Howling:Revisiting the why of the cracks

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Moffat told us repeatedly that the whole reason for the cracks/reboot plot was so he could remove aliens from public consciousness, so people in the 2011 Whoniverse would react to everything exactly the same way as people in the 2011 real world.

That all made sense at the time. But looking back, Amy didn't have a single adventure set in present day Earth since her first episode. When she finally did, after 2-1/2 years for us and 10 for her, the public reactions we saw were played as an intentional homage to the RTD era; The Power of Three would have gone down exactly the same way in, say, series 3. (Not to mention that it isn't even our present day, it's probably years in the future…) The Doctor did have two present-day adventures without her, but both of those were small stories where nobody had to deal with aliens but Craig and his family, so there was no payoff there either.

So, what was the point of resetting history? Was he spending 2-1/2 years setting up for next week, so Amy's final story can play out differently from an RTD finale? Is the fact that Amy's home time has always been a safe zone a plot point? Is the payoff even farther ahead, with the new companion? Or is it just that, for whatever reasons, Moffat never ended up writing a present-day story, so it all turned out to be for nothing? --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 17:23, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

I reckon it was just a way of allowing Moffat to start from scratch. 94.72.194.203^{talk to me} 20:08, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Night Terrors was also in the present day, but that doesn't really change any of your point. Moffat probably just wanted the option of setting an episode in the present day without people being used to alien invasions, and just never took advantage of it. I'm sure that it didn't help that right after his crack arc, RTD introduced the most impossible to notice ever event in human history in Torchwood.Icecreamdif ☎ 20:16, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, "the most impossible to notice ever event in human history": Is there a "not" missing from that? It would make sense as "the most impossible not to notice ever event in human history" but it makes none as it stands. --2.101.48.190^{talk to me} 22:52, September 25, 2012 (UTC)

I think Icecreamdif is right. Moffat gave himself a way to start over from scratch, but never used it. Maybe he could have used it last week, but by this point a "intentional homage to the RTD era" was more interesting. Still you have to wonder what kind of stories he was planning to do that he never got around to.

Yes, there was suppossed to be a "not" there. I suck at proofreading.Icecreamdif ☎ 00:03, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just oversensitive to this because I put so much effort into defending Moffat's plan to other fans, and it's disheartening to see it amount to nothing…

(Also, Icecreamdif, you're right about Night Terrors. And that raises the point that Amy and Rory weren't ahead at all until God Complex; a bit until a season after The Big Bang, it was a bit under a year later for them and for the main Earth timeline, although probably much more for the Doctor given what we saw in the DVD extras. But if that means anything, it belongs in another thread…) --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 02:10, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

70: I don't think you're being oversensitive about the cracks plan. It has always had the serious problem that it made a high proportion of the fans very uneasy, even those like you (& me) who could understand & defend the rationale. It needed to be justified by achieving something -- basically, good stories that couldn't otherwise have worked -- that was worth all the effort Moffat & co. put into it and all the mental gymnastics it required of the audience and all the uneasiness it caused by meaning that some of the best stories of the RTD era "never happened" as far as most characters were concerned. At the moment, it seems to have achieved nothing at all. Moffat has every right to waste his own efforts (even if that seems foolish) but he's wasted the viewers' efforts, too. --89.242.70.19^{talk to me} 07:49, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

Addendum: I'm left with the impression that Moffat's a very ingenious fellow who can construct elaborate & devious plots, who enjoys being ingenious, who enjoys showing everyone how ingenious he is & who thinks ingenuity is enough -- but ingenuity without purpose isn't enough & he's not shown us he had a real purpose. --89.242.70.19^{talk to me} 08:11, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

89: Nicely put. I've been thinking that about Moffat lately too. Shambala108 ☎ 14:16, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's just a small number of hardcore RTD fans who were uneasy; none of the mainstream casual viewers were turned off by it. Also, it was a good story, and it worked, and it got people talking. And, most of all, it's really the first time the show had an effective plot _about_ time travel, instead of just using it as a vehicle to visit history like it was a foreign planet, since the 2nd Doctor era. (The show has had some great parallel universe stories, from Inferno to Turn Left, but that's not the same thing.)

