6.5X010 The Girl Who Waited (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!)

[Alidar Jarok]

Why do you assume the older Amy is dead? We have no idea what those injections actually would do to a human, only that they were designed for beings with two hearts. We also know that she's now smart enough to build her own sonic screwdriver, and has a plethora of temporal engines and an army of robots at her disposal.

She's not dead, she never existed.

 

[jbny67]

Why do you assume the older Amy is dead? We have no idea what those injections actually would do to a human, only that they were designed for beings with two hearts. We also know that she's now smart enough to build her own sonic screwdriver, and has a plethora of temporal engines and an army of robots at her disposal.

She's not dead, she never existed.

That's what I got from the episode as well. The Doctor says this will happen a few times. Then in the last shot of older Amy, while she's on the ground, she seems to fade away from existence.

 

[Stevil2001]

All this talk of paradoxes and changing timelines just reminds me of how much its always bugged me a little that the Reapers from Fathers Day have never made a return appearance, no matter how much the Doctor mucks about with time. At the very least hey should have been all over him during Waters of Mars.

They specifically cite in "Father's Day," probably as an out for that very reason, that what made the "wound in time" that attracted the Reapers was the doubled presence of the Doctor and Rose. Which maybe means they should have shown up in "The Girl Who Waited" but oh well.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Why do you assume the older Amy is dead? We have no idea what those injections actually would do to a human, only that they were designed for beings with two hearts. We also know that she's now smart enough to build her own sonic screwdriver, and has a plethora of temporal engines and an army of robots at her disposal.

She's not dead, she never existed.

True. THOUGH... it's possible that INSIDE the facility, she continues to exist. That the time engines there are holding the paradox. It's not good temporal physics, but, it might make an interesting story--justified by the facility being it's own time stream. And the place DID hold the paradox for a little bit, maybe it wouldn't be a problem once youngAmy is gone.

As much as I like the idea of OldAmy somehow being the bad guy, I don't think that's what they will do.

All this talk of paradoxes and changing timelines just reminds me of how much its always bugged me a little that the Reapers from Fathers Day have never made a return appearance, no matter how much the Doctor mucks about with time. At the very least hey should have been all over him during Waters of Mars.

They specifically cite in "Father's Day," probably as an out for that very reason, that what made the "wound in time" that attracted the Reapers was the doubled presence of the Doctor and Rose. Which maybe means they should have shown up in "The Girl Who Waited" but oh well.

Perhaps inside the facility, the reapers couldn't get to them. As someone said up thread, artificial time stream vs. the natural one.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Why do you assume the older Amy is dead? We have no idea what those injections actually would do to a human, only that they were designed for beings with two hearts. We also know that she's now smart enough to build her own sonic screwdriver, and has a plethora of temporal engines and an army of robots at her disposal.

She's not dead, she never existed.

True. THOUGH... it's possible that INSIDE the facility, she continues to exist. That the time engines there are holding the paradox. It's not good temporal physics, but, it might make an interesting story--justified by the facility being it's own time stream. And the place DID hold the paradox for a little bit, maybe it wouldn't be a problem once youngAmy is gone.

The Time Engines didn't hold the paradox, the Tardis did. And it was struggling to do so. If both were to enter the Tardis, that would be the final straw. It doesn't make sense the lowly time engines could hide the paradox if the Tardis couldn't, especially as the problem would only grow worse the farther away Amy was from ever returning.

 

[Professor Zoom]

She's not dead, she never existed.

True. THOUGH... it's possible that INSIDE the facility, she continues to exist. That the time engines there are holding the paradox. It's not good temporal physics, but, it might make an interesting story--justified by the facility being it's own time stream. And the place DID hold the paradox for a little bit, maybe it wouldn't be a problem once youngAmy is gone.

The Time Engines didn't hold the paradox, the Tardis did. And it was struggling to do so. If both were to enter the Tardis, that would be the final straw. It doesn't make sense the lowly time engines could hide the paradox if the Tardis couldn't, especially as the problem would only grow worse the farther away Amy was from ever returning.

Right.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I mean, if they wanted to do that in the story they could. Of course, if they wanted to do that, they just wouldn't have forced Rory to make a choice. Also, to do that would require adding more complications to a system that makes decent sense for Who-level temporal mechanics.

 

[Rory]

thought it was a great episode the stuff with the two Amy's was really well done, can't wait for next weeks!

