It's a moot point now, though? After all, it's in the 21st century. Maybe he didn't even take it and used some other time travel method for some reason.
6x01 The Impossible Astronaut (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!!)
- Thread starter Neroon
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There were certainly some grim and disturbing moments, but I would hardly characterize the episode as a whole that way. I thought there was also quite a lot of fun, adventure, and humor to be found in there too.
Hell, just having Matt Smith's wacky and mad Eleventh Doctor running around guarantees THAT much.
It started tongue and cheek, after all, you have Matt Smith with a Stetson. Plus, there's a couple of joke scenes in it too. It got dark about 3/4 of the way through.
Amy- Maybe he's a clone or duplicate or something.
And we're dealing with a clone episode soon.
The next time the lake event rolls around(Or time travel to the event) the clone will replacing the real doctor.
The doctor's going to pull a Chrono Trigger moment!
Gave it a GERONIMO!!!! Loved it. Can't wait for next episode. I really liked the cheeky recap in the opening credits. River is awesome.
That's the kind of thing that I wonder about in relation to ontological paradoxes. There really ought to be an original timeline from which a loop can be set up, even if the final "rest state" of the loop removes the sequence of events that created it in the first place. This kind of ought to be the case with either a parallel universe or "single universe, changing history" setup. In the NuWhoniverse the latter would appear to be the case (prior to the recent mini episode, anyway), so there ought to be no duplicate Eleven running around as a consequence.
He probably set it to self-destruct or otherwise removed it from prying eyes. Alternatively, it could be his car or his diary.
Canton says that it's really him and that he's really dead. I can imagine Amy and Rory wondering about that in the suggested clone episode, though.
Not necessarily, there's no need for a loopless timeline, the loop was always there, that's why it's a paradox, there's no start.
The real doctor could easily tell Canton the clone is the real one.
^ That's a stretch. Future Doc appears to have the real one's memories, too, and he does say that he's been around for 1103 years. Also, I believe that Moffatt did say that it was him.
^That was the real Doctor the first time the event happened
The next time it rolls around the Clone will be in the doctor's place
The next time it rolls around the Clone will be in the doctor's place
As I pointed out in an earlier post, there was an actor listed in the credits as portraying "The Silent". These are the Silents. Their intent remains a mystery, but your hypothesis is ... intriguing.
Checkmate
Commodore
Or, you know, "The Silence" can simply be their name as a race, with "Silent" being a singular member. You know, like "knife" versus "knives." Heaven forbid.
Why are they the Silents? They could just as easily be The Silence and the singular for them is Silent. Person and People, Silent and Silence.
How bout it IS our Doctor and he invited his friends to witness his death purposely to keep it from happening...
He said he's tired of running, that he wants to stop running, as if the Doctor is in some kind of trouble that he can't escape from on his own. So, he faces the consequences of whatever's hunting him and allows his friends to witness his fate so they may serve to keep it from happening... including himself.
That's why he wanted his body burned so when the "Scooby-Who" gang solve the mystery and save him there's no duplicate Doctor's corpse left in the past... tying up the lose ends before it even begins.
Maybe Canton (?) has something to do with the Doctor's trouble, and must be convinced the Doctor is dead for some reason, the Doctor knowing once again that his friends will save him and close the loop.
Moffat seems to LOVE paradoxical time travel stories more than most prior DW show runners... added to his ramped up creep factor injection and this might possibly be a Moffat-ian masterpiece !!!
I thought it was a depressingly poor season opener for the most part, but there were some merits to it.
To be fair, I wasn't expecting much from this episode. Steven Moffat's endless repetition as a storyteller and his style of writing for the characters and their dialogue irritates me greatly.
So whilst I am looking forward to this season, his episodes are not the ones I'm waiting for.
Nevertheless, I went into TIA reminding myself that he does occasionally write good episodes (Flesh and Stone for example), and that I should take the opportunity of a new season to give him a clean slate with regard to my opinion of his abilities.
It wasn't long before the writing was back up on the wall...
All the usual niggles were present and 'correct' - reused stories, insufferable dialogue, time travel jiggery pokery that show Moffat trying far too hard to be clever, lots of emotionally frail outsider characters moping about and 'having issues' etc etc.
All of this I had expected and mentally prepared myself to tolerate in advance. But his decision to drop such a massive emotional downer onto the character's shoulders in the first episode was a calamitious misjudgement.
Now I'll give him his due - the scene on the beach was easily the best thing in the episode.
But, the mental scarring that leaves on the characters is set to run and run, which promises (or rather threatens) a lot of scenes where a miserable Amy and Rory mope about in depression and fatalistic impotence over the Doctor's 'death', whenever they think he isn't watching them.
How many times will we have to endure the Doctor saying something like 'Isn't this great? Why would you ever want it to end?!' only to have Amy and Rory exchange soulful looks and say 'But it will... and it makes us... so sad...'
EVen worse, Amy is pregant. I cried with horror at this. because babies have an unfortunate tendency to ruin stories and characters, swallowing the character's time and dominating what they are about. And that's without even mentioning messiah babies, devil babies etc etc.
