Doctor Who - Closing Time (and what I think is going on.)
It would be nice if you looked where you were going in the metro and didn't kick over the bag that had my made-from-scratch tomato sauce in it, assholes.
Craig and the Doctor meet up again to remind us that we can't run from who we are.
I think I'm really done with Fairy Tale logic.
Look, I love fairy tales. I tell them myself. I am terribly fond of Blind Love being led by Madness because he accidentally put out her eyes at the beginning of time; of a child's nursery rhyme saving the souls of her parents, and of wishing on a star making it so. It's delightful.
It's also a crap way to resolve a Doctor Who plot.
The thing is, Craig destroying the Cybermen with the Power of Paternal Love is probably the least objectionable way to do it (miles ahead of the irritating "I want to bang a hot girl so now I'm a real boy" of Victory of the Daleks) but it still kind of pissed me off. The fact that these Cybermen made no sense (Are they our universe's cybermen returned? Why have they been there hundreds of years?) didn't help, even if I was delighted to see the Cybermats again.
Mostly this was all fluff and running about, which I don't mind too much when done well. "Stormageddon", for instance, in all its silliness, will never annoy me. And lord knows I like an in-continuity nod, so "Petrichor - For the girl who is tired of waiting" made me smile. This was placed in counterpoint to the Doctor knowing it is time to go and face his death tomorrow (more or less). There is some hand-waving why he would be dropping by Craig on such a day, and then the point that even now, resigned to it all being over and his own existence being a danger to others, the Doctor still can't help trying to help.
OK, fine.
The arc gets an advance with the River coda, and what ends up feeling like a very anticlimactic final reveal. (Given the preview for the final episode, I think we can safely assume the theory that the eyepatch is there to always have an image of a Forget-Me-Not Alien in front of you.)
OK, fine.
So frothy and sort of fun, but really feels like filler before the final ep, and surprisingly not giving us a two-part finale.
The real question is whether we've been watching two Doctors the whole time, or just the Doctor at two points in his timeline. (UPDATE: To clarify, I am fairly certain it will be revealed that we haven't been watching these episodes in chronological order in at least some way. Whether they are out of sequence from the Doctor's point of view, Rory's, Amy's, or some combination, I am not sure of. Although I lean to the first or second.)
I had hoped to have watched the eps more than once by now, as I caught up with my standing Doctor Who date with misskitty_79. That being over, no such luck. Therefore I can't provide a list of specific moments backing this theory up, but I can throw out ones I seem to remember.
We have, throughout Series 6, seen a recurring switch in the Doctor's outfit (specifically the bowtie - which also switched in 5 - but also his coat) and his behaviour. Most specifically, little things such as the Rubiks cube, and the use of tenses, and the shoes. The most obvious solution is, of course, that there is a Ganger!Doctor who took over at some point, keeping Amy and Rory busy while the original goes about trying to fix things. The Doctor practically makes his Ganger copy deliberately in The Rebel Flesh, and tells it that it can survive it's seeming death in that episode.
There's some poetic justice in that, of course, the Doctor using Madame K's trick back on her, but given Moffat must have figured everyone would jump to that conclusion right away, it seems unlikely in the end. He does like trying to be the cleverest person in the room. My fear is that we will see the Time Lord Doctor killed, and then the Ganger!Doctor take over because they are "indistinguishable". I'd prefer something where the Doctor gets fatalistic and it is up to Rory or Amy or River to actually think a way out of the puzzle. Given that we have heard nothing about the TARDIS blowing up or the alliance, even though these things are supposedly linked to the Silence, perhaps we are going to have a last-minute call back to something from Season 5. The Universe was rebooted from Amy's head after all.
In the end, it may simply be all about "The Oldest Question", which I sadly feel will be "What is the Doctor's Name". We know he tells River. We have had it implied he will only tell her if he got married. We know that "Silence Will Fall" afterwards. The Episode is called "The Wedding of River Song". How any of this ties into cracks in time, the TARDIS exploding, a need for an endless war against him, or any of it?? I frankly don't really care all that much anymore.
