Doctor Who Thread III: Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow

[Calemyr]

All told, I thought it was a pretty good episode. Sometimes I think the fandom for Who is going the Dominic Deegan route, and look only for the opportunity to complain rather than do some actual logical thought on their own part.

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Why can't the Doctor visit the Ponds? The area between 1938 and 2012 in the New York region has now absorbed a major paradox. It is literally a hair's breadth away from feeding pteranodons in the park. If the Doctor were determined enough, he could find a dozen ways to get back there, just like he could go back and see the Time Lords again, but he doesn't for the same reason: the cost would be too high. If he even popped in to say hello, his slightest action could change when the Ponds die by half an hour, and then Teddy Roosevelt would be delivering a podcast about how Ghengis Khan should not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.

Amy and Rory went out with style, twice on Amy's part. The second one wasn't supposed to have the epic feel to it the first did, however. It was supposed to have a tragic, senseless, and above all final feel to it, and I think that was achieved. The divorce was a stupid and unnecessary element given the rest of the half-season, but it did do one thing: it set up the fact that the relationship is not as one-sided as it seemed and both of them are willing to sacrifice everything they care about for the sake of the other. Amy's side of the equation had not been addressed since Amy's Choice in Season 5. Without it, their bickering on the edge of the rooftop and Amy's final farewell would not have had lost a little power, to my mind.

And it finally explains the jarring inconsistency in Eleventh Hour. In the season 5 premiere, little Amelia is seen sitting on her suitcase in her back yard, looking hopefully up at the stars when she hears the Tardis noise and happily looks behind her. But we know that the two times the Doctor had been to that night already, that scene couldn't have happened. Elventh Hour Doctor had already left, and Big Bang Doctor didn't arrive by Tardis. Now we know the truth: it was Angels Take Manhattan Doctor, coming to fill little Amelia's head with so many wonderful dreams of the future that would carry her through the hard years of waiting and being told the Raggedy Man didn't exist. Now if we could only get an explanation for the Rory scene in God Complex (where he talks about their travels in the past tense), things would be sewn up nicely.

River, however, was really the most interesting thing about the episode, and that is because she finally shows a hint about how much her relationship with the Doctor hurts her, how she'll hide all suffering from him because he doesn't like to see it. And the interesting bit, the really interesting bit, is that the Doctor's unwillingness to talk about the Library is hurting her more than sparing her - for him, the worst moment in their relationship was their first. It's there, it's dealt with, and everything that comes after that does so without the guarantee that he'll lose her, because that's already happened. More than that, he still preserved her for all eternity while he was at it, which also softens the blow. And it's torturing her to know that one day, sooner or later, she's going to hurt the Doctor in the worst way she possibly can. Remember River's death scene, the hurt sound in her voice when she realizes that that moment meant that the Doctor always knew how their relationship would end. Had she known he was already at peace with that, it would have spared her so much suffering...

That said, the Statue of Liberty was a dumb idea. If you're going to take that large hit to the story's credibility, at least do something with it!

Final remark: Mike McShane! I fanboy over the weirdest things, I know, but seeing one of my favorite Who's Line Is It Anyway cast members again was almost as cool as seeing Ben Browder in Who. Almost.

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I also have mixed feelings about the Doctor's healing of River's wrist. On one hand, I don't like it because it was unnecessary: The only thing she used that hand for in the rest of the episode was to climb the fire escape. I would have had the Doctor splint it or something to limit the pain, but left it in play because choices should have consequences.

But that's just it, isn't it? The Doctor doesn't like consequences. He doesn't like to see the people he cares about suffer. He did something extremely stupid, like burn some of his regeneration energy on an injury time alone would heal, because he simply cannot bring himself to leave his wife to suffer. It's that childishness that is the root of River's attitude in this episode - you can't let the Doctor see you suffer, because he'll do anything, no matter how stupid, to try and fix it.