oh, and its now cannon that Timelords can change sex when they regenerate. All those years of speculation…
Yeah… I can understand that. That brings to mind another thing that bothers me: the Doctor nowadays is, by default, the most intelligent and knowledgeable guy around. Other versions of the character wouldn’t be scared by this kind of thing, because they accepted the universe was vast enough there needed to be smarter, weirder things than him out there. The Doctor should see the Silence as a challenge, not a personal threat. The reason he doesn’t is because he now sees himself as some sort of supreme authority.
I miss a Doctor that is an explorer and who’s always learning, who wanders into trouble, instead of a superhero with all the answers who goes looking for trouble. The Doctor (to me) shouldn’t be an authority figure, he should strive to knock authority figures off their pedestals.
Anyone surprised the Doctor doesn’t receive email?
I wish my snail mail could magically find me anywhere in the universe. I’d even settle for another state.
I’m guessing the Doctor doesn’t fill out a daily mail forwarding card at the Gallifrey Post Office. 
I wonder how that little cube found the Tardis? It had to track him through time and space. I need a Timelord to teach my postman his tricks.
I unequivocally loved Gaiman’s episode. Suranne Jones was wonderful. The Tardis chose the Doctor, to go on adventures. I am happy with this.
Also, bunk beds. Doctor, sometimes you are utterly clueless, even if ladders * are* cool.
I’m a little uneasy about the idea myself, though it’s long been hinted at. It leaves the question as to whether a TARDIS is an artificial intelligence, some sort of naturally evolved creature, and whether or not being in a TARDIS is something a TARDIS has an opinion about. I had a thought they could be like hermit crabs, needing to find some sort of substantial shelter, in which case the Time Lords might have built them shells they found attractive or useful in exchange for them acting as transportation. It really leaves a bunch of questions even as it provides some answers.
An evil entity is threatening all of them and saying “I’m a bad ass, be afraid of me” and it’s suddenly bad for the Doctor to say “I’m not afraid of you, I’m an even worse bad ass than you.”?
As for the cheering on the TARDIS as she kills House – we know for a fact House has killed and dismembered people, treated people as playthings, killed a multitude of TARDIS’s, played cruel games with Amy and Rory just for the fun of it, and is now threatening to kill all of them and eat Sexy the TARDIS… I’d say killing House comes under self defense. The Doctor doesn’t object to self defense killing when there really is no other choice. Even if you could argue that House has to eat TARDIS’s or something like them, he doesn’t have to torture other people, yet he does.
Actually, it’s not a certain genocide. If the Silents go away and avoid humans they won’t be killed on sight. Yes, initially it must have been a bloodbath but the survivors could leave Earth and find someplace without humans to live if they want to survive. It’s a fate that can be escaped, unlike what happened to the Family of Blood.
This. Without their technology they’re just ordinary mortal creatures. Smart, tough, sometimes resourceful, and regeneration is a great trick though that is clearly an outgrowth of their technology as well (attributed to Rassilon) but still quite mortal.
The Fourth Doctor also talks himself out of wiping out the Daleks preemptively because of the impact that would have on history and points out the alliances and cooperation between species brought about by having the Daleks as a common enemy. It’s not just that killing a species entirely is wrong, it’s also about how much history would be undone and rewritten, resulting in who knows what?
…my personal pet theory is quite simply that it wasn’t the House playing with Amy, it was the Big Bad, or whatever it has been thats been playing with Amy’s head for the last few episodes.
Putting it like this, it’s not so much that it’s bad (which I don’t think it is) as it is wrong for the character. It’s not something I feel is appropriate for the Doctor to say, especially considering how much trouble he’s had with living with the Time Lord genocide. You can then counter that it’s not bad characterization, it’s just different from the one I’d like, to which I’d have no answer.
I’ll agree that House is evil, but in the past that’s been no excuse for the Doctor. If Amy or Rory had done it I’d have had no problems with it, it’d have been a normal human reaction, but the Doctor should be held to a higher standard and historically has held himself to such a standard. Also it’s not at all clear it is self-defense. House appears to have already been defeated when it happens. Even if it is self-defense, the cheering is in bad taste.
