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 Dr. What wrote:


It would be interesting if this special episode has the Doctor take her to the Singing Towers, then at the end he would hand her a screwdriver and drop her off with that crew headed for the Library.

Pretty sure they've already done that. There were a series of shorts on the series 6 (I think) boxed set called First Night, Last Night, Best Night and Worst Night. I'm certain at least one of those hinted at the Singing Towers.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Dr. What wrote:


It would be interesting if this special episode has the Doctor take her to the Singing Towers, then at the end he would hand her a screwdriver and drop her off with that crew headed for the Library.

Pretty sure they've already done that. There were a series of shorts on the series 6 (I think) boxed set called First Night, Last Night, Best Night and Worst Night. I'm certain at least one of those hinted at the Singing Towers.

Last Night, and it was explicit about it. That was quite clearly the last time River saw the Doctor before she died in the library, so we really have seen pretty much all the important bits of River and the Doctor's life together.

 -Shrike- wrote:
..., so we really have seen pretty much all the important bits of River and the Doctor's life together.

Except for the bits that we haven't.

And we have no way of knowing what those might be, on account of not having seen them yet...

Yeah, I had forgotten about Last Night.

 Dr. What wrote:
Yeah, I had forgotten about Last Night.

Thats what she said.

Just to drag it out a bit more, River said that Tennant-Doctor looked 'really young', and it sounded as though she'd known him in many forms. Since it was the first time he had met her, River could, and should, appear at any time to come.

I'm often wondering how well the baddies' timelines cross the Doctor's in the correct order.
Eccleston-Doctor had a lot of mention of the Time War, and characters all around him talked about it too. Not much afterwards, and nothing before. Yet, he was in all sorts of times.
It was the the same with the missing planets. They were taken from all kinds of times, yet he only heard about them when it made the story continue.
I know, it has to happen that way for the narrative to work, but just stands out a lot.

I want to see an odd comment or two thrown into a story, which only makes sense a couple of years later.

It's possible "Minister of War" could be such a comment. Far more likely to be paid off much sooner though.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Just to drag it out a bit more, River said that Tennant-Doctor looked 'really young', and it sounded as though she'd known him in many forms. Since it was the first time he had met her, River could, and should, appear at any time to come.

I'm often wondering how well the baddies' timelines cross the Doctor's in the correct order.
Eccleston-Doctor had a lot of mention of the Time War, and characters all around him talked about it too. Not much afterwards, and nothing before. Yet, he was in all sorts of times.
It was the the same with the missing planets. They were taken from all kinds of times, yet he only heard about them when it made the story continue.
I know, it has to happen that way for the narrative to work, but just stands out a lot.

I want to see an odd comment or two thrown into a story, which only makes sense a couple of years later.

Time Travel, Whattya gonna do.
When Rose would phone the docter, how would she know she got HER docter a,d how is it at the correct timeline?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
When Rose would phone the docter, how would she know she got HER docter a,d how is it at the correct timeline?

I expect that one would be down to the fact that the call routes through the Tardis, and the Tardis is big on enforcing the whole 'no crossing over your own timeline' thing... so would put the call through at the appropriate time to the appropriate Doctor.

Is the Tardis just a big Dues Ex MAchina then?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Is the Tardis just a big Dues Ex MAchina then?

Absolutely.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Is the Tardis just a big Dues Ex MAchina then?

Well, yes. It always has been.

Yes, that really is the whole point of the whole of Doctor Who. The Tardis is a time machine that lets people fly around for exciting adventures anywhere in time and space. It has all kinds of capabilities for furthering the plot.

Or, being the plot in a lot of cases.

As a show it's pretty good, but there's a lot more they could do with it.
I assume there's some overriding policy to keep things to a single series/story-arc. Only some break through of that, like River and the Master.
If only inconsistencies got caught before hitting the screen. Weeping Angels that can look at each other? Oh well...

 Skinnereal wrote:
Or, being the plot in a lot of cases.

As a show it's pretty good, but there's a lot more they could do with it.
I assume there's some overriding policy to keep things to a single series/story-arc. Only some break through of that, like River and the
Master.

The only other notable one was The Silence, that was first mentioned at the start of series 5 and didn't get properly resolved until Trenzalore in Time of the Doctor, 3 series and 3 specials later. To be honest, though, I'd much prefer as little of an 'arc' as possible with the plot, I'd rather see a series that's just 'Monster of the Week' stuff with stories that can stand on their own merits, and a finale that rewards you picking up on stuff without having to beat you around the head with plot arc material at the end of every episode (basically, more 'Bad Wolf', less 'We now interrupt this program to bring you Missy').

