Howling:Mels

The Howling → Mels

There be spoilers about un-released stories here.
Run back to the forums if you're scared.

Am I the only one who found the addition of Mels to be kind of a weird plot point. Not that I find it weird that Amy and Rory grew up with their own daughter who secretly wanted to kill Amy's imaginary friend. That all makes perfect sense in the context of the story. What I find weird is that Mels has never been seen or mentioned before. I feel like if RTD was still in charge, we would have seen Mels as early as The Eleventh Hour as a minor character, and then she would have showed up at the wedding again. That way it would have been a shocking plot twist. This way, it's more along the lines of "Huh, a character named Mels who seems obsessed with the Doctor. I wonder who that could be." The way they ended up doing it it seemed more like Moffat was just like "Hey, you know what would be cool. If it turned out that River's actually known Amy and Rory their whole lives." I guess the difference is that Davies always seemed like he had the story planned out years in advance (the Master's drumming, the cult of skaro, etc.), while Moffat seems like he's just making it up as he goes along. It also seems a bit odd that Amy and Rory seem to forget that Mels is an old childhood friend the second she regenerated. At the end, for example, Amy said something along the lines of "Are you sure we should just leave her there? She's our baby, she's River." No mention of, "Rory and I have known her our whole lives." I dunno, overall the episode was pretty good, and I've enjoyed the whole River Song arc, but the whole Mels plot twist just seemed like lazy writing to me.Gowron8472 02:50, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

In addition, immediately after regeneration, the new personality is fluid. I do wish that point was made more forcibly in the episode. Boblipton 00:25, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

Well, Amy and Rory don't forget that Mels was their childhood friend--instead, they realize that River was their childhood friend. --Bold Clone 03:14, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well gowron8472 does have a point. They do realize that their daughter was their childhood friend, but they hardly discuss the subject. I'm sure that they'll bring it up in later episodes. Amy might be happy to realize that she did not in fact miss all those years like she said on the Doctor's answering machine, although given how much Mels got in trouble she might not be too happy. Well, we'll see in the next River Song episode.Icecreamdif 04:11, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I guess it's nice to see one person who's got the opposite complaint to the mass delusion that "the show has gotten too arc-heavy to follow for the common people who aren't as smart as me".

But really, the only reason RTD was able to seed his plot points so early is that they were so trivial. Sure, the words "Bad Wolf" were in every episode after the first, but that's just throwing out two words that turn out to not really mean anything important, just a random phrase that Rose used to signal herself across time. The Heart of the TARDIS wasn't even mentioned (unless you think he seeded it decades ago in Arc of Infinity) until pretty late in the very episode when it became central to the plot; we didn't meet Harold Saxon until the middle of the 3-part finale; etc. Compare that to gradually learning about the cracks throughout series 5, and the hints of the future Doctor be traveling back through the whole season at the end.

Also, I kind of like that the possiblity is left open that maybe they originally _hadn't_ known Mels their whole life, and the whole series of events from The Pandorica Opens to A Good Man Goes to War changed their (pre-time-traveler) past. I doubt that will turn out to be true, but I like that we can't be sure yet. --173.228.85.35 04:41, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well, you have an interesting idea (Mels is actually a retroactive time travel change), but what I fail to see is anything that might back it up. --Bold Clone 14:52, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

"given how much Mels got in trouble she might not be too happy": Amy didn't seem all that bothered, except to tell Mels she should stop it for her own sake; indeed, it was obviously part of what made them friends. Also, at least when she was younger, Amy seems to have got into a fair amount of trouble herself -- witness the conversation between young Amelia and Mels on that very topic that ends with Amelia saying, "I count as a boy." It looks as if they were both tearaways but Amy calmed down (a little) as she grew up, whereas Mels got worse.

One thing I liked was Mels making sure her parents got together: "Penny in the air... Penny drops." --89.241.71.249 17:47, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

I'm not neccessarily agreeing with Gowron8472 that RTD would have done a better job, though the Torchwood arc was a bit more elaborate than the Bad Wolf thing, and the heart of the TARDIS did actually appear in Boom Town. I'm just saying that if Mels had been introduced in The Eleventh Hour and been seen again in The Big Bang, then when she appeared in Let's Kill Hitler we would have thought "oh, there's Mels again. Is she going to become a companion." If anybody had noticed the similarity between her and Melody's names, they would have just assumed that Amy named her daughter after Mels. As it was, however, Mels seemed to come completely out of the blue. She's been Amy and Rory' best friend for their entire lives, but neither of them have ever mentioned her once. Rose and Donna both used to name drop their old friends a lot, so why wasn't Mels ever mentioned, even in passing. I don't know about other people, but I figured out who Mels was as soon as I heard her name. I assumed she would be a recurring character before she regenerated, but when you know that River is going to be in the episode, you know that Mels has a pretty similar name, the flashbacks show that she is pretty obsessed with the Doctor, and she has a similar personality to River, it really wasn't that hard to figure out. If she had already been an established character, I doubt I would have made the connection.Icecreamdif 23:14, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Bold Clone: As I said, it probably won't turn out to be true. But it would be a cool storyline (assuming the justification works, the characters react to it in appropriate ways, etc., but I take that for granted with Moffat—or, really, any writer since the Pip&Jane Baker days).

