The destruction of the archenemy trope

The archenemy trope is brilliant. There's a reason it has always thrived across all mediums, and genres.

Every hero needs a villain, but an archenemy who pops up regularly can allow the writer to flesh a villain out more and develop the hero and villains relationship too. It's always a great moment when a villain who really scares the hero and who the hero HATES shows up.

Sadly however it seems no one can do a good archenemy anymore for the following reasons.

1/ They have to add a sexual element to the villain and the heroes relationship. The Doctor/The Master, Buffy/Faith, Batman/the Joker, Green Goblin/Spider-Man, Holmes/Moriarty, Xena/Callisto, Dan Dare/The Mekon writers have added a gay aspect to ALL of these characters relationships no matter how out of character and absurd it is.

A lot of writers add these elements because they think its edgy, but its infantile. It reduces all of these villains to the little boy who pulls on a boys pigtails of the girl he likes.  Also it seems like the most hackneyed thing to reduce all of these complex relationships to sex, which would explain why Moffat did it.

2/ They have to make the villain and hero friends. Now this isn't always a bad idea. Sometimes that can work like Magneto and Professor X. However people try and crowbar it into every hero/villain relationship and it makes no sense most of the time.

Like the Doctor and Davros. People nowadays go on about how they are friends like this bit here.

Despite this, both Davros and the Doctor called each other friends on separate occasions. Davros considered the Doctor the closest thing that the scientist had to a familiar, even as they served as foes.

What a load of crap! When did they call each other friends?

IMO the reason people go down these routes with archenemies is because writers nowadays are snobs.

They think if they just write a good old fashioned Holmes/Moriarty type relationship then it will look silly and childish, so they have to add what they think are really deep and adult themes to their relationship, even if it makes no sense like "lets make it that Roger Delgado wants to shag Jon Pertwee."

IMO this is why DW is shit in general. Snobby writers who can't just write good adventure stories because they think they're stupid and childish, so they write cheesy soap operas instead.

IMO we need to get back to archenemies being these types of characters.






And not for the love of god shit like this.




Love Eliza Dushku in every way, but UGH that Buffy/Faith subtext is such bullshit. It makes no sense. Why does Faith want to shag Buffy? It literally feels like its just added in there for no reason except to be edgy, except ironically its the biggest cliche imaginable. Making them sisters would be less of a cliche.

Davros and the Doctor are friends? Since fucking when? Was the Doctor holding a gun to his head in Resurrection just a bit of banter then? He was also so upset that his old pal Davros was about to die in Remembrance that he said "Goodbye, Davros. It hasn't been pleasant" and looked pretty jovial when the mother ship blew up. Yeah, what a sparkling friendship. Davros considered him to be nothing more than an irritating Time Lord.

lol These people are idiots.

Commander Maxil wrote:Davros and the Doctor are friends? Since fucking when? Was the Doctor holding a gun to his head in Resurrection just a bit of banter then? He was also so upset that his old pal Davros was about to die in Remembrance that he said "Goodbye, Davros. It hasn't been pleasant" and looked pretty jovial when the mother ship blew up. Yeah, what a sparkling friendship. Davros considered him to be nothing more than an irritating Time Lord.

Completely true, but the same was also true of the Master as well.

Its not just DW that does this though. One of the things I disliked about Once Upon A Time season 7 was a bit where Rumple tells his archenemy Hook that the reason he never killed him was because he was the closest thing he had to a friend.

Just to be clear this is how their feud begun.



Now obviously I love Once Upon A Time and its writers came up with some unbelievably clever and original plots like the Peter Pan arc, but Rumple saying that was just so stupid. That's what he considers a friend? A guy who shags his wife and who he then mutilates in response.

You could tell the writers were just adding that in because its the trendy thing to make out that actually you think these two people hate each other, but actually they have a love/hate relationship that's more complex than you thought, but actually it just doesn't make any sense. You can't just toss in a friendship between two villains with no basis.

If you a friendship it has to either be like Lex and Superman, IE once friends who drift apart, or the villain and hero need to still have at least some common ground like Magneto and the Professor.

Shame as I LOVED the Hook/Rumple feud apart from that one bit of it. It was a proper archenemy one. These cliches however that writers toss in to try and give these classic tropes depth I'm afraid need to die.

Davros does say in Davros (BF) that he thinks he and the doctor could have been friends in "another history". The Doctor quickly shoots him down by saying they'd never be friends.

Davros only suggested it because he viewed the Doctor as an equal, perhaps a rival to his genius.