Thought of the day

[tenlittlebullets]

I'm just gonna leave a link and two names for y'all.

The link: a blog post called Teflon Writers and Velcro Writers.

Name number one: Steven Moffat.

Name number two: Russell T. Davies.

Discuss.

Comments

[gileonnen.livejournal.com]

I suspect that, although Moffat is definitely closer to Teflon and Davies is closer to Velcro, neither one falls completely into one category or the other--Moffat not polished enough (and a bit too engrossing), and Davies not engrossing enough. I propose, rather, that we adopt a Tefcro Sliding Scale with intermediate slippery-grabby points.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, there is most definitely a sliding scale, and Moff slipped a bit further towards the Velcro end this past season (which was imperfect, unfinished, infuriating, and interesting). All the same, though, RTD and Moffat-up-through-season-5 are pretty canonical examples of Velcro and Teflon, at least for me. But I find Rusty very engrossing--hideously engrossing, at times, when you're screaming at the inevitable trainwreck but you know he's still got you by the balls.

The post does seem to nail the gist of the flamewars between RTD fans ("I don't find Moffat's work engaging!") and Moffat fans ("I don't find Davies' work admirable!"), and it captures something I'd been trying to put my finger on when I was crouched in the corner with my hands over my ears mumbling "i like them both but in different ways oh god please don't hurt me."

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Moffat does have moments where he evokes a very visceral reaction (like with Blink) and Davies left me and I think a lot of viewers totally cold with Jesus!Fairy!Ten.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Fair point! Though I think even Moffat's most viscerally affecting moments are very polished and calculated for maximum effect, whereas Davies is more fond of taking raw themes and emotions and splattering them across the screen. RTD almost always affects me, even if it isn't the effect he intended... like Tinkerbell Jesus Ten, which makes me want to scream and shake him and write lots of meta about how ludicrous and wrong it is.

[ariastar.livejournal.com]

See, this is particularly interesting to me because -- I suspect that at his best RTD is very much a Velcro writer, and similarly at his best Moffat is a Teflon one, but this ... isn't always true? Like, RTD's third season gives me SO MANY FEELINGS, he has me hooked but good and I want to talk endlessly about ALL THESE EMOTIONS &c, but -- when he gets carried away with his messy emotional writing it stops hooking me at all; the inundation of epic feelings just numbs and irritates me. Meanwhile Moffat's best work is stuff like Empty Child/Doctor Dances and Blink, which are extremely polished and quite Teflon by this analogy, but ...

Okay, here's the thing. Doomsday didn't make me cry. Last of the Time Lords didn't make me cry. Journey's End didn't make me cry. End of Time didn't make me cry. My feelings ranged from "Oh, I see that you want me to find this quite sad" to "Noooo but I want more John Simm!" to "FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHY ARE YOU TAKING DONNA'S AGENCY" to "Stop wanking and get the fuck on with it," which ... I guess are emotions, but I see all the GRAND! DRAMATIC! TRAGEDY! and I'm just impatient. Meanwhile the end of Doctor Dances makes me tear the fuck up with joy, and the end of Big Bang makes me tear the fuck up with joy, and Amy rescuing the stupid star whale in Beast Below and then giving the Doctor hugs makes me cry, and everything about River gives me ALL THE FEELS, so --

Maybe this all comes down to a matter of taste? Moffat's writing is smooth and polished a lot of the time, so, certainly, Teflon, but sometimes it gives me lots of feelings anyway. And RTD is definitely of the grabbing and sticking and changing and Velcro, but sometimes I just don't care.

And now I'm going to undermine my whole thesis by observing that RTD's Who has made me write somewhere in the realm of 150,000 words, whereas Moffat's Who has made me write ... 2000. So there's that.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, that is very true re: messy emotional writing, although I think it wasn't until End of Time that he completely lost me and I just went "fuck it, there is nothing left for me to engage with, I am getting drunk and laughing at the screen and making pervy comments about Ten's bum." RTD at his worst loses all anchors and just throws grandiose angst at the screen without it springing from anything; Moffat at his worst gets authorial constipation and half the story doesn't make it from his head to the screen. Which makes the emotional arcs of s6 feel underdeveloped and the climaxes feel unearned, but trying to mentally fill in what he left out is like the crack cocaine of meta, so s6 is much more Velcro-y to me than s5.

