Doctor Who 2008: Sontarans cometh, RTD Ood 'ave 'im etc.

I also like how this show plays with size - the most gigantic library in the entire universe is inside a little girl's head ("bigger inside than outside?") and then the Doctor's inside the library, poking at an object smaller than the little girl but which in turn seems to contain her..? And it all seems to make a weird sort of sense.

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The data ghosting bit made me mist up as well!

I was surprised by the introduction of a character that knows the Dr's future – because this plot thread seems to have nothing to do with the already spoilered reintroduction of characters for the rest of the series: Davros, Rose. This future-wife or whatever storyline seems to look into the next season/series/specials, which threw me.

Unless they're going to be incredibly lame and actually wrap up that plotline completely next ep and we'll never hear about that woman again.

Been listening to more of the audios. the I, Davros one is really a good study on facsism to go along with the character work.

Also, paul mcgann is a great doctor.

Unless they're going to be incredibly lame and actually wrap up that plotline completely next ep and we'll never hear about that woman again.

That would be my guess.

I'm guessing either:

a) The Doctor spoilers his own future and opts to never actually meet her in the future because it's the only way he can save everyone else (ie by never arriving there in the first place, maybe)

Or more likely

b) She is a complete impostor and has never met the Doctor in any Timeline, but just knows about his history and future (because there's a bludy great book there with everything in it)

One more thing to add to the (not very convincing) River = Jack (= Boe) theory: River managed to send the Doc a message on his psychic paper. The only other time this has happened is when the Face of Boe did so in series 2. Boe = Jack = ... River??
Not very good, but still.

ooh i like the complete impostor theory!

perhaps paving stone Who obsessive girl regenerated into Riverdance.

Maybe he is naughty, reads the book and timey-wimey stuff means that spoils their future.

One thing that did cross my mind was that p0erhaps she is from a future where he has lost his tardis and he is her companion.

Maybe she's his stalker.

Actually I quite like that idea.

He gave her his screwdriver. I thought he only had one though. Head hurts!

I think someone always gets him a halford boxed set of screwdrivers every Christmas.

Yeah, there was that nonsense when he first met Martha where he broke his screwdriver and acted all sad, and then by the end of the episode he had a new one. He probably absconded with a big packing crate full of them before he blew up the factories.

No-one? I really liked that.

Yeah, it was great. I could feel the shockwave of kiddies having the shits put up them all over the land when Miss Whatsit revealed her face.

'Everybody lives' again.

I thought as a kid I'd have more scared by the idea that I stopped existing when my mum closed her eyes. But Miss Evangelista's face made me go "woah" and I don't scare easily, certainly not by Doctor Who.

Can't believe all these muppets didn't realise she was Mrs Who after the first part. "River Song" = Anna Livia Plurabelle in Finnegans Wake which was a clue too I think.

That kid saying "we're not real are we mummy?" absolutely broke my heart.

hey, does her name tie into Ood dude telling the doctor his "song" would soon end?

xpost, yeah, that + whole Donna-coming-to-terms-with-the-fact-her-kids-weren't-real thing = "ooh, there's a speck of dust or something in my eye"

Yeah of course that must be what the Ood meant. Especially cos River says that he's got a long life ahead of him.

aye, she might even have seen him regenerate (she certainly knew it was a possibility when she thought he was going to die)

Aside from the Marakesh episode of The Apprentice, and any episode of Mad Men, this was surely the best piece of TV so far this year. So good. Probably Moffat's best work to date.

I'm so looking forward to when he'll be writing four or five a year!

i'm confused

How so?

So so so so so so so so good. Also so so so so so close to being totally unbelievable and shithouse, but didn't cross that line.

can they just get the saved people (song and pals) out again like with the 4000 (rapture) ppl? if not, why not? (write on only one side of the paper at a time)

They were saved when they were data ghosts rather than whilst in the proces of teleportation, and thus are not 'whole' (that's my guess, anyway).

I hope Donna meets up with her fella again.

Saved after you've been killed = you still dead

There were quite a few references to other Moffat episodes in this, "Everybody Lives!", "I'm always alright", and people disappearing because Donna blinked.

Can't believe all these muppets didn't realise she was Mrs Who after the first part. "River Song" = Anna Livia Plurabelle in Finnegans Wake which was a clue too I think.

the strength of denial is surprising haha

i warmed to her, fine

really liked this ep. seemed to pull off the matrix-y stuff by appealing to sentiment but whatever!
glad the shadow monsters go their world back

At what point was it revealed that River was his future wife? I thought it was - quite deliberately - never said.

