S5E13: The Big Bang

But Amy would've left herself that message in the past after she had freed the star whale. There'd be no reason to warn herself to leave if she knows she'll save the day. Surely that was a message foreshadowing something bigger.

Evil Monkey Pope wrote:

But Amy would've left herself that message in the past after she had freed the star whale. There'd be no reason to warn herself to leave if she knows she'll save the day. Surely that was a message foreshadowing something bigger.

I thought went like this:

She watched the video

She left the message for herself

She pushed the forget button

Davros called the Doctor "Destroyer of Worlds". The voice in the TARDIS sounds like Davros. Hmmmmm....

Evil Monkey Pope wrote:

But Amy would've left herself that message in the past after she had freed the star whale. There'd be no reason to warn herself to leave if she knows she'll save the day. Surely that was a message foreshadowing something bigger.

o.O How does the Voting Chamber act like a time machine? The scene's fairly straight forward. She watched the video, left herself the message, and pressed "Forget".

Mustakozene-80 wrote:

Davros called the Doctor "Destroyer of Worlds".
The voice in the TARDIS sounds like Davros. Hmmmmm....

It also plays into the MO he displayed in "Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" where he wanted to destroy the whole of reality. At the same time, where'd Davros learn to remote pilot a TARDIS?

Didn't her message play right after the voting info? That would mean she'd have to have planted it there ahead of time.

Evil Monkey Pope wrote:

Didn't her message play right after the voting info? That would mean she'd have to have planted it there ahead of time.

It didn't all happen that fast. She recorded it before hitting forget.

After the first few minutes, I was prepared to hate the finale. It just smacked of Deus ex Machina... but overall I liked it. It really did get better as it went.
And, I love that Amy and Rory both went with the Doctor. I've missed the old days where the companion was just a person who happened to tag along, and not specifically a young woman.
Anyway, loved it.

A FREAKING MAZING! This one had me on the edge of my seat! Dear god this was good!

About par for season. Many highlights and a lot of weak ones too. This whole season had a wealth of paradoxical moments and over the top sci-fi camp. Amy remembers the doctor voila he and the tardis are back. Reminded me of Martha spreading the story of the doctor to bring him back to glory. Concept I'll get along with but it seems it could have just been crafted a little better. All in all a solid season.

Hi, y’all. I’m new. Nice to meet you!

This last episode has me very confused.

Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey (WWTW) doesn’t quite do it for me this time…

QUESTION ONE:
How did the Doctor ever get out of the Pandorica?

We see the Doctor with his little fez and mop hand Robot Rory a sonic screwdriver. Robot Rory unlocks the Pandorica. The Doctor pops out.
The Doctor puts on a vortex manipulator, goes into the future, dons fez, grabs mop, and then (WWTW) pops back into the past.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Loopiness.

Oh, and don’t try to sell me some wolf tickets about Big Bang II rewriting all of that, so the loop never happened, anyway. (WWTW)

Because that means none of that episode really happened. (WWTW)

Or, actually, the one before that…(WWTW)

Or, now that I think about it…

Let’s go back to episode one of the season!

Let’s start when the TARDIS lands in the garden. Hold on a minute…

QUESTION TWO.
Did the Doctor even land in Amy’s garden? He didn’t exist anymore, correct? Wasn’t he snapped to the other side of that, erm, crack thing-a-ma-bob?

That’s a pretty big WWTW.

When he did not appear in the garden, there were no stars. (No stars because of the exploding TARDIS…) Wait. But now there should be stars because the TARDIS did not explode…

Hold on. We had this last season. If the Doctor dies, the Earth has all of these terrible things happen, and then Davros nukes all of creation. Everything worked out great when Donna set things right. She made sure the Doctor existed to help fix things. Only…

How far back does the Doctor not existing go, once he saves all of time and space in season five?

How would Amy be having her wedding if the Doctor was erased from existence? What about Davros nuking creation? Was Amy not remembering the Darleks some mysterious season five CYA going on with the writer in anticipation of the finale? Or, in season six we will see more of this explained? Otherwise…BIIIIIIIIG WWTW. No DoctorDonna. No human Doctor for Rose. (No DoctorDonna also completely screws up the End of Time pts 1 and 2!)

