I’m not emotional, it just gets irritating to have people bang on about things that the insist are important when there’s no clear reason to think that (how many times did people bring up the absence of ducks in the pond in Prisoner Zero as some big hidden mystery that would eventually be revealed?).
typoink - I take your point that Moffat tends not to leave white space, and particularly when you’re dealing with a race that use white space as a weapon you’d be a little surprised that this wasn’t explored more. I think you’re right, that we’ll find out there’s more to it with the Silence than just those episodes. For example, what’s their connection with Melody as they were the ones raising her, it seems. As ever it’ll all become clear in the fullness of time, I think Moffat has demonstrated that he comes good on his promises in that respect.
So River’s upset in The Library makes perfect sense because she now believes, perhaps correctly, that she will never, in her timeline, see the Doctor again.
By the point next time we see her, with the Angels, she is has dealt with the fact that she is interacting with her mother from before she was born and able to play it coy.
There will be a point in the future from the Amy/Doctor perspective where adult River mets her mother for the first time, with Amy already knowing it.
The whole dynamic in fact will change from River not giving spoilers to The Doctor and Amy not giving things away.
Yeah, but then you have the whole thing with the missing jacket from the episode with the Weeping Angels last season. What seemed like a simple filming mistake was actually a real plot point, so it’s hard to tell what small insignificant things might turn out to be important.
I still think we might see some more adventures in America. However, I think it’s safe to say that one of the reasons that the ducks got so much attention was just because the Doctor flat out asked the question. It seemed like it might be significant to the protagonist. It’s only natural to think so.
The stuff in America, we KNOW what happened during their time. But do we know ALL of what they did? No. Though to be fair, neither do the characters…
Since it’s definitely possible Amy got snatched during that time we might actually see it. Or not.
Finally catching up. Yowza. I liked the Sontaran nurse. That’s an honor debt for you. And the lesbian Salurian that has trouble telling male and female mammals apart.
No, that prediction was carried out in this episode. “The only water in the forest is the river” was what the TARDIS said. That’s also what River said, explaining the writing on the prayer leaf. (Which, by the way, is flat out wrong. Forests have streams, and creeks, and ponds, and even lakes.) The point is that Lorna Bucket is from the Gamma Forest. She used her language to write the name, and thus we get the River/Pond - Song/Melody transposition. That was what was foreshadowed by the prior line.
And speaking of language, when Amy is first meeting Lorna, Lorna says something about “Then why does he call himself that [the Doctor]?” That’s the first hint in the episode for the later confrontation by River. What does that word come to mean? Clearly for Lorna, it has come to mean “Warrior” or “Soldier” or “Destroyer” or something.
He was doing penance for an honor debt of his blood line. He seemed to be the same line as the ones faced by Tenant. I think that their failure to win and conquer the Earth created that honor debt, and their line couldn’t go home without facing some form of penance, and the Doctor arranged that penance in the most humiliating form he could find for a Sontaran.
I’m growing rather fond of Rory. At first he was mostly a joke, but he’s becoming more.
Also notice that the Doctor has definitely changed. He went from being “the Man who Wouldn’t” to being “the man who you don’t want to find out”.
I don’t think the line was supposed to imply that the only water in ANY forest is the river. The implication (or maybe it was outright stated–I can’t remember the scene exactly) is that the only water *in the Gamma Forest *is the river, and that is why Lorna had no other word in her language to convey “Pond.”
That is perhaps the fairest interpretation, but it would be a pretty bizarre set of circumstances that there is a river without streams to feed it, rainwater, and collections of water where obstacles prevent it flowing downhill smoothly. Those collection points become ponds.
But hey, Moffat needed the name gimmick somehow.
(I wonder if this is the big secret Moffat told Alex Kingston early on.)
I am also wondering if she is rory’s daughter or the Doctor’s … she was able to exist in 2 dimensions simultaniously…as only a time lord could do… remember the doctor was scanning Amy’s body from the Tardis in episode #160 - The Doctor’s Wife…
and my DVR shows the special Doctor Who episode airs on Aug 13th…next Sat. not this one
[SPOILER]also in episode 165 - A good man goes to war- we find out River is Amy’s daughter… so if she kills Rory does that mean she kills her own father?.. or is the Doctor her father?.. she does have some time lord capabilities…
River’s attitude to either of the Doctors she’s met has always seemed a bit more erotically charged than that of a daughter to her father. Besides–I really think I’d remember the Doctor screwing Amy. (River did absorb certain Time-Lordish properties by being conceived in the TARDIS.)
A clue will be if Rory starts learning how to pilot the TARDIS, because I’m pretty sure the man she killed taught her how to pilot one. Better than the Doctor (edit: the current Doctor anyway) even.
As for who her father is, it’s most likely Rory. Every indication is made that the Doctor and River become lovers. I suppose Moffat could be messing with us, but I honestly don’t think so. At lest when it comes to this.
I thought it was made unambiguously clear that Rory is the father in the last episode. She was conceived in the time vortex on the Pond’s honeymoon. As Futurama would put it, “they did the nasty in the past-y.”
The Doctor definitely taught River to fly. In “The Pandorica Opens” the TARDIS starts going nuts and he accuses her of flying it wrong. She replies, “I’m flying it perfectly! YOU taught me!”
Going by the previews I’ve seen online, I’m getting the feeling this may be Matt Smith’s last season. And I don’t want it to be.
