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FishyFish

By FishyFish
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Harsin

Harsin

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I don't have a problem with Doctor Who becoming more continuity heavy, my problem with this arc is that it doesn't make a lick of logical sense if you think about it for more than two minutes.

So you're a race of scary 7 foot tall 'memory proof' monsters who shoot electricity who have been secretly guiding humanity from behind the scenes since the Stone Age. You're so scared of the answer to 'Doctor Who?' that you want him murderised so he can't answer it. Rather than just put a cap in his ass from behind or frying him with your electricity powers you hatch a plan. From what I can make out from this series it goes as follows:

- They find out, somehow, that Amy is pregnant and then manage to kidnap her and replace her with a version made of goo that she's controlling with wifi that can travese space and time while she's whacked out on goofballs inside an iron lung, without the Doctor or her husband noticing.

- Unfortunately the Doctor eventually realises their ruse and mounts a big rescue attempt, they manage to nick the baby with the goo trick again, everyone realises that, surprise, said baby is River Song and that they want baby River to turn her into a customised Doctor hunting assassin because she's half Timelord.

- They take the baby back to the 60s and stick her into a Silent run orphanage (they're not all bad though as they give her a picture of Amy).

- They engineer the entire space race just so they can get a space suit to stick young River in, from inside their own Tardis.

- Oops she escapes, and has her first regeneration on the streets of New York in the 60s. She then pootles around the Earth for the next 40 years and becomes Amy and Rory's best friend who they never mention before or after. Presumably she's in touch with Eyepatch Woman and the Silents during this period as I'm assuming she didn't get extract of the 'Judas Tree' from Boots.

- She finally tracks down the Doctor, gets shot, regenerates into River and then poisons him. Mission successful! Power of love saves they day though and she gives up her remaining regenerations to save him.

- Decides to study archaeology, but Eyepatch Lady and the Silents track her down and bung her back inside the spacesuit, then go back in time and stick her at the bottom of a lake to wait.

- Doctor arrives at lake, up she comes, reveals that the spacesuit is actually autonomous. In which case why bother putting her in it in the first place, couldn't they just have sicced the spacesuit on its own at him, or if it really needs someone in it then use one of their many followers. Having River in the suit is actually a liability as she manages to override it with the power of love.

- After shenanigans due to time crashing, she proper shoots him, but it's okay because he's switched himself out with a robot doppleganger. For no apparent reason Amy remember all the alternate universe stuff when she didn't after Epiosde 1, even though it's the exact same event we're seeing.

- The same organisation that was helping the Silents, and was willing to commit an entire space station and an army to the above plan, put River in prison for the murder. Then at some point after that they seem fine and dandy about enrolling the Doctor to help them out.

I notice the 'over analysis' rebut is already being rolled out*, I don't agree with it and it's alarmingly close to the RTD years when any criticism was met with "It's a kids show" or "Turn your brain off". I enjoyed last series and most of this one precisely because I didn't have to "turn my brain off". last series arc was well written and internally consistent. Surely we should be applauding TV that invites you to analyse and think about it, I could just go and watch Terra Nova if all I wanted was special effects and loud noises. Last night's finale I feel ambivalent about, I enjoyed parts of it, Matt Smith's performance is always a high point no matter the story and I liked the flair of imagination on display. But as a consistent and satisfying series arc I felt it failed.

EDIT: That post appears to have disappeared :sherlock: so now I sound like a madman.

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mdn2

mdn2

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Your point can be summed in a single question : what does the Doctor do that's so bad that's worse than wiping out the whole universe. Twice.

Saving Captain Jack in the first series, thus inflicting Miracle Day on us all. Universal destruction seems like a fair trade in those circumstances.

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:mediadavid:

:mediadavid:

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- Doctor arrives at lake, up she comes, reveals that the spacesuit is actually autonomous. In which case why bother putting her in it in the first place, couldn't they just have sicced the spacesuit on its own at him, or if it really needs someone in it then use one of their many followers. Having River in the suit is actually a liability as she manages to override it with the power of love.

Ah, but it was a fixed point in time that River kills numbskull Dr. Even though they had engineered that fixed point, the Silent were then trapped by it and had to make sure it happened as such.

Or something.

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Reidles

Reidles

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Was it history and records that caused time to stop and everything to happen at once? Did The Silence cause time to stop and everything to happen at once? Neither, we were told it was because a fixed point in time (the doctor's death, not the illusion of the doctor's death) had been altered. This was the explanation given by the show itself. Moffat cheated.

Yep, but the effects when they ate the Viking bloke were rubbish.

It's a fair analysis, and it was cheating, but I had no problem with it. The Silence created the situation, in turn the fixed point and River's decision to change this buggered up time as the Silence had worked so hard to ensure this was the fixed point (it didn't have to be, originally, he still has that battle and the question, etc, which is why the Silence decided to change/rewrite time).

