3 weeks till new Who!

[MarkB]

The other question this episode raised was about the TARDIS and the Doctor. In The Doctor's Wife, the TARDIS said she picked the Doctor but in this episode Clara actually got teh Doctor to choose her yet the TARDIS doesn't like Clara? I know Clara is an abberation in the future (which the TARDIS can "see") but without her the TARDIS would have been decommissioned long ago.

As I understand it, the likely explanation is that the TARDIS originally did choose the Doctor, but the Great Intelligence went back and diverted him to a different TARDIS, and then Clara went back and undid that diversion by guiding him back to the right TARDIS.

 

[MerricB]

I may be misremembering, but didn't that happen during the wedding?

No - he actually whispers to her "Look into my eye".

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

So, questions. Or more like observationsthat Moffat puts things in scripts and then totally forgets about them.

1) "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." -- so that turned out to be nonsense. Why is it the Fall of the Eleventh? And, more importantly, what happened to no living creature being able to speak falsely or fail to answer?

May not have happened yet. It should be noted that Clara sees *11* doctors, despite this being the timestream of the entire life of the Doctor - so where are #12 and #13? The implication is that it's Matt Smith's Doctor who dies.

Interestingly, River wasn't living when she opened the doors. I'm leaning towards "the fall of the eleventh" being something that is still to happen, but we'll see.

3) Why should a time traveler never visit their own grave? Rory saw his.

And we all saw how that ended. Not well for Rory.

The point is that graves of time travellers have small "cracks" in time. The Doctor, having travelled the most, has a very, very large crack.

4) Who created the grave and set the password? A spot where anybody can step in and rewrite the Doctor's history (and thus much of the universe's) protected just by a password? One presumably not set by the Doctor or River, both of whom would be dead at the time.

Could be River. Could be Clara. Could be a future Doctor.

Cheers!

 

[Morrus]

May not have happened yet. It should be noted that Clara sees *11* doctors, despite this being the timestream of the entire life of the Doctor - so where are #12 and #13? The implication is that it's Matt Smith's Doctor who dies.

Interestingly, River wasn't living when she opened the doors. I'm leaning towards "the fall of the eleventh" being something that is still to happen, but we'll see.

The Doctor is living and failed to answer. In fact, nobody even mentioned that characteristic of the place. We can speculate, but I honestly think it just got dropped.

And we all saw how that ended. Not well for Rory.

Not *because* he saw his grave. Just coincidentally as well as.

The point is that graves of time travellers have small "cracks" in time. The Doctor, having travelled the most, has a very, very large crack.

Yeah, I understood the point. I don't think that the episode actually bore that staement out. I still don't see why he shouldn't visit it. The only problem was that the GI was there too and decided to use the crack. The Doctor's presence didn't harm it or him.

He should have said "A time traveller should never let an enemy have access to their grave because he'll use it to rewrite history" not "a time traveller should never visit his grave".

 

[MerricB]

The Doctor's presence didn't harm it or him.

Have a look again - the Doctor gets very weak near it (about 30 minutes in). He collapses and says, "Which is why I shouldn't be here. The paradoxes... very bad".

Cheers!

 

[Morrus]

Have a look again - the Doctor gets very weak near it (about 30 minutes in). He collapses and says, "Which is why I shouldn't be here. The paradoxes... very bad".

Forgot that. Yeah, that was just silly. What paradoxes? There were no paradoxes. That's bad technobabble, Moffat! Bad man!

 

[MerricB]

1) "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." -- so that turned out to be nonsense. Why is it the Fall of the Eleventh? And, more importantly, what happened to no living creature being able to speak falsely or fail to answer?

An alternative explanation...
...the Doctor "falls" to the planet, turning off the anti-gravity
...no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer... or they'll be killed by the Great Intelligence.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Yeah, that was just silly. What paradoxes? There were no paradoxes.

Ah, that's because of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect...

(Cue interruption by guerrillas).

Cheers!

 

[Morrus]

An alternative explanation...
...the Doctor "falls" to the planet, turning off the anti-gravity
...no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer... or they'll be killed by the Great Intelligence.

Meh. If either of those are the explanation (and they're not - I'd bet a lot of money on it being, as I said, a dropped thread) then it's weak as heck. We can invent our own explanations for anything, but if we're doing that we have to be aware that's all we're doing.

 

[Bagpuss]

But that's the thing with prophecies.