avevale_intelligencer

Um.

If there is sequential and linear physiological time, then there is time. If there is time, then the earth moves, the sun appears to rise and set, and it is not always 5:02 on the 22nd of whenever. If there is no sequential and linear physiological time, then the story we have just watched could never have started, let alone gone on.

If time itself requires that the Doctor die, then it (being an impersonal force of nature) is not going to be fooled by a robot. If time itself does not require that the Doctor die, then all that melodrama and there's-no-other-waying was unnecessary. And if an impersonal force of nature can be fooled by a robot, then nothing makes any sense at all. It's the Father's Day nonsense all over again.

So, two crashing, jarring, mind-mangling absurdities right at the heart of this culminatory episode and therefore at the heart of the entire season.

Apart from that, I've seen a good deal of waffle about post-modernism and such, but all I saw here was the usual panto-style "let's bring everyone back on stage for the big finale" that Davies started and Moffat has turned into a formula. The only thing that's missing is the marching-in-place singalong, Which is all very fine and large, but Doctor Who used to tell stories. And yes, sometimes they were nonsensical, but never, not ever, never did they show as much contempt for the audience's intelligence as this lot.

And sadly, the audience isn't noticing.

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Then (and forgive me) if the event at Lake Silencio is what it has always been, what causes the time disruption? The Doctor says it's him still being alive, but since he is now still alive and time is no longer disrupted, that isn't the true explanation.

I suspect the trouble was that the event at Lake Silencio required that the Doctor get hit by those beams and then be burnt; it was a fixed point in time with fixed events. However, only the observers there at the time make the event a fixed point - meaning, that if you have another way to make events unfold that way, you can still *do* it, just without the logical conclusion because you use a much trickier conclusion instead.

The time disruption was caused by the impossible astronaut not following the script and not hitting the Doctor with those beams - thus not making him fall in the dust.

I think there is another reason why they decided to address this fixed point issue. During the Donna Noble run there was the fixed point of Pompeii; during the lone Doctor/end of Tennant run there was the Mars expedition getting wiped out which was supposed to be a fixed point but which he altered. In short, they are at least saying that even the Doctor is not quite sure what makes a point fixed, but even he has to abide by a true fixed point - just not always in the logical conclusion way.

I should mention that there's a piece of anime called Steins;Gate which addresses mutability and immutability of time. The series end bears some relation to the Doctor's solution - making something conform to a witnessed account but be absolutely nothing like what was seen.

Edited 2011-10-04 03:51 (UTC)

"what causes the time disruption"

River. In her attempt to save the Doctor - because she believes he's about to die - she manages to override the suit and thus "prevent" (temporarily, if that can be a meaningful word in this context) the events that should follow.

" The Doctor says it's him still being alive, "

Of course he does! He can't let on the real reason, as that would reveal that he's not about to die at all.

As we've been told several times this season (and significantly, at least once by post-Silencio!River), "Rule 1: The Doctor lies".

So, basically, there was always an easy way out, and the entire storyline has been a scam.

Well, all fiction is a scam, of course, that's probably why I like it so much. And anyone who believed the Doctor was really going to die was...possibly engaging a little too much with the fiction. But am I really the only one who found the resolution just a little bit too easy, just a little bit of an anticlimax after all that over-emotional grind? And am I the only one who thinks that at least some of the previous incarnations would have viewed "Rule one: the Doctor lies" with a certain amount of horror?

Maybe I am. And maybe the fact that I've got trapped into thinking about this again is a sign that it's doing what it's supposed to.

A scam perpetrated upon whom? On the viewers? Not if you've watched the whole series. All the clues are there, just mixed in with some very clever red herrings (such as planting the Ganger two-parter early in the season, with a duplicate Doctor in it, to get everyone wondering if it was the "Flesh" Doctor we saw on the beach...)

It's certainly a scam perpetrated on the Silence/Kovarian, though, and quite right too! =:o}

So we were actually supposed to sit through all that weeping and melodrama and angstiness (that took up huge chunks of every episode that could have been filled with, you know, story) saying "oh, come on, he can use the robot"? Oh, that's all right then. I thought I was doing it wrong. :)

"And am I the only one who thinks that at least some of the previous incarnations would have viewed "Rule one: the Doctor lies" with a certain amount of horror?"

Not just his previous incarnations, but this one too! (Even though all of them have told a few woppers in their time... "The fluid link's broken! We'll have to go and get some mercury from that fascinating city you wouldn't let me explore"... "'Boney', I said: 'Always remember, an army marches on it's stomach'"... ) But it's the eleventh Doctor himself who coins that rule (amongst others), as a gloomy comment on his own behaviour. It's one of the many things he doesn't like about himself, that send him running away for 200 hundred years. Not just running from the Silence, but running from his friends and himself. Until eventually he gets an answer to the question he asked the TARDIS last time he was dying: "There must be someone left in the universe I haven't screwed up...?". There is: Craig. One person he's pretty sure he actually did help. He decides to pop back and reassure himself of that, before he goes to face what he still thinks, at this point, is his inevitable doom...

That's the beginning of the end of his self-destructive spiral. But the real turnaround happens when he goes to talk to the Teselecta guy, and - with a clear head at last, having finished making all his preparations - finally puts two and two together: He can satisfy all the requirements of the Lake Silencio event, and get away safely and unseen, if he goes there *in the Teselecta*.

To me, the only weak point in the plotting there is the idea that the Doctor could actually manage to survive a massive blue funk lasting 200 years without either caving in and taking on board another "stray" or dropping himself down teh nearest singularity. But I suppose if he stays aboard the TARDIS she'll nurse him through most of it.

Or maybe, as some have suggested, it isn't really 200 hundred years he's been running: It's just that during this period he decides to start giving his real age again... but still doesn't admit to having lied about it ever since his 9th incarnation. Giving up one lie, only to conceal it behind another...

And River goes on to tell her mother: "And so do I."

Which makes me think that he actually did tell her his True Name (wouldn't have been a valid Gallifreyan marriage without, would it?)and she now knows what the whole fuss is.

And I think you're wrong, Zander: I think we will find out what the Big Deal is and what the Silence is and why the Doctor's Name will cause it. And it will cause it. And we will have to have another 'With One Mighty Leap' to get them all out of the mess again.

Which will annoy you, Zander, but in a different way.

Michael Cule

I get the feeling you think there's nothing nuWho could do that wouldn't annoy me. This is not the case. I've set out my wish list further up, and it could all be done. But it won't.

So, nuWho.

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