Doctor Who Episodes

Maybe I'm spoiled with Moffats great episodes, where the intrigue is clever and solid, but Steve Thompsons The Curse of the Black Spot made me question why I was watching Doctor Who at all (so naturally I come to 4chan to whine, because I know that you all care very much). It was clear that it was a filler episode even before Wikipedia confirmed it (as it was previous scheduled as the ninth episode, but later easily moved) but very sloppily(?) done.

There was nothing wrong with the basic premise, but the line is crossed when the Doctor "invents" that parallell universes can be linked through reflective surfaces. I'm not a nerd boy expecting everything to be canon, but this was handwaving a solution: "X can be a portal to alien spaceships sometimes."

The Doctor previously mentioned that the myth about sirens was persistent for a valid reason, so this implies that derelict spaceships ROUTINELY seeks out ships at sea with reflective surfaces to project their holographic medical AIs through. The alternative is that... ...the ships somehow crashed into eachother for some reason? ...and the boy infected them with typhoid fever? This is never explained, and yet this is most likely an obvious filler that will never be referred back to or explained further.

...but all these insane things doesn't compare to the finale, where they find Rory strapped to a medical table, because he's been kept alive so that he doesn't drown. His condition is easy to cure: His lungs are filled with water. I can understand that the ship doesn't know how to cure him, but the Doctor is known for his TREMENDOUS skills with alien computers, so this is where he should point his sonic screwdriver to the ships medical bank and explain to it that fluid doesn't belong in human lungs. Alternatively they could manually resusitate his heart and lungs while he's being kept alive.

Instead we have yet another cliché lifesaving scene where Rory magically gets better once Amy has stopped breaking his ribs, all because the series wants to explain to the viewers that she loves him and that he matters. It's so cliché and horribly contrived that what this scene does, is making Rory into an annoying burden.

THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG

(Spoilers, of course. Watch the entire episode first.)

I'm somewhat cranky about this episode, and half of it could be due to sleep depravation, so let me first state the things I liked about this episode:
- River Song rewriting the fixed point in time. That was unexpected and funny.
- While it's not impossible to figure out, the way that the Doctor and "Ceasar" first notice that they're fighting the Silence, is plain awesome. I'm not sure exactly how the Silence is fighting them simply by hanging from the ceiling, but let's not go into that.
- Second of all, the eye pieces are explained properly, and goes from the role of being a trademark for evil, to a handy gadget.
- Third of all, the Doctor trying to make Amy remember who she really is, is pretty funny.

That being said, here's the bad side:
First of all, I could barely buy the headless monks, but talking heads? Talking heads enjoying wi-fi movies, and sometimes getting headaches because their boxes are being put on their wrong sides? Heads whose skulls still move freely after death? ...without necks?
Oh, how low this show has fallen. To mirror the words said straight afterwards: "This is absurd."

The scene ends with the Doctor being told "the living question", a question that somehow translates into a reason that he has to die, but a question that is asked "at the fields of Trensilor at the fall of the eleventh". What this new verse does, is that it ruins the episode by postponing both the Doctors death AND the fall of the Silence, in the very beginning of the episode before anything of it has even had a chance to happen the first time around. With all suspense gone, we are left with nothing but a Houdini to look forward to.

The old riddling verse is also retranslated as "The Silence MUST fall." meaning that everyone who said "Silence will fall." during the first season with the eleventh Doctor, has translated it wrong in the same way.

I was also treated to a plot completely suspended on "timey wimey" techno-babble, and I was speechless to be served this from Moffat. I'm completely fine with River short circuiting history, but as soon as she does, nothing HAS to make sense anymore, and very little does. How come there's a centurion riding a horse carriage in the middle of the street, among lots of cars? Is he too stuck-up to buy a car? Why would River and the Doctor touching start time again, and even start Rivers space suit? ...and if time has stopped, what is keeping "Ceasar" from simply flipping the calendar every day? This is a simple, basic understanding of velocity being dependent on time: If time stops, EVERYTHING stops. Time can collapse (though in a more chaotic manner) but never stop, not for everybody.

The Doctor is rescued from the Silence and taken to a US(!) government pyramid where they store captured Silence aliens, along with Madame Kovarian, presumably because at the top of this, there's a distress beacon calling for help. ...that doesn't help. This whole episode has been moving towards nothing.

In response millions of voices is apparently seen dotting the sun in the form of solar flares and sun spots. They're just there for dramatic effect - they don't even serve a purpose. However they managed to project themselves in this manner - all the people from the past and the future - millions of people "showed up" for nothing.

By the way, as the Silence can't kill the Doctor without killing themselves as well, I am assuming that the Silence was aiming to ultimately capture both Doctor Who and River Song and force them to hug, but this isn't explained, despite this being a chance for the episode to cling to some kind of plot coherence.

...and while the Doctor insists that he has to die at Lake Silencio, it dawns on me that nobody explained why he showed up there in the first place, the first time around that he later learns about. Because "time was running out" and he couldn't have any more fun? If he still doesn't die, will time still be running out for him just as before?

There were three ways that Doctor Who was getting out of his own death: He could pull a complete Houdini like he did with the Pandorica, he could make a replica of flesh, and he could borrow a robot from the little people. The first and the third option would be completely ridiculous, the third option because the Doctor is seen regenerating, and massive energy waves emanating from his body when River shoots him. That would be some extreme pyrotechnics there, that he would get scorchmarks from if it was even remotely bound by the laws of physics, and the flesh duplicate would be much more plausible. This was even before the robots hand touching Rivers arm caused time to move again, when I presume direct contact was required. It's as if the episode was rewritten toward the end.

...and in the end River goes to jail for killing a robot, while Amy who killed a human being, becomes such an (in television) unique thing as an unpunished murderer. Well, I'm not convinced about this at all, as Amy was frying the woman only to leave the room to the Silence for an easy rescue. We'll be seeing her again.

In the end, the smurf guy is seen desperately shouting after the Doctor, and it's painfully obvious that he's shouting something equivalent of "Please don't go! Come back and watch the next season, won't you? There's so much more! We'll tell you more about the Doctor, promise! We'll do the whole death scene again, but "at the fields of Trensilor at the fall of the eleventh". See? There's even a new riddle verse! That's never been done before! Hello?!".

poop!

poop!