So we totally wrote an essay about 60’s who acting…
So I see a lot of people around going “Who was that dude the Doctor called in the final?”
“Oh, so he was an old friend of the Doctor’s. He went to his death after finding out that his old friend was dead.”
But it’s more than that.
The Doctor doesn’t have ties. He doesn’t go back and see people or keep contacts; he is completely and utterly disconnected from timelines and places and lifetimes. Except for the Brig. The Brig was the Doctor’s connection to Earth and normal linear-arlity in the same way that the NewWho companions stayed connected to their familes. He had all of time and space, and yet every now and then he would come and see the Brigadier - the heart of his UNIT family - always like how you go and see your old friends (only the Doctor would draw a load of trouble along behind him, naturally) and always (or pretty much, anyways) in the right order.
He’s got a time machine; they’ve got nothing on him. He can go gallivanting around with no limits. There is only one, tiny, cobweb strand that links him to a normal, grounded life where once a moment is gone it is gone and that is the Brigadier.
He finds out the Brigadier is dead.
“It’s Time.”
15 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS OF SERIES 6.
courtesy of SFX.com
So, why go to the trouble of putting River in the lake?
Okay, so The Silence want to kill the Doctor. They know that he’s going to be a monstrously tough target, so they go to the trouble of scavenging technology to build the spacesuit we see in “The Impossible Astronaut” and “The Wedding Of River Song”. They take Melody and programme her to be the Doctor’s perfect assassin, but she escapes. Several years later, The Silence track her down and force her back into the suit. And, er, put her in Lake Silencio. Why? We know that Utah is a Still Point in time, which explains the location, but why dump her in the water? Was it just to freak Amy and Rory out? And isn’t that a bit peculiar? Maybe they’re just a race with a sense of drama?
Speaking of the incident at Lake Silencio, did it really take the Doctor 200 years to come up with that escape plan?
Because, good as it was, it wasn’t so clever that the Doctor would take that long to crack it. Then again, he’s convinced himself that his death is an inevitability. Perhaps the depression is dragging him down. Though even Morrissey would struggle to sulk for two whole centuries.
What was going on with those photos of a happy Amy and baby Melody?
Weird one this. In “The Day Of The Moon”, while Ganger Amy is walking through the children’s home, she sees some framed portraits of herself holding Melody. But at this point she hasn’t given birth. And then after the birth on Demon’s Run, it’s hard to imagine that they had any quality time together. Perhaps her mind is conjuring images of her hopes for the future, in the same way that it’s giving her glimpses of Madame Kovarian.
How does drawing tally marks on your face help? Surely that’s an awkward place to mark yourself? You’d need to carry a mirror around with you at all times.
Er…
What’s going on with Madame Kovarian?
She’s dead in the aborted timeline, killed by Amy. But since that universe no longer exists, she’s probably still knocking about with The Silence and basking in her apparent victory. Will we see her again? It seems likely, if only to give Amy a bit of closure. Then again maybe the Silence activated her Eye Drive as soon as their plan to kill the Doctor appeared to succeed.
What was that Season 6B teaser all about?
After “A Good Man Goes To War” finished, the BBC aired a brief teaser. It showed a skeletal hand grasping a dying Sonic Screwdriver, alongside the tagline “TIME RUNS OUT”. What was all that about? Time doesn’t run out in “The Wedding Of River Song” – it just stops. And no-one is reduced to bones. So, er, yeah…
How are Dorium and those skulls still alive?
Dorium says that the Headless Monks “behead you alive” but a beheading is still a beheading! Yes, it’s a minor question that will almost certainly never be answered, but it would be nice to have some kind of explanation next time we see ol’ blue head.
Are the Doctor and River married now?
Because technically River married the Teselecta, not the Doctor. We’re sure there must be a law against that sort of thing. Yet River still refers to being the Doctor’s wife in the scene with Amy and Rory in the garden…
Whatever happened to the Evil League of Evil?
Remember the big monster team up from “The Pandorica Opens”? They seemed to have fairly big plans for the Doctor. But after the end of season five we’ve not heard a peep from them. Was their alliance a one-time deal? Who organised it? Are they still out there? And do they have monthly meetings where they get together over drinks to discuss anti Time Lord leaflet campaigns?
Speaking of monsters, what’s up with the Cybermen?
The Cybermen in the Russell T Davies era were from an alternative universe where they were manufactured on Earth by Cybus Industries. Instead of converting humans whole, they just took the brain of their victims. It was a handy way of giving us a new Cyber origin story without trampling on past continuity. But come “The Pandorica Opens”, the Cybus logo has gone, and the Cybermen are converting people whole again. By the time of “A Good Man Goes To War” they have established legions in space. So are these now the “proper” Cybermen from “our” universe? And if so, isn’t it a bit odd that they look almost exactly like their parallel cousins? And when are they going to fix that emotional feedback bug? Seems a bit of a basic error for a race obsesses with eliminating emotions.
What’s going on with the other timeship from “The Lodger”?
