I particularly loved ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ for doing something that you felt sure Who must have done before, yet breaking entirely new ground. And not being afraid to play down the monster-fighting aspect of the affair in favour of character. All that, and astoundingly good art-direction and design work too; ironic that in some quarters fans seized on poor CGI or monster design when the art-direction was probably among Who’s finest ever hours.

‘Amy’s Choice’ was also excellent, though seemed to lose sight of emotional realism again when Amy came out of the dream-world; shouldn’t there have been a beat dealing with her loss of the dream-world baby? I can’t imagine RTD or Julie Gardner missing that in their notes, but plot ran away with emotional realism slightly here. Or the emotion didn’t quite ring true for me as a result of how it was integrated with the situation’s science-fictionality. A minor quibble in another excellent story, mind you.

Another trick that the series repeatedly played — in both Moffat and others’ screenplays, as you highlight — was matching narrative events with real-life contexts: electioneering in ‘The Beast Below’, but then football in Roberts’ ‘The Lodger’, as well as Stonehenge featuring just prior to the Solstice. Moffat et al seemed to always be in tune with the times; this was literally Doctor Who’s most timely run of stories, culminating in the gimmick of identical transmission date and end-of-universe date, of course. Proper TV magic!

This series was the perfect antidote to the joyless slog of the specials in 2009 (despite the occasional moment that clicked: Davies+Tennant were still potent here and there), and the enjoyable-but-already-rehashed feel of much of the 2008 series. Here we had the audacity of launching a new Doctor in a new way, with a new kind of narrative arc, and a few new surprises.

Words, indeed, are cool. And here I think Moffat clearly excels over Davies. While Davies could certainly craft scenes with a hefty, affecting emotional punch (my favorites are in The End of the World, The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, Midnight, and Turn Left), they were often surrounded by plots and characters that didn’t quite work as well. By comparison, yes, Moffat’s dialogue sparkles throughout his stories, but more importantly, he’s really, really clever at a larger level, crafting surprisingly intricate unfolding plots and populating them with rich characters. As a result, the stories themselves, as a whole, are what we remember and cherish: we don’t love Blink only because of “timey-wimey, wibbly wobbly” or The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances only for “Everybody lives!” but for their intricate and passionate construction and execution.

In addition, it wasn’t only in Moffat’s scripts that words (particularly those coming from Matt Smith’s mouth) created magic in 2010. Although Gatiss and Chibnall did disappoint in this regard, Curtis, Nye, and Roberts all delivered frankly astonishingly great scripts that worked wonders despite their seemingly dubious premises. While I’ll most remember this series for the cleverness of the crack and (of course) the mad energy of the Eleventh Doctor, I’ll also love it for the bold surrealism of Amy’s Choice, the slapstick of The Lodger, and the sheer heartburst of Vincent and the Doctor. I’m very optimistic that we’ll see more of this in 2011, with the likes of Neil Gaiman and (rumor has it) Paul Cornell in the fold.

The twitter phenomenon has me puzzled for all celebs. I kinda don’t want to be near them…I think I like the pretense of a fully developed world a bit too much.

The early sense of realism that Davies brought to the table was, I also agree, one of his key strengths. Davies’s Who had a strong sense of emotional realism (I refer to this in ‘Triumph of a Time Lord’ in more detail), and this was a crucial part of its successful mainstreaming.

Moffat does occasionally seem in danger of losing the thread of this emotional realism among his plotting. Though the repeated series five device of Amy crying or smiling without knowing why was a clever plot iteration, I found it difficult to empathise with or relate to: it was emotion, yes, but fantastical, science-fictionalised feeling rather than an emotional beat that felt true-to-life. (See also the emotions of Moffat’s Jekyll, which are integrated with the series’ fantastical premise). Davies layered ‘ordinary’ feeling into the telefantasy mix, whereas Moffat seems prone to integrate it *into* the fantastical rather more, making it seem more artificial or forced. Having said that, series six and its newlyweds may offer greater opportunities for emotional realism than did the ‘crack’ arc of series five!

As for Moffat and Davies, I think they each represent a spirit of fandom in similar ways; though Davies penned ‘Love & Monsters’, I’m pretty sure Moffat’s on record as having said he would have written something very much along those lines, had Davies not pre-empted him.

The biggest difference between Davies and Moffat’s approach to (and expression of) fandom at the moment would seem to be extra-textual: Davies has always resisted having an online presence, but Moffat has newly taken to Twitter (linked to Sherlock promotion, in part) and is interacting in that venue with fans and audiences. The irony is that although Moffat seems symbolically ‘closer’ to fandom through this activity, he’s also used the text of Who to discipline ‘good’ fandom more strongly than Davies ever did, e.g. warning against “spoilers!” in River Song’s catchphrase.

I think i need to rewatch in a couple of sittings to get a stronger sense of the story arc and the crossassociations and foreshadowings, but that’s the joy of a complex and clever text as well, isn’t it? Rereading allows for more depth and exposes new layers.

I think you may also hit upon one reason why fans seem to have embraced Moffat’s doctor even in the face of youth/RTD discontent/and a host of other things. we love words. we do think words are cool!

Given the truism by now that Davis’s the fanboy who made it, I now wonder whether the spirit of the fan might be more accurately represented by Moffat. And if we can’t make that argument fully with DW, we just have to look at Sherlock!!! (Seriously, I’m listening to a present-day SH fanfic AU, and when I started watching the first ep, I kinda got whiplash from how much this looked like the story I’m still listening to!)

I love the idea of this multi-series villain being Moffat’s “Mary Sue” — it’s an apt description for the way Moffat likes to structure this series, and hopefully the next. I’m also with you re: the major letdowns of the Davies era. While Davies initially brought a delightful sense of realism to the series (a companion with a family, an ex-boyfriend, etc.), the realities of the series’ success seems to have made it so Davies delved deeper and deeper into Doctor Who’s history to draw out villains, as well as raise the stakes for each series-ender in increasingly ludicrous ways. I can’t say I really need explanation of what “The Moment” was (it was something that ended the Time War, that’s good enough for me), but other elements of the late Davies era still irritate me — what in the world was “The Book of Saxon”?

All of this is to say that I agree that the framing of Doctor Who as a fairytale makes Moffat’s machinations really *work*. Fairytales are fundamentally simplistic and moralistic, which fits the tone of Doctor Who quite well; they also don’t seem to jibe with either the realism that Davies initially was striving for, nor a ludicrous “the entire Universe is about to be destroyed by a hammy Time Lord/a Dalek super-sect/Cybermen/etc.” style plot. Perhaps it will turn out that one of these villains was behind the explosion of the TARDIS, but the emphasis was properly on the cracks, Amy’s confusing life, and the wedding. Even with all of the major stakes present in the plot, as it was framed as a fairytale, the series had to return to the story about the little girl with the fairytale name and her magic friend with the mysterious box. I adored it.

Overall, even with a few missteps (“Victory of the Daleks,” the Siluran two-parter), this is my favorite Doctor Who series, perhaps of all of them, old and new. Matt Smith’s performance was pitch perfect (evoking Troughton and McCoy more than I had ever expected). In one short season, he has actually eclipsed both Eccleston and Tennant in my estimation. A year and a half ago, I would have never expected myself to write that, but here we are.