3 weeks till new Who!

[Mallus]

That's not the same thing.

I think you missed something when you watched Hide. But, to be fair, maybe I did !

It establishes a specific rule...

What rule are you referring to?

In Hide, it's clearly stated the TARDIS can easily *enter* the collapsing magic ghost pocket universe, but it runs the risk of having it's power source drained (and thus getting trapped). It's portrayed as risky, and the Doctor opts to use the psychic lady to create a portal.

(I suspect this was meant as characterization of the Doctor: he chooses to place an innocent young woman under duress rather than risk his TARDIS -- making him a bit like the "sliver of ice in his heart" kind of guy the psychic lady warned Clara about, also a bit more like Moffat's Holmes, despite the superficial frantic kid-show host element to Smith's Doctor).

Are we not talking about the same thing?

Having re-skimmed the episode, I think the intention may have been that the psychic's efforts somehow made it possible for the TARDIS to go to the pocket dimension and safely return. But if that's the case, the writer completely failed to deliver it in a coherent fashion.

I think the intention was for the TARDIS-trip into the pocket universe to be risky. Because that's what the episode said. At no point was it stated to be impossible, so no further explanation of how it occurred was required.

 

[Guest 85555]

I have to agree with mallus on this one. I could have missed something, but didn't see any issue with the Tardis going into the pocket dimension the way t dif.

 

[Bagpuss]

. It's portrayed as risky, and the Doctor opts to use the psychic lady to create a portal.

(I suspect this was meant as characterization of the Doctor: he chooses to place an innocent young woman under duress rather than risk his TARDIS -- making him a bit like the "sliver of ice in his heart" kind of guy the psychic lady warned Clara about, also a bit more like Moffat's Holmes, despite the superficial frantic kid-show host element to Smith's Doctor).

They have previously raised the point on a number of occasions that the Doctor frequently gets others to do the dirty work or risk there lives for him.

 

[Nellisir]

Having re-skimmed the episode, I think the intention may have been that the psychic's efforts somehow made it possible for the TARDIS to go to the pocket dimension and safely return. But if that's the case, the writer completely failed to deliver it in a coherent fashion.

I think that's complicating it. I thought it boiled down to "more than 4 seconds, powerless; more than 10 seconds, dead." Ergo, they were there less than 4 seconds. They could make repeat trips because they didn't stay more than 4 seconds each time.

 

[Morrus]

That's not the same thing.

If we want to talk about an applicable example from Star Wars, let's consider the end of the first movie: It establishes a specific rule ("the only way to destroy this thing is to fire a photon torpedo into the exhaust port") and then structures the end of the film around it.

Now, let's imagine that instead of the movie we actually saw Lucas had delivered a different movie: Luke's attack run fails. Oh no! C3-PO turns to Princess Leia and says, "You have to help him you stupid cow!" And then Princess Leia says, "Wait!" She types furiously for a few seconds and then the Death Star blows up. Leia smiles, "I just suddenly realized I could reverse the polarity of the shield generators!"

Ta-da!

That's writing. And it's still not as bad as the ending in "Hide", because at least it doesn't explicitly rule out reversing the polarity of the shield generators (not once, but twice) only to present that as the solution (not once, but twice) without any justification for how the situation has changed beyond Clara calling the TARDIS a cow.

The equivalent to the "Han Solo in the asteroid field" moment would have been something like:

Doctor: We'll use the TARDIS to go pick her up!
Clara: Is that dangerous?
Doctor: Well... if we stay there longer than 10 seconds the TARDIS might blow up. But I'm pretty sure if we'll be fine... I mean, we'll be fine. I'm sure we'll be fine. Fine-ish.
Clara: Next time, just say "no".

It's a dialogue that just says "this will be really dangerous, so appreciate how nifty I am".

Having re-skimmed the episode, I think the intention may have been that the psychic's efforts somehow made it possible for the TARDIS to go to the pocket dimension and safely return. But if that's the case, the writer completely failed to deliver it in a coherent fashion.

That's a long post; but you basically missed the explanation. It was there and stated clearly.

