I started this blog because I wanted to write about something in pop culture about which I was passionate. Doctor Who has been that for many, many years. But it’s really hard to get worked up about it this season. Capaldi – like Matt Smith – clearly loves being the Doctor even if the writing is not all that great, and – like Smith – he does the best he can with it. I see him as a mix of the First, Third, and Fourth Doctors, and the writers don’t seem to be capitalizing on that potential. Capaldi is, to be sure, but not the writers.

So, as I’ve said from the beginning, I have loved Doctor Who for a long time. My earliest recollections are of Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor as I watched repeats from the 70’s on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons on PBS when I was about six years old. I really don’t know that I understood everything that was happening at the time, but I remember being fascinated by the Doctor, Sarah, Harry, Lela, Romana, Tegan, Nyssa, even Adric and K-9. They were strange and mysterious to me, but they were so interesting in their basic humanity.

The mysterious and clever Doctor who struggled with the morality of his choices, even when it came to stopping his greatest enemies. Sarah, the plucky girl reporter and best friend. Harry, the military man often dumped on by the Doctor but far more capable than the Doctor ever credited him. Lela, the savage warrior woman who struggled to rise above her primitive roots. Romana and Adric, individuals who rivaled the Doctor for intelligence. Nyssa, whose life had been shattered by the Master and the death of her father still managing to carry on afterward. Tegan, the Australian stewardess who just wanted to get back home.

Who does that? Who travels all over time and space with this crazy band of misfits and just wants to get back to being a stewardess? Even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense, there was a verisimilitude to it. Some people, no matter how amazing something might be to those around them, just want to bury their head in the sand and get on with their mundane lives.

The problem, as I see it, is the same one into which George Lucas fell with the Star Wars prequels. Moffat has no oversight, no one to reign in his ideas or to focus him on the story and characters. It’s been heading this way for a while. Moffat has a few good ideas that he mixes, matches, and moves around, and his story arcs are ambitious. The pay-off, however, rarely lives up to the promise of the set-up.

Series Five set up the great mystery of Silence Will Fall, and that series’ finale built-up the mystery of someone manipulating the Doctor’s life and timeline. Series Six continued the Silence storyline, but it gave no real resolution to many of the mysteries established in the Series Five finale. By the end of the Eleventh Doctor’s run, we finally had an answer: the Doctor and his allies set into motion the events that brought his greatest enemies together because that’s what had already happened. But that was almost an aside to the rather thin story of the Doctor protecting a town called Christmas. (Ugh.)

Then we get a new Doctor and a promise of a new direction. While I have liked a lot of the new episodes, I haven’t loved them like I did with the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors of recent memory. All three of those had very strong first (and sometimes only) series. The Eleventh, especially, had a great first series. Series Eight, the current series with the Twelfth Doctor, not so much.

The writers are tired. Moffat is split between Doctor Who and Sherlock, and it’s obvious which one is getting his better work right now. There’s a lot of potential in the current cast and direction, but I’d like to see a crew come on that remembers how to have fun while telling serious stories about adult characters. Clever banter needs to trump insults.

Peter Capaldi has made a great Doctor, all brooding and moody yet curious and generally compassionate, and “Robot of Sherwood” and “Listen” and “Time Heist” had Capaldi’s best moments. I loved seeing the Doctor identify something about which he was curious and investigate it. THAT felt completely right. Seeing the Doctor use time travel to set up his own adventure was also a bit of brilliance. Playing with Robin Hood, they remembered to keep it fun. Danny Pink is brilliantly played and mostly well-written, at least until “The Caretaker.” However, there’s just a sense of “meh” to most of the season. The “Missy/Promised Land/Heaven” aspect is being poorly set-up, and it feels shoe-horned into the episodes.

And for some reason the Doctor now hates soldiers.

He worked with UNIT soldiers for years across multiple incarnations. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a career officer, was such a close friend that the Doctor decided life was not worth living after he learned of the man’s death. Harry Sullivan worked with and traveled with the Doctor for a while. The Doctor has never been so anti-soldier. He’s never liked violence for the sake of violence, and he usually seeks alternative solutions. But he’s never been so reluctant to trust soldiers or to accept their help. If there had been a good reason for it – say, a tragedy involving betrayal by a soldier or group of soldiers near the end of his previous life – I could buy it.

As my friend Anthony pointed out:

There is way too much history involving The Doctor and his working with, or friendship with military people. I understand that with each regeneration his personality changes, but the memories are there, and I just don’t find it plausible that he’s suddenly so vehemently anti-military, to the point of bigotry.

I can see where they are probably going with this…Pink will eventually “change” The Doctor’s views about Soldiers in more than likely some sort of self sacrificial moment, (cue the image of the plastic weaponless toy soldier, and a ton of tears)

Sadly, Moffat does not tend to treat his female characters well. I see what he’s doing with Danny, and I like that he has respect for those who serve and that he recognizes soldiers do more than shoot-to-kill. And while I think he and Clara have great chemistry together, her revelation that she loves him came rather out of the blue. I’m afraid that she’ll wind up marrying Danny and leaving, and that would not do justice to either character. Amy and Rory ultimately left in a similar manner. And the emotional abuse of Clara is truly appalling and needless, especially given her rather decent character development this series. Yes, the Sixth Doctor did get extremely violent  with Peri at first, but he let up fairly quickly after he stabilized, leading them to develop a deep and touching relationship. The Twelfth Doctor continues to insult everything from Clara’s appearance to her intelligence and choice in men.  Yet she trusts him and follows his orders without hesitation.

Why?

The show just doesn’t have the bang that it did when Davies was running or when Moffat first took over, but I’m still watching. Sometimes I have to ask myself the same question.

Why?