Doctor Who has Become too Much Like Twilight… Really?

How many people in the past year and a half have been subjected to those numerous complaints about Moffat’s take on Doctor Who? I for one am surrounded by people telling me ‘the scripts are just not as good’, that ‘Smith doesn’t live up to his predecessor’ and that ‘the characters are just not that likable.’ I for one see each of these arguments as nothing more than opinion and you can’t argue with peoples’ opinions… I’ve tried. The result is a black eye. But one level-headed argument I’ve heard increasingly often of late is the infuriating claim that Doctor Who is too much like Twilight.

Twilight itself has become short-hand for ‘bad writing’ in a pop-cultural context, at least among those of us who don’t throw on a black cloak and stalk Robert Pattison in a pair of fake pointy teeth but I’m not writing to take a cheap swipe at obsessive fanatics, I after all am writing an online article on my favourite television series so I’ll press on and take you through the logic behind the ‘Twilight Argument’.

Twilight, for those of you not in the know tells the tale of Isabella Swann, an outsider who falls in highly reciprocated love with teen-hottie vampire, Edward Cullen. She later discovers that her teen-hottie BFF Jacob also harbors deep-seated feelings for her. Finally, after much angst Bella chooses to marry Edward whilst their offspring ends up with Jacob (I haven’t seen or read the final instalment of the Twilight saga but I’m informed that this is just as sinister as it sounds)…

Now, take a look at the Pond-saga through Twilight-tinted spectacles… Amy, a young woman living in England meets an exciting older man towards whom she has certain ‘special’ feelings and finds she must choose between a life with him or a life with her boyfriend. Both men possess superhuman powers (at least if you count Rory’s uncanny knack for returning to life after being erased from existence). After choosing to marry Rory, their offspring ends up with the unchosen third wheel the Doctor.

So, with an open mind I guess anyone would recognise a few similarities in a couple of superficial plot points but I never really looked at it like that before because I always interpreted the meanings and themes of the two stories in entirely different ways. With the character of Amy, in The Eleventh Hour we meet a girl whose life has essentially been ruined by the Doctor. He fell into her life when she was lonely and parentless which lead to him filling, in her mind the part of a replacement father-figure or cool older brother who had come to protect and provide her with some much needed familial love. Over the years her love for him became obsessive and twisted in her mind meaning she could never get over the idea that he would one day come back for her meaning that she could never really grow up and live a life with Rory when she always believed in her heart that her father/ cool older brother would come back and take her off with him to see the stars.

Already, we can see a difference between the nature of the love triangles in Doctor Who and Twilight. Bella is in obsessive love with Edward Cullen, Amy isn’t in love with the Doctor. She idolises him, yes but that isn’t the same thing. When the Doctor comes back for her, her emotions are confused further. She loves Rory but she has built the Doctor up in her mind as the ideal man (women, it is said often marry men similar in character to their own fathers) so she feels like she has been making do with Rory and attempts to live her childhood dream by travelling in the stars with her ideal man towards whom she has such strong emotions.

 She later makes advances on the Doctor (at the end of Flesh and Stone) because she needs someone to comfort her, she needs reassurance and wants to feel connected after the terrible experience that she went through episode and the Doctor is just there. She is confused, mixing up her fatherly protector love for the doctor with a romantic passion. This is why the Doctor brings Rory on board so she will have someone to comfort and protect her in his place for the Doctor never had Cullen-esque feelings for Amy. He sees her as the little girl he met in The Eleventh Hour.

‘Doctor: Coming?

Amy: No.

Doctor: You Wanted to come 14 years ago…

Amy: I grew up!

Doctor: Don’t worry, I’ll soon fix that.’

From The Eleventh Hour by Steven Moffat.

Now fatherly love, many might say makes the Amy’s advances and her impending choice a tad sinister but I think there has been a great deal of misinterpretation on the part of certain viewers. Take, for example the story Amy's Choice away from which, I feel many people take the wrong message. It's not that Amy has to choose which boyfriend to go out with, if it were I’m sure I’d sympathise far more with the boys who cry ‘Twilight!’ it's that she has to choose between two ways of life. Does she want to be pregnant in Leadworth or playing with her imaginary childhood friend in space? She needs to choose whether to grow up or not.

Amy’s arc, I feel is concluded in The God Complex when we see how Amy's blind faith in the Doctor is damaging to her very life. She will never be able to grow up and live that life with Rory unless she accepts that the Doctor is not the man that she has idolised him to be. A hugely important moment in a child's life is when s/he learns that their parents are imperfect beings, a moment that will allow them to stop clinging on to the coat tails and start looking after themselves and this moment comes for Amy in The God Complex. She goes off to live a life with Rory. She, in short grows up.  

‘Doctor: Forget your faith in me. I took you with me because I was vain because I wanted to be adored. Look at you, you’re glorious, Pond. The girl who waited for me. I’m not a hero. I really am just a mad man in a box. And its time we saw each other as we really are.

Amy Williams’.

From The God Complex by Toby Whithouse

So, at the end of the day Amy's choice is one between Growing up and staying a child. Bella's is between Jacob and Edward which sexy supernatural does she want to end up with? Perhaps Twilight deserves to be criticised, perhaps its an underappreciated masterpiece but in the end saying something has a similar plot to Twilight isn’t a truly insightful or valid criticism for the Love Triangle is an age old literary staple so there will be various similarities whenever it comes up. But when the love triangle might represent maturity and childishness, denial and acceptance, love and idolisation you can bet that it means Doctor Who is far more than just a cheap Twilight knock off.