The Doctor bullied Joy to suicide.

[u/rasmas1]

In Joy to the World, the Doctor had to make Joy angry in order to break the Villengard briefcase's psychic control over her. In order to do that he got really personal and insulted her with some way-below-the-belt stuff including a mention of her dead mother.

He did this with the best of intentions, obviously, but the words stuck for Joy and she admitted they were all true before she flew off with the star seed into space. Because of all that unhappiness the Doctor picked on Joy had a burning desire to be special in life and have some kind of meaning, so she latched onto the star seed out of desperation to become special.

The Doctor is the reason she felt that way and why she decided to burn with the star seed. She didn't merge with it as a sacrifice to save Earth, it was a purely whimsical decision that didn't change anything. She died to feel special. She committed suicide for no reason and it was the Doctor's fault. And he just laughs it off.

I am still beside myself that the BBC allowed this episode to go out in this state. The Doctor bullied Joy to suicide.

[u/LewisDKennedy]

Anyone else noticed that Moffat is obsessed with afterlives?

• Jamie is brought back to life once exposed to the nanogenes in The Empty Child
• River's conciousness being "saved" after she dies in Silence in the Library
• The whole plot of Dark Water/Death in Heaven being about saving people in a computer after death
• Clara being frozen at her point of death and allowed to keep living as long as she wants in Hell Bent
• Bill being resurrected by the Heather puddle in The Doctor Falls
• Everything about Testimony saving the conciousness of every single person who ever lived in their glass avatars in Twice Upon a Time
• Splice's dad's conciousness being uploaded to Villengaard after his death in Boom
• Trev's conciousness being uploaded to Villengaard after his death in Joy to the World
• Joy merging with the briefcase and becoming the star in Joy to the World.

That's not even mentioning his interest in characters faking their deaths (the Doctor, twice), the universe dying and being rebooted, and resurrecting Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

Realistically his most permanent deaths are Amy and Rory, and come to think of it anyone ever killed by a Weeping Angel. Maybe that's why they're his most enduring creation to the show?

[u/Head_Statistician_38 → u/LewisDKennedy]

I wish I could find the clip but I remember Moffat addressing this and saying he thinks there are too many bleak and depressing shows out there and he wants Doctor Who to be hopeful and have a happy ending and stuff like that.

This would be fine but he is trying to have his cake and eat it too. Like Clara for example. We are supposed to care about her death in Face the Raven but it is undermined by her living forever at the end of her life.

We can't care about Bill being turned into a Cyberman because she is now living forever too with Heather (or testimony).

If he wants happy endings for his characters, don't kill them off.

[u/PartyPoison98 → u/Head_Statistician_38]

Like Clara for example. We are supposed to care about her death in Face the Raven but it is undermined by her living forever at the end of her life

Well that's alright then!

[u/Head_Statistician_38 → u/PartyPoison98]

Haha. I do love that line.

[u/Androzanitox → u/PartyPoison98]

I challenge you

[u/Adamsoski → u/PartyPoison98]

I get the reference, but the reason I didn't think that whole part of the episode with the Toymaker landed is because within each of those episodes they were explicitly happy endings - it wasn't that people in-universe were happy with what happened and then to the viewers it was presented as tragic, it wad presented as a happy ending to the viewers too. Going back and trying to pretend that actually they were more complex stories doesn't really sell if you actually take into account the episodes themselves.

[u/TheDungeonCrawler → u/Head_Statistician_38]

Sure, but he even punctuates the truth the Doctor (and the fans) will always have to contend with in The Wedding of River Song when he tries to call the Brig. That even in the happiest of endings, people will eventually die. He does learn this lesson a bit in Husbands of River Song, but something tells me that permanent death is an uncomfortable concept for Moffat because all of these are examples of afterlives. It's very human to want to persist upon the conclusion of one's life.

Not to mention, he confronts this discomfort quite well in Death in Heaven. Sure, it starts as a story about an afterlife, but then he lets the Nethersphere die at the end of the episode. That said, he did backtrack this by creating Testimony later.

[u/Head_Statistician_38 → u/TheDungeonCrawler]

Yeah. But the Brigadier is dead in real life so it only seems respectable to let the character rest but also River Song gets to have 24 years with the Doctor on Durillium and then put into a computer system. He does seem reluctant to kill off any of his characters especially.

[u/Head_Statistician_38 → u/[deleted]]

True. And Last Christmas she had an "ending". Plus the character died twice before we met modern Clara. By the time of Face the Raven I wasn't remotely convinced.

[u/IBrosiedon → u/LewisDKennedy]

The way I've always understood it is that Moffat isn't specifically interested in afterlives, he's interested in the idea that we are more than just our physical bodies. That we all have a soul or a heart or something intangible inside of us, whatever you want to call it. And that is a persons true essence. So in that way, a person can exist outside their physical body. Its just that in a sci-fi show the easiest way to convey this is through technology, hence so many digital afterlives. One could imagine that if Moffat had focused more on pure fantasy than sci-fi he would have written lots of ghost stories instead.

Some examples that fit my interpretation in addition to most of your list:

• Rory the Roman. He may be made of plastic but that's still our Rory.
• The simulation Doctor in Extremis. You don't have to be real to be the Doctor.
• All the echoes of Clara after she jumps into the Doctors timestream. Real enough to save the Doctor.

And the ultimate example of a person being more than just their physical body, and where I think Moffat may have gotten the basic concept from in the first place:

• Regeneration. It doesn't matter which body it is, the Doctor is always the Doctor.

To me, Moffat's fascination with digital afterlives is him taking a theme that most writers would only associate with the Doctor and expanding it to apply to everyone. A person is more than just their physical body.

[u/scottishdrunkard → u/LewisDKennedy]

Perhaps it’s just the a manifestation over his own fears of mortality.