Whenever someone tends to find a particular hatred for a specific episode of Doctor Who, one often jumps to the idea of plot holes. For those of you who don’t know, plot holes are gaps in logic/ flaws within the narrative of a piece of media that can often draw you out of a story and make you question the illusion of the world and character it is trying to create. For example If there’s a more obvious and logical solution to the problems occurring in a story that meant the whole story could have been resolved in a lot less time if practiced but no one acknowledges or chooses to take it, then generally that story is pretty weak.
However I feel like recently, especially with this overabundance of Moffat hatred, people are too quick to jump on the plot hole bandwagon as the default excuse for whenever they don’t like an episode as some kind of definitive or objective justification for the episode being bad. These people try to push the agenda that Moffat is somehow ruining Doctor Who and they heavily attempt to make out that this is somehow only a problem now that Moffat is in charge, when in actual fact, almost the opposite is true.
I will admit there are plot holes in Moffat episodes, plenty of them. But these are more than often the same people who praise Russell T Davies’s work (RTD) as a shining example of good Doctor Who and beg for him to return. But if that was true, and I mean really true then RTD’s episodes must be air tight plot wise right? Only they’re not. Not at all, in fact most of them are littered with plot holes from start to finish. These people are entitled to their opinion, and that’s fine, but the way Moffat haters go about their actions, you’d think that that was the case. I know plot holes aren’t the only criticism he faces, but it’s the default people use to try and justify themselves to suggest that the more educated opinion is that Moffat ‘ruined’ the show. However this exposes a mass hypocrisy in this mindset given RTD’s episodes most of the time were far more guilty of having plot holes. And if this comes as a shock to you. I present to you a case study of just one of the many plot hole ridden RTD episodes, be shocked to find that this is how many plot holes I found in just one two part story written by RTD.
Case Study: The Last of the Timelords. Series 3 Episode 13
The Plot:
According to this episode we’re expected to believe that Martha. After only hearing the words ‘use the countdown’ from the Doctor somehow knew that she has to: Travel the world for a year, tell stories about the Doctor and somehow tell everyone to pray for him at a specific time that she or no one else could have possibly known. Know that she has to get captured in specifically a years time and be executed at a specific time of day. Make the Master think she was collecting components to a gun that kills time lords (to which she had no knowledge of before this point in the story). Somehow know that getting these people to pray would somehow correlate to some unrelated satellite’s in the sky used to get Saxon into power to begin with to now restore the Doctor to his former age so he can save everyone, okay everyone got? Good!
The Holes:
1) How does Martha know:
a) When she’ll get captured? She’s one of the few survivors on the planet and a number one target on the Master’s list of people to get rid of, how does she know when she’ll get captured or how? Doesn’t it seem all too convenient that it takes the Master a year to trace her considering he rules the world and it was established in the previous episode that the perception filter she’s wearing does not work on time lords.
b) When to tell these people to pray, baring in mind differences of time zones in different countries, daylight savings etc. how could she possibly orchestrate this whole thing and be this pin point accurate when she didn’t even know when the Master would capture her?
2) Thinking about the Doctor or saying his name no matter how many people do so would do nothing at all given that thoughts can only be transmitted unless a character is telepathic. We know in the Doctor Who universe that that isn’t the case. It’s also worth noting that even if this was the case then satellites don’t work the way they should for this to work, which leads me to my next point.
3) The satellites used in question do not and never function to read minds, they were only used for post hypnotic suggestion on people in the last episode, not to control their minds, there is a difference. Where has this mind influencing power all of a sudden come from? More importantly, why is it two way? Surely the Master would have designed it one way to avoid infiltration, as they do establish in the episode before that some people can see through the conspiracy of Harold Saxon and attempt to thwart it, including a contact with connections to Torchwood. Surely if it was that easy then one of these people could have stopped it by blocking the signal or sent something back and then none of the events in this episode would have ever happened.
4) How do the words Doctor spoken or thought:
A) Relate to that specific character and not the thousands of people on the planet that also have that title?
B) Know specifically to deage him and when to stop when he just so happens to be the age he was before this story, how is the technology that sophisticated?
With this completely illogical plot and resolution that sounds like it was made up on the fly, you cannot deny that it falls apart on every single level. No one should claim that all of this is ‘suspension of disbelief’ unless they’re willing to grant Moffat the same benefit of the doubt for his ‘plot holes’ . And all of this does matter, this is the resolution to a full 13 episode series story arc and a very poorly written pay off for a full years worth of story arc investment, this is so incoherent that it feels like a series of non-sequitur’s put together to make it look like it all fits in to place and that it all makes sense, but as you can see it really doesn’t.
People who were taken in by RTD’s era often lord this episode as one of his best, yet will claim a Moffat episode is bad because of it’s plot holes and claim that this is a valid and educated opinion, yet given all that I’ve just proven to you, is it really?
I can apply this to pretty much any of his big arc episodes/ finales in his run passed series 1, I won’t as you’re probably tired of me talking. However I will provide valid links to people who can put the plot holes in other stories written by him such as video reviews of stories like The End of Time, The Next Doctor, Love and Monsters these are in all honesty, put together far more eloquently than I ever could.
Plot holes in RTD episodes:
Diamanda Hagan’s reviews:
- http://blip.tv/diamanda-hagan-lecher-bitch/twatty-new-who-review-the-next-doctor-5955614
-http://blip.tv/diamanda-hagan-lecher-bitch/twatty-new-who-review-love-and-monsters-6646836
The point I’m trying to make with this is simple, people can use plot holes all they like to give themselves a more educated edge, however, make sure your argument is sound and that the ideology you want to push with it doesn’t expose you as nothing more than a hypocrite. I’ll admit I’m not too fond of RTD’s era but I can confidently back myself up on why I feel that way. I don’t think Moffat is all that great either, not as bad as RTD in my opinion but still not that great.
But when people are trying to make the argument that objective story telling quality is going down hill in the show, to the point in which someone actually started a petition to fire Steven Moffat, then that’s when this line of fan entitlement is drawn. Don’t expose your own philosophy as nonsense when you support someone who was responsible for things you are moaning about now, it just exposes you as one massive hypocrite. You can have your opinion, but unless you can balance your argument correctly and back up your points. Don’t claim it to be intellectually superior and educated unless it actually is.
