said, I enjoyed Madge as a character, and thought the actress did a good job of making her interesting and personable despite the by-numbers writing. I would just have liked to have seen a more flawed and complex character, as opposed to the rather patronising imperfection of bad driving.

I was thrilled to see Bill Bailey and disappointed when he was only a cameo and a rather wasted one at that. Still, his first scene made me chuckle out loud, as did the doctor's: "There are some sentences I should really stay away from" line. (I always appreciate a good reword of an old joke).

But as a mushy Christmas story, I liked it a lot better than last year's.... partly because of the Narnia references, admittedly. I do wish the husband had stayed dead though, and I can't help but wonder what poor Anderson's fate was!

[kernowgirl.livejournal.com]

Also, I found myself somewhat bothered by how the children completely failed to have any kind of family resemblance. Which was odd, because they seemed to have been cast for their looks. They were picture perfect child characters: the coke-bottle glasses and red hair of the little boy with an interest in space, and the large eyes and full lips of the girl burgeoning on womanhood.

But they didn't look anything like their parents, and the roles they were given didn't live up to their archetypical appearance: the boy was the plot-necessary heedless wanderer, while the girl seemed to be building up to a character breakthrough that never happened. I kind of felt that if they liked the actors so much, they should have saved them for another episode.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

True about the appearances and what they hinted at character-wise, too. Some people have speculated that some or all of them may become replacement companions at some point during the next season, especially given the Doctor's final reminder to Madge that she should feel free to wish for him again if she needs him. Despite not much liking this story, I'd be quite up for that, as a whole family with different ages and genders represented could offer all sorts of interesting possibilities for adventures and character-development on board the TARDIS. So maybe they will get the chance to develop their potential more fully next season.

[kernowgirl.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that didn't occur to me, but like you, I find it very appealing!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, very good point about the alternative of jealousy, and the way its absence rather denied her own motivations as a character. That would definitely have been a lot more interesting, and more moving too by dint of making her more realistic and relatable.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I didn't enjoy this Christmas special.

Generally wet.

I agree about the mystical motherhood trope and the negotiable death. Both poor in their own way.

I'm not much enjoying Moffat's tenure.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

No, me neither (on Moffat's tenure). In all honesty, I wish he would pass Doctor Who on to someone else, and concentrate his energies purely on Sherlock. But there's no way the BBC will take that risk with the 50th anniversary coming up, so I guess we're stuck with him until at least the end of 2013. :-/

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I think Maffat will ant himself to hang on for the 50th anniversary, but I wouldn't be surprised if he goes after that. His replacement will, of course, be Gatiss.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yeah - he'll be in tenure until the 50th anniversary.

The question is, will I?

[hollyione.livejournal.com]

I found it slightly missing something too. Pleasant enough to watch, but the Narnia references didn't do much for me - there wasn't really any reason for them to be there as far as I could see. Also the true sadness of losing a father wasn't really explored, as you mentioned in your review - almost trivialised by the fact that he was saved by the Power of Sacred Motherhood.

And WHAT about his co-pilot who seemed to conveniently disappear? And WHAT would his superiors say about his lancaster suddenly turning up in a completely random place? And why not use Bill Bailey a bit more? Etc, etc.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Exactly! There were at least two other people on board that plane (Anderson and the bloke who reported that he was 'in a bad way'). Also, why exactly did all the tree-spirits need to travel off the planet in Madge Arwell's head if they were then just going to float off amongst the stars anyway? Plot-holes don't bother me that much in themselves - I can easily forgive them if a story makes sense emotionally. But when it falls apart on both fronts, I get annoyed. :-(

[hollyione.livejournal.com]

I forgot about the other guy on the plane (he must have had a family too). Plus, if they were going to use Narnia as meta-references they could have subverted it in some way, i.e. Aslan turned out to be an evil brainwasher or something and the White Witch good after all. Although, would that have been too disillusioning for CS Lewis fans (personally I think his views could do with being challenged). They just didn't stand up to scrutiny in my opionon.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, some subversion would have been great, and I think could have been done in a way that didn't upset Lewis fans too much - just playing around with the possibilities left by the gaps in his narrative. I agree with you that as it was the Narnia references didn't go very deep at all - much like the use of Greek mythology in the widely-reviled Tom Baker story Underworld (http://strange-complex.livejournal.com/270436.html#cutid1), in fact.

[chrisvenus]

I have to admit I'm surprised it was only when you saw the visions of the husband in the vortex that you realised he was going to come back to life. I was assuming from the moment they actually bothered showing him that he was going to come back. Otherwise his death would have been better served off screen allowing for more time for the family.