There were quite a few references to other Moffat episodes in this, "Everybody Lives!", "I'm always alright", and people disappearing because Donna blinked.

It also had a couple of mini scares that Moffat likes to build in: the Miss Evangelista reveal was one, and the "there are only 5 of us - how come there's 6 people in here" harked back to Empty Child/Doctor Dances "then who's typing?" type shocks.
Though my favourite was the first brief glimpse of Miss Evangelista's Victorian gothic dress just moving out of frame. Strange, unexpected and slightly unsettling at the same time. I love this kind of stuff, it reminds me of the unnerving moments that would regularly crop up in '70s children programmes like The Enchanted Castle, Moondial and Children of the Stones.
Seems like it's been a long time since there's been anything to weird the kids out like that.

"We're not real, are we mummy?" = way to give kids existential nightmares. would've totally boggled 9-year-old me.

loved all the time-loopy stuff that Moffat does so well too.... the doctor wouldn't have known he was going to meet her later if he hadn't met her first, and he wouldn't have met her first if he hadn't met her later. it's basically the same narrative trick used in Bad Wolf, but executed far better.

At what point was it revealed that River was his future wife? I thought it was - quite deliberately - never said.

yeah - she winds up being "saved" (grand pun there) and in the matrixy heaven-world, and there's THREE kids in beds, but there's no matrix doctor for her - i don't understand the talk about her being the doctor's wife, in short (other than speculation)

i'm also still sort of confused about her sonic screwdriver - was it never the doctor's, it was always hers? and he gives it to her because of the bit that happened at the end and he basically just needs to return it to her? implying that at some point she manages to escape from the matrix?

Having not seen it yet I'll take a punt at...past wife? Also have just driven self crazy rearranging 'riversong' to get Rose something. Must dash.

It's the Doctor's screwdriver - he's worked out a way to modify it in the intervening years to enable it to save her essence or whatever as she dies. He gives it to her at their last meeting because he knows she's about to go to the Library to die.

They were careful to not say out loud "OMG I am Mrs Who how d'ya like them apples???" but there were so many joking references - "You're fighting like an old married couple", "so I'm not allowed to have a career?" and the Doctor's assertion that there is only one circumstance in which he would tell somebody his name, that it seems hugely churlish to pretend that River Song - like I said, that's the archetypal everywife of Finnegans Wake, right? - can be anybody else.

Three kids, I think, was the reiteration of Donna's two children plus CAL herself, who I think is who River was tucking in at the end there.

Also it's stated that the Doctor comes to visit her in Cyber-Heaven, and since he's not dead there's no permanent digitized version of him.

*pushes glasses back up bridge of nose*

xposts It doesn't matter who the sonic screwdriver belongs to. it's a loop.

let's say he's aged 900 now and she's 40. and let's say when he's 906, travelling through time, he happens to meet her when she's 20 years old. they have 20 years of fun together, he gives her the screwdriver... and then when she's 40, she calls him to the library using the psychic paper. BUT she gets 900-year-old Doctor instead of 906-year-old.

future doctor passes screwdriver to river song ---> river song passes it to current doctor ---> current doctor saves dead river song in data bank and keeps the screwdriver, so that in his future he can pass it back to river song.

she's his future wife/companion/something, he is her past husband/companion/something. the hint that she's his future wife = wot noodle vague said.

Wow, I really liked this one, too.

argh yes - his future being her past is what's making my head spin i think

Screwdriver got all bollocksed in the zappo machine thingy, didn't it?

Don't normally like watching them explicate everything in Confidential but saw a bit last night where the writers were pointing out that the screwdriver, like the psychic paper, is really just a mcguffin that doesn't bare thinking about too hard.

Yeah, I figured the screwdriver gets fried-out in the exchanger. My question on the resolution was what actually happened to the microbes?

Also, I did like how this ep had both the scary aspects for the younger kids and the romantic bits for the, well, older kids. The face reveal and getting chased by two skeletonized astronauts would have done me in at age 7, especially since I had just decided that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up*.

*heh, my astronaut ambitions were, of course, far before I knew what Houston was actually like.

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doctor made a deal: they buggered off for one day, so that the humans can evacuate the planet.

i wanted donna to meet her stutterer again.

WE ALL DID.