Doctor Who thread II: "I should have a hat like that." [SPOILERS]

[SmartAlec]

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I guess that this isn't the end of the arc.

[Weezer]

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It was alright I guess. The tesselector was a major cop out, but anything they did to finagle their way out of the situation would've felt the same way. It was a better resolution than if they'd used a flesh!Doctor but worse than if they went all timey wimey and changed the fixed point.
My biggest problem with the episode is how the tone made such a turn from the Doctor's "I've been too godlike" sadness/disillusionment to "yay I'm happy and having lots of sex with my wife" without much changing. I found it very jarring. Also much of the plot, both for the episode and the season as a whole, was based far too much around providing points of speculation/disinformation for the fans.

[factotum]

Another thing about this episode:

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It all hinges around the Silence thinking the Doctor is dead. However, his chatty blue friend knows he's alive, and we already know he can't keep a secret. In addition, I don't see how Amy or Rory can possibly come back next year, because if they start hanging out with the Doctor again it makes it pretty darned ruddy obvious he aten't dead--yet somebody earlier in the thread said they were definitely signed up for next year? Does not compute.

[Thufir]

Another thing about this episode:

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It all hinges around the Silence thinking the Doctor is dead. However, his chatty blue friend knows he's alive, and we already know he can't keep a secret. In addition, I don't see how Amy or Rory can possibly come back next year, because if they start hanging out with the Doctor again it makes it pretty darned ruddy obvious he aten't dead--yet somebody earlier in the thread said they were definitely signed up for next year? Does not compute.

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Who's to say Dorium can't keep a secret? And I doubt the Silence are that bothered about going to talk to the severed heads in any case.
As to Amy and Rory, that only works as an argument if you assume the Silence are constantly watching them. Which why would they be if they think the Doctor's dead?


Oh, on another subject, just remembered one point, from the new bit of lore. Fields of Trensilore, the Fall of the Eleventh. Obvious hint is obvious.

[Avaris]

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I am... in two minds about this. I enjoyed the episode, but it didn't feel like a finale, and the obvious way of solving the death was a little too obvious.

It feels odd to say 'it didn't feel like a finale' given how much I hate the RTD finales, but it's how I feel. RTD went too far for the big grand alien threat to earth approach, I feel this goes too much the other way; the episode would have actually benefited from a big explosion or two. I still prefer this overall style to the other finales though.

As a story it held together well. I liked the way it was told, with the alternative histories colliding, altough this was a little close to the previous season end in style. It just... I don't know. I liked it, it just wasn't as great as the rest of this half of the season has been.

Best moment was, as ever, Rory. I was dissapointed he didn't get to be one of the people remembering what was going on, but this is made up by his exchange with Amy; "You need to take the eyedrive off, it could activate any moment!" "It already has..."

Thinking about it, I think the most important thing about this episode (and indeed this story arc) is what it sets up for the future. Up till now we have had the legacy of big, world threatening events that were the hallmark of the RTD era, which while good in small doses eventually got to the stage where it was difficult to maintain an in-universe logic; why do people not know about aliens/the doctor? This diminished the setting in which the story could be set. I think that the goal from here is to tell 'smaller' stories much like those we've seen for the rest of this series, and that this episode provides the in-universe logic for the doctor no longer getting involved in the big dramatic things. In other words, this episode has finally managed to wipe the slate clean of RTD's legacy.

[Axolotl]

Anyway, I don't get how it's useful to pretend things don't exist just because you didn't like them.

Become a Highlander fan. Then you'll understand.

I was very surprised by that last episode. It was a season finale that didn't cause me to to cursh the BBC in a fit of rage and dissapointment. Sure it didn't have the scale of earlier finales but it did up the scale for madcap ideas and continuity crazyness.

Although I can't help but feel that with the past two seasons the show seems to have become a live action comic strip. It keeps throwing whatever crazy ideas the writers can come up without caring how well they fit or not, it alternatly embraces mad continuty refrences or ignores everything thats happened before with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Hell just look at River Song's story arc, even DC would say that was too crazy.

[Starscream]

Thoughts:

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Overall I liked it. The Doctor, Rory, Amy, and River all got to be awesome in their own way. There were lots of funny bits, which are always my favorites. And it was exciting and fun. The scenes with Winston were great, and I loved the "every time point is colliding" future.

