So, are you Team Child or Team Monster with what was under the sheet?
I thought the entire point of the episode was that it wasn't a monster. In every single case of something weird and unexplained happening in that episode, the Doctor or someone else did offer a perfectly reasonable, mundane, everyday non-sci-fi explanation for it. It's just that he (and we as viewers) have been trained through experience to dismiss that and look for the sci-fi explanation. But sometimes, there just isn't one. It was just an electrical fault in the television set. It was the metal of the ship creaking as the temperature cooled. It was another kid from the children's home messing about.
The same theme is there in the subplot. Clara and Danny's first date is such a disaster because they're both scared and nervous and assuming the worst of every little word, when in fact it's all perfectly innocent. It's not until Clara realises, in the course of explaining it to Dr Jr, that it's okay to be scared that she can let it go, not be scared and make it right with Danny.
The point is that there is no monster in this episode but the ones we create for ourselves.
So I thought I had River's story figured out but I just ended up confusing myself even more. She has been dead all along?
River's timeline is all over the place. They talk about it as if they are traveling in opposite linear directions, precisely back to front, but there are too many occasions that contradict that for it to be literally true. In fact there's a lot of jumping back and forth.
The first time the Doctor met River was the last time River met the Doctor, in "Silence in the Library." Ever since then, the Doctor has known exactly how and when River will die. Every subsequent time he's met her, it's been a later point in his timeline but an earlier point in hers, from when she was still alive. The last time the Doctor saw the living River (on screen at least, and also depending upon where the 'Night and the Doctor' shorts fit in) was in "The Angels Take Manhattan." The River that he saw in "The Name of the Doctor" was a post-death echo taken directly from the Library's computer.
Twelve talks about an adventure with River in "The Caretaker," but we don't know that he's talking about an adventure that happened while he was Twelve. It's more likely that it was an off-screen adventure while he was Eleven, who seems to be the most River-some incarnation.
At least one of the books (I think?) does talk about River having adventures with all of the previous incarnations of the Doctor at various points, each ending with her wiping their memory because she knows they don't 'know' her yet. Plus there's an upcoming audio series of River's adventures with Eight, which presumably will have to end the same way.
.
Last edited:
