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[Thad]

Well, the Iron Giant Cyberman was a plothole that kinda had to be dealt with.  And yes, I remember her not knowing what a Dalek was, but I thought that got fixed when the Doctor closed the holes.

Dunno -- clearly we haven't seen the last of that storyline, as "the Silence will fall" is the line that preceded the destruction of the TARDIS.

Now we know "the question will be asked and the Silence will fall".

What's the question?  "Doctor Who?" would be a little too cute I think, but it WOULD of course tie back to the original mystery that kicked all this off: how River knows the answer to that very question.

[Lottel]

Well, it's been said for years by the Doctor himself, he'll reveal his name right before his death and only to someone he loves. I assume that means next episode we'll learn his name?

[Thad]

...huh?  I don't remember him saying that at all.  Seems like something I'd remember given the emphasis it got in Silence in the Library (oh yeah, there's that "Silence" again), where he clearly knew the implication of River knowing his name but didn't say what it was.

[Royal☭]

Doctor Who The Prequel to Episode 13 The Wedding of River Song

Wondering if the "Doctor turned away from violence" law is significant, considering how bloodthirsty the Doctor has been this season.

One of the themes you didn't discuss, Thad, is the idea of altering the unalterable, of the Doctor interfering with points of time that are referred to as fixed points, and River Song succumbing to her fate of killing the Doctor. Like how Pompeii had to explode. Hence the significance of "Let's Kill Hitler", an episode that references a time-travel paradox (If it existed, why did Hitler exist?) while also setting in motion the events the Doctor has to avoid.

At the very least, the next episode looks like it'll be a fun one that's about time travel.

[Thad]

Once again, it's going to be damn tough to answer all the lingering questions in the remaining one episode.  Wonder if it'll have an extra 15 minutes on it or suchlike.

OR, manage to answer enough to leave the audience satisfied for a whole year while still leaving the big ones dangling.  Nice trick if you can pull it off.

Loose ends:

[spoiler]The Question has still not been asked, and the Silence has still not fallen.
River as much as told us Madam Kovarian's death was undone when they fixed the timeline.  Question is, does she remember what happened there, like the Doctor and the Companions?  Does she remember her masters turning on her?
Still no payoff on all those Omega symbols -- which, yes, we just saw again, with River coming straight from the middle of last season.
What did the Doctor see behind Door #11 two weeks ago?
What of the removal of the regeneration cap?
And of course, the very first question from when we first met River: how does she learn the Doctor's name, and why is it important?[/spoiler]

I think Moffat managed to use the best of RTD's kitchen-sink finale approach -- striking visuals, returning characters, classic monsters, old continuity (and what a sweet [spoiler]sendoff to the Brigadier[/spoiler]) -- while still keeping a laser focus on the main plot thread of the last two seasons.  I really enjoyed it.  (That said, fuck that guy; give the Hugo to Gaiman.)

I suspect next season will give us more but still won't wrap the major arc; the big climax will be in fall '13, for the fiftieth anniversary.  Moffat is playing a very long game here.

[Bal]

Amazing, but a whole fucking year's wait? Get some fucking work ethic, British TV.

Also, [spoiler]The Silent calling out the fact the Rory has died like fifty times was fantastic[/spoiler]

[Sharkey]

Mekka Lekka Hi Mekka Hiney Ho!


Also, all I can think of whenever Matt Smith has that ridiculous beard on:



I wear pubes on my face now. Pubeface is cool.

[Thad]

Amazing, but a whole fucking year's wait? Get some fucking work ethic, British TV.

Moff's implied on his Twitter that it's so he can focus on the big anniversary blowout.

Mekka Lekka Hi Mekka Hiney Ho!

Ha, yes, I was thinking the very same.

The funny thing is that that's not really far removed from the original dialogue.  In the actual scene, Joker tells Batman he peeked at his batwang while he was changing.

Fucking Kevin Smith.

[Lottel]

Loose ends:
[spoiler]The Question has still not been asked, and the Silence has still not fallen.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Sure it was. The last minute of the show was them asking the question. He just didn't answer. I guess when Smith dies, he'll answer the Question. Fall of the Eleventh and all that.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
And of course, the very first question from when we first met River: how does she learn the Doctor's name, and why is it important?[/spoiler]

Well, we know the second bit. And the first bit? [spoiler]I assume she was there. Which means we have to deal with River until Matt's dead if I'm right, the poor bastard.[/spoiler]

But yeah. Of course [spoiler]that was the question. It would have been retarded for it to be anything else. And of course it was the tessaract. I didn't see the Doctor riding inside of it coming, but that makes sense.[/spoiler]

Rest of the episode was pretty neat and I enjoyed it. I just kind of wish we could get away from River and The Silence for a while. Maybe one or two episodes next season with one or two mentions before there. Light foreshadowing.  I like the ideas of both River and The Silence, but they've taken over the show and I'm not entirely tickled by how they turned out.

[Thad]

Well, we know the second bit.

Not really.  I mean, we know it's going to mean the end of the Silence, and that it's only going to be revealed in a place where all questions must be answered, but that still doesn't answer the "Why?"

"Fall of the Eleventh" has a certain pretty clear implication, but again, doesn't tell us much.