The scene where the Doctor tries to prove that time can't catch up with him by calling the Brigadier and learning that he has died was heartbreaking. Of course, Nicholas Courtney died this year, and this is the show's way of paying tribute. The look on the Doctor's face was tragic. I'm sure my face looked much the same, the Brig was always one of my favorites.

I actually don't consider the Tesselecta thing to be a cop out in any way. A cop out is what we would have if the Doctor survived in a manner that wasn't established before. In this case, we knew such a thing existed, and many people guessed that this would happen.

As for obvious, well, we ALL knew he was going to live. Don't deny it. The possibility that he wouldn't never crossed our minds. Doctor Who is renewed for another season. Matt Smith is confirmed to return. We knew this even before episode one aired back in April. Forgone conclusion.

The only question was how he'd survive. And at the very least we were given a good red herring (my money was on the Flesh) so the ending could be a little bit of a surprise.

Now for the stuff I didn't like. It answered a lot of questions and raised new ones. A lot of new ones. Which is fine when I can tune in next week and find out the answers, but I can't. I get to tune in next year. I don't mind waiting for resolution, but that's too long.

I also thought that Madame Kovarian should have been used more and her death was anticlimactic. Although, since only a parallel version of her died, I suppose she might return. The real universe version of her is still out there and thinks she was successful.

Also would have liked the Silence (the aliens, I mean) to do more clever memory stuff. That scene where Churchill and the Doctor are talking, and the tally marks keep appearing, and they suddenly realize they are in a fight without remembering? Awesome. But at the end the Silence just openly attack. They had control of the eye-patches, couldn't they have just turned them off and had everyone at their mercy?

But overall I enjoyed myself too much for these little things to get in the way. I had fun, I want more, I can't wait for Christmas, so we can see how the Doctor's new "low profile" attitude affects him.

Let's say 7/10.

[Kobold-Bard]

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Will River's actress be returning, or is River done now?

[Axolotl]

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Will River's actress be returning, or is River done now?

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Even if she returns she'll probably have less of a focus to the story. I mean, we've seen her birth, childhood, death, we've seen her marry the doctor and seen her kill the doctor. What more can they really do with her now?

[Kobold-Bard]

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Even if she returns she'll probably have less of a focus to the story. I mean, we've seen her birth, childhood, death, we've seen her marry the doctor and seen her kill the doctor. What more can they really do with her now?

That's my hope tbh. Never liked her.

[Axolotl]

That's my hope tbh. Never liked her.

I'm just glad we got a complete story arc for her. The main thing that worried me when she first appeared was that she'd just be one of those elements that appears to be important and then never even gets mentioned again.

What does everyone else think of the Silence as villans overall? I quite like them, it's nice to see major antagonists not taken from the original series. Although I do really hope they bring back Valeyard somehow.

Oh and

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Did anyone else have Planescape flashbacks in those scenes in the crypt?

[Thufir]

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I am... in two minds about this. I enjoyed the episode, but it didn't feel like a finale,

This is kind of a decent summary of how I feel. I like it as an episode, but it didn't work so well as a finale.

I actually don't consider the Tesselecta thing to be a cop out in any way. A cop out is what we would have if the Doctor survived in a manner that wasn't established before. In this case, we knew such a thing existed, and many people guessed that this would happen.

It is a cop-out, because we were told the Doctor was dead, that he died at Lake Silencio and must always have died there. Apparently this was altered to "The Doctor must always be at Lake Silencio at River must always shoot him." And more than that, on Confidential Steven Moffat said "Yes that was indeed the Doctor, and yes he is really dead."
Also because it was thoroughly anticlimactic and didn't match all the character development he's had the past few episodes.

[Cen]

Oh and

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Did anyone else have Planescape flashbacks in those scenes in the crypt?

The part where Lothar, the master of the Bones of the Night kidnaps Morte?
Yeah, it was my first thought.

Damn you! Now that you mentioned it I have to reinstall it!

[Eldan]

Would call this the worst episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen. Might be worse than Love and Monsters. There was a single scene in it that almost worked,

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Rory standing against the Silents with the Eyepatch. And even that only lasted a few seconds before it was ruined.

Urgh.

