Ultimate Doctor Who Madness

[Agrajag]

It's not gonna be the final nail in the coffin for a lot of fans at least, because I think people are going to theorize the girl is the Doctor and Amy's baby.

[Jim North]

Yah, I was thinking about that, and I don't think it's Amy and the Doctor's kid. Or at least, not really. The little girl was regenerating, after all, and according to statements made concerning the Doctor's half-human clone way back when, if she really is half-human then she shouldn't be able to regenerate. yes, there was the whole "Eighth Doctor is supposedly half-human" thing, but that seems to be one of the parts of the TV movie that the new series is ignoring. Thank goodness.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the girl isn't a product of Amy and the Doctor, mind. If this girl is a future version of Amy's child and since the unborn baby seems to be in flux, her abilities may stem from different alternate timelines of sorts. Her ability to regenerate, for instance, may come from a timeline/reality in which Amy did choose the Doctor over Rory, one in which Time Lord/human hybrids are capable of regenerating.

It's also possible that she really is Amy and Rory's kid, human as could be originally, but altered in some way afterward. It could be that Amy's fears that space/time traveling in the TARDIS while pregnant will affect the unborn child are well founded, and that her apparent super-strength and regeneration abilities are a result of that. Or perhaps even more sinister, someone took her and experimented upon her to give her these abilities. Maybe that's what the cybereye lady was all about . . . a temporal echo of a nurse at the lab that was working on the girl.

All very complicated. Tons of possibilities, really. Need more data!

[kleptoman]

I was thinking about the original Doctor being the "grandpa" of the little girl, and wondering whether that might come in somewhere. But I honestly don't know that much about the original Doctor ones.

[Joopac_Badur]

I was thinking about the original Doctor being the "grandpa" of the little girl, and wondering whether that might come in somewhere. But I honestly don't know that much about the original Doctor ones.

Spoiled for length, not secrecy:

Spoiler: show

At the beginning of the show, the First Doctor traveled with Susan, whom they both claimed was his granddaughter. During the second season, Susan fell in love with a human. She wanted to stay, but she feared for the health of her grandfather, who at the time was in the form of a much older man. Seeing that his granddaughter would never live her own life because of him, he left her there on Earth. Some fans doubt that she is in fact the Doctor's granddaughter for various reasons, but the show itself has not given any reason to doubt their relationship.

I'm not sure at all who the little girl from the past two episodes is. Obviously she is somehow connected to the Time Lords. I don't believe she is the Doctor in a future form. I also have my doubts that she is the daughter of Amy (the pictures may mean she is just taking care of the little girl like an adoptive or foster parent). My current suspicion is that she is Jenny, the Doctor's female clone/daughter thing last seen in Series 4. Rumor is that originally RTD wanted to leave Jenny dead at the end of her one episode (The Doctor's Daughter), but Moffet, who was already tapped to take over after RTD left, insisted that Jenny be left alive. So ... there's that.

Also, my theory about the death of the Doctor seen in "The Impossible Astronaut" is that it's how Matt Smith will leave the show so many years later. Due to the interrupted regeneration, the 12th Doctor will be flawed. That flaw is the Valeyard.

Also, for some background on the "Classic Who," here is a little tutorial:

[Jim North]

Meh, they'll likely have the whole "Future Eleven gets killed by the astronaut" thing wrapped up by the end of the season. Thing is, he's crossing over his own timeline. And not in a "The Three/Five/Two Doctors" and "Time Crash" kind of way. It's very possible that he may have stopped the Silents the first time around even without his future self's interference, but the original conclusion wasn't entirely to his future self's satisfaction, so he set out to change it. Doing this sets things up where they can be even further changed, allowing him to actually survive the ordeal at the lake - or perhaps erase it completely - if his past self does everything right.

Either way, crossing his own timeline is a very risky and highly dangerous game for the Doctor to be playing. Things might still come out right for him, however, as long as he doesn't cause the entirety of space/time to explode in the process.

[Monkeychewtoy]

So. I think I have this all figured out. In the future, the Doctor regenerates... into River Song. The incredibly narcissistic Doctor is finally able to make out with him/herself, and eventually decides that the best way to prolong his life beyond his/her allotted regenerations... is to clone him/herself by seducing his/her past self. The resulting child snaps some portion of time in half, killing the male Doctor, and making the female Doctor guilty of murder. She willingly goes to prison, remembering that this is how things have to play out, and Amy is left to raise the daughter Doctor. When the daughter Doctor figures out that Amy isn't her mother, she steals the Tardis and tries to run away, but crash-lands in America in 1969. When she sees her father/self, she begins to remember being him, and realizes that in order to keep time from unraveling and Moffet from having to file for unemployment, she has to go to the future to kill herself in the past... while dressed as an astronaut.

...

[Jim North]

Ahoy, mateys, The Curse of the Black Spot!

Brilliant Rory is brilliant.

