New Doctor Who

OK, we know about Amy and Rory cause we're fans. The casual viewer wouldn't know much about them. She's a sing-o-gram girl. What else does she do? Who/where are her parents? How old is she? Where did she go to school? What does she aspire to do?

I don't think Moffatt does a very good job of character development. Can you name any secondary characters or villians that were adequately fleshed out? The only one that comes to mind from last season is the guy in The Lodger and the story wasn't written by Moffatt. I suppose Vincent Van Gogh was nicely portrayed but that wasn't a fictional character.

I agree with you on RTD going overboard with the emotional appeals.

The Silence? The concept seems to be a spin on the Weeping Angels. As long as you looked at the Weeping Angels they were stationary; When you look away from the Silence, you forget about them.

 

Characters in stories are all about their starting point and how the story changes them. If you don't know the starting point of the character how can you know how they are being changed by events?

Yes, I watched all stories last year. I've seen all stories ever broadcast since 1963 and have most in some form of a recording. I don't know what Amy aspired to do or become. She was a singing telegram delivery person. I presume she has loftier career goals than that! I don't know how old she is, or what kind of education she has.

No, but it would be nice to know their motivations for their actions.

You've responded to my questions by asking me questions. It's a common trait of posters on this board, and frustrating. I usually don't play that game but I will name a couple. Sir Robert in "Tooth and Claw", the alternate universe Pete Tyler in Rise of Cybermen/Age of Steel, just about any crew member in "42", the monster in the Satan Pit, the villains in Human Nature/Family of Blood, etc.

I thought RTD's stories were too soap opera-ish. I didn't like the constant gay references. He had a tendency to end sticky predicaments with a deus ex machina. But for the most part his plots were solid and they had good characterizations. I had tired of RTD and had high hopes for Moffatt.

Generally speaking the hallmark of Moffatt's stories are fast paced convoluted timey-wimey plots with rapid-fire dialogue, lots of red herrings, a lot of running around. They are fun to watch but when you sit back afterwards and think about them, they don't hold up.

Yes, he does have great monsters.

I presume you've seen Day of the Moon? If so, I have about a half dozen questions that didn't add up for me, which is the problem with long story arcs. I will ask you just one:

What is the overall plan of the Silence with regards to humans? What are they trying to accomplish?

 

Not sure but I got the implication or impression at least that they were somehow stranded on earth - the Doctor's statement that makind was going to the moon being important to the Silence/ Silents I think backs that up - so they're probably using humanity and manipulating human development to escape back to their home world.

Another unanswered question, which almost certainly forms the kernel of this season's story arc: who was the child in the photo Amy saw in the asylum?

 

Yeah.....but if they had space travel capabilities why wouldn't they repair their spacecraft? Or embark on a mission to build a new one? (They had some sort of a control console in their secret lair.) And they've been here since before fire and the wheel.

There's just so many questions and goofy plot points.

Are the Silence responsible for John F. Kennedy's "we shall go to the moon and return safely to earth within a decade" speech? Did they hypnotically suggest to the Germans that they develop rockets during WWII? Did they help the Russians develop their space program?

Why was the girl in the spacesuit? What did she do to (or shoot at) the older version of the Doctor at the beginning of Impossible Astronaut that killed him? If you look at the scene again you can see ripples in the lake water from the blast. Why were River's expert shots with the six-shooter impotent to kill the girl in the spacesuit?

Would humans really kill an alien on sight because they saw (and forgot) a 3 second clip of an alien in the moon landing TV footage? How/Why does that hypnotic suggestion thingy work on videotape?

I know the Doctor was being held in Area 51, but where did the U.S. get vast quantities of dwarf star alloy perfectly machined into blocks that they could stack into a prison cell?

If I kill a Silence in my home and the corpse is laying on the carpet and I turn away, I forget there's this creature in my house. Next time I look at it I wonder what this dead alien is doing in my house. But I turn away and forget about it. How long will this go on? "Honey, I don't know what this dead alien is doing on the floor, but I say we take it out to the curb with the rubbish."

