The Pointlessness of the Doctor's "death"

[Sindatur]

DWF wrote:

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But it was Moffat who made the Church and it's what went after the Doctor. And it's like the Doctor ever kept a low profile, it was the Doctor in the library who told the Vashta Nerada to look him up in the library becasue of how dangerous he was.

Exactly, RTD had the Doctor as a famous Super Hero, and Moffat brought along The Church of The Silence in order to perpetuate this arc, that has led to his low profile. Maybe he got that idea after Doctor Who was his, maybe, he only wrote that in The Library episode to keep with RTD's Tone and texture for the Doctor. Or maybe he's simply a hypocrite, but, nonetheless, he used River and The Church as the catalyst for this change, at least since the beginning of last season, if not from S5, since The Church did appear in S5 and was mysterious about their profile and River's crime.

[ROBE]

Also it was the fall of the 11th the Silence were worried about.

[Mister Fandango]

Honestly, I wonder the same thing about the Time Lords themselves. Why doesn't he run into them constantly? Sure, they were 'time locked' (whatever that means), but their exploits before the Time War already happened. Their impact on the universe already happened. The Doctor even talks about said exploits every now and again, such as with the Corsair. And then you have cases where Time Lords such as the Meddling Monk influenced Earth's own history; construction of Stonehenge, 'suggesting' aircraft design to da Vinci, etc.

I mean, is being time locked just shorthand for 'erased from existence?' Because that's the only way it would make any sense. But we already know that's not the case.

Sure, no bumping into any Time Lords who are aware of events post-Time War. That much makes sense. But none at all? Not so much.

[Timelord_Victorious]

Maybe it's a bit like the time cracks... They erased Amy's parents from history but Amy is still here even though that should be impossible.
Also time crack erased people CAN be remembered. Amy subconciously remembered Rory and could actively be reminded of him.

Time Lock could work in a similar way. Gallifrey is still there, we know that much, but hidden behind a nearly impenetrable wall of timelock. Gone from the perception of lesser beings. Suspended in a single moment of (non)time (no causal connection to any other moment in time).

The timelock is not unbreakable, Dalek Caan did it and the Daleks are back in full force.

The Timelords nearly did it by finding that one thread left to the rest of the Universe and using it as a lifeline.

[Holdfast]

Irvy wrote:

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So him dying at some point shouldn't really have any effect. You can't breath a sigh of relief that he's dead, because he still might turn up and stop you. Or save you. You might turn out to be the first person he ever met, thousands of years after he "died".

He's had a millennia to go anywhere, anywhen, which weaves him so intrinsically into the fabric of space time that even his actual death won't remove him from the universe or stop him from turning up on your doorstep.

Sure, but having a lot of time to do things isn't the same as having an infinite amount of time to do things and, more importantly, knowing what to do and when. He's not omniscient & omnipresent.

Kill him (permanently) before he has a chance to foil your plans and assuming he doesn't have the opportunity to tell a younger version of himself (or anyone else) how to stop you, you win.

I mean, a younger version might still stop your plans further down the line, but that would be unrelated/coincidental/bad luck rather than due to the supposed pointlessness of killing him. It's still worth trying to kill him when you encounter him, because you have at least a chance he doesn't eventually turn up in your way in a younger guise.

[PorthosShadow]

Presumably The Silence know The Doctors history up until the incident on The Fields Of Trenzalore. So they chose a specific time and place (Lake Silencio) to kill The Doctor so that he can't continue onward to The Fields Of Trenzalore. Now even though he cheated his own death the events leading up to The Fields Of Trenzalore remain unchanged. Basically, The Silence were trying to cut him off at the proverbial pass.

They know where and when he is going between Lake Silencio and The Fields Of Trenzalore. So that is what The Silence hoped to achieve by the aforementioned cutting him off the pass.

Now I think The Doctor hoped by faking his death that he could keep stay out of trouble or change the history The Silence are aware of. Really he wanted to live and is just trying to get by hoping The Silence won't care so as long as he never reaches The Fields Of Trenzalore or causes to much trouble.

So not pointless but rather a desperate gamble to continue living or as another famous science fiction Doctor from Kentucky once said "What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live"

[Mister Fandango]

Timelord_Victorious wrote:

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Maybe it's a bit like the time cracks... They erased Amy's parents from history but Amy is still here even though that should be impossible.
Also time crack erased people CAN be remembered. Amy subconciously remembered Rory and could actively be reminded of him.

Time Lock could work in a similar way. Gallifrey is still there, we know that much, but hidden behind a nearly impenetrable wall of timelock. Gone from the perception of lesser beings. Suspended in a single moment of (non)time (no causal connection to any other moment in time).

The timelock is not unbreakable, Dalek Caan did it and the Daleks are back in full force.

The Timelords nearly did it by finding that one thread left to the rest of the Universe and using it as a lifeline.

I appreciate the speculation, but it really doesn't jibe with me. Amy's situation was obviously unique and something the Doctor didn't understand at all until after some investigation, and even then all it required (a bit of hyperbole there, as it was obviously more complex than that) was for her to remember things and poof, everything was back. Even things she had no clue about, like, oh, everything. Hell, one of the things she did know about was the Time Lords courtesy of the Doctor announcing his race to her.

And, again, there's the massive paradox about all the things the Time Lords did throughout all of space and time prior to the Time War just <snap> being whisked away into oblivion. Hell, it took everything the Doctor's TARDIS had just to maintain a tiny paradox on Earth for a few months. What could possibly maintain one that extends throughout every moment in time and every inch of space?

To be honest, I don't understand why RTD got rid of all the Time Lords to begin with. Eliminating stories involving them seems a bit crippling to me, especially if you're just going to introduce some anyway.

[Starkers]

I think it made a lot of sense really at the time, bringing back Who to an audience, a large proportion of whom weren’t yet alive when the TV movie aired, let alone when the Doctor and Ace walked off into the sunset, by stripping the character down to the bare essentials. Eccentric alien called The Doctor who travels in a police box.

I have a lot of issues with some of the choices RTD made over the years, but sometimes I really don’t think he gets as much credit as he deserves for bringing back a show with that much history without either A/ rebooting it completely, or B/ avalanching the viewer with so much information early on that they give up before you have a chance to hook them. Removing the Timelords from the equation was part of this, and added an interesting ‘last of his kind’ vibe.

That said, given the ease with which the Daleks came back, I would like to see more Timelords in the future.

[ClayinCA]

PorthosShadow wrote:

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as another famous science fiction Doctor from Kentucky once said "What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live"

He's from Georgia, surely?

Starkers wrote:

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I have a lot of issues with some of the choices RTD made over the years, but sometimes I really don’t think he gets as much credit as he deserves for bringing back a show with that much history without either A/ rebooting it completely, or B/ avalanching the viewer with so much information early on that they give up before you have a chance to hook them. Removing the Timelords from the equation was part of this, and added an interesting ‘last of his kind’ vibe.

Entirely agreed. And as RTD said, the whole point of the Time War/Last of the Time Lords thing was to give the new series its own, distinctive mythology apart from that of the original series. I think it did this splendidly, and frankly I think the Doctor is much more interesting as the only Time Lord in existence (depending on whether or not the Master is around that week) than he was as one of a whole planetful.

Having said that, I do miss Romana....