Can somebody set me straight here? I’m sure I’ve missed something.

Otherwise...Can I have a WWTW to save myself the time I spent watching the season that never happened… and the season that just took a big poop on season four? No offense. I love Doctor Who, y’all. Honest!

Let’s just say that this entire season five “never happened”.

If so… then…

There is still a tormented StarWhale flying around?
Those Darleks from WWII are still skittering around somewhere?
We have a whole flock of Angels somewhere who never get dealt with?
There is still a nasty piece of pollen in the TARDIS?
Lots of cheezed off lizards are gonna’ take over Earth once we knock a hole in their roof?
There is still an invisible monster on the rampage, because the Doctor never took Amy to the museum to see the paintings? Never prompting the visit to Vincent?
Does this mean there is still a creepy lodger on an imaginary floor burning people up to pilot a second TARDIS? (I’m still trying to make sense of that episode, to be honest.)

QUESTION THREE
Is everybody just assuming that season five happened without the cracks? If so, it still makes no sense. The Doctor clearly said his reason for taking Amy was because her life “made no sense.” No cracks = life makes sense. The Doctor hops in his TARDIS and leaves. (WWTW)

Okay, so Amy can call him back from that one little childhood memory of watching a man eat fishfingers and custard. That is her memory for recall, and fixes the past seasons... somewhat. Still a bit too WWTW for my tastes, though.

HOWEVER! A lot of “good” the Doctor did while joyriding through time and space with Amy never happened. (See points above.)

QUESTION FOUR.
I am also still trying to figure out how River could pop in to Amy’s wedding with the book if she and the Doctor never happened. (WWTW) That seems to be a BIG STRETCH there. Seems to very pointedly place significance, again, on their mysterious relationship, which I find myself really hoping would just dry up and blow away. Can’t the Doctor just be charming and unfettered, like in the old days? Why the parade of love interests? Let it go…

Again, a whole lot of WWTW going on for me, here.

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!

Welcome Severus.
Remember when the Doctor left the Pandorica and used the time vortex manipulator to leave ancient Britain to go to the future when Amy was young? He then pops back to same year but slightly earlier to tell Rory how to free him. He moves around the same way throughout. The idea was to show how he plans ahead and jumps back/forwards as needed to bring events to their conclusion. If time is linear, the Doctor moves around on said timeline as needed.
The rest of your questions are good ones and open to interpretation. I think everyhing is set back in order for the day after the Doctor first picked up Amy. I believe the adventures happened and River/Doctor probably are best explained as "temporal anomolies" and are able to navigate time in such a way as to do some pretty incredulous things.

iloveseverus wrote:

Hi, y’all. I’m new. Nice to meet you!

Howdy!

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QUESTION ONE:
How did the Doctor ever get out of the Pandorica?

Time Travel on a non-linear plane. He effectively violated the "Big Rule" of Time Travel and started jumping through his own personal time line. Fortunately, Paradoxes were canceled out due to the lack of a universe.

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Oh, and don’t try to sell me some wolf tickets about Big Bang II rewriting all of that, so the loop never happened, anyway. (WWTW)

Because that means none of that episode really happened. (WWTW)

Well, technically the episode didn't happen in the same manner "Turn Left" never happened. What we experienced was a Parallel World that literally operated beyond the bounds of time and space (Because Time and Space didn't even exist).

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QUESTION TWO.
Did the Doctor even land in Amy’s garden? He didn’t exist anymore, correct? Wasn’t he snapped to the other side of that, erm, crack thing-a-ma-bob?

That’s a pretty big WWTW.

When he did not appear in the garden, there were no stars. (No stars because of the exploding TARDIS…) Wait. But now there should be stars because the TARDIS did not explode…

Keep in mind, when the TARDIS detonated, it created an alternate universe. One in which Earth was only spared the destruction because it was "Ground Zero" of the explosion of the TARDIS (Hence the TARDIS took the place of the sun). Since the exploding TARDIS was what Earth was theoretically orbiting around, the Doctor couldn't land in Amy's garden. He only had access to the Vortex Manipulator.

Quote :

Hold on. We had this last season. If the Doctor dies, the Earth has all of these terrible things happen, and then Davros nukes all of creation. Everything worked out great when Donna set things right. She made sure the Doctor existed to help fix things. Only…

How far back does the Doctor not existing go, once he saves all of time and space in season five?

