Doctor Who (again) [SPOILERS]

[Archonic Energy]

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Holy Mother of Jimbob, Time Lords can change gender.

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that above all else in this episode has made me go

[Wolfman42666]

The problem with internet smiley's is that you can't be happy with a sad smile.

[factotum]

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OK, after that, who wants to see the Doctor's next regeneration be female, and ideally Suranne Jones?

[Archonic Energy]

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OK, after that, who wants to see the Doctor's next regeneration be female, and ideally Suranne Jones?

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"River Song"

[Kobold-Bard]

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"River Song"

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An incest joke? Really?

You really think Dr. Who are going to have the Dr. marry himself?

[Archonic Energy]

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An incest joke? Really?

You really think Dr. Who are going to have the Dr. marry himself?

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Amy flirted with herself in "time"
and, it's not technically incest...

the doctor knows his own name...
the doctor knows he can't interfere with his own timeline so he plays someone else...
the doctor may "say" they are married but that doesn't make it so...

[Jibar]

So that was fantastic. Like, really, fantastic. More of that.

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Okay, this series seems to have a lot of Not-Monsters. Like, set ups for other monsters that don't appear or are really similar.
Silence are Not-Weeping Angels.
Siren was Not-Empty Child
House was Not-Time Lord
And next week is Not-Sontarans.
What's up with that?

Also, I've been playing New Vegas a lot recently so as soon as House was introduced I hated him.

[Starscream]

Loved it.

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First of all: Written by Neil Gaiman. Squeee!

Second: The Doctor was awesome. Really funny, interesting and cool. I continue to like Matt Smith more and more as he makes more episodes. Hope he sticks around for a good long while.

Third: Amy and Rory were awesome. That whole "Hate/Die/Kill/AMY" thing was surprisingly dark and creepy for this show, but considering who wrote it I should expect a bit of the macabre. And Amy's "Did you wish really hard?" line had me in stitches.

Fourth: Liked the TARDIS chick. Didn't expect to. There isn't a lot you could do to meet fan expectations after almost 50 years of history, but they made a pretty good stab at it. How else could she be but completely mad?

Mr. Gaiman, please write more episodes of Doctor Who. I'll be your best friend!

[Eldan]

Know what I expected to happen?

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The TARDIS regenerating.

Into River Song.

I kept expecting it until the last second.

[Drolyt]

Excellent episode, easily best of the season so far. Only thing that disappointed me was that there were no Time Lords, and that this thing had apparently killed hundreds of them. I guess Time Lords are kinda helpless without their tech, but how did this thing lure so many of them without Gallifrey noticing? Ah well.

[Calemyr]

I was just catching up on the new season (still haven't gotten to see this weekend's episode, though). Watching the Christmas episode, however, the lyrics of the final carol started me thinking...

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When you're alone, silence is all around (or you know or you see or you'll be - it's different each line).

Beautiful song. Gorgeous. But does that have any meaning to the season, you think? The Silence are apparently a major element of the season, but another seems to be the Doctor's loneliness (a constant of the new series, really). He seems to be growing more and more enamored with River, and to some degree I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that she's all he really has. I just wonder if that song is foreshadowing, or just a lovely song performed by a lovely voice.

As for what I've read about the recent episode (I could never get along with River, I likes me spoilers too much):

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I think River is quite possibly the Doctor's Tardis, myself. It makes sense in an odd way, especially given their relationship, both emotional and temporal. River is going backwards along his timeline, back from the moment she became River. Of course there's also fact that the Doctor faces the same fate River does: eventually the time will come when he'll meet her and she won't even recognize him, while he'll know everything about her. That would be hard on a human like River, but it'd be harder still on the Doctor, I should think. I just envision the Doctor heading towards the same cataclysm that River is moving away from. Anyway, it's a thought.

[Fuzzie Fuzz]

THAT WAS SO COOL. One of my favorite episodes ever.

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The interactions between the Doctor and the TARDIS were spot on, the "wishing" and bunk beds lines were hilarious, Time Lords can change gender (!), etcetera, etcetera. Basically what everyone else said, but man, that was amazing.

[Drolyt]

I missed something, how do we know Time Lords can change gender?

[Szilard]

I missed something, how do we know Time Lords can change gender?

He mentioned his Time Lord buddy was a great guy, but occasionally a girl. I'm blanking on the exact quote though.

[Thufir]

The greatest flaw of that episode was that it was too short. Some things could perhaps have been developed slightly more. But only slightly.

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I was engaged throughout while everything was tense, then obviously the tension kind of went away once House was ousted, and I felt mildly dissatisfied for maybe 5 seconds and then OH MY GODDESS the ending.

