Howling:Silence in Series 5

The Howling → Silence in Series 5

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

So characters have been warning the Doctor that “silence will fall” since the eleventh hour. Now that we know that the Silence edit themselves out of memory it is possible that the silence have been around since the beginning of Moffat’s writing. I am in the process of re-watching the previous episodes to see if Moffat left us clues and came across the final scene of the eleventh hour. During that scene Amy’s face grows grim several times in the scene and she turns away only to look normal again. In addition she fiddles with the Tardis controls several times in the scene. I originally thought it odd, but ignored it since nothing came of it in that series. However, watching it now she appears to search for a particular control and flips it and then turns around quickly to mask the fact that she just did something to the Tardis as if the silence told her to do something. Perhaps a Silent has been in the Tardis all this time. This would also explain why we hear the voice in the Tardis in The Pandorica Opens.

Now on a side note, I also rewatched The Edge of Destruction recently and can see a lot of illusions to something getting into the Tardis. Barbara, Ian, Susan and the Doctor all start acting differently and also seem to be fighting these new traits (which feels like subliminal messages). Something affects the Tardis and causes it to malfunction (much like Pandorica Opens). And to top it all off Susan even mentions Silence. I am not saying that this is connected, just that I found it really funny. However, if Moffat links all the way back to the third story of Doctor Who, then I think Moffat is an even more amazing writer than I ever thought.

Anyways, I would like others to post here other instances where characters might see Silence so that we can discuss their legitimacy. MasterIII 21:47, May 3, 2011 (UTC)

It is incredibly unlikely that the writers of the 3rd episode of the show were setting up a plot arc that wouldn't be resolved for almost half a century. In Edge of Destruction, everything that happened had to do with the TARDIS being alive and telepathic, and trying to warn them that the fast-return-switch was broken.(Although it would have been simpler to ring the cloister bells or something.)Icecreamdif 22:29, May 3, 2011 (UTC)

No I think you misunderstood me. I am sure that the writers of Edge of destruction had intended for the episode to be concluded after the two episodes. What I was trying to say is that Stephen Moffat may be a clever enough writer to have seen possibility in that episode and to write elements of that into this season's story arc so as to link back to it. Again that was just a side note in this thread and highly unlikely, mostly I am interested in scenes in Moffat written stories and in series 5 as a whole that may be interperated as a charachter seeing silence.MasterIII 03:14, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Someone just pointed out to me a few things to add to this, all in the soundtrack:

• The background music that's used as the Silence theme in the series 6 opener also appears in various places in series 5.

• The "electronic lion purr" sound that follows the Silence around also appeaed in various places.

• The high pitched noise right after the Doctor interrupts the companions having their huddled conversation underneath the TARDIS control panel appeared multiple times, often near lines about Silence, but also in A Christmas Carol and other places that don't seem relevant.

At this point, I'm just forwarding someone else's idea; I haven't gone back and watched series 5 yet to see if there's anything to it... not that I'm complaining about having another good excuse to do so. :) --99.33.24.89 11:13, May 28, 2011 (UTC)

Also, on the Edge of Destruction bit, it's not impossible that the Moff thought about that. He's talked about rewatching the early episodes recently, and he's retroactively added "unintended premonitions" into past episodes before, albeit mostly his own RTD-era episodes. (In fact, this episode may have another one: What happened when the Doctor and Martha were stranded in 1969 in Blink, and did it have anything to do with the fact that for some reason they ended up watching the moon landing 4 times?) Edge also seems to have some premonitions of The Doctor's Wife. (And the classic story that episode referenced most directly, War Games, was the 1969 story where Zoe's and Rory's memories were wiped, and the Doctor went off on his "Season 6B" adventures that nobody remembered until the Virgin novels decades later... a lot more happened than most people remember indeed....) --99.33.24.89 11:29, May 28, 2011 (UTC)

The bit about Amy fiddling with the Tardis console and then acting like she had no idea what she'd just done, was extremely alarming to me the first time I saw it. It reminded me of Turlough, albeit that Turlough knew what he was doing at the time. I'd be very interested in a list of "electronic lion purr" noises and musical cues, such as 99.33 mentions.

