Doctor Who 28 x 04: The Girl in the Fireplace [SPOILERS]

JEL · May 13, 2006

Morrus said:
Eh, I enjoyed the episode immensely, but had a problem for it.

How can anyone ever say to the Doctor "You're too late"? He's the Doctor. He has a TARDIS. Surely the reply, then, is "Oh, I'll come back yesterday then".

That really seemed silly to me. A 28-season series about a time-traveller, and someone says to him "You're too late".

The Fathers Day episode last season pretty much explains that.

To add, the Doctor even says he can't use the TARDIS in this episode because they're already a part of events.

fnork de sporg · May 13, 2006

Morrus said:
Eh, I enjoyed the episode immensely, but had a problem for it.

How can anyone ever say to the Doctor "You're too late"? He's the Doctor. He has a TARDIS. Surely the reply, then, is "Oh, I'll come back yesterday then".

That really seemed silly to me. A 28-season series about a time-traveller, and someone says to him "You're too late".

Earlier in that episode he had made a statement that they couldn't use the TARDIS because they were "part of events now". Of course there's no more info given for us to actually make sense of that, but it appears while the TARDIS can reqrite history it is somehow restricted from tampering with causality it has already affected. For some reason.

{Edit/} Grr, scooped

glass · May 15, 2006

StevenAC said:
Guys, there was no time dilation effect! If time was flowing at different rates on either side of the fireplace (especially if six years was supposedly passing in seconds), how could the Doctor have had conversations through it, as happened on two different occasions in the episode?!

Time flowed at the same rate while the portal was connected. Each time it disconnected it jumped forward again. This was by design: the clockworks were deliberately scanning through her life, looking for the right time.

I thought it was quite clear what was happening -- the loose connection in the fireplace portal caused it to jump randomly from point to point in Reinette's life whenever anyone entered it from the ship. So, at the beginning, the Doctor talks to Reinette through the fireplace, then operates it and finds himself in her bedroom but several weeks later. At the end, the Doctor repairs it (he thinks), returns to the ship and is able to continue the conversation with Reinette he was having before he used it. But then, when he goes back the final time, the loose connection strikes again...

There are at least two things wrong with this theory. For one thing, the 'loose connection' was caused by Rainette's moving the fireplace. If you were correct then there would have been no jump between looking through the fireplace and moving through it at the beginning, because it was still in Rainette's childhood room at that point. Secondly, the jump forward through Rainette's life occured with all the portals, not just the one in the fireplace.

Maybe the doctor made a mistake by not realising that Rainette would die so young, but I don't think he can have made a mistake in fixing the fireplace properly.

glass.

sniffles · May 15, 2006

Morrus said:
Eh, I enjoyed the episode immensely, but had a problem for it.

How can anyone ever say to the Doctor "You're too late"? He's the Doctor. He has a TARDIS. Surely the reply, then, is "Oh, I'll come back yesterday then".

That really seemed silly to me. A 28-season series about a time-traveller, and someone says to him "You're too late".

Yes, and that's been the point of the series for it's entire life! He never arrives in time to prevent the bad thing from ever happening, and he never says, "Oh, I missed the right moment to fix everything, I'll just step back a day and do it over again." If he did do either of those things, the series wouldn't be any fun to watch!

MonsterMash · May 15, 2006

glass said:
Time flowed at the same rate while the portal was connected. Each time it disconnected it jumped forward again. This was by design: the clockworks were deliberately scanning through her life, looking for the right time.There are at least two things wrong with this theory. For one thing, the 'loose connection' was caused by Rainette's moving the fireplace. If you were correct then there would have been no jump between looking through the fireplace and moving through it at the beginning, because it was still in Rainette's childhood room at that point. Secondly, the jump forward through Rainette's life occured with all the portals, not just the one in the fireplace.

Maybe the doctor made a mistake by not realising that Rainette would die so young, but I don't think he can have made a mistake in fixing the fireplace properly.

glass.

The portals were supposed to be at different times with each one having a fixed time, I think it was just the fireplace being moved that created the loose connection that meant it wasn't coming to a fixed time.

I think the best David Tennant episode so far and it was up with the Empty Child/Doctor Dances from the Ecclestone series.

Dr Who is shown around 7pm on a Saturday night in the Uk.

sniffles · May 15, 2006

Felon said:
"Finally" has a heart? A lot of actors brought a soft side to the role, going back to second doctor Patrick Troughton.

I have to agree now. I was watching the first two episodes of "The War Games" yesterday and saw the 2nd Doctor give Zoe a fatherly peck on the forehead. I'd just forgotten seeing him be physical with companions beyond the occasional hand-holding.

StevenAC · May 16, 2006

glass said:
Time flowed at the same rate while the portal was connected. Each time it disconnected it jumped forward again. This was by design: the clockworks were deliberately scanning through her life, looking for the right time.