Creepy Eye Lady is back. I like Creepy Eye lady.

I felt the episode moved a little too fast at first, then too slow toward the end. They should have spread out the pirates getting taken a little longer, I think. And is there anything more tedious than a resuscitation scene? Eh. Maybe I've just watched too much Baywatch.

This was a good episode, don't get me wrong . . . but I feel that it's probably one of those that will end up being considered mediocre and generally forgotten under the weight of all the other awesome episodes this season will undoubtedly produce.

[frazzledog]

I agree with you there Jim. Now for me, I don't know if I just don't connect with Amy and The Doctor anymore, or if it was the fact that Rory was so convinced that he would be fine, but I didn't cry at all until Rory came "back to life" because he was so happy. And I mean, I cry at everything!! Was the emotion just not done properly, or am I that disconnected to Amy/Doctor?

[Jim North]

For me it was the fact that Rory was so absolutely obviously going to be fine combined with the fact that they dragged it out for so long just like every show and movie in existence does with resuscitation scenes. I sat here for at least twenty minutes yelling "Just spit out the water! Just spit it out! SPIT OUT THE DAMN WATER ALREADY!" at the screen. Honestly, they should have just pulled him on board the TARDIS, blown air into his lungs once, and bam, he's okay. I would at least have applauded them for brevity then.

So yes, I'd say the emotion done improperly thing.

[Joopac_Badur]

See, I thought the episode was paced perfectly till the storm hit, then everything was rushed. Oh wait! She's traveling through reflections! Oh shit! There's a storm! Oh fuck! She's killed Toby and Rory! Wait a mo! She's not killing them! She's probably transporting them somewhere! Don't ask how I know this! Oh shit it's a spaceship from another dimension crossing over into this one and the pirate ship was inconveniently here at the same time despite me saying earlier in the show that traveling between parallel worlds is very very hard to do. And then boom! She's a doctor/computer program! Rory is dead again. Rory is alive again! And now the Doctor taught everyone how to competently fly a space ship.

Really, they shouldn't have spent so long on the whole my dad's a pirate thing and, and yeah, nixed the Rory is dying. Why can't Amy die for once? Rory dying is now a running gag for the show it seems. Still it was a lot of fun. Silly bits abound, but it felt weird going to this sort of episode after Moffat's stellar two parter.

The next episode, the Gaiman one, looks exciting! Another Time Lord maybe! Rory and Amy running around the TARDIS! Judging from the preview, it looks like this episode is the one that will have the previous TARDIS interior from Nine and Ten's run. Also, why does the Doctor keep Ood stowed away in his ship. Surely he isn't a practitioner of slavery!

And another thing! About the Silence (as this is apparently the official plural form of Silent), I really hope they come back at some point. We were all led to believe that they are somehow the big bad of the Eleventh. They're the one's aledgedly manipulating the TARDIS and trying to build their own. Likewise, there's still the mystery of the Space-suit girl. "Day of the Moon" made it seem like we would not be seeing them again, and I really hope that is not the case.

[Agrajag]

I liked the episode a lot. I agree that the Rory-death-revive scene was too long, but otherwise good stuff.

I think the Silence will be back. Interviews with the cast and crew seem to imply they're gonna be more than just a one-off villain. And we know they're not all gone by the 21st century since Amy sees one on the beach. Also they might have time machines. So yeah, they'll be back.

[Jim North]

And they're not all going to be killed off immediately anyway. There's tons of places on Earth they can hide out where people won't have access to videos of the moon landing. They've certainly been set back and will undoubtedly lose their tyrannical hold on humanity, but it can't possibly have been a 100% defeat for them. Heck, it may well have been Silents (I've found I kind of prefer that over "Silence") from the future of this event that stole on board the TARDIS and tried to take the Doctor out of the equation before he could take them out.

Oh, this reminds me, by the by . . . I have this theory that Amy, Rory, and River have apparently not seen any videos of the moon landing before. They're apparently from the timeline where the Silents were already culled, but when they see the bastards, they react in fear just like everybody else. Presumably, if they'd seen the moon landing before, they'd remember the subliminal message when they saw one of the monsters and know what to do.

There are possible holes in that theory, of course, but I kind of like it.

[Agrajag]

I mean, not seeing a video of the moon landing isn't very far-fetched honestly. I don't think I've ever seen it. Unless a Silent made me forget.

[Jim North]

Absolutely! Which is one of the reasons I think my theory has definite merit. I think Day of the Moon was the first time I'd personally seen the landing since . . . hell, about third grade or so, I think. The idea of someone - or even three someones taken at random - having gone their entire life without watching it seems extremely plausible to me.

[Agrajag]

Which also makes me believe they haven't been totally defeated. I mean probably most people who were alive at the time saw the moon landing footage. But as time goes on less and less people will have seen it.

Also it's implied that suggestions don't last forever unless they're repeated. So unless people keep rewatching it, they'll stop killing Silents I think? Maybe?