I love this episode, and I'm pretty sure it will improve on repeat viewings.

Oh, and

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While of course River didn't turn up, as inevitably had to be considered a possibility given the episode title, "The only water in the forest is the river"?
Methinks we've just been given a cryptic hint.

[Leecros]

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I think River is quite possibly the Doctor's Tardis, myself. It makes sense in an odd way, especially given their relationship, both emotional and temporal. River is going backwards along his timeline, back from the moment she became River. Of course there's also fact that the Doctor faces the same fate River does: eventually the time will come when he'll meet her and she won't even recognize him, while he'll know everything about her. That would be hard on a human like River, but it'd be harder still on the Doctor, I should think. I just envision the Doctor heading towards the same cataclysm that River is moving away from. Anyway, it's a thought.

Somehow i think i'll be disappointed if that is the case.

Thinking about that theory there's two issues that i can think off just offhand right now that makes me not like that theory.

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River's interactions with The TARDIS up to this point is definitely not the interactions that i would expect from interacting with oneself. Yes, she seems to know more about how to control it than The Doctor, but if i recall she also refers to her several times as "IT" which is not something that i would think you would utilize to refer to yourself. I think she does refer to her as "Her" several times, but i do think i remember some It's in there. Of course she may just be a 'good'* actress in that regard.


That's also avoiding the glaring issue which in theory, she shouldn't be able to knowingly interact with her past(?) without causing....a lot of bad stuff to happen.

Of course that said and going back to the first episode of the season...we don't actually know what happened to 200 years older TARDIS. Dead-Future-Doctor wasn't seen with her. Although that may be a future plot point... I am curious.

*I use good relatively since i find her to actually not be a very good actress....although i do like the concept of the character. Her personality just seems so forced.

[SuperPanda]

I loved every moment of the episode, it was wonderful and creepy and had all the awesome which Curse of the Black Spot seemed to miss out on.

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Was it me alone who had a moment of "yay!" when they found 9's old control room and there were references back to the "Time Crash" children in need special (which was one of my favorite moments of Russel T. Davies' run just for pure joyful sillyness of the whole thing. Seeing that gives me some hope (not much) that sometime in the next few years there will be a multi-doctor episode like ones I've read about from Classic Who in which we see 9, 10, and 11 working together for something. Seriously though, as much as I loved Tennant's run, I'd be much happier to see 9 come back briefly to interact with 11 than I would to see 10 again.

I agree that interaction with the TARDIS was beautiful and that House was a creepy villain thing. I wouldn't be so sure that its gone since the control pannels were still glowing House-green instead of Tardis-turquoise at the end of the episode. The rift, and existance there of seems like it could potentially be a wonderful hook into something else later on.

Why the doctor said "I'm going to build a TARDIS." was I the only one thinking that would result in the Necro TARDIS somehow? That he'd use it and cast it adrift and it would fall into the hands of the Silent (or on the Lodger's house)?

[factotum]

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I think River is quite possibly the Doctor's Tardis, myself.

I don't see it, for one main reason:

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The TARDIS in human form we saw in last night's episode still had the memories of being spread over all of time and space, so she knew stuff that was going to happen later. River's memory is nothing like that--she doesn't know what will happen on her "future" interactions with the Doctor, only that they'll also be "past" interactions as far as he's concerned.

[bahamut19]

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Oh, and

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While of course River didn't turn up, as inevitably had to be considered a possibility given the episode title, "The only water in the forest is the river"?
Methinks we've just been given a cryptic hint.

When we first met River Song, it was a two-parter, the second episode of which was titled "Forest of the Dead" If I recall correctly, her consciousness is technically still alive in a computer program.

[Kato]

Well, I guess I'll have to agree with the general opinion... THAT WAS AWESOMESAUCE.

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So much stuff happening... The TARDIS was great. At the beginning I was slightly scared with bringing timelords back or something Gaiman might go too far and do something stupid but he really made the TARDIS very convincing. (Though, I wondered a little how the TARDIS translation still worked when she was offline or if everyone was speaking English all of a sudden) The actress did a great job, imo.

I really have very little to complain and I had to try hard... Rory was great overall and I hope we won't get 'Rory was useless' complains again. Okay, the little joke with 'the pretty one' was to be expected but it was still funny to me. And oh my god, was I... I don't know... heart broken(?) when Amy met the 2000 years old(er) Rory in that corridor. How much crap can you pile on one man? Poor boy. Well, I guess/hope that really was just an illusion and not some alternate Rory... *shudder*

Urgh, I could go on forever. I'm just in a great mood. I almost missed the line about changing genders but... well, thank you Mister Gaiman for making that clear. Bit much scientific munbo-jumbo but meh.

