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question to fans who get confused by arcs
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People constantly moan the arcs are confusing which makes me wonder how would you cope with usa shows with 22 episodes a season with arcs sometime spread over a couple of seasons. Shows like supernatural and fringe must really confuse you
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Fringe was incredibly well written, and didn't have the ridiculous complexity of the whole "river song is your future wife, who you will always meet in the wrong order, she's now part time-lord, oh, and she's also your companion's child, but she doesn't know this yet".
Or in general, simple(!) plots work well, and there was a lot less timey wimey rubbish. If Moffat wrote Fringe, every episode would have been like the one with the white tulip, and the fringe team would have de-ambered their past selves at the start of season 5.
Actually it was complex and that old chestnut of paying attention doesn't hold true. But worse than the complexity was that it was an extremely poor storyline. River Song ends up marrying the Doctor and being the child of his companions, who actually gives a toss?
Maybe.. But not everyone is like that. Maybe complex is the wrong way of putting it.. "poor planning" a closer one. Another difference with Fringe, all the loose ends were nicely tidied up over the space of several episodes, rather than cramming three season's of unfinished work into 60 minute special. Guess their writers knew where they were going all along, unlike Moffat et al.
Well I watched it and understood it and there was nothing poor about it but then we are all entitled to our own opinions and if you don't give a toss just switch off that's what I do when I don't like a tv show.
I didn't give a toss about that storyline, but I do about Doctor Who in general.
To be fair the last episode of Fringe got quite a few people confused and I'm convinced that the disappearance of Walter from the timeline was a pretty big plot hole that didn't make much sense without some substantial fabrication of additional, non-televised, supposition to fill it!
It's the sort of thing I tend to find myself doing to 'fix' certain plot holes in Doctor Who, as well.
Not unsurprisingly it seems to always be down to the paradoxes of Time Travel that cause the problems.
I don't have a problem with arcs in general and I've never had a problem with River's story, but Time Travel and its paradoxes are complicated and confusing things and Doctor Who gets more than its fair share, particularly in recent years. It doesn't help when things are left unexplained for multiple seasons because then you are watching without ever having a complete understanding of what's going on. Plus the number of times the resolutions actually cause more plot holes than they resolve is not helpful in trusting that everything will make sense in the end. Usually we either never find out the explanation or we find out that we were right to assume that what we saw earlier made no sense!
I hope that isn't too confusing for you, OP.
I much prefer a slower paced well thought out story with a beginning, a middle and an end, but that's just my personal preference.
I usually wiki the episodes I can't make head nor tail of to get some sort of explanation, then rewatch them and then (sometimes) the penny drops.
I just wish I could sit down and watch the flippin thing and enjoy it without having a pain in my head trying to figure it out.
Maybe that makes me stupid in your eyes OP, and if so, you are entitled to your opinion. I know I'm not stupid so I'm ok with whatever you might think. But please, feel free to carry on patronising other Who fans who still love the show but just wish it wasn't so frantic.
Like, how River knows the Doctor's name, is River married to the Doctor and who was the woman in the shop. A lot of things are vague.
This whole 'complex' thing has been made a smoke screen for appalling writing and it's structure in the last few series where this multi series arc has been involved. There is nothing complex about setting a question and then answering later on, that isn't complex writing. Yes, I know people like to think the shows they watch are complex, but they aren't, sorry arcs are basic storytelling. What can make it so called 'complex' is how it achieves getting from A-Z in order to tell its story. An arc/story line that starts off at A then maybe gets another mention when we get to the letter M but then goes straight to Z isn't complex and that is what we have had with a lot the Matt Smith era arcs IMO.
So again, setting a question and answering later on isn't complex.
Soap operas, dramas and so on have just as many arcs going on, if not more, there isn't anything complex about them. But of course because we are now talking sci-fi with aliens, monsters and wonderful machinery that doesn't exist, these very same arcs suddenly become 'complex', they aren't, they are either told well or told badly.
And then get resolved by having "Spitfires in Space"
Arcs are great for a series if done right. The best arcs are those that, with hindsight, you think "ohh I should have spotted that" and normally make perfect sense when all the pieces are in place. The trouble with Doctor Who arcs is that they aren't like that. They are often unsatisfying and unrewarding upon completion (to me at least). Too often things are just chucked in at the last minute to resolve the story, things that you couldn't possibly see coming.
Furthermore, even if a show's writing is good, that doesn't necessarily mean fans want to spend a lot of time on figuring out complicated story arcs. I know for myself as a casual X-Files fan, once the "alien" arc started getting too complicated, I simply lost interest and stopped watching. Certainly I don't have any intention of getting out a pen and paper and making diagrams and charts trying to figure out what's going on in a show, particularly since the producers and writers are undoubtedly earning a lot of money and it's their job to produce and write coherent episodes/storylines/arcs.
I completely disagree. When you are dealing with a universe where cause and effect can be reversed, where timelines change so that what you watched may not have ever happened or could only have happened if something that you just changed from happening happened or could only have happened if you do something in the future to make them happen but if they hadn't happened you wouldn't have a future to make it happen - it becomes complex!
