Steven Moffat: An Era of Forgotten Things

John Hussey takes a look at some lingering elements from Moffat’s era.

Some of you reading might have judged the article title as a little provocative and assume that the content of this article is here to slag Moffat off. Actually you’d be wrong. This article is just intended to be a fun little trip through his era in order to pick some things which were left unfinished, or simply forgotten about. Some of it is random, some of it is question-worthy, and some of it is things we are just waiting to be answered. So without further delay, let us begin.

Parent Misplacement

Here’s my first question: What happened to Amy’s parents? It was implied throughout Series Five that Amy was mysterious. She simply didn’t make sense to the Doctor and intrigued him. This was later explained to be caused by the Time Cracks messing up her life and erasing huge chunks of it from existence. Come the ending of ‘The Big Bang’ the Doctor rebooted the entire universe and brought what was forgotten back into reality, including Amy’s parents. Now don’t get me wrong this was a brilliant plot-point and made a lot of sense, but what didn’t make sense was why Moffat went to the effort of bringing them back. After the wedding they were never seen again.

Now this either means that Amy is a lousy daughter, made worse by the fact that she hadn’t seen them in years due to being erased from history, or they are uncaring parents who lost contact. Either way their disappearance from the show didn’t exactly matter as such because the Pond’s story continued to be brilliant without their presence, but it just seemed really out of place in the back of my mind that these two characters, who’d been brought back to life, were just immediately thrown away without any further consideration.

This leads me to point out the out-of-the-blue appearance by Brian Williams in Series Seven. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed his appearance and Mark Williams did a splendid job, but why was he brought in at such a late stage in the game? From a story perspective I can see clearly why Moffat would include such a character, i.e. to make the Pond’s departure all the more emotional. But the question is where had he been this entire time? He literally just turned up out of the blue. It was like, “By the way, Rory now has a dad and he’s joining the story.” Yes we obviously knew he had a dad, everyone has a dad, but why only now does he turn up?

Had he been seen at the wedding or at least been in the background a few times throughout the Pond’s time on the show it would’ve made his involvement all the more legit. In some respects this appearance made Moffat’s tenure shift back to Russell T Davies’ formula of family involvements which in some respect didn’t quite gel with the new era. Another point with this appearance is the simple notion of “if Rory’s dad is involved, and he’d never been seen before, then where in the heck where Amy’s parents?”

Pack Your Bags

This is probably going to sound random, but it was never really answered, and that was, why did Amy and Rory move away from Leadworth? It was established as their home town in Series Five and gave a nice fantastical element to it with its charming and cosy features, especially in ‘Amy’s Choice,’ and yet it was thrown away come Series Six. I know it was made apparent in ‘The God Complex’ that they moved due to the Doctor but where were they living when they received the Doctor’s message at the beginning of ‘The Impossible Astronaut’. I mean for a while I actually thought they still lived in Leadworth up until someone told me they were now living in London by the time of Series Seven. Why London? It’s a tacky addition which resembled the typical companion of the Davies’ era, making the Ponds less original in terms of living environment. It’s never really explained why they moved there and just didn’t make much sense. Leadworth was better in my eyes and different to the modern era.

Duties Abandoned

It was made perfectly clear throughout Series Seven that Clara felt obligated to look after the Maitland family after the tragic loss of their mother, echoing back to some form of guilt and the fact she knew about this experience through her own personal tragedy. Now, tell me why is it that from ‘The Day of the Doctor’ onwards has this factor been aborted? Not once has there been a reference to the Maitland family, nor any indication that Clara still looks after them. She’s completely abandoned them and no longer has any association with them. Instead the story has just moved onto other things like Coal Hill, Danny and Courtney.

Call me a bit picky but it’s almost like just because a new era has begun with Capaldi this little side-note (although quite important to Clara’s character) was wafted aside due to it being a part of Matt Smith’s era. The Maitland’s didn’t exactly bring much to the story (and quite frankly it’s nice that they’ve gone) but no explanation of their absence at all is too lazy for my liking, plus it didn’t feel like their part in the story ever actually went anywhere, nor came to any real conclusion. Like with Amy’s parents they were just dropped off the face of the Earth in favour of the next big thing within the on-going story-arc.

Paradigm No More

This was something that has become a disappointment over time. ‘Victory of the Daleks’ established that the Daleks were on the brink of extinction after the events of ‘Journey’s End’ and were required to think of the perfect solution in order to find salvation. This came about through the creation of the Paradigm, pure Daleks that were essentially more lethal and powerful. Sadly after ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ the Paradigm haven’t appeared nor had a single mention. Why is that? They were such a great creation on Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ part and served to only make the Daleks better. We had promise of different functions, gadgets and further more the true purpose of the Eternal. Sadly they’ve disappeared off the face of Skaro and it seems we will never discover more about these distinctive pepper- pots.

The Origins of the Faces

We were promised by Moffat that we’d get some answers to where the Doctor gets his faces from. We even had him state that he had asked Russell T Davies about his theory that would explain it. Sadly this was still left open for discussion after the Twelfth Doctor simply brushed over the subject through a couple of throwaway lines in Deep Breath. Though it isn’t important as such, it would be nice to have the answer because it has become too coincidental now that he has had more than one incarnation that resembles another character within the Whoniverse (twice in Twelfth’s case).

Courtney Who?

Courtney is the latest character to receive Moffat’s abandonment (unless she returns in Series Nine, in which case I apologise). Like with Amy’s parents and the Maitlands, Courtney was developed as a new side character to aid with the companion’s storyline. Like with the Maitlands, Courtney also gained a sense of development (more than the Maitlands I’d like to add) through a trip in the TARDIS. It was made to believe this was going somewhere, especially with Courtney because her character was very much involved within the story’s dilemma rather than a back-drop when the writer couldn’t find any further use for them.

Sadly ‘Kill the Moon’ brought about an abrupt ending to her character and she wasn’t seen again in Series Eight. It felt like, with a lot of things in Series Eight, that the side character’s were used as tools to sharpen the Doctor and Clara’s characters, friendship and story-arcs. When I say tools I don’t mean in the usual sense when characters are used for developments, I mean that’s all they were there for and it’s obvious that is their function. Courtney was used to make the Doctor’s harsher characteristics appear more apparent by having Courtney in danger as well as Clara. This was a shame really because it just felt like her character development just went nowhere and her appearances wasted.

The Unanswered

This section is a list of a few other things that Moffat has yet to answer. I’ll give the man the benefit of the doubt because chances are these will be answered in due time, but until then they will be on the list until ticked off.

• How did the Master escape Gallifrey?
• With Danny dead, how did Orson come about or is he no longer in existence?
• Who was behind Gus in ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’?
• And finally, why were two sets of Robots searching for the Promise Lands, i.e. 
Missy’s warped version of Heaven?

Some of these questions speak for themselves, like with how the Master got away from Gallifrey and the identity of the villain in ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’, in which we just need a little more explanation. With the Robots, that’s just plain confusing and probably won’t ever get an answer, thereby leaving a plot-hole in the grand scheme of Series Eight’s story-arc. The Orson part, well again some explanation would be nice. I mean if Clara turns out to be pregnant then we have our answer but until then it would seem the plot-points of ‘Listen’ are left unanswered.

Thanks for listening and if you have any forgotten or unfinished things that I’ve missed then please discuss about them in the comments.