How did I not make the connection in Asylum??? Oswin does that wipe, of course, and tells the Doctor how easy it was, and he says he was unable to do it. Sheesh, I just watched funnylilgal’s reaction video for that this morning, and still managed to fail to connect. (insert ashamed face, here).
And @deltaandthebannermen - thanks for that note. I’ve never met Valerie, but it is nice to know BF did some follow-through on that plot point.
I love how they undo this so quickly in The Time of the Doctor, too. It’s quite comical.
I’m intrigued to discover how the 11/Valarie use this plot thread and what goes on there.
I barely even remember this plot point happened lol, that’s how quickly they abandoned it.
I’m probably misremembering but wasn’t Handles also used to further wipe mentions of the Doctor as well?
My fan theory is that all the dead cyber people got cloned into the future with alternate identities.
It’s how Danny was able to contact the Doctor from ‘Heaven’ and return that dead little boy.
So Danny becomes Orson and The Brigadier becomes Brett Von.
No, Handles was used to track down and translate the Time Lords’ signal emanating from Trenzalore.
This is what I came to say. Why can’t Amy and Rory just leave NYC and the Doctor come pick them up? Why can’t the Doctor just meet them a year later when the Tardis is no longer blocked?
Also Moffat missed a trick. River/Melody was left in an New York orphanage in the 1960s and there’s photos of her being rasied by the Ponds. Scenes that never happened.
Why not have the Ponds find their Daughter in the past and raise her proper, in the past to preserve the timeline, and let that be the reason why they stop traveling.
Moffat is so thick sometimes.
Okay I know he used it for that, I thought he originally got Handles to assist with wiping his name from existence but then had Handles also translate the message, damn I gotta rewatch time of the Doctor
Because it defeats the thematic point that Amy and Rory had made the decision to leave the Doctor and stay together in one place rather than travel with the Doctor anymore. It was a decision that they were considering for the whole season up to that point, but they kept falling back on traveling more, unable to actually make the choice. Getting zapped by the angel made that choice that much easier.
And honestly, I think the story would be lesser for it (not that I think it’s amazing to begin with) if they did do some sort of cop-out like them going somewhere else to get picked up by the Doctor or wait to a different time. The “written in a book” stuff was a bit dumb, but they still essentially said that them being stuck living the rest of their lives in the past is a fixed point. Fixed point means that these cop-out ideas everyone always suggests won’t work.
Would be hilarious if Amy/Rory saw a police box in NY and a different doctor just comes out a past one having no idea who/what is happening and a future one trying to convince Amy moreso that this is the doctor and her not buying it
The Moffat era is just riddled with plot holes that could have been so easily fixed.
Another one that bugs the hell out of me is in A Christmas Carol. What’s to stop the Doctor going back in time and taking the sick woman to a hospital that could heal her?
Within the story itself he already changes events in the past and takes the couple on adventures elsewhere in the universe, so there’s no established limits to prevent him from doing this.
As is, the Doctor just leaves a woman to die within 24 hours with her now elderly lover just because he’s an asshole.
Again, thematically I love it, and I agree that out-of-universe it would defeat the point for them to just be picked up and keep traveling. But the story just doesn’t give me a convincing in-universe explanation for why that’s not an option — and believe me, I want to be convinced!
Fixed points are all well and good, but part of the problem is that just a little while back in The Wedding of River Song it was proved conclusively that it is possible to maintain a fixed point by faking a death. If the fixed point of the death of the Doctor himself could be worked around by faking it (which, yes, also felt like a cop-out, lol), what makes this so different?
(Personally, I like to imagine a sentimental two minute epilogue scene where the Doctor pops back to retrieve the Ponds, but does his trademark thing of getting it wrong and shows up like fifty something years late, after they’ve already lived out their lives. Amy is an old woman, Rory is an old man or has already passed away, and we have a callback to The Girl Who Waited with the Doctor considering going back in time to try again… but elderly Amy refuses to let him, because they lived out a good and happy life and she doesn’t want any of that rewritten, and this time the Doctor listens.)
Because the Doctor didn’t know she was dying until too late, and as you say, at that point he’s already interfered enough, crossing his own timeline like that to “fix” it would be incredibly risky and dangerous, like has been established time and time again. And say he did go back and get her cured, what exactly is then keeping her in the capsule to only come out every Christmas to take a trip, to get to know and love Kazran, and get him to become a better person, one who would save the ship of people, which is the Doctor’s whole plan to begin with? She would go and live her own life, and Kazran would still become the miserable sad sack who doesn’t care that a whole ship of people are going to die. No, it’s not exactly a good thing the Doctor does with respect to Abigail, but that kind of manipulative thing is exactly the sort of stuff 11 (and many other Doctors) does on multiple occasions in the name of the greater good, a big part of why he has the Alliance or the Silence or whatever trying to end him.
I do agree a lot about it could have been much better fleshed out, a lot about The Angels Take Manhattan is an underwritten mess. Actually that idea you had there is an interesting way to get around it better.
I said the opposite. One of the problems with A Christmas Carol is that it doesn’t present any real consequences for interfering so why is helping a dying woman somehow a bridge too far this time?
By the time he knew Abigail was sick and only had one day left, he had already established himself as a part of this course of events. We have a plethora of other examples of the Doctor saying he can’t then go back, cross his own timeline, and change things when he’s already become part of those events, the consequences potentially disastrous, why does this particular instance need extra explanation? What consequences for what interference do you want? What consequences does he need for trying to change an asshole into a better person to save a ship full of innocent people that he has every ability to save? Kazran brought it on himself.
I’d argue here that it isn’t a cop-out, the fixed point wasn’t “tricked” - the fixed point is merely that everyone thinks the Doctor died. He never did, it was always a trick.
He had to pretend to die to get the Silence off their backs, put River in jail instead of being controlled by them, and save the universe.
River was so convinced that he actually died that she tried to stop the fixed point (apparently just long enough to tell the Doctor how important he is), that is what causes all the problems in Wedding. Then when she finds out he was never going to die at all, she is fine to let it happen.
So no, fixed points can’t be tricked but tricks can be fixed points.
Fair enough, and good distinction — but by the same token, we don’t know it’s a fixed point that Rory lived out his days in twentieth century Manhattan, we just know there’s a gravestone with Rory’s name on it. There is no concrete evidence that he even needs to actually be buried there.
Dude you’re missing the point entirely.
A Christmas Carol rides rough shod over the rules established in other Doctor Who stories. There’s no fixed points, no consequence for altering time like in Fathers Day, no paradoxes to work around ect, there’s nothing physical stopping the Doctor from doing what he wants when he wants to.
That’s the problem. That’s the plot hole in of itself.
The result of this plot hole is that the Doctor looks like dickhead who refuses to help a sick woman just because her boyfriend was an ass to him. The end.
Well, we’ll agree to disagree I guess then. I don’t agree there is any plot hole, and I’ve tried to explain why. Sorry you don’t like the episode.