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How can the Tesselactor start to regenerate? Why was this the worst TV kiss I've ever seen? Why was everything so boring and predictable throughout? Why can't I have Tennant back? Why couldn't they make at least one funny joke? Why, exactly, did the Doctor feel the need to lie to Amy and Rory? Everyone else, yes. But why them, but tell River? Why did they have to utterly break the mood so much?

Overall: made no sense, was not funny, was not thrilling, was not scary, felt treated like an idiot. Point for balloon cars and pterodactyls, but would have needed more time to establish that world. Am disappointed. Disappointing end to a disappointing season.

Oh and

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Did anyone else have Planescape flashbacks in those scenes in the crypt?

Oh yes. So much.


Edit: Thinking about it, I think I have identified a thing Moffat does that annoys me quite often.

A thirty second (or so it feels) scene that goes like this: well-known antagonist (or other canon figure) is here. Doctor or Companion comes in, disables said thing quickly for some reason that, however, stays utterly inconsequential for the episode and could be cut.

I.e. the Doctor and the Dalek today. Rory and the Cyberfleet in A Good Man.... Too quick. He doesn't take time to properly set up the scene. He hurries too much.

[Axolotl]

Looking back on clips of the episode on iPlayer I now have one minor complaint with the episode.

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Why are we unmaking this bubble universe? Winston Churchill rides mammoths to while he rules the Roman Empire. Lizardmen and humans live side-by-side. Steam Engines travel on huge struts everywhere from the middle of London to the Great Pyramids (which are now secret US bases). Now sure time has stopped, but so what? This is the most awesome it will ever be. Kennedy is President, Cleopatra is alive, balloon cars fill the sky. Why would we want this to change? Pterodactyls are common pests in England! Dickens is writing new books. And we get all this but still the luxuries of modern technology. We have the opportunity to live in the coolest, most amazing society ever, and it lasts forever, but no the Doctor has to stop it.

[Starscream]

Looking back on clips of the episode on iPlayer I now have one minor complaint with the episode.

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Why are we unmaking this bubble universe? Winston Churcill rides mammoths to while he rules the Roman Empire. Lizardmen and humans live side-by-side. Steam Engines travel on huge struts everywhere from the middle of London to the Great Pyramids (which are now secret US bases). Now sure time has stopped, but so what? This is the most awesome it will ever be. Kennedy is President, Cleopatra is alive, balloon cars fill the sky. Why would we want this to change? Pterodactyls are common pests in England! Dickens is writing new books. And we get all this but still the luxuries of modern technology. We have the opportunity to live in the coolest, most amazing society ever, and it lasts forever, but no the Doctor has to stop it.

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Yeah, this would have been a much better parallel universe to keep in existence than "There are zeppelins and everyone wears earpieces"

I want a future episode where Wiston Churchill saves the day by riding through a wall on his mammoth with a tommygun in one hand and a katana in the other!

...that sounds like something from Dr. McNinja.

[MBI]

I think throughout the entire episode, I was only confused once. And that was when I saw the hot air balloon cars.
Serriously, the Timey Wimey stuff all makes perfect-ish sense to me.
Either I'm completely wrong Or I've Been reading too much Homestuck.

And as for Stephen Moffat saying that the Doctor was really dead, Stephen Moffat also once stressed the importance to lying to the fans.

[Anderlith]

Doctor Who?

[Yanagi]

Pretty much the conclusion I expected.

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I know others will disagree, but I think Moffat is a lot more playful with the timey-wimey aspect of the show, and I enjoy it.

Take for example, the construct of a fixed point: It's been used in past as a kind of fait accompli meets deus ex machina way of keeping the Doctor from jabbing his fingers into every event in history. This episode tweaked that idea on the nose, and it deserved it.

If you actually think about it beyond the hand-wave level, the construct of a fixed point has to do with issues of causality, but doesn't extrapolate the variables of any given "fixed points" to generate a meaningful interpretation of what's fixed and what isn't amongst near-infinite variables that go into any fragment of space-time occurrence. "It has to happen" is actually "Certain conditions must be fulfilled"--it's just that generally those criterion are difficult to tease out.

In NuWho we've seen cases of the Doctor intervening in a manner that doesn't alter a fixed point (at Vesuvius) and in a manner that would have (in Waters of Mars), as well as the creation and resolution of a paradox event (Father's Day), which suggested that my idea of criterion-fulfillment isn't off base relative to the show's internal technobabble.