What bothers me is that Moffat doesn't seem to be sure which of his ideas are the best ones, and his enthusiasm is infectious, so we end up focusing on things that have no payoff. When people look back at series 5 today, it's The Big Bang that everyone talks about, but I think in 20 years it'll be Flesh and Stone or Vincent and the Doctor. Really, those are the stories we should be talking about today, too, and it's Moffat's fault that we aren't. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 17:01, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I'd not describe myself as a "hardcore RTD fan". I liked RTD's stuff, certainly, but I've been a fan since 1963, not just since 2005. I can't agree that "it's really the first time the show had an effective plot _about_ time travel ... since the 2nd Doctor era" because Father's Day (9th Doctor) had an effective plot about time travel. So did The Day of the Daleks (3rd Doctor). Such plots are, though, rarer than they ought to be.

Your second point, however, has substantial merit. Some, at least, of the problem is that Moffat has touted things like The Big Bang as laying the groundwork for something to follow but the something hasn't followed. --89.241.65.32^{talk to me} 19:20, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

There have been plenty of time travel plots since the Second Doctor's time. As 89 said, there was Day of the Daleks and Father's Day, but there's also been The Girl in the Fireplace, Mawdryn Undead, pretty much all of the multi-Doctor stories, the entire River Song arc, and plenty of others that I can't think of off the top of my head.Icecreamdif ☎ 21:06, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

Well, the multi-Doctor stories really weren't about time travel, Mawdryn Undead (and a few others, like Time Flight) tried but weren't really effective, and you can't use the River Song arc as a pre-Moffat example. But you're both right, it was a bit of hyperbole to say that there were _no_ effective stories about time travel from season 7 to series 4; it's just that there were a lot _fewer_ than before, and the Moffat era is better for the change. So, I still love the cracks arc, I just wish Moffat hadn't tried to sell us the wrong reasons for it.

As for the other point: 89, are you one of the people who thought The Big Bang was unintelligible nonsense or got angry because it ruined RTD's stories? If not, then you're proving my point: it's just (some) hardcore RTD fans that felt that way; very few classic fans did. (I'm not sure why—it might be that the kind of person who would have blown his top over that had already used up all their top-blowing over the Time War—or, earlier, about half the plot elements in the TV movie. But that's just a wild guess.) --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 03:17, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the Classic fans didn't complain because we've seen Ghostlight, and thus have no right to refer to anything as comparatively simple as The Big Bang as "unintelligble nonsense." I liked The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, but I think the entire story could have worked just as well and mostly unchanged without erasing RTD episodes.Icecreamdif ☎ 12:21, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

Good point about Ghost Light. Even Marc Platt doesn't understand what happened in that story, and he wrote it. :) Anyway, I think erasing random bits of history is part of what made series 5 so interesting—but you're right that it would have been just as good, or maybe better, if all we had is what we saw on screen: random bits of history were erased, including The Stolen Earth. The added behind-the-scenes information that those random bits also included every other public alien invasion that wasn't effectively covered up adds nothing to the story; it's just needless setup for future disappointment.

On the other hand, it _was_ behind-the-scenes; the casual fans probably don't know and don't care about it, and in the long run, the only people who remember will be the kind of people who remember JNT's proclamations (and the arguments within fandom that they sparked) today. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 17:29, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

70: No, I'm not "one of the people who thought The Big Bang was unintelligible nonsense or got angry because it ruined RTD's stories" It wasn't & it didn't. If RTD's stories were good before The Big Bang, they're just as good after it. I didn't do any "top-blowing over the Time War—or ... the TV movie", either. I suppose that, having been watching since the policeman in foggy London at the start of An Unearthly Child, I qualify as a "Classic fan" (as Icecreamdif puts it). I do agree with what you say about "The added behind-the-scenes information..." being "just needless setup for future disappointment." It's the fact that the behind-the-scenes claims were made but never followed up that's undermining my belief that Moffat actually knows what he's trying to do.

