So, nuWho.

[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.

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"but just as the Doctor lies, so does Moffat."

[GRIN]

Someone's stated it as:

Rule 1: The Doctor lies;
Rule 2: So does Moffat;
Rule 3: So does River;
Rule 4: So do the teasers!

Remember that brief shot they included in the season trailer of naked River? Never appeared in the series, did it? =:o} (The scene got cut from the ep. in question.)

I just saw this season all along as a "Howdunnit" puzzle: obviously the Doctor couldn't really, permanently die (because, duh, no more series!), so the questions were (1)how and (2) why did it come to appear to everyone that he had? We learned the "why" halfway through the season (Ep7:"A Good Man Goes To War"), and just had to wait till the end for the "how".

And I *like* the why. It paves the way for getting back to exactly the kind of smaller-scale, less "legendy" Doctor Who that Zander wants, but in way that doesn't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Basically, the Doctor is going back under cover, leaving his legend behind. He'll probably need to be careful to spend his time now in small, out of the way places, where word of his wherabouts can't get back to the Silence (or where he can cover by pretending to be his pre-Lake Silencio self). He should be able to get away with that for at least a year's worth of stories... until this question business catches up with him.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And you have to admit it was jolly clever the way the Teselecta not only fooled the sophisticated sensors which the Silence would doubtless have installed in the suit to guard against just such elementary trickery, but even managed to simulate regeneration energy release when it got shot. For a robot designed to rearrange its outer shell to mimic human forms that's a nifty feature.

I'm now considering a story entitled Zander Nyrond Must Die, in which sixty per cent of the tale is taken up with him explaining how absolutely unalterable and inevitable his death is and taking tearful leave of his many friends, ten per cent with a tear-jerking and utterly moving death scene, twenty-nine per cent with said friends weeping over his lifeless body, tragically recalling the good times and vowing revenge, and half of one per cent with him leaping up and saying "ha ha, fooled you, of course Nyronds can't die, did you really think I meant it?" And then his friends kill him and throw a party to celebrate.