Apply all this to the Silence's season long plot to kill Eleven.

The Silence have, by forcing a fixed point, attempted to bottleneck possibility such that Eleven's death at Lake Silencio is an inevitability...but really all they've done is created a set of criterion events that have to be fulfilled. And then they've blabbed about those criterion by reciting them as prophecy and generally being smug while yammering away about how it's all unchangeable. The joke is that for all of their conspiring and time-hopping, The Silence have hobbled themselves with a bias--they're their own confirmation that the Doctor ceases to exist after Lake Silencio--and don't recognize that this one element means that even a slight information failure on their part makes the artificial fixed point escapable.

There's a hole in the criterion fulfillment aspect of the fixed point--the Doctor does not have to die, he just has to appear to die at the time and place and be identified as dead. Witnesses (and contemporary agents of the Silence, presumably) pass that information along and it becomes encoded as a fact...as time advances forward the Silence encode this information as fact-and- "prophecy" and eventually structure a plot that relies upon their lore of a fixed point. It's an enclosed case of confirmation bias played out in space-time.

And here's the open-ended bit...now that the fixed point has been resolved and the Doctor is still alive, it's possible that the Silence will find out and again try to kill him, and since possibility is no longer bottle-necked the future (and past) of what and how they try is open. Indeed, we may have already seen a future assassination attempt--detonating the TARDIS--and/or bits and pieces of Silence conspiracies that we don't recognize as such.

It's actually a pretty good demonstration of how frightening and complex a war across time would be: essentially, we've watched a flawed campaign of terror, espionage, and infiltration played out by extrapolation of available knowledge across time--confirm-able events, people, dates/location--paired with exploitation of uncertainties...all of those vague things that can be fiddled with in the time-stream...towards a specific objective. But it was one-campaign...and there's theoretically a dozen others occurring, implemented by different iterations of the Silence.

The mash-up dimension was enjoyable, too.

[Mauve Shirt]

"I need a strip of cloth about a foot long, NEVERMIND!"

[Anderlith]

"I need a strip of cloth about a foot long, NEVERMIND!"

Bowties are cool

[Reverent-One]

Would call this the worst episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen. Might be worse than Love and Monsters. There was a single scene in it that almost worked,

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Rory standing against the Silents with the Eyepatch. And even that only lasted a few seconds before it was ruined.

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I agree they ruined that moment by him not being able to do anything once the silent broke through, especially considering Amy showed he could have just removed his eyepatch and actually been able to help.

Overall: made no sense, was not funny, was not thrilling, was not scary, felt treated like an idiot. Point for balloon cars and pterodactyls, but would have needed more time to establish that world. Am disappointed. Disappointing end to a disappointing season.

I'm curious, how do feel this season compares to last season?

Anywho, my thoughts:

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It was an entertaining hour of television. The Doctor not actually dying was as expected and doesn't particularly bother me. Though that does mean that we're spending an episode on solving a problem that we absolutely know will be solved, and doesn't make for the most suspenseful television.

Whoever said upthread that they're putting in a lot of work focused on misleading/messing with the fans is right, between the two Doctor reveals (As the soothslayer and the "monk"), the Doctor's response to the Tesselecta, and the Doctor whispering to River, it had a very...manufactured feel to it. It got a bit predictable.

I am confused as how River was able to cross her own timestream and be at the Lake twice at that same time, I thought this was a bad thing. They even reference that in the episode.

Oh, and Curly spoilers:

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When the Doctor told Dorian that Time never got to him, my first thought was "I think your past self would disagree".

Speaking of Curly, uh-oh, there was a Rose reference in this episode. She's not going to like that.

[Raz_Fox]

In which I rant, and mourn.

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If it weren't for the fact that Let's Kill Hitler already leaped merrily across several great whites, I think that I could point to this episode, this episode alone, and say: "This is where the last proud remnants of a show I used to love and idolize jumped the shark. Remember it for what it could have been, and mourn for its loss."

