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

[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.