DOCTOR WHO Spoiler Thread

[filkertom]

Season ender: "The Wedding of River Song". I have to finish watching it, so I'll be with you later or tomorrow.

Comments

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Look into my eye...

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

BBC announced the cancellation of the Doctor Who Confidential series this past week. While it's shows have been a bit thin on talking about plot, and getting a bit of fluff (Arthur/Rory swimming with sharks), it does offer quite a bit on how the show is put together. Comments I seen about it is that is comforting for some children to see Paul Kasey getting into the monster costume so they can be reassured that it is make-believe. That is something I would not have thought about myself. Thing I did think about is that it's the training ground, Confidential production assistants become main show production assistants, and so forth.

[rrcgoose.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly, I'm not really that upset with the way this season ended. It was a horribly deus ex machina as I was expecting it to be. Not as good as some of the other season have been, but not terribly bad.

I, for one, like Matt Smith's look in the episode with the longer hair. Does anyone else think it makes him look a lot like a younger Doctor 1?

Steve-

[roane.livejournal.com]

Yes! I thought the same thing. Which, you know, kind of ties back into the Doctor (possibly) having a family again...

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Aside from the Time Vortex-sized inconsistency in the plot, not bad. If the Doctor 's death is the fixed point in time that required putting right to restart Time, how is it that "killing" a robotic duplicate succeeds in the restart? It doesn't work for me.

On the other hand, it was fun to watch, and left us with plenty of hooks for next season, plus the whole "Valeyard origin" story we can see coming.

[dysprog.livejournal.com]

Correction: The Events we saw by the lake are indeed a fixed point in time, but they are not The Doctor's death. They never were. It was always The Doctor-bot. Everyone *thought* it was the Doctor. *The Doctor* thought it was The Doctor. But it wasn't.

When The Event did not play out, it broke time. But the event was not The Doctor's death.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

quantum hand-wave-ium... it works because no-one actually noticed it wasn't a robotic doctor originally, so it totally could be...

[salkryn.livejournal.com]

The Silence were attempting to stop the Doctor from answering the Question, which is probably also a fixed point in time, so the Doctor dying before the answering would have also broken time, if I'm following the logic.

[voiceofkiki.livejournal.com]

I was entertained, but I will admit to being worried. This show has lasted so long because some things aren't done. There are questions, sure. But the answers aren't really important. Would the Prisoner have been so great if they'd answered everything? Would Lost have sucked so much if they hadn't tried to? The point is that sometimes questions are more interesting than answers. There's another problem. From this point on, the Doctor will always be married. River may or may not be there, but he will be married. He can't be widowed because she died before he married her. Maybe they'll write a divorce ep, but I somehow doubt it.

Also, I giggled at the reveal of the first question. Yes, it is the first and most obvious question in the series. But... The shark will be jumped when the question is answered.

Moff's a fanboy. I love him for that. However, the thing that makes for good fanfic does not make for good canon. In fanfic, the Doctor is married to whoever you want and his name is really Bob. But that would suck as canon. And I get that the show is technically fanfic now just by the nature of the people involved in its creation. But... it still has to work as canon as well. And so, yeah. I'm a bit worried.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

But The Doctor had obviously been married before. He has a Granddaughter in the original Season 1. So there you are. So this is not something new in the Doctor Who story line.
And River Song dies with #10, but where is that in Doctor #? Timeline. In his timeline, she doesn't come back from a trip into the past, and he knows it because he remembers when she dies. One of the spoilers he needs to keep from her.
And I like that at the end of the episode, Amy is keeping a diary as well. Just so she can keep track of her daughter.

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

Are they really married though?

I see two things that might indicate that they aren't:

1. The ceremony actually took place between River and the Teselecta (although I suppose it could be considered to have been "standing in" for the Doctor).
2. The whole wedding took place in a timeline than no longer exists.

I have no problem with the idea of the Doctor being married (after all, it seems extremely likely that he was married before), but based on what we saw in this episode, I'm just not 100% sure that he really did marry River.

[voiceofkiki.livejournal.com]

I will give you the alternate timeline. That may be grounds for considering it never happened (although River seems damned convinced it did). But the Doctor was inside the Tesselecta and controlling it at the time. If I'm wearing a gorilla suit when we get married, I don't really have claim that you married a gorilla suit. I'm present, I'm there, I said the words or whatever. Alternate timelines are a bit iffy, I'll grant.