 

[Checkmate]

But could she survive as a paradox away from the Tardis? With young Amy saved older Amy shoud have ceased to exist?

Who's to say how long she would exist before that happened? She was smart enough to build a sonic screwdriver from scratch, which apparently the Doctor doesn't even do (the TARDIS has been making them for him since the reboot). Why, in a last ditch attempt to save herself -- a drive she very strongly possesses, requiring others to let her 'sacrifice' herself -- is it hard to imagine she'd tinker with those temporal engines?

And, additionally, why is it assumed that the temporal engines were particularly weak? They were simultaneously sustaining thousands if not millions of different timestreams. Compressed timestreams at that, something the TARDIS itself seems to have a bit of trouble with.

And these are the same robots that have been trying to get her for 36 years!

She managed to conquer one for the simple reason to alleviate her loneliness. Who's to say that if she turned her mind to more villainous goals she wouldn't take control of all of them? Especially if you assume, which you pretty much have to do for any of this, that the injection was relatively harmless to her and she had nothing to fear except the occasional nap.

We only have the Doctor's word on the actual outcome of any of this and, as it has been made abundantly clear, the Doctor lies. A lot.

 

[wamdue]

For what its worth it is interesting that we last see her in a "hospital" with time stream tec, maybe its nothing, but its a little bit interesting

 

[Gov Kodos]

Or completely out of the blue, find out it's Donna's suppressed Timelord consciousness which, sitting around in Silence, has turned her into the big bad. I doubt it will happen, but it would be unlooked for.

 

[timothy]

fantastic episode loved every bit of it, including the music. the score was fantastic on this and keeps getting better as well as the stories.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

All this talk of paradoxes and changing timelines just reminds me of how much its always bugged me a little that the Reapers from Fathers Day have never made a return appearance, no matter how much the Doctor mucks about with time. At the very least hey should have been all over him during Waters of Mars.

Maybe the Trickster brigade killed them all.

or

The temporal disruption was significant because Rose's father was related to a time traveler and Adelaide Brooke was not.

My understanding was that the temporal disruption was significantly larger in "Father's Day" because of the earlier versions of the Doctor & Rose that were there. So Rose actually contradicted 2 of her timelines at once.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Because no classic companion was ever sassy? Willful? independant?

Sarah Jane, Leela, Tegan...and that's just off the top of my head!

Sarah Jane was willful for about 25 minutes in the Pertwee era when she was supposed to be a feminist, before she turned into a standard screamer. Leela was a savage, so I'm not sure if she counts in the same way. And Tegan was about as likeable as an unrequested piercing, so she's hardly one to cite as a good example.

Well depends what you want from a companion. I prefer a bit of attitude, give me an Amy, Donna or a Tegan over a Martha, Peri or Nyssa any day.

While I agree about Amy & Donna over Martha & Peri, I actually prefer Nyssa over Tegan. But then, Tegan was mostly just a case of bad timing. While she's like nails on a chalkboard for most of the Peter Davison years, she paired up really well with Colin Baker in "A Fix with the Sontarans."

Why do you assume the older Amy is dead? We have no idea what those injections actually would do to a human, only that they were designed for beings with two hearts.

I'm imagining the reverse of how the 7th Doctor died in the 1996 movie.

I don't think you've been spoiled as myself and Lonemagpie were really just hypothisising

Frankly if I were Moffat I'd have had everyone in that suit at some point!

Like all the alternate endings to the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episode on The Simpsons.

If Amy's life is unchanged by having or not having parents, then surely... ?

Was Mels in both the histories in her head from the two universes?

I wonder.

 

[I am not Spock]

Awesome. I loved it. My favourite episode since Vincent And The Doctor. Great story, and great acting work from Arthur and Karen. For all her naysayers, Ms Gillan I think was very good as older Amy. And this ep sure was full of Karen goodness (not a problem for me, as she's frankly, gorgeous). I, like many others here, didn't see the Doctor's betrayal coming, either. I felt sorry for old Amy.

Great work from all the cast, and fine storytelling. I enjoyed this one a lot. My fave of the season so far.

 

[I am not Spock]

Something I forgot to mention: In addition to Karen Gillian's double performance, I was really impressed by the make-up older Amy had (especially contrast to the rubbish old Doctor make up in "The Last of the Time Lords) and the modulation of Karen's voice to make her sound older.

I thought the aging make-up wasn't all that great, but the performance was really good. Considering how poor Karen could be last year, she was very impressive.

