Tick Tock Goes The Clock...

[clocketpatch]

So, the final episode. I saw a screencap from it that made me scratch my head a fair bit (if you've seen it, you'll know of what I'm speaking immediately, if you haven't they're pretty easy to find on Google... spoilers goes without saying).

Anyway, it was very WHAT, butbutbut WHAT?!!?

Now there is a leaked quote to add to the mayhem:

Crowds lined the mall today as Holy Roman Emperor, Winston Churchill returned to the Buckingham Senate on his personal Mammoth.

^That's being read off on a news broadcast at some point during the episode apparently

So, um, I'm highly confused. All I know is that this finale has pre-emptively broken my brain, because no matter what else happens, WINSTON CHURCHILL RIDING A MAMMOTH whaaaaaaaaaaattt?!?!? And weren't there dinosaurs in the trailer as well? Time has got itself seriously, seriously twisted.

[aquabluejay]

Perhaps someone is/has been mucking about with time again?

[clocketpatch]

WHAT DID I JUST WATCH?!

Doctor WHO! Doctor WHO! DOCTOR WHO!!!

*dies laughing*

*regenerates*

*dies laughing again*

This time it was a fixed point, but luckily I had a nice tesselector suit to take the blow

*and laughs again*

Really, I think I was just laughing through all the big emotional scenes because that was just too ridiculous. Especially the skulls and the Indiana Jones moment.

I did enjoy mashed-time!London though. I want fic set in that reality because it looks fun.

[Maggadin]

Is it just me or is that relationship very unhealthy?

[clocketpatch]

Noting that there was one moment that made me do the opposite of laughing:


"Tell him everything's on me except the money and the driving."

That made me come very close to crying. The Brigadier always helped the Doctor when he needed it most.

[jjpor]

I liked it, to be honest. Not as good as The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, perhaps, but about ten times better than A Good Man Goes To War. I was worried about the way this series was going at about the halfway mark, but it seems to have found its feet again in the home stretch. I guess this one was a bit like Let's Kill Hitler - more amusing/entertaining than an actual classic or anything *and a bit more River-centric than I'd personally like*, but it did tie up the arc fairly neatly *while leaving a couple of things dangling - notably why the TARDIS exploded in S5 (although we can perhaps presume that was another attempt by the Silence to kill the Doctor...perhaps), and what all this malarkey about the question actually means, or why indeed the Silence want the Doctor dead, exactly. And the significance of the Evil!TARDIS from The Lodger, for that matter. Given that Moffat suggests S7 is going to be all standalone stories, I suggest that may be something that gets picked up in the 50th anniversary run, which I am increasingly coming to think is going to be where Matt Smith bows out and we get our Twelve. I'll personally be sad to see him go, but it'd be a good moment to do so, and he'll have had a pretty decent innings by then, really, probably as long as Tennant's.

I'll be quite honest about something, though - I really do hope River stays in her prison cell as much as possible. Whether you like her as a character or not, I think she'd get a bit overpowering if she was the Doctor's companion week in, week out. As far as I'm aware, that's not going to happen, and I hope we'll see a bit more of the Ponds even if they're not regulars any more, because I would definitely considering losing them to gain River as a bit of a step back. A lot of a step back, actually.

Thoughts: Ah, so that's how Time Lord weddings go? Explains why Romana and Four never actually got hitched - I can't imagine her parents/House/Loom/whatever actually consenting to it, and in any case the idea that she was their property to give away (there I go again, always putting the least flattering/most dystopian spin on anything relating to Gallifreyan social mores) would not sit well, I fancy. I think I'd have to agree with Maggadin on the unhealthy relationship thing - I mean, she was willing to destroy the universe, over his protests, because she couldn't bear to lose him? At least this wasn't presented as a positive romantic-love-conquers-all kind of thing, though - Eleven was horrified and told her so, and one kind of suspects that the marriage thing was a fairly manipulative tactic to get her to do what he wanted.

How heroic was Rory, sorry Captain Williams? He and Amy have been magnificent this series - almost certainly the best NuWho companions so far, imho. See my comments above about steps back.

I liked that Amy's violent action against the Silence wasn't glossed over as something totally positive or without consequences - big contrast between her and River's blithe willingness to use lethal force (on everybody who isn't the Doctor, anyway), whatever she might say (although to be fair, the Silence did make River that way).

Thought the historical mash-up timeline was pretty good, caveats about the Doctor palling around with Churchill etc aside. Roman waiting at the traffic lights in his chariot amused me. Not as much as Charles Dickens on BBC Breakfast, though: "So, is the next Xmas Special going to be as good as the last one?" "Yes! It's all about ghosts..." And his fake little laugh at the idiocy of the presenters... ;D

And the Brig...! That was a "I've got something in my eye" moment, for sure. I was pleased to see Nicholas Courtney's passing acknowledged in such a classy way, and that it actually worked in the context of the story too. Eleven looked floored by the news, as well he might. Which brings me to...

Matt Smith - fantastic actor. Goes from strength to strength.

So yes, a good way to round off S6, I think - tied up all of the most important strands and in a fairly elegant way. Finally, honourable mentions have to go to the little Indiana Jones reference and the use made of the robot duplicate driven by little people from Let's Kill Hitler - didn't see that one coming, but it didn't feel like a cheat either. Chekov's Gun, my friends - Chekov's Gun.

And a couple of plot bunnies out of it too - may change the Eleven/Romana fic I write for the ficathon, Clocket, but I'm sure the original I was talking about will see the light of day sooner or later...*

[johne]

Oct 2, 2011 19:21:50 GMT jjpor said:

I think I'd have to agree with Maggadin on the unhealthy relationship thing - I mean, she was willing to destroy the universe, over his protests, because she couldn't bear to lose him?

]For those who see a jab at RTD in every Moffat script, I think the target here would be Rose and her little games with the dimension cannon.

Given that the other party to River's marriage was really the Tesselecta, does that mean any of its crew could show up on River's doorstep demanding conjugal rights? Though I suspect they wouldn't last long if they tried. Or perhaps she'd constantly be summoning the entire robot to perform its spousal duties: Taking out the bins, removing spiders from the bathtub, and so forth.

As for my thoughts on the whole season, it does feel very like two disjoint streams. One with the whole Doctor-dies plotline, and a collection of standalones set mostly at night. It doesn't quite seem to flow as well as the previous one.

I can think of two plausible reasons for the TARDIS blowing up last year:
i) Subconscious command implanted in River. She was the one flying it at the time.
ii) The attic in Amy's house in Leadworth is a time engine, similar to the one in The Lodger, but deliberately designed as a TARDIS-killer. As many people have pointed out, there is a staircase leading up from the top floor of her house that doesn't seem to go anywhere. And given what effect the prototype in The Lodger had on the TARDIS...

Presumably, when they planned to destroy the TARDIS, they didn't count on it taking the whole Universe with it. But at least they didn't make the same mistake twice; instead, they came up with new and exciting mistakes ;D

And I'd still like to know:

• What the Silence's capabilities really are. On the one hand they need humans in 1969 to build them a spacesuit; on the other, they have time travel, dimensional tech, weapons capable of taking down a Time Lord, and the ability to make fixed points in time (presumably very strong glue is involved).
  
• Whether their remark to Amy "You will bring the silence" just refers to River being her daughter, or whether there's more to it.
  
• Why aren't there any ducks in the duck pond?
  

[

[aquabluejay]

I loved quite a bit about this episode!


OK, just saying, I totally called what the question was... I mean honestly? I think we all did.

I was sad about the Brig, but I'm also really glad that they finally acknowledged his death in cannon.

I laughed my ass off at the establishing shots of the jumbled history, especially the hot air balloon cars... XD

[IMForeman]

*I liked it! But I also felt slightly underwhelmed somehow.

I think I expected slightly more brain-breakingness and timey wimey twists, y'know the kind we've come to expect from Moffat. But either all the surprising stuff had already happened - River revealed as Amy and Rory's daughter and, er, also their childhood friend; Amy and Rory leaving the TARDIS - or was not particularly unexpected - River is the one to kill the Doctor, and also to marry him. About the only thing unexpected was the stuff involving the Tesalecta (did anyone predict that?).

And I'm not actually complaining about that, mind. I was getting emotional whiplash from all the twists earlier in the series, and it was actually nice to have something relatively straightforward for a change. But it was still lacking...something, I thought. Maybe it was the lack of any real resolution involving Amy, Rory, and/or River. I still find it quite preferable to the beat-you-over-the-head-with-emotion finales that RTD favored, but I would have liked a bit more closure. Then again, we do know that Amy and Rory are returning in some capacity next series, and I wouldn't be surprised if River was coming back too, so maybe we won't be getting closure for a while.

The thing is, I don't really want River back next series, and I say that as a huge fan of hers. I would love to see her pop up every so often, but her big arc is over now, and if she keeps coming back, I could see myself starting to get sick of her. A spin-off, though, I could go for that. Maybe a Pond family sitcom.

