The Time Of The Doctor (Grading/Discussion)(SPOILERS!)
- Thread starter Samurai8472
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Doesn't look like it.
But that is covered in the episode, even though in a rushed and abrupt manner. These stories are covering adventures we don't see in the episode.
That they (The Doctor and the Silence) fought together against the Daleks. Lem says as much in the vo narration.
I thought this would be a chuckle: Nerd Whines About The 10 Biggest Problems With "The Time Of The Doctor" http://youtu.be/uwM8FropWHQ
Although maybe not...?
Although maybe not...?
Every single one of his complaints has an answer written into the episode (or a preceding one). Is that the joke?
I think they're mostly good points. They can mostly be answered by the words "The Doctor goes where the fun us and lies his @ss off to get there", but still they're mostly good points.
How are they good points? Many of them are pointless questions that have nothing to do with the story. How did the Papal Mainframe shield the planet? With a shield. How did the Weeping Angels get there? The Doctor said they must have gotten through the shield. We saw that the Sontarans and others found ways to do this, so why not the Angels? Besides, they could have gotten there before the Papal Mainframe put the shield in place, anyway. These are not things that require explanations. It's like asking how the TARDIS can travel through time or how the Doctor can meet his previous incarnations. It does. He can. It's a given.
He ended up on the Dalek ship without knowing it because he told Handles to put him on a ship without specifying which one. The Cyber ship was of a new design he hadn't seen before, and he did land the TARDIS on it. All of this was explicitly mentioned in dialogue at the time it was happening.
The TARDIS could land once it had the key to lock onto. This was stated, and it'd already been previously established in episodes like "The Angels Take Manhattan" that the TARDIS could land where it was otherwise prevented from doing so if it had a signal to lock onto. But more to the point, this complaint is completely contrary to his preceding one about the shield being too effective against Time Lord technology. How can you at once complain that the TARDIS can't get through the shield and that it can??
Why didn't he know the planet was Trenzalore? When he'd been there before the planet was a smoking husk. Same reason why in The Web Planet he didn't know at first that he was on Vortis. Same reason why in Genesis Of The Daleks he didn't immediately recognize Skaro. It looked different.
The line about the previous encounters with the Silence/Silents being a rogue sect was all the explanation that was needed in the context of this story. Why do people want everything spelled out? Leaving it ambiguous leaves room for (1) us to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks, and (2) future stories that haven't been written yet to expand upon it.
He clarified what the "plan" was to Clara a moment after sending off not-Barnable: it was to "talk very fast, hope something good happens, take the credit."
The Doctor's "death" with accompanying aborted regeneration in "The Impossible Astronaut" was the Tesselecta in disguise as per "The Wedding Of River Song." He was indeed bluffing the Cyberiat in "Nightmare In Silver" when he said he could regenerate right then if he wanted. (It was explicitly stated that he could hide knowledge from it in the same episode. And the episode itself was an homage to the Troughton years, when he often got out of situations by...you guessed it, bluffing.)
The regeneration thing could not have been laid out more clearly, explicitly, and succinctly than it was in the bloody episode! One would practically have to be a simpleton not to get it! Its not being explicitly mentioned in the new series prior to this doesn't equate to it having been "forgotten about."
We can presume the Time Lords themselves sealed the crack in the same manner that the Doctor sealed the one in Amy's room in "The Eleventh Hour." And it remains to be seen whether they come back through or not.
When has the Doctor ever shied from destroying Daleks? (The reason he agonized over it in Genesis was that the embryos weren't yet Daleks and hadn't yet done all the evil things he'd seen them do later. The analogy he used when explaining his predicament to Sarah Jane was that it would be like killing Hitler as a child.)
I'm really sick of hearing people bitch about this episode, which was GREAT and immensely satisfying, and whose plot hole problems are certainly no greater than the vast majority of Who stories.
He focused on trivial things and didn't even hit on one that seemed genuinely silly to me: the Doctor and Clara are beamed down to the freezing surface wearing holographic clothes and shoes but this causes them no visible discomfort.
Next.
He ended up on the Dalek ship without knowing it because he told Handles to put him on a ship without specifying which one. The Cyber ship was of a new design he hadn't seen before, and he did land the TARDIS on it. All of this was explicitly mentioned in dialogue at the time it was happening.
The TARDIS could land once it had the key to lock onto. This was stated, and it'd already been previously established in episodes like "The Angels Take Manhattan" that the TARDIS could land where it was otherwise prevented from doing so if it had a signal to lock onto. But more to the point, this complaint is completely contrary to his preceding one about the shield being too effective against Time Lord technology. How can you at once complain that the TARDIS can't get through the shield and that it can??
Why didn't he know the planet was Trenzalore? When he'd been there before the planet was a smoking husk. Same reason why in The Web Planet he didn't know at first that he was on Vortis. Same reason why in Genesis Of The Daleks he didn't immediately recognize Skaro. It looked different.
The line about the previous encounters with the Silence/Silents being a rogue sect was all the explanation that was needed in the context of this story. Why do people want everything spelled out? Leaving it ambiguous leaves room for (1) us to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks, and (2) future stories that haven't been written yet to expand upon it.