Doomsday made me tear up (and actually I teared up again on rewatch). Last of the Time Lords didn't make me tear up, but it gave me ALL THE FEELINGS, just not sobbing feelings so much. Journey's End mostly gave me I WILL PUNCH THE SCREEN NOW feelings, but Ten's angst is so horribly compelling even when Rusty is not just missing the point but hammering industriously at a spot that is ten feet away from his intended anvil. Moffat's hankie moments, meanwhile, are so carefully crafted that even when they make me tear up--and there are bits of Big Bang that made me tear up--it feels like I'm only doing so because I'm being manipulated into it, and my FEEEELINGS are over when the scene is over. (Similarly, Moffat's horror is SPECTACULAR, but it is also composed of the delightful scary-movie chills that make it fun to be scared shitless and to spend the next three days staring jumpily over your shoulder at statues. Half the fun is knowing that he's playing you like a marionette and trusting him to be really damn good at it. RTD doesn't do much horror, but when he does, it strikes chords that make my very soul go "AUGH DO NOT WANT.")

ETA: And since I mentioned rewatch, can I just flail about all the beautiful foreshadowing in series 3? Right now I'm on the second episode in a row where Martha's been held up at gunpoint by someone who goes on to say "TROLOLOL it wasn't a real gun, how thick are you?"

[ariastar.livejournal.com]

RTD at his worst loses all anchors and just throws grandiose angst at the screen without it springing from anything; Moffat at his worst gets authorial constipation and half the story doesn't make it from his head to the screen.

Oooh, yes, this is an excellent point. It also explains to me why I had so many urges to fix RTD's Who, but not so much to fix Moffat's -- because love RTD's character stuff and want to organize it into something actually moving, whereas I just get impatient with Moffat for taking inexplicable shortcuts. But it is good that you want to fill in what he left out! I want what was left out to be filled in, but I don't want to be the one to do it.

Moffat's hankie moments, meanwhile, are so carefully crafted that even when they make me tear up ... it feels like I'm only doing so because I'm being manipulated into it, and my FEEEELINGS are over when the scene is over.

Huh! I think this is another one of those differences in taste, specifically of what kind of writing strikes us as more manipulative. Because the careful crafting of Moffat's hankie moments makes them feel ... especially earned to me? Like, I see all the things he did, thematically and plot-wise, to get us to whatever moment, so I get pleasure from that as well as from whatever emotion the moment itself has. Whereas it's with RTD that I feel more manipulated, because I can just hear him going, "LOOK, LOOK HOW TOUCHING AND EMOTIONAL THIS MOMENT IS, I AM CRYING AS I WRITE IT, NOW LET ME FEAST ON YOUR TEARS." And it's a perfectly good way to write emotional bits! It just -- distances me in a way that carefully crafted writing doesn't, for whatever odd reason.

Re: foreshadowing in series 3, yessss. Seriously it's my favorite season of RTD's Who, not just because of Martha or the Master, even though it falls apart at the end. It has so many great thematic things in it. Come to think of it, this may be the reason I have lots of feelings about it -- I like the way it's crafted.

Team Teflon writers who Velcro me anyway! Or maybe team Velcro writers with Teflon leanings.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Because the careful crafting of Moffat's hankie moments makes them feel ... especially earned to me? Like, I see all the things he did, thematically and plot-wise, to get us to whatever moment, so I get pleasure from that as well as from whatever emotion the moment itself has. Whereas it's with RTD that I feel more manipulated, because I can just hear him going, "LOOK, LOOK HOW TOUCHING AND EMOTIONAL THIS MOMENT IS, I AM CRYING AS I WRITE IT, NOW LET ME FEAST ON YOUR TEARS."

Ha! Yes, I think it is a matter of taste--RTD at his best takes themes and situations that are naturally full of big emotions, and pushes them into place in creative ways while leaving them mostly raw. Of course, when he's not at his best it becomes "LOOK HOW BIG THESE EMOTIONS ARE--NOW CRY! CRY, DAMMIT!" because the emotions aren't coming from the situation, they're coming from Rusty telling us to have feelings and Murray Gold crying havoc and letting slip the treble solo of woe. Moffat, on the other hand, I can easily imagine sitting back and pondering how to reap the greatest harvest of our bitter tears and nightmares, without actually being that affected himself by the nefarious things he's plotting. That is something I very much enjoy when he's doing horror or meta-y things, but with emotional climaxes, it feels a bit too artful for me to engage properly--there is no crack in that perfect polish for me to get through and feel anything he's not directly commanding me to feel.

(Re s3: YES! There is so much there, and he's done so many clever things with it, that even though he makes the climax of the whole series hang on friggin' Tinkerbell Jesus, he has still left us so much to work with.

Also, Ten is a dick. Like, I regularly rant about how much of a dick he was to Martha, and I did not even remember him being as much of a dick in Shakespeare Code as he actually was. Wow.)