Oh my god how can anyone hate Rory?

Seriously! Without him, I don't care that much for Amy!

the show did not become truly amazing until Steven Moffat took over as lead writer and producer at the beginning of the fifth season, the same time that Matt Smith became the new Doctor.

Clearly, we don't hang in the same circles. I was super thrilled for Moffat and tired of RTD's maudlin attitude (that extended goodbye sequence in Tennant's final ep? Hurt my poor rolling eyeballs, even if there were parts I liked). And yet, Moffat has not lived up to my expectations.

[Martha] ended up married to Rose’s ex-boyfriend Mickey

Wait, what? Did this happen on TW? And didn't Mickey end up in the alt-universe? I'm so confused.

Can we all take a moment here to agree, unequivocally, that “feisty” is the single most condescending adjective in the English language, ranking even above “articulate” in its ability to convey disdain?

Hell no, I'd give that to "cute." Call me "feisty" and I might growl. Call me "cute" and I'm kicking you in the nads (present virtual company excepted). Tell me I'm "cute when I'm angry" and I will shoot laserbeams FROM MY EYEBALLS.

A small white room that bore a remarkable resemblance to a refrigerator.

Oh, damn. That is... a connection I had not made.

A woman who exists to bring a baby into the world (so that it can grow up and make out with Matt Smith) might as well be made of cardboard.

Excuse me, THAT'S her offhand summary of River Song? I get that this is an article about Amy Pond, but if you're complaining about how a female character is written while dismissing another fascinating female character, I feel like it weakens your argument.

I don't know. Reading all that, I can see why she might be annoyed, but it seems overly harsh to me. I mean, Rory has had many moments of insecurity, but if my best girl was super close with someone as charismatic as the Doctor, I'd be a little unsure, too.

OMG I generally love Sady Doyle but I do not get her hate-on for Rory. At. ALL. He's emasculated? Really? IDK.

Ack. Having a hard time separating meta- and intra-textual analysis. Tired.

But really, all that love for Donna and no bitterness over her fate? The shittiest fate possible for a companion and for her in particular, to forget that she'd ever been awesome or special or traveled the universe? And there was that ep where the writers had a chance to fix it, to have her remember, but no.

I'm probably not able to be objective about this, and I did watch Who back in the day, and remember the damsel-in-distressedness of previous companions, and I don't think Amy is all that bad. I also watch other contemporary tv shows who don't serve their characters as well. And while I'm at it, let me bring up Cordelia. TWO demon pregnancies and a season spent in a coma, thx.

::sigh:: tl; dr. Sorry for being all rantycakes. I do not intend to suggest that Who is not problematic, that Moffat is not capable of doing a better job of crafting storylines, that Pond would not be a better character with more agency. See my link in Press on enjoying problematic media.

But wait, there's MORE.

On River Song - I *like* that she knows things the Doctor doesn't. I don't find her two-dimensional at all. Who knows, maybe they'll fuck up everything now that mysteries are coming clear, but I'm finding the hints we find out interesting.

I just don't trust River with Moffet. I think a lot of her awesomeness is Alex Kingston, actually.

I read the interview (from 2004) with Moffet that was linked in the comments, and have placed him in the Scott Adams pile of artists.

Sady is bananas a lot, and I definitely rolled my eyes at her takedown of Rory in the comments, but I agreed with much of the original blog post (not written by Sady). I've had a lot of uneasiness about the past 2 seasons which I haven't been able to articulate, because something just felt so weird and off.

I think RTD definitely had issues with women too (which made the Donna ending so fucking awful), but Moffet's brought it to a whole new level. Just IMO. I mean, when the showrunner says shit like this:

So, post-New Man, post-Lad, where does the male of the species stand now? "Well, the world is vastly counted in favour of men at every level - except if you live in a civilised country and you’re sort of educated and middle-class, because then you’re almost certainly junior in your relationship and in a state of permanent, crippled apology. Your preferences are routinely mocked. There’s a huge, unfortunate lack of respect for anything male."

it just makes me sigh.

(ps- I less than three debating with smonster's spicy brains! I apologize that I'm actually not mentally up to the task right now though.)

So, post-New Man, post-Lad, where does the male of the species stand now? "Well, the world is vastly counted in favour of men at every level - except if you live in a civilised country and you’re sort of educated and middle-class, because then you’re almost certainly junior in your relationship and in a state of permanent, crippled apology. Your preferences are routinely mocked. There’s a huge, unfortunate lack of respect for anything male."

Oh, fucking A wut. I did not see the article link. I'll have to read it, and I suspect it will make me cry/wanna barf/come to loathe Moffat as well. ::sigh::

So, I finished season two of Fringe. A season in a week isn't THAT bad, right?

Very excited to move on to season three! I continue to be too dumb to figure things out when I should, I literally went, "Why does Olivia need to find the hidden key to her own apartment? Did she leave the real one with Rachel?" But I guess I did figure out that it was not the real Olivia as soon as she asked to use the typewriter. So it could have been worse, I could have been clueless until they revealed the tattoo! Anyway, I'm fairly obsessed. I can't think of anything about the show I don't like. There was an episode I watched yesterday where people (corpses included) kept singing and Gene had polka dots. It was insane and I loved it.

Hee, "Brown Betty" is fun times.

A season in a week isn't THAT bad, right?

When I was mainlining Farscape, I did seasons in a matter of days.

[Martha] ended up married to Rose’s ex-boyfriend Mickey

Wait, what? Did this happen on TW? And didn't Mickey end up in the alt-universe? I'm so confused.

That confused me too. Wasn't Martha engaged to a hot doctor? I know we saw her and Mickey having adventures together at some point (during RTD's final episode, maybe?), but I don't remember thinking they were married. Mickey did live in the alt-universe for a while, but I'm pretty sure he ended up returning to "our" universe in the end.

I was super thrilled for Moffat and tired of RTD's maudlin attitude (that extended goodbye sequence in Tennant's final ep? Hurt my poor rolling eyeballs, even if there were parts I liked). And yet, Moffat has not lived up to my expectations.

Same here. And oy, I wish I hadn't read that quote from him.

I'm not crazy about Amy and I adore Rory, so I obviously disagree with the OP and Sady about a few things, but the post and comments did help me realize something about Amy and Rory's relationship: there's no there there. I don't know if the problem is the writing or the acting or if they just have no real chemistry, but I have yet to see a scene between the two of them in which I actually believed that they loved each other or even got along or knew each other very well. So it makes the love triangle stuff even more obnoxious, and it makes Rory's mooning around after Amy seem mostly just sad, and it makes Amy's attitude toward him seem mostly just condescending and kind of mean.

I haven't read the article yet. I just never warmed to grown-up Amy, is my problem, but I adore Rory, and I like Eleven and River Song, so I'm still happy with it. I just figure that within the show, I need to believe that they love Amy, so I go with it, even though I don't really see it.

No episode in Eleven's run has come close to Empty Child/Doctor Dances or Blink for me, but overall, I am enjoying him in the role and the show. I like him equally as well as Ten, and find him kind of refreshing. Man, I still miss Nine and wish we'd gotten more of him.

Moffat's quote, I don't get. I suppose I should read the article. Whatever.