Geronimo!

[Riff]

I had no idea what to call this thread, so that will have to do. It sort of works, though - a leap into the unknown.

This is for miscellaneous stuff on Season Five, the Christmas special, Season 6, and anything else, really. It's just that I've got a bit of interesting stuff to mention, just in case anyone is unaware. This is all officially released info and there are no spoilers (which Moffat hates, anyway).

[Riff]

Season 6 will be transmitted in two halves, seven episodes in the Spring and six in the Autumn.

Moffat claims the main reason for this is that he wants an unbearable cliffhanger at the end of episode seven. I suspect the idea is also to maximise overnight ratings by removing DW from the Summer.

But who cares? DW will be on when it's dark and miserable outside, as it was when I was a child, as it should be. So there.

[Riff]

So, naughty Moffat has been teasing (not spoiling - he hates spoilers) us in Doctor Who magazine:

"It's almost a year away our lovely new series, and that's a long old wait, so it would be cruel of me to start dropping hints. Like telling you that you've seen more than you think. Or that the Doctor has noticed what you have not. Or that when the biggest jaw-dropping twist finally comes - well, the second one - you'll realise you've known about it from the very beginning."

I wonder what we've missed, that we'll realise we've always known about? If it isn't on my clues list, I might sue. ;D

[Riff]

So, those time cracks. Just what has changed? The Next Doctor and Stolen Earth/Journey's End are definitely affected. And Amy not knowing what a Cyberman is must mean that Army of Ghosts/Doomsday are similarly changed. Time travelers will remember the original version, and the causal effects of those stories are still present, but for most people, they literally didn't happen.

So what exactly has and hasn't happened? Moffat in Doctor Who Magazine:

"All bets that we feel like ignoring are off. The increasing problem in Doctor Who is that the people in the show live on a completely different planet from us. They're like, "Look, more aliens, more planets in the sky, ho hum!"

Moffat diplomatically doesn't mention that this was all down to his predecessor. Anyway, he goes on:

"But history has wibbled. Without being too explicit about it, we can have characters surprised at the existence of aliens again, if we feel like it. But let's be honest - it's only us fans who give a toss about all this. So don't expect any "History has wibbled" scenes. This is just a way for us all to justify continuity errors to ourselves, so we can sleep at night. Don't all thank me at once."

[Queen E]

Sept 28, 2010 17:31:01 GMT -5 Riff said:

So, those time cracks. Just what has changed? The Next Doctor and Stolen Earth/Journey's End are definitely affected. And Amy not knowing what a Cyberman is must mean that Army of Ghosts/Doomsday are similarly changed. Time travelers will remember the original version, and the causal effects of those stories are still present, but for most people, they literally didn't happen.

So what exactly has and hasn't happened? Moffat in Doctor Who Magazine:

"All bets that we feel like ignoring are off. The increasing problem in Doctor Who is that the people in the show live on a completely different planet from us. They're like, "Look, more aliens, more planets in the sky, ho hum!"

Moffat diplomatically doesn't mention that this was all down to his predecessor. Anyway, he goes on:

"But history has wibbled. Without being too explicit about it, we can have characters surprised at the existence of aliens again, if we feel like it. But let's be honest - it's only us fans who give a toss about all this. So don't expect any "History has wibbled" scenes. This is just a way for us all to justify continuity errors to ourselves, so we can sleep at night. Don't all thank me at once."

I can think of two things that caused the time cracks:

1. Rose/The Daleks in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. I think it is unclear whether her attempting to get back weakened what the Doctor had closed which allowed the Daleks in, or the Daleks created the cracks and Rose exploited them.

2. The Time Lords in "The End of Time Parts 1 and 2."

[Karen]

Sept 28, 2010 17:16:14 GMT -5 Riff said:

Season 6 will be transmitted in two halves, seven episodes in the Spring and six in the Autumn.

Moffat claims the main reason for this is that he wants an unbearable cliffhanger at the end of episode seven. I suspect the idea is also to maximise overnight ratings by removing DW from the Summer.

But who cares? DW will be on when it's dark and miserable outside, as it was when I was a child, as it should be. So there.

LOL! Cool.

Thanks for the 'teasers', Riff. Can't wait for the new season(s)!

[Queen E]

ANNE POSTED THIS:

I think we need a futile speculation thread for this show... lacking that, I'm going to throw a few thoughts out here before my head explodes. FYI, when I say "saw", it only means that we were shown something, and I have no idea whether it'll turn out to be true or not, because, after all, history can be rewritten:

Last season, we saw an alliance of many races intended to stop the Doctor before he destroyed the universe. We still don't know if they were right or not.

We were told that River Song killed a man, the best man she'd ever known, and that she has, apparently, an intimate, long-term relationship with the Doctor.

This season, we saw:

1. The Doctor killed, apparently permanently, by someone in a spacesuit.

2. A little girl trapped in an identical spacesuit.

3. A little girl, apparently the same one, apparently regenerating.

4. Biotechnology that can duplicate someone down to their deepest thoughts and memories.

And we were told that:

1. The Doctor has/will become something to fear, so much so that an army is being raised against him (sounds like The Master to me). We have also seen him, over the course of both seasons, turning from peaceful to violent solutions. The anger Nine had is still there; it had just been suppressed, and now it's starting to erupt again.

2. Amy and Rory's daughter, who has in her DNA something similar to that of the Timelords, has been abducted so that she can be brought up as a weapon to bring the Doctor down.

3. River Song is Amy and Rory's daughter.

So River could be the little girl who was in the spacesuit, and she shot and killed the Doctor. Given the way she bops in and out of that prison, maybe she put herself there when she realized what she'd done.

I dunno. I'm not very good at this. My brain hurts.



Also, no amount of knowing that your long-lost daughter will grow up to be River Song is going to make up to Amy and Rory for losing her as a baby. Not to mention the whole weirdness of Melody/River being older than they are. I find the whole story arc sad and disturbing. I'm not going to stop watching; I just hope that things will turn out better than they're looking right now.

[Queen E]

Anne:

I like how you've tied this together.

I particularly like how you bring in Nine's anger, which was also oddly tempered with both a desire to end it all (including himself) and not hurt anyone.

What seems to me to be the danger for the Doctor is that combination of viewing humans as "brilliant," desperately in need of rescue, and "stupid apes." Maybe he should change his name to "The Father," as some of this twigs directly to a certain kind of pervasive paternal style. The Master, in some ways, is easier to deal with: he thinks all humans are stupid apes and not much else. The Doctor, on the other hand, well, you never know if you're going to get praise, rescue, or insult (or all three).

I've got a lot more thoughts on your thoughts, but I have to dust. I'll be back in a bit!

[Queen E]

Oh, one more thing: Right there with you with the whole Melody/River abduction thing. It reminds me of the Connor kidnapping storyline, which I found incredibly hard to deal with on an emotional level (even for fiction).

[Anne, Old S'cubie Cat]

Jun 13, 2011 14:09:29 GMT -5 Queen E said:

Oh, one more thing: Right there with you with the whole Melody/River abduction thing. It reminds me of the Connor kidnapping storyline, which I found incredibly hard to deal with on an emotional level (even for fiction).

It also, now that I think of it, reminds me of the stories of babies being abducted by the fairies - fairies steal baby and leave changeling/doppleganger, child returns years later - except that in this case, instead of the child being the same age and everyone she knew being old and/or dead because no time passes in the fairy world, she's grown up and no time has passed outside, so to speak.

And thank you for your kind words about my ravings. I had to get them out of my head, they were going around and around and around...

[Sue]