And in that regard, this series seems to be doing quite well, unless the plot arc concerns the Doc's mad guitar skills...

If only inconsistencies got caught before hitting the screen. Weeping Angels that can look at each other? Oh well...

When are you thinking? If you're talking about The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, they only moved when the lights were out, so they couldn't 'see' each other even if they were looking in that direction. Lights come back on, freeze.

 Paradigm wrote:
When are you thinking? If you're talking about The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, they only moved when the lights were out, so they couldn't 'see' each other even if they were looking in that direction. Lights come back on, freeze.

Yeah, that.
In Blink, they couldn't look at each other, or they'd get stuck, even after the lights go out, which is why they covered their faces.
After that, they could recover in darkness.

Huh, I never took it that way. I always figured they had to actually be seen for the Quantum Lock to kick in, and thus, if there's total darkness (for instance, in an underground maze in which you can shut off every electric light source) then they're good to go. In Blink, even at night there would be some degree of ambient light that meant they would be able to 'see' each other and thus needed to cover their faces. At the end of that episode, the light is left on, thus as long as there's power they are stuck.

I thought I was missing something there.
Good stuff.

Tonight's was odd, and not in a particularly good way. A couple of great scenes, but as a episode it seemed to exist entirely to set up


Still, 4/5 is still a more consistent run that they managed last year, and next week's looks decent.

Yeah, my description of the episode would be "odd" as well.

I'm kinda surprised about the Vikings portrayal too. I had kinda figured The BBC being, well, the BBC with their requirement-to-educate or whatever the technical phrase is, I was expecting halfway through to stop halfway through and say, "you really expect me to believe this fantasy?" Before tossing a horned helmet against a wall and revealing it to be some kind of holodeck. Then a rant about how it's all wrong.

To be fair, they did that last year with Robin Hood, the whole 'this is so historically inaccurate it can't be real but it is' thing. But yeah, the horned helmets and the fact they referred to the whole lot as 'vikings' (as opposed to just the seafarers).

Yeah, I was actually expecting a callback to the Robin Hood episode, the way things were going...

We just got that prophesied hybrid warrior, didn't we?

Possibly. Although I got the impression that the prophecy referred specifically to a Time Lord-Dalek hybrid from the way Davros was talking about it. I may be wrong, though.

If there is another Time Lord/ hybrid to come it will look like the new black.

We've already had The Doctor's Daughter, who is a Human/TimeLord/Clone hybrid, and River Song, who is a Human/Tardis hybrid.

I would like to see The Doctor's Daughter return to the show in some way.

 Paradigm wrote:
Possibly. Although I got the impression that the prophecy referred specifically to a Time Lord-Dalek hybrid from the way Davros was talking about it. I may be wrong, though.

I took it to be that the prophecy said "great warrior race" and Davros automatically took it to mean his creations. The Fisher King said something similar about the Time Lords, "once they realized they had teeth."

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If there is another Time Lord/ hybrid to come it will look like the new black.

We've already had The Doctor's Daughter, who is a Human/TimeLord/Clone hybrid, and River Song, who is a Human/Tardis hybrid.

I would like to see The Doctor's Daughter return to the show in some way.

DoctorDonna as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Eighth Doctor claimed to be half-human, half-time lord.

And a splendid return to form this week. The plot itself might have been a little light, but the character work this week was great. I hope we see more of Ashildr in future, she has the potential to be a very interesting recurring character.

I found there was something really weird with this episode. Like the generally production and stuff. EG the sound felt off, the dialogue pacing seemed weird.

And the final dialogue between Maisie and the Doc could have some with being redrafted a few more times. How does offering to be the Doctors cleanup crew be a bad thing, or frenemies?

There was kind of a sense that this was the writer's first script for the show (well, this and last week's) and it wasn't quite as polished as it might have been in places. I honestly think it could have been better if The Lion King had been left out and the episode had just dealt with The Doctor trying to 'fix' the unbelievable mess he made of her life. The darker of immortality has been hinted at a few times between The Doc and Captain 's stories, but I think it was handled better here and I definitely think /hope there's more to this story still to be told.

As for the final exchange, I took that to basically say as long as Ashildr is doing the cleanup, she's representing everything The Doctor fails to do. Despite their 'friendship', I think she still resents him for abandoning her and he is ashamed that he did. So her doing what she's going to do is a constant reminder of his greatest failures and shames.