The Write Stuff

I gotta admit, I’m a little nervous about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was refreshing to have a different writer working on the screenplay for Order – OK, so there were a few things I didn’t like about it. But for once I didn’t feel like Ron was made to be the punching bag, and while Hermione was still the convenient know-it-all (how did she know about the Room of Requirement?), it wasn’t as bad as in some of the other movies.

But we’re back to Steve Kloves for HBP. And the trailer looks so good that I’m getting excited — and then I remember Kloves is back and I get nervous again.

Funny how one writer makes you nervous and another absolutely makes you squee. Because there’s something very similar going on over at the Beeb. Russell T. Davies, head writer for Doctor Who, is leaving and in his place is the brilliant mind who brought us some of my favorite episodes – Steven Moffat.

One quirky thing about Moffat’s episodes – he hasn’t really killed anybody off yet. He wrote the two-parter in series one that introduced us to Captain Jack, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances – and that’s the one where the Doctor almost gleefully announces at the end, “And everybody lives!” Reinette, a.k.a. Madame de Pompadour, died at the end of The Girl in the Fireplace, but she wasn’t killed – she just died of natural causes. In one of the creepiest episodes of the new Who, Blink, the “bad guys” steal people’s lifetimes but instead of killing them, they’re just moved to a different point in time. So again, no death. You can make an argument that River Song dies in this year’s two parter, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, but there’s a sort of weird loophole that left her still “existing” in a virtual world. (I guess that one depends on your view of what it means to be alive.)

Anyway, I can’t see Moffat keeping that streak going for long now that he’s head writer, so I guess the question is – who do you think he’ll bump off first? An incidental? A companion? (Please not the Doctor just yet. I’m not ready to say goodbye to the Tenth!) I’m not worried about major changes to the show. Moffat’s kind of a Who fanboy himself! But I’m sure there could be other changes. Davies has kind of a dark worldview (hello, Midnight?) – while Moffat’s written some dark episodes, I think he also is a more “hopeful” person and I could see that having an impact. After all, hope was what was left after Pandora opened the box.

By the way, I was only kidding when I suggested Rupert Grint as the 11th Doctor – but some of your responses are cracking me up! Someone said Luna would make a great companion. How funny would that be! Or the Phelps twins as both ginger and twin Doctors. *snort* They’re not ginger in real life, you know. But hey, that’s what Miss Clairol is for! I’d suggest Slughorn, but he’s probably a bit too much like the first Doctor, Hartnell. But tell me Dumbledore wouldn’t have made a great Doctor in his youth! And he was ginger!