Doctor Who: mixed feelings, and a question

[major_clanger]

The Wedding of River Song

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did it wrap up the Amy/River plot arc? Sort of. Did it work as an exposition of time travel. Um, I have serious doubts.

Steven Moffat still doesn't quite seem to have decided what counts as a 'fixed point in time'. Some things, the Doctor can change; some other things, he can't. OK, we can accept that. But it also appears that there are some points in time he can go to, and others that are forbidden to him.

The most egregious example of this is the short scene - doubtless inserted to acknowledge the death of Nicholas Courtney - in which the Doctor, having gleefully explained how having a time machine means that he is not and indeed cannot ever be late, tries to call the Brigadier, only to be told that the Brigadier had passed away a few months earlier.

Just think about this. What does 'earlier' mean? What, indeed, is 'now' for the Doctor? He seems to have a Tardis Phone that can call or be called by any era in history, so why is it that on this particular occasion the call is to a point in time slightly too late? More particularly, why is it late just when the Doctor has explained to us all that time has, in his words, never caught up with him?

This is the sort of little scene that is meant to have an emotional impact. The impact is meant to come from the Doctor realising that he is wrong about a central aspect of his way of life, and wrong in a way that means he will never be able to see a much-loved friend again. Yet as presented it not only makes no sense but seems to contradict itself. The Doctor says 'my life works like X' and then X is shown to be wrong. Come on, the Doctor is (at this point in his personal timeline) 1,100 years old and a Time Lord to boot. He must surely know the rules of how time works for him by now!

What this scene is, in fact, is an example of what I don't like about Doctor Who: the tendency to throw in plot points that just make no sense in the wider context of the programme purely for their immediate dramatic impact. The result is fun and engaging, but it's not science fiction.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to give Moffat a bye on this one, providing I internally rationalize it thus: the act of the Doctor learning that he had missed the Brig's death and that he had NOT been there means he's essentially collapsed the probability space that he's allowed to muck around with and can't go back to that point.

What I want to know is how they're going to handle the "X Not Dead Doctors Plus Stand-ins" for the 50th anniversary without Gallifrey handling the rule breaking for them.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

That worked back in Season One as the rationale for why the Doctor, having returned Rose Tyler home a year late, couldn't just get back in the TARDIS with her and try again. His mistake had created a timeline in which Rose was a missing person for a year, and since the only reason for a second trip would be to erase the timeline that caused that trip, a paradox would result.

But this time, it didn't seem to be suggested that the Doctor had somehow dialled the right number but the wrong month. Rather, it somehow felt as if the Doctor's life was to at least some extent synched to the Brigadier's. Of course, the whole point of the River Song plot arc is that this doesn't happen (indeed, quite the opposite) so again, how is this explained?

'Wibbly-wobbly Timely-wimey' is meant to be a metaphor, not a get-out-clause!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not entirely clear how the Phone Switch in the Tardis actually works :)

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about the Doctor's death: the whole episode turns on the fact that due to some rule of the universe, he absolutely positively has to die at Lake Silencio for time to run smoothly. OTOH, he can easily fake out whatever entity/entropy is requiring his death with a Teselecta. Huh?

[steer.livejournal.com]

Wrong! Due to some rule of the universe an event has to occur at lake silencio for time to run smoothly. Due to cunning fakery (the presence of a being which is definitely the doctor, a body which looks like the doctor and the death of said body) everyone assumes this event is the death of the doctor but it is not and never was.

It was always a fakey robot death and a River Song believing it was genuinely the doctor dying that happened at lake silencio but it required the doctor to realise this and get on and do it for time to run properly.

What we originally saw was the death of the teselecta doctor and what caused the time stream to break was the failure of teselecta doctor to show up and die. If the actual doctor had shown up and actually died the effect on time would doubtless have been worse.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

everyone assumes this event is the death of the doctor but it is not and never was

Although the resolution annoyed me, I actually would be happier with a plot where time or the universe or entropy or whatever actually required the Doctor to die but was faked out by the teselecta than one where the requirement was that a *fake* Doctor die!

If the actual doctor had shown up and actually died the effect on time would doubtless have been worse.

Sorry, still have my doubts :->

[steer.livejournal.com]

Fair enough -- to me it seemed pretty clear that it was the Teselecta thing all along it is just that it took a while for the doctor to catch on to this. I don't find the "the universe was faked out" thing convincing. I mean the really nice part about the Teselecta explanation was that the doctor himself was actually present inside the thing that looked like the doctor and that was clearly dead. For me it was a "woah neat" moment that they'd contrived a get out which worked with "yes, this really is the doctor, yes, we checked it's not a clone or scan, yes he's dead" -- 100% consistent with what was presented.