Also, some things are a bit odd to me about the warning Prisoner Zero gives the Doctor: 1- PZ is the Doctor's enemy, so it doesn't make sense for PZ to give helpful clues. It seems more like a taunt. 2- Why would the fall of the Silence's dominion over earth, be a taunt? Was demonizing the Silence a mistake? 3- Same question if it's a warning... why warn the Doctor that evil domineering aliens will fall?

Some of these elements surrounding the Silence are starting to seem like an arsepull... let's hope not. Agonaga 04:18, May 31, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the fall of the Silence is somehow connected to what ultimately led to the army of Clerics. Or maybe the Silence are a lot less local than we thought, and Silence Will Fall (in the opposite sense) over the rest of the galaxy, even though the Silence have fallen on Earth. Or...

Anyway, I think it's intentional that "Silence Will Fall" can have two opposite meanings (much as "Miranda Cleaves" can, "cleaves" being the English word most famous for having two opposite meanings...), but I don't think the Moff worked out to do with those two opposite meanings until this season, so it'll be hard to work out too much of the plot by watching season 5. --99.8.228.227 04:00, June 5, 2011 (UTC)

I think it makes sense that the Silence were in the TARDIS during Series 5 at least because they were most likely the ones who cause the TARDIS to blow up. Putting that together with Amy fiddling with the TARDIS controls suddenly makes sens: I haven't watched "Pandorica" in a while, but does it seem possible that the Silence told River to land outside Amy's house on June 26, 2010? River, unlike Amy, has experience flying the TARDIS, and knows what controls are what even better than the Doctor. Also, I've heard a lot about instances in "The Lodger" where Amy may see a Silent while in the TARDIS and then acts confused as if she's forgotten something. I also think that the ship using the perception filter in "The Lodger" was owned by the Silence; it returns in "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon". Craig is coming back this fall, so maybe that's when this will be solved. Glimmer721 23:58, July 5, 2011 (UTC)

P.S. For scenes in "The Lodger", see this video Glimmer721 00:25, July 6, 2011 (UTC)

In The Pandorica Opens just before the TARDIS explode theres a voice that say it again “Silence will fall“ and is not the voice of the Silence. Why would Silence say that anyway? Bmaria 15:10, July 6, 2011 (UTC)

I'm starting to wonder: if Prisoner Zero came through that crack in the wall, did anything else come through?Boblipton 16:50, July 6, 2011 (UTC)

Probably not. The Doctor only opened the crack for a couple of seconds, and we saw the crack the whole time it was open. A Silence could have come through, and we just forgot about it, but why would it. The Silence have been on Earth since the wheel and the fire, so why would they have to come to 90s Earth through a time crack?Icecreamdif 05:50, July 7, 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed in this picture [1] if you look at the middle left there are some cowled figures that look a lot like the Silence. Also there have been several images of Silence wearing monks robes, this fits with my theory that the Headless Monks are somehow connected with the Silence. 200.199.23.121 14:07, September 12, 2011 (UTC)

Those are Roboforms, nothing to do with the Silence. Also on whether the Silence could've had a hand in Edge of Destruction I would say: highly probable at the moment. I believe Steven Moffat or someone else connected to the series said something about the Silence influencing for much longer than anyone expected and mentioned the lack of memory of as prelude to the possibility they have been influencing things around the Doctor his entire life. The Light6 01:07, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

Well, that could explain every discontinuity in the history of the show: the Doctor's age, the 2nd Doctor thinking Time Lords are immortal, everyone on Gallifrey forgetting about the Eye of Harmony, the Daleks not recognizing the Doctor in two stories where they should have, the Doctor and the Master forgetting they were loomed, Time Lords using the Looms in the first place (because they forgot that the Curse of Pythia never actually worked), the Delgado Master being both his 1st and 13th incarnations, the 1st Doctor's single pulse and the conflicting explanations that have been given, when the UNIT stories happened, the first four Doctors frequently mixing up the words "galaxy" and "universe", the TARDIS sometimes being able to translate written (even smell-based) language and sometimes not, whether TARDISes are built or grown, most of War of the Daleks, the multiple first times the Doctor met Shakespeare (and which incarnation helped him write which play), … :) --50.0.128.155 02:51, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

