Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

Also we know this is a later Amy and Rory because we've never heard anything about Amy being famous before.

Amy and Rory in Utah ...

If the Amy and Rory in the department store were an Amy and Rory who postdate the Doctor's death, you'd think they'd be a little bit fucking sadder, knowing the Dcotor was going to die the next day. Unless they're so far in advance they know he doesn't die.

But if that's the case, the Amy and Rory in the department store are just living average everyday lives (apart from being superstar models). And so were the Amy and Rory who at the start of the series went to Utah for the doctor's death.

While there can be two Amy and Rorys at the same place in the timeline, surely one of them must be a time travelling pair who are just dropping in. Can both pairs really live ordinary domestic lives at the same time? At a practical level, it's going to show up on tax and national insurance systems. Someone will notice.

I was going to go for tomorrow must mean tomorrow for the Doctor only, but it's pretty clear that:

a) Corden is in April 2011.
b) so are the Ponds who are heading to Utah to meet the Doctor (who dies on 22 April 2011).
c) So are the Ponds who are living life as supermodel-ed couple, and can't possibly be the same Ponds in b).

I can just about deal with the idea of them living in different places at the same time if both pairs were just living their own quiet lives, but wouldn't the Amy in b) be bothered by her mug suddenly cropping up on billboards everywhere?

Another explanation is that the doctor actually meets an earlier Amy/Rory in Utah 2010, before Tardis-ing them to Utah 2011, though why he'd bother getting them to go all the way there in the first place is a mystery...

(another holdover question I had from "The Impossible Astronaut" was where Older Doctor's Tardis was - we only see him in a stetson on a car, and we don't know what happened to it after he died. The first Tardis we see belongs to the Doctor who's 200 years younger.)

Are we supposed to believe that the doctor has been going around without a companion for 200 years? What if he is going early to Utah (in his timeline) and this screws things up somehow.

Roll on next week.

We need to crowd-source a complete list of questions to be answered next, s we can tick them off as we watch and double our fun.

xpost But I don't think he does Tardis them to Utah 2011, since that episode began with them alone frantically driving to try to make it to the appointed spot. Can't imagine he'd drop them in Provo and then say "You've got six hours to drive to Lake Silencio." Cos Provo's no fun.

(ps Fang Rock was the very first ep I rewatched in my "Time Reconsidered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Who Eps" project over at FT. I hugely prefer Matt as Doctor, but TBaker is actually not as awful as usual in Fang, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.)

Honestly, they could've just avoided this crap if they hadn't included the scene with the Ponds in the department store. I mean, what did that accomplish really? Proving that Amy is capable of getting a job? That modeling is a good substitute for time-traveling and saving the universe? Bleh.

I took the point of it to be:
(a) the Doctor is taken aback by their being there;
(b) one party gets (unobserved) to glimpse another party in unexpected byways of the timeline
(c) the Doctor has to restrain himself from getting their attention

If any of these needed achieving for urgent plot-reasons, it did so.

I'm reading his very very late-doors sense of shame-filled self-knowledge as being a nearing-death self-reflective thingie.

Roz OTM. Just because they didn't trust us to realise that the Doctor is not yet done with Amy and Rory. As if we'd forget their existence if they were absent for one episode. Risible.

The Doctor didn't look taken aback to see them. He looked wistful.

Initially he was surprised is all I meant: he wasn't anticipating they would be there. If they were only in the ep for the reasons yr saying, yr right, that's p lame. I assumed there must be more to it, but in a very "show me then" kind of a way. So perhaps "hoped" more than "assumed". I quite liked the idea that Amy becomes A BIG DEAL in the non-doctor world: but they only needed the poster for this.

I don't mind that idea either IF it had taken place in any year after 2011. but no, they HAD to also emphasise that this was taking place the day before he died.

As it is, it's just sloppy writing and embarrassing given how many genuinely complex timey-wimey stuff that Moffat has pulled off successfully before.

Amy doesn't know what Petrichor means in The Doctor's Wife, does she? if not then Closing Time HAS to be later in her personal timestream than God Complex.

I'm really hoping the newspaper was a production error now. ɥbɹɐ ʇı ʇnoqɐ ʞןɐʇ ʇ,uɐɔ ı ʇnq buıɥʇǝɯos oʇuo sı pɐǝɹɥʇdn ǝuoǝɯos ɹo

Newspaper also throws up the conundrum that The Lodger takes place in Summer 2010 (as the flier for the Van Gogh exhibition states) which doesn't leave enough time for Craig and Sophie to have a 12 week (? my guess) old baby.

Other time problems not resolved include Amy's two ages in The Beast Below and the am/pm changes in Time Of Angels. There are more, I'm sure.

If there are two Amys/Rorys it would probably explain why he bought them that new house and made them live in Colchester. Naah, I think the whole thing would make sense anyway it if wasn't for that newspaper and the whole episode was set in 5 years time or something.

maybe it's an issue printed on psychic paper by the silence

I don't get why Moffatt doesn't just have a big timeline where he marks all these things out?

Still, I can see why the Doctor might carelessly leave Amy & Rory in the right place a few months too early, he's kind of sloppy when it comes to things like that.

A&R not being that arsed about their baby is the big annoying hole in this series though, definitely. Especially given its a baby they already know as a grown-up and has been snatched away and trained to kill the Doctor. It doesn't make sense that they'd then just carry on jaunting around as space tourists. Weird thing is, there'd be so many legitimate reasons to be going to these planets, like as part of the search or something, that it's weird these just weren't written in.