It's worse, it's really worse, because they had my favorite Doctor Who episode of all time, period, this season. The Doctor's Wife was the culmination of everything I loved about Doctor Who - it was hysterically funny, it was utterly heartbreaking, it was breathtakingly awesome, it revolved around the Doctor's relationship to his TARDIS and how they were closer than anyone else in the universe could possibly be. It was beautiful, and my only regret over it is that it wasn't a two-parter. It was mad, whimsical in the best way, and I thought to myself that perhaps I'd given Moffat the short end of the stick, that maybe season six could cement Smith as a worthy successor to Tennant. That scene at the end, where the Doctor says goodbye to Idris - Smith won my heart over, right there. Let no man say that he can't be the Doctor, he is the Doctor.

And then we get this, this, this abomination, in which River Song proves herself to be even more clingy, selfish and Sueish than Rose was at her worst. Her character arc has, fittingly, been nothing but a degeneration - she began as an interesting character in Silence in the Library who had traveled before with the Doctor, and by the time she had shown up every Time Lord in the show's history with her TARDIS piloting skills and made a Dalek - a DALEK - beg for mercy, I was sick of her.

And then A Good Man Goes To War happened, in which the Doctor's greatest rise and fall is all about River. And then Let's Kill Hitler happened, in which a promising, exciting episode idea is hijacked by MORE RIVER YAY. (And she can explode with Regeneration energy, and poison the Doctor with an unstoppable poison, and she's the GREATEST WAR CRIMINAL IN ALL OF HISTORY, and she selflessly saved the Doctor because she's really pure of heart and her love is the purest love, solving a continuity issue which had already been explained back in the Library...) And then this.

River has the purest love for the Doctor. Her suffering, if she had to kill him, would be greater than the suffering of everything else in the universe, and she has the temerity to say this to the Doctor's face. But that's okay, because they'll marry, and then everything will be right back to normal, except now the Doctor and River are married and will be doing the bedtop sport for indoor types-

Replace every instance of "River" up there with "Rose", and I guarantee that this would be called the worst episode of the show's history. There would be so much hate. If Rose had gotten a Dalek to beg for mercy just because she'd been the Bad Wolf, the internet would have exploded with rage. If Rose had known that the iconic sound of the series was a mistake caused by the parking brake being left on, and that she could fix it because the TARDIS itself had taught her in the future, and by the way, she's really the TARDIS's baby and she's half-Timelord... this would be regarded, rightly, as the point at which the show shot itself in the foot.

The Wedding of River Song took the core of the only strong story in this entire season, and snapped it in two, so that the Doctor could be hooked up with the only woman who really loves him. Nevermind the TARDIS! She's not going to be a woman again anytime soon, after all, and the Doctor needs some lovin'! What, that episode's entire point was that there is a deep, unbreakable bond between the Doctor and the TARDIS, to the point where they could rightly be called an old married couple? Too bad! River's just as important to him now, because she's River Song.

The only scene I actually liked, other than the Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill (hee), was Rory standing against the Silence, fist clenched, enduring unimaginable pain and yet holding the line. That, for a moment, was a return to the Last Centurion, my favorite character of Moffat's seasons so far. And then even that's ruined when he wimps out and needs Amy to save him again. It was bad in The Girl Who Waited, it was awful here. But that wobble in the fist, that determination in his eye as he stood, ready to do his duty - for a moment, it was almost perfect. Alas.

I have come to the realization, now, that I am perfectly fine with waiting a year for Doctor Who to start back up again, because I have lost all faith in Moffat. Or, rather, I feel my faith in him, my trust that sometime during this season things would get better, the hope that Let's Kill Hitler was just a self-indulgent fluke, was bitterly betrayed tonight, just so that his Mary Sue could marry the Doctor. I'll be the first to admit that Last of the Time Lords was mangled by the Tinkerbell!Doctor, that the End of Time could have been much better, and that the Cyberking over London caused so much continuity issues that it nearly made my head explode; Tennant's run wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. But I never felt so utterly disappointed with the show back then as I do now.

Goodbye, River Song, and good riddance. Goodbye, Moffat, maybe I'll bother to tune in when you come back. Goodbye, Rory Williams, the Last Centurion, one of the finest companions of NuWho. Goodbye, Smith. I'll remember you as you should have been, a madman in his beloved box.

[Dienekes]

So new episode.

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Ehh, gonna be called a Moffat lover who can't see the problems and whatnot, but I really enjoyed this episode. Not the best mind you, but I really enjoyed it.

