So since the current season, with varying success, seems to be sticking to the plot-of-the-week format, and not returning to the silence arc for now, I have had to abandon my theory that the stuff I couldn't figure out before was deliberately left open in order to be answered this year. Two things stick out as utterly unexplained to me. Did I miss the explanation? Do you think it's still coming? Or are these real plotholes? Spoilers pertain to nuWho seasons 5 and 6 only. [?=Two Questions]One, who made the TARDIS explode at the end of S5, and why? (The Silents have no stated interest in destroying the universe, and the menacing voice refers to their fall; besides, they shouldn't be able to do it in the first place.) Two, why did the Silents put little girl River into an astronaut suit, and then again for killing the Doctor? (The suit does something important, and River is afraid of it when she calls Nixon, but grown middle regeneration River in Let's Kill Hitler doesn't need it to (be about to) fulfill her mission.)[/?]
It was like that last season too. The show, for better or worse, has not clung tightly to very many arcs. The Doctor not re-examining his approach after River told him that it was why the universe hated him is the example that comes to mind immediately. Then it gets bookended in the true season finale with River showing him that the universe loves him after all. Very nice symmetry, but where was the payoff in between? [?=Don't know why this is a spoiler, but okay]The entirety of last season went by without ANY investigation into what could make the TARDIS misdirect and go kerblooie, never mind asking the question of whether it might try again. Rather frustrating for me. The implication now is that the Silence organization was behind it, but if my car were rigged to explode, I wouldn't shrug and get on with my life and expect random circumstances to hand me the answer on a non-exploding platter. The astronaut suit was presumably for life support or carrying her around or something as a child. As an adult, it was for purposes of putting on a show -- the Silence does have a sense of style. Also to let her hide in the lake until the Doctor showed up. Remember, that's a fixed point in spacetime -- if they killed the Doctor at some random spot, he might be able to wriggle out of it somehow. How they expected to lure him there, I don't know.[/?]
I'm very interested to see where Moffat is going with this whole idea that perhaps the Doctor has gotten too big, or too menacing to other races. Seems like something is building, that perhaps his sins are about to catch up to him. On a personal note, tonight we'll watch the final episode with Amy and Rory and I'm unsure of how it will go.... A year and a half ago i tried getting 7 yo Littleflow into Who, after a two or three episodes of Ten, she wasn't really buying it. Then she watched The Eleventh Hour. Eight year old female protagonist that spends her whole life waiting on her imaginary friend, only to have him come back? This was her reaction... She was hooked to say the least. She's been a trooper too, saddling up for anything scary that the Doctor has to offer. So we've been preparing her, Amy and Rory will be leaving, and we don't know if it will be happy or not.
Mofat is too clever for his own good. I have not much enjoyed the tenure of Matt Smith, but through no fault of Smith himself. He is a capable actor. The fact is that Moffat Who has been laced with messy stories that have sought to bamboozle the viewer but have neve rbeen warpped up in their entirelty. It has takeen me until this latest series to havd me warm up to the 11th Doctor, which is the longest for me. Ultimately, this season has been better than the others, but Dinorsaurs on a Spaceship was woeful, and Angels Take Manhattan, while better, was ultimately a very poor send off for the Ponds (and this is coming from a person who hated the Amy character).
No thread of its own so... While I enjoyed the Pond send-off episode in general, I did struggle slightly with the ending. As far as I could see Amy and Rory got to live out the rest of their days being Angel food in an apartment block in New York? Or were we meant to assume they escaped from the Angels and just had to live back then? I didn't get it. Also, the Doctor can now never go back to New York between, what, 1925 and 2012? And if they escaped from the Angels why didn't they just get a message to the Doctor - not impossible, it has been done - and hitchhike out to new Jersey to wait for a lift?
'I didn't get it' has been my reaction to most Moffat Who. The series is getting so complicated that it's no real fun to watch anymore. He's a great writer (made COUPLING after all ) and 'Blink' was certainly one of the best episodes ever, but right now I'm very confused. Also, 'Blink' couldn't be topped. They should have let the Angels rest in peace instead of going bigger and bigger. The last one sucked hard, this one wasn't so aces either.
The Angels eat a specific temporal energy...the paradox backlash of a life that was supposed to be lived until 2090 or so that is suddenly altered when an Angel touches you and sends you to a past time period. They aren't interested in killing in the traditional sense...they don't have to. They send you away to die to death. Actually, the real unexplained Angel anomaly is why the hell they were breaking necks and killing folks on the Byzantium.
That whole Angels-in-Manhattan thing got wiped out by the time energy (or whatever) from the paradox of Amy and Rory killing themselves. So all that was left, presumably, was just that one Angel who squirted free of the space-time collapse, who somehow sensed that the graveyard at that time was a good place to wait for them to come along for REVEEEENGE. Presumably they lived out their lives in a reasonably normal, Angel-free fashion. In fact, Amy's afterword in the book implied as much. I've always assumed that they had a very specific goal in mind -- releasing themselves back into the universe -- and didn't want any complications, such as time-zonked soldiers sending a warning to the universe thirty years beforehand. There would be time to, ahem, resume standard relations with other beings after the job was done.
Well, I suppose that makes *some* sense. Maybe I'll just think of it like that. Still think Amy and Rory could have taken themselves to Atlantic City and got picked up there.
I imagine when the Angels eat their proper futures if they were to be brought back to their proper time that it would be a massive paradox that would probably lead to a "Father's Day" like mess. As for the Doctor not being able to ever see them again...I suspect that is the usual Doctor lie....he just won't ever go see them again. Plus...he could just be wrong...he was about Rose.
THe problem with Moffat in seasons 5 & 6 is that he was trying to be too clever for his own good, which resulted in a mess of contrived plot points, some of which were ultimately left unanswered. I thought it was the weakest of all nuWho. I have found this season to me a marked improvement, even if the departure of the Ponds was a bit bullshitty. As for "silence will fall", this doesn't refer to the Silents, but is rather a reference to what would happen if the question of who the Doctor is was asked.
Saw this thread and read the first few posts. Figured it was about another Doctor Who topic and not specific episodes. But now that you've pointed it out, I see PGT tacked on something.
