Sometimes we get comments…

I got this comment posted today on one of my older posts.

Matt wrote:

I must say you are rather generous in your blasting of the McCoy Era. I find your comments irrelevant and uncalled for. Not liking a particular episode or Doctor is fair enough, but you went a little too far. Whether made for Tennant or McCoy, this episode still has qualities that outdo most of what we have so far seen in the revival. And you cannot dismiss the hard work the production crew out into every single minute we see on TV and take for granted. Its so easy to be openly critical of something when you have no clue how much thought and planning went into it.

I’m responding here because I think it’s best addressed where it is more likely to be seen and because I hope I can explain my point of view on the issue of criticism more clearly. Any review is a subjective process. The reviewer brings their own thoughts, predisposition and attitudes to the table every time they sit down to write. That is not a bad thing in what is, by definition, an opinion piece.

That is what brings us different viewpoints. While I certainly enjoy reading a review that is similar to my own feelings on a subject because it brings a sense of positive affirmation, I also equally enjoy (while not agreeing with) conflicting reviews. Those things that people like or dislike are what they put forward and often in them you can see a different rationale at arriving at a disparate conclusion.

I went back and re-read my posts concerning Love & Monsters and I’m going to stand behind them. I do not concur that I “…went a little too far” in my criticism of the episode. I’m not going to re-visit my criticisms here. I am going to address your points though, because I do feel that there are points of merit to make in response.

First off, the amount of work, thought and planning that goes into any endeavor is irrelevant to evaluation of the finished product. Making allowances for the effort is sentimental, at best. Hard work does not always equal success, nor does hard work always mean that the goal is worthy of the effort put into it. (For example, I’m sure a lot of thought and planning went into the attack on Pearl Harbor, but that does not mean we should not be critical of the result.)

This is not to say that the people on the production crew, the grips, the gaffers, the costume designers and the little old lady who fetches the tea didn’t do their job perfectly adequately, perhaps even perfectly. But it is to say that the finished product was fundamentally flawed on the drawing board, and that their efforts were, to some degree, in vain.

In addition to not mattering how much work was done, neither does it matter if I have a clue as to how much work that was. As it happens, I have somewhat more than a laymen’s understanding of how much work is involved in this kind of production, but certainly not enough to have a complete appreciation of every detail. I need not understand how much work went into the building of my television set to know if the picture quality stinks. The criteria for judging an episode of a TV show is not units of work, it is “units of enjoyment”, if you will.

In that respect, this episode was a failure to my mind.

Particularly when you’re talking about a series, there are certain expectations that must be met – a unwritten contract between the producers and the viewers. It’s a contract that for my part says, “I’m going to be back at my TV one week from tonight watching your show because you’re telling a story I want to see.” And I’m there, investing my time watching the show rather than doing something else. They’ve promised me value for my time and if they slipped an episode of the 700 Club in instead of Doctor Who, I’d feel cheated.

That’s how this episode played to me. They didn’t have the budget to make 13 episodes of Doctor Who, so they made 12 and 1 filler of something else and they had the temerity to package it as Doctor Who. I’d have rather seen them make just 12.

Now, taking this episode out of the context of the Doctor Who series, I still feel it was a mess. The production was certainly on par with the quality of the rest of the revival series. Technically it is well done, but I see no particular qualities that “…outdo most of what we have seen so far in the revival.” Indeed, apart from the soundtrack, I saw no qualities that outdid the rest of the revival. At best it achieved a tie and only in the technical arts.

There’s no doubt that Love & Monsters is one of those “love it or hate” it episodes. That was apparent the day after it first aired. Like discussions on politics and religion, I doubt that there will be many converts from one side to the other; however, I would certainly like to hear what you (or anybody else) liked (or disliked) about it.

On a second note, as you say, I generously blast the McCoy era. I’d go so far as to say that I heap derision on it. So much so that, in one respect, I will recant my statement that Love & Monsters is the worst ever. McCoy’s Ghost Light was the worst ever. I had forgotten how stupendously awful it really was. Having recently seen both, Ghost Light wins that ignominious title hands down. I fear as they release more McCoy DVDs that title may transfer hands again.

So what’s wrong with the McCoy era?

One of the things that they overplay in the revival series is that notion that death follows the Doctor everywhere. That’s not correct. The Doctor is chasing death. He’s trying to intercept and detour death. He arrives in time to stop deaths. Yes, some still occur, but blaming it on the Doctor’s presence is back-assward logic. Whatever he may be: eccentric, arrogant, ineffectual, flamboyant, comical or cranky, the Doctor is always a moral force for good.

During McCoy’s era that changed. By the end of his time, the Doctor had become a moral but callous creature. He played with the lives of his companions and the people around him like chess pieces. He set his own agenda, unknown and unanswerable to anyone and, while we’re to believe he’s doing it for the overall “good” the fact is that his game playing almost certainly resulted in some of the deaths. In McCoy’s case, death really did follow the Doctor.

Of course, the fact that the scripts during that era became increasingly incoherent hardly helped things at all, either.

My reviews may be opinionated, acerbic or may even appear downright mean-spirited at times, but they are not. (Mean-spirited, that is. OK, I won’t swear that I’ve never been mean-spirited.) I’m not paid to write reviews, I write about things I care about. I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who for 31 years but that is not carte blanche that everything about it must be good.

You made a fair criticism and it might surprise you to know that these are not ideas that hadn’t occurred to me in the past. Where is the point when a review becomes a litany or nit-picking and flaw bashing? And when are those flaws justifiably something that should have been “fixed” and therefore something that should be pointed out? It may be a fine line.

Many is the time that after writing a review, I walk away and come back later to decide if I went “too far”. Sometimes I feel I did and I soften them, sometimes when I come back, I’m even more sure than ever. In the case of Love & Monsters even coming back to my review months later, I still feel it is spot on.

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