No, the droids were scanning through her life by opening multiple time windows, each one locked to a particular period (apart from the faulty fireplace). From the conversation with the female repair droid:
DROID: She is incomplete.
DOCTOR: What, so that's the plan, then? Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?

If the fireplace's jumping forward was deliberate on the part of the droids, they would have had no need to make any other time windows.

There are at least two things wrong with this theory. For one thing, the 'loose connection' was caused by Rainette's moving the fireplace.

No, it wasn't. It was explicitly stated to be present from the start. From the scene where the Doctor first appears in Reinette's room:
DOCTOR: We were talking. Just a moment ago. I was in your fireplace.
YOUNG REINETTE: Monsieur, that was weeks ago. That was months.
DOCTOR: Really? Hmm... [starts tapping fireplace] Must be a loose connection. Need to get a man in.

If you were correct then there would have been no jump between looking through the fireplace and moving through it at the beginning, because it was still in Rainette's childhood room at that point.

No. As I said, it was the action of operating the fireplace -- going through it from the ship to Versailles -- which jogged the loose connection and caused it to jump to a different time.

Secondly, the jump forward through Rainette's life occured with all the portals, not just the one in the fireplace.

Eh? All of the portals were at fixed points in Reinette's life, except the fireplace.

glass · May 16, 2006

StevenAC said:
No, the droids were scanning through her life by opening multiple time windows, each one locked to a particular period (apart from the faulty fireplace). From the conversation with the female repair droid:
DROID: She is incomplete.
DOCTOR: What, so that's the plan, then? Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?

Huh? Eveytime they used the fire place (or any of the other locations), it opened up a new time window.

If the fireplace's jumping forward was deliberate on the part of the droids, they would have had no need to make any other time windows.

If Rainette spent her entire life in her childhood bedroom. Since she didn't...

No, it wasn't. It was explicitly stated to be present from the start. From the scene where the Doctor first appears in Reinette's room:
DOCTOR: We were talking. Just a moment ago. I was in your fireplace.
YOUNG REINETTE: Monsieur, that was weeks ago. That was months.
DOCTOR: Really? Hmm... [starts tapping fireplace] Must be a loose connection. Need to get a man in.

I missed that bit. That does provide you position with a little more support, but it was a throwaway mark; its hardly concrete.

No. As I said, it was the action of operating the fireplace -- going through it from the ship to Versailles -- which jogged the loose connection and caused it to jump to a different time.

A reasonable supposition, but no more so than mine.

Eh? All of the portals were at fixed points in Reinette's life, except the fireplace.

I'm pretty sure that was never stated. And, IIRC (I might not) the doctor used a different portal to access the final scene from the clockworks.

So your thoughts on the subject make as much sense as mine, maybe a little more, but either way it was hardly as glaringly obvious as you made it out to be.

EDIT: Was having trouble with the italics, but Piratecat found the problem.

glass.

StevenAC · May 16, 2006

glass said:
StevenAC said:

DOCTOR: Really? Hmm... [starts tapping fireplace] Must be a loose connection. Need to get a man in.

Click to expand...

I missed that bit. That does provide you position with a little more support, but it was a throwaway mark; its hardly concrete.

No, it isn't a throwaway remark, as is indicated by its deliberate mirroring in the scene at the end where the Doctor manages to reestablish the link to the ship. This sort of duplication is a technique Steven Moffat often uses to highlight significant bits of dialogue -- see, for example, the two occurrences of the "[you've] had some cowboys in here" line, which provide a subtle hint of the connection between Reinette and the ship.

And, IIRC (I might not) the doctor used a different portal to access the final scene from the clockworks.

Assuming you mean the climactic scene in the ballroom, the droids used the same mirror portal that the Doctor later smashes. This is shown by the fact that when they capture Reinette and the king in her bedroom, they drag them off to the ballroom:
REINETTE: Where are we going?
DROID: The teleport has limited range. We must have proximity to the time portal.

At this point, the ballroom mirror is the only portal to 1758 (i.e. when Reinette is 37). This is shown by Mickey's reference to finding "the portal at age 37," and also by the fact that the droids have taken the precaution of physically blocking this portal on the ship, but not any of the others.

So your thoughts on the subject make as much sense as mine, maybe a little more, but either way it was hardly as glaringly obvious as you made it out to be.

The loose connection in the fireplace is the crux of the entire story. So much so, in fact, that Steven Moffat (briefly) considered using Loose Connection as the title of the episode.

glass · May 18, 2006

StevenAC said:
The loose connection in the fireplace is the crux of the entire story. So much so, in fact, that Steven Moffat (briefly) considered using Loose Connection as the title of the episode.

Ah, I guess you are right then.

Still, there are a couple of things that make less sense in that context, like why did it matter that smashing the mirror took all the portals offline, if only the mirror one was usefull because all the other reached into the past anyway.

And if the the loose connection in the fireplace was the reason it could reach into different times, then for the doctor to use it at all, it would have to still be loose (since the doctor was not in the time it was designed to reach). And the doctor should have known this, and waited to take Rainette back with him.

glass.