The Doctor said the TARDIS could go in for a few seconds before it died. It went in for a few seconds and got out before it died (thus the not landing and hanging on the outside).

That's it. It was really simple.

 

[MerricB]

I dunno. She's definitely human. And how does her dying twice fit into that? No, I think it's something weirder than that.

My basic impression is whatever "splits" Clara, it happens in the future. The Great Intelligence will probably be involved. And the TARDIS, having knowledge of the future (as established in The Doctor's Wife) sees it and wants to stop it - probably to protect the Doctor.

Cheers!

 

[JustinAlexander]

What rule are you referring to?

In Hide, it's clearly stated the TARDIS can easily *enter* the collapsing magic ghost pocket universe, but it runs the risk of having it's power source drained (and thus getting trapped). It's portrayed as risky, and the Doctor opts to use the psychic lady to create a portal.

It's really, really simple. When you have a conversation like this:

"Why can't we do X to solve the problem?"
"We can't do X because Y will happen."

You can't just turn around five minutes later, do X, and have the only justification be "Clara insulted the TARDIS". It's a textbook example of bad writing. Doing it again five minutes later only makes it worse.

Meanwhile, throughout both these sequences, you have the psychic doing something. What, exactly? Nothing of relevance, apparently. Which might be acceptable the first time, but then the Doctor has her do it again despite it having no apparent impact on anything. More bad writing. (Even if we ignore the fact that the TARDIS was there for longer than 10 seconds.)

Okay, let's assume that Clara just didn't know that the psychic was going to pull it together so the second rescue effort was superfluous. But since we already know that the psychic actually can pull people out of the pocket dimension, why put the TARDIS at risk a second time? It doesn't make any sense within the rules of the universe as they've established them in the episode.

The entire ending is a mess.

The sad thing is that it wouldn't be particularly difficult to fix it. For example, instead of having the rationale for the TARDIS not being able to help be "in four seconds I'd be stranded, in ten seconds I'd be dead" just cut the second part of that sentence: The TARDIS says, "In four seconds I'd be stranded." And then have Clara says, "But not if you followed a psychic beacon." And, ta-da, you'd have an ending that worked.

Or the TARDIS is always part of the solution. Or you just skip the whole TARDIS bit. Or any number of other possibilities.

Here's one which would have been thematically interesting: The psychic can pull her descendant out because of their connection; they're family. But once she leaves, the connection snaps shut because the connection doesn't exist any more. Oh crap. How do we get the Doctor out? Well, we need someone with a deep connection to him. Oh, hey. The TARDIS! (And then the same logic applies when you use the monster in the house to retrieve the other monster.)

I'm honestly amazed at the number of people trying to defend a blatant deus ex technobabble here.

 

[Bagpuss]

Yeah the mentioning of a psychic beacon would have improved it. Although I don't think Clara should have mentioned it, she wouldn't have known. I would have preferred a scene where the Doctor gets mad at Clara for coming to rescue him.

Then talking to the TARDIS saying something, a long the lines of you knew "you could follow the psychic beacon out again, why didn't I think of that? Clever old girl!"

 

[Morrus]

It's really, really simple. When you have a conversation like this:

"Why can't we do X to solve the problem?"
"We can't do X because Y will happen."

You can't just turn around five minutes later, do X, and have the only justification be "Clara insulted the TARDIS". It's a textbook example of bad writing. Doing it again five minutes later only makes it worse.

You're missing the part where that didn't happen. At the risk of souding repetitive, the Doctor said the TARDIS could go in for a few seconds before it died. It went in for a few seconds and got out before it died (thus the not landing and hanging on the outside).

 

[sabrinathecat]

I think the point is more that when the show says something can't ever happen, and then goes and contradicts itself shortly thereafter, then the writers have just cheapened the drama of the situation. Now, the dipping toes in the water of the pocket and jumping back out again explanation might work for you. It doesn't work for everyone.
Can't say whether it will work for me or not.
I am saddened by the drastic down-turn in the quality of writing for NuWho since Moffat took over. This has been gone over before. In my opinion, Moffat has pulled a Lucas. I sincerely hope that at some point the writing and general stories will improve to where it was during series 3. Even series 2.