The Moffat Regeneration

Spoilers for Doctor Who, particularly the episode Let's Kill Hitler.

Steven Moffat wrote some of the best New Who, and personal favourites like The Empty child/The Doctor Dances and Blink[1] and yet my enjoyment of the series as a whole has been in a downward spiral since he was put in charge.

The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that around the time Moffat took control of Doctor Who, he regenerated into Jeph Loeb.  The hallmarks are all there; the focus on superficial spectacle over solid story, guest stars shoehorned in at every opportunity, regardless of whether it screws with established continuity[2] or is remotely appropriate to the plot.  Convoluted stories that don't work if you think about them at all...

The kicker for me was in the latest episode Let's Kill Hitler, which apart from bringing in one of history's biggest guest stars only to lock him in a closet after five minutes and forget about him, contains one of the classic Loebisms from Hush: introducing a major character's life-long best friend who has never previously been mentioned in the story while having them be central to overall continuity.[3]

At first I thought it was some clever time-travel thing and the Doctor would notice that Amy and Rory's past had been changed, or that their memories had been tampered with, but no.  Apparently it's merely the same kind of bad writing that gives us time-travelling Autons making a plastic robot copy of Rory [4] for their Roman army at Stonehenge, even though they'd never met him.[5]

And that's not even addressing the throwaway concept of previously unmentioned time-travellers going around assassinating history's greatest criminals, but who are so crap that instead of surgical strikes to a time and place where the person won't be missed, they are entirely years off the mark, and when they screw up they leave extremely advanced technology lying around in Hitler's own office for him to reverse-engineer into a super weapon.  But the Doctor doesn't seem bothered about this kind of tampering with time,[6] so let us not mention it again.


1) Though he managed to destroy any interest I had in the scary stone angels by bringing them back and overexposing them.
2) Daleks teaming up with Cybermen?  Did Moffat miss Doomsday, where the Cybermen outnumbered the Daleks thirteen million to four and when they propose an alliance the Daleks sneer at them and kick their shiny metal asses?
3) And even underlining how poorly this is being shoehorned into the plot by handwaving why she didn't appear at both her best friends' wedding, but not why nobody noticed at the time.
4) Who was dead at the time.
5) Did the plot of The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang make sense on any level at all?  I'm sure there are devoted websites out there taking it apart and bodging it back together with ingenuity and convoluted assumption to somehow force it to make sense, but personally I think that's the job of the guy who was paid to write it. And possibly the script editor, who was also paid to check it made sense.
6) It's not like there's ever been previous stories about the Doctor dealing with a Time Meddler...

One Hulk, two Hulk, red Hulk, boo Hulk

Hulksies are red, dilly dilly,
Hulksies are green,
Ed Mac draws lumpy people and
Jeph Loeb's still a hack.

Gentle reader, as you may know, I am not overfond of the writings of Jeph Loeb. It would not, perhaps, be going too far to say that, were it up to me, he would be first up against the wall when the revolution comes [1].

I was thus delighted when he signed up with Marvel, as it meant that he would no longer be interfering with characters I liked. His origin for Supergirl has been more (if you read this month's Action) or less (if you read this month's Brave and the Bold) retconned out of existence, along with her skeevy parental issues and nude adolescent spaceship-piloting, and most of his other additions and revisions are well on their way to being dismantled, ignored, reinterpreted. or set to fall down the next passing Crisis.

Thus it is that I now only read Loebwork for the thrill of the truly awful. The relaxing experience of knowing that I will not be disappointed by plot holes or lapses in structure, continuity, or basic physics. Indeed, I look forward to them with the gusto of one playing a drinking game wherein you take a shot every time Grant Morrison features a minor character unseen since 1966.

So I've been reading Hulk. AKA Red Hulk.

Is it in any continuity with other Marvel comics? I have a vague notion of dedicated fanboys working feverishly through the night to wedge all the cameos and guest stars into continuity, but I sincerely don't care [2].

Red Hulk is big and mean. Red Hulk is so strong he can beat up Classic™ Green Hulk and punch Thor into space. But sometimes he uses a gun.

Classic™ Hulk is very Silver Age retro and refers to himself in the third person. Classic™ Hulk is not a bag of hammers.

Each issue is composed of 95% Red Hulk beating up on this issue's guest star, 5% dropping hints and having people make inaccurate suspicions as to who Red Hulk might be.

I don't care who Red Hulk is.

There are also little one page gag strips by Audrey Loeb [3] at the end that feature Red Hulk, Green Hulk, and Blue Hulk. They are a delight.

In the latest issue, after five issues of Red Hulk beating the crap out of everyone, finally, Classic™ Hulk and Thor get together and beat Red Hulk. And then they go away, leaving Red Hulk to recover and go beat someone else next issue.

It has all the depth of a video game[4].



Notes

1. You can make guesses about who would fill the number two and three slots if you like. It's not difficult.
2. And how many SHIELD helicarriers are there, anyway? I don't think I've read a Marvel comic in the last year where they haven't crashed one.
3. She is either a relative, or it's very unfortunate coincidence.
4. Space Invaders, not Age of Empires.