Can’t they just say they were rescued by an alien? Aren’t aliens common knowledge in the Doctor Who universe? Earth was whisked to the other side of the universe, attacked by Daleks and whisked back. Can’t really cover up that.
What? No, no … the Ice Warriors were/will be still around a few centuries later. They just moved, apparently.
Seems they didn’t get on with the neighbours.
True, we can’t forget some of the things that have happened in the show, and especially Torchwood, where it seems everyone is beginning to take aliens running around for granted. Seems odd humans need Adelaide to inspire them off into space when they’ve already been introduced to plenty of extraterrestrial shenanigans.
I missed it I’m afraid, is it possible to watch it again in the UK, BBC iplayer perhaps?
The dark side of the Doctor has always been there, almost from the onset where the first Doctor contemplates killing a caveman (although the reason for this escapes me).
The seventh Doctor particularly played up the darker elements of the role, committing genocide which he had previously refused to do. Admittedly it was the Daleks so he knew they would be back anyway.
Looking forward to the Christmas Specials, will make sure I don’t miss them.
That’s apparently exactly what they did, from the news story updates that were shown. There’s a headline along the lines of “Who is The Doctor?”
bump
Good episode but I didn’t like the ending at all.
So Adelaide kills herself? Why? To get back at the Doctor for saving her life? I’ve heard of some ridiculous rationales in my time but that one’s gotta take the cake.
Or perhaps she did it because time dictated she must die. Her death was fixed and there was no other way around it. So we’re to assume that time forced her hand?
More to the point, the key point in the timeline was NOT Adelaide’s death. It was inspiring her granddaughter to take that flight out into space and bring the human race into a new era. The Doctor makes a point at the end that she can now go inspire her granddaughter in person. But that doesn’t happen. She goes and kills herself in her house. Wow, that’s sure inspiring. If this was what time had to do to rectify itself, I think it failed even the wibbly wobbly logic test.
Yeah - I think the ending was a little forced… like RTD had written himself into a corner.
She had to die at the end to give The Doctor his extensional crisis, but shooting herself would not, I think, have inspired her grand-daughter. A better ending would have been if Adelaide were unable somehow to make it into the TARDIS.
You’ve never dealt with insurance companies have you ? You know how much it cost to insure the TARDIS?
sorry, couldnt help myself on this one 
Oh, I liked this episode. I liked the fact the Doctor’s finally got tired of all this rules crap when things so often appear to go to shit and all he gets in the end is misery because he DOES follow the rules. I think we can all relate to that feeling at one level or another.
I think it was her way to proove that The Doctor is not the absolute authority on what is and what should be. She had to show him he didn’t have power over all. If he wasn’t going to set time right she would try to do so in what limited way she could.
Mind you I’m not sure how shooting herself at home would acomplish this unless Time simply dictates she must be dead. The “little people” surviving did not matter.
Yeah, as a Time Lord, he could easily have taken Adelaide out of Earth’s time stream. Drop her off on a nice tropical paradise planet on the other side of the universe. If he didn’t think of it, she could have suggested it rather than blowing her brains out. But, she had to prove to the Doctor there are things he simply can’t change. He couldn’t just jump back into the Tardis and stop her from pulling the trigger.
What I want to know is, why didn’t the Doctor’'s actions attract the winged creatures that appeared in “Father’s Day” when Rose saved her father?
I have always applauded the BBC for its progressive casting of smokin’ asian-heritage hotties. It’s a practice that is woefully behind in this hemisphere.
Throughout the episode, Adelaide isn’t exactly the best at getting along with people. She apparently had some sort of personal relationship with Maggie, who griped that she was treated like a servant, and possibly a soured romance with Ed, whom she treated kind of crappily as well. The rest of the crew didn’t seem particularly fond of her either, and there’s even an awkward feeling in the first scene in which she’s watching a message from her daughter.
So I think when the Doctor says she can inspire her granddaughter in person and she snaps back that he doesn’t know that, she may actually be thinking that her presence will have the opposite effect, that she’ll end up alienating her granddaughter who will want to be nothing like her.
Add that to the fact that the Doctor had clearly come unhinged (“The laws of time are MINE and they will OBEY me!”) in contrast to the calm, eloquent way in which he had explained himself before, and it wouldn’t be hard at all for her to conclude that his interference was dead wrong.
No, shooting herself in her own home is far from an ideal solution, but she doesn’t have the option of transporting herself back to the base before it blew up. Only the Doctor could do that, and he clearly won’t.
Also, we don’t know that the “little people” had no effect on history, just that one very important part of the timeline was restored.
For all this talk of the doctor becoming extremely arrogant, did any of you watch the original series? Sylvester McCoy’s doctor usually had an attitude of “I’m always going to win in the end.” Of course we all know that, but it was off-putting (to me anyway) for him to know and acknowledge it.
In “Father’s Day,” the Doctor and Rose crossed back into their own timeline, creating a vulnerable point. (This is not a fanwank; it’s addressed in the episode.) In subsequent episodes, the Doctor has refused to re-enter his own timeline.
Some people would consider being alive and permanently separated from everything and everyone they knew and loved to be worse than death – not me, but some people. Also, there would be a very small but non-zero probability of Adelaide returning to earth. The Doctor may not be the only time traveler in the universe. Anyway, since he went from strict non-interference to “fuck the rules,” there was no point at which he would have reasonably considered such a thing.
Good point. And I guess the other times he crossed his own timeline (or time-stream as it’s called in the Whoverse) in past episodes the Time Lords were there to keep the creatures from showing up.
And in “Time Crash,” I think the remnants of the Paradox Machine [technobabble particle here] protected the 5th and 10th Doctors both.
I seem to be the last person to see this episode, as I ahd to wait for the DVD release.
On the whole I quite enjoyed most of it. It wasn’t as scary as it was described by the BBC, but was an enjoyable storyline.
DT got a bit intense towards the end, but then reined it in. My only major gripe is a minor one and that is, this would have happened whether or not the Doctor appeared. So other than having his mental “I’m a timelord I can do what I like” moment and rescuing two people (3 but one died) he achieved very little.
More of a set up for the final arc rather than a great stand alone episode.
You’re definitely right there. All in all, it’s an episode that isn’t all that memorable except for the emotional setup going into Tennant’s final run as Doctor. I think it paid off pretty well once I saw where it was going.
Not necessarily. I’m in the US of A and PVR’d it, only to watch this past weekend. I’m a Who Newbie and thoroughly enjoyed it. I found the creatures scary enough, especially Maggie’s wordless water-spouting in isolation.
I got a good laugh out of the “Name, rank, purpose” answer of “The Doctor, doctor, fun.”