First off the concept of time collapsing on itself was awesome. Winston Churchill Emperor of Rome braving the hazards of the pteranodon scourge was awesome. The framing of the story? Made perfect sense and watching all the clues show that they were steadily defending themselves from the Silence was great.

I didn't find the plot hard to follow at all. River tried hard to change a fixed point that was scene in the beginning of the season, screwed everything up and the rest of the episode is trying to get back to that point and still save the Doctor.

I really enjoyed the dialogue with the characters and that Ponds were amazing badasses of awesome. The one thing I would have changed was to at least let Rory kill one of them as they came in. Just one to fully establish him as the paramount asskicker of the Who Universe whom all should fear. Watching him proclaim that it had already turned on made me give the double fist pump of glory and the shout of Rory! Something I have rewarded to only 3 other fictional characters.

The scene where River showed the Doctor that the Universe does want to help him was sufficiently heart warming. Though the dialogue about her not being able to bring herself to kill him was a bit sappy. How sappy? I don't know, I generally found every conversation of this kind sappy. So I'm not much of a judge on this point.

As to the cop-out? Honestly this one makes sense to me. Down to the detail of the Doctor wanting his body cremated so that no evidence could be found to ruin the gambit.

Mostly I was enjoying myself and the ride it gives, and that's about all I get out of this show anyway. Nothing made me cry foul like the defeat of the Master, and the victory at the end was given it's due amount of build up and resolution. In the show, I can't think of a reason why it couldn't end as it did, nor a dramatic reason why. Watching the Doctor get around the fixed point made me smile in victory instead of laugh in derision, so that's a definite plus.

As for River being a Sue? I agree. But then, so's the Doctor. It all depends on how enjoyable of a Sue they are, and honestly I still enjoy River. Now, admittedly, sappy romantic dialogue was sappy romantic dialogue it'll never get interesting or being interesting to me. But the only real point of her that really got me as over the top was making the Dalek scream for mercy. That was disappointing. In this episode I think she pulled her weight well. Sure she got the dramatic reveal that the Universe loves the Doctor, but that was created by her and Amy's corporation. Her part to play was mostly just to get hitched. It was the Doctor's scheming that saved his life, not hers. Yes, she's an important part of the show, which makes sense as Amy would be an important part in a show dedicated to Rory and vice versa. As to her importance in the arc. Well yeah. The entire thing has been about explaining what makes River, River. You can chart her growth and development in the hands of the Silence throughout the season. If you didn't like it, well yeah it's a bit different to the normal "we mention a vague evil at the end of every other episode to confront at the end."

But mostly this all has to do with what my desires are when watching Who. I have never been frightened by a single episode, so it is not the horror. I know full well that the Doctor will succeed in every episode, so it is not the suspense (though I do enjoy a good build up and plot twist. In fact I love a good complicated and intricate plot). No, what brings me back is two things, firstly the funny character interaction, of which this episode had many amusing moments. Secondly, the madcap, insane, scenarios that the show can bring out with a straight face (alright, a smirking face, ya got me) in which this episode was chalk full of.

Now the problem comes in with Dorium's head (heh, I liked Dorium, nice to see he got another hurrah in there)screaming out the question. Which was weak. That was disappointing. Doctor Who? That could have and should have been done better. But still, barely detracted from the fun I had with the episode.

[sentaku]

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In which I rant, and mourn.


And then we get this, this, this abomination, in which River Song proves herself to be even more clingy, selfish and Sueish than Rose was at her worst. Her character arc has, fittingly, been nothing but a degeneration - she began as an interesting character in Silence in the Library who had traveled before with the Doctor, and by the time she had shown up every Time Lord in the show's history with her TARDIS piloting skills and made a Dalek - a DALEK - beg for mercy, I was sick of her.

A Dalek, you know the race that The Doctor wiped from existence multiple times, he is their greatest enemy, etc? According to history River KILLED THE DOCTOR, something the Dalek would be aware of.

And then A Good Man Goes To War happened, in which the Doctor's greatest rise and fall is all about River.

The doctors's rise and fall was not about River. It was about the fact that the doctor's name DOCTOR stopped meaning someone who a great healer but instead a great warrior.