And yes. The Doctor was almost certainly married before. But we assume that marriage ended somehow (death, divorce, being trapped forever on Gallifrey with no escape). So all I'm saying now is that at some point they either have to say that his relationship with River is no more, or decide never to give him even a hint at another love interest. Unless they want to do a storyline about the Doctor cheating on River. But this is a family show, so it seems unlikely.

Dissolving a marriage by death is a bit trickier when you could argue that the person was dead before you married them. I mean her entire life is based on the fact that the Doctor just pops in and out of it. So it could be done, I guess. But it just takes more writing gymnastics.

So yeah, the Doctor is married now in his personal timeline until such time as they tell us that the relationship is over or the marriage never happened. And the Doctor in an ongoing relationship is something we've never had to deal with before, really. At least not an explicit one.

[mtgat]

I've got one for you.

The River we've met so far (except for LKH) has been after this in the timeline, so our River has in her personal timeline always been married to the Doctor.

But if she and the Doctor really are generally going in reverse to each other, the River we meet from now on will be from a point in her personal timeline that predates their wedding.

[muddlewait.livejournal.com]

Also, touching the Tesselecta counts as touching the Doctor? Or... no, not going down this road. Was magic. Reality saved. All good.

[muddlewait.livejournal.com]

Right there with you, mate,

When far more energy is spent by readers/viewers answering the question "What the hell happened?" rather than "Was it right or wrong?" or "What should they have done?", your story has gone astray.

[mythdude.livejournal.com]

I actually liked it a lot more than the first 11 finale. While this one was a bit deux ex machina as someone pointed out, it was still pretty satisfying and I loved watching the Doctor gather all the information he could on the Silence. The fact they set up what I assume is the next season finale was interesting as well!

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

So, why did London get sent back to 5:02pm 4/22/2011, when that time in Utah/Arizona would be 7 or 8 hours later initially? Okay, everybody everywhere gets set back (or forward) to that time--timey whimey effect of messing with a fixed point in time.

Actually, I have a problem with The Silence in the big picture. Why would The Silence, who have been around man since fire and the wheel put up with all the allien (and Sillurian) invasions of Earth without them doing something to about it? It throws a wrench into so many Classic Who stories.

[muddlewait.livejournal.com]

Timey wimey ball. The Silence didn't exist before Amy's memories remade the universe. If the universe we're seeing now even *is* the main continuity universe.

[loremaster2085.livejournal.com]

If you consider the Doctor to be a "god", then yes, the ending of "The Wedding of River Song" did have a _literal_ deus ex machina ending, in that the Doctor came out of a machine. However, it was _not_ a deus ex machina in a literary or dramatic sense. In such a case, the plot twist would have had to appear without being introduced prior in the story. If we hadn't had the earlier scene with the Doctor encountering the Teselecta, and the captain specifically asking, "Isn't there anything we can do?", then it would have been. That twist was planted in the very first episode of the new season, and called upon to specifically resolve this very plot thread. It ain't a deus ex machina.

[muddlewait.livejournal.com]

I don't even try to pretend there are answers to plot-related questions on this show any more. When you have to reset continuity to mostly-maybe-but-not-entirely undo the plot your first season generated, and you have to have your main character fake out all of reality with his own death to undo the changes made to the character (from bohemian time-and-space adventurer to multiversally famous nemesis of all that is evil) for the series reboot six years ago... I just roll with it now. Nothing's defined or remains that way for long.

My hope, based on the last few minutes of this episode, is that next season is more old-school. Doctor encounters unpleasant or confusing situation, Doctor and companions get better understanding of it and help fix it, as well as they can, anyway. Move on. Stories can be dramatically significant and develop character, and even be genuinely important, without being epic.

My read of the show's title doesn't involve having the question directly asked, much less answered. You find out by what he does and what happens to him and his friends as he goes. Just like you do with a real person.

[sdelmonte]

I enjoyed it a lot, though I know that, like last season's finale, if you poke at it too much, it unravels. Moffat knows how to keep things fun, even when playing with some pretty heavy elements. Matt Smith is just amazing, better each week. And despite the doubts and pain the Doctor feels, he never really gives into the darkness.

But the story elements border on the byzantine of late and I wonder if Moffat is going to try too hard to outdo himself.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

unfortunately i was unable to watch this episode because i'm currently in the hospital. sounds like it was an interesting one if nothing else.