Is Anyone Fed Up With This Timey-Wimey Stuff?
Face Of Jack
Posts: 7,181 Forum Member
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I LOVE DOCTOR WHO - always have! And I love the fact that he travels in space and time. But just recently it has become an irritation to me.
David Tennant's era started it with 'fixed points in time' - and Matt Smith (phew - well as much as I love him) really blew it out of all proportions and completely re-wrote history as we know it and saved the whole Universe!! There's not much else he can do is there? What's left?
I think the old Doctor Who stories were the best - straight-forward kill the baddies and go back to the Tardis. Time travel was good - but not messed about with! No going back to rescue a dead person (Adric??) (RORY!!!) OK Rory was not rescued by time-travel - but he was brought back by similar means - countless times! That got a bit boring in the end.
I'm not Moffat-bashing, but he has got this inkling to use time-travel as a device to mix up everyones lives (and ours!) and confuse the whole universe!!
Please, for series 8 - let's have a more sensible story-arc!
I'm not old-fashioned am I??
David Tennant's era started it with 'fixed points in time' - and Matt Smith (phew - well as much as I love him) really blew it out of all proportions and completely re-wrote history as we know it and saved the whole Universe!! There's not much else he can do is there? What's left?
I think the old Doctor Who stories were the best - straight-forward kill the baddies and go back to the Tardis. Time travel was good - but not messed about with! No going back to rescue a dead person (Adric??) (RORY!!!) OK Rory was not rescued by time-travel - but he was brought back by similar means - countless times! That got a bit boring in the end.
I'm not Moffat-bashing, but he has got this inkling to use time-travel as a device to mix up everyones lives (and ours!) and confuse the whole universe!!
Please, for series 8 - let's have a more sensible story-arc!
I'm not old-fashioned am I??
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Comments
No, I think you are completely right!
Also, if you remember, in the Children In Need episode with the Fifth Doctor, The Tenth Doctor talked about "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey". That was ok, but it has got out of hand, with SM since he joined as head showrunner.
I didn't like the fact that the universe had to be re-booted with the Eleventh Doctor, towards the end of The Big Bang.
Another thing I don't like, and you probably agree with me on this, is the whole Dr. Simeon, Great Intelligence thing, with Richard E. Grant going on about destroying the Doctor's timeline, ruining every success he's had.
And yes, you are quite right. We need the next series to be more straight, not having peoples lives mixed up by the "timey-wimey" experiments of the Doctor.
Calling it 'timey-wimey', yes. But not having time-play in a show with a time-traveller? Not sure why you'd want that.
Specifics to address, though - you make it sound like only Matt's Doctor saved the universe... 10 did all the time, too.
Rory was only brought back through timey-wimey-ness once. The one time he truly did die. I'm not sure how one time can 'get a bit boring in the end'...
There are plenty of TV shows with easy to follow linear narratives. In fact that's most of them. I love Doctor Who because its something different. Does Moffat always get it right? Not at all. But he thinks big and is ambitious for the show. I loved the RTD era but his stories seldom even bothered to address the subject of time travel.
Also as has been pointed out by others the 'saving the entire universe' thing was exploited just as much previously. If anything Moffat scaled down his finales and made them more personal. I would favour Moffats labyrinthine and sometimes nonsensical plotting to yet more 'oh look! Badly acting extras screaming in the streets about an inevitably easily defeated universe terrifying menace!'. But I suppose everyone wants different things from the show.
One thing I don't want and thank goodness both RTD and Moffat steered clear of it is cartoon level 'goodies defeat baddies' rubbish. This is Doctor Who. Not Road Runner. The show has never really been that simplistic and when it has been its been at its very worse.
That's not to say I think every episode should revolve around paradoxes and rewriting history etc. but I think there should be a certain level of that sort of stuff in Doctor Who episodes.
Perhaps Moffat could tone it down a little bit, but to be honest with you, I'm not that fussed.
Also I think some people are exaggerating the amount of timey wimey episodes I don't remember many episodes like that.
Also David Tennant saved the whole of reality (which if you believe there are multiple universes is more than saving the universe)
Except when it's obviously wrong and badly thought out, like New York and the Williams's departure.
I LOVE time-travel stories, but what I'm saying is that the series has gone a bit too far with it. In other words - it's a cop-out of whatever situation the Doctor is in!!
"Let's re-wind and start again shall we" is the answer to it all! Let's re-start the universe that was about to be destroyed by an almighty enemy of the world!
OK I know it's all fiction, fantasy, whatever. But please give us some sort of reality in that the Doctor CANNOT use Time Travel to solve everything!