When you're watching a romance happening largely in reverse chronological order between the two parties, it's complex. Trying to keep the relative timelines in your head is complex.
It's complete nonsense to liken this stuff to your average soap or drama. The events of these arcs are not straightforward A to Z stuff at all and, whether you understand it or can follow it or not, I think it's completely wrong to suggest otherwise.
Give people some credit. Maybe the people who have been confused by the stories Moffat has dished up have only struggled with the last 2 unintelligible series? Maybe it's not all arcs, just the latest one from Dr Who? I've enjoyed plenty of series that have had arcs and followed them enthusiastically. Maybe the difference is that those US shows actually had people who could write stories rather than set pieces that just look good? How about you stop insulting peoples intelligence and post a proper a question that starts debate rather than just the narrow, blinkered view you seem to hold?
For example, how did the Doctor and Clara get out of his time stream? "The Name of the Doctor" made a big deal out of first Clara and then the Doctor going into his time stream and then the obvious question of how they got out wasn't even answered. They just showed up already out of it in "The Day of the Doctor".
Or how about the resolution to the Room 11 issue. In "The God Complex" the Doctor looks in the room and says "Of course. Who else?" And yet in a 10-second resolution, it is revealed that the Doctor saw a crack. Say what? If he saw a crack then why did he say "Who else?" It makes no sense.
In fact, what I think happened was that Whithouse/Moffat really didn't have any idea who was in the room during "The God Complex", that it was for the purposes of creating drama only. And then when fans kept asking about it and wanting an answer, Moffat couldn't think of who to put in the room so he shoved a crack in there and called it a day. Is it any wonder fans get confused by what's going on?
I have to disagree, what is actually is complex about it, it all depends on the writer and how it is written. Would we say 'Back to the Future' was complex, what about 'Benjamin Button' HG Wells' 'Time machine'. Hell, even 'It's a Wonderful Life' or Dickens' 'Christmas Carol'. The tools used are all the same, it is how they are presented which may lead to confusion, it doesn't mean it is complex. Not understanding something doesn't make it complex, a writer leaving ambiguity in his question doesn't make something complex. There is nothing over the last few series arcs that would remotely make think what I have seen was complex.
No it is isn't. If it is badly done it maybe be confusing, confusing doesn't always equate to complexity. Are we really going to pretend that a Saturday afternoon family TV show is complex.
No it isn't nonsense, chucking a bit of made up timey wimey into things doesn't make it complex. Following an arc, any arc, is no different than following an arc in a drama or a soap. But because it is sci-fi it is complex, sorry don't buy it.
Johns new friend turns out to be the long lost daughter of someone his is married to.
Or
John meets his wife but both timelines are going in different ways.
There is nothing ultimately complex about either.
I am quite content to watch programmes with story-arcs. A "story-arc" is a pretentious name for "an ongoing story", and I am quite capable of following a story that develops over time.
I like stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In that order. I don't care if that means I am old fashioned. Also, as a big fan of the movie Memento, I am quite capable of dealing with stories that work in reverse ... but Memento provides enough signposts along the way so that the viewer is given an insight into what is going on. The story's protagonist does not have this, which is what makes the film so special.
I am content for a story-arc (an ongoing story) to develop over however long it needs to develop.
Whether it is Eastenders or Doctor Who, whether the story is set in a market or a space-station, it doesn't matter to me, as long as I am given a good story that is well told. That is what drama is about: telling stories. Doctor Who, in the last three years or so, has failed in that.
I agree with you on this Chuff.
I'm watching through the Classic Series at the moment and it's so straight forward. No arcs, no shifting about from random place to place, no stupid solitary species from various races, no multi-race stories full stop and everything makes perfect sense. As you say, it has a start, middle and end, everything just follows on from everything else and just progresses. And most importantly, when a story is done with, it is done with and aside from odd references we still don't have to keep going back to something that happened three or four years ago.
As for the OP's comments, don't know whether it was intentional but it does come across as patronising. I've watched series arcs in Buffy and Angel and it's worth pointing out they have more episodes to play with and therefore everything makes perfect sense. I occasionally get confused but that doesn't make me dumb. Sometimes the explanations are rattled out so fast it's worth a rewatch just to try and get a grip on things. Having just rewatched all last years episodes some of them made more sense second time round.
You disagree with my disagreement of you? That's surprising
Making a complex plot understandable depends on the writer (and I'm not making any claims one way or another about the writing or about whether it was understandable), however, a complex plot is still complex whether it is written to be understandable or not.
The tools are the same in the sense that the letters of the alphabet are the same tools used to write a story. Doesn't make all stories the same level of complexity.
Christmas Carol and the first Back to the Future were fairly linear. The second back to the future, I would argue, did get quite complex. I can't remember the plots of the Time Machine or Wonderful Life and I've never heard of Benjamin Button so I can't comment on those.
So you are saying that a plot where A leads to B which leads to C is the same level of complexity as a plot where A doesn't lead to B but B happens anyway because it turns out that C led to B which then leads to C which leads to D which prevents A from happening but, never mind, we're at D now so it shouldn't matter.
Well I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. You can state that that isn't complex until the cows come home but you are never going to convince me.