It seems like what you're asking is that whenever the Doctor does something morally questionable, some other character has to actually speak up within the show and say "Doctor, you are wrong."
No, that isn't what I want, though I can see how it looked that way. I want the people around the Doctor to act like people. Most of the time, they do. That doesn't mean other characters calling him an arse and giving him an itemized explanation of why, but it does mean that things he does should some effect on his dynamics with other people, and vice versa. Yet sometimes he does frankly bizarre stuff that just doesn't seem to register. Moments like that make the morality look more black-and-white, not less.
What they're doing is far more complex because they leave it to the viewers to decide.
Sometimes (Nine and the delta wave). Other times, I'm not so bowled over by the complexity (Daleks versus Cybermen. Behold, the seriousness of modern television, which the frivolity of past decades can never touch). Still other times, something that was almost worth thinking about after we've switched off the TV set gets a dimension leached out of it because it's as if it never happened (Ten leaves his teenaged companions on a spaceship of killer robots without any expectation of getting back to them, but this apparently has no ramifications for his relationship with Rose). And then there are the times when the show coasts on superficial imagery that flattens the situation's dynamics instead of allowing things free play (LotTL is blatantly set up in the mold of Brothers K, but it isn't Brothers K. It just isn't).
A situation becomes complex when they allow what characters do to complicate things.
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Date: 2008-01-28 12:24 am (UTC)No, that isn't what I want, though I can see how it looked that way. I want the people around the Doctor to act like people. Most of the time, they do. That doesn't mean other characters calling him an arse and giving him an itemized explanation of why, but it does mean that things he does should some effect on his dynamics with other people, and vice versa. Yet sometimes he does frankly bizarre stuff that just doesn't seem to register. Moments like that make the morality look more black-and-white, not less.
What they're doing is far more complex because they leave it to the viewers to decide.
Sometimes (Nine and the delta wave). Other times, I'm not so bowled over by the complexity (Daleks versus Cybermen. Behold, the seriousness of modern television, which the frivolity of past decades can never touch). Still other times, something that was almost worth thinking about after we've switched off the TV set gets a dimension leached out of it because it's as if it never happened (Ten leaves his teenaged companions on a spaceship of killer robots without any expectation of getting back to them, but this apparently has no ramifications for his relationship with Rose). And then there are the times when the show coasts on superficial imagery that flattens the situation's dynamics instead of allowing things free play (LotTL is blatantly set up in the mold of Brothers K, but it isn't Brothers K. It just isn't).
A situation becomes complex when they allow what characters do to complicate things.