Speaking of...I really loved seeing River dropping in on her parents and enjoying a glass of wine with Amy. One of the reasons I enjoy River being Amy and Rory's daughter, despite the somewhat botched job it ended up as, is that it gives River a connection to characters outside the Doctor. I actually find her relationship with Amy (and to a lesser extent, Rory - but lesser only because we've seen less of it) much more interesting than her relationship with the Doctor, and it's a shame that it was somewhat botched after LKH.

Also loved Amy with the machine gun, and killing Madame Kovarian. Not that violence is cool, obviously. *cough*

And of course, I can't not mention the Brig. I'd read ahead of time about the mention, but it was very touching.

What are people's general thoughts about S6, now that it's over? Well, okay, there's still the Christmas special, but that doesn't really count...me, I think it was a little overambitious, and the characters suffered a bit from the over-reliance on plot, but I count it as a very good try with occasional moments of brilliance.*

[jjpor]

*I do like the idea, johne, of Moffat continually dissing RTD in his stories even if I don't necessarily believe it's true. It should be true! Without getting into a debate about Moffat's abilities or lack of them as a writer, I would merely observe that, unlike old Rusty, when he writes arguably-dysfunctional relationships between characters he at least gives the impression of doing so intentionally.

Yeah, no way was that marriage legal in any way shape or form. I'm sure on Gallifrey you had to fill in all kinds of paperwork and get your genes tested and stuff before you even got on the hundred-year waiting list. ;D And Eleven knew it! He was just stringing River along, the headgear-fixated barsteward that he is... Or so I like to believe, anyway.

I even bet the Doctor who shows up to bust her out of the Stormcage every night (really?!) is the Ganger Doctor from The Almost People, saved by Eleven at the last minute so that he could take care of that stuff for him while he...did whatever he's doing now he's decided to keep a low profile (and we'll see how long that lasts...)

I like the idea of Amy's gaff in Leadworth as a TARDIS-killer, johne - even if it isn't true, it ought to be. Mind you, I'm still fond of the idea of House from The Doctor's Wife being some Dalek-built anti-TARDIS weapon that never got disarmed after the Time War. Either that, or River remains a Manchurian Candidate forever subconsciously trying to bump off the Doctor - that works for me too. ;D

Seriously, given how lacking in foresight and full of the potential for accidental universal destruction the Silents'/Silence's plans seem to be, I'm wondering if they didn't have a bit of technical assistance from a certain Monsieur Le Maitre/Herr von Meister/Professor Maestro/Mr Insert Other Painfully Obvious Pseudonym, Esq...

I'd just like the fact that the Evil!TARDIS out of the Lodger was indeed an Evil!TARDIS and the same Evil!TARDIS as the Silents were knocking around in in Day of the Moon to be acknowledged. It'd mean a lot to me.

IMF, I was completely unspoiled for the Brig moment, and it hit me like a great big...thing between the eyes. My facial expression was something like Eleven's. As I said, very welcome, very classy and extremely touching.

S6 overall? Not as good as S5, if I'm brutally honest, and could have done with a more killer finale, possibly, but honestly I'll take Moffat and Eleven on a bad day over the excesses of the later RTD era. None of it touches pre-1989 Who's high notes, of course. Still liking the boy Smith and his performance an awful lot and thought Gillan and Darvill were great. Gillan in particular you can see growing as an actress before your eyes, which is one in the eye for her critics from last year, I think. I'd go along with johne's observation that the difference between Moffat-scripted and non-Moffat-scripted stories remains stark, even if some of the latter have been the really strong ones this season. It's an unevenness of tone rather than a clear quality divide, and it does give a bit of a disjointed feel I guess.

All in all, my problems with it remain quibbles rather than deal-breakers. We have yet to see anything as mind-bogglingly awful as Journey's End or End of Time - if we ever did, I'd obviously have to revise my assessment of the Moffat regime. *

[librarylover]

** I think it was a good episode, but I know what IMF means about it feeling a bit underwhelming somehow. The things I found really surprising were:
1. The Doctor and River actually, sorta got married, if marriage to a shape-changing robot with the guy it is mimicking miniaturized inside counts in any legal jurisdiction. I expected the title to be a red herring.
2. They left it open for River to show up again. I really expected this to be her swan song. I agree that an occasional appearance could be fun, but I wouldn't want her in it too much. I liked it better when she was more mysterious. **

[kirkg]

How does one make River "more mysterious" after so much has been revealed?

And just how does she appear from time to time if we've seen her arrive, kill the doctor, save the doctor, kill the doctor, and stop time? Why can't/didn't she save herself with Ten (no, I haven't seen it yet either).

I still need a correct list of episodes from season six for me to watch in the correct order, you know...