And yes, I did think the same that Moffat was overcompensating for sexism.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Well, given Moffat's track record and the general sentimental tone of the Christmas specials, I did note it as a likelihood from the beginning. But it was when the visions appeared in the vortex that I knew for 100% certain sure.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Once, just once, I’d like someone I care about to die and not to come back to life.

Dammit – Homer killed off Patroclus. I am given to understand that he even managed to turn the inconvenient death of a key character into a turning point in the narrative.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Haha - quite!

yupyup

[jayseajay.livejournal.com]

hey there, its jane, she of bitching about sherlock in cif...i'm a bit late to the party, but was on an early morning caffeination and doctor who noodle about, and found myself here...just wanted to say that i was really interested to read that your response to the mother-ship trope on xmas day was exactly the same as mine...'he's aware of the fact that many of us think his writing of women is dodgy and has stuck this whole adoration of the mother in to compensate.' what i find striking about moffat is that he is so blind about gender politics that when he tries to defend himself (or his fans try and defend him) against charges of misogyny they turn to other tropes which are equally suspect. he doesn't get that veneration and denigration are two sides of the same operation (its a strange omission is there is nothing on this on tv tropes etc...its seems evident...maddona/whore being only the most notable example...there is a nice taxonomy from melanie klein which might be useful here, it lists six types of defense against narcissistic wounds and almost reads as a patriarchal playbook...the most notable are denigration, appropriation and idealization). this issue also comes up i've found in that people seem to think that the fact that moffat often writes adult men as incompetent, blundering emotionally stunted menchildren is somehow evidence that he's not a misogynist - see he hates men too!! - without understanding that this is also only just the shadow side of the myth of the invulnerable, self-sufficient warrior hero...And lastly, with regard to sherlock specifically, Moffat thinks that a rebuttal of a charge of sexism here consists in demonstrating how chivalrous his protagonist is, and how he hates it when people are violent to women...Again, there is a fundamental failure to understand dialectical reversal...Two sides of the same coin steven, repeat three times and go to bed with some Jung under your pillow. anyway...i'm wibbling...just to say, its nice to find a smart doctor who blog - clearly my ident gives away my biases - i'll check out some of your pieces on the last couple of seasons...cheers.

Re: yupyup

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Oh, hi, and thanks for your comment! I really enjoyed your piece about Sherlock in the Guardian. Personally, I found that the misogyny which so many other people were obviously seeing in that particular episode didn't strike me as forcefully as it had in the Doctor Who Christmas special, and it took me about a week to be able to articulate why (http://strange-complex.livejournal.com/417954.html). In the end I think it was because Sherlock revolves so heavily around double- and triple-bluffing that by the end of each episode, I'm left with an enduring sense that what I've seen on screen probably still isn't the full story - that is, there's a great deal of room for alternative, less misogynistic, readings of the characters' motivations in Sherlock in a way that there isn't really in Doctor Who. But that's about my reception of the programme rather than Moffat's writing, and it is sadly all too clear that Moffat is exactly as clueless about gender politics as you have pointed out.

I heard about Moffat's rebuttal of criticism regarding Sherlock at the BAFTA Cymru preview screening of The Hounds of Baskerville, both from a friend who was there and from this article (http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/need-to-read/2012/01/04/sherlock-writer-steven-moffat-furious-with-sexist-claim-91466-30062866/) (which I'm sure you'll have seen, as it references your Guardian piece directly). What the article doesn't make clear, but my friend's write-up did, was that the issue of sexism in Sherlock was raised in the very first question when the floor was opened up to the audience - which is a good indication of how prominent the issue has become amongst his target audience, and how fed up people are about it. But you are quite right that his response shows a continuing total failure to understand what it actually is that people are complaining about. In fact, not only did he confuse being excessively protective towards women with actually respecting us as human beings - he also deftly deflected the question from the issue of whether the programme (and therefore he as writer) is sexist to whether the central character is. Grrrr - not the same thing at all!

Sadly, it's obvious at this stage that Moffat ain't gonna change. He's hearing the complaints, but he's not really listening to them - and I doubt he ever will. But I'm glad all the same to hear a rising chorus of voices raised in criticism about it. It may be too late for him, but the more the problems in work like his are called out, the more hope there is that future writers will learn how to avoid them.