Or as Moffat put it 16 years ago

Found here
Jan 8 1995, 9:21 pm
Here's a particularly stupid theory. If we take "The Doctor" to
be the Doctor's name - even if it is in the form of a title no
doubt meaning something deep and Gallifreyan - perhaps our
earthly use of the word "doctor" meaning healer or wise man is
direct result of the Doctor's multiple interventions in our
history as a healer and wise man. In other words, we got it from
him. This is a very silly idea and I'm consequently rather proud
of it.
Steven Moffat

And then Let's Kill Hitler happened, in which a promising, exciting episode idea is hijacked by MORE RIVER YAY. (And she can explode with Regeneration energy, and poison the Doctor with an unstoppable poison, and she's the GREATEST WAR CRIMINAL IN ALL OF HISTORY, and she selflessly saved the Doctor because she's really pure of heart and her love is the purest love, solving a continuity issue which had already been explained back in the Library...) And then this.

1. 10 to 11 severely damaged the tardis with regeneration energy.
2. Um, poison can be pretty deadly, and time lords can be killed.
3. So um what title does she get for killing the doctor.

River has the purest love for the Doctor. Her suffering, if she had to kill him, would be greater than the suffering of everything else in the universe, and she has the temerity to say this to the Doctor's face. But that's okay, because they'll marry, and then everything will be right back to normal, except now the Doctor and River are married and will be doing the bedtop sport for indoor types-

Yes because not trying to find a way to save the doctor would been the correct thing to do. Oh it's not like the Dalek's, the Cyberman, weeping angels, ect would not be causing tons of sufferign to the universe one the doctor is gone. She should of just went yup, I'll kill you, killed him and the show should of been over. or would you of perfered jack to show up out of nowhere and take the hit.

Replace every instance of "River" up there with "Rose", and I guarantee that this would be called the worst episode of the show's history. There would be so much hate. If Rose had gotten a Dalek to beg for mercy just because she'd been the Bad Wolf, the internet would have exploded with rage. If Rose had known that the iconic sound of the series was a mistake caused by the parking brake being left on, and that she could fix it because the TARDIS itself had taught her in the future, and by the way, she's really the TARDIS's baby and she's half-Timelord... this would be regarded, rightly, as the point at which the show shot itself in the foot.

Rose used magical tardis powers to wipe out the dalek's and make them never of exited. Something that shouldn't of worked in the first place since the Time Lords would of done that already. Rose being half timelord
would of been pulled out of thin air. Rivers parent's are established, their relationship to each other, the fact that she is conceived on board the tardis. her being half timelord is developed.

The Wedding of River Song took the core of the only strong story in this entire season, and snapped it in two, so that the Doctor could be hooked up with the only woman who really loves him. Nevermind the TARDIS! She's not going to be a woman again anytime soon, after all, and the Doctor needs some lovin'! What, that episode's entire point was that there is a deep, unbreakable bond between the Doctor and the TARDIS, to the point where they could rightly be called an old married couple? Too bad! River's just as important to him now, because she's River Song.

Yes no one else loves the doctor, nope not at all, not Rose, not martha, not Jack not the billions of people he saved, just River. In case you missed it the doctor is traveling with the Tardis still, not on some farm on Beston 6 with River and their 3 kids.

[Sunken Valley]

Damn, the crowds beat me to it. By a long shot. Anyway, time for the last official Sunken Valley review in a long time. I do hope to have a season 6 round up though. So let me take you back to just not so long ago at 5:02pm.

Spoilers!

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Stuff I liked

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I did actually like the opening bit before the credits. It was in media res, which is okay, although I agree with Elan about it. I do feel they used up a lot of money on it though.

Amy killing Korvarian was good, especially as they talked about how it was wrong afterward. Something I like to hear.

Good build up to season 7, which according to Moffat will be lots of little stories connecting together (so it does compute Factotum) and which I suspect will be the Matt Smith Doctor’s last hurrah.

Stuff I didn't like

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Thufir bet good money (which, by the way, it is interesting that he used a Sunken catchphrase) that I would despise this. He lost his bet. I worse than despised it. My rage is akin to (from DBZ abridged episode 18) Vegeta’s after the Dragon Ball he hid is gone. He roars with rage so loud that it can be heard at both the good guys and bad guys camps, in Goku’s spaceship, on earth, in the Afterlife and 20 years into the future. That is my rage.

