Howling:Unresolved questions after Series 5

The Howling → Unresolved questions after Series 5

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With Series 5 over, lots of questions have been answered, but a few remain open. Will they be dealt with in a future season, or did I just miss the answer? Please contribute to the two lists below, and offer answers and solutions! :-) Hack59 11:14, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

Unresolved issues

1. The cracks so far seem to have been caused by the presence of the TARDIS. I offer the Confidential about Victory of the Daleks as evidence, in which the patent absence of any cracks from the War Room wall before the final departure of the TARDIS was pointed out as something to watch out for, so the final crack was very recent. If that's the case, what caused the crack in Amelia's wall?
2. In The Time of Angels, Amy tells the Doctor that he lets "people call you 'sir' now", even though it is never shown that she had learned of his distaste for this appellation. In fact, we have never actually seen the 11th Doctor being uncomfortable at being called 'sir' or any kind of military behaviour. Where did this come from
3. River Song claims to be in jail for having "killed [...] the best". She's probably referring to the Doctor. Safe to assume that this will be dealt with in the future. (Ideally, she'd kill him when she first meets him, causing her imprisonment and his regeneration, though that'd be a while off.)
4. In Victory of the Daleks, Amy doesn't recognize the Daleks. Does she now? Did her past future also get rewritten? God this stuff is confusing ;-)
5. In The Eleventh Hour, little Amelia is seen still outside in the garden and waiting at dawn, and there's a TARDIS brake noise and she smiles. How does that fit in?
6. In The Big Bang, River discovers scorch marks outside of Amy's house. Someone or something has been there. 173.57.144.238 21:16, June 27, 2010 (UTC)
7. In The Lodger, Someone or something was trying to build a type of TARDIS and trapped the Doctor's TARDIS in a time loop 173.57.144.238 21:16, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

Resolved issues

For karmic balance, I'll also quickly list a few issues that have been debated in the individual episodes' discussions but which are now resolved.

• Clocks jumping wrongly between AM and PM: As the Doctor observes laconically: "History is shrinking." (Brilliant. This line is on par with "Time is reversing!" in Series 3. Why can't we all see the obvious like he does?)
• The reappearing Doctor in Flesh and Stone talking to Amy who has her eyes shut: It was the future Doctor 'rewinding' into his own past.
• Why did Amy never bring up her own family: Everyone had been consumed by the crack and thus never existed in her mind. Now we also know that "never having existed" does not undo previous births while you still ... errr... had ever existed, somehow.
• In The Eleventh Hour the Doctor wonders how Amy knows that the pond in her village is a duck pond "if there are never any ducks in it". As was pointed out, the Doctor could well be alluding to the fact that Amy Pond has no memories of her own family or origins. (Are there any other references of the duck pond throughout the series?)

Answers and Discussion

[Please post your solutions, suggestions and discussions below. Please separate unrelated entries with level-3 heading and sign your posts. I will edit conclusive new points into the above two lists.]

Rewinding

Not an answer, just random gossiping: Note how the Doctor preferred to walk into the Crack over rewinding further into anything to do with RTD. Poor Rose, that was her only chance for more screentime ;-) . Hack59 11:55, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

1. Cracks caused by TARDIS?

There was no crack in the wall and there never was. The Doctor was reduced to fiction by entering the crack, literaly a story in a girls mind. He is brought back into reality by Amy but the events we saw were not strictly real ones in this new whoniverse.

3. River Song

Time will tell.

Question: River Song claims to have last seen the Doctor when Pandorica opened. How does that work? 87.112.168.194 21:11, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

The event you have in mind happens in Flesh and Stone, which in River's timeline happens after she was at the Pandorica. What exactly is the problem? Or do you mean that nothing can strictly speaking have happened after the Pandorica reboot? Wait, maybe now I get your question: You think that the Byzantium event did not happen as a result of the Pandorica, so River cannot go to the Byzantium as the next thing. And you may wonder how anyone can remember anything that happened at the Pandorica. Good point.

I think the way we are meant to view the Pandorica event is that "everything is back to how it was, but the cracks are gone and Amy's life is fixed". As someone said eisewhere, everything in episodes prior to Big Bang will have either happened or not happened at the writers' convenience, I don't think there's any consistent way to come up with any other viewpoint.

Or, if that's not enough timey-wimey for you, how about this: Before the Pandorica, River did go to the Byzantium as her next thing after the Pandorica, so then she did tell the Doctor that she just came from there; but now that the Pandorica exploded, she won't have done the Byzantium trip as her next thing and spoken to the Doctor there, but then you would contend that the Byzantium didn't happen after all, so she never did say that. It's as retarded as it sounds, but what else can you expect from such a dramatic plot device. Hack59 21:27, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

4. Amy knowing about Daleks

We will find out what has 'changed' as new stories develop. Things will have 'not happend' in this new whoniverse as the writers need.

5. Little Amelia smiling at dawn

The 'reality' of this is again called into question. Perhaps; in her original reality she fianlly gets to see stars. This may now be a story she remembers somehow. Actually, apparently this was a dream - she is dreaming of waiting for him, and when she starts to smile, she wakes up.

Please sign your posts. (All of them, please, I just did a bit of rearranging.) Hmm, you may be right, but that's just speculation that we have no evidence for or against. Sure, it never happened, but then it should have made sense just in its own past context, where the Doctor did not come back the next morning, so I'm still confused.Hack59 11:55, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

Just think of it as her dreaming about a story she heard somewhre about a mad man in blue box. There is nothing more to it that the dreams you have. However, later in her life she uses the memory of this dream, and many other dreams like it, to turn the Doctor into reality. Thre are plenty of exmple in fairytales where children make theri dreams come true. Jack Chilli 12:03, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

Like the Doctor said, "Oh, the dreams you'll have of that blue box" (don't quote me on it). I believe that sequence was a dream that the sleeping Amy was having, the TARDIS sound in the dream because it had just materialized outside. Just as prisoner zero said, she was still just a child inside. The Thirteenth Doctor 21:29, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

6. Rewinding Doctor

Although this "fits in" for most people, we are missing some things about the "Flesh and Stone" scene. We don't see the Doctor approach her is a notable point. Now, in that scene, he doesn't wear the vortex manipulator, but he does in the scene before and scene after. Also, the wristwatch had a black strap, not a gold one. In the same scene before "he" approaches Amy, he is seen wearing the gold watch, then when he apparently does, it is black... Now, since we didn't see the rewinding Doctor approach Amy, it is still perfectly plausible that this is still an even futurer Doctor coming back in time. What do you make of that? --The Thirteenth Doctor 12:41, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

I really hope not; it would be silly to go back again and again. Just continuity problems now; they hadn't worked out exactly what he needed to have on him. _anything_ is possible in Doctor Who though. Jack Chilli 13:22, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

Not sure about those continuity issues, but about the vortex manipulator: I thought that when the Doctor was 'rewinding', that was happening by the Powers Of Time herself, rather than through active time travel, so he wasn't using any vortex manipulator for that. I think he was literally emerging from a crack or something like that. I'd need to rewatch the rewinding scenes, though. Hack59 13:31, June 27, 2010 (UTC)