So can lack of infinite amounts of time to do the research on older works. Boblipton 03:26, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

One day, Gary Russell will end up as show-runner on Doctor Who, and there will never be a single continuity error in the 13 episodes he oversees before he gets the show canceled. :) --50.0.128.155 04:18, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

Why would the Silence have been involved in Edge of Destruction. The events of that episode were all explained by the TARDIS trying to warn the Doctor and friends that the spring on the fast return switch was broken (maybe that's why they recalled all the type 40s). If any recent episode makes that story make more sense than it's The Doctor's Wife. Even if the Silence were somehow involved in that episode, what could they possibly have hoped to gain? As for the Silence being behind every continuity error in the series, that seems more than a little unlikely. What, for example, would the Silence gain by making the Second Doctor think that Time Lords are immortal (and though not strictly immortal they are incredibly long lived barring accidents. Didn't it take the First Doctor 500 years to die of old age, and if you go all 13 lives without accidents, a layman might call that immortal) Same with confusing the Master about which incarnation he's in, or making everyone forget what year it is. The Silence wouldn't seem to have anything to gain from this.Icecreamdif 04:20, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

The notion of the Silence being involved in The Edge of Destruction is at least slightly daft. The possibility that it could have contributed to Moffat's ideas, however, is not -- it's just unprovable. If it did contribute, even Moffat himself might not have been concsious of the fact. As I recall, The Edge of Destruction was, in effect, the TARDIS playing a game of charades to try to get across the notion "out of time" because the stuck switch was continuing to tell her to travel backwards in time, when there was no earlier time she could travel to. She had, quite literally, run out of time. A voice interface would have been useful on that occasion.

It's much more plausible that so-far unexplained, seemingly minor events in The Eleventh Hour and later episodes might be down to the Silence -- not retrospectively "explained away" by their influence but always intended to be part of their story -- because Moffat was in a position to put such things into the show by then. It's not merely possible that the Silence have been around since the start of Series 5. They were. Moffat might not have had all the details worked out, but he certainly had enough to make Prisoner Zero say, "Silence will fall, Doctor." Any further back than The Eleventh Hour is a shade unlikely, however. --89.242.76.105 08:34, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

People keep taking my comment about the Edge of Destruction seriously. Don't take my comments about EoD literaly. All I was trying to say was that I could see elements in EoD that might suggest a silent in the Tardis as far back as that episode. I had watched The Day of the Moon as well as a video looking at the clips of series 5 that might have been slients on Youtube just prior to rewatching EOD. It was an amusement to me to think that Moffat might be trying to tie things back to the third story of Doctor Who. Do I think that is really the case, no of course not. I agree that it is highly unlikely that that is the case. I guess I was trying to suggest that those reading this post should watch the episode over with the idea that a silent had gotten into the Tardis, just once. They should have a laugh with this notion and then go back to the original intent behind the episode (which I agree is much more closely tied to the Doctor’s Wife).

Completely separate from the EOD discussion:

What I do believe (until this theory is proved wrong) is that there are silents in series 5 that will be revealed as series 6 concludes (including one wandering around inside the Tardis). Again the scene with Amy in the console room for the first time still doesn’t sit right with me. MasterIII 23:57, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

That really doesn't look like its anything more than Amy just playing with the buttons and being surprised when it makes a noise. I doubt the Silence have anything to do with it. The only time in season 5 whereit reeally seems likely that a Silence is present is during The Pandorica Opens when River was in the TARDIS and it blew up.Icecreamdif 00:25, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

