Doctor Who

[fingertrouble]

Hmm half expected Pete whyaduck to post about the latest Doctor Who episode but looks like he hasn't posted here for a while so it's left for me to do it. Proceed at your peril


OK this wasn't a surprise, sad but you knew it was coming, the loss of Rory and Amy but did it have to suck so much? I don't mean emotionally, I mean it had plot holes so wide you could drive Starship Titanic through it (or the Statue of Liberty/Angel)

1. Angels zap you back to a fixed point in time right? So how could they have 'saved' Rory the first time (in 1938 at the Hotel) at all? Surely his point was 'fixed' - more than the intended paradox here?

2. River travelled back to see them in 1938 - something specified as 'impossible' by the Doctor because they were a fixed time and couldn't be changed by visiting in the Tardis. But surely going back in time and writing a book to warn them is changing the past time - and also couldn't Amy just create a paradox easily by not writing the book?

3. She wrote the afterword 'after' - so why couldn't she write in a changed ending saving them all or changing it all? Time wimey total bollocks more like.

4. It was similar to the way they wrote out Tasha Yar in Star Trek, abrupt and not really making much sense - but unlike that one this has been planned for ages...

5. So Brian (the Dad) waits at home forever and they never return...after the Doctor promised he'd get them back safe. Nice, err closure. Not.

6. Rory is an auton right? A Roman auton centurion? Did I miss the memo where he could age and die? He waited for 2000 years without aging but ages normally in his own time. WTF?

7. 'Old detective novels - why read those?' 'oh it keeps me in contact with someone I care about' - did I imagine that scene last year or earlier in this? It basically spells out he knew that all of this would happen, which again why didn't he change anything unlike his 'death'?

These are just the ones I spotted - I bet there are many more.

Comments

[chronicpaint.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that when the universe rebooted at the end of The Big Bang, Rory ceased to be an Auton and reverted back to flesh and blood Rory

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

But Rory remembers the 2000 years?

[chronicpaint.livejournal.com]

Yeah. He was still Rory when he was an Auton. His personhood(?) remained in both forms. That's how I've always interpreted it.

[blankbooks.livejournal.com]

Well, the Doctor returns at their wedding only because they manage to remember him and which then allows them to remember the entire parallel timeline. But didn't Rory the Auton only exist in that pocket dimension that was used to trap the Doctor? I'm having trouble remembering that episode now, but my explanation actually raises the opposite question: if Auton Rory was only in that pocket dimension and never really Rory, why would Rory remember anything about it at all?

I only just watched the latest episode and, yeah, Moffat is bad with time travel and plot holes. Which speaks to my issues with the 11th Doctor in general. He's grown on me as a character, but there's just an obvious sloppiness in the writing. The concepts have a giddy energy (Dinosaurs! On a Spaceship!) and I appreciate that. This Doctor has a lot more "Whee!" than previous ones. However, it's too ardently plotted. Events will happen because someone along the way decided it'd be neat if they happened and who cares if the story makes sense? And I feel like the counter-argument's always going to be that "Whee!" factor. "It's fun, it's a ride. Don't think about it, just enjoy it." But that argument doesn't fly after the 10th Doctor.

This show went from being a program I was evangelical about to my friends to something I catch up on when I have the time and remember. On the one hand, the group behind this Doctor had a high standard to meet and I never wholly expected them to. On the other hand, I never expected them to be so bad so often, to so consistently and repeatedly fail to make something good.