The Silence have vast networks of tunnels under the earth's crust. So after the broadcast of the moon landing why won't most of them simply migrate to third world countries where they didn't get the TV broadcast and live in safety from humanity?

The best analogy I can come up with is the Silence seems to be like a kind of parasite. If the Silence has been here since before fire and the wheel, just what is their plan?

I presume that was the girl in the spacesuit as a smaller child.

 

That's an interesting way to look at things. Asking questions is answering questions. Hmmm...

I defined a set of requirements for Amy. I should have been clearer that I didn't mean these criteria to be applied to one-off characters. For secondary characters you can get a sense of who they are not only by the facts presented in the dialogue/script but also by facial expressions, body language, voice inflection, etc. You "know" about who they are. For example, I would say that I "know" the monster in Satan Pit more than I know any of the Silurians in Hungry Earth. I know Sir Robert better than I know Guido from Vampires of Venice.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this.

When Canton is chasing River Song in the high rise in NYC River says, "You were invaded a long time ago, America is being occupied", so I assume they are extra-terrestrial. I suppose as parasites they could have hitch-hiked with some other aliens and never had space flight capability of their own.

Because I like coherent plots.

River says the space suit has 20 different kinds of alien technology inside of it. She says a person wouldn't need to eat in the suit because everything is self-sustaining. So how does an earth-bound parasitic alien invasion force get access to 20 kinds of alien technology? This is the sort of plot hole that drives me crazy.

 

Really liked The Doctor's Wife, screened here on Saturday. Moving, touching, and Suranne Jones is dead hot! The Tardis goes alll kenotic...

 

We don't need to see any more episodes to know it is a plot hole. The astronaut suit had over 20 types of alien technology in it. Since the Silence is earth-bound, and has been for thousands of years, where would they get this alien technology from? Even in the Doctor Who universe I don't think 20 alien races have visited earth. And even if there had been, are we to believe that the Silence has captured technology from every single alien race? Even supposing they have, if they can patch work together and sync-up disparate alien technologies, with that sort of intelligence at their disposal, what are they doing still stranded on earth?

As long as I'm on a roll I might as well mention how the Silence completely undermines human achievement and Dr. Who canon.

If the Silence is the catalyst behind every human maneuver since fire and the wheel, doesn't that invalidate the entirety of human endeavor? If all human progress is linked to the Silence then why, in story after story does the Doctor state things like (paraphrasing), "humans are so clever, you've reached the stars" or "earth is my favorite planet and humans are my favorite species" or "don't underestimate humanity's drive and ingenuity, they will spread from galaxy to galaxy."

It's not just the title of the story that was bad, the whole story was flawed.

I never said RTD's stories didn't have plot holes, but his stories have far fewer ones than stories commissioned under Moffatt. I'd have to go back and re-watch the episode you mention in order to see what you are talking about.

 

That was a great episode! This is what we need more of--standalone stories with new concepts mixed in with a touch of continuity from previous stories and a dash of explanation for old questions. A solid story based on the Doctor, not the companions, where the Doctor is the hero, not the companions. I was SO hoping that the woman with the eye-patch wouldn't make an appearance and I was so glad that she was absent.

 

So, who else reckons the Gangers are proto-Autons?

 

Hmm...hadn't crossed my mind. But since Autons were on Earth in the 1970's and 2000's and this story is set in the future, I don't see how it works.

I was kind of shocked that the Doctor implied the "Flesh" had souls and were sacred life.

One thing though, we now have a candidate for which version of the Doctor got killed at the beginning of Impossible Astronaut.

 

...and indeed that the assassin in the spacesuit may well be the 'real' Doctor.

 

Thanks to on demand and netflix my 16 yr old son is now a Dr. Who fan!

 

It's a very different show now from when it originally returned in 2005.

More, I'm told, like the traditional Doctor Who series.

 

So is River the person in the spacesuit? And...


Spoilers alert!
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Ganger-Doctor doesn't survive his encounter with Flesh-Jen so, unless he can regenerate the same as the original, he isn't the one being shot by Spaceman.

Great cliffhanger on this one, BTW.