Icecreamdif: I'd take issue with the idea that those who saw Ghost Light have "no right to refer to The Big Bang as 'unintelligble nonsense'." We've every right to do that -- just no inclination to do it. I enjoyed Ghost Light when it aired. I still enjoy Ghost Light (a couple of times a year, on average). --89.240.243.135^{talk to me} 21:11, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

I actually enjoyed Ghost Light a bit more on my second viewing of it than my first, but I still found it to be "unintelligible nonsense." Obviously we still have the right to call anything we want unintelligible nonsense, I just don't think that anything will ever be as unintelligible as Ghost Light. The DVD special features did help though(I never got what Control was suppossed to be until I watched those, and somehow I missed most of the evolution subtext on my first viewing). Still, this conversation isn't really meant to be about Ghost Light.Icecreamdif ☎ 00:35, September 28, 2012 (UTC)

89: You said that The Big Bang "made a high proportion of the fans very uneasy". But I don't think it did. It certainly didn't affect you or me, or any other "classic fan" I know, that way. Or any of the casual viewers. Or even most of the "RTD fan" types; just a small number of them. So, that was my point: I don't think that's a real downside. The only real downside is what we've all agreed on: the behind-the-scenes extra information led to "Moffat fans" (including those of us who are also classic or RTD or whatever fans) being disillusioned.

And even there, maybe we're being petulant and petty. Moffat definitely change the way Doctor Who stories can be told, and mostly in positive ways, he just didn't actually do so in the ways he promised. (Of course it's just as petty of me to point out that Miles, Orman, Cornell, etc. already did most of the same things in the novels, and that doesn't stop me from pointing it out… but I also recognize what a big deal it was to bring that to TV.) --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 05:22, September 28, 2012 (UTC)

70: The Big Bang itself -- that is, what was on screen -- didn't make me uneasy. It was the combination of the episode with the behind-the-scenes claims about what was intended that did so. At the time I made my original comment, we weren't distinguishing between the two -- maybe we should have been but we weren't. By the time I made my comment about being a "classic fan" & not having a problem with the episode, we were distinguishing between the episode itself & the behind-the-scenes "explanation". My two statements differ because they were made about two different things.

One of the problems I have with the behind-the-scenes "explanation" is that it was sweeping. It said that a lot of stuff had been erased from history but it didn't say, & nothing since has said, what was erased & what was not. We're left not knowing what the history of the everyday world (from the point of view of the characters in it) actually is. It's not simply the history of the real, out-of-universe world. It's not the world you'd expect from having watched the classic series, the TV movie & the RTD-era stories -- unspecified but important parts of that history have been erased. What is it? We still don't know. Why don't we know? Because Moffat hasn't followed up. We've nothing to work with in understanding the world the characters live in. Presumably, the Dalek invasion & the transport of Earth halfway across the universe didn't happen. We at least have a clue to that from Amy's failure to remember the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks. What about the Sycorax? What about the Slitheen? What about the "ghosts" who turned out to be Cybermen? What about ATMOS & the Sontarans? We simply don't know. Moffat said he was resetting the in-universe everyday world to make it close to the out-of-universe real world. He has not done that. What he's done is to make the in-universe everyday world into a world with an indeterminate history. --89.241.68.117^{talk to me} 07:23, September 28, 2012 (UTC)

OK, you're right, the confusion is my fault. Anyway…

Moffat didn't accidentally make the everyday world of Doctor Who into a world with an indeterminate history. He very intentionally forced fandom to accept that it had always worked that way. Let me quote the Doctor: "The thing is, Amy, everyone's memory is a mess. Life is a mess… Time is being rewritten all around us, every day. People think their memories are bad, but their memories are fine. The past is really like that."