"As for the Silence being behind every continuity error in the series, that seems more than a little unlikely." Well, yes, it was supposed to be blatantly facetious. The Silence can't possibly have made the Time Lords forget about the Eye of Harmony for thousands of years. Even if they could, how could the Master have learned the truth without learning about the Silence? It makes no sense. Obviously, the truth is that the Silence made Graham Williams forget most of Robert Holmes' script a year earlier (and so on all the way up to Philip Segal 18 years after that). The Silence were running the Earth since the wheel and the fire, and the BBC is part of the Earth. Why? Because they wanted to discredit the show, so that nobody would notice that the Question is hidden right there in plain sight, of course. Nobody remembers any of the details of the classic series except the kind of fans who are too busy debating minutiae to notice anything larger. (Gary Russell is, of course, the one man who is immune to the Silence. RTD wrote about Gary's 1782-page Great Big Encyclopedia of Everything in Doctor Who Ever Anywhere in The Writers' Tale, and yet, as soon as you turn the page, you forget, and you're sure that all he wrote was the 192-page Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia covering just the new series.)

Anyway, more seriously, I think it's going to turn out that the larger Silence religious order, not specifically the alien things on Earth, were behind most of the loose plot threads from last season. Prisoner Zero was talking about their core prophecy, not about the aliens falling upon the Earth, or about them falling from power after 1969. And so on. But Icecreamdif may be right that the Panodorica Opens scene is an exception to that. --70.36.140.19 04:58, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

MasterIII & Icecreamdif: "the scene with Amy in the console room for the first time" & "That really doesn't look like its anything more than Amy just playing with the buttons..." It wouldn't, even if SM intended to reveal later that it was the Silence (Munch Scream aliens). Even the cast and the other members of the crew might not have known what SM was up to, if he just said he wanted Amy to do what she did and didn't say why he wanted it. Alex Kingston has said (I think in one of the DW Confidentials) that, when she was working on Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, the stuff she had to read from River's diary -- the crash of the Byzantium was the main example she gave -- seemed like nothing more than dialogue to establish the idea of River's previous encounters with the Doctor and it wasn't until she worked on The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone that she discovered there really was a story about the crash. After that but only after that, she started wondering what the stories were behind the other incidents referred to in River's diary. Secrecy isn't the only reason SM fails to explain to the cast what's behind some of the stuff he gets them to do. He also wants to avoid distracting the actors by giving them too much to think about.

On the other hand, the scene with Amy in the console room might be nothing more than it appears to be on the surface. Some scenes are, in spite of SM's involvement.

The TARDIS explosion is different. We're meant to know it's not yet been explained, and the same goes for the full meaning of PZ's "Silence will fall, Doctor!" We're also quite obviously meant to connect them. The script had PZ say, "The Pandorica will open and Silence will fall!" so that we would connect them. --89.241.76.198 06:42, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

Moffat has said that he hadn't actually planned to write an episode about the crash of the Byzantium at the time he wrote that line. He loved the sound of that so much that it stayed with him, and by the time he decided to do another River episode, it had to be about the crash.

Kind of the same thing as the water names. Originally, it was just a coincidence. (Remember that originally the coincidence was River Song, Jackson Lake, and Adelaide Brooke, invented by three different writers, but everyone thought it would be significant in the 2009 finale.) But after first RTD and then Moffat were asked about it a few million times apiece, suddenly Moffat thought of an interesting way to make use of it, and now it's actually meaningful.

The case with "silence will fall" isn't quite like that. He's said that from the moment he wrote that line in the first episode of series 5, he knew that the Silence was going to carry over and be important in series 6—but he didn't actually decide what the Silence was until he started plotting out series 6 (which means, toward the end of filming series 5, which means he could have snuck them into The Pandorica Opens). --70.36.140.19 07:46, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

"Moffat has said...": Rule 1, Moffat lies. He's said so himself (and it's logically impossible for that particular statement to be untrue). He certainly lied shamelessly about River. However, even if he's telling the truth, this time, I'd not put it past him to insert the Silence retrospectively into events from episodes made before he'd worked out what he wanted the Silence to be, if only by using dialogue to "explain" things.