This was the season opener, the return of pretty much the only thing worth watching on TV, the return of the Hero to millions (and particularly to younger viewers). It was a time for singing and dancing, an exuberant start to the season, promising adventure, thrills and spills.
It wasn't the time to basically saddle the Doctor with a kind of terminal illness (as everyone will now be treating him as such, even if he doesn't know why).
But it doesn't end there. Quite apart from all this, TIA was just unbelievably slow and boring. Only Steven Moffat can throw around 800 plots on screen at once, and still manage to make it feel like nothing actually happened. 45 minutes in and it still feel that the story hasn't actually started yet!
And the silents... Yet more zombies... oh good. Okay, so these are magic zombies, but they still have that 'horde of stiff and slow baddies with little to no individual personality' feel about them.
If they were just one off baddies, they'd be fine. But as recurring villains, I was underwhelmed by them. And that abilty they have to make people forget was hilarious, and not in a good way.
The episode was just drab and felt really small time. For all its talk of 'Going to America!' there were still lots of gloomy interior shots, and according to this episode at least, America seems to have a population of about 5 people, 1 of whom is the president!
It's also getting absurd just how many times the main cast members are dying, but not really dying. It seems to be happening all the time - Amy, Rory and the Doctor have all died at least twice since Moffat took over!
But I did mention merits to the episode, didn't I?
Probably the most important thing is that Amy was much improved. She definately seems to be calmer and less aggresively irritating than she was in the previous season. I still don't actively like her as a character, but I didn't find her mere presence borderline intolerable, and that's a big step forward.
And like I said, although I question the timing of the beach scene because of the 'aftershock' pall that it casts over the characters and viewers so early in the season, you still have to give credit that the death scene (or whatever it was that is actually going on there), was very good.
So all in all, I wasn't a huge fan of this episode, but neither had I expected to be, so I'm not that disappointed. The fact is, I'm looking forward to the second half of the season far more than the first, because I like the writers in the latter half much more. (I'm not a Neil Gaiman fan, and I've never been a 'Pirates are ace!' kind of person. I'm more of a 'Pirates are evil scum and are hopelessly misrepresented in Fiction!' kind of guy).
The fact that the TARDIS interior looks much improved, and Amy is actually bearable now, actually did more than enough to quell my general discontent about the episode. And so for those reasons, I give the episode:
5.5 of 10.
(Almost certainly too high a score, but the episode has W. Morgan Sheppard and Mark Sheppard in it, and I've always liked those two).
To be fair, I wasn't expecting much from this episode. Steven Moffat's endless repetition as a storyteller and his style of writing for the characters and their dialogue irritates me greatly.
So whilst I am looking forward to this season, his episodes are not the ones I'm waiting for.
Nevertheless, I went into TIA reminding myself that he does occasionally write good episodes (Flesh and Stone for example), and that I should take the opportunity of a new season to give him a clean slate with regard to my opinion of his abilities.
It wasn't long before the writing was back up on the wall...
All the usual niggles were present and 'correct' - reused stories, insufferable dialogue, time travel jiggery pokery that show Moffat trying far too hard to be clever, lots of emotionally frail outsider characters moping about and 'having issues' etc etc.
All of this I had expected and mentally prepared myself to tolerate in advance. But his decision to drop such a massive emotional downer onto the character's shoulders in the first episode was a calamitious misjudgement.
Now I'll give him his due - the scene on the beach was easily the best thing in the episode.
But, the mental scarring that leaves on the characters is set to run and run, which promises (or rather threatens) a lot of scenes where a miserable Amy and Rory mope about in depression and fatalistic impotence over the Doctor's 'death', whenever they think he isn't watching them.
How many times will we have to endure the Doctor saying something like 'Isn't this great? Why would you ever want it to end?!' only to have Amy and Rory exchange soulful looks and say 'But it will... and it makes us... so sad...'
EVen worse, Amy is pregant. I cried with horror at this. because babies have an unfortunate tendency to ruin stories and characters, swallowing the character's time and dominating what they are about. And that's without even mentioning messiah babies, devil babies etc etc.
This was the season opener, the return of pretty much the only thing worth watching on TV, the return of the Hero to millions (and particularly to younger viewers). It was a time for singing and dancing, an exuberant start to the season, promising adventure, thrills and spills.
It wasn't the time to basically saddle the Doctor with a kind of terminal illness (as everyone will now be treating him as such, even if he doesn't know why).
But it doesn't end there. Quite apart from all this, TIA was just unbelievably slow and boring. Only Steven Moffat can throw around 800 plots on screen at once, and still manage to make it feel like nothing actually happened. 45 minutes in and it still feel that the story hasn't actually started yet!
And the silents... Yet more zombies... oh good. Okay, so these are magic zombies, but they still have that 'horde of stiff and slow baddies with little to no individual personality' feel about them.
If they were just one off baddies, they'd be fine. But as recurring villains, I was underwhelmed by them. And that abilty they have to make people forget was hilarious, and not in a good way.