I guess you could believe it was originally the doctor present and only in the second iteration was it the Teselecta but that takes an elegant minimal solution to the problem posed and makes it ugly questionable and messy (to my mind at least).

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

they'd contrived a get out which worked with "yes, this really is the doctor, yes, we checked it's not a clone or scan, yes he's dead" -- 100% consistent with what was presented.

My problem remains that the time-connection to me means that what needed to happen was for the Doctor as Time Lord to be dead -- the teselecta has no special relevance to time or the universe so I don't see why its "death" would have anything to do with time stopping or starting. But, looks like we will have to agree to disagree on this one (and stop hijacking major_clanger's blog :-> )

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I thought the time connection was simply that if you disrupt a fixed point, time withers and dies. But this does flat out contradict Waters of Mars (where time merely re heals itself to same result). Which supports your version.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that not only was it a fixed point, one of the participants was there again later in her lifetime, for extra paradox.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Actually I think the death of the Brigadier scene had a second "out of series" reason. In interviews Moffat said that in the last episode a character would die completely and irrevocably, the hint being this would be the doctor (but we know it would not be) but in fact it was the Brigadier who (rightfully) got a nodded "farewell" (which brought a lump to my throat).

Doctor who always had from the earliest series the notion that the doctor could be "late" for things and getting back in the TARDIS and backing up was not an option. I think it's one of the things you have to accept is dramatically necessary for the series to continue. Otherwise, pretty much any problem is soluble by getting back in the TARDIS and going back in time until the problem is easily soluble.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I think it might be a fair reading that the Doctor's sadness there is not that he CAN'T go back and see the Brigadier again - he can, so long as he doesn;t cross when he's been there before, and maybe at some point he still does, and it turns up in a Big Finish novel - but simply that he (and the big kids in the audience watching) accepts the coincidental lesson of that moment that everyone really is mortal.

I like the idea of dialling the wrong month :)

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

My reading was that the Doctor was holding the blue envelopes, and called the Brigadier hoping he could be one of the people to come to the beach and be with him at the end, in April 2011, which is not possible in the Brig's timeline. No comment on if he could go back in time and see him one last time.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Now that is an excellent thought - and makes perfect sense of why he would call the Brigadier on a specific date.

(I think there's a Gallifreyan code of manners which says that you encounter people sequentially along their personal time lines in order not to cause them total confusion. River, not having been brought up on Gallifrey, has never absorbed this rule.)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I like this idea of a Gallifreyan code of manners - it makes a lot of sense, and complements the 'Gallifreyan Mean Time' drawn from the sequential meetings of Time Lords.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Now that makes sense. Thanks.

[twinfair.livejournal.com]

This does make some sort of sense except that he didn't call any of the others, just sent them the invite.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Gosh, if this wasn't what they had intended, it certainly should have been.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Dr Who has never been science fiction - it is science fantasy, or, as Moffat says, "fairy tale". Which does not make your point any less valid, of course.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

Oh yes it has been.

The problem is that this story was yet another one that was simply one element after another after another. Putting lots and lots and lots of things in a pot doesn't make a good stew.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

But has been a fantasy adventure series since its return.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

I would agree, although I want it to be SF. It always was, some better than others, but recently it's not even been fantasy. This week's was "cameo plotting", this is a Dalek bit, this is the Churchill bit, etc. I always have a sinking feeling when it's radically different form the last episode and we have explaining how we got there.

Compare this with Moffat's "Blink" and the very tight plotting of "Coupling".

[altariel.livejournal.com]

A considerable part of the charm of Doctor Who for me is its ability to shift between a variety of genres (SF, fantasy, gothic) whilst, plot-wise, basically remaining a family adventure series.

I admit I'm not a great fan of complex arcs and would prefer strong and distinctive stories-of-the-week. Having said that, the fairy tale flavour of last season worked particularly well for me, and I've enjoyed this season's nods to Indiana Jones.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I think Russell T's great addition was complex arcs, but now they are being overdone, almost there for the sake of being there. For example, the end of the last episode was merely a head telling us what the next arc was going to be.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The irony being that I've enjoyed the arc episodes more than the SotW episodes this season - chiefly, I think, because Moffatt is such a slick scriptwriter. "Let's Kill Hitler" was wonderful.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

Two things irritate me about the latest incarnation of 'Dr Who'. The shift to melodrama (your example, the whole River Song/Doctor plotline). And the steampunking of all the sets and props to grub a little fashion appeal. Lack of subtlety, lack of originality. Not Good Enough.