I think she was great in this episode. And the ageing makeup was well done too. Subtle, not ridiculous like some episodes are with their old age makeup. In the scenes with younger and older Amy, the difference between the two was quite apparent.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Anyone else notice the conceptual similarities to the DS9 episodes "Children of Time" & "Time's Orphan"?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Anyone else notice the conceptual similarities to the DS9 episodes "Children of Time" & "Time's Orphan"?

Yes, I believe people have noticed that in this very thread.

 

[Psion]

I've been watching very carefully, and I'm coming to the conclusion that the Doctor's Tardis might actually be bigger on the inside.

 

[Sci]

A snap reaction.

I always thought that RTD's Doctor Who work showed that he went to bed with Lawrence Miles' novels under his pillows, in much the same way that Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek work showed he went to bed with Robert Heinlein's books under his pillows.

I think this week proved conclusively that Steven Moffat goes to bed with Star Trek: Voyager DVDs under his pillows.

Yes, Moffat didn't write this, but he did commission it, so I think it's fair to lay the blame for the episode at Moffat's door.

Maybe it's because I've watched "Timeless" five times in the last month, but I didn't find anything special to "The Girl Who Waited." Yes, the performances from Darvill and Gillan especially were astonishing, and I cannot fault those. But the story was nothing Brannon Braga hasn't done a dozen times already.

Just because it's done with British accents doesn't make it new and different and compelling.

At the end of the day, the episode will only work for you if you are invested in the characters' relationships with one-another. I don't care if it's not "new," I care if it's compelling, and I found it compelling. With VOY's "Timeless," on the other hand, I never found any of the VOY characters vivid or three-dimensional enough to be invested in their relationships, so nothing they ever did was very compelling to me.

No, see Deep Space Nine's "Children of Time." That's probably closer to "The Girl Who Waited" than "Timeless" and has just as dark an ending.

The difference, though, is that Sisko is the main character in "Children of Time," and Sisko isn't ultimately the one who makes the guilt-inducing, heart-wrenching decision to screw over all the people from the colony -- Future!Odo is. "The Girl Who Waited" would be akin to a version of "Children of Time" told from Future!Odo's POV.

I didn't say cuddly. I said I don't like the increasing theme that the Doctor is really, in essence, a bad guy or villain or some other kind of bastard. It's like when they start saying Batman creates more problems than he solves.

I don't think this episode, nor "The God Complex," were saying that the Doctor is a bastard per se. And frankly, I don't think I ever really saw the Doctor as a completely moral person -- I mean, the first time we see him in nuWho, he's blowing up a building in the middle of London and puts Rose out of work! It reminded me of the Doctor running through the streets of Pompeii, hiding his face from all the people he'd just condemned to their deaths as he tries to reach the TARDIS. The Doctor is a basically good man, and many times he is a hero and saves the day -- but sometimes, he just screws up, or he's just wrong, or he just has to do something horrible because there's no other choice.

I understand why the Doctor lied to old Amy, but I still think it was wrong. He did not have the right to erase old Amy from time just so that young Amy wouldn't have to be alone and in danger for almost 40 years.

"Just so?" Like that's nothing?

To put it another way: The Doctor's choice is either to erase Old Amy from time, or to condemn Young Amy to a lifetime of torture and solitary confinement, which would be an act of horrific, horrific abuse.

Really, there are no good choices to be made there. No matter what, he has to do something horrible.

If anything the fact that Old Amy relents at the end and consents is the only thing that makes it somewhat morally palatable.

The moment Rory met old Amy she technically became the "real" Amy,

No. The entire point of the episode was that they were both real.

But the show's rewritten time as far back as Father's Day and nobody batted an eyelid back then?

Except that the Doctor was furious Rose had interfered with her own history instead of just observing and they were almost eaten by monsters because of it, now the Doctor just screws with time like it's nothing.

I'm just not a fan of changing things like that. If you can simply rewrite history, any sense of danger flies out of the window. Amy's old? Change it! Amy's dead? Change it! Rory slipped on a banana peel and broke his ankle? Change it!

I think it's pretty clear that sometimes time can be rewritten without it fundamentally erasing a person from time, sometimes time can be rewritten but only by erasing someone from time, and sometimes time can't be rewritten at all lest giant bats show up and try to eat you, and that only the Doctor can tell which is which because of his vast and terrible Time Brain.