Icecreamdif: If you notice, Amy and Rory never mention any of their friends when they're off with the Doctor. And that isn't something peculiar to them; most companions never mention a single other person, or at best make vague and rare references to a single relative (like Sarah Jane's Aunt Lavinia, or Amy's Aunt Sharon). The only exception I can think of in the classic series is Ace, and even in the RTD era, it was only Rose and Donna who talked about their friends. Can you name any colleagues, classmates, or friends of Ian and Barbara, Romana, Tegan, Peri, or Martha (or, before he got his own spinoff, Jack)? --173.228.85.35 03:48, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

But what you have to remember is, until this series, Amy _didn't have a daughter_. So she would have grown up all this time with Mels, without having that idea in her head. It's posisble she even named her daughter after her best friend, without ever making the connection. 187.59.125.160 14:05, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

"It's posisble she even named her daughter after her best friend, without ever making the connection": She did. That's in the dialog of Let's Kill Hitler. Amy says she named her daughter after Mels because Mels was her best friend and the Doctor says, "You named your daughter after your daughter." --2.96.28.149 16:37, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see why Amy never made the connection. 173.228.85.35, I see what you're saying about companionsnever mentioning their friends, and you have a point. I'm not really talking about this from an in-universe point of view, but from a real world storytelling point of view. I think that the character of Mels and the plot twist of her turning into River would have worked better with a bit more foreshadowing. Introducing the character about ten minutes before the big reveal that she is actually River just seems a bit lazy to me. Even if Moffat had done what RTD did in Utopia, and spent the episode introducing the character before having her regenerate at the end, it would have been better. Still, apart from that I did enjoy the episode, and I think that its an interesting plot point that Rory and Amy knew their daughter for their whole lives, but I feel like it could have been done better. Also, I don't see how they could have not known Mels their entire lives in a diffeent timeline fom before A Good Man Goes to War. Mainly, because then we would have to assume that they and the Doctor didn't know the older River Song until after the episode, which of course makes no sense at all. Since Mels got them together anyway, we should assume that her entire life is one masive causality loop.Icecreamdif 18:15, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

I, too, feel that Mels could have been handled better. Other considerations apart, that version of Melody was highly entertaining in her own right and I'd like to have seen more of her. I'd also have liked to see more of the Sydney Wade version. We've had 3 good actresses cast in the part (Sydney Wade as the 1960s version, Maya Glace-Green as the younger Mels and Nina Toussaint-White as the adult Mels), none of whom have been allowed much screen time. It all feels rushed. --2.96.28.149 18:36, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, I'm not talking about in-universe either. In fact, in-universe, it actually never made much sense to me that Sarah Jane doesn't have a life outside of the Doctor—but I didn't mind too much, because it worked for the stories, and that's pretty much the way all TV scifi works (how many acquaintances does Scotty have outside the bridge crew and engineering team of the Enterprise?).

As for how they could have not known Mels in a different timeline: Why would that mean they didn't know the older River? I think you're missing the fundamental point that it's a different timeline, so history is different between the two of them. In the old one, River never became Mels, so the first time they met her was with the Doctor in their early 20s; in the new one, she did, so the first time they met her was as children in Leadworth. Even though I don't think this is what Moffat's planning, it's definitely the _kind_ of thing he likes to do, and the kind of thing you keep failing to get, just like the cracks.

2.96.28.49: Maybe Moffat has just written too many ideas to fit into a 13-episode season. But I don't think so. Leaving people wanting to know more of the backstory is exactly what makes great episodic writing. A few dozen lines, and we believe Mels is a fully-realized, fascinating character, and we desperately want to know more of her story. But the reality is, that's all the story there is—and anything he dreamed up would be less interesting than we're expecting. I know I'm not explaining this very well; Neil Gaiman explains it a lot better in the context of Idris, on his blog and elsewhere. (Gaiman can explain just about anything a lot better than me; that's why he's the famous writer…) Of course the actress, and the director, also deserve a lot of credit, not just Moffat. But the point is that it _is_ a credit, not a problem. --173.228.85.35 04:41, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

While the last writer makes a good point, I'm also a bit annoyed by the last episode. The transformation of character in the last sequence, from happy psychopath to the stand-by-your-man gal is abrupt for my taste and I need a little more, if only a thunderstruck look. It feels like plot pushing character, rather than the other way around. Boblipton 10:48, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

173, we both know that the only characters in the original Star Trek who got any character development or background at all were Kirk, Spock, and Bones, so Scotty is hardly a reasonable analogy here. Modern-day Doctor Who companions get much more character development and backstory than 60s Star Trek characters. Also, just because we disagree on a subject doesn't mean that I have failed to grasp it. Most details of the cracks were left pretty vague, and it is just as likely that you are the one who is completely mistaken. My problem with Mels isn't that she was so interesting and I think she should have been given more screen time. It is that she seems to come out of nowhere for the simple purpose of regenerating into River. If they had just given her a cameo or a minor role in The Eleventh Hour, where we saw many citizens of Leadworth, then her role in Let's Kill Hitler would have been more effective. He certainly doesn't seem to have written too many ideas to fit into 13 episodes. He's not even filling thirteen episodes with his ideas, is he. I didn't eally mind Sydney Wad not getting much screen time though. In that episode, young Melody is a much more mysterious character, and giving her less screen time worked better. With Mels, its almost like the old Anthony Ainley Master episodes in a way, where the Master would spend the first part of the episode wearing a bad disguise only to remove it for no reason. It's obviously not the exact same thing, but it still comes down to the big reveal being "this character who you've never heard of before is actually River Song." It would work much better if it was "this minor character who you didn't pay much attention to last year is actually River Song."Icecreamdif 14:33, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

OK, look at Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Sure, they got much more character development than Scotty, but almost none of it was their backstory, it was their relationships with each other, and how they dealt with the extraordinary events they were facing week after week, and so on. (In 3 years, all we learned about McCoy's past was that he had an ex-wife and a daughter.) And the same is true of Sarah Jane, Tegan, or Jack Harkness.

