[Phantom Hoover]

When someone else's religion has a prophecy, everyone not of that religion generally ignores it as nonsense. When a TV religion has a prophecy, it's meant to come true at some point.

Yes, this is a basic corollary of the law of conservation of detail. You don't necessarily have to have the prophecy come true, but you do need to at least address it when appropriate rather than introducing it as a plot element then totally ignoring it.

[karajorma]

The actions of The Silence is addressing it though. The only difference is that instead of introducing them as some crazy cult with a whacked out belief, you'd be introducing them as a cult with a quite plausible belief that they are reacting to in the wrong way.

A large part of what makes The Silence interesting is the possibility that they might be right, and that the only way to save the universe is to prevent The Question being asked. Now even if they are wrong about the whole basic premise of their belief, it makes for better TV if we believe it too rather than telling us on day one that they're wrong. That simply relegates them to a bunch of religious crazies.

Of course, pulling that all off in a way that is satisfying is hard, but it's not impossible. While I'd probably prefer the prophecy to be real, I could live with it being false if it was handled in an interesting way.

[Flipside]

Also, considering Tennants' Doctor suffered from 'Death by Prophecy', I think they want to avoid repeating themselves too closely.

[Mika]

I don't know what it is, but I don't think Moffat is that good with longer story arcs, Russell seemed to pull those off better. Quite a bit of loose ends are already there, and I was wondering about how initiated the TARDIS destruction sequence myself after this episode and in general, I feel that the internal coherence has been somewhat lost in the show. I don't think Name of the Doctor provided that good story to begin with, there wasn't that much of substance around - plenty of good ideas, but not enough time to dwelve and develop them. Although to his credit, Moffat has pulled of several of my favorite episodes as well, Blink remains the best modern Dr Who episode so far, but I did consider Doctor's Wife and Impossible Astronaut & Day Of The Moon pretty darn good.

[Phantom Hoover]

My armchair analysis is that Moffat is accustomed to writing trick plots spanning an episode or two, which he did very well back in the RTD era; but when he took over the show, he just tried extending a trick plot over all his series, and that just hasn't worked. It's not a matter of the material getting stretched thin, it's more like it's metastatised into a mess of threads and twists with little evidence of a long-term plan. RTD, on the other hand, kept his plot arcs confined to fairly self-contained series-long affairs, with a good sense of closure at the end of all of them.

It had its own problems, most notably with the ongoing escalation of stakes (the Daleks are going to destroy future Earth! The Daleks are going to destroy present Earth! The Master just trashed present Earth and is preparing to take over the universe! Davros is going to destroy all the universes! The Time Lords are going to destroy time!!) but overall it worked pretty well as a way of organising the show.

[karajorma]

I guess it might be a personal thing but I prefer Moffat's Who to Davies (Although I thought Davies was great). I don't have a problem with plot threads being introduced as long as they aren't introduced and then ignored (ala X-Files). Moffet seems to like to have more going on at one time than Davies did, but I'm okay with that. I kinda like the idea of not closing every major plot thread at the end of every season.

With Davies I always found that the endings were a little deus exish. It wasn't completely deus ex because it almost always had a consequence (Doctor gets killed, Rose gets trapped in a parallel universe, Donna has to forget everything she knew) but there always was something about the endings that felt a little rushed to me.

Compare that against series 6 which did much the same thing as Davies plots by having a strong central theme to the season (The death of the Doctor) but had given clues all along about something not being quite right (Why burn his body?) and didn't just seed clues as to who would solve the problem (Bad Wolf, Doctor-Donna), but more importantly how (Using the Teselecta, who were introduced halfway through the season rather than appearing in the last episode).
 While the Silence stuff wasn't self contained, we saw all the stuff about River paid off during the season as we learn that, yes, she is the Doctor's wife, yes, she was in jail for his murder as we'd always suspected, etc.
 As for closure, we did get plenty. As well as all the stuff about River, the main story arc surrounding the Doctor's death at Lake Silencio was completely wrapped up.

