Okay so imagine you ask somebody to tell you a riddle.
They turn to you and they say “the south pole.“
You say “what?”
They just repeat “the south pole!“
So you press them for some sort of explanation. They urge you to figure it out on your own, they say it’ll be better that way. They give you an hour to figure it out.
So you set to trying to figure it out, but every five minutes, they say something like “you still haven’t gotten it? It’s going to be great when you do!” or “but what do I mean by that?“ or “don’t forget: the south pole!”
And then, the hour’s up, and you still have no idea what they mean.
“Okay, are you ready for this?” They ask you. You say yes, and they say:
“Where can I build a house with four walls, all facing north?”
And of course, you reply “the south pole.“
Now, I imagine you’re pretty unsatisfied. You feel like, if you had been given the riddle to begin with, you would have had a lot of fun trying to figure it out
But instead, you were given the answer at the beginning, and it just feels like your friend just spent a full hour enjoying watching you squirm while you tried to figure out what the riddle was
And that’s the problem I have with how Steven Moffat constructs his seasons of Doctor Who
…brilliant