Meanwhile, I don't know why you think "Mels is really River" is, or should be, the big season-dominating reveal. It's just one minor plot point in the much larger saga of River, which itself is just part of the season's overall storyline. Ultimately, the Doctor is the main character this season, not Amy (as with most seasons, with season 26 and series 2 being notable exceptions). --173.228.85.35 17:35, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

Of course there will be other big dominating reveals this season, but this should have been a much bigger one. It is pretty much a major portion of River's life condense into the first 20 minutes of an episode. Besides, not that this is about Star Trek, but we did get a bt more with Kirk and Spock. With Kirk we find out about at least a hundred ex girlfriends that he's had (including Carol Marcus), his illegitimate son that he never knew about, the guy who used to bully him back at the Academy-there are more examples that I can't think of. With Spock we meet both of his parents, his half-brother, I think he got an ex-girlfriend from years ago. Even McCoy we get a bit more when we learn about his father who he euthanized, and I think he had a daughter in the animated series. Either way, DS9 might be a better analogy for the way the direction that Doctor Who is taking these days. Legate Damar, for example, would have been a pretty lame character if he had only been introduced in the final ten episode arc to lead the Cardassian resistance movement. Instead, they introudce the charactes years earlier as basically an exttra serving on Gul Dukat's ship, and built him up over time. same goes for Enterprise. If we only found out that T'pol was in an arranged marriage in Home, it would seem like a completely random plot point that came out of nowhere for no reason other than to create conflict in her relationship with Trip. Instead, we learned that T'pol was suppossed to marry Koss back in season 1, and then it became important in season 4. Yes, most characters don't actually talk about their friends unless its relevant to the plot, but Mels would have been a much more compelling character with just a bit of foreshadowing.Icecreamdif 18:19, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

McCoy's daughter Joanna was mentioned (but never appeared) in the original series. His divorce was also mentioned.

Anyway, back to the real business: Although I (in common with others) feel the introduction and rapid disposal of the Mels (Nina Toussaint-White) version of Melody is a bit odd, that might itself be a plot point, for all we so far know. After all, something that looked like a continuity error (the Doctor's jacket in Flesh and Stone) turned out to be intentional and to make sense, once we'd seen the rest of the series. It's too soon to assume that the sudden "intrusion" of Mels isn't meant to be odd. --2.101.48.209 01:22, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Well, the only likely way that that could be intentional would be if Moffat is going for the alternate timeline approach. We know that she didn't just rewrite Amy and Rory's memories or anything like that because of the flashbacks. Making Mels part of an alternate timeline wouldn't make any sense though. For one thing, Amy named her daughter after Mels, so Amy's daughter would have a different name in the alternate timeline. For another thing, we know that a later version of Mels was already part of the timeline during The Eleventh Hour, as we had already seen River back in Silence in the Library. As for Dr. McCoy, I remember there was something along the lines of his daughter was supposed to appear in that awful hippy episode, but they decided against it because they didn't want tom make him seem old. It was something like that. Either way, we were definetly inroduced to some kind of relation to him in the animate series.Icecreamdif 01:29, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

If it's altered memory, the flashbacks could be to Amy's memories, rather than to "actual history". If they explained that in an episode, nobody would think twice about it.

If it's an alternate timeline, maybe her daughter was named Melody for a different reason in the original timeline. (Which would mean there wasn't actually an ontological paradox until someone changed history, which actually makes things a bit more interesting.) Also, I wasn't suggesting that River's entire existence could be in an alternate timeline, just that her having grown up (as Mels) with Amy and Rory could.

I still don't think either of these is what Moffat's planning, but they're both far from impossible. And, as the new number 2 implies, Moffat could easily be planning something involving River and timey-wimey that's more clever than the idea I just tossed out from the top of my head. After all, there's a reason they gave the show to him instead of me. :) --173.228.85.35 04:00, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

If it is an altered memory, then that just makes the sudden inclusion of the character even worse than it already is. In that case, there is really no good reason to have introduced Mels at all. The way that the episode came out, it at least established that Amy and Rory knew their daughter for her entire childhood, but if it is altered memory, then they might as well have just had them run into young iver in Berlin. As for the alternate timeline, it is possible, but there is literally no evidence at all to support that. It comes to the same thing as saying that River must be the Rani-completely random theories with no evidence to back them up.Icecreamdif 15:45, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

The "new number 2" is the same one -- dynamic IP addressing, changes each time I connect and doesn't always begin with "2". I wasn't really suggesting an alternate timeline or modified memories. I don't really know what I'm suggesting other the possibility that something that looks odd may be meant to look odd and we'll find out why later. I'm told I have a twisted mind but I don't claim it's twisted enough to figure out in advance what Steven Moffat is up to. --89.241.66.115 16:26, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

It hink the most likely reason is really just that Moffat hadn't mapped out River's entire backstory yet back when he started writing Series 5. He may or may not have decided that River was Amys daughter, but I don't think that he had decided that she was also Amy's childhood friend yet. Icecreamdif 17:50, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

"The new number 2" was a joking reference to The Prisoner, where each week the new sinister leader of the Island would say "I am the new number 2. You are number 6." It's not meant to imply that you're a different person each time you log on to the internet. :)

Anyway, I didn't think you were suggesting, any more than I am, that either the altered timeline or the altered memory thing is the most likely truth. They're just the only two examples anyone in this thread has come up with of something clever and twisted and timey-wimey that Moffat could be preparing to spring on us. As you imply, Moffat is more clever and twisted than we are, and he's thinking about this stuff full-time, so we shouldn't expect to be able to anticipate everything.