The Wedding of River Song was predicted almost entirely by people on this forum. Thufir said “Doctor Who?”, Sanguine said that the parallel universe was caused by the Doctor not dying and I’m sure someone mentioned the Tesslecta. In a shocking turn of events, Moffat is more predictable than Davis. And I bet Moffat’s chuckling away going “ha, ha bet nobody got it”. YOU ARE PAST YOU’RE SELL BY DATE MOFFAT! Plus, you shouldn’t lie to your fans. You should outright not answer.

The Tesselecta (or should I say Tesserectum) seemed like a copout. Anything would be a copout. But the problem with the Tesselecta is that it was predictable. The second it was in the previously on, I got it. It had already been one of my preferred theories (next to the flesh and River faking it). I thought it was cheap. How did it fake Regeneration, explain that!

Other things this ep did not explain, Who blew up the Doctor’s TARDIS? And how did River mess with a fixed point in the first place? Plus a lot of the questions from the Let’s kill Moffat and Day of the Moon did not get answered either.

The episode moved far too fast and could have done with being a two parter.

The Silent felt wasted as the villains of the piece. Plus I find it hard to understand them. And we still don’t know how Korvarian got mixed up in this.

The wedding of River Song was largely symbolic and contributed to nothing. Plus, River is a sue. Don’t deny it.

The episode was overall not nearly as impressive as Moffat hyped it up to be. Fortunately, I’m glad that everyone I thought would agree with me did and everyone who didn’t didn’t (although I’m surprised Thufir took my side and Weezer did not).

Fun fact

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The Doctor’s chess opponent was played by Mark Gattis.

Overall score: 5/10

[Dr. Simon]

Looking back on clips of the episode on iPlayer I now have one minor complaint with the episode.

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Why are we unmaking this bubble universe? Winston Churchill rides mammoths to while he rules the Roman Empire. Lizardmen and humans live side-by-side. Steam Engines travel on huge struts everywhere from the middle of London to the Great Pyramids (which are now secret US bases). Now sure time has stopped, but so what? This is the most awesome it will ever be. Kennedy is President, Cleopatra is alive, balloon cars fill the sky. Why would we want this to change? Pterodactyls are common pests in England! Dickens is writing new books. And we get all this but still the luxuries of modern technology. We have the opportunity to live in the coolest, most amazing society ever, and it lasts forever, but no the Doctor has to stop it.

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Because it wouldn't have lasted forever. As was pointed out in the episode it was unstable anmd would enventually have become the End Of The Universe As We Know It.

Edit: darn non-standard BBcode!

[Sanguine]

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Sanguine said that the parallel universe was caused by the Doctor not dying

My integrity demands that I point out you have to squint a little to see my theory as accurate. After all this episode had nothing to do with the Key to Time. Which is quite frankly a shame, I would love to see the Guardians in New Who.

[Dr. Simon]

Although I can't help but feel that with the past two seasons the show seems to have become a live action comic strip. It keeps throwing whatever crazy ideas the writers can come up without caring how well they fit or not, it alternatly embraces mad continuty refrences or ignores everything thats happened before with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Hell just look at River Song's story arc, even DC would say that was too crazy.

Pfft. That's been Doctor Who since William Hartnell was piloting the TARDIS; you either embrace it as part of the charm, or you go mad trying to make things fit.

[KillianHawkeye]

I liked most of the episode, except for the ending. Too much got left out, and still so many questions. (I think Moffat is hoping everyone forgets the Pandorica ever existed.) The Silents were kind of extraneous, as was the evil eye-patch lady. It seemed like nobody had time to be awesome. I think it would have worked better as a 2-parter to give more time for the side characters and to let the plot develop without rushing everything. Bonus points for space vikings playing "live" chess with massive electrocutions, Winston Churchill, and pterodactyls. At least they've kinda explained WHY the Silence wants The Doctor dead (in a "sort of, but not really" kind of way).

Final Thoughts: Hopefully River will stick around for next season, but go back to being more like a normal companion. I like her, but the revelation of her origins just made things too crazy. I was really hoping not just to see her story unfold (which we got), but also her relationship with The Doctor (which we really haven't yet). I'd like to see more of the meeting out of order "let's compare books" like we saw at the beginning of The Impossible Astronaut.