That was my assumption as well, Merijeek.
I am severely peeved off that they killed Rory. I mean, I am guessing that there is going to be some kind of magic timeline reset button at the end of the season that will bring him back, but in the meantime the character is gone from the show, and he was really starting to grow on me.
Seems like Rory is part of the Doctor’s timeline as well…can he remember him because he’s not that important, or because he’s a Time Lord?
-Joe
There must be some subtlety I am missing about all this because Amy could remember the soldiers from the Stone Angels episode but not Rory? The Doctor said she could remember them because she was a time traveller or something similar.
I haven’t figured it out yet either, but the soldiers themselves were all from the same timeline, so when one got erased, it affected everyone else from that timeline. Amy could remember them because she wasn’t from their timeline, and had a more objective view of things.
When Rory got erased, it was from Amy’s timeline. I’m guessing no one from Amy’s time/town can remember Rory.
The Doctor of course, would be immune to such temporal whimeyness, being a TL, and all.
My wag.
It didn’t make sense to me either. According to the Doctor Who Wiki, the explanation was that he was part of her timeline, and she could even still remember from that if she wasn’t disturbed. Yeah, neither made sense to me, as he’s supposed to be erased out of existence, not just people’s memories.
So, the lizard people have a military caste that can readily override the civilian leadership, scientists that vivisect prisoners to learn their weaknesses, and were eager to execute unarmed prisoners. And the moral is humans are the ones that need time to improve?
The lesson is that* both* have good and bad members, and both need to improve. Well, if “lesson” is the right word; I think they were just trying to tell an interesting story.
I think the scientist said something about learning human needs, rather than weaknesses. The vivisection appeared to be somewhat harmless, except for the scar.
The moral, if anything, was that it’s a bad idea to let the military get too powerful, or make decisions on behalf of society and of course they just happened to get lucky with the drilling is bad message.
The problem with that, though, is that the lizard people are going back into hibernation – there’s not going to be an opportunity for them to improve over the next thousand years.
Sure, but if things work out well they also won’t wake up to an attack from the monkeys, either.
-Joe
I don’t think there’s anyway to make literal sense of the time crack’s erasing people from history. Let’s look back at the first episode in which the device was used: The angel that crashed the Byzantium on Alfava Metraxis never existed, and neither did the other angels that had previously been angels that were stranded on the planet. Yet at the end of the episode, not only are the Doctor, Amy, and River are still gathered on the beach, but River is wearing her angel-hunting uniform and hoping for a pardon based on her fighting the nonexistent angels. I think we just have to accept it as a[del]n arbitrary plot device[/del] mystery that only a Time Lord is capable of understanding.
Spoilers for next episode and beyond:
[spoiler]Amy misses Rory, but she doesn’t know it.
I’ve seen lots of confident posts elsewhere that Rory has to return soon because the series 5 trailer showed him dressed in a Roman uniform. I haven’t spotted him yet, and even if it’s true it could turn out not to be Rory; Martha Jones had an identical cousin, and Gwen Cooper had a double in another century.
But of course Rory has to come back. It’s just too nihilistic to have a likable recurring character wiped from existence like that without. And I’m pretty sure Amy is going to say “I love you” at some point.[/spoiler]
Same. Also, I’m annoyed that he died for a stupid reason. Had he done nothing, the Doctor would have sonic’d the weapon and everybody would have lived. If his intervention had actually saved someone’s life, I’d be far less peeved about Roy being killed off.
Well, that part is easy. Rory is trying to compete with The Doctor for Amy’s affections. He did what he could, which was stupid and pointless.
See also the part where the one thing he was asked to do (keep lizardwoman alive) was also an abject failure.
-Joe
This sounds pretty on target.
Anyone else just really not liking this series? I know part of it is missing david tennant, but i feel like something is just off track here.
I’m not missing David Tennant a bit, and I really, really enjoyed David Tennant. But I’ve always thought the Doctor should be an eccentric old curmudgeon. I just never expected a 26-year-old to nail it. I find Matt Smith more interesting and surprising to watch than any other actor has been in the part. (Admittedly my viewing of the early Docs has been limited, but I’ve sampled all of them.)
I also don’t miss the operatic emotions of 2005-2010. Not that I didn’t enjoy them, but it’s nice to have less screaming, wailing, and blubbering and more softly delivered lines and misty-eyed sorrow. You know, just for a change.
Is there a discussion of the “jacket wearing doctor” that I missed?
There’s too much histrionics for my taste.
I’m sorry - you think there were LESS histrionics with Tennant? The guy was all but raving into the camera most of the time.
It did, several billion years earlier in fact. Sadly this is a remnant of the original Silurian story in the 1970s, before we had a decent theory about how the moon was formed.
The Doctor addressed it, I think, by a comment about “mistakenly believing it was the moon” or soemthing like that.
I thought this episode started well, but fell a bit flat at the end, except for Rory’s death. Personally I would rather Amy had died, but there you go.
For me, the thing that needs to be destroyed next is the sonic screwdriver, it has gone from being a useful device for opening things to a deus ex machina for every occasion.
In the last two episodes alone it has:
Opened things
reprogrammed computers
acted as a medical scanner (on Rory)
destroyed silurian weapons (plausible with a focussed sonic pulse I guess)
It is relied on too much and should be either sued less or disposed of.
I totally agree, it would appear that there is nothing the screwdriver can’t do now (apart from wood, of course). I agreed it should be sued less too - litigation isn’t helping anyone. 