The self-contained, non-Moffatt episodes all have the air of being hastily shoehorned into the overall plot. It was fine in the first half of the season but feels more awkward as things progress.

That said, I don't buy that it's any more inconsistent than usual. It's always inconsistent, it depends all on the highs and lows. If anything I think they're both less high and low than normal - nothing that's made me go "fuck that was awful" but equally nothing amazing either, although the first couple of eps were terrific.

I'm sure Moffat would have a big timeline - surely the only way to do it - whether he remembers everything to put on it is a different matter, but main characters wd be there you'd imagine.

I was very bored by that episode, although I'm not sure there was really much wrong with it. (too many bloody living rooms in this half of the series - not enough disused quarries) but yes, they did mention it was Colchester.

I never understood what people saw in "The Lodger", but, have to say, I did enjoy this episode a lot. It was one of the few 'funny'/lightweight/Gareth Roberts eps that has worked. Really couldn't care less about the ming-mong-y stuff.

Just watched - Craig definitely mentions they're in Colchester. Timey-wimey hurting my head, lot of issues mentioned discussed by us - getting to Utah by tomorrow, how do Amy and Rory not remember they are River's parents when they get to Utah tomorrow for the events of The Impossible Astronaut, etc.

Still remain vaguely confident they will be explained, but seems a lot to fit into one ep.

hand-wave.gif

There you go, sorted.

Anyone expecting too much more than that probably needs to speak to someone who lived through the LOST finale.

Meh episode with some laughs and once more HUMAN EMOTIONAL LOVE saving the day. Didn't any of the thousands of people cybered up in all those other episodes have babies they loved so much they could reverse the conversion?

THEY DIDN'T LOVE ENOUGH

We need to crowd-source a complete list of questions to be answered next, s we can tick them off as we watch and double our fun.

down w/ this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/28/doctor-who-confidential-axed

Amazed this was still a thing tbh

I've only ever watched a few of those, and reckon it must be a real pain in the arse to work on a show where not only do you have to do takes, but you have to spend so much time in between takes explaining what you're doing, instead of just standing around smoking and freezing your ass off.

i often enjoy these more than the show

Even if there is a shit handwave there's no way it will be as bad as the Lost finale.

list! now!

Jacob?

The Doctor, Rory, River and Amy are all already dead and in purgatory this whole season.

The series will end with the Doctor and all his Nu-Who companions* looking happy in a church.

*Except the black people.

list

1) WHY THE HELL DID ALL THE UNIVERSE EXPLORE

britain's obtusest yoda

EXPLODE

The Doctor, Rory, River and Amy are all already dead and in purgatory this whole season.

Trying to fit this to a LOST template and coming up with Jack, Charlie, Boibee/Walter and Clare. Patch lady = Mikhail. K9 guest appearance as Vincent. Master = MiB. Can't fit Kate in, maybe as Alternaworld Rose who gets to shag AlternaDoctor/Jack.

(If you ignore the whole afterlife story threads of the final lost season it is about 10x better than you might recall because that was a total blight on the story and a blatant CON and BETRAYAL of the contract with the audience. I still believe this.)

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls62yvdGCR1r3itvoo1_400.jpg

http://oi53.tinypic.com/2a6knww.jpg

This is assuming that people who don't watch Community are familiar with INSPECTOR SPACETIME yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMSyIgydYfs

hoo boy

what better way to mark the olympics than reminding ourselves of the WORST EPISODE EVAR

I was wondering if people outside London ----> England ---->over there can handle "Fear Her" better because they (us) aren't hearing on the news shows all the time about an impending Olympics event. Like if "Fear Her" had taken place in Salt Lake City in 1999 would I be as cranky as the internet?
answer: no one likes "Fear Her"

I didn't like "Fear Her", also wb

Well, that was shit.

Well, that was shit.

― 50,000 raspberries with the face of Peter Ndlovu (aldo), Saturday, October 1, 2011 6:51 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark

It also now means Silence in the Library doesn't make sense. Why would Emo Doc wonder why River told him he was really a man inside a giant robot, or more importantly why would it mean anything to him - since it not only hasn't happened yet, but never happens to HIM?

he might have told her more than one thing

ANYWAY, STILL SHIT

It also now means Silence in the Library doesn't make sense. Why would Emo Doc wonder why River told him he was really a man inside a giant robot, or more importantly why would it mean anything to him - since it not only hasn't happened yet, but never happens to HIM?

It only doesn't make sense if you're assuming the Doctor didn't tell River his name at any other point in her life.

I kind of enjoyed that even though it was basically kid-in-a-toyshop bollocks. The handwave was less annoying than the reset button I'd been expecting, but the implications of the Doctor lying low don't really make sense, when you consider that a later one will be presumably be hanging out at some point post-2011 and everyone will realise.

I think that might be it for me and Doctor Who. I'm sick of the speeches, the myth of the romantic, lonely Doctor, the Murray Gold music, the bullshit "everyone loves you and they all came to help save you". I wouldn't give any new programme this long to improve before I dropped it.

^^^ that.

i'm going to need a couple of days for some wiki page somewhere to update so I can understand this whole series, I think. Didn't help that it was split, neither.