The episode was just drab and felt really small time. For all its talk of 'Going to America!' there were still lots of gloomy interior shots, and according to this episode at least, America seems to have a population of about 5 people, 1 of whom is the president!
It's also getting absurd just how many times the main cast members are dying, but not really dying. It seems to be happening all the time - Amy, Rory and the Doctor have all died at least twice since Moffat took over!
But I did mention merits to the episode, didn't I?
Probably the most important thing is that Amy was much improved. She definately seems to be calmer and less aggresively irritating than she was in the previous season. I still don't actively like her as a character, but I didn't find her mere presence borderline intolerable, and that's a big step forward.
And like I said, although I question the timing of the beach scene because of the 'aftershock' pall that it casts over the characters and viewers so early in the season, you still have to give credit that the death scene (or whatever it was that is actually going on there), was very good.
So all in all, I wasn't a huge fan of this episode, but neither had I expected to be, so I'm not that disappointed. The fact is, I'm looking forward to the second half of the season far more than the first, because I like the writers in the latter half much more. (I'm not a Neil Gaiman fan, and I've never been a 'Pirates are ace!' kind of person. I'm more of a 'Pirates are evil scum and are hopelessly misrepresented in Fiction!' kind of guy).
The fact that the TARDIS interior looks much improved, and Amy is actually bearable now, actually did more than enough to quell my general discontent about the episode. And so for those reasons, I give the episode:
5.5 of 10.
(Almost certainly too high a score, but the episode has W. Morgan Sheppard and Mark Sheppard in it, and I've always liked those two).
Watched it again, and liked it more. Some gratuitous silliness, but that's not really a bad thing. I can't wait to see how they resolve it.
If I have to add another nitpick, I'd say I was a little let down by the look of the 1969 Secret Service (not FBI, which doesn't protect the President) guys. You could see they put some effort into making Joy look like she was from the period, but the Secret Service guys just looked like modern-day guys in dark suits. I can't quite define what it is that makes me feel that way.
The diner looked perfectly fine to me. There's a Johnny Rockets down the street from my work that looks a lot like that, so it's totally reasonable to assume that you'd find one in Utah, or wherever they're supposed to be.
Did anyone else notice that the San Juan school bus that drops them off is number 51? Area 51 reference? Or just coincidence.
There are San Juans in Utah, New Mexico,Colorado, and Texas, so I still don't know exactly where it was supposed to be.
If I have to add another nitpick, I'd say I was a little let down by the look of the 1969 Secret Service (not FBI, which doesn't protect the President) guys. You could see they put some effort into making Joy look like she was from the period, but the Secret Service guys just looked like modern-day guys in dark suits. I can't quite define what it is that makes me feel that way.
The diner looked perfectly fine to me. There's a Johnny Rockets down the street from my work that looks a lot like that, so it's totally reasonable to assume that you'd find one in Utah, or wherever they're supposed to be.
Did anyone else notice that the San Juan school bus that drops them off is number 51? Area 51 reference? Or just coincidence.
There are San Juans in Utah, New Mexico,Colorado, and Texas, so I still don't know exactly where it was supposed to be.
Checkmate
Commodore
I just watched it again, too. I paid particular attention to the death scene. I'm almost positive that it was River inside the suit, and this is the "I killed a wonderful man" originated from, just like a lot of people speculated. The main reason I think this is because of what River says after she shoots at the astronaut and saw that it had no effect.
"Of course."
"Of course."
I'm not sure if this has been noted elsewhere, and I really have no idea if it may have been a possibility or not, but a friend of mine noted that it was probably unlikely that there were any black secret service men in the White House in 1969. I'd like to be proven wrong however.
I had the same thought. It did seem a bit anachronistic to me. But maybe I'm wrong.
...AND, I also think the little girl is River AND is in the space suit, and this episode is when she first meets the stranger that knows all about her (the Doctor). I think she's in the astronaut suit as another younger version of herself (but older than a little girl) and kills the Doctor as part of a complicated plan for which is why older River can't seem to shoot straight at the astronaut because she remembers this all happening; so she fails, on purpose, to kill herself even though she's a crack shot (shooting the Doctors' Stetson off his head earlier in the episode, and his tossed up Fez last season)... the Doctor could also be who she kills to land herself in space prison (killing a great man)... another part of the plan that is formulated in the latter 200 years of the older Doctor's life.
The future Doctors TARDIS is in the lake she emerges from (lake, river, pond?? get it?) which is how she arrives there and then disappears. And is why she was taught to fly the TARDIS at some point in her life with the Doctor, as this may play out all thru River's younger life.
River makes no effort to find the assassin, tells the others to let this play out, keeping Amy and Rory from telling the Doctor and finally understanding what her life has all been about. (The space suit is possibly also a nod to when the Doctor first met River in the library, she was wearing a white space suit). This all still means that River can still meet the Doctor at different points in their seperate time streams for the rest of the series, but now we'll know who she is and what her connection to the Doctor is all about... spoilers.
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