Post by Deleted on May 13, 2017 19:35:36 GMT
Top 5 Prominent Moffat-isms
What is a Moffat-ism? Basically, it's a reoccurring theme, plot device or quirk featured in the writings of acclaimed yet divisive Scottish television writer and producer Steven Moffat. Moffat is most well-known for his hit BBC modernised adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories and for his contributions to the Doctor Who universe firstly as a recurring writer and then as the main showrunner for 7 years.
Some of these Moffat-isms are considered good advice for writers, others less so. I'll let you decide.
5) The crazy, quirky, queer villainess
Way to start off on a sour note. This quite tiresome trend in Moffat's writing across the board in both Sherlock and Doctor Who is one of the most criticised aspects of Moffat's episodes. Many examples are prevalent throughout his work (River Song, the Mistress, Vastra, Irene Adler, Eurus Holmes), and an aspect of these characters is the fact that they are most often portrayed as not entirely villainous and redeemable but make no mistake, these characters are a bit off.
Moffat's villainous female characters tended to exhibit a number of the same traits such as an exceptionally arrogant attitude, an interest in women or both sexes (often revealed through offhanded remarks), a preference for bizarre clothes, a callous disregard for human life, a set of catchphrases, and a predilection for either siding with or against the heroes on a whim. For many people, myself included, the story of Eurus Holmes in Sherlock's final episode was the point where Moffat's typical tropes in regards to his "strong female characters" became utterly hackneyed but at least to a vaguely amusing extent.
And yes, there are quite perturbing ramifications from this kind of writing of characters if all of them are written as queer and also dangerous and unstable. Even though those characters would often be established as more cunning and naturally intelligent than the male leads, usually these characters ultimately still needed a male character to "show them the light". It's not exclusively a Moffat-ism, it has existed for years prior to his use of it, but Steven certainly has made it one of his trademarks. Basically, it was alright the first few times but got old fast.
4) The benign yet scary phrase that a thing keeps saying over and over
Several of Moffat's Doctor Who aliens and monsters had this weird habit of revealing themselves as threats to the heroes by either repeating a simple, benign phrase ad nauseum or by constantly repeating words back to someone else. The Gas Mask Zombies, the Spoonheads, and most recently Heather the Pilot all exhibited this.
The thing is though, while Moffat repeated this technique often, it never really stopped being unnerving in the least.
3) Creative control
Weeping Angels, Jim Moriarty, River Song. All of these characters are extremely popular and Moffat almost certainly knew they would be, so he has never once let anyone else write them on TV at least. While some people get tired of seeing Moffat's characters again and again, and sometimes his shoehorning of characters into certain elongated cameo roles in episodes for no clear reason even after they've been killed off gets confusing, but I see it as a case of Moffat giving the majority of fans what they want, and that is to see more of his great characters.
2) Multi-genre experience
This was something Moffat was most expert at, and part of why he became so massively influential in the first place. While Doctor Who always had scary elements, Moffat frequently ramped it up to the next level in his stories, with the 2005 episode "The Empty Child" including a traumatising scene of a gas mask slowly bursting out of a scientist's face, and the universally adored 2007 episode "Blink" being a suspense thriller told entirely from normal humans' perspectives. Then there was Sherlock, which steadily became more action/secret agent thriller oriented as time went by, a change in direction that was... questionable, but still interesting and engaging.
1) Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey
This is mainly a Doctor Who thing, but it's pretty important. Moffat was the writer who was perhaps most willing to take advantage of Doctor Who's unique premise, more specifically the time travel element to tell increasingly unique, thrilling and elaborate adventures within 45 minutes. And a vast majority of Moffat's stories are fantastic because of the ingenuity.
In practically all of his season finales for Matt Smith's run as the Doctor, however, Moffat may have gone a bit overboard with this technique and gave us incomprehensible, clusterfuckey episodes like "The Big Bang" and "The Wedding of River Song". When I was about 10, I picked up a Doctor Who comic with a little Q&A section at the end called "Doctor What" in which kids would ask the editors questions about The Lore(TM), and one of them, I shit you not, asked "What the hell happened in "The Big Bang"?", so that should give you an idea of how the timey-wimey trope can be misused.
