Point of Order

[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.

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

I've got it! Because people tend to conflate good/evil and order/chaos, but actually they're two different measures, like two perpendicular axes (you can have ordered evil, for example). RTD tended to make everything about morality, but really, goodness was never the Doctor's problem: he is the good man, that's who he is, he always wants to do the right thing, he always has to help. Even his fall in WoM had to be because he just couldn't stand not to help. The real issue was that his sense of control had been thrown all out of wack and the order/chaos axis kept screwing him up. And the Doctor does conflate good and control quite a lot--Ten had to be in control to be right, there's that whole exchange between Eleven and Kovarian about whether good men need rules . . . The Doctor doesn't need so many rules because he's not a good man--he needs them because he's not actually in control. But the more he tries to clamp down on his control, the more destruction he ends up causing, until finally his forceful bending of the universe to his will spawned chaos (in Melody) to rear up and devour him (mirroring! but not dark mirroring . . .).

So really all this is about sorting out the Doctor's order/control axis, and doing that will require him to give up control on the beach . . .

[owlboy]

YEESSSSS<3

[promethia_tenk]

*fist pump*

I knew something was bugging me about all this. Ok, I can actually like this episode now <3

[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.

[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?

[promethia_tenk]

Yes, exactly that! And that's how Comedy works and how the green world works (and the whole "go with the flow" idea): there's a problem (disorder) but trying to *force* a solution to it (pushing towards what seems to be greater order) doesn't work because really the problems are deeper than they look. So the solution is actually to cause *more* chaos so as to get down to the root of things and see how they really work and find the more fundamental and stable order.

But when the Doctor gets too ARRRGH I AM THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY ALL MUST BEND TO MY WILL he really can't do that properly and ends up causing all sorts of trouble even though he consistently *means* well. So the Doctor doesn't need a dark mirror, he needs a chaotic mirror to show him how domineering he's become, and the rest of the story will be about returning River (and the Pond family) to greater order and the Doctor to greater chaos/more natural control (Time Lord Victorious ----> rambling space wanderer).