Cast your mind back to “The Lodger” and the ship above Craig’s flat. As the Doctor notes, it was curiously TARDIS like in design, with a hexagonal control room and a perception filter similar to the TARDIS’s Chameleon Circuit. It, or a ship very like it, shows up again in “Day Of The Moon” and is under the control of The Silence. So, is the ship in “The Lodger” the same craft as in “Day Of The Moon”— (having perhaps vworped to Colchester after River kills the Silence in 1969)? Or is it another of the same design? And are these the Silence’s own timeships, or have they just stolen the technology?
So who blew up the TARDIS in “The Big Bang”?
Was it The Silence? That seems likely, but we’ve never actually been told. A voice says “silence will fall”, but it doesn’t sound anything like a Silent. And what caused it to blow up in the first place? In light of season six, it seems likely that it has something to do with River being on board at the time (given that she was programmed to kill the Doctor. Perhaps something about her caused it to explode). Whatever, its destruction causes the cracks in time that eat up Amy’s parents in season five. Was this deliberate? Because if so it rather goes against what we know of their plans now.
Now we come to mention it, what exactly is The Silence?
Right. So there’s this religious order called The Silence. Their mantra is “silence will fall”, which sounds like a goal. But we learn in season six that it’s actually something they are trying to prevent. “Silence will fall when the question is asked.” That’s bad, apparently. But then the Doctor complicates things by saying that the silence is “my silence. My death”. So, er, which is it? Are there, in fact, three silences? The silence that will fall when the question is asked, the silence of the Doctor’s death in Utah and The Silence themselves? And isn’t that just a wee bit confusing?
What is the question?
The biggie. The scene with Dorium at the end of “The Wedding Of River Song” implies that it is literally “Doctor who?” But why is the answer to that question so terrible? Presumably it’s not just that he has an embarrassing name, like Theta Sigma, Gary or Wayne.
Let’s look at that prophecy again. “On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered.”
That sounds like the Doctor will be forced to reveal the “terrible dangerous secret that must never be told”. And think back to “Forest Of The Dead” and the Doctor’s first encounter with River. There he says, “There’s only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There’s only one time I could.” Back in 2008 that sounded like confirmation that River was the Doctor’s wife, and he was referring to their future wedding day. But it’s looking more likely now that he has known all these years that one day he will have to reveal his true identity – with potentially catastrophic consequences. We can’t wait to find out the truth…
And finally, and most crucially… why was there a duck pond with no ducks in “The Eleventh Hour”?
Maybe they were on holiday.
So BBC,
You have enough money to maybe plan an entire film that’ll probably suck, but don’t have enough money for a really great show that gives us the chance to see behind-the-scene footage of Doctor Who being filmed?
To start off with, you’re probably right, anons. But please don’t tell me that I’m not a Whovian, and hear me out.
While I don’t give a shit about a movie being made (however ill-advised I think it might be), an integral part of this show—throughout its long history (with perhaps the exception of…
Muses
You know, sometimes I wonder if the Doctor is measuring his age (if he even properly counts it any more) in Earth years or Gallifreyan years.
Like, one year on Mars (one orbit around the Sun) is 686.98 Earth days.
It stands to reason that it would take Gallifrey a different amount of time to orbit around their main star (remember, it’s situated in a binary star system).
So, as it says here, “The main star was large and golden red,’ so we can assume that the planet was situated closer to their star than the Earth is to our Sun, meaning that their orbit might be shorter than ours is, ergo, one Gallifreyan year might be shorter than one Earth year. (Further evidence, Gallifrey has been described by the Doctor “like the Serengeti all year round.” High temperatures may mean close proximity to the star. Of course, the fact that they have proximity to two stars could mean the high temperature.)
How many Earth days would it take for Gallifrey to complete one orbit?
(Putting a read more here because I get a little rambly.)
The Confusion Regarding Melody Pond
Spoilers for Let’s Kill Hitler, though in all honesty if one is still avoiding spoilers at this point, one should be nowhere near Tumblr.
‘People criticize River Song’s story as being too “fanfiction-ish.” Seriously? The original writers for Doctor Who are long gone, guys. The people who’ve been picking up the show since are fans in their own right - so technically, everything on this show is “fanfiction”. And it’s bloody good fanfiction as well, in my opinion.’
Waiting For The Right Doctor
At the end of The Parting of the Ways, the man known as Captain Jack Harkness is left on Satellite 5. He uses his Vortex Manipulator to hop back to Cardiff in 1869 and is then stuck waiting for the Doctor to come back- but not just any Doctor. He needs a version of the Doctor that his timeline is compatible with. So for over one hundred and fifty years, he waited and searched. He likely had others helping him as well. Imagine it. Every time he saw a police box, checking and double-checking, having people stake out said police boxes. 1963 must have been hell.
But he watched, he waited. And in that time period, 1869-2008, every single version of the Doctor to date has been in the UK. Where Jack was constantly on the lookout. The obvious conlclusion is that it is very likely that Captain Jack Harkness has at least seen every single incarnation of the Doctor, from William Hartnell to Matt Smith to every one afterward, and had the knowledge that it was indeed the Doctor. He has probably met a few of them as well as a random stranger, innocently testing to see if this were the correct Doctor. The only reason he knew a compatible version was coming in End of Days is because of Ten’s severed hand. So before he got ahold of that… how many Doctors did he meet? Especially once he gained access to CCTV, how many regenerations has he seen? How many different companions? How much of the Doctor’s life has gone past his eyes while he waited for the right one?
