Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

what's so bad about the silence?

if they've been around for thousands of years directing all human history... did they only make the bad stuff happen?

weird that people only in 1969 work out how to remind themselves

there were some proper good bits in that ep tho

can buy this but a little bothered by the fact that Amy made no move to kill the Silence the first time she sees one

that was before the doctor put the message in the apollo broadcast. even though it was after the apollo mission. "wibbly wobbly", as aldo said.

it was a pretty silly solution -- people forget them unless it's linked to something memorable -- but there are so many loose ends it almost seems forgivable.

possibly i've forgotten the end of last week, but the start of this week confused me more than it should. they sort of skated over how amy didn't shoot the kid, and i don't get how the feds came to have a 'shoot on sight' policy for the tardis team.

yeah that is a puzzle.

Amy hit the helmet but missed the kid's head. They showed a shot of the kid screaming but unhurt with a bullet hole in the visor in this episode.

The "shoot on sight" policy didn't need an explicit reason considering that the dude doing the shooting was part of a plot to get everyone in a hermetically sealed room that The Silence couldn't get into so that they could have a base to work out of on Earth.

not cool with Nixon being allowed in the TARDIS tbh

I thought the hand moving was bcz River tweaked a bit of wiring - the girl's arms are not long enough to reach the gloves so mechanical means would be necessary to make the hands move anyway

There was definitely a suggestion that the suit could operate independently (perhaps remotely?), but when it confronted the Doctor in 2011 and raised its visor, the Doctor seemed to recognize whoever it was inside.

it was a pretty silly solution -- people forget them unless it's linked to something memorable -- but there are so many loose ends it almost seems forgivable.

We're not supposed to remember the directive to kill the Silence because it's associated with the moon landing, instead, the moon landing happens to have a global audience and so the Silence's unintentional post-hypnotic suggestion will have been suggested to as wide an audience as possible (who don't consciously remember it, of course).

Also, are we sure that's Nixon and not, like, President Ed Sullivan?

Amy hit the helmet but missed the kid's head. They showed a shot of the kid screaming but unhurt with a bullet hole in the visor in this episode.

Yeah, I don't know if Amy was a crack shot to begin with, but she seemed to be firing blindly/wildly at the spaceman, so it's not surprising that she missed.

Lot of focus on how weird the Nixon impersonation was but the actor was really effective imo.

He was great, and I really liked the "record everything" nod to the Nixon tapes.

Yeah, apparently the Doctor didn't tell him that Nixon could stop after the moon landing broadcast.

Liked Whovian-Nixon, found it funny how smiley and not-awkward he was. Like, maybe HE would have been better than irl Nixon.

OTM. There was a whole 'imagine if Nixon was not a complete shit' thing going on which fits with the slight distortions of history theme going on atm.

Also, having watched ep 1 again, why were people complaining about River shooting the Doctor's hat off from in front? She was definitely behind him.

Surprised how THRILLED I was when the little girl suddenly started regenerating.

that was before the doctor put the message in the apollo broadcast. even though it was after the apollo mission. "wibbly wobbly", as aldo said.

Grrr, this is such giant bullshit if they don't specifically set up that he's changing history as per Christmas Carol. I like my time travel to pick some rules and stick to them.

OTM. There was a whole 'imagine if Nixon was not a complete shit' thing going on which fits with the slight distortions of history theme going on atm.

note that the Doctor also sets up Nixon to become a paranoid nutbar who assumes everything is secretly out to get him, in their last scene, too

Also, having watched ep 1 again, why were people complaining about River shooting the Doctor's hat off from in front? She was definitely behind him.

nope. Let's say that the schoolbus (why are they catching a schoolbus as tourists, too?) is headed north.

Rory and Amy get off on the east side of the bus.
Doctor is revealed as bus leaves, on western side of road.
Rory and Amy cross road, east->west.
Doctor gets off car, greets them, is facing west->east with the desert behind him.
Hat flies off his head, west->east.
Cut to River, standing with road extending behind her.

There is no road behind the Doctor in the previous shot, or any of the previous shots in that direction, so she can ONLY be standing on the eastern side of the road, facing (and firing) east->west.

ok then... hard to argue with that

the misdirect on Amy's nanomonologue is annoyingly bullshit - her life couldn't have been "so boring" before Rory metaphorically "fell out of the sky" because they have known each other since they were small

(also we have not seen anything that made it not boring since they started dating that is down to Rory himself, rather than Amy's impulsiveness, but we have only seen hints of their Leadworth life)

lolled at the script that kept making Nixon say "people".

And next week, about 4 yrs too late for Memeland but even so, PIRATES!

rewatching ep 1, and re amy's pregnancy: "i wasn't going to mention it but you've put on a few pounds..." - future Doctor.

And next week [...spoiler content]

ARGH

Sorry, it was on the "NEXT WEEK" thing at the end. Are those off limits in this thread too?

most people probably don't think so, quietly, to themselves, but no-one disagreed with me upthread iirc

(I change the channel or hit the spacebar or run out of the office as soon as they come on)

Grrr, this is such giant bullshit if they don't specifically set up that he's changing history as per Christmas Carol. I like my time travel to pick some rules and stick to them.

it occurred to me that due to the prospect of people's brains failing after remembering the silence so much they may have edited out the silent from the moon landing footage - so amy would never have seen it, nor rory nor...tho maybe centurion rory remembered it wherever he actually is in 1969 (still guarding the pandorica in london?) until he was turned back into regular rory.

centurion rory doesn't exist anymore though right? It was a different universe that was destroyed in the second big bang. which is why he doesn't quite remember it.

