flagrantly

TV One additional thought which I forgot to mention in my review yesterday and motivated by the "professional" reviewers and Gallifrey Base's predictable response to seeing the first half of a story. There's been plenty of talk on how Moffat essentially keeps using the same narrative structure over and over again, of pre-destination paradoxes, that he's run out of ideas.

What if the whole of this first episode was about suggesting just that but then going off in a different direction? Perhaps that's why he used it again so flagrantly in the Comic Relief special, to remind us of it ready to lull us into a false sense of security so that he can do something new and surprising. You never know.

Another which only occurred to me when looking at the illustrative screenshots from another Behind The Sofa alumni Frank Collins's excellent review, specifically this shot which seemed particularly familiar for some reason (and which I hope he won't mind me borrowing):

 

Here's why:


Cue an instrumental version of The Smiths. 
on

2 comments:

  1. Tom2:53 am

    I think the repeated use of predestination paradoxes is easily enough explained by the idea that this kind of thing happens all the time for the Doctor, just as a fact of the way he lives. I didn't sit there watching The Impossible Planet thinking about how "typical" the storytelling was for Moffat--the future Doctor sending a mysterious summons for his past self--rather it struck me as a typical example of the Doctor being the Doctor. Always one step ahead of everyone else, playing dangerous games we can't hope to understand just yet, never appearing in what we perceive as the correct order-- maybe Moffat just writes it that way because that's really how he thinks Doctor Who should be written.

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  2. Anonymous4:49 pm

    That shot reminded me of this photo of Picasso and friends by Robert Capa. Water in the background, bald guy in the middle, but rather more cheerful.

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