Doctor Who

**Ohemgee** · 2012-10-04 11:20

Originally Posted by Rhyis.

Maybe it's because only started watching on this doctor, but I roll my eyes whenever I see a Dalek.

**Jer** · 2012-10-04 12:00

Originally Posted by Ragnus

I'm just hoping that this is a giant segway to bring back a more mature Doctor in either character development or in the 12th Doctor. New companion will probably end up being the same character as the Delekified girl in the first episode because "Something something Daleks...something something Time Stream / Fixed point in time" and causes the Doctor to stop with his second childhood coping mechanism.

It did look like they had put some effort in making him appear like some of his age was showing when he was reading the afterword. Would also go along with River's comment earlier making him grow up some.

Spoiler: show

**Odin'sLaw** · 2012-10-04 18:49

Originally Posted by Brill Weave

I like the angels but for me my favorite villains will always be the Daleks.

never scared me i remember one of the doctor who movies as a child and i looked at my dad and said "you was scared of a salt shaker? O.O" never have they scared me even when we learnt they could hover!

**Vlorsutes** · 2012-10-12 11:39

I thought this was an amazing bit of a follow-up to the last episode, and it's a shame they weren't able to actually film it.

**Ragnus** · 2012-10-12 12:01

It's a nice ending to the episode, but there's still no shits given from me when I watched that. Bryan was just a character left over from the "We're using Harry Potter actors in this episode" episode. He's been around for half of a half season. Not sure how anyone would already be attached to that character when it took almost an entire season to get used to the Ponds in general.

**Sunrider** · 2012-10-12 15:11

You might have not given any fucks, but that clip took every fuck I already had, and the ones I might have had today, and ate them. Then washed them down with the tears I just shed.

Fuck, now my mood is ruined again.

**Qalbert** · 2012-10-12 15:26

**Rhinox** · 2012-10-13 15:20

pretty good scene.

tbh that scene was more of a tear jerker than the last pond scene was for me.

**Myrrh_Quetz** · 2012-10-14 23:58

Spoiler: show

**TummieGaruda** · 2012-10-15 01:39

Originally Posted by Myrrh_Quetz

Spoiler: show

I can try to answer both.

First, my take was that the Tardis could not enter into 1938 because of all the time energy with the angels going on created an effect where large objects could not be transported into that year, but smaller objects could (a person wearing a vortex manipulator or being zapped by an angel). At the end of the episode, they created a paradox which destroyed the Winter Quay and the angels inside the building. However, the angels in 2012 still were zapping people into 1938, but there was no Winter Quay to continue with their plans.

Here's where the plothole rears its ugly head.
Throughout the episode there was this idea that if Amy read ahead in the book, that event would become fixed in time. We are all accustomed to the logic presented in the Back to the Future series and other similar works where events can be changed and aren't fixed. Take a picture of a tomb stone and you can go back and rewrite history and erase the name from it. Doctor who presents us with the idea that once something is seen or witnessed about the future of a person, it cannot be undone. This so called rule is somewhat broken at the end of series 6 where the doctor "dies" but is in a "doctor suit" via the Tesselector.

So why can't the Doctor go back and rescue them? Perhaps go to 1939 or have the ponds go outside New York? Supposedly the answer is that going back to rescue them or deviate them from their current path to their fixed points in time (their deaths) would create another paradox and rip New York apart (this was said after Rory got zapped and Amy said they could go back) since Rory's death was fixed due to the gravestone. That isn't to say that the Doctor couldn't go back and visit them..maybe drop by after a few years to say hello. I think that there is a specific reason as to why he doesn't go back for a visit and I believe it has to do with his guilt in not protecting them. He knows that he has interrupted in their lives so much that he just wants to let them live out the rest of their lives without him. They truly had two lives: one as a normal working married couple and the other that travels with the Doctor, and he basically chose for them and left them alone.

As for the second question, the episode you are speaking of with Martha Jones and the Daleks took place during 1930. In the afterward shot story that was never shot, Rory states he was sent back 50 years before he was born and we can assume this was 1938. So the "Daleks in Manhattan" is about 8 years before the events TaTM.

EDIT:
It is now said that the Doctor cannot return to that Era. If so that means he probably cannot go back to any time between 1938 and 1989. We will see if this is the case in later episodes if the Doctor avoids those years completely.

**RedRed** · 2012-10-15 02:06

Originally Posted by TummieGaruda

Spoiler: show

I can try to answer both.

First, my take was that the Tardis could not enter into 1938 because of all the time energy with the angels going on created an effect where large objects could not be transported into that year, but smaller objects could (a person wearing a vortex manipulator or being zapped by an angel). At the end of the episode, they created a paradox which destroyed the Winter Quay and the angels inside the building. However, the angels in 2012 still were zapping people into 1938, but there was no Winter Quay to continue with their plans.