Re: yupyup

[jayseajay.livejournal.com]

Hey! Thanks for the reply! And thanks moreover for the info re: the BAFTA screening…I didn’t know it came up first, and yes, that’s telling…Given that this issue of Moffat’s writing of women has been doing the rounds on the internet since he took over Who (if not before…but tbh, the puzzle box approach in the context of RTD’s more well rounded characters and arcs worked really well, and the tendency to introduce emotional schisms between the characters had little traction…on this, I also have a question for you…Sally Sparrow? The one exception to the 2D-rule? Or is it just that Carey Mulligan is such a stellar actress that she could endow a lamppost with luminous humanity?). Anyway, massive digression…Given that it’s a long-standing complaint, I am really pleased that its being brought to him forcefully now…and its not particularly because I care about whether Sherlock is sexist, or even whether Steven Moffat is…it's because he’s in charge of one of our great cultural institutions, and his misogyny is in significant respects responsible for the fact that he’s making a bit of a ham-fist of it.

Re: the particular episode of Sherlock, I half agree with you, but possibly for different reasons, in that, I also find Moffat’s sexism far less egregious here than in Who (I mean, to me, asking whether Sherlock is sexist kinda brings to mind an old line about popes and catholics…it's about the power of pure rationality, it's likely that its not gonna be great with the ladies) but as your nice Bechdel test userpic makes plain, Who is a different matter. As you say, Moffat’s not capable of hearing, that much is plain…but maybe some of the people at BBC Cymru are…Really, I understand the decision, insofar as Moffat’s episodes during RTD’s tenure were outstanding, and there are certain things he has a real talent for as a dramatist (timey-wimey plots, great monsters etc)…but its interesting to me that they thought they could hand over a show whose success was in the hands of a gay-man/woman/metrosexual man triumvirate to a dude who has such serious problems with women and thought it wouldn’t have an effect. What RTD/Gardener’s input/thought-process here was would be interesting to know…and I also really want to know what they and DT really think about the current situation…Anyway, maybe it is too late now for Who, but if it has been heard that gender politics in the writing of drama, and Who in particular, is a real issue…and an issue insofar as it actually seriously impacts the quality of the drama, then that will be something.

Re: yupyup

[jayseajay.livejournal.com]

Lastly, I just wanted to add that I really like your observation about Moffat and his problem with the dying. I could ramble on here about the fact that I think that patriarchy, at base, is structured around the denial of death but I won’t bore you…but just to say, to my mind, its another facet of the same thing, as not unrelatedly, is his inability to really embed his characters in their history, and deal with the passing of time, and loss. To me, this is one of the things I love[d] about Who…it dramatizes the difference between lived time and abstract time…you can whiz around a timeline, but as an individual, time still passes which cannot be recouped (under threat of Reapers etc)…and that’s what makes life incredible and tragic…that there is history, and loss, and that it cannot be negotiated with. Without this, there is nothing at stake…and that’s where Moffat comes unstuck…(along with the fact that he seems to care far more for primal under-the-bed scaries than for the conflict between injustice and its other)…if its all just provisional, and there always just another clever clever way of getting out of it, then who cares? And who cares about these people, who have come from nowhere, and exist somehow outside their own timelines? Gaiman’s episode was the only one since Moffat took over that moved me in anything like the way RTD (for all his schmaltz and froopy deus ex machinas) did…because, for a second, he gave The Doctor back his history – his history with his people and his ship – and hence, he became again, for a moment, a creature who really cared about things, about where he had come from and where he was going…and just for a moment, I believed he was the same man…and then it was gone…

Which is all to say that probably, I should just start dealing with the fact that maybe Who is over for me (and not waste my time sticking it to Moffat in public…oh…but it was such fun!)…dammit, hoisted on my own….

Re: yupyup

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

And yes to this, too - especially what you say about whether there is anything real at stake or not, and the provisional nature of all the problems Moffat puts in the way of his characters. I loved the emotional truth of RTD's characterisations, and I've always rated character over plot, even when watching shows like Who which tend to be plot-focused, so his approach really appealed to me. Anyway, I hope you won't give up on Who entirely, or even better that it will change so that you don't have to.

Re: yupyup

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

On Sally Sparrow, yes - I did really like her, and agree that she had far more depth than most of Moffat's women. But then that was during the RTD era, and it's possible that he had some input into her characterisation which helped to flesh out Moffat's original characterisation. It's only now that Moffat is head writer that we can more confidently attribute authorial decisions to him specifically - and the results are ugly.

On your more general point about how Who has changed since Moffat took over, I really hope it isn't too late in the sense that the show can never recover from this! But yes - surely RTD must wince sometimes, at both Who and Sherlock? And BBC Cymru can't be entirely deaf to people's complaints. Sadly, we're clearly stuck with Moffat until the 50th anniversary year has been dealt with, but Who had always reinvented itself, and I'm optimistic that it can find a new direction once Moffat moves on.