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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.