What he said about the crash of the Byzantium might be another lie or it might (very strictly interpreted) be the truth but we know Moffat thinks ahead and leaves "hooks" on which he can hang future stories, if he wants to. The clearest example is Jenny in The Doctor's Daughter, who was originally intended to die. Moffat asked that she be kept alive, so that future stories about her would be possible. As far as I know, no such story is yet planned and there's no obligation on him to come up with one, but the "hook" is there if he ever wants to hang something on it. Entries in River's diary are very likely to be in the same category: "hooks" that can be used in future but don't have to be. For him, it's a win/win situation. If he writes a story about (say) Jim the Fish, it ties in with what's gone before. If he never does, the references to Jim the Fish serve to give depth to the characters and remind us we don't see everything the Doctor (or River) gets up to, thus providing cover whenever a story needs the Doctor (or River) to know something we don't know he (or she) knows.

Personally, I have no complaints about Moffat thinking ahead in this way, especially as it makes him careful to avoid doing things that limit his (or other writers') future story options. Had Moffat been around to influence things at the time, I doubt if the "12 regeneration limit" would have been scripted to be as hard and fast as it was, facing writers now, or in the next few years, with the problem of how to get around it without obviously "cheating". The limit might still have been there to explain why the Master was doing what he was but an "out" would have been built in to the story in a way that left the Master in that fix without putting all Time Lords, including the Doctor, in the fix with him. --2.101.55.215 20:03, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I doubt the writers at the time of that fourth Doctor episode really imagined that the show would be running for long enough for it to be an issue. If they had wanted to, they could have just had the Master come back being played by a different actor, but they dcided not to for whatever reason. The regeneration limit is actually a good thing if you think abuot it though. It makes the Doctor more human by showing that his life span is not infinite, and he will eventually die no matter what. without the regeneration limit, we also wouldn't have had that great scene in Let's Kill Hitler where River sacrifices her remaining regenerations to save the Doctor's life. Has Moffat actually said that the reason he asked for Jenny to remain alive so that she could be brought back if someone ever wanted to, or did he just think that that would be a better ending for The Doctor's Daughter? The Prisoner Zero thing was probably jut referring to the end of the universe in The Pandorica Opens, sinced the Pandorica was opened in that episode and Silence did fall, or owuld have had it not been for Big Bang 2. Was there anything in that episode that might qualify as the question that would cause silence to fall?Icecreamdif 20:18, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

I don't suppose the writers at the time did imagine the show would run long enough for the limit to create problems. My point was that I think Moffat is better at thinking ahead than they were. Even if he'd not have expected such a long run, his preference for leaving options open would (I suspect) have led him to say, "Don't do it that way, do it this other way, so nobody trips over it later."

As far as Jenny is concerned, my understanding is that Moffat liked the character and wanted the option of bringing her back. It's certainly true, though, that (even if she never does return) it was a better ending. In very, very many continuing shows, when a guest character becomes emotionally important to a regular character, any but the most naïve viewer knows that that guest character is going to be killed off. It's a cliché. It may be (I don't know) that Moffat got his way over Jenny's survival because RTD and/or others recognised that it did improve the ending. --2.101.55.215 21:54, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

Moffat doesn't always think ahead. He didn't object to Davies line about Time Lords' having 507 regenerations, and think how much trouble that will cause the writeres in a few centuries.Icecreamdif 00:06, September 15, 2011 (UTC)

Well, his alternative at that point was sticking with 12. The alternative to 12 when it was first put in a script was no troublesome limit. --89.240.248.104 03:24, September 15, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but then they'd still have the problem of making the Time Lords immortal. There have been quite a few good episodedss that revolved around the regeneration limit.Icecreamdif 03:34, September 15, 2011 (UTC)

Re-planning 30-year-old stories would be a bit futile but they'd not have had that problem if they'd simply left things as they were (ie, unspecified) for Time Lords in general and scripted it so only the Master had a problem. However, you've raised something that affects all long-running shows: individual ideas that are good, or even excellent, in themselves but leave behind persisting problems for the show as a whole. (Star Trek, for example, had the problem that, once they'd introduced the transporter as a fast way of getting the characters into the action, it also gave the characters far too easy a way of getting out of jeopardy. Landing party in danger? Beam it up and, if necessary, beam it back down somewhere safer. That's why they kept having to find ways to disable the thing.) Sometimes, even a superb story comes with a long-term cost that's too great.

