![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonessa24I'm currently freaking out about a presentation I've been procrastinating on too long (I blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
die_monster , if she was around she would have made me work by now, bawww), so clearly the answer is more procrastination! In the form of writing down thoughts on the Doctor Who finale, mostly questions/plot holes that I noticed or have seen around LJ, and my collection of answers, so I can refer to it for RP and to look smarter than everyone else.
General (non-spoilery) thoughts, for those who don't know yet: This was easily the most amazing finale of New Who, and probably the most amazing two parter too, in my opinion. I'm not even going to bother listing what I loved, because I loved, oh about 90% of it.
Let's start with questions I have answers/handwaves for.
Why was the Pandorica so easy to open with the Screwdriver, when surely the Evil Alliance knows that the Doctor has friends who'd come release him?
I saw someone say that maybe the baddies hadn't gotten around to finishing the Lock This Shit Up Forever sequence in the closing of the Pandorica before history went boom around them. Also they would have presumably left guards.
On that note, why didn't the Evil Alliance just shoot him during his Big Scary Speech or when they were sticking him in the box?
I like to think some of them put up a bitch fight over who gets to kill him, so they all agreed to keep him alive forever instead. Also makes for good punishment if you're EVIL.
Ontological paradoxes suck, don't they?
No they don't, they're awesome. Also they're probably fairly stable once the loops have been closed, so I doubt even the TARDIS would be too horribly fussed about them.
Why didn't the Doctor use the vortex manipulator to go back in time to warn himself about the Pandorica/not let River fly the TARDIS/etc?
I think once the TARDIS actually exploded, there was literally no point in history where she wasn't exploding. He couldn't have prevented it from happening by going back in time.
Why wasn't Rory mad after waiting for 2,000 years?
Someone said that maybe being essentially a robot kept him from going mad. I think with history collapsing, maybe 2,000 years weren't as long as they would normally be.
Is Rory plastic now?
At the wedding reception, when the Doctor comes back and he remembers him, he says "I was plastic. He was the stripper at my stag party." in the background (yay subtitles). So no, but he remembers it. Probably like a dream or something, since the human brain isn't made for dealing with two sets of memories. XD (On that note, I wonder which set is more prevalent for Amy - growing up with parents but without any adventures with the Doctor, or no parents but adventures. I imagine there will be lots of headaches all around.)
Why did the TARDIS save River in a time loop, when she clearly doesn't like her? (shush she totally doesn't)
One answer could be that liking her or not, the TARDIS knows River is useful to the Doctor, so if she preserved her maybe she could help him fix everything. The other is that sealing the console room in a time loop was the TARDIS' last attempt at stopping or at least delaying the explosion, and River just happened to be there.My headTARDIS is obviously going for that option. Also, I find it silly to think the TARDIS just automatically powers down every time no one's inside (as the Doctor seemed to say in The Pandorica Opens), so I'm thinking he meant that she could choose to cut power to everything, but safety protocols prevented her as long as someone was inside. As sentient as she is, she's still a machine too and there's quite a lot of programming she simply can't override on her own.
Why did the explosion go on for 2,000 years (or forever) only to conveniently speed up dramatically when the Doctor showed up in 1996?
Time loop in the console room! The explosion couldn't "finish" while there was still a bit of not-exploding preserved at the heart of everything. But when the Doctor teleported inside to get River out, he popped the loop like a bubble, so afterwards the explosion rapidly neared its end. GDI RIVER. The TARDIS couldn't reestablish the time loop at that point since she's been eternally exploding, okay.
How could the Earth and humanity have developed the same without stars?
History didn't get rewritten to accomodate for the changes, at least not in a proper, consequent way. Most of history as it was before the explosion stuck around more or less well, with more and more pieces disappearing and leaving the rest to not make much sense. Thus there's a word and concept for 'stars' without there ever having been any.
Do we have a Doctor-as-Amy-remembers-him now?
The universe-as-it-was has been rushing through her head, so that gets restored when she remembers, rather than a subjective memory. Except now the cracks never happened, so she doesn't have the universe in her head, so HOSHIT GRANDFATHER PARADOX. Wait, actually, no. Since the Doctor/TARDIS were responsible for the cracks, in a universe without them there wouldn't be cracks and it would all be fine and peachy. But you can't have a universe with no cracks ever having existed in which Amy can remember the Doctor back into existence... can you? Asfdslgs *head explodes*
Which brings me neatly to questions I can't figure out.
How is Earth still standing if the Doctor has never existed?
The "copy" of the universe that was stored in the Pandorica and then extrapolated from included all his actions, but only up until Stonehenge tiem (I can never remember the year, argh). But he saved the Earth and the universe a bunch of times after that too.
Where the fuck did the TARDIS land at the end of Pandorica Opens?
It couldn't have been Stonehenge, at least not in whatever AD, because the explosion starts in 2010 and she hadn't quite started exploding yet at that point. And if it was anywhere else on Earth, I don't see how she could have been conveniently located to become the sun. I wish it had been space when River opened the door.
Why doesn't the Pandorica remember a universe with cracks?
It was created in the universe with cracks, because of the cracks.
How is River still in Amy's time to be at the wedding?
I don't mind the empty TARDIS diary so much, I just accept it as one of those remnants, like photos and such. But River specifically said everyone would end up where they're supposed to be, and she's supposed to be in the 51st century, and she knew to give the diary to Rory at their wedding. Wtf River gdi.
