Let's Kill Hitler!!!

[Stephanie Cervantez]

I was just curious to see what my fellow whovians were feeling/thinking/theorizing during the hours leading up to the new episode.

Feel free to post your theories:

"It's totally River who kills the Doctor!!"

"I think ------ is going to happen during the new episode."

Your rants:

"WHY DID MOFFAT HAVE TO SPLIT THE SEASON IN TWO GRAAAHHHHH!!!!"

"STOP KILLING RORY!!!!!"

Your feelings:

"ASODPIHFAEHA I AM SO STOKED FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON!!!"

"Eleven is the best Doctor EVER!!"

Or just completely random (Doctor Who related) stuff:

"If River is Amy and Rory's daughter, why's she blonde?"

"The babies who played baby Melody were cute."

Have fun with it yeah? Whovians ought to stick together and ramble on to their heart's content, especially during this crucial time :D DFTBA!

[AlbinoPearl]

Oooooh, the Doctor that died could be a ganger? That makes sense. Well "makes sense" is a phrase you can't really use about Doctor Who

[Satynne]

I have been thinking about that too!

[Rachel Kadushin]

Well... yes now we have ganger and futurist robot as options.

[Rachel Kadushin]

Here's are some topics from the episode:

 

If the TARDIS taught/told Melody/River how to fly her, then that 1) makes the TARDIS her god-parent 2) means that Mels/River can still receive advanced technology information into her brain quickly and assimilate it.

 

Also, if Mels/River can regenerate older or younger then does her body also age slower or age at the pace she wants it to?

[Danno]

of course she can, she got her 'time head' by being conceived in the TARDIS...we think.  did they still have the bunkbeds on their wedding night?

 

she jokes about going younger.  not sure if she was talking about aging (and the fact that the actress was her youngest at the character's death) or her future regenerations (a reference to the Doctor's progressive incarnations?)

[Kailey deWeever]

She must have to age like a regular human being, or else Amy and Rory wouldn't have 'grown up' with her, if she aged like a normal time lord then she wouldn't go from child to teenager to adult like a human...but who knows!

[Rachel Kadushin]

Well, since the Silence is a religion and not a race, and we saw Robots/advanced cybermen among the clerics in "A Good Man Goes To War" -- while in the time traveling Robot ship in this episode something that looked a lot like -- Daleks without their pepper-pots. I'd say way future human society infiltrated and controlled by cybermen (in the Silence) and daleks (in the secular society).

Those beheaded people who became priests just screamed "cybermen" to me.

Also if the Silence were acting in "controlling" humanity from the beginning and somehow they were time-traveling, too, we have another case of timey-wimey stuff happening with the Doctor that can't be completely stopped due to fixed events in time. It may only be the "scream-men-in-black" who had the memory influencing skills or it may be something that can be "genetically engineered" into more than one species.

 

Future cybermen may have realized that they need some organic life forms to work for them, rather than totally converting planets -- and again the Doctor may be to "blame" by convincing some sect of cybermen to not destroy all humans but to work and interact with them. Thus the secret society-control approach.

And we've already seen that daleks want to serve as much or more than they want to kill, so they may have been repurposed in a distopian society that doesn't value human life much. 

[Stephanie Cervantez]

Exactly right? I thought it was going to be Doctor Who too, which is most likely why that's not the answer. Steven Moffat's a billion times cleverer than me, so that's probably the red herring and it's going to be something much deeper than that...

[Rachel Kadushin]

I see it more like good intentions followed up with no follow-up but on to the next adventure. Not all defeated or former enemies can be trusted to govern themselves, but the Doctor is a believer in free choice and the consequences of that. The hint is when Mels as a school age girl said - and this happened because the Doctor didn't save us. It is like when people say, why didn't g-d save us if he is all powerful and all knowing. This makes this cult the equivalent of former christians who start to do what they think is "satanist" to spite the "father" that they thought would always protect them if they were faithful.

 

The Doctor's greatest character flaw is that he never accepts the responsibility governance that comes with power. There's not need to be an absolute dictator when in power and bureaucracies are so boring. So it is almost like a form of social ADD by saying he can only be the heroic and not a king/president/prime minster. In Greek Mythology the hero that survives often becomes the King. We see this in the story of David and Goliath, as well. Where David later becomes King David.

Even in stealing or being stolen by the TARDIS which started his adventures was bout not wanting to be a part of the "authority" group and delegating to doing something that wasn't about putting aside his own interest -- even on a part-time basis. 

 

I love that the Doctor is a science-hero, but in the bigger picture of the universe, this is a bit of his consequences.

[Danno]

wow, way to imagine people complexly Rachel.

[Rachel Kadushin]

Thanks, Danno. The source material (the show) helps.

[Cecilia Warren]

I have mixed feelings about this episode. One one hand, I loved learning more about River Song. On the other hand, the thing with Mels was honestly just ... weird, and the whole episode had a rushed feel. It was wonderful seeing Rose, Martha and Donna again, however briefly. The Doctor's reaction was interesting, how he felt guilty. Loved that bit.

 

But it would have been nice to see the River Song storyline told over a few episodes.