As for Icecreamdif's idea that Moffat hadn't mapped out the whole backstory from the beginning, I definitely agree with that. That's how all episodic writers work. Moffat's even talked about the fact that one of the strengths of Doctor Who is that, because it largely recycles itself every few years, you can paint in more interesting stories without having to worry about painting yourself into a corner. So, he keeps inventing new elements to the River story, and he'll keep doing so until he reaches a point where anything worth writing would contradict the established story, at which point he'll just stop using her. --173.228.85.35 18:21, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but these days Doctor Who isn't quite episodic, is it. It isn't like Torchwood where the entire season is esentially one story, but it is still one story told over several episodes. I think that the River Song arc would have been stronger if he had mapped out at least a general idea of what he wanted to do with the character. Obviously I'm not saying that when he was writing Silence in the Library he should have been thinking "OK, so in 2011 I'll do an episode where her previous incarnation goes to Berlin, regenerates, and tries to kill the Doctor," but when he realized that he would be able to do an entire story arc involving the characte he could have planned out some of the major plot twists such as River being a childhood friend of her parents. I would imagine that if Moffat were to rewrite The Eleventh Hour knoinwing about the plot twists from Let's Kill Hitler that he would have given Mels a cameo. Icecreamdif 19:30, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

That would have just been stupid on Moffat's part. The Eleventh Hour: the Doctor is signalling the Atraxi with his screwdriver. Mels is seen walking by. Suddenly, she turns around and shoots the Doctor in the head. The Doctor dies before he can regenerate, and the Atraxi blow up the earth. ...Mels could never have appeared before now because 1) she was probably in jail, or 2) she would have killed or tried to kill the Doctor. --Bold Clone 20:19, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Why would she have shot the Doctor back then. If she shot the Doctor back then he would have died, Amy never would have travelled in the TARDIS, and Mels would never have been born. I'm sure she was waiting for a version of the Doctor from after A Good Man Goes to War to show up, or she would have just walked into UNIT HQ in the 70s (or 80s) and shot the Third Doctor. All that would have to happen would be when we're meeting all the Leadworth residents in the Eleventh Hour for Mels to show up and say something along the lines of Oh my god its you. Its the raggedy Doctor. I've always wanted to meet you.," add a bit more to show her personality and how she always gets into trouble, continue the episode, and everyone would have forgotten about her until The Let's Kill Hitler. Then when she returned everyone would have just thought "Oh yeah, it's that character from last season. I guess she's going to be a companion now."Icecreamdif 20:58, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif is right. Mels programming must have included some limitations to ensure she'd not create a paradox by killing the Doctor so soon in his timeline that she prevented her own birth. It's not too unlikely that she'd also be programmed to keep away from the Doctor until she was ready to kill him. Kovarian and company wouldn't want to risk him figuring out who she was (or, even just that she had been programmed to do something involving him) while it was still impossible for her to kill him without creating a paradox. They also (unless stupid) would want to avoid the risk that getting to know the Doctor would undermine Melody's programming, which seems to be exactly what it has done. --89.241.69.44 04:31, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but Mels wouldn't have known the exact date that the Doctor would arrive in Leadworth in 2008, so she wouldn't really be able to avoid him. Icecreamdif 15:39, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

She couldn't arrange to go on holiday at the critical time, no. She could still avoid him, though. By the time she got to Leadworth, she had seen what he looked like in his 11th incarnation. All she'd need to do would be to keep out of his (and Amy's) sight. He wasn't there for very long and, even in a small place like that, it's possible to stay away from someone for a few hours, if you want to. Since she was operating under programming that probably included hypnosis, she'd not even need to be consciously aware of recognising him -- or, indeed, of avoiding him. --2.101.60.5 20:23, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

Poor Third Doctor. First Terrence Dicks kills him off early in Seven Keys to Doomsday, then Larry Miles kills him off early in Interference, and now Icecreamdif kills him off early in the middle of the UNIT stories. Why doesn't anyone want to let him finally get to Metebelis III as he always wanted? --173.228.85.35 03:41, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to kill him off. He was easily the best Doctor. I'm just saying tahat the fact that Melody never showed up at UNIT proves that she had to wait forr a later version of the Doctor, and that she wasn't around in the 70s/80.Icecreamdif 15:13, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

It does prove she had to wait for a later version of the Doctor but it doesn't prove she wasn't around in the 70s/80s. She could have been around but waiting. Whoever programmed her to kill the Doctor would need (not just want) to ensure that that part of her programming didn't become active until she encountered him late enough in his timeline to avoid preventing her own birth. Knowing that she couldn't kill him until then, it would be sensible to program her to keep away from him. If she'd made contact earlier, there are two major dangers: 1. he might learn enough to become suspicious of her and take action to frustrate the plan to kill him, or 2. her programmed imperative to kill him might get activated too early and create a temporal paradox. If it occurred to them that contact with the Doctor might counteract her programming (as it did), that would be another reason for them to want to keep her away from him until the last moment. However, none of those would be a reason to stop her being around and making preparations, such as locating her parents and befriending them -- and, rather importantly, getting them together so that they'd become her parents. --2.96.28.193 00:05, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