Here's where the plothole rears its ugly head.
Throughout the episode there was this idea that if Amy read ahead in the book, that event would become fixed in time. We are all accustomed to the logic presented in the Back to the Future series and other similar works where events can be changed and aren't fixed. Take a picture of a tomb stone and you can go back and rewrite history and erase the name from it. Doctor who presents us with the idea that once something is seen or witnessed about the future of a person, it cannot be undone. This so called rule is somewhat broken at the end of series 6 where the doctor "dies" but is in a "doctor suit" via the Tesselector.

So why can't the Doctor go back and rescue them? Perhaps go to 1939 or have the ponds go outside New York? Supposedly the answer is that going back to rescue them or deviate them from their current path to their fixed points in time (their deaths) would create another paradox and rip New York apart (this was said after Rory got zapped and Amy said they could go back) since Rory's death was fixed due to the gravestone. That isn't to say that the Doctor couldn't go back and visit them..maybe drop by after a few years to say hello. I think that there is a specific reason as to why he doesn't go back for a visit and I believe it has to do with his guilt in not protecting them. He knows that he has interrupted in their lives so much that he just wants to let them live out the rest of their lives without him. They truly had two lives: one as a normal working married couple and the other that travels with the Doctor, and he basically chose for them and left them alone.

As for the second question, the episode you are speaking of with Martha Jones and the Daleks took place during 1930. In the afterward shot story that was never shot, Rory states he was sent back 50 years before he was born and we can assume this was 1938. So the "Daleks in Manhattan" is about 8 years before the events TaTM.

EDIT:
It is now said that the Doctor cannot return to that Era. If so that means he probably cannot go back to any time between 1938 and 1989. We will see if this is the case in later episodes if the Doctor avoids those years completely.

Spoiler: show

**Qeomash** · 2012-10-15 02:24

First, with regards to being unable to land in 1938, I would assume the time distortions died with Winter Quay and its paradox. They could land in it however they want after they got back to the Graveyard.

Whatever time the Ponds landed and lived, I think the Doctor can still visit that time. He just can't visit them. Either he would be unable to find them, even if he looked, or would create a paradox by meeting them.

**Sunrider** · 2012-10-15 08:11

Having nothing else to go on, I just reason it as having something to do with the Angels' "potential energy" consumption. If they steal away all the days one might have had, then they also steal away any potential contact with the friends, family, places, and things one knew, as well as might have known.

For the Ponds, this meant stealing all future contact with The Doctor, River, the TARDIS, Rory's pop, etc., which created around them kind of a fixed point that The Doctor & co. can't interfere with.

My explanation is pseudosciency as all hell, but fuck it, this is Doctor Who.

**Ragnus** · 2012-10-15 09:49

Possible Multiverse / String Theory version of an explanation based on a convo I had with the fiance.

Spoiler: show

me: Also, with the hotel gone, it makes no sense how Rory and Amy are stuck in NY. The prospect totally hinges on them being stuck in a building that is no longer there or guarded by an army of angels, and that the TARDIS is banned from NYC or the entirety of the world for a span of 50 years.

Her: If you think of time and space as a fabric, as some people do, or even as elastic band, the risk Amy and Rory took could have in fact tore the entire universe asunder as they had just seen Rory die, meaning that in the time line they were currently living in it had already happened. They created a new time-line where it had never happened by jumping of the building, but they could have as easily torn time. However some how they created a new time line (in theory adjacent to or on top of the current time line) in which Rory never got taken by an Angel in 195X. 195X would be the starting point of the branching of the two time lines and therefore the weakest (assuming that the two time lines stabilize out rather than collapse on each other). If Rory were then sent back there again the argument could be made that the point in time, and immediate time surrounding the 195X event is too unstable to travel to in the T.A.R.D.I.S..
The depends on how the T.A.R.D.I.S. manipulates time and space to achieve travel. And precisely what sort of damage was caused to time and space in the first place when the events happened.

me: Then if that's true, then there is a half century gap that cannot every be used in Dr. Who ever again and also retcons any other episode that has ever happened before that because of the weakened fabric of time and space.

ever*

her: No. The fabric of time exists still, in two branches (at least). Time in theory starts at one branch. So all choices made stem from that one branch.
You have to understand Doctor Who works under the multiverse theory.
Which of course covers string theory as well.

me: Even then, they visited that topic before with Tennant and Queen Victoria.
"What did you do!? I don't know! I probably haven't done it yet!"
But the whole wrench in things is the Rory killing himself paradox

Her: Yes, so in the time line the Victoria and Ten were experience simultaneously. The Doctor generally doesn't jump dimensions, just space and time. So he floats back and forth on one space line. In the case of the paradox, since the universe didn't collapse, Rory theoretically had to have created a new time line. Since that time line hasn't collapsed on ours we're out of phase with it as far as most people could define it, it's another world. This is already two worlds sitting on top of one another. If the Doctor goes back he would A. need to hit the right time line, B. need to create ANOTHER paradox by grabbing Rory again since they'd already seen Angel take Rory /and/ his gravestone.