What is a Moffat-ism? Basically, it's a reoccurring theme, plot device or quirk featured in the writings of acclaimed yet divisive Scottish television writer and producer Steven Moffat. Moffat is most well-known for his hit BBC modernised adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories and for his contributions to the Doctor Who universe firstly as a recurring writer and then as the main showrunner for 7 years.
Some of these Moffat-isms are considered good advice for writers, others less so. I'll let you decide.
5) The crazy, quirky, queer villainess
Way to start off on a sour note. This quite tiresome trend in Moffat's writing across the board in both Sherlock and Doctor Who is one of the most criticised aspects of Moffat's episodes. Many examples are prevalent throughout his work (River Song, the Mistress, Vastra, Irene Adler, Eurus Holmes), and an aspect of these characters is the fact that they are most often portrayed as not entirely villainous and redeemable but make no mistake, these characters are a bit off.
Moffat's villainous female characters tended to exhibit a number of the same traits such as an exceptionally arrogant attitude, an interest in women or both sexes (often revealed through offhanded remarks), a preference for bizarre clothes, a callous disregard for human life, a set of catchphrases, and a predilection for either siding with or against the heroes on a whim. For many people, myself included, the story of Eurus Holmes in Sherlock's final episode was the point where Moffat's typical tropes in regards to his "strong female characters" became utterly hackneyed but at least to a vaguely amusing extent.
And yes, there are quite perturbing ramifications from this kind of writing of characters if all of them are written as queer and also dangerous and unstable. Even though those characters would often be established as more cunning and naturally intelligent than the male leads, usually these characters ultimately still needed a male character to "show them the light". It's not exclusively a Moffat-ism, it has existed for years prior to his use of it, but Steven certainly has made it one of his trademarks. Basically, it was alright the first few times but got old fast.
4) The benign yet scary phrase that a thing keeps saying over and over
Several of Moffat's Doctor Who aliens and monsters had this weird habit of revealing themselves as threats to the heroes by either repeating a simple, benign phrase ad nauseum or by constantly repeating words back to someone else. The Gas Mask Zombies, the Spoonheads, and most recently Heather the Pilot all exhibited this.
The thing is though, while Moffat repeated this technique often, it never really stopped being unnerving in the least.
3) Creative control
Weeping Angels, Jim Moriarty, River Song. All of these characters are extremely popular and Moffat almost certainly knew they would be, so he has never once let anyone else write them on TV at least. While some people get tired of seeing Moffat's characters again and again, and sometimes his shoehorning of characters into certain elongated cameo roles in episodes for no clear reason even after they've been killed off gets confusing, but I see it as a case of Moffat giving the majority of fans what they want, and that is to see more of his great characters.
2) Multi-genre experience
This was something Moffat was most expert at, and part of why he became so massively influential in the first place. While Doctor Who always had scary elements, Moffat frequently ramped it up to the next level in his stories, with the 2005 episode "The Empty Child" including a traumatising scene of a gas mask slowly bursting out of a scientist's face, and the universally adored 2007 episode "Blink" being a suspense thriller told entirely from normal humans' perspectives. Then there was Sherlock, which steadily became more action/secret agent thriller oriented as time went by, a change in direction that was... questionable, but still interesting and engaging.
1) Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey
This is mainly a Doctor Who thing, but it's pretty important. Moffat was the writer who was perhaps most willing to take advantage of Doctor Who's unique premise, more specifically the time travel element to tell increasingly unique, thrilling and elaborate adventures within 45 minutes. And a vast majority of Moffat's stories are fantastic because of the ingenuity.
In practically all of his season finales for Matt Smith's run as the Doctor, however, Moffat may have gone a bit overboard with this technique and gave us incomprehensible, clusterfuckey episodes like "The Big Bang" and "The Wedding of River Song". When I was about 10, I picked up a Doctor Who comic with a little Q&A section at the end called "Doctor What" in which kids would ask the editors questions about The Lore(TM), and one of them, I shit you not, asked "What the hell happened in "The Big Bang"?", so that should give you an idea of how the timey-wimey trope can be misused.