Doctor Who thread II: "I should have a hat like that." [SPOILERS]

[Philistine]

{Scrubbed}

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The fractured history universe was awesome, if clearly drug induced...

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This is just a matter of personal curiosity, but why are drugs apparently so many people's default assumption here? As John Cleese famously said of writing for Monty Python, "You can't write good comedy when you're stoned, because when you're stoned you think everything is funny." The same principle applies to more serious material: if your state of mind is such that you think everything is awesome, you end up with crap like Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor or...

I suddenly find myself desirous of a specific, one-word name for Curly-specific spoilers. "Curlers," perhaps?

CURLERS AHOY! (S4, S4.5)

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... or planets that "form a perfect alignment" (which makes no sense and is never explained), or Master Race (which didn't even go anywhere, making it not only stupid but also an utter waste of time and VFX budget), or False Dilemma Target Practice, or an utterly pointless and contrived death & regeneration.

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Biggest complaint of the epsiode is Rory. Why does his memory get wiped? Rory, with full knowledge and awareness of what was going on, could have added such a wonderful layer of drama and development to the story. I could see him having a scene sitting in the pyramid with the Doctor and talking to him about why he should or shouldn't die and then having to give the same talk to Amy. Rory has this wonderful and frustrating potential to truely be the companion that the Doctor needs with him, the one who will keep him in check and tell him "no" when he's gone too far. I had hoped he'd finally become that after "The Girl Who Waited" but now they take all of development away form him.

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Why does Amy remember the aborted timeline at all?

When did that conversation happen? (Answer: it appears to be in a brand new timeline because Amy is coming off from the Finale while in the previously established timeline it should have been after The God Complex and before Closing Time, but the dialogue doesn't mesh with that). Unfortunately this answer means that many great episodes "The Doctor's wife, Girl who Waited, God Complex" "Almost people, Rebel Flesh" didn't happen in this timeline.

Curlers ahoy!

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It was established in the previous season that Amy remembers the events of multiple timelines - possibly due to the fact that she grew up in a house that had a giant crack in space-time in its walls. In fact, that was the key to the resolution of S5 (which also never happened in the New & Improved Official Timeline). Well... that, and some fun and creative usage of time travel (which had been sorely lacking under the previous regime). Rory, OTOH, can remember being The Last Centurion if he concentrates, but it's never established that he recalls anything else from S5 - like how he ended up as a Nestene Auton in the first place, for example. It may also be notable that Amy's recollection isn't perfect this time, either: she knows she's looking for "Rory," but doesn't recognize "Captain Williams" despite (presumably) quite a bit of contact. Anyway, it's timey-wimey. So maybe they'll both remember all of S6 come the premiere of S7, or maybe it'll only be the Doctor whose personal timeline includes all that. No way to know as yet - which seems like a pretty unsurprising problem for a time-travel show to have, come to think about it. Especially a time-travel show that actually takes advantage of time travel.

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If he was the tesselecta the whole time, why did he visible age, including hair growth? (Answer: he chose to so as not to alert the silent of the fracture universe who aren't part of this universe at all as to a plan to stop them in this universe which they wouldn't be able to do anything about since they are all in that universe.)

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I'll answer your question with more questions! First, was the Doctor the Tesselecta the whole time? Second, why does the Doctor ever visibly age?

In his personal timeline, S6 covers 200 years of his life - and that's before River manages to break Time itself, creating a pocket reality in which time literally cannot be measured (and could thus subjectively be anything from microns to epochs). So why didn't the Doctor visibly age between "God Complex" and "Closing Time"? Presumably, Time Lords age as much or as little as they choose, when they choose - making all these questions moot.

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If silence will fall when the question is asked, why did Dorian ask the question at the end of the episode? (answer: to get a giggle out of the audience with a pun that is almost 50 years and running. Either that or maybe he was just getting a"head" of himself).

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Asking the question, by itself, isn't enough. It's specifically the asking of the question in circumstances where the Doctor is compelled to answer - and answer truthfully! - that poses the problem, apparently because he can't for some as-yet unknown reason.