• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Gaiman Q&A about 'The Doctor's Wife'

if you were to walk to the end of the ship, you would then end up back on the other side of the ship..where the pocket dimension begins.. like walking around the earth, only you don't fall off the edge, eventually you end back up where you started..The Tardis is much the same.

Ah, so it's like an old-school adventure game.
 
if you were to walk to the end of the ship, you would then end up back on the other side of the ship..where the pocket dimension begins.. like walking around the earth, only you don't fall off the edge, eventually you end back up where you started..The Tardis is much the same.

Ah, so it's like an old-school adventure game.

yep just like it..

instead of walking off into nowhere like in some games.. with glitches..you end up on the other side of the map..each time you jump off you end up on the opposite side.. like pac-man..

pac-man is a perfect example of the tardis.. only the board you play on is the ship, and the computer is inside the digital game board. the outside wooden box the arcade is played on is the tardis exterior, only the scale is in reverse..

in logopolis, Tegan walks off into the tardis gets lost in the catacombs of the Cloisters.. ends up popping back to the start of where she was cause she was at the end of the bubble, which brought her back..then she wondered off again, and ended up walking deeper, but was then brought back to the console room..same reason.. she stepped off the map, which brought her to the other side..
 
The question is if the the Tardis burns off 30 percent of the the rooms, does it get the mass back somehow by growing it back or something? it should be a small tardis by now if not:

25% in Catrovalva
30% going in to the bubble universe
30% coming out of the bubble universe
actually no..
Actually, there's an even simpler way of looking at it from a mathematical angle (but I agree with the general gist of what you said): 25% of the TARDIS at the time of Castrovalva and then 60% of what was remaining of that 75% much later on in "The Doctor's Wife."
 
Couple more things that interest me...

Yes, things changed when it slipped story arcs. <snip> It meant that the TARDIS was no longer trying to warn the Doctor about the events of The Big Bang, or how he could get out of it.

In almost all the drafts of the script until we reached shooting... <snip> it was very clear that House had absolutely survived.

I had thought right from the first moment House spoke, that it was the same voice from the end of "The Pandorica Opens," that says Silence Will Fall as the Tardis is exploding around River.

And if "The Doctor's Wife" had taken place before "The Pandorica Opens," I think everyone would have assumed (and for all we know, correctly) that the not-dead House was the one behind the entire Pandorica plan, somehow tricking all the Doctor's enemies into trapping him in the box so that he could get hold of the Tardis again and blow it up, thus creating the cracks and the End of the Universe (be it out of revenge against the Doctor, or annoyance that there were no more Tardises to eat, or just boredom).

Was that in fact the original meaning of "The Silence" - a much more prosaic meaning that did in fact refer to the End of the Universe as we assumed it to be at the time? And that it would have been House as the man behind the curtain? That seems a bit... dull.

But since "The Doctor's Wife" didn't take place before "The Pandorica Opens," we now still have no explanation for the Tardis explosion. Are we to assume that the voice in TPO was indeed a not-dead-after-all House, who travelled back in time and created another wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ball of bollocks in proactive revenge against the Doctor? And if so, how does that mesh with what we now know The Silence to be?
 
Well I'm still curious as to how far back Gaiman's episode could have aired. It just nags at me that the Tenth doctor was warned of the death of his most faithful companion. Now everyone took that to mean Donna, but I remember a theory at the time that pointed out that realistically the Tardis is his most faithful companion...
 
Well I'm still curious as to how far back Gaiman's episode could have aired.
From what I understand, it would have been where we got "The Lodger" instead, which was written because this wasn't ready. So it would have served a similar purpose as "Utopia" and "Turn Left" - setting up the two-part finale without actually being a part of it.

But then it does also say that he knew he was writing it during the Specials season. But that could just mean that Moffat reached out to him really really early.
 
Hmmm ... buried in Gaiman's full comments is an interesting spoiler:

Yes, things changed when it slipped story arcs. It became Rory and Amy, not just Rory, which meant changing the way that the House toyed with them/kept them busy while it took over the TARDIS. It meant that the TARDIS was no longer trying to warn the Doctor about the events of The Big Bang, or how he could get out of it.
This has me intrigued. "... became Rory and Amy, not just Rory ..."? What happens to Amy later in the season? If she dies, does Rory ultimately blame the Doctor and get revenge by somehow coming back as an Auton in an Apollo 11 space suit? Or was this a typo and he meant Amy instead of Rory in discussing events from last season?
 
^^^ I think that was a mis-type, because he's talking about the differences between seasons 5 and 6, not some hypothetical future into season 6.
 
I definitely read that as a mistype. This was during a live posting/chat and Neil Gaiman be forgiven for getting his wires crossed.
 
I had thought right from the first moment House spoke, that it was the same voice from the end of "The Pandorica Opens," that says Silence Will Fall as the Tardis is exploding around River.

I don't know why. The "Silence Will Fall" voice was much, much higher-pitched than Michael Sheen's House.

Was that in fact the original meaning of "The Silence" - a much more prosaic meaning that did in fact refer to the End of the Universe as we assumed it to be at the time? And that it would have been House as the man behind the curtain? That seems a bit... dull.

I think it's more probable that Steven Moffat always intended for the Silence, first seen in "The Impossible Astronaut," to have been behind the attempted hijacking of the TARDIS in "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang."

But since "The Doctor's Wife" didn't take place before "The Pandorica Opens," we now still have no explanation for the Tardis explosion.

Sure we do. The Silence. We just don't quite know how or to what end yet. We have an incomplete explanation, not no explanation.

Are we to assume that the voice in TPO was indeed a not-dead-after-all House, who travelled back in time and created another wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ball of bollocks in proactive revenge against the Doctor?

I see no reason to associate House with the "Silence Will Fall" hijackers whatsoever.
 
Hmmm ... buried in Gaiman's full comments is an interesting spoiler:

Yes, things changed when it slipped story arcs. It became Rory and Amy, not just Rory, which meant changing the way that the House toyed with them/kept them busy while it took over the TARDIS. It meant that the TARDIS was no longer trying to warn the Doctor about the events of The Big Bang, or how he could get out of it.
This has me intrigued. "... became Rory and Amy, not just Rory ..."? What happens to Amy later in the season? If she dies, does Rory ultimately blame the Doctor and get revenge by somehow coming back as an Auton in an Apollo 11 space suit? Or was this a typo and he meant Amy instead of Rory in discussing events from last season?

Could this be related to the Tardis/Idris telling Rory, "The only water in the forest is River" and indication that Amy Pond won't be around soon?
 
Hmmm ... buried in Gaiman's full comments is an interesting spoiler:

Yes, things changed when it slipped story arcs. It became Rory and Amy, not just Rory, which meant changing the way that the House toyed with them/kept them busy while it took over the TARDIS. It meant that the TARDIS was no longer trying to warn the Doctor about the events of The Big Bang, or how he could get out of it.
This has me intrigued. "... became Rory and Amy, not just Rory ..."? What happens to Amy later in the season? If she dies, does Rory ultimately blame the Doctor and get revenge by somehow coming back as an Auton in an Apollo 11 space suit? Or was this a typo and he meant Amy instead of Rory in discussing events from last season?

Could this be related to the Tardis/Idris telling Rory, "The only water in the forest is River" and indication that Amy Pond won't be around soon?

I suspect

"It became Rory and Amy, not just Rory"

Should have read

"It became Rory and Amy, not just Amy"

Then it makes sense from the context of its original placement in S5.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top