I think some people might have forgotten what a big mystery River was when she was first introduced. I can't see how it can be claimed that Moffet didn't know exactly what he was going to do with her from day one though. It's pretty obvious that he knew right from the start what we'd think of her. It's even more obvious if you've watched all the Doctor Who Confidentials as he flat out states it. He even played with our expectations (You have no idea how many times I've seen the theory that River must be the Doctor's wife cause the only time he'd say his name would be when they got married).

[General Battuta]

Isn't River the Doctor's wife?

[karajorma]

She is. What I mean is that people were flat out stating that she must be because she knows his name from when they got married and had to exchange their real names. Quite a few people subscribed to the notion that the "Only one time he could possibly tell her his name" would be his marriage to her. Hell, I wouldn't have been surprised if the theory was correct, I just didn't buy it as proof they were married.

If you watch The Marriage of River Song again you can clearly see that Moffet is blowing raspberries at people there by

1) Having the marriage ceremony shortened to not include the exchange of names
2) Having the Doctor pretend to whisper his name in River's ear when actually he's telling her something else.

[Flipside]

Yup, unless the Doctors' name is 'Look into my eyes', River was told the Doctors name off-screen at some point, as it were.

[Phantom Hoover]

I kinda like the idea of not closing every major plot thread at the end of every season.

This is probably our basic disagreement — I don't think Doctor Who really needs or suits inter-season arcs. It's conceived as a show about the Doctor and a couple of other characters hopping around completely different settings and having adventures; introducing the persistent characters and setting elements needed to do tight long-term plotting is somewhat at odds with that, and I think Moffat's handling of it has gotten the series bogged down.

e: FWIW, I don't think Davies was a particularly good writer either (although Midnight was very good), but he kept the show itself running fairly smoothly and created room for other writers to make the show's best episodes.

[karajorma]

I think it probably is. I've always thought that sci-fi shows that have persistent characters and settings are improved by that. Not every episode has to be about the main storyline but having one there somewhere definitely makes a show more interesting to me.

[Phantom Hoover]

I prefer tight plotting and large ensembles of developed characters myself as well, but I think that a) Moffat has not implemented this very well at all, and b) he sacrificed something which worked pretty well in its niche in his attempt to do so. Heterogenity is, as Battuta frequently says, a good thing for a creative ecosystem. Everything trying to fit itself to the one mold no matter how ill-fitted it is doesn't really benefit anyone.

[karajorma]

I'm going to simply have to disagree with you. I like the show better this way.

[General Battuta]

I like the idea of Moffat's show better, but I think the execution's been awful.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I couldn't stand the show during the David Tennant/RTD era, but Matt Smith is easily my second-favourite doctor (right behind Tom Baker, which is probably more nostalgia than anything else). In addition, one of the few Tennant episodes I actually liked was Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, so it seems I definitely prefer Moffat's writing.

[General Battuta]

Silence was a fantastic episode. Moffat did great work under the puerile and predictable RTD, but as he's grown overloaded his creativity has tapped out and his issues writing women have really come to the front.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Silence was a fantastic episode. Moffat did great work under the puerile and predictable RTD, but as he's grown overloaded his creativity has tapped out and his issues writing women have really come to the front.

That is definitely one of his failings, true, but then... well, Doctor Who has never had the greatest female characters, so it still seems like a step up most of the time.

[Nuke]

i started watching the first doctor (1960's), ever. it has a classic scifi vibe but still considering other shows that were out around that time, its not bad.

[Grizzly]

My current interpretation is that this Doctor actually IS the twelfth, and that John Hurt's doctor is a doctor the 11th knows about in advance. Considering: The Time War has been mentioned quite a few times before, and the doctor's actions have been mentioned a few times - by the doctor himself. However, the actions of the Hurt Doctor seem to be very, very unspeakable...