promethia_tenk: (kiss kiss bang bang)
[personal profile] promethia_tenk
Just to remind myself, because it bears reminding, and because I do manage to forget it: Moffat doesn't write good and evil.  Sure, he plays with the vocabulary sometimes (generally to deconstruct and undermine it), but that's never what it's about.  The real struggle, the real dynamic, the real juxtaposition on which everything hinges is CHAOS and ORDER.  Those are the forces we're dealing with.

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 08:16 pm (UTC)
elisi: Edwin and Charles (River (smug))
From: [personal profile] elisi
Well young!River certainly is chaos incarnate...

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 08:30 pm (UTC)
owlboy: (dw - crazy river)
From: [personal profile] owlboy
The Doctor is chaotic as well. Put the two together and you strangely cancel out their chaos.

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 08:49 pm (UTC)
owlboy: (Default)
From: [personal profile] owlboy
True. I think they heal the most chaotic parts of each other though, and humanize each other. While still causing serious consternation for everyone around them

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 10:13 pm (UTC)
owlboy: (Eleven/River nose pokey)
From: [personal profile] owlboy
:DDDDDDD

ngh I ship it so hard and forever. ;_; I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP./

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 08:44 pm (UTC)
elisi: Edwin and Charles (Amy by marcasite)
From: [personal profile] elisi
because they rather embody chaos and order themselves.
*nods a lot* And it's why Amy copes so much better.

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 10:14 pm (UTC)
owlboy: (Eleven- bitches wish they had my swagger)
From: [personal profile] owlboy
YEESSSSS<3

(no subject)

Date: 8 Sep 2011 10:26 pm (UTC)
owlboy: (dw - crazy river)
From: [personal profile] owlboy
I have gone from being nonplussed/apathetic to loving it to itty bitty pieces and omg River's whole story is the best thing ever!!1 I feel sad for people who gave up on it.

(no subject)

Date: 9 Sep 2011 06:59 am (UTC)
elisi: Edwin and Charles (Space Gandalf by atruebluesky)
From: [personal profile] elisi
Oooooh.

And actually, this of course fits with the whole Trickster thing - I'm thinking of the fact that he always turns up 'where there's trouble' (oh hai there Gandalf parallels!), or he brings chaos himself (like in Night Terrors) and what he does is ride the chaos (because he's chaos himself) and then reorganises it into a new order. Does that make sense?

Spanner in the works

Date: 9 Sep 2011 03:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] janie-aire.livejournal.com
Moffat does write about good and evil, not just to undermine it, but to focus in on what good and evil really entail. The Doctor's morality isn't about rules so much as it is about empathy.

With Eleven more than any other Doctor, we see him actively putting himself in the place of the monster, and we see an awful lot of monsters who are just like him, in somewayshape or form. His first glimpse in a "mirror" is when he sees himself (and Amelia) reflected in Prisoner Zero.

He's identified with the star whale by Amy. His identity reboots the Daleks. Both he and the angels are space-time events significant enough to close a Crack. He sits on the throne of Signora Calvierri. He *is* the Dream Lord. And so on. He saves Kazran because he finds empathy in Kazran -- and he damns the sexy fish vampires for not remembering a name.

I wonder if the real juxtaposition that everything hings on is juxtaposition itself. Order and chaos, good and evil, man and monster, fire and water, red and blue. The light and the dark. Isn't everything crossed with its opposite on this show?

Re: Spanner in the works

Date: 9 Sep 2011 01:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] janie-aire.livejournal.com
Yes, he's really good at destroying the either/or dichotomy of good and evil. Good writers know that compelling characters have both light and dark inside them. That's what generates internal conflict, these competing forces for what to do next.

But I wonder if the chaos/order axis you're suggesting (a *great* insight, btw) is also a dichotomy that will get undermined. That is to say, is *dichotomy* itself being undermined? I wonder. Am I dichotomizing dichotomy? (*jane scratches her head.*)

The Chaos to Order dynamic you describe is also meta! The Doctor comes in and finds a thread of order in the chaos, but this is also true for the story itself. *We* come into a story filled with chaos, told out of order, and through the Doctor and his Companions we get to "make sense" of all these images and archetypes.

I think this is the underlying structure of The Reveal. The Reveal is that final nugget of understanding that illuminates the entire text.

Re: Spanner in the works

Date: 9 Sep 2011 09:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] janie-aire.livejournal.com
Oh, something else! The Doctor arrives amidst the chaos and made sense of it, but at the same time he introduces an element of chaos into the order of the monsters. Like in Day of the Moon, just bopping in on the Silents and making a huge mess of things. The Doctor is practically Chaos incarnate, which makes him inherently unpredictable.

About me:

Parapsychological librarian and friendly neighborhood heretic.