green_amber | And the real thing...

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2006,
dr who

And the real thing...

So OK, I've re watched Dr Who properly (in case you think I lead a very sad life, well, you're right, but I've also made another fabulous Nigel Slater curry with the left over curry leaves and coconut milk, tidied up, bought a new smartphone *finally*, dragged Andy round clothes shops til his head exploded, and caught up on Green Wing, and so ...)

Well I liked it a lot better when I watched it properly - so much vital plot hole filla that goes whoosh! past you if you don't watch out but it's still a game of two halves.. so in the style of

ninebelow:

Versaille, clockwork things under beds with scary masks, Sophie Myles's eyes and clothes, horses jumping through mirrors, "secrets" hinted at during mind melds -- GOOD!!!

The Doctor abandoning Mickey and Rose, the Doctor falling in love at first sight (unless you take the dodgy child-love/Time Traveller's Wife interpetration), suddent ability to do two way mind melds, spaceships run by human hearts, the Doctor's failure to do the obvious thing and take the Tardis to visit M de P between when he last sees her, and her death -- BAD!!

Well if I was Rose, after two weeks involving an old flame, a new flame, and my own old flame being invited aboard as gooseberry, I think I'd consider myself well and truely dumped. I actually think the logical course for Rose would be to run blubbing home to Mum for a bit, leaving the Doctor to have one of these heart-to-heart two-handers with Mickey about 'ow much they love the ol' ball and chain, darn the pub, just like Phil and Grant in Eastenders. (Oh that alone would justify the Estuary accent bit.)

So this week's theory is: Rose eventually abandons Doctor but Mickey annoys her by choosing to stay (he's enjoying himself and it's not like he's anything but a sloppy seconds shag for Rose).
Doctor blubs in pint glass with his Lonely Angelness and decides to go back in Tardis to change history so Time War never starts and Time Lords get revived.
Unfortunately so do daleks.
Mickey gets killed by a Dalek.
Rose tells the Doctor she hates him even more.
Doctor does something (not sure what - save her mum?) to win her back - and together they risk All Time (cue scaley winged things ) by changing time back again so he is returnd to Planet Lonely.
Doctor grows up a bit cos you can only be Jarvis Cocker for so long when you're 900 years old and resolves to shag no one under at least 800 yrs old.
Roll on next series

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this predicated on the notion that rose is a co-depedent cry baby who'll run back to mum when her co-dependee gets frisky. I see her more as the "you can shag who you like mate, I want to see the next galaxy" type.

well the mum stuff was dressage - I see her leaving and intending to move on to something else for sure, not just back to Mickey. I can't see her wanting to be dependent in any sense on someone who treated her as non equal even if he was a Time Lord and that's kinda what he's doing - treating her as a sort of fun pet, scratch her under the chin one day, abandon her for the weekend the next. She's NOT an independent partner in this enterprise - he owns the car :-)

"Versaille, clockwork things under beds with scary masks, Sophie Myles's eyes and clothes, horses jumping through mirrors, "secrets" hinted at during mind melds -- GOOD!!!"

I'd agree with the goodness of all these things.

"The Doctor abandoning Mickey and Rose, the Doctor falling in love at first sight (unless you take the dodgy child-love/Time Traveller's Wife interpetration)"

I've been waiting for the Doctor to fall in love for decades. And it was right that they made him fall for one of the great courtesans of history. We would not expect any less.

"suddent ability to do two way mind melds"

Yes, an interesting new ability. Now that it is canonical, I wonder what they'll do with it?

"spaceships run by human hearts, the Doctor's failure to do the obvious thing and take the Tardis to visit M de P between when he last sees her, and her death -- BAD!!"

Add to your bad list: clockwork androids (why? WHY?); elaborate time portals that make no sense for androids with built-in teleport; a ship with working warp drives capable of time travel to specific times and places, but which can't go home.

"Well if I was Rose, after two weeks involving an old flame, a new flame, and my own old flame being invited aboard as gooseberry, I think I'd consider myself well and truely dumped. I actually think the logical course for Rose would be to run blubbing home to Mum for a bit, leaving the Doctor to have one of these heart-to-heart two-handers with Mickey about 'ow much they love the ol' ball and chain, darn the pub, just like Phil and Grant in Eastenders. (Oh that alone would justify the Estuary accent bit.)"

It may yet happen. I seem to be the only person in the universe who likes Mickey. A rather tragic figure, really. A sweet boy to whom very little good comes.

I suspect he's going to die, though.

a ship with working warp drives capable of time travel to specific times and places, but which can't go home.

I'm sure it _could_ go home if it wasn't piloted by insane androids with a pre-revolutionary France fixation.