That's the first time we heard it from the Doctor's mouth, but it's Moffat's view, and RTD's, and Cornell's and Shearman's and most of the other new series writers. (The classic writers just didn't give a damn either way, because nobody had videotapes yet to check up on them.) In non-TV stories and out-of-universe comments, RTD was never afraid to say so. But he knew from experience that some fans just wouldn't accept that, so he was careful to make sure every line on TV could, if you really wanted to, be interpreted in some other way. Moffat didn't care, and thought the tiptoeing was getting in the way of good stories, so his first season was always going to be about "history can change".

Both RTD and Cornell have argued that this is why Doctor Who can set stories in the present day after 49 years of future history, while Star Trek had to give up after 20. Zoe's city clearly doesn't exist in Donna's era, and that's not just ok, it's the way the show _should_ be. Lance Parkin has practically made a career of trying to fit all the contradictory continuity together, but it only takes a pages of AHistory to realize that it's a fun game, but a fool's errand if you take it seriously.

So, if I'm defending Moffat against your charge, what am _I_ bothered by? He's the one who made me recognize what the problem was in the first place, the "ho-human, more alien invaders, what's for supper" thing, and he apparently just un-solved it, and he didn't even give us any episodes in between where we got to see how things could be better. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 03:19, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, you've misunderstood what I meant by "indeterminate", which I borrowed from maths/physics. What Moffat described is a changeable history, not an indeterminate history. The state of a switch is changeable -- you can flip it from on to off or vice versa -- but both states are determinate. It's indeterminate only if it's impossible to know whether it's on or off. Something can be changing constantly but still be determinate, as long as it's possible to work out (somehow) what its state or value is at whatever point you're interested in. (I'm usually 89 but I'm 2, this time.) --2.96.31.113^{talk to me} 07:27, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

Come to think of it, the history of the real world is changeable -- more gets added to it every second!

That's not what Moffat meant, of course, but I've no problem with the changeable history the Doctor described to Amy. It's an old friend. If history in the "Whoniverse" hadn't been like that, the Time Lords wouldn't have needed the Web of Time, etc. --2.96.31.113^{talk to me} 07:51, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

No, I think Moffat really _is_ saying that the past is indeterminate. Admittedly he didn't say that directly, but Paul Cornell did, years ago. I'm pretty sure it was on r.a.dw. Peter Darvill-Evans said something like, "But if it works your way, then the past isn't just unknown, it's unknowable, just like the future," to which Cornell replied, "Exactly," and then went on to give an analogy with Feynman's explanation of quantum physics. To use your switch: If you build a robot arm that flips the switch every time a particle in a lump of uranium decays, then go away for a day, you don't know whether the switch is on or off, and there's no way, even in principle, that you could; there simply is no fact of the matter to discover. Or, rather, the fact of the matter is that the switch is in a superposition of two states.

So, if history is fundamentally indeterminate, why do history and science work at all—and to the point that the visible indeterminacies are rare and striking enough that we notice them? I think the quantum physics analogy works there again (although as far as I know none of the Who writers have actually used it): The universe really is indeterminate at the microscopic level, and yet the macroscopic universe appears almost perfectly determinate.

Larry Miles has a completely different answer to that, which ties directly to your "the Time Lords wouldn't have needed the Web of Time". And actually, there are real-world physicists who have brought up effectively the same question and tried to answer it; see Julian Barbour's "The End of Time" for an example. But we've already got enough to deal with. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 20:52, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

This is more of a question than a theory, since I'm not sure if I actually believe this, but it seems worth mentioning: Has it been considered yet that River may have been the one who blew up the TARDIS?...

We know that she has been under the influence of the Silence (though technically I mean she's been influenced by the Silence and the "Silents") several times in her life. It would seem entirely possible for them to have implanted the idea in her mind to blow it up in an effort to kill the Doctor, and not have realized how enormous the consequences would be. Until we find out what happens when the prophecy comes to fruition we can't even be entirely certain of their motives in general anyhow. Also, if this is the case, it would also stand to reason that they then blocked the door (which how that could happen was also never quite explained) to keep River from leaving. Which would, so to speak, be them "tying up loose ends". Probably having known the Doctor was not on board at the time, an attempt to destroy the TARDIS would still make sense. Because what can the Doctor really do if he becomes "a madman with a box without a box"? He certainly would never reach Trenzalore- which also seems to be the central plan. Not necessarily to kill him, just to keep him from answering the question. (Perhaps the Lake Silencio scenario came about only because this failed, and they finally realized they did have to kill him.)