Well, the question as to whether or not she was around in the 70s is alwready being discussed on another page, so let's not bring that here. As for avoiding him before A Good Man Goes To War, I agree, but they still could have introduced the character before Let's Kill Hitler. Either she had no way of knowing he'd show up so would accidently run into him and just act like a normal human being (or as normal as Mels ever acted) or they could have included a scene with Mels with Amy and Rory, but without the Doctor. Alternatively, they could have introduced Mels in Let's Kill Hitler, but given us a few more episodes before she regenerated.Icecreamdif 02:57, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

Scenes with Rory, Amy and Mels but not the Doctor would, I think, have been good, especially if they'd been arranged so they didn't make us (the audience) wonder why this best friend somehow never met the Doctor. Given that a fascination with the Doctor is very much part of the character, that might have been difficult (but surely not beyond the convoluted wit of Steven Moffat). Prolonging the interval between her meeting the Doctor and trying to kill him, on the other hand, would simply raise the question of why she didn't try earlier. It would also risk making the Doctor seem slow on the uptake if he didn't figure out who she was fairly quickly. The real-world answer is probably that Nina Toussaint-White either wasn't available for long enough or would have been too expensive (or a bit of both). --2.101.50.177 00:09, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Additional thought: Keeping Mels from meeting the Doctor without alerting the audience might have worked if a (seemingly) comedic point had been made of this "Doctor-obsessed" friend wanting to meet him but somehow always just missing him. The character would then have seemed to be there for the purpose of providing a running joke. Later, when we found out who she really was, it could have been revealed that she was, in fact, deliberately avoiding him but disguising the fact. --2.101.50.177 00:17, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that would have definetly worked. Prolonging the interval between her meeting the Doctor could have worked if done right, but the plot would have had to be more complicated. She wouldn't have been able to kill him with just the lipstick, but they'd have to come up with something along the lines of she needs to gain more information on him first, or something like that. Just introducing her in The Eleventh Hour would have been much better though. Alternatively, they could have done the same kind of thing as with Turlough, where she keeps trying to kill him but changing her mind or missing the opportunity, though I'm not sure if they could have teally made that work.Icecreamdif 02:03, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

I don't think they really made it work the first time around. Turlough isn't exactly the most popular companion in history. (There's a reason we didn't see another male companion until Adam in 2005, or a full-time one until Rory in 2011. Although of course Turlough's predecessor deserves as much blame for that as him…) In an interview, Moffat called the Turlough/Black Guardian story arc a low point in what was otherwise the best era of the series, and went on to use it as an example of how not to do a long-running arc. ("The same scene over and over every week is not an arc. And if you must do the same thing over and over, don't have a character call attention to it by constantly growling, 'This time you must do it!'") Personally, I don't think it was nearly as bad as that, and it did set up for some interesting later development in the 5-Turlough and Tegan-Turlough relationships, but I don't see Moffat taking any pointers from it…--173.228.85.35 04:25, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Well, Turlough was hardly the worst 5th Doctor companion. Obviously I wouldn't expect Moffat to do the exact same thing as they did back in the 80s, but maybe something similar but done better. I'm not really sure if that would have worked with this particular story arc though.Icecreamdif 15:53, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Turlough-style dithering wouldn't have worked for River/Melody. It would have been horribly and obviously out of character. If anyone operates on the principle "Just go for it" it's her. The only way I can see that prolonging the interval between her meeting the Doctor (as in Let's Kill Hitler) and attempting to kill him could have been made to work would have been to have Mels needing to manoeuvre the Doctor into a particular situation before she made the attempt. That, however, wouldn't get around the danger of making him seem too slow at working out who she was.

Moffat is right about the Turlough/Black Guardian story arc. The Black Guardian ought to have given up on Turlough and found another catspaw, very early on. The later developments of Turlough's relationships with the Doctor and with Teagan would have worked just as well if his "evil but irresolute" phase had been much shorter; it simply doesn't take that long to establish a character as untrustworthy! --89.241.68.80 18:02, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

Well of course different incarnations of a Time Lord can act differently, butfrom what we've seen of the Mels incarnation I would have to agree with you. Of course, we did already have her trying to kill the Doctor and then changing her mind, but it wasn't the same as Turlough. Attempting to manuevre the Doctor into some situation could havve worked, and it might be possible to do without the Doctor figuring out. Alternatively they could have the Doctor figure out but not tell anyone for a while, like he did with ganger-Amy. But yeah, that would have made the plot much more complicated, and it would have been best if he had introduced her before Let's Kill Hitler. The Black Guardian trilology wasn't perfect and definetly did have some problems, but overall it wasn't bad. Overall, I wish the clasic series had done more sotry arcs. Icecreamdif 18:13, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

It was primarily the Mels (Maya Glace-Green/Nina Toussaint-White) incarnation I was thinking of. The River (Alex Kingston) incarnation still believes in going for it but, at least later in her timeline, seems to put a bit more thought into how she just goes for it. Although we've seen comparatively little of the "little girl" (Sydney Wade) incarnation, what we did see gave me the impression she was calmer and more mature in her outlook -- paradoxically so, since she was younger. As I've said before, I'd very much like to see more of that incarnation and it's possible we will, when some of the gaps get filled in in the series finalé.

