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Post by paulpogue on May 5, 2011 19:50:34 GMT -8
More realistic thoughts, which I think have a stronger likelihood of being correct:
As a result of the Crack and the TARDIS explosion, the universe wasn't rebooted -- rather, we split into Universe A and Universe B. The two universes are nearly identical, with two exceptions:
1. The Doctor. One Doctor is ours, the other walked into the light at the end of "The Big Bang" and lived another 200 years and became Future Doctor seen in The Impossible Astronaut. Doctor B has no TARDIS, and knows everything that's going on. Doctor A has a TARDIS, and the Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know.
2. Rory. Rory A is a human who has lived his life with Amy. Rory B is an Auton who lived 2,000 years and thinks he is Rory A. Rory A can have a child. Rory B, being plastic, cannot. But unlike everyone else, who was exactly copied into Universe B, both Rorys are existing simultaneously, with the memories separated by a "door" in his mind. But the child conceived by Rory A can't co-exist with childless Rory B, hence the Schrodinger's Baby effect.
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Post by paulpogue on May 6, 2011 22:00:47 GMT -8
A couple of more thoughts:
1. River, when shooting at the astronaut, gives up and says "No, of course not." At the time it felt like, "no, of course we've met another creature who's immune to bullets so why do I even bother?" But what if it was because she knew something the others didn't?
2. The Doctor is still floating around 1969. Several times, actually. Martha and the Doctor visited the moon landing four times, according to "Blink." Also according to "Blink," he was trapped on earth in an Angel-induced exile during the moon landing era.
Admittedly, you could argue that this is no big deal -- the Doctor and his sidekicks probably check out the moon landing all the time. But this is a Moffat-penned episode. Combine that with the Doctor's offhand mention that a lot of things happened in 1969 and it makes one wonder.
3. Elsewhere on MightyGodKing.com, someone brought up a good point: The Doctor has seen the moon landing footage plenty of times, including when it was first aired. Hell, Jon Pertwee probably saw it happen live in UNIT HQ. Has the Doctor been whammied by his own post-hypnotic suggestion all this time?
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Post by jensaltmann on May 6, 2011 23:34:22 GMT -8
1. River, when shooting at the astronaut, gives up and says "No, of course not." At the time it felt like, "no, of course we've met another creature who's immune to bullets so why do I even bother?" But what if it was because she knew something the others didn't? That had been my reading, actually. That River knew what was going on, that the shooting had mostly been a venting of her frustration.
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Post by jensaltmann on May 6, 2011 23:37:25 GMT -8
2. Rory. Rory A is a human who has lived his life with Amy. Rory B is an Auton who lived 2,000 years and thinks he is Rory A. Rory A can have a child. Rory B, being plastic, cannot. But unlike everyone else, who was exactly copied into Universe B, both Rorys are existing simultaneously, with the memories separated by a "door" in his mind. But the child conceived by Rory A can't co-exist with childless Rory B, hence the Schrodinger's Baby effect. Yes and no. Agreed and not. I remember the "the universe is restored from one character's memories" from a comic book I've read once. I forget, which one. The thing is, the universe is restored from Amy's memories. Amy knew that Rory was, at one point, a robot that protected her for 2000 years. But after the reboot, he was human again, because (my take) that was how she remembered him. He was human again, but with the memories of 2000 years, because that's how she knew him.
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Post by jkcarrier on May 7, 2011 7:19:13 GMT -8
Has the Doctor been whammied by his own post-hypnotic suggestion all this time? Seems like it may have influenced him, at least. The Doctor himself notes that he ought to have a problem with River Song gunning down the Silence en mass, and yet he doesn't.
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Post by jensaltmann on May 7, 2011 8:22:39 GMT -8
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Post by michaelpaciocco on May 7, 2011 19:14:53 GMT -8
"The Curse of the Black Spot" - it's...it was alright. Perfectly servicable. But after the adrenaline of the opening two-parter, it felt a little timid.