Clockwork androids and cyborg spaceships = doubleplusgood.

yeh. I love all the iconage in this ep and I think it would have been better done as wholly surreal - maybe mad android with the ability to warp reality - than even slightly trying to make sense.

Ditto. I mean I know that "future clockwork" as a literal idea is stupid, but in this case I thought the surreal edge was a good thing - it worked in context. Not only as an excuse for the tick-tock warning noise, but because I think the use of clockwork is more suggestive of "meaninglessly following a programme with no intelligence" than a 50th century computer would be, and fitted with the idea that the androids were essentially not actually insane, but following a very limited logic which resulted in decisions which look insane *to* *us*.

yeh and also it gave us the truely terrible "winding you up" pun which I actually managed to miss first time !

I like M too, but I DO suspect he's going to die too.

yeh, the teleport is the worst plot hole of all - the Doctor does bark out "short range teleport" only - but WHY?? I don't think the story needed their teleport function (it's just a sense of wonder one shot deal, really) and would have made slightly more sense without.

And, on 2nd viewing, where DID the horse come from???

my, we really are out in the open sea of fandom, the shore of normal viewage having slipped 'neath the horizon leagues ago. but whilst we are here...

there is a "door" to the garden, which he murmurs "so this is where you came from" to the horse as he goes through it.

he also shouts an excuse (which escapes me) as to why he can't just tardis back to the crisis point.

Biggest plotpoint for me is the abandonage. If he isn't at least called on it, even merely to excuse himself with an "i knew i would find a way back", then we have a glaring moral inconsistency in the charcter, and that is the kind of consitency i care far more about than plot. (and could get all fan-ny about, pun intended)

If memory serves, he's abandoned at least one character to certain death per episode so far. Now this is not a likeable Doctor (almost certainly by design) so some some-uppance is due. While I like a moral arc as much as the next person, I want them to just get on with it; problems begin when you abandon the Doctor's moral core for too long. If the Doctor is dislikeable, the show becomes dislikeable.

Dislikeable? Is that a word? Maybe I mean "unlikeable".

But most people don't seem to think he's unlikeable; he is instead *perplexing* because says/emotes all the right things to the People He Cares about, then does all the wrong things. as I keep thinking, it reminds me terribly of certain geek co-dependent relationships..

so in summary to the above, yes, i don't normally fuss about plotholes (I was indulging myself cos I do have that 5% ADD thing:) but I DO fuss about character-holes and that's what we're building up an interesting stockpile of..

The excuse for not tardissing (love the verbing, by the way) was something along the lines of, "If we cross our timeline we become part of events." Like the reason he gave Rose for not using the Tardis to stop the Daleks in "Bad Wolf", I think. Which makes almost no sense, but kind of does if you don't think too hard about it. Or if you think very hard, maybe.

Of course, I have no doubt that there are numerous times in the program's (and the Doctor's) past that he has done things that violate that stricture. But (to try to fit all this into the logic of the program) perhaps he's become more cautious since 'Father's Day'.

It pisses me off cos (a) it's a total band aid on the plot but (b) mainly, it also stops the Doctor doimg almost anything. If he can't even go *past* his own tracks (without, note, changing history ) without releasing Bad Scaley Things on the universe, then can he now do ANYTHING, in theory, between 2006 and 5106??

I think the block on crossing his own timeline has always been canon to a degree and for good reason. Of course every time travel show is fundamentally flawed due to the number of paradoxes in the concept but crossing the timeline is a real killer. Essentially if you screw up, you could just go back and try again ... and again ... until you get it right. (The results of this were addressed rather well in a Star Trek Voyager episode, surprisingly: the "Year of Hell" two parter).

I think Dr Who has always avoided elaborating on this rule (as do most other shows) as otherwise you get the problem you've described. They tend
to adopt a "flexible" interpretation whilst having a canon which stops the dramatic tension being killed by second chances.

I think a reasonable interpretation is that being 10 ft from yourself is bad but being 10,000 miles from yourself is OK. Which implies that crossing the timeline isn't black and white but a continuum (inverse square law perhaps?). As you get closer to yourself, the risk of creating a paradox increases - along with the risk of the clean-up dragons from "Father's Day" showing up; this isn't unreasonable. Butterflies wings etc. And of course in many time travel films the guidance to the traveller is that it's OK to go back as long as you don't shoot your father, meet yourself etc...

I think the argument in this case was that once the Doctor had gone to Versailles and watched the hearse carriage AND received the letter from Ronette, where she hadn't met him in the intervening six years, he couldn't go back and meet her again (paradox ensues).

Yes that;sa good explanation - god I'm convinced!

I'm sure I once read an sf story which was more or less to the effect that as time travel creates paradoxes , it can only actually exist if we never get to know it does. as soon as we know, it's never existed!

I didn't catch the horse / garden line at the time - thanks for explaining that one !

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And the real thing...

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