Please excuse me for butting in. I remember when kaffyr posted that. It really caught my eye, but I never responded to it because it took me a long while to work out what I thought of it.
What I came around to, actually, is that I completely disagree: I don't think Moff's much hung up on death at all. But I don't really care whether anybody else agrees with me on that or not. What I do want to speak to is this:
Once people start comparing Rory to Kenny in South Park though, death in Moffat's world has lost meaning, when perhaps it shouldn't. So then "Everybody lives!" loses meaning too. Only the puzzle remains.
If Moff undermines the impact of death in his writing, I think it's in order to focus on the demons and struggles he's really interested in, which are all psychological: loss of memory, loss of connection, loss of self, loss of the ability to accurately perceive reality, and the loss of agency and control and sense of meaning or purpose that can result from all of that.
In fact I think he quite effectively uses the repeated deaths in order to explore those very things. What's more upsetting about Eleven dying on the beach: that the Doctor died, or the feeling of disorientation and emotional whiplash and the inability to determine what's real or what any of it means? The death itself is almost comforting: a simple fact of life. The real danger is psychological.
no subject
What I came around to, actually, is that I completely disagree: I don't think Moff's much hung up on death at all. But I don't really care whether anybody else agrees with me on that or not. What I do want to speak to is this:
Once people start comparing Rory to Kenny in South Park though, death in Moffat's world has lost meaning, when perhaps it shouldn't. So then "Everybody lives!" loses meaning too. Only the puzzle remains.
If Moff undermines the impact of death in his writing, I think it's in order to focus on the demons and struggles he's really interested in, which are all psychological: loss of memory, loss of connection, loss of self, loss of the ability to accurately perceive reality, and the loss of agency and control and sense of meaning or purpose that can result from all of that.
In fact I think he quite effectively uses the repeated deaths in order to explore those very things. What's more upsetting about Eleven dying on the beach: that the Doctor died, or the feeling of disorientation and emotional whiplash and the inability to determine what's real or what any of it means? The death itself is almost comforting: a simple fact of life. The real danger is psychological.