Personally I only half buy this because the last time a paradox happened was when Rose saved her dad which caused the reapers appeared to cleanse everything and was fixed when he died anyway. I'm guessing the reapers never appeared because of the headstone incident kept the timeline intact.

**Odin'sLaw** · 2012-10-15 10:32

Originally Posted by Ragnus

Possible Multiverse / String Theory version of an explanation based on a convo I had with the fiance.

Spoiler: show

me: Also, with the hotel gone, it makes no sense how Rory and Amy are stuck in NY. The prospect totally hinges on them being stuck in a building that is no longer there or guarded by an army of angels, and that the TARDIS is banned from NYC or the entirety of the world for a span of 50 years.

Her: If you think of time and space as a fabric, as some people do, or even as elastic band, the risk Amy and Rory took could have in fact tore the entire universe asunder as they had just seen Rory die, meaning that in the time line they were currently living in it had already happened. They created a new time-line where it had never happened by jumping of the building, but they could have as easily torn time. However some how they created a new time line (in theory adjacent to or on top of the current time line) in which Rory never got taken by an Angel in 195X. 195X would be the starting point of the branching of the two time lines and therefore the weakest (assuming that the two time lines stabilize out rather than collapse on each other). If Rory were then sent back there again the argument could be made that the point in time, and immediate time surrounding the 195X event is too unstable to travel to in the T.A.R.D.I.S..
The depends on how the T.A.R.D.I.S. manipulates time and space to achieve travel. And precisely what sort of damage was caused to time and space in the first place when the events happened.

me: Then if that's true, then there is a half century gap that cannot every be used in Dr. Who ever again and also retcons any other episode that has ever happened before that because of the weakened fabric of time and space.

ever*

her: No. The fabric of time exists still, in two branches (at least). Time in theory starts at one branch. So all choices made stem from that one branch.
You have to understand Doctor Who works under the multiverse theory.
Which of course covers string theory as well.

me: Even then, they visited that topic before with Tennant and Queen Victoria.
"What did you do!? I don't know! I probably haven't done it yet!"
But the whole wrench in things is the Rory killing himself paradox

Her: Yes, so in the time line the Victoria and Ten were experience simultaneously. The Doctor generally doesn't jump dimensions, just space and time. So he floats back and forth on one space line. In the case of the paradox, since the universe didn't collapse, Rory theoretically had to have created a new time line. Since that time line hasn't collapsed on ours we're out of phase with it as far as most people could define it, it's another world. This is already two worlds sitting on top of one another. If the Doctor goes back he would A. need to hit the right time line, B. need to create ANOTHER paradox by grabbing Rory again since they'd already seen Angel take Rory /and/ his gravestone.

Personally I only half buy this because the last time a paradox happened was when Rose saved her dad which caused the reapers appeared to cleanse everything and was fixed when he died anyway. I'm guessing the reapers never appeared because of the headstone incident kept the timeline intact.

You love that woman and never let her go!

**Ragnus** · 2012-10-15 10:58

Well, the last part of about the reapers was something I added to the post that was supposed to be separate from the chat log. But I do admit she understands stuff in Physics I just sit there and scratch my head at.

**Myrrh_Quetz** · 2012-10-15 13:33

What confuses me is that Angels don't have free rain to travel in time. It's just how they feed and it appears to be only backwards so how did that one Angel find Rory to begin with at the end? And again, at that current point in time before Rory was sent back, the Hotel didn't exist so there shouldn't have been anything to be sent back to and no Angels to hunt them down as they should have died according to the theory in the episode.

I just don't like the Matt Smith Doctor. Everything seems half assed and full of holes.

**Ragnus** · 2012-10-15 13:51

Eh. I'm just chalking that one up to random angel. Even without the hotel, they were sending people back to feed on time energy a la Blink.

I have to agree about Matt Smith. I really can't wait for twelfth Doctor.

Speaking of which... it's said that Time Lords get twelve regenerations. Does that mean that there will be twelve forms of The Doctor or thirteen?

**Myrrh_Quetz** · 2012-10-15 13:56

That's another issue. Tennant used a regeneration without changing but River also gave him her remaining regeneration energy so does that mean he has her (ten?) Remaining or not.

An I get random left over angels but when they touched someone they were sent to random points in time. It hasn't been stated if angels can choose how far back they send someone.

Like I said, the writers seem lazy this time round

**Jer** · 2012-10-15 14:33

From what I remember about The Doctor before the current generation (starting in 2005), there was hints and what not that he may not be a 'normal' Time-Lord and has more regenerations that the norm. The 'limit' is self-imposed and may not be present in him.

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