Re: the Doctor Who season finale!

[odditycollector]

Eeeee! Man, it is nice getting through the second half of one of those and still feeling *gleeful* rather than vaguely betrayed.

Oh, also, just noticed that the end there: it hinged on something very like the Tinkerbell solution that almost drove me from the franchise (I at least wrote half a fic about the Martha being > the Doctor) didn't it? Only less crap.

Comments

[wordsatourbacks]

I think the stuff under your spoiler cut got truncated somehow!

[odditycollector]

So it did, dammit. Luckily, I had just misplaced a bracket and need do no retyping!

[petra]

Sort of kind of like Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor, except that it was a theme they'd done before and the Doctor was the *dead* kind of Messiah instead of the glowing kind.

It was much easier to take.

[winter-sidhe.livejournal.com]

There's a hole that's bugging me. Who let the Doctor out to back in time to give Rory the Sonic Screwdriver to let him out in the first place. You can't say The Doctor, because no one let him out that first time.

My head hurts.

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

You are right. IDK, I'm usually a bit more aware of that sort of thing (I've worked out how John Connor exists to my satisfaction) but I guess I was having too much fun on that ride. It's a common breed of paradox in time travel shows, and it usually makes my head hurt too.

...Maybe the explanation got eaten by a crack in the universe? Or... the box opened when baby!Amelia touched it while Amy was inside. Maybe a different temporal version of the Doctor touched it, before history ate that event? (Though, uh, if it's a future one, it doesn't really solve the problem.)

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

It's the same kind of loop Moffat used in Blink, which never makes sense from our point of view: Predestination Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox). Also see Bill & Ted.

[winter-sidhe.livejournal.com]

RE: Predestination Paradox, tl;dr

I've decided the answer is MAGIC.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

I prefer to think that since the wizards in all those old stories turn out to be the Doctor...A WIZARD DID IT!

[milkshake-b.livejournal.com]

I've gotten the impression, especially with Moffat's Who, that the particular way time and causality work aren't the ones most people assume, and that means cause and effect aren't the same and the whole Predestination Paradox thing isn't a paradox but, well, Tuesday. Time doesn't have a "from" and a "to", an "is," "was," and a "will be," it has a funny little squiggle with some slashes through it and a whirly bit that looks like of like a slinky. (Probably, actually, it strongly resembles a witch's shamble from Pratchett.) I'm sure Gallifreyen has words for this stuff. But more importantly from a storytelling point of view, we've seen enough of this sort of thing--River Song is a walking embodiment of it--that it's not a plot hole, as far as I'm concerned. The rules of the universe make it work, and even if we don't precisely know those rules, we've seen enough of them in action to accept it.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

From our limited, human point of view, I think it's best to say the Whoniverse operates on a quantum basis and not a mechanical one. A lot of what happens happens not because of a strictly rational reason but because it should happen. The Doctor still exists because Amy remembers him, and to remember him he should have existed for her to have memories, thus he exists.

The rules of the universe make it work, and even if we don't precisely know those rules, we've seen enough of them in action to accept it.

Exactly! Very well said. (In fact, you can ignore that first part, I've just been looking for an excuse to say "quantum not mechanical" all day, and this seemed as ideal a place as any.)

[odditycollector.livejournal.com]

*points up* Yes! I agree with this, earlier babbling notwithstanding. (I was tired, and trying half-assedly to apply the rules I'd worked out for Terminator to Dr Who, even though they'd never fit.)