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

[Reluctance]

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Ending technobabble felt too strained. In my headcanon, the residue of the paradox made any further time travel for the Ponds too risky for the rest of the universe. The Doctor can still stop in and visit, he just can't take them back to their original time, and especially can't adventure with them anymore. Plus, it ties up the normal life vs. doctor life theme much better.

Angels need to stop gaining new powers all willy-nilly. Whoever picks up the show after Moffat's run needs to retcon them hard. It's like everything has to be as cool as possible right now, when a little subtlety would pay off much better in the long run.

Actually liked River in this one. Either she or the doctor should've been smart enough to trick out time somewhere, but this is more "I'm your intellectual equal" River than "I'm your intellectual equal, who's also badass action chick who knows more about everything going on than you do" River. I like someone equivalent who can act as his foil.

As always, the cast has wonderful chemistry. Karen and especially Arthur should be snapped up soon for some high-quality stuff.

More general thoughts:

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While I like The Great Hack, it seems too far-reaching. Wiping computer systems and creatures with integrated computers is one thing. Wiping the memories of everybody who isn't a named character is quite another. I'd like to see hints of more people, like Clive from Rose, trying to piece together fragmentary evidence to make sense of things that they know happened.

And the monsters really need to be toned down. The new Dalek empire needs some handwavium to explain why they're not running around as the universe's unchecked time-traveling superpower, angels need to be stripped back to the tricks they used in Blink, and in general enemy abilities should be clearly delineated. Otherwise, you run into believability problems. Did every postcard of the Statue of Liberty wind up going berserk and turning people into temporal driftwood? Plus, each side developing new powers for no particular reason is something comic books have learned the pitfalls of long ago.