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Very confused over 50th anniversary (spoilers naturally)

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Paul Weaver

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Premium Member
So the end of the previous episode had Clara jumping into the Doctor's time stream, fracturing, and appearing throughout the Doctor's history.

The Doctor then jumped into his own time stream, met Clara, and got run down by various previous incarnations before seeing William Hurt. Lizard-girl and Dead River were left at Trenzalore, and we were left with an unconscious Clara and a collapsing time stream.

This episode started with Clara riding a motorbike into the Tardis in modern day London.

Did I miss something?

Don't get me wrong, great episode (although seeing Hurt regenerate into Ecclestone would have been good), and the Paul McGann mini episode was brilliant, but what happened to the continuation?
 
John Hurt, not William. :)

It was a bit of a jump but I expect as Moffat wrote the story he realised it was moving more and more away from resolving the 'save Clara' story from The Name of the Doctor, and so it was dropped, and the anniversary episode simply began with a cold open. I think it worked; you just have to assume that the Doctor leaping into his own timeline fixed the damaged caused by The Great Intelligence and they made it out off camera.

More likely though the end of TNOTD was simply a plot device to introduce Hurt and give an almighty cliffhanger.

Though it could also be said that Moffat is shite for solving his own storylines and would hope everyone would just forget anything that happened before it.
 
Its a few years later. Clara is no longer a nanny, shes a teacher.

I dont remember where i saw the quote but Jenna Louise Coleman herself said it was a few years later.
 
An a side not isn't it just Jenna Coleman now?
But half the fun of the anniversary special was trying to spot the referrences to the earlier episodes.

I counted at least 6 in the first minute (well that I could idnetify).

The original opening
The Policeman walking
The sign to trotters lane
The name of the high school
Chairmen of the Board of Governors
The clock as Clara leaves the school (I'm willing to bet that was the time the first episode aired)
 
Well...to get back on topic. What confused me was the...and I have to "back-translate" here because the episode was showing dubbed in german here and I have to wait for the DVD to see it in english..., the Doctor said something about "the timelines are asynchron" and that the others wouldn´t remember anything about what happened.

What exactly ARE asynchron timelines? And why are they asynchron timelines anyway?

And what exactly changed for Gallifrey? It was time locked before and its still time locked now, right? Although for some reason the Doctor now doesn´t know where exactly it is?
 
FreddyE said:
What exactly ARE asynchron timelines? And why are they asynchron timelines anyway?
Click to expand...
It's technobabble for "the past Doctors won't remember any of it".

And what exactly changed for Gallifrey? It was time locked before and its still time locked now, right? Although for some reason the Doctor now doesn´t know where exactly it is?
Click to expand...
The Time War is time locked. What changed is that Gallifrey was destroyed, whereas now it's not.
 
"Asynchron" is German for "out of sync" (the phrase used in the show here) or "asynchronous", isn't it? But, yes, it's just technobabble that sounds a bit more convincing than "timey-wimey". I seem to recall previous multiple doctor adventures used the phrase, but my memory isn't clear on that. :shifty:
 
The Mirrorball Man said:
FreddyE said:
And what exactly changed for Gallifrey? It was time locked before and its still time locked now, right? Although for some reason the Doctor now doesn´t know where exactly it is?
Click to expand...
The Time War is time locked. What changed is that Gallifrey was destroyed, whereas now it's not.
Click to expand...

Well, no not quite, or at least not as I understood it. What changed is that the Doctor used to think Gallifrey was destroyed. Now he knows it wasn't, it was just shunted off into a pocket universe.

Hurt, Eccleston and Tennant won't remember that because of the aforementioned out-of-sync timelines, but Smith and Capaldi will remember it. Either way, the whole war and destruction/disappearance of Gallifrey is still timelocked.

.
 
^Agreed, the events of the Last Day of Last Great Time War as shown in "The Day of the Doctor" were exactly how they orginally played out. Nothing changed. Just the Doctor from Smith's incarnation onwards will remember the real events.
 
They didn't change history, they just think they are changing history due to not remembering how events actually played out.
 
It's Moffat who changed/retconned history. Granted there was some wiggle room go make the restoration of Galifrey possible.

Dialogue from episodes that corroborate Galifrey falling and burning. Off the top of my head would be.

Doctor Who
"End of the World"
"Dalek"
"Father's Day"
"The Parting of the Ways"
"The Sound of Drums"
"Fires Of Pompeii"
I want to say "Journey's End" and "Stolen Earth" but I can't be sure. I haven't seen them in awhile.
"The End of Time"

Torchwood
"Adrift"
 
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