How would Amy be having her wedding if the Doctor was erased from existence? What about Davros nuking creation? Was Amy not remembering the Darleks some mysterious season five CYA going on with the writer in anticipation of the finale? Or, in season six we will see more of this explained? Otherwise…BIIIIIIIIG WWTW. No DoctorDonna. No human Doctor for Rose. (No DoctorDonna also completely screws up the End of Time pts 1 and 2!)

The Doctor was erased from the whole of Space Time. No Doctor, no Dalek Caan Temporal Shifting into the Time War. No Dalek Caan, no Davros. No Davros, no Reality Bomb. No Reality Bomb, most of the issues that occurred in Season 4 cease to be an issue (Pyrovilla, Adipose III, etc).

Indeed, no Doctor there's a very good chance there were no Daleks, given the Doctor was the one who hesitated and allowed them to live in "Genesis of the Daleks" (Which I really must see). No Daleks, no Time War. No Daleks, no Void Ship for the Cult of Skaro. No Void Ship, no crack in reality that led to Pete's World. No Pete's World, no Cybermen. No Cybermen, no Cyberking in Victorian London.

And a cascade effect from there. The only real potential issue would be the Titanic crashing in "Voyage of the Damned", but without the Time War who knows what the galaxy at large is like. Maybe not even a recession that requires the Slitheen to attempt to blow up the planet.

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Otherwise...Can I have a WWTW to save myself the time I spent watching the season that never happened… and the season that just took a big poop on season four? No offense. I love Doctor Who, y’all. Honest!

Nope. Everything still happened the way it is shown to happen. Everything but Rory the Auton (And even then, Rory remembers being an Auton).

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Let’s just say that this entire season five “never happened”.

If so… then…

There is still a tormented StarWhale flying around?
Those Darleks from WWII are still skittering around somewhere?
We have a whole flock of Angels somewhere who never get dealt with?
There is still a nasty piece of pollen in the TARDIS?
Lots of cheezed off lizards are gonna’ take over Earth once we knock a hole in their roof?
There
is still an invisible monster on the rampage, because the Doctor never
took Amy to the museum to see the paintings? Never prompting the visit
to Vincent?
Does this mean there is still a creepy lodger on an
imaginary floor burning people up to pilot a second TARDIS? (I’m still
trying to make sense of that episode, to be honest.)

Nope, on all counts.

Indeed, there's only less then a day discrepancy in which the Doctor "ceased to be". He whisked Amy off the night before her wedding. He returns to reality the day of her wedding. As far as the Space-Time Continuum is concerned in relation to the Doctor, he never left.

While the Doctor "vanished" in Amy's childhood, she wakes up the Day of her wedding surprised (and she can't understand why) by the appearance of her parents. That means Amy's subconscious perception of events still catalogs everything as "normal" time flow in regards to Season 5. Like I said, the Doctor's been gone less then a day by Amy's reckoning (Since she ran off with him the night of her wedding). And Amy's reckoning - at least in this instance - was the Universe's reckoning.

I got the impression that if she didn't remember him soon (as in, on that day), there'd be a chance he wouldn't be able to make it back.

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QUESTION THREE
Is everybody just assuming that season five happened without the cracks? If so, it still makes no sense. The Doctor clearly said his reason for taking Amy was because her life “made no sense.” No cracks = life makes sense. The Doctor hops in his TARDIS and leaves. (WWTW)

The Cracks happened as far as the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River Song's perceptions of events claim they happened. However, like it was explained in "Waters of Mars" minor details likely changed, but the story stayed the same. The Angels were dealt with somehow (or just left to rot on a dead alien world feasting off a crashed star liner's drive core), and Rory wasn't with The Doctor and Amy during the events of "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood".

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Okay, so Amy can call him back from that one little childhood memory of watching a man eat fishfingers and custard. That is her memory for recall, and fixes the past seasons... somewhat. Still a bit too WWTW for my tastes, though.

Amy was soaking up the whole universe into her head as a kid, when the Crack was on her wall. She believed Rory back into existence instead of an Auton, and she was the "link" needed for the Doctor to get back into the Universe.