Last question: Does Eleven rock harder than a rocking thing?
YES HE DOES.
die_monster , if she was around she would have made me work by now, bawww), so clearly the answer is more procrastination! In the form of writing down thoughts on the Doctor Who finale, mostly questions/plot holes that I noticed or have seen around LJ, and my collection of answers, so I can refer to it for RP and to look smarter than everyone else.General (non-spoilery) thoughts, for those who don't know yet: This was easily the most amazing finale of New Who, and probably the most amazing two parter too, in my opinion. I'm not even going to bother listing what I loved, because I loved, oh about 90% of it.
Let's start with questions I have answers/handwaves for.
Why was the Pandorica so easy to open with the Screwdriver, when surely the Evil Alliance knows that the Doctor has friends who'd come release him?
I saw someone say that maybe the baddies hadn't gotten around to finishing the Lock This Shit Up Forever sequence in the closing of the Pandorica before history went boom around them. Also they would have presumably left guards.
On that note, why didn't the Evil Alliance just shoot him during his Big Scary Speech or when they were sticking him in the box?
I like to think some of them put up a bitch fight over who gets to kill him, so they all agreed to keep him alive forever instead. Also makes for good punishment if you're EVIL.
Ontological paradoxes suck, don't they?
No they don't, they're awesome. Also they're probably fairly stable once the loops have been closed, so I doubt even the TARDIS would be too horribly fussed about them.
Why didn't the Doctor use the vortex manipulator to go back in time to warn himself about the Pandorica/not let River fly the TARDIS/etc?
I think once the TARDIS actually exploded, there was literally no point in history where she wasn't exploding. He couldn't have prevented it from happening by going back in time.
Why wasn't Rory mad after waiting for 2,000 years?
Someone said that maybe being essentially a robot kept him from going mad. I think with history collapsing, maybe 2,000 years weren't as long as they would normally be.
Is Rory plastic now?
At the wedding reception, when the Doctor comes back and he remembers him, he says "I was plastic. He was the stripper at my stag party." in the background (yay subtitles). So no, but he remembers it. Probably like a dream or something, since the human brain isn't made for dealing with two sets of memories. XD (On that note, I wonder which set is more prevalent for Amy - growing up with parents but without any adventures with the Doctor, or no parents but adventures. I imagine there will be lots of headaches all around.)
Why did the TARDIS save River in a time loop, when she clearly doesn't like her? (shush she totally doesn't)
One answer could be that liking her or not, the TARDIS knows River is useful to the Doctor, so if she preserved her maybe she could help him fix everything. The other is that sealing the console room in a time loop was the TARDIS' last attempt at stopping or at least delaying the explosion, and River just happened to be there.
Why did the explosion go on for 2,000 years (or forever) only to conveniently speed up dramatically when the Doctor showed up in 1996?
Time loop in the console room! The explosion couldn't "finish" while there was still a bit of not-exploding preserved at the heart of everything. But when the Doctor teleported inside to get River out, he popped the loop like a bubble, so afterwards the explosion rapidly neared its end. GDI RIVER. The TARDIS couldn't reestablish the time loop at that point since she's been eternally exploding, okay.
How could the Earth and humanity have developed the same without stars?
History didn't get rewritten to accomodate for the changes, at least not in a proper, consequent way. Most of history as it was before the explosion stuck around more or less well, with more and more pieces disappearing and leaving the rest to not make much sense. Thus there's a word and concept for 'stars' without there ever having been any.
Do we have a Doctor-as-Amy-remembers-him now?
The universe-as-it-was has been rushing through her head, so that gets restored when she remembers, rather than a subjective memory. Except now the cracks never happened, so she doesn't have the universe in her head, so HOSHIT GRANDFATHER PARADOX. Wait, actually, no. Since the Doctor/TARDIS were responsible for the cracks, in a universe without them there wouldn't be cracks and it would all be fine and peachy. But you can't have a universe with no cracks ever having existed in which Amy can remember the Doctor back into existence... can you? Asfdslgs *head explodes*
Which brings me neatly to questions I can't figure out.
How is Earth still standing if the Doctor has never existed?
The "copy" of the universe that was stored in the Pandorica and then extrapolated from included all his actions, but only up until Stonehenge tiem (I can never remember the year, argh). But he saved the Earth and the universe a bunch of times after that too.
Where the fuck did the TARDIS land at the end of Pandorica Opens?
It couldn't have been Stonehenge, at least not in whatever AD, because the explosion starts in 2010 and she hadn't quite started exploding yet at that point. And if it was anywhere else on Earth, I don't see how she could have been conveniently located to become the sun. I wish it had been space when River opened the door.
Why doesn't the Pandorica remember a universe with cracks?
It was created in the universe with cracks, because of the cracks.
How is River still in Amy's time to be at the wedding?
I don't mind the empty TARDIS diary so much, I just accept it as one of those remnants, like photos and such. But River specifically said everyone would end up where they're supposed to be, and she's supposed to be in the 51st century, and she knew to give the diary to Rory at their wedding. Wtf River gdi.
Why were there baddies at the Pandorica that the Doctor hadn't even messed with yet, from their point of view, like the Silurians and the Sycorax?
I guess they all just have time travel now. Pfff.
So, flist, any takers? If not, I'll just ignore those questions because ZOMG IT WAS AWESOME AND CLEVER AND I LOVE IT TO BITS. I'm good at that.
Last question: Does Eleven rock harder than a rocking thing?
YES HE DOES.