Moffat's reboot of the universe was intended to correct a problem of exactly this kind. The stories in Aliens of London/World War Three, The Christmas Invasion, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, etc. were all great stories (which I still very much enjoy) but they made the "ordinary" world of early 21st-century Earth inside the show a very different place from the real early 21st-century Earth and, short of drastic action, the divergence between them could only grow. Eventually, it would have got to the stage where new viewers wouldn't have been able to identify with the show's version of Earth -- familiarity with aliens and (logically inevitable) defences against hostile aliens. Before too long, it would have been difficult to use the real world as a shooting location without having to use a lot of expensive CGI to create the differences that there logically ought to have been. The show's version of contemporary Earth would have become an alien world itself -- or, rather, as much a parallel world as the London of "Pete's World", and as difficult to present on screen. The nature of the show, unlike many others, allows such a problem to be corrected -- time can be rewritten and, if needs be, the entire universe can be re-run to remove the troublesome events. Series 5 did that. --89.242.76.175 15:53, September 15, 2011 (UTC)

The transporters aren't a major problem. After all, their's always some kind of interference in the atmosphere or magnetic field that makes it impossible to get a lock. That, or somone just steals Captain Kirk's communicator. Since, as Jack likes to remind us, "the 21st century is when everything changes." it would have been nice to see some of the changes. As for how to kkeep the present relatable, it wouldn't have been that hard. RTDhad already been doing it for a while, with tons of references to people not believing in alien is and thinking the invasiosn were some kind of hoax. According to Rupesh, people still believed that even after the Daleks moved the planet. And the problem still exists now anyway, unless everyone in the world forgot that people stopped dying for a few months. Really, Moffat's best bet to keep the world relatable is to stop going to the modern day as much, which is what he seems to be doing. Back in the day, with the obvious exception of the Third Doctor, the Doctor never really spent that much time on then-modern day Earth, and when th he did, there were only a handful of occasion where the threat was big enough to be noticed by the world at large. That seems to be what Moffat is doing. Out of the episodes that have been set in the moder day for more than a few minutes, we've had the Atraxi capture one small town that nobdy really cares about,a house kidnapping random passersby, and a little kid kidnapping people who scare him. None of these are worldwide, and with half the world still not believing the Dalek invasion was real, there wouldn't really be a problem. Of course, Torachwood is probabbly going to continue making things world wide, but whatever.Icecreamdif 16:26, September 15, 2011 (UTC)

Moffat didn't object to the 507 line because he knew nobody would take it seriously. He and RTD discussed it, and RTD said basically the same thing he's said in public. That's why Moffat's teasers refered to an old friend finding a "very cheeky way" around the limit: He wanted us to know that we could enjoy the scene without having to accept that the limit had been changed.

Also, the 13 regenerations thing did cause a furor in fandom when Robert Holmes first dropped it into The Deadly Assassin. Man fans were adamant that when the Doctor had said his people were immortal, he meant it, and this kind of retcon was just going too far. The fact that Time Lord society was a bit over 6000 years old also angered fans who insisted that it was millions of years old and those who insisted it was just a few centuries (despite the fact that Colony in Space had already hinted the same thing years earlier).

Anyway, it's definitely true that Moffat leaves lots of hooks that he can use later. If he's telling the truth that next season is going to be a lot more episodic and less arc-driven, I suspect that we'll still see all kinds of "clues" that he's written in for future stories, we just won't see him using most of them. And I agree that this is a great way to write the show—as 2 says, the "Jim the Fish" reference gives the Doctor/River story more depth, and so on.

But I don't think you can really fault Holmes, DNA, and the other great classic writers for not doing this. It's not that they didn't expect the show to be around in 30 years (after all, they knew it had already been around for 15 years). It's that, to a large extent, nobody ever thought of writing episodic sci-fi this way until a generation of Doctor Who fans who'd grown up with a lifetime of arguing over continuity became writers themselves. Ben Aaronovitch (and to a lesser extent Andrew Cartmel and Marc Platt) was really the first TV writer to intentionally drop in plot threads for later use. A few of the novel writers—especially Paul Cornell and Larry Miles—did the same. So Moffat can look back on what Aaronovitch, Cornell, and RTD did and think about how to do it better, which gives him a huge advantage over Holmes. That's not to say that Moffat isn't a great writer, just to say that Holmes is too.