I agree with both points. I’ll also agree that these were defensible decisions (though I’m not at all sure about the Family of Blood). Still, they strike me as unnecessarily vicious and violent for the Doctor. He’s never been a strict pacifist, but he’s always preached the employment of minimal force and always tried to explore alternatives other than force.
This is true. But still, it all begins with the Doctor’s reluctance to use violence and with his disgust with the idea of genocide. More importantly, he questions if he has the right to make this decision. Note that in this story, unlike his usual MO, the Doctor is on a mission for the Time Lords and his mandate is explicitly to destroy the Daleks before they can become a force for evil and chaos in the universe. Even then he’s unsure if he has the necessary authority to play god.
It’s definitely not a certain genocide. Recall that as “the Impossible Astronaut” begins (minus a few throw-away bits), Amy & Rory have resumed their normal lives for months and meet up with the Doctor (1103 year old version) & River in Area 51 in their home time period, which is presumably the modern day. While they are picnicking, Amy sees a Silent standing in the distance. It’s only after the Doctor is killed, and they meet the younger Doctor that they travel back in time to 1969, when the “genocide” takes place. So, there was at least one remaining Silent as of 2011.
Also, regarding the Doctor’s “death” - in each episode so far, we’ve seen the Doctor make some presumably off-handed remark about “only living once” or “everybody’s got to go sometime”, eliciting awkward glances between Amy & Rory. During most of these exchanges, the focus is on Amy & Rory’s reactions. But ISTM that the Doctor is dropping quite a lot of “off-handed” remarks about “only living once.” I think he already knows about (or has even already planned) his “death.”
Tardises are grown. It’s not AI. It’s just I.
(I’m not reading the rest because I’m behind and don’t want spoilers.)
This may be a stupid question but how can the box travel with House without a Tardis to power it?
By the ineffable, unquantifiable power of the Time Lords. (I.e. A wizard did it.)
Me too, it would have been fun for me to see them turn up in Peter Davison’s control room, he being my first Doctor.
Well, House is already fairly in sync with the TARDISes, if he/it feeds on TARDIS energy. He’s also obviously been studying TARDISes for a long time, and may have practiced flying them around his own universe substituting his own soul and mind for that of the TARDIS, just in case he ever needed to move on.
Keep in mind that if he was stuck there, and forced to hate her, it’s not like it happened because he was just locked in another room. He was (presumably) tortured by The House the entire time.
I think the Cybus universe (and other dimension hopping) was a big deal because they were parallel universes. This pocket universe, on the other hand, was just a small pustule on our universe. Totally different.
I also didn’t have a problem with The House killing Time Lords. Across all of time they’d it managed to kill a couple hundred. A couple hundred across all of time? I’m sure slippery bathroom doors have killed more than that.
Yes, it’s quite clear that the only reason House left its own pocket universe was because there would be no more TARDIS coming to feed it. Presumably it could have left long ago, it just didn’t see a reason to do so. Until no more meals were going to be delivered.
-Joe
"Pull to Open"
Brilliant. I never noticed.
Never ever, all these years.
And it’s so damn obvious - you’d never build a box that size with the door opening inward.
Anyone else gobsmacked?
I’ll never admit it, even if it were true. So of course not!
-Joe
I’m wondering - how are you so sure? Because the TARDIS sure looks an awful lot like a construct, doesn’t it?
Perhaps House and TARDIS’s are related types of creatures? They both feed on rift energy, after all…
The pot my ficus lives in is a construct too, but the ficus is living.
-Joe, doesn’t actually own a ficus, can’t remember the name of the plant on his filing cabinet
Actually I had just noted it for the first time at the start of the episode as The Doctor was standing with the door push inwards with the complete sign “PULL …” in frame next to him. I don’t think it was a coincidence that it was never framed in a way that it called attention to it before.