As for the cryptic hint... May really refer to Ms Song. Though I'd doubt it's the library again even if going back there would be a nice twist. Also there'd still be the 'water' part... Well, we'll see.

As for next week... they'll have a hard time keeping up, I guess.

Least I forget...

What's so unworkable about a hollow planet that jumps through hyperspace to engulf worlds and strip them of all their mineral resources? And the stuff with the time dams, their ever increasing energy requirements and the Captain's revenge plan was the sort of brilliant simplicity that only the very best writers can come up with.

Hm... well, I really shouldn't dwell on science in Who but a hollow mining planet brings along a lot of problems. Like it only being limited to planets with a rather specific size or the fact that planets in general only have minerals in rare places (at least where it's worth mining) but i guess with sufficiently highly developed technology you could solve that as well as the fact that it'd take multiple generations to mine a planet and the citizens are obviously too stupid to figure out what may the be cause of the 'changing lights in the sky' (did they ever mention something about the changing sun? I forgot)
The time dam... well, I think there was something that bugged me a lot about it when I first watched but I can't recall it anymore. Maybe I missed something back then. (Maybe it was her moving/breathing normally in there? Something like that) btw, maybe I got something wrong again but how did the queen fix the captain with the low level technology the planet seems to have? Argh, I'm overthinking.
No, it as a great episode if you don't try to take the captain serious and I guess just some stuff stuck badly to me. (Well, apart from the telepaths. I still think they were stupid and would have served a better purpose in another story)

[Thufir]

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When we first met River Song, it was a two-parter, the second episode of which was titled "Forest of the Dead" If I recall correctly, her consciousness is technically still alive in a computer program.

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Yeah, but the Doctor knows that already, he wouldn't need to be reminded of it.

@Kato:

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Of course old Rory was an illusion. Real Rory would never hate Amy.

[Eldan]

Not so sure about Rory.

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I don't really think the Tardis can create illusions. What it can do is mess with time. Isolating one room and accelerating it 2000 years ahead of th rest is something I can see happening. Creating fake doubles seems a strange power to have for a time machine, even a living supertech one.

[Kobold-Bard]

Not so sure about Rory.

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I don't really think the Tardis can create illusions. What it can do is mess with time. Isolating one room and accelerating it 2000 years ahead of th rest is something I can see happening. Creating fake doubles seems a strange power to have for a time machine, even a living supertech one.

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Technically it was only ~60 years, to make him old. The 2000 years he mentioned were as the centurion.

[Kato]

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Technically it was only ~60 years, to make him old. The 2000 years he mentioned were as the centurion.

Oh yeah, makes more sense. Guess I misinterpreted him there. It's still pretty bad.

[Tiki Snakes]

The tardis hasn't shown any ability to control time within itself, as far as I know.

But House has shown the ability to control peoples minds, previous to this.
As Rory said, "it's just messing with our minds!" or something like that.

Also, River Song isn't the Tardis simply because quite clearly the Tardis-in-a-body idea is Neil Gaimans, whereas they have clearly know the secret behind River Song since her re-appearence (which is to say, the next episode she was in since the original Library episode).

This alone is enough to make me certain. The many other good reasons are just frosting.

Also, I really think it's past time we had some timelords come back, I can only hope the threads teasing us about this are eventually going to deliver. I'll not believe it till long after it's happened, though.
Hey, we only saw the Corsair's arm, and his arm and a couple of internal organs are accounted for...Ah, wishful thinking.

[Tiger Duck]

the Tardis-in-a-body idea is Neil Gaimans

And yet I remember a Doctor Who comic featuring 10 that had the tardis taking the shape of Martha.

[Tiki Snakes]

And yet I remember a Doctor Who comic featuring 10 that had the tardis taking the shape of Martha.

Well, in the context of the episode and recent TV serieses, at least, then. Given that within the episode at least it was clear that the Tardis was claiming that it was the only period of time they would ever talk during, and that it hadn't ever been a person before?

[Selrahc]

Not so sure about Rory.

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I don't really think the Tardis can create illusions. What it can do is mess with time. Isolating one room and accelerating it 2000 years ahead of th rest is something I can see happening. Creating fake doubles seems a strange power to have for a time machine, even a living supertech one.

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Except that then there was a point where Amy's vision was impaired but not Rory's. Had to be an illusion.

[Eldan]

Oh, true. Didn't think of that.

[Heliomance]

My theory for next episode: Origin of the Autons.