There is no rule book of time, The Silence just engineered it a bit different and, as The Doctor could not change it, he did the next best thing. "Time can be re-written". He just tricked them and will surely lay low in the next season because of it, which should be good as people on here are saying.

Also, I really like it when Who goes low budget. I loved the skulls, clearly just being chucked over the Viking guy by some off screen prop guy. Same with the 'immunisation' robots in the tessellator - they looked shite, but all the more charming for it.

Overall, there is no denying that Moffat has answered his critics and tied everything up very nicely, when it looked like he was going to get himself in all kinds of trouble. Of course, a few cynical tricks used (River fibbing all the time, faking a death, etc) but nothing compared to the 'it was all a dream' stuff of some of RTD's tenure.

My only hope is that now Moffat has proved to everyone how clever he is, he can sit back and just do a few low key stories as many on here have echoed. There is no doubt he can do this stuff, but it has polarised the viewpoints of some fans. Strange thing is, I always seem to say it with his series: "Well, that was good but the real test is what he does next..." I suppose it's a sign of great writing? :unsure:

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Ravern

Ravern

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So you're a race of scary 7 foot tall 'memory proof' monsters who shoot electricity who have been secretly guiding humanity from behind the scenes since the Stone Age. You're so scared of the answer to 'Doctor Who?' that you want him murderised so he can't answer it. Rather than just put a cap in his ass from behind or frying him with your electricity powers you hatch a plan. From what I can make out from this series it goes as follows:

Basically:

- Silence want Doctor dead

- Amy is pregnant with timelord child

- Silence see this as their best opportunity to get at the doctor and hijack the child, successfully, including foiling the Doctor's rescue at Demon's Run

- Silence set the child up to kill the Doctor, and somehow (either by being let free, or by escaping) the child escapes

- Child grows ups, tries once to kill doctor (Let's Kill Hitler). Plan fails.

- Silence engineer a more foolproof plan - but only kill a fake doctor (The Impossible Astronaut)

- Alternative timestream created by paradox of fake doctor not dying. Resolved by wedding. Silence (hopefully) buy this fake.

- Doctor moves into the shadows

I don't see how it doesn't make sense. The bit that maybe seems contrived is that they turn to River as their best opportunity. This doesn't seem ludicrous to me.

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Ravern

Ravern

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It's a fair analysis, and it was cheating, but I had no problem with it. The Silence created the situation, in turn the fixed point and River's decision to change this buggered up time as the Silence had worked so hard to ensure this was the fixed point (it didn't have to be, originally, he still has that battle and the question, etc, which is why the Silence decided to change/rewrite time).

There is no rule book of time, The Silence just engineered it a bit different and, as The Doctor could not change it, he did the next best thing. "Time can be re-written". He just tricked them and will surely lay low in the next season because of it, which should be good as people on here are saying.

No. The Silence succeed in creating a fixed point in time. They are mistaken in thinking it is the death of the Doctor. The fixed point they create (whose disturbance causes the potential collapse of time) is just the fake doctor dying.

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Reidles

Reidles

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- Silence want Doctor dead

- Amy is pregnant with timelord child

- Silence see this as their best opportunity to get at the doctor and hijack the child, successfully, including foiling the Doctor's rescue at Demon's Run

- Silence set the child up to kill the Doctor, and somehow (either by being let free, or by escaping) the child escapes

- Child grows ups, tries once to kill doctor (Let's Kill Hitler). Plan fails.

- Silence engineer a more foolproof plan - but only kill a fake doctor (The Impossible Astronaut)

- Alternative timestream created by paradox of fake doctor not dying. Resolved by wedding. Silence (hopefully) buy this fake.

- Doctor moves into the shadows

I am going to print out and laminate this as future reference for haters, etc.

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scottcr

scottcr

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Watched it tonight and loved it... Huge amounts of imagination and simply great fun to watch. We still haven't learned why the Tardis exploded in series 1 and some bad shit must go down when we find out what the Doctors real name is...

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mdn2

mdn2

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Maybe the Doctor's name will turn out to be...

The Master!

And it turns out the last 2 years have been a huge double bluff. Matt Smith will develop a manic laugh and an evil goatee. The Silence realised who he was and are actually the good guys trying to stop him before he destroys the universe. And River will actually kill him this time.

:unsure:

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BackAgain

BackAgain

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I can't help but feel that the story would have made a little more sense if the eleventh doctor had actually died and regenerated inside the robot. This would have also tied in with river saying she couldn't be shot while regenerating and also no-one would know what the new doctor looked like but us and his companions. I feel the fake regeneration was a bit of a cop out.

But I don't want a new doctor, and Mat Smith is awesome so I guess I can put up with a disappointing resolution. I mean at least it's nothing like the hobbit doctor and everyone saying his name, truly the low point of nearly 50 years of Doctor Who.

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