Post by dalekbuster523finish on Jan 10, 2018 12:58:43 GMT
I see no need for a concerted effort to make a "lighter" tone, and I'm not even sure I buy the notion that Moffat's era was darker. But before we get into weird debates, how about we state what we mean by lighter and darker tones?
I don't think it should be either light or dark intentionally. Whatever works best for a given story should be used.
What's "Dark" to me? The Girl Who Waited, The Settling, Prisoners of Fate, Heaven Sent, Father's Day, Amy's Choice, Silence/Forest, All of Dalek Empire, Lucie Miller/To The Death, Most/All of War Doctor, Damaged Goods, Colditz & the later trilogy, Spare Parts, Creatures of Beauty.
"Light"? Sometimes there's comic light: The One Doctor or Dinosaurs on a Space Ship. Or maybe a non-romp that simply isn't bitterly dark, has a few jokes. Kingmaker?
So really, what are we even saying when we want darker or lighter or neither? Does the "dark" involve sadness, death, lack of jokes? Things generally going badly?
On my re-watch of the new series, I hit S4 and S1. There's tons of darkness. The main difference I see between RTD and Moffat isn't about dark v. light, but rather (1) deification in RTD v. flip-flopping between deification and fallibility of the Doctor in Moffat, (2) Moffat either having complex plot arcs with great set-ups and bad landings (S6 for example) or weirdly unnecessary themes (S8 "am I a good man"?).
I say ignore making any effort on lightness v. darkness, but tone down overly complex plot arcs and if he needs to have one, make sure it's plotted from beginning to end before episodes are written. Just focus on good storytelling. Be Big Finish, but on TV, basically.
(And yeah, enough of the speeches).
Russell T Davies era stories I generally consider to be dark are Dalek, Blink, Silence In The Library/Forest of the Dead, Midnight and The Water of Mars. Only two of them are written by RTD.
I can name far more dark Moffat era stories - The Time of Angels/Flesh And Stone, Amy's Choice, A Christmas Carol (although ends happily, Kazran's refusal to open the cloud belt could easily have seen the deaths of everyone on that ship where Amy and Rory were having their honeymoon), The Impossible Astronaut/Day of The Moon, The Doctor's Wife, The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, Night Terrors, The God Complex, The Wedding of River Song, Asylum of the Daleks, A Town Called Mercy, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John (in a way), Cold War, Hide, Nightmare In Silver, Name of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor, Deep Breath, Into The Dalek, Listen, Kill The Moon, Mummy On The Orient Express, Flatline, Dark Water/Death In Heaven, all of Series 9 bar The Girl Who Died, Smile, Knock Knock, Oxygen, the Monks trilogy and World Enough And Time/The Doctor Falls.
That's why I feel like we need a lighter era from Chibnall. There's nothing wrong with still having some dark episodes but now the show needs to go back in the other direction.