Steven Moffat death threatened off Twitter

 

Steven Moffat is one of my favorite television writers. He's one of the main writers for the amazing BBC television series Dr. Who and in my opinion, is fantastic. That being said, this article is going to be biased towards my like of him.

So the meat and potatoes of this post come from the fact that Moffat was chased off of Twitter after receiving death threats and a massive amount of hate for the Dr. Who episode Dinosaurs on a Ship – which featured dinosaurs…in space…It was awesome. There was a grand upheaval as one of the characters (a rather sexist African safari hunter) seemed to objectify women the entire time. There was also some hate coming from the fact that one of the female characters was going to be sold as she was a very valuable piece of history and worth a lot. This started the massive Twitter Moffat-ia, claiming that the man was a blatant sexist and after interview quotes were pulled, he was called out for thinking homosexuality was a joke and asexuality wasn’t important.
 
Now to address the sexism, yes, this episode had it in spades. A lot of people are not aware that Moffat didn’t in fact even write this episode and those that are said he approved it, which makes him guilty anyway. I personally don’t think that Moffat is sexist, I mean look at his characters. Yes, the Doctor has always been a man and I can understand that for continuity’s sake – but all of the companions have been women. They haven’t all been the boring, classically gorgeous, damsels in distress; these have all been powerful, kick-ass women. Almost all of Moffat’s female leads take no crap and by the very definition are leaders – often times saving the Doctor himself.  I’ve always admired the fact that the female characters have been a range of “normal” women that I felt I could look up to in the fiction world. Nobody pointed out the fact that when this male character made his sexist comments they were always commented on and addressed in the show.

For the homosexuality bit, Moffat was quoted in an interview stating that the gay characters really spice the show up. I’m sorry but they really do. That’s not objectifying them as the token “gay” character because of that, god knows the Doctor does it as well, but the same-sex oriented characters really only add. Yes, they add some spice, diversity is spice. It’s not being rude and disrespectful because they are GREAT characters that are vibrant and funny and just add to this show. Moffat also ended up hated because of last week’s show with the character Oswin Oswald’s comment about dating a girl being just a phase for her. People erupted saying that it was disrespectful and glorified bisexuality as just a phase and not real. At that moment I was starting to get a little upset with the Moffat-haters because, good lord, they just seem to hate everything. My view on this is, this character has an individual life, and you can’t tell them that they’re wrong for being a certain way – for some people being curious about the same-sex is just a phase. It’s human experience! You can’t qualify it because it doesn’t suite your way of thinking! You’re bisexual?  Great! You’re gay? Fantastic! You’re just experimenting? EXPERIMENT AWAY!

Finally, the asexuality comment. Moffat answered in an interview that there are no asexual characters on his show because that’s not interesting enough for television. People are up in arms upset because of this and my question is, where in sam hell would an asexual character go?! People in this show show their sexuality through the relationships with other characters – you have 45 minutes roughly to express an entire storyline with the main and new characters. Asexuality – the lack of sexual attraction to any person- is one of those things that you can read for any character really. Who is to say that the Doctor isn’t asexual? I’m not saying that anyone who doesn’t express a set sexuality in the show is asexual, I’m expressing the fact that you just don’t know. That’s what sexuality is though for some people, it’s personal and private. Not every character has to be loud and proud about their orientation. The show’s not about sexual orientation!

I think that it’s really disgusting how people took to threatening this man over the internet over a television show. It’s a fact of life; people lose interest and love for shows – instead of death threatening the writer, demanding to make the show you want, just move on. Fictional television is fun and entertaining; if it’s not for you anymore than maybe you’ve lost a reason to watch the show.
 
A friend of mine posted a very good comment that really embodies this. Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.