This entry was originally posted at http://lightcastle.dreamwidth.org/252027.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Craig and the Doctor meet up again to remind us that we can't run from who we are.
I think I'm really done with Fairy Tale logic.
Look, I love fairy tales. I tell them myself. I am terribly fond of Blind Love being led by Madness because he accidentally put out her eyes at the beginning of time; of a child's nursery rhyme saving the souls of her parents, and of wishing on a star making it so. It's delightful.
It's also a crap way to resolve a Doctor Who plot.
The thing is, Craig destroying the Cybermen with the Power of Paternal Love is probably the least objectionable way to do it (miles ahead of the irritating "I want to bang a hot girl so now I'm a real boy" of Victory of the Daleks) but it still kind of pissed me off. The fact that these Cybermen made no sense (Are they our universe's cybermen returned? Why have they been there hundreds of years?) didn't help, even if I was delighted to see the Cybermats again.
Mostly this was all fluff and running about, which I don't mind too much when done well. "Stormageddon", for instance, in all its silliness, will never annoy me. And lord knows I like an in-continuity nod, so "Petrichor - For the girl who is tired of waiting" made me smile. This was placed in counterpoint to the Doctor knowing it is time to go and face his death tomorrow (more or less). There is some hand-waving why he would be dropping by Craig on such a day, and then the point that even now, resigned to it all being over and his own existence being a danger to others, the Doctor still can't help trying to help.
OK, fine.
The arc gets an advance with the River coda, and what ends up feeling like a very anticlimactic final reveal. (Given the preview for the final episode, I think we can safely assume the theory that the eyepatch is there to always have an image of a Forget-Me-Not Alien in front of you.)
OK, fine.
So frothy and sort of fun, but really feels like filler before the final ep, and surprisingly not giving us a two-part finale.
The real question is whether we've been watching two Doctors the whole time, or just the Doctor at two points in his timeline. (UPDATE: To clarify, I am fairly certain it will be revealed that we haven't been watching these episodes in chronological order in at least some way. Whether they are out of sequence from the Doctor's point of view, Rory's, Amy's, or some combination, I am not sure of. Although I lean to the first or second.)
I had hoped to have watched the eps more than once by now, as I caught up with my standing Doctor Who date with misskitty_79. That being over, no such luck. Therefore I can't provide a list of specific moments backing this theory up, but I can throw out ones I seem to remember.
We have, throughout Series 6, seen a recurring switch in the Doctor's outfit (specifically the bowtie - which also switched in 5 - but also his coat) and his behaviour. Most specifically, little things such as the Rubiks cube, and the use of tenses, and the shoes. The most obvious solution is, of course, that there is a Ganger!Doctor who took over at some point, keeping Amy and Rory busy while the original goes about trying to fix things. The Doctor practically makes his Ganger copy deliberately in The Rebel Flesh, and tells it that it can survive it's seeming death in that episode.
There's some poetic justice in that, of course, the Doctor using Madame K's trick back on her, but given Moffat must have figured everyone would jump to that conclusion right away, it seems unlikely in the end. He does like trying to be the cleverest person in the room. My fear is that we will see the Time Lord Doctor killed, and then the Ganger!Doctor take over because they are "indistinguishable". I'd prefer something where the Doctor gets fatalistic and it is up to Rory or Amy or River to actually think a way out of the puzzle. Given that we have heard nothing about the TARDIS blowing up or the alliance, even though these things are supposedly linked to the Silence, perhaps we are going to have a last-minute call back to something from Season 5. The Universe was rebooted from Amy's head after all.
In the end, it may simply be all about "The Oldest Question", which I sadly feel will be "What is the Doctor's Name". We know he tells River. We have had it implied he will only tell her if he got married. We know that "Silence Will Fall" afterwards. The Episode is called "The Wedding of River Song". How any of this ties into cracks in time, the TARDIS exploding, a need for an endless war against him, or any of it?? I frankly don't really care all that much anymore.
This entry was originally posted at http://lightcastle.dreamwidth.org/252027.html. Please comment there using OpenID.