He clarified what the "plan" was to Clara a moment after sending off not-Barnable: it was to "talk very fast, hope something good happens, take the credit."
The Doctor's "death" with accompanying aborted regeneration in "The Impossible Astronaut" was the Tesselecta in disguise as per "The Wedding Of River Song." He was indeed bluffing the Cyberiat in "Nightmare In Silver" when he said he could regenerate right then if he wanted. (It was explicitly stated that he could hide knowledge from it in the same episode. And the episode itself was an homage to the Troughton years, when he often got out of situations by...you guessed it, bluffing.)
The regeneration thing could not have been laid out more clearly, explicitly, and succinctly than it was in the bloody episode! One would practically have to be a simpleton not to get it! Its not being explicitly mentioned in the new series prior to this doesn't equate to it having been "forgotten about."
We can presume the Time Lords themselves sealed the crack in the same manner that the Doctor sealed the one in Amy's room in "The Eleventh Hour." And it remains to be seen whether they come back through or not.
When has the Doctor ever shied from destroying Daleks? (The reason he agonized over it in Genesis was that the embryos weren't yet Daleks and hadn't yet done all the evil things he'd seen them do later. The analogy he used when explaining his predicament to Sarah Jane was that it would be like killing Hitler as a child.)
I'm really sick of hearing people bitch about this episode, which was GREAT and immensely satisfying, and whose plot hole problems are certainly no greater than the vast majority of Who stories.
He focused on trivial things and didn't even hit on one that seemed genuinely silly to me: the Doctor and Clara are beamed down to the freezing surface wearing holographic clothes and shoes but this causes them no visible discomfort.
Next.
Yeah, that answers things fairly well. The only thing that I don't think is certain is that he knew right away that he was out of regenerations. This could be something he figured out recently. I don't think the dialog forecloses it either way.
The thing I'm sick of (I thought the episode was good, not great, btw) is people who engage in pointless nitpicking and use it as a substitute for criticism of a story. All his complaints could be valid (I agree that they weren't) and it would still be meaningless because it's irrelevant to the story being told.
The thing I'm sick of (I thought the episode was good, not great, btw) is people who engage in pointless nitpicking and use it as a substitute for criticism of a story. All his complaints could be valid (I agree that they weren't) and it would still be meaningless because it's irrelevant to the story being told.
He probably thought he had one more left. He knew about 10's vanity regeneration. But, as it is depicted in "The Name of the Doctor" and "The Day of the Doctor", he buried memories of the War Doctor and may have not realized/remembered that regeneration.
Well, he knew about the meta crisis regeneration but he might not have understood its full implications right away.
I don't think that really works, because throughout the new series, he clearly remembers being the one to end the Time War by wiping out both sides. It's brought up many times. And I don't recall him indicating in either "Name" or "Time" that he doesn't remember the Hurt incarnation, just that he doesn't talk about him.
Anyway, not to belabor the point, but just because I'm feeling a bit nerdy, to reiterate that there is no inconsistency with "Nightmare In Silver," here are the specific relevant passages of dialogue between the Doctor and "Mister Clever":
The Doctor is allowing the Cyberiad access to select information to set up a bluff.
This reinforces that the Cyberiad does not have complete access to all the Doctor's knowledge and memories. It is emphasized even more explicitly later during the chess game:
These are plot points from the episode itself. Haven't you been paying attention?
(That last was not directed at the above poster, but rather the guy in the video.)
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Despite the fact that this was never written as his last regeneration prior to this episode, with at least 4 different episodes contradicting that fact, what I want to know is this: why did the town/planet not evolve? He is there anywhere from 600-900 years. Think about the Earth in the year 1400 versus now. Why did they seem to be at a technological stand still? I would think being in a near constant state of attack would accelerate their desire to build better defenses, not retard it.
^ Clearly they founded that colony to be Christmas all the time.
Luddite colonists with a pine tree fetish.
Luddite colonists with a pine tree fetish.
Without going point by point, it *was* hokey how the Papal Mainframe could hold back the combined evil forces of the universre for centuries.
That took me right out of the story. If have too many unbelievable things in a story, it doesn't work. Generally just one is the rule.
Mr Awe
I've come to the idea that Trenzalore is what it appears to be -- the town inside a snowglobe. That the Doctor spent nine centuries (from his perspective) inside a snowglobe, protecting a town that could never, ever change, from what evils lurk beyond the glass.
becuase 1) at first they were afraid of what was down there before they knew it was the Timelords
2) After they found out all the Doctor had to do to bring them back was say his name so they were kind of in a stalemate.
That's pretty nicely poetic, and I can get on board with that Moffatt-esque sentiment. Moreover, these guys could be the equivalent of those Bringloidi colonists from the TNG episode "Up the Long Ladder", who decided to reject post-19th century technology and live forever on a planet as a bunch of drunken Irish.
In other words, they're deliberate Amish types, choosing to live in a perpetual state of technology and culture because they wanted to. They certainly have and use a certain level of technology, but overall they're happy living as simple folk in a run-down old village for eternity. I highly doubt that would be realistically sustainable for 300-900 years, but what the hell, it's science fiction.
Mark