I agree the Black Guardian story arc wasn't bad but I don't think it was anywhere near as good as it could and should have been. At that time, of course, the show could get away with all kinds of things because the main audience reaction was "At least we don't have to put up with Adric any more!" (In those days, I was watching the show on a communal TV set in the local Students' Union and, when Adric got blown up, the entire -- fairly large -- audience cheered.) --89.242.67.85 20:28, September 7, 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what Moffat has in store for this story line, but if it continues like this, I won't be watching Dr. Who again until someone else is in charge. The Doctor is sleeping with his friends' daughter (Woody Allen look out) and Rory and Amy are now banished to earth like good little minions to go about their lives without having at least gotten in one on air puch to the Doctor to go get their baby before she turns into Mels./ River. I love River Song as a character, and I liked Amy and Rory having a child. Even if it had a time head. But wibbly wobbly timey wimey won't cut through the BS of this story line. This season turned Amy into a weakling (she had problems giving CPR to a man who waited 2000 years for her!) and made Rory so ineffective as a father. A buch of mad adventures with the Doctor (seriously, does Moffat think parents of a kidnapped child would give a damn about anything besides getting her back BEFORE she gets brainwashed?) and then he drops them off to live out the rest of their days wondering what happened to their baby. I wonder, will the Doctor go and get River's body from the Library so they at least know how she died? No, probably not. Amy was a good vessel for a new pseudo timelord and Rory was tolerated as a nice pet. And now its really quite alright with Amy and Rory that they grew up with their daughter? I'm with Amy on this one, "Timelord's just a name, it doesn't mean he knows anything." and unless Moffat has something really brillant up his sleve, I call this a clasic example of ruining a really good story line for your own ego's sake.

The Mels story line was way too rushed, but the idea of Amy and Rory growing up with their daughter wasn't bad. First of all, the Doctor isn't sleeping with their daughter at least not yet). Second of all, Amy and Rory have travelled with the Doctor long enough to realize how at least some of the laws of time work. They know that their daughter grows up to be Mels who grows up to be River, so they know that theirs not anything they can do about it.And, why would the Doctor go to the library to bring them River's body? What's he going to do, say "Remember that little girl you gave birth to less than a year ago? Well, she dies to save my lif. Here's her body." Amy and Rory don't really need to know how she dies, because thy are stiill going to meet versions of her that haven't died yet. I think that it was actually a good plot point that the Doctor brought Amy and Rory back to Earth. Look how his recent companions have all left him. Rose got trapped in a parallel universe, Jack died, Martha spent a year living in a post-apocoyptic version of Earth, Donna had her memory erased. It all ties back to the speech that the Doctor gave to Amy to make her lose her faith in him. He really should have just left htem back in Leadworth after the wedding, and now he's finally doing the responsible thing and sending them back home.Icecreamdif 20:26, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Doctor giving Amy and Rory a house to live in was a bit of a first wasnt it (or was it their house from the winnig lottery ticket, and the Doctor just gave them the car ) ? I can't remember the Doctor being so generous with any of this other companions. I mean when Tegan left, she wasn't even dropped off in the right city IIRC. The only other similar thing I can think of is the Doctor leaving K-9 with Sarah Jane, though I don't recall if that was at the time she left or some time later. 177.17.56.70 21:12, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

I

I thought he didn't really drop Tegan off. Didn't Tegan just decide she didn't want to be around the Doctor anymore after he killed a bunch of Daleks, while they were on Earth anyway, so she just left. SSarah Jane, however, was dopped off in the wrong city, though the Doctor was in a hurry at the time to stop the Lord Preident from being assassinated. Maybe I need to rewatch the scene, but I was a bit unlcear as to when exactly the Doctor had a chance to get amy and Rory a housee nad a car.Icecreamdif 21:41, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

"the Doctor leaving K-9 with Sarah Jane": It was years after she'd left the TARDIS. When he left her in Aberdeen, in mistake for Croydon, it was 1976 or thereabouts (Hand of Fear). When she opened the crate and found K9 -- the first time she'd seen him -- it was 1981, although the crate had been left with her aunt some time before that (A Girl's Best Friend).

The oddity about the gifts to Amy and Rory isn't the Doctor's generosity. In the circumstances, that's explainable by (a) guilt and (b) wanting to make sure they'd not argue. The question is: When in the Doctor's timestream did he get the chance to make the arrangements, get the keys, etc., without them knowing about it? He obviously only decided to stop them travelling with him as a result of the events in the Minotaur's prison, yet it appeared as if they just stepped into the TARDIS and went straight to the house and car. Did the Doctor, after the death of the Minotaur, get into the TARDIS without them, saying (in effect), "Just a couple of things to do. Back in a tick," and, if he did, how did Amy react? Amy knows only too well what the Doctor's timekeeping can be like! She's the "Girl Who Waited" rather a long time. --89.242.66.251 22:02, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

The car's in the TARDIS garage and the house he'll buy tomorrow.Boblipton 23:55, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering that too, but then we don't know what the Doctor did between when he rushed off after the battle of Demons Run and when he was called back to Leadworth by Amy and surprised by Mels/River. Perhaps he was hanging out in estate agent offices and visiting car showrooms. 177.17.56.70 01:43, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't he supposed to be looking for Melody at the time? Anyway, it seemed like he didn't make the decision to bring Amy and Rory home until his speech to Amy about not having faith in him.Icecreamdif 02:07, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Even ignoring the fact that, as Boblipton implies, the Doctor has a time machine (and the fact that his time machine can create cars, as it definitely did in the EDAs, and seems to have done in the TV movie, and besides, if it can make sonic screwdrivers, how hard is a Jaguar?): We know the Doctor can connect to computer networks while in-flight. You can buy a house and a car (and have the car delivered) online in our universe, so presumably you can in the Whoniverse. And the Doctor can do things with computers in seconds that realistically should take much longer. So, while he's looking lost in thought and banging away at controls, he's just finished escrow on a house and filled in the delivery order (3 days ago) for a car.