????

the whole point of using the moon landing footage is that every subsequent generation of humans will also see the moon landing footage, particularly because humans are going to spread out into space meaning this piece of historical media will still be watched FOREVER, a handful of times, by EVERYONE. (except um people with no or limited access to audiovisual media for whom this piece of footage is not top priority)

editing out the footage would kind of um obviate that. but really who's going to watch the moon landings footage enough to damage their brains? except people looking for evidence that the moon landings were faked and, well.

that was an xpost obv

and i meant 'editing out the silent from the footage' in that second para

lol the thing I love about the way Moffatt writes is the way you can effortlessly extrapolate off of his stories into weird, unexpected directions, like this: editing out the footage would kind of um obviate that. but really who's going to watch the moon landings footage enough to damage their brains? except people looking for evidence that the moon landings were faked and, well.

i thought the idea was more that just being reminded about the silence in general enough times would lead to brains frazzling, not specifically repeated views of the same footage (tho this would not have remained anyway? so edit out or wait for it to erode? argh)

dude in the home's brain frazzles because there are a grillion silents living right under his nose, so he is constantly seeing them and then having his brain wiped.

everyone else sees the silents pretty regularly and gets their brains wiped each time and lives with it okay - a couple more sightings and wipings, courtesy of the moon landings footage, isn't going to make a huge difference.

srsly don't get where yr idea that it would 'erode' from the physical record is coming from?

idg what is bothering ppl about the time stuff in the episode. obviously it's not presented in some chronological finality order (the way things turned out after the events of the episode) but in a looser causative order. some of the complaints seem to be like asking why Marty McFly starts to disappear in Back to the Future if he ultimately got his parents back together. Why can't we assume that after the message was sent out Amy + Rory participated in the Silence killing like everyone else?

srsly don't get where yr idea that it would 'erode' from the physical record is coming from?

because the Doctor tells Canton "even information about these creatures erases itself over time" which i took to mean actual documentation

dude in the home's brain frazzles because there are a grillion silents living right under his nose he's not frazzled so much as he's missing a lot of time... he's had so many interactions that they've taken up a long chunk of his life equating to +/- 2 years, and he's unsure of the date b/c for him – subjectively – a lot less time has passed than actually.

because the Doctor tells Canton "even information about these creatures erases itself over time" which i took to mean actual documentation

fair point.

I took that to mean that The Doctor stores his holograms on VHS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFoVU0DMRSc

he's not frazzled so much as he's missing a lot of time...

except that the Doctor says "if your memory gets wiped enough your brain gets frazzled"

Say, Rory isn't an Auton anymore, right?

No.

River/Doctor timeline graphic (too big to post directly)
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2011/05/keo7f.jpg

^ mucho head-hurtiness ensues, but thanks!

The one thing I never fully bought is that the Doctor and River are living their lives exactly back-to-front; wouldn't it make more sense for them to encounter each other at random points in their lives, so if you mapped one of the chronologically the other would be bouncing all over the place?

Wasn't it only this season that they established the back-to-front bit, or had they mentioned it in the Weeping Angels/River two-parter? Because the "checking our diaries to see where we are in our respective timelines" bit is an overly complicated solution if their intersections are that orderly.

well not necessarily, they're trying to figure out exactly which parts they'd gotten up to

I was thinking River was in the suit but surely she would have remembered that whole setting and wouldn't have been as shocked as Amy and Rory, so now I don't know who it was.

But you don't need to flip through a book and ask "have we done this yet, have we done that" if one of you is living the book left to right and the other is living it right to left. You only need to flip to the next page, in the correct direction.

I am pretty sure they are both writing left to right, unless Gallifreyan is a right to left language

I watched the second episode again as I was getting a bit confused. To the point where I may have to watch the entire last series again to make sure I understand the references in this series. Now, is that a clever ploy by the BBC DVD department to shift more copies, or is Moffat and co. just really weaving an intricate story? Call me cynical but I hope I'm not being played.

I'm also struggling with this whole pregnancy storyline, it's girly nonsense, I don't want my assistants going all soap opera, their job is to get lost, find a problem, meet a scary monster, scream for the doctor e.t.c. If this isn't part of a wider story arc involving kick ass adventure and mind boggling timey wimey stuff then I am going to be seriouly pissed off. It better not be a Time Lord love child. If I wanted guff like that I'd watch Eastenders.

That is all.

Anyway Rose and Martha are the ones who are totally trying to have Time Babies, likely successfully in Rose's case.

Front to back / back to front - you know what I mean! River shouldn't ever have to ask "have we done that thing yet," because if she remembers it, he hasn't done it. If their timelines are actually reversed.

But you don't need to flip through a book and ask "have we done this yet, have we done that" if one of you is living the book left to right and the other is living it right to left

I was thinking that

then I got to feeling gently sad about what she said about "one day I'll meet him and he won't recognise me at all and it'll be the death of me", and what if they aren't actually reversed but she really believed that

(this post is either stating the obvious or reminding people of things they don't want to be reminded of until they get revisited by the series, so, apologies either way I guess)

xxpost- which is why I hate all that "Rose and the Doctor get it on in a parallel universe" nonsense. Dr Who never has and never should be about romance. Jesus it makes me mad. One of the best things about the old school, I'm thinking Pertwee/Baker era is precisely that he is sexless. When you are a time lord with the ability to travel through space and time, getting your rocks off goes quite low down in your list of priorities. I hate it the most because it is playing for an audience who otherwise wouldn't watch (lets get the mums involved type schtick) I know I look like a purist, but some things work and shouldn't be changed. Again I say, if I wanted that type of slushy programme, I'd watch it. Don't try and make Dr Who sexy!