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Post by paulpogue on May 7, 2011 20:02:32 GMT -8
Very, very weird episode. A hell of a lot of fun -- Pirates! Very slight advancement of the overall arc! Everything structured like a Tom Baker base-under-siege episode! But even moreso than most Who, it completely falls apart upon even slight inspection. Why was the Doctor so much more manic and impulsive than usual? Did they really set up a question of "why did you give up your honorable career to search for gold" and resolve it with "oh, it's because he really likes gold"? When Smith gave his "is this who you want to be?" speech, it's like someone showed him Tennant's closing speech from "The Doctor's Daughter" and said "Like this, but EDGIER." Two thirds of the moments from this episode seemed like they were drawn from somewhere else. Bits of "Blink!" "Waters of Mars!" An end reveal that feels an awful lot like "The Doctor Dances"! Hell, some of this stuff was so derivative that they actually ended the show on the exact same closing moment of tension as last week -- not similar, not very much like, but EXACTLY THE SAME MOMENT. (Yes, they did this with the Crack as well, but at least every time the crack reappeared, it served the greater purpose of "The Crack is following them everywhere." Here it plays like "Yep, Amy is still pregnant/not pregnant.")
And that CPR scene -- ugh. Look, I have a high tolerance for poor realism in my sci-fi stories. I'm a journalist who grew up watching two of the biggest icons in all superheroism make a joke of journalistic ethics month in and month out; I learn to tune this stuff out pretty easily. But the CPR bit was apparently written by someone whose entire knowledge of CPR comes from TV, and then went out and wrote a scene that sort of felt like what they'd seen before, but with less tension.
For all my griping, I didn't HATE this episode; on a visceral "Amy gets to dress up as a pirate and the Doctor says Yo-ho-ho a lot" level, it was quite entertaining. Plus: Eyepatch lady! But the writing and editing was so wildly inconsistent that this is easily the worst episode of the Moffat era. And from a purely television-creation standpoint, it's probably one of the worst episodes of Nu-Who as a whole. It's not as offensively bad as, say "Evolution of the Daleks," which was a creative abortion from beginning to end, but it was an utterly incompetent mess from a writing, directing and especially editing standpoint.
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Post by jbhelfrich on May 9, 2011 12:04:48 GMT -8
I definitely have the feeling that Pirate episode was perhaps supposed to be last season, and was bumped around (like Gaiaman's episode that airs next week.)
We'll certainly see the Silence again; they told Amy that she brings the Silence, and that hasn't been resolved yet. In a related note, what if the strange pregnancy scan is because Amy is pregnant, but as soon as the Tardis notices, it forgets?
Also, with the revelation that "Silence in the Library" was not a coincidence, I place the odds at Tennant returning in some fashion, possibly in something set during the wandering time, at about 80%. Just not sure if it will be flashbacks or a Two Doctors thing.
I would also really really love to know which doctor gave River the screwdriver. What if later in River's timeline, 11 (or 12, or even 10, explaining how she recognized Tennant) came back and darted in and out, breaking the otherwise presumed reverse chronology that has so far only been violated by the scene with DeadDoctor?
That screwdriver showed features that 11's hasn't yet, correct?
Also, while tossing theories around with the lovely wife, she pointed out that we don't know for certain that DeadDoctor really is 1100+ years old: "Rule one: The Doctor lies."
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Post by jbhelfrich on May 10, 2011 8:49:15 GMT -8
Oh, and the Doctor explicitly calls out the set similarity to the Lodger episode ("Very Arlington Road" or something) and the guy from that episode is going to reappear sometime this season.
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Post by jbhelfrich on May 12, 2011 5:11:29 GMT -8
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Post by paulpogue on May 12, 2011 10:12:27 GMT -8
Ten's TARDIS has been speculated about ever since someone freeze-framed the Series 6 trailer and picked out about three frames of that set exploding. This is the first really clear look we've gotten of it, though; the freeze-frames still could have been "set that looks a lot like Ten's" as opposed to "definitely Ten's", as is now confirmed.
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Post by jbhelfrich on May 12, 2011 17:05:08 GMT -8
The set doesn't exactly look assembled, but it's certainly not in storage. And Gaiman referred to it as sneaking onto the old Tardis set. I know the BBC is not a Hollywood studio, but surely they can't afford to leave studios just sitting around unused.
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Post by jarddavis on May 14, 2011 21:44:16 GMT -8
And now we know why the set was still there. The TARDIS has more than one auxiliary control room. And why do I think that one's going to become important later in the season?
Big clue, I think, to the underlying story of the season. "The only water in the Forest is the River."
Considering when Ten, and us, first met River, it was in a "forest." Silence in the Library, and the recent revelation that this too must be a factor in the oncoming revelation regarding River
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Post by paulpogue on May 15, 2011 5:45:17 GMT -8
You know, after the Stetson, I was really ready to retire the "XX are cool" line, but the way Smith delivered "Bunk beds are cool" out of totally nowhere was pretty awesome.
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