And the first bit? [spoiler]I assume she was there. Which means we have to deal with River until Matt's dead if I'm right, the poor bastard.[/spoiler]

Oh, I'll go one farther: not only is [spoiler]she there, she's the one asking the question[/spoiler].  Still doesn't tell us shit.  That's the thing about prophecies; they wouldn't be very interesting if they were specific.

But yeah. Of course [spoiler]that was the question. It would have been retarded for it to be anything else. And of course it was the tessaract. I didn't see the Doctor riding inside of it coming, but that makes sense.[/spoiler]

What's funny is that you could see all the duplicates as Moff going "Yes, of course it's a duplicate that died.  But can you guess which ONE?"

Rest of the episode was pretty neat and I enjoyed it. I just kind of wish we could get away from River and The Silence for a while. Maybe one or two episodes next season with one or two mentions before there. Light foreshadowing.  I like the ideas of both River and The Silence, but they've taken over the show and I'm not entirely tickled by how they turned out.

I'll agree on the whole that I'd be happy if next season was mostly disconnected and he saved wrapping up the arc for the season after.

But while it seemed like River and the Silence overwhelmed this season, they weren't actually in that many episodes.  I'd say the season was largely disconnected episodes with big arc stuff introduced in the last five minutes.

[Mothra]

Liked the last two episodes quite a bit. Love that The Doctor still thinks it's Earth custom to kiss each cheek in greeting, no matter the relation.

Season finale was fun, not overly complicated, really imaginative, and overall pretty satisfying. I don't necessarily know if The Doctor's impending death was worth building an entire season around, but ┐('～`；)┌ w/e it came out quite well in the end.

[Thad]

So, okay.  Doctor Who?

Between The Big Bang and The Doctor's Wife, we've been working from the template of a guy who just stole his TARDIS because he wanted to go exploring.  (One of my favorite moments in series history is in The War Games when the Doctor admits to Jamie and Zoe that he stole it, and when they incredulously ask why, he responds, "I was BORED!")  But the McCoy era played up the idea that the Doctor was lying (hm, sounds like a phrase we've heard recently) and had a much less whimsical agenda.  Remembrance of the Daleks throws in the retcon that the reason he was on Earth in the first place, back in the very beginning of the series, was to hide Time Lord artifact the Hand of Omega.  (Oh hey, we've been seeing some omegas on the show, too!)  He even hints in dialogue that he was there when it was made -- which would suggest he was actually far older and more important than had previously been implied, and indeed probably a founding Time Lord along with Omega and Rassilon.

io9's review of the finale links the TARDIS Wiki entry for Cartmel Masterplan:

The overall plan for Cartmel was to reveal that the Doctor was some form of a reincarnation of The Other, a mysterious figure from Gallifrey's past who helped form the Time Lord society and perfect the time travel technology of the Time Lords.

So yeah, pretty much what I just said.

I suspect that's got something to do with where all this is going, the idea that the Doctor's very identity is some sort of horrible, universe-shattering secret, and, yes, all the damn omegas that keep popping up.  (And, of course, omega as a reference to endings, and often cataclysmic ones.)

And I'm pretty well torn on that.  On the one hand, it fits that there's some kind of big mystery and subterfuge behind the character that's been heavily implied since the late 1980's.  It also adds retroactive drama to his confrontation with Rassilon in The End of Time -- or, for that matter, his confrontations with Omega in the original series.

But on the other hand, I love the idea that he's just an intergalactic vagabond who stole a ship to go see the universe, and that he only got caught up in being a heroic and, eventually, godlike figure because he kept ending up in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing.

They're not mutually exclusive, of course -- wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.  He could have been present at the point when Rassilon and Omega perfected time travel AFTER traveling back in time himself.

Or, per the link above, some nonsense about the Other throwing himself into some damn cloning device and reappearing as the Doctor ten million years later.  But that's lame.

[Sharkey]

You know what I like about God Complex? That the planetary collision part of nerd kid's conspiracy theory actually describes the plot of the first doctor serial The Tenth Planet, which took place in the far flung future of the mid 80s. Which also happens to be the time period the holodeck space hotel is miming.

Nice touch.

Actually, come to think of it, the psychic email cube things in The Doctor's Wife were a throwback to The War Games. Hell if this season hasn't been full of this sort of thing.

[Thad]

Nice.  I caught the War Games ref (mostly because Gaiman teased it before the ep aired), but I haven't seen (what's left of) Tenth Planet.

There've also been little one-line bits of dialogue that explain away original-series inconsistencies as just the Doctor lying to people (Let's Kill Hitler describes the Temporal Grace as "a clever lie"; the Christmas special dismissed the DNA lock the Doctor alluded to in Pyramids of Mars with "There's no such thing"; and over in the comics, there was a line about "You know, I once convinced my greatest enemy I was half-human, with a clever bluff and a half-open Chameleon Arch.").

[Royal☭]

SNES 16-Bit Doctor Who Intro (2010)

[Zaratustra]

I'm watching series 5 now. It's kind of cool, except the constant reliance on memory-wiping as a plot device and the part they defused a bomb with the power of love.

[Lottel]

Minecraft - Weeping Angels Mod Spotlight

[Royal☭]

REQUIRED

[Thad]

Doctor Who - Cast & Crew Special

[Niku]

And the other one:
Doctor Who - "The Ballad of Russell and Julie" Wrap Party Special