Unlike "Bad Wolf" Rose or The DoctorDonna, Amy's "special gift" is simply a very good memory.

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HOWEVER! A lot of “good” the Doctor did while joyriding through time and space with Amy never happened. (See points above.)

Yes they did. The Doctor that was brought back to reality after his experience with the Pandorica. Given River's diary refilled itself, that means everything that did happen (or will happen) occurred with only minor revisions.

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QUESTION FOUR.
I am also still trying to figure out how River could pop in to Amy’s wedding with the book if she and the Doctor never happened. (WWTW) That seems to be a BIG STRETCH there. Seems to very pointedly place significance, again, on their mysterious relationship, which I find myself really hoping would just dry up and blow away. Can’t the Doctor just be charming and unfettered, like in the old days? Why the parade of love interests? Let it go…

River is still an X Factor. She is definitely more then she seems to be, and it seems possible she could even be another Child of Gallifrey.

As for her being a love interest...this seems to be a romance in reverse. River very clearly loves the Doctor at this point, but the Doctor doesn't know her. By the time the Doctor will grow to care for River, she won't know Him. They're two people who likely will never have an "on screen" romance. It seems the only point in time that the Doctor and River are ever together when they're both "in sync" is the event that proceeds her visiting the Library, which ends in her physical death.



Hope my explanations made at least a little bit of sense, and again - welcome!

Hi
Thinking about the potential baddie from Season 5 that will carry over into Season 6 or 32, I had greatly suspected Omega to be behind things. However, another thought occurred to me and I'd appreciate some feedback from those of you who are Second Doctor diehards on this idea, because it last appeared during his time. The idea came from some spoilery McKinstry art, perhaps from some future episode, of an old Who monster. Those monsters had someone behind them, a voice from another dimension.
Could the big bad be The Great Intellegence?
I know it is obscure but that might also allow Moffat some latitude in how would develop the character.

I like your thinking my boy!

However confusing this was, it was really really clever! Loved every minute of it. 10/10.

Can't believe I haven't commented on this yet, but here we go...

I. LOVED. IT.

It made a change from the "big" RTD finales that included all different characters, objects that'd just pop up at the last minute that could help to save the day... Whereas in this finale, it only had 5/6 main characters (excluding the wedding scene), and the Doctor used gadgets that he'd had in the previous episode (vortex manip, sonic, Pandorica, etc.)

I wasn't sure with the finale at first, but I quickly warmed to it, especially the Dalek begging for mercy. As people have pointed out, it must mean River is pretty dangerous/scary if a Dalek is begging for mercy.

I'm amazingly happy that Rory and Amy are continuing to travel with the Doctor into the next season, it's about time we had a companion staying on for more than a year... now we get TWO!

The "Something old, something new... etc" scene made me smile, and summed up the TARDIS very well, (although, I have a feeling some of the comments may have been the Doctor, but I'm assuming they're all about the TARDIS, since he told Amelia the story of how it came to be.)

I have a feeling whoever took control of the TARDIS may have also been manipulating the various aliens that formed the Alliance into trapping the Doctor and therefore, ending the universe (in theory, obviously didn't work out that way.)

As I said above, I LOVED IT. I think it's slightly better than the RTD finales, imo. I was immensely satisfied with the finale and can't wait to find out who was controlling the TARDIS. And, I don't mind there being questions which lead onto the next season, makes it all the more exciting!

BRING ON SEASON 6!

I've only seen clips of this so far, but it seems like a pretty good episode, and I think the stone daleks are really cool, and one of them actually

Spoiler:

Instead of just threatening to exterminate him or keep on saying exterminate but never actually shoot the doctor.

Invisible Supreme wrote:

I've only seen clips of this so far, but it seems like a pretty good episode, and I think the stone daleks are really cool, and one of them actually

Spoiler:

Instead of just threatening to exterminate him or keep on saying exterminate but never actually shoot the doctor.

that's not a spoiler

kcooper76 wrote:

Invisible Supreme wrote:

I've only seen clips of this so far, but it seems like a pretty good episode, and I think the stone daleks are really cool, and one of them actually

Spoiler:

Instead of just threatening to exterminate him or keep on saying exterminate but never actually shoot the doctor.

that's not a spoiler

Ah.