Anyway, the generosity is actually interesting. Remember that the 10th Doctor went back and gave each of his companions a gift right before dying, and that gave him a sense of closure he'd never had before (especially since he could compare that last wave to Sarah Jane to the last time they parted)—and, maybe more importantly, gave himself that sense of closure). And Amy and Rory are the first companions he's dropped off since realizing that he could do such a thing. So, it's not surprising that he left them a gift.

But what that means is that, at least as far as he's concerned, this time he really _is_ leaving them for good, not just dropping them off for a few months while he goes to investigate who blew up his TARDIS or who kidnapped their daughter. Of course we know that he's wrong about that, because they'll be back in two weeks, and recurring characters next season, but presumably he doesn't watch trailers and read the BBC website from the TARDIS. --70.36.140.19 03:07, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Foreknowledge is dangerous, after all. Boblipton 03:12, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

And we know how much Moffat hates spoilers, and Moffat could make sure he never gets another new hat again. --70.36.140.19 03:51, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

70.36.140.19: Presumably, then, the TARDIS also made the keys the Doctor gave to Amy and Rory. I suppose that is possible but there seems too much left completely unaccounted for and it wouldn't be very difficult to hint at how he pulled the trick. The complete absence of any attempt to account for it is what seems suspicious -- suggestive of an explanation yet to come. --89.242.66.251 04:30, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Good point about the keys; I didn't even think about that. But yes, the TARDIS could have made them. Anyway, I see your point about the complete absence of an explanation. And it does seem to imply that either he was planning this since at least the end of The Girl Who Waited, if not sooner, or that there's some timey-wimey going on that will be important later (like last season's future Doctor). If it's the former, that seems to imply that he deliberately brought them to the God Complex hotel to destroy Amy's faith so she'd agree with him, which is pretty 7th Doctor of him—but on reflection, not much different from deliberately bringing them to the Rebel Flesh factory to test how Amy responds to a Ganger Doctor… --70.36.140.19 04:54, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

That's not why they went to the ganger factory. The Doctor wasn't even planning to take Amy with him, but they got hit by a solar storm or whatever it was before he had a chance to drop her off. He just wanted to learn about the flesh so that he woudknow how to deactivate it.Icecreamdif 06:32, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

i cant remember, but was it actually said that the doctor bought the house? i thought it was amy and rory's already and the doctor bought the car for them after he left them and delivered it back in time. Imamadmad 08:15, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

The Doctor wanted to visit the Flesh. At first he said he didn't want to bring Amy and Rory—which is consistent with the fact that he tried to drop them off before going. But later he said that he had to find out how Amy would react. This could be just unclear wording in the script, but it could also mean that he wasn't being entirely honest with them, and he really _did_ want them with him, and engineering things so they would be.

As for the house, I don't think anyone said that he bought it, but… did it look like the same place they were living at the start of the season? I'll have to go back and look…--70.36.140.19 12:05, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the Doctor was really interested in seeing how Amy would react to the flesh until after the accident that seperated the gangers from the humans, particularly once hehad his own ganger.Icecreamdif 19:24, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

We only saw the interior of Amy and Rory's house in The Impossible Astronaut, plus a brief glimpse (through the front door) of the other side of the street. However, in The God Complex, not only does Amy jokingly ask if it's a real house but also the Doctor's reply is "real house, real door keys," and he gives Amy the keys. If it had been the same house, Amy and Rory would already have had the keys. Amy's joking comments would also have been phrased differently: instead of "a real house", she'd have said something like "really our house". Additionally, Rory says, "The car, too." In the context, that "too" can only mean "as well as the house". It's pretty clear from the dialogue that both house and car are gifts. --78.146.179.196 21:28, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

78: Watching it again, you're right, the house is clearly a gift.

Icecreamdif: In The Almost People, at 42:30: "I needed to see the Flesh in its early days. That's why I scanned it, that's why we were there in the first place. I was going to drop you for fish and chips first, but things happened, and there was stuff and shenanigans… I needed enough information to block the signal from the Flesh." So you're wrong, that _is_ why they went to the factory; the Doctor says so explicitly. And yet, he clearly told them earlier that it was an accident. There's no other explanation for this but that he was deliberately misleading them. For more evidence, go to 06:23 in The Rebel Flesh: "I think we're here. This is it." "Doctor, what are you talking about? We've never been here before." "We came here by accident." "Accident? (beat) Yes, I know, accident." He's clearly being defensive here; he's already forgotten that he'd told them, a couple minutes earlier, that it was an accident, because it wasn't actually an accident. And then, at 06:45, he knew that "almost people" were coming. At 08:30, he deliberately asks to see the Flesh, walks right up to it, waits until no one is looking at him, and sonics it. Then, after he says "It's like it was scanning me", what does he do? He puts his hand on it. On first viewing, it seemed like he was just doing the usual Doctor reckless thing, but once we know he was here to get information on the Flesh, to confirm that Amy was a Ganger, and to find out how to disrupt the signal, it's obvious it was premeditated, and yet he was definitely pretending that it wasn't.