Finally, if you read The Writer's Tale, RTD very clearly intended, from the beginning, to make the Whoniverse a very different world, where alien invasions were out there in the public view and couldn't be ignored. But if you watch his later interviews, he says that the series 5 finale convinced him that he'd written himself into a corner, without ever realizing it. The problem wasn't really with the modern-day stories in general, but with modern-day companions. He'd had to (subconsciously) build in an excuse for why Donna was like us, despite her world being so different, and the idea of doing that for every companion to come was just unworkable. If he'd stayed in charge for another few years, he might have gotten around it for a while by giving the Doctor a full-time companion who's not a modern-day Earth woman for a year, something he'd been itching to do anyway, but eventually it would have caught up with him. Of course RTD may be wrong. It may be that a combination of his often-repeated desite to go back to watching the show as a fan rather than an insider, together with the quality of Moffat's writing, tricked him into thinking that Moffat had solved a real problem rather than just changing things for the same of change. Also, from what Moffat's said, it sounds like he's at least as much concerned about modern-world episodes as about the companions; when he talks about the NAs taking the "cheap and easy way out" by setting all their stories in the 27th century instead of the 21st, what else could he mean? But what RTD says rings true. Try to imagine how much different Amy and Rory would have been in they'd lived through The Stolen Earth, and it actually is more of a problem than imagining how much different Leadworth or the British Museum would be. --70.36.140.19 13:08, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't be too different. Amy would have recognized the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks, but tthey were both pretty quick to believe in aliens in The Eleventh Hour anyway.Icecreamdif 18:23, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

But the whole point is that learning that aliens exist broadened their horizons. Amy learned that there's life beyond Leadworth, and this made her a different person. --70.36.140.19 18:34, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

But Amy had really believed impossible things like that her entire life, since the Doctor crashed when she was a little girl. Besides, I can't remember how all the dates work out with that whole year skip, but wasn't most of The Eleventh Hourbefore the Dalek invasion anyway. By the time of The Stolen Earth, Amy would have already believed in aliens becasue of the Atraxi and Prisoner Zero anyway.Icecreamdif 22:20, September 17, 2011 (UTC)

The issue isn't how Amy would have reacted in The Stolen Earth, given the events of The Eleventh Hour. The issue is how she would have reacted in The Eleventh Hour, given all of the public invasions that had happened before then. And you're right that The Stolen Earth probably hadn't happened yet, but many of RTD's "spectacle episodes" had, and it only takes one. (And actually, Rory is really the important one here; it's the contrast between Amy's blind faith in the Doctor and Rory's healthy worry that's driving this season.)

Anyway, as I said, RTD may be wrong. But if so, it's not because of some little detail he forgot to mention. RTD is wrong if if would have been just as easy to show the characters growing in the same way over the first season, even if they'd already lived through all of RTD's spectacles. Think about Rory's speech in Vampires of Venice about how the Doctor inspires people to put themselves in danger. I don't think that speech would have rung true if he'd lived through the RTD invasions before joining the Doctor in that episode. But maybe Moffat could have gotten Rory to that same point anyway, just by writing things a little differently. And if so, RTD hadn't actually painted himself into a corner. --70.36.140.19 00:11, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but it's still a different world and different people. What, there were monsters back then too? So it's just like modern life and we have to deal with it the same way. Certainly different if you have never encountered it. As you say, it can be dealt with by good writing, but it requires both subtlety and bashing and an audience who can deal with all that stuff.Boblipton 00:23, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

Well, the Slitheen were a hoax, and the Cybermen/Dalekss were due to drugs in the water supply. I don't htink that knowing about aliens would have made Rory's speech in Vampires in Venice any different. After all, Davros made a simlar sppech in Journey's end, and they're both right.Icecreamdif 00:28, September 18, 2011 (UTC)

RTD clearly intended those invasions to be world-changing events that couldn't be swept under the covers. He talked about it many times in Confidential, