Well no, because the space whale doesn’yt eat children. WHich raises the question of what the point is. The only answer I have thought of is as a means to procure cheap labour for beneath.
Well, to be fair, I figured that the process was in place before the people in charge knew about the whale-doesn’t-eat-children thing. As a matter of fact, the look of the Underboss guy when he said that really gave the impression of “and we really don’t know what to do with the bastards.”
-Joe
The downstairs boss said that they were in the habit of sending useless people or poor performers or something like that “beneath”, which explains the dumb kid’s getting dumped.
All in all, I thought this episode was pure Steven Moffat - paper thin on things like plot, consistency, sci-fi rules, etc, but gloriously heavy on emotion and character. I enjoyed it.
That was really just a gimmick to get the kiddies interested in the show. Remember, Doctor Who is sometimes called a kid’s show, but it’s not really. What it is is something much harder to do well: a family show that has to keep the four year olds and the forty
year olds equally engaged. The rest of the show was a bit complicated for kids didn’t have a lot for them to grasp on to. But how do you make a police state understandable and scary to a little kid? Simple: if you don’t do your homework, they KILL you!!! 
Between that and the whale at the end who likes kids, I think most single-digit fans will remember the show as fun and scary, while most of us well into the double digits seem to have really liked it too. A tricky thing to pull off, really.
There is a difference between showing the ship with engines glowing and making a huge plot point out of “The engines aren’t working but the ship is moving. IT CANNOT BE!” Plus, usually the engines are making the ship go FTL, which obviously goes beyond normal physics anyway. This was a generation ship and it seemed to be travelling quite slowly. Why wouldn’t they shut the engines down if they weren’t going to need them for hundreds of years?
And some shows have gotten the physics of sublight acceleration right (or at least tried). Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica and 2001 come to mind. I’m sure their were others.
My wife did, and the only exposure she’s ever had to Discworld is the “Hogfather” miniseries.
-Joe
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Actually, from what I’ve read you’re wrong. On a regular, Newtonian non-FTL ship the engines would ALWAYS be running. For the first half of your journey you’d be accelerating continually. For the second half you’d be decelerating continually.
That’s how you’d get there in the shortest time. And your engines would be burning the whole time.
-Joe
But that’s just for the sake of convenience - it shortens the time of the journey considerably. If you didn’t care how long it took, you could easily coast the whole way with no engines.
Was there something in this episode that gave you the idea they weren’t happy to be going faster? I don’t see shortening a long trip as a matter of “convenient”.
I don’t see anyone building generation ships because they want to, they do it because they have to.
-Joe
Ok, that’s a good point. Smeghead is correct, of course, but I’m willing to fanwank it by saying that from what the Doctor knows about the conventions of space travel and the type of ship they were on, the ship WOULD have had its engines on. Still, I wish he had simply said that he saw the ship accelerating through space, instead of merely moving through space. (Though I suppose arguably “moving” through space means accelerating, since from the ship’s own POV, it isn’t moving if it isn’t accelerating. Ok, that’s what I’m going with. Fanwank accomplished.)
Yeah, I agree that’s a perfect description of Moffat’s work, and one of the reasons I’m still not entirely looking forward to the rest of the season.
Also, I sort of think that Liz 10 and her cabinet (or whoever those people were) should have been punished for what they’ve done. They apparently automatically assumed that the star whale who appears out of nowhere (and has been known to guide ships) needs to be tortured horribly to work. And how did they subdue the whale long enough to build a ship around it? They’re apparently completely incompetent but they can shoot a whale out of the sky? Or they can imprison a whale and build a spaceship around it in space? Did they already have a ship built and they were just looking for an engine or a whale or some shit? Did any of them never think that you don’t have to be horrible barbarians to make this work? I know Liz 10 thought she was making the best possible decision, but it’s such an obviously bad decision (compounded with murder and child slavery) that she is clearly not fit to rule (I know Amy made her abdicate, but I would have liked some sort of trial or at least an acknowledgement that she’s horrible).
I, for one, am not mocking at all, Alan. I cried too.
Uh oh! You were supposed to press the forget button after reading that!
Who’s to say they didn’t?
-Joe
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland remember! We’re still there, being towed along in the wake of the whale.
There’s probably a Wales/Whales joke to be had 
Occasionally it swallows some planetoids or lands and munches a bit of a larger planet. Ah wait…
In the term United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Great Britain refers to the big island, as opposed to the smaller Irish island, so without Scotland it should become the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland…
Maybe my 20th & 21st century background led to me misunderstanding what the letters UK stood for on the 29th Century spaceship! 
I’m not sure about that: The United Kingdom of Great Britain part came about because of the unification of the two kingdoms on the island of Great Britain, so the current name of the country is (The United Kingdom of Great Britain) and Northern Ireland. If Scotland buggers off on a ship powered by a giant space-haggis, it’s the “United Kingdom” bit that needs changing.
You’re probably right, but I was trying to justify it’s use on the spaceship…
And if, as it seemed, all the different counties were separate towerblocks, how did they get to London by going up 20 levels?
Also, did anyone else think ‘Cities in Flight’ by James Blish when they saw the opening shot of the city in space?
Oh, man! Why didn’t they do that episode???
I was at a Q&A with Steven Moffat, Matt Smith & Karen Gillan today and someone brought up the ID card. Moffat said that he hadn’t even looked at the date on the ID card and that it’s not a clue to anything.
Damn.
I hope we get to see Jack Davenport in something Whovian at some point.
-Joe
Argh! I originally thought it was just a mistake, but I was coming around to the “It’s A Clue” idea. Oh well.