The only question is whether that's the only thing he was misleading them about. Did he intend to come there alone, but accidentally bring Amy and Rory, or was that the plan all along? First, why be sneaky about everything if the only plan was to scan the Flesh and find out how to block the signal? Nobody would have thought there was anything wrong with that. But else could he be planning? If he already knew about his death at Lake Silencio, the plan could just be to get a Ganger of himself made. But he only learned about his death from Amy, later in the story. The only other plan I can think of is the one he tells Amy, in The Almost People, at 38:10: "I'm the original Doctor. We had to know if we were treated the same. It was important, vital, we learn about the Flesh, and we could only do that through your eyes." He's telling her flat out that he's been deceiving her through the entire adventure in order to learn how she'd react to the Flesh, because it was vital information.

And now, go back to The Rebel Flesh, at 03:54, during the "Who wants fish and chips?" bit. He switches the scanner from the pregnancy scan to something else that he finds interesting but doesn't mention to Amy and Rory. Then he offers to drop them off, but he's acting very weird. Amy notices it and calls him on it. Finally, she gives him a dubious, "What?", and he just stands there waiting for a few seconds until the alarm sounds. Now we finally see what was on the scanner: a solar storm warning. Maybe there was something else on the scanner between the pregnancy scan and the solar storm warning, but if so, what? And if it really was an accident, why did he forget less than 3 minutes later?

And that ties into the overall story arc about the Doctor's guilt over what he's doing to his companions, which we didn't notice until the second half of the season. --70.36.140.19 04:34, September 20, 2011 (UTC)

From what the Doctor said to Amy (i.e., Ganger-Amy), it cannot have been an accident that she was there. Rory's presence might have been incidental -- the Doctor needed to have Amy with him and couldn't do that without Rory being there, too -- but even that's dubious, considering what happened at the end. This is obviously a case of Rule 1 in operation: "The Doctor lies." As has been remarked on elsewhere, in this season especially, 11 is behaving very like 7. Even the scene in The God Complex with Amy and young Amelia, where he undermines Amy's faith in him, has a close parallel with the scene in The Curse of Fenric, where he undermines Ace's faith in him. The technique is different -- with Ace, he was far more brutal (and had to be) -- but in both cases, he's doing it to protect them. Amy's faith was making her "food" for the Minotaur; Ace's faith was preventing the Ancient Hæmovore from taking out Fenric, who was the real threat. Although the companions (Ace and Amy) are very different personalities, both do fairly quickly understand that, paradoxically, the Doctor's destruction of their faith in him is actually evidence that that faith is well grounded. We've not yet seen how Amy's relationship with the Doctor will develop after that but, with Ace, we saw (in Survival) that she and the Doctor were, if anything, closer afterwards. --78.146.178.98 13:27, September 20, 2011 (UTC)

70, you misunderstand me. I wasn't talking about the so called accident that caused the TARDIS to land there, I was talking about the later accident that caused the Gangers to become independant. The Doctor didn't need Amy to be htere. His plan was to go there by himself, scan the flesh, pick up Amy and Rory, and then deactivate Am's ganger, but a he said the TARDIS crashed on Earth before he intended to land and then the gangers became indepnedant(the stuff and shenanigans that he was talking about). He does actually seem a bit like seven. I havent't seen a lot of the Seventh's Doctor's earlier episodes, but didn't he start out as more of a comedic Doctor before he became the more serious manipulative one. There is also one major difference between this episode and Curse of Fenric. From what I remember from Curse of Fenric, which may be one of the most confusing episodes in the show's history next to Ghostlight, the Doctor made Ace lose her faith in him by acting like a jerk and acting like he didn't care about her, before telling her he was lyuing. In The God Complex the Doctor was very sincere when he told Amy that he didn't deserve her faith (just look at his earlier conversation with Rita). The Doctor realizes that he's screwed up Amy and Rory's lives and he feels guilty about it, though he wouldn't necessarily have admitted it to Amy if he didn't need to to stop the Minotaur.Icecreamdif 18:52, September 20, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif: He was intentionally misleading them about his plans, as 70 and 78 said. I went back and watched the episodes after reading 70's post, and he's right. The Doctor knew the tsunami was coming, and that he wouldn't be able to drop them off, before he made the offer. And he made the offer in a really bizarre way that was guaranteed to make Amy and Rory refuse, or at least hestitate. And when they acted predictably, but didn't hesitate long enough, he just stood there with his mouth open to kill a few more seconds and make his pretense believable. And he definitely planned to get himself cloned from the start, too. I don't think this is quite a case of "Rule 1: The Doctor lies" as 78 says, so much as "Rule 1.5: The Doctor tells half-truths intended to deceive". But it's basically the same thing.

You're right about the 7th Doctor's change over time. He started off as a sort of a cheap copy of the 2nd Doctor without the diplomatic skills, fumbling around and grinning like an idiot until he got lucky. But they started changing him even before the end of the first season, and by the first story of his second season (Remembrance of the Daleks), he's the crafty chess-master we all remember him as. That progression continued over the next two years, until the show was canceled, and the novelisations of Ghost Light shows that the writers were looking to take it even further.

You're also right that the 1tth Doctor's manipulation of Amy in The God Complex is both much less cruel and much more subtle than the 7th Doctor's manipulation of Ace in The Curse of Fenric, and that's a very good point. If you think about it, it's a much more effective way to do things. But the 11th Doctor seems to understand humans so much worse than the 7th Doctor, or really than any of his incarnations, so how did he figure that out? Maybe this is just instinctive for him? Maybe the alien-weirdo thing is just an act? Or maybe he's more like the stereotypical psychiatrist character, understanding human behavior from the outside but not from the inside? --12.249.226.210 19:31, September 20, 2011 (UTC)