eve11 | More thoughts on the series finale (Reply)

ETA It sounds like I'm being mean and ranty here but I'm really not. I liked it; I'm just conflicted. And ready to go back to something simpler.

So does this mean that the Doctor was actually a little tiny Doctor inside a big Robot Doctor for the entirety of the weird alternate timeline? Why would he get knocked out or taken prisoner or whatever else? He could have just left in his TARDIS. Unless he really really wanted to just fade away into the shadows. That's quite a commitment to a ruse, I must say. Why would the eye drive work on the robot? Why would the robot be in pain? It's a clever trick but it doesn't work... unless, UNLESS, the Doctor in the weirdo reality is not in fact the tesselecta but is only in the tesselecta in the beach. In which case he can't show River the trick in the tower. And if the tesselecta is being controlled by the mini people and not the Doctor it undermines the emotion of all of his scenes, and if iit's just being controlled by the Doctor then how does he have time to run up to the eye and wave? So it's a bit ridiculous. IDK

I did love the scene with him and Dorium's head in the TARDIS where he calls the Brig. And oh, I loved the bit with the Dalek too.

The rats line... man that whole bit was straight out of Indiana Jones and not even lightly. The skulls, goodness.

So why did the doctor call Canton Delaware? I'm sad that we didn't get to see him again.

"Run."
"I did run; running brought me here."
--saddest line of the episode. I loved that scene actually. Except for the bad CGI of River in the suit but I did love it. I think they actually sold River's heartache extremely well. "Please my love, just run." "Can't." "Time can be rewritten." "Don't you dare."

"This is a fixed point in time!"
"Fixed points can be rewritten!"
"No they can't, of course they can't! Who told you tha--"? LOL
Also I liked the dissolve effect there.

Pond. Amelia Pond. LOL!

The scene in the train is actually really fun. But it doesn't make sense if the Doctor's already a tesselecta.

"What's wrong with you?"
"I'm still alive."
--Except Amy and River are working together and River knows what's wrong and that they can't touch. Why would Amy not know?

"outside the bubble of our time the universe is turning." What? All of reality is collapsing. What? This makes no sense. Unless it's just the Earth?

I think part of the weirdness of this episode is that the sound is crap. It's like all ADR and sounds sound-stagey.

I liked a lot of the little bits of this, but it just doesn't seem to give as intriguing of a clean-up as the set-up. This appears to be a motif with Moffat. Like, wait, okay, River lies at the beginning? She recognizes the suit? But then the Doctor says she won't remember the murder here, so does River remember her childhood or not? She remembers being on the beach, kind of? And she goes to prison for killing the Doctor, despite the fact that she wasn't in control. That makes no sense. It is also a pretty selfish thing for the Doctor to basically use River to send himself into obscurity and have her do time for a murder she didn't commit. Unless, though, I suppose she's okay with that? What the heck?

AND another thing; River coming out of the Byzantium has been through both the first and second instances of herself on the beach. And she knows the Doctor isn't dead at that point. Because he told her when she was outside of time in the tower. So she doesn't remember kiling him but remembers it from her future vantage point to know it's a fixed point. But she at some point also remembers that the Doctor has escaped by being in the Tesselecta. So, was all her grief in Utah just a show? Or did she gradually remember what he had told her when they got married. Did they even really get married? Brain. Hurts.

*sighs*

So, fun, but basically it was all setup and no real payoff. Luckily, I wasn't expecting one. I am however, expecting that next year, Moffat will hopefully go back to a more contained arc. Also, I called it, but I think the motif of "Doctor Who" is really just kind of silly. I was ready for it to be over with Let's Kill Hitler. And another thing, Moffat wants to tone the Doctor down to the shadows as it were, but then frames the ultimate question of "Doctor Who" right in the middle of that? *rollseyes*

Right so stuff we don't know:

"You will tell the Doctor what he must know, and what he must never know." Still no clue.

"I have a feeling she'll come to us." Nothing. Well, kind of, i guess. Mels found Amy and Rory but not until later.

Still no real understanding of the Silence, except they are the sentinals of history or something. No understanding of how they blow people to tiny chunks and know their names and stuff.

Still no reason why the TARDIS blew up, why Amy's wedding was so important, or why River Song showed up afterward.

Still not really understanding why Kovarian decided that the best way to kill the Doctor was to put River in a suit and have her shoot him on the shores of the lake.

And wait, so if the true question is some variation of "Who is the Doctor", and it's a big secret and it's crazy enough that an entire order has sprung up to keep the question from being uttered... why does knowing the question mean that the Doctor understands why he should die?

And "at the fall of the Eleventh"... well, I suppose then that means we won't get a payoff for that until Eleven regenerates?

It's such a weird aesthetic, this story. It was fun but It feels like Moffat is running from his own creation.