Flesh And Stone

[daibhidc]

Well, as far as I'm concerned, we now have the line that defines the Eleventh Doctor.

River: There's a plan?
Doctor: I don't know, I haven't finished talking yet.

Beyond that ... Wow!

First of all, lets really amp up the Weeping Angels. If you close your eyes you're dead? Fine, how about if you open your eyes, you're also dead? (Although, I'm not totally convinced by the idea that the Angels freeze if they think you can see. It was my understanding that freezing was an autonomous reaction caused by the mere fact of someone seeing them, whether the Angel knew this or not. I suppose they could have some psychosomatic thing where they think this is happening, so they don't bother trying to move...)

And yay, they notice the cracks! For a while there, I was afraid that every episode was going to end with a crack appearing after the TARDIS had left, but we'd never actually learn anything further until the finale. But now we know, and the Doctor knows, that this is the End of Time following Amy around, and connected to history being altered so she doesn't remember The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. And to there being a duck pond with no ducks!

And River Song killed someone in her recent past. A good man. A hero. Someone she considers the best man she's ever known. Lucky history's being changed really, or we wouldn't have a series next series...

And then, oh good life, what's this? I've seen it suggested before now that the difference between Doctor/Rose/Mickey and Doctor/Amy/Rory is that Amy isn't interested in the Doctor that way - she just wanted to get away for a while. But apparently the difference is that Rose was Tragically In Love with the Doctor, and Amy just wants to get him into bed...

Comments

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

I nearly gnawed my fingers off with Amy stumbling through the forest, and when the angels started moving... Moffatt is Cap'n Nightmare Fuel.

Amy must be the most unWholesome companion ever though what with the being a stripper, impersonating a police officer, picking locks, knowing enough about pickpocketing to spot someone doing it, and trying to get laid the night before her own wedding because she was kinda bored, she'd have given Mary Whitehouse a fit back in the day. Good.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Although, I do feel the need to point out Amy isn't a stripper, she's a kissogram.

(I've been told, by someone else on LJ making this distinction clear, that in UK law strippers are classified as sex workers while kissograms are simply entertainmers. Personally, I suspect kissograms probably don't exist any more, but hey, it's the Whoniverse...)

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

personally and from my experience kissogram and strippers are both in the same employment bracket as massage parlour worker. But I'll be generous. Okay, Amy is a Kissogram.

[john_amend_all]

Yes, I think it's pretty clear who's supposed to have been killed. Or rather, Who's supposed to have been killed.

I think the difference between Doctor/Rose and Doctor/Amy is that we were expected to look at the Doctor and Rose and think "Aww, how sweet, soulmates." And we were expected to look at Amy and think "This young woman has some Serious Issues, and not just in the timey-wimey sense."

[scarfman]

this is the End of Time following Amy around, and connected to history being altered so she doesn't remember The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.

And no one remembers the CyberKing. Moffat's retconning in a catch-all to get rid of anything from the Davies administration he doesn't want to have to deal with.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe. But it's interesting that he keeps going on about how Amy should remember the Daleks/history should remember the Cyberking. If anything, it seems like more a Lampshade Hanging than a Handwave.

It may be that this is his way of getting rid of RTD ideas he doesn't want to deal with. But he's doing it by, well, dealing with them. (This is Doctor Who, the accepted way of getting rid of aspects of previous seasons you don't want to deal with is to completely ignore them and never mention anything related to them ever again...)

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

It turns out jblum talks about this a bit in his F&S post. Amongst other things, he says:

(And it's worth remembering that judging by the timeframes given in The Writer's Tale, Russell knew what Steven's overall plans were before he got to doing The Next Doctor -- it looks likely that the Doctor hanging a lampshade on the Cyberking not being remembered was Russell deliberately foreshadowing, not Steven cleaning up a mess).

[cat63.livejournal.com]

I missed it, but it has been pointed out elsewhere that when the Doctor comes back to Amy after being about to leave with River and the Bishop, he's wearing the jacket the Angels took off him. I did notice that his hair changed abruptly in that scene, but thought it was a continuity glitch until the jacket thing was mentioned - people are theorising that this is a Doctor from a "time can be rewritten" future...

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I hadn't noticed that either. And, again as jblum says, it adds another wrinkle to "Remember what I told you when you were seven" -- was it something he told her in the scene we saw, or was it something FutureDoc went back to tell her, maybe in that scene where she wakes up to the sound of the TARDIS?

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Aargh! Time paradoxes do my head in :-) But it's nice to see them actually using that aspect of things for once.