When the TARDIS was exploding, River also seemed to be doing a whole lot of frantic things to the TARDIS, including hooking together giant cables that didn't seem too "happy" about being connected. It seemed like she was trying to stop it, but you never know. The Silence would have certainly known how familiar she was with the TARDIS, especially having apparently orchestrated her having becoming part Time Lord, or at the very least were able to enhance that quality in her. Even with the war that humans had already unknowingly waged against the Silents, we still know that not only did they survive, but they're still on Earth for quite some time after that. (The Silent who stood and watched at Lake Silencio in modern times, and even the ones with Madame Kovarian in the far future.) As a matter of fact, even though those attempts to build their own TARDIS were never explained fully, it's obvious that the Silence organization has access to time travel since they brought River to Utah from the future. Now that I think about it, they could have even been using River to build those TARDISes, since they don't tend to make anything themselves, but rather influence others to do so.

[Side note: Is Time Lady the official name for a female Time Lord, or since they can change gender anyway is Time Lord generally used for all of them?] Saghan ☎ 16:48, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

Saghan, re your side note: As far as I know, the Doctor used the term "Time Lady" once (in City of Death), referring to Romana. I don't recall it being used on screen on any other occasion. Romana used the term "Time Lord" of herself (in The Creature from the Pit). Given that they can change gender and that we've no example on screen of a female Time Lord calling herself a "Time Lady", I would (& do) use "Time Lord" for all of them. However, "Time Lady" seems to be established fan usage & it may be a losing battle to try to get it changed. I can't, though, see any reason to adopt the sexist habit myself. --89.240.242.255^{talk to me} 18:31, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I think Time Lord would be more correct. It's not a title, it's a species. We don't (usually) have separate gender-based names for other species. We just use the general term "male" and "female" to describe the individual gender of an single entity within a species. Plus, this use of the word Lord isn't a term of respect, it literally has to do with them being lords (or gods) of time. I only even asked because I know that the gender-change ability is a somewhat recent inclusion into the show, and couldn't remember if it had been explained in the classic series. Saghan ☎ 18:55, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

In the classic series, in reference to females, we heard each term twice, and that's it, in 26 seasons. (There are mentions of terms like "Lady President", but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.) Romana didn't blink an eye at being called a Time Lady by either the Doctor or Adric. In the novelisations, "Time Lady" appears all over the place in description and narrative tags (it sometimes seems like Terrance Dicks thought Romana's name was "The Time Lady"), but neither one comes up much in conversation. In the Virgin and BBC novels, both of them come up quite a few times, but it seems to vary more by author than by situation.

I think the only reasonable answer is that both are perfectly correct. In the majority of human languages, the male form is also used as the gender-nonspecific form. English is only partly that way today, so it sounds strange for a woman to say something like "I am a man, not an animal", but in plenty of languages it would be just as reasonable as "I am a woman, not a girl" from the same person.

As for whether Time Lord is a species or a title, there's so much conflicting information that we really can't say. In fact, sometimes it's clearly _neither_ of the two, but yet another thing. Look at the Doctor's speech about Jenny in The Doctor's Daughter—he's describing "Time Lord" as some kind of ethnic/cultural term like "Jew". Again, the novels give us a lot more information, but only make things even more confusing. Behind the scenes, Graham Williams said that in The Invasion of Time he deliberately avoided the term as much as possible because he had absolutely know idea whether all Gallifreyans were Time Lords, just the nobles, or some other subset, or what. If the producer of the show found it hopelessly confused after just a handful of Time Lord episodes, what hope do we have? --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 03:55, October 2, 2012 (UTC)