Judging by todays standards - Matt Smith would have just gone back and saved Adric within seconds!! (I don't think Tegan would have allowed that though!
All I'm saying is - time-travel is OK - but don't abuse it and mix everyone else up!!(or use it as a 'get-out' clause!!)
I thought it sounded an interesting idea but the actual way it was implented, for me, didn't work and weakened the show. The time travel part of Who has simply been a way to expand the storytelling to any era - dinosaurs in the distant past or struggling human colonies in the far future.
But introducing that timey-wimeyness to the Doctor himself didn't work for me. I didn't like the idea that each time we saw the 11th Doctor, decades or centuries may have passed for him (off screen). It made me connect with him less emotionally, and also invest less in his relationship with his companions who were invariably left back at home on a regular basis.
And his ability to manipulate time to fast-track escape plans/the narrative took a lot of the threat/urgency out of stories.
All in all, entertaining to a degree but now (I think) a significant weakness in the show going forward. I am hoping it all gets scaled back very quickly.
And it's no different than, say, the Last of the Time Lords, where the events of the villain's plot were undone by a convenient timey-wimey effect that also conveniently left our heroes out of it. Journey to the Centre of the Tardis was similar, but it's nice how that tied into a later episode.
And there's not that many more examples than that. For every alternate timeline seen in episodes like The Wedding of River Song, there's a similar one like Turn Left.
The recent series have been every bit as insistent as before that you can't cross your own timeline, and that bad things happen if you do.
I think the Time wimey stuff has been overdone but I also think the fact the show is about Time Travel shouldn't mean it be cut out altogether.
In Classic Who there wasn't enough Time Related stories over it's 26 year run and I like the fact both RTD and SM have sort of used it more extensively in New Who.
It's all about getting the balance right. I would say Father's Day is a prime example of getting it spot on and using Time correctly and making a cracking good story at the same time.
That also fits in with the OP's other comment about straightforward arc. Fingers crossed that the New Series uses a nice balance with the arc as it used to when it first came back and not dominate every story.
So balance really is the key to everything. I should be some of Guardian, maintaining the balance of every Series of Doctor Who!
Where's my pigeon hat?!
Yes, it physically made me groan when ever it reared it's Com Con/Q+A pandering head.
It all became a lazy gimmick, a plot sonic screwdriver. It worked extremely well in Blink but beyond that, for me it failed on every level, be it in terms of drama, engaging writing, structure and on any intellectual level. I know Doctor Who is a family show and should always have one eye on the kiddy audience but to serve up such an insulting mess really tested my love of the show to a level I can only describe as McCoy era.
Unfortunately I fear that Matt Smiths tenure as The Doctor will be overshadowed by the stink of Timey Wimey, especially Series 6, one of the most vacuous and shallow series of any TV show I have had the misfortune to see, and all due the show runners awful meandering arcs that time and time again fizzled out like a cheap sparkler. A cheap sparkler that puffed and wheezed to pathetic limp poof and has now long been disgarded in a bucket of scummy green water somewhere at the end of the garden.
Timey Wimey = Bollocks Shmollocks.
I would agree with this if it had ever been said.
Odd that the Hurt Doctor seems to have never heard of the phrase whereas (if Time Crash is canon) the Fifth Doctor was clearly familiar with it.
Must be some sort of wibb... oh, never mind.
Imagine the movie star trek, Kirks just been marooned and discovered an older version of Spock from the prime timeline. Spock mindmelds with Kirks and explains everything with "Its a timey wimey thing"
Bloody Futurama has better plots and explanations and yet Danny Cohen has the audacity to say BBC drama is on a par with breaking bad or games of thrones?????
Did I miss the episode of Game of Thrones with the Chuckle brothers?
Yes, they got decapitated by Grotbags
Star Trek techno-babble is just 'timey-wimey' in a lab coat. When Doctor Who did do techno-babble, even when it was based on real theories, it was almost entirely wrong. Why open yourself to that kind of criticism?
Yes, but then there is the established principle of an earlier Doctor not remembering the interactions with his later self. The Fifth Doctor wouldn't remember their interactions when he returned to his own time, and only recalled the event when it happened to him as the Tenth. Skipping the War Doctor entirely.
Yes but let's face it, that was always just a ploy around which to tell stories and go to another earth like quarry on another planet. It was never much about time itself and even when it was, it was just a general "Oh you shouldn't/can't mess with time" and the problems if they do, storyline.
They now seemed to have replaced good stories with complex stories and think that they are the same thing. They are not! Complex time stuff just for the sake of it whereas a good old simple well told tail has always served Dr Who well for decades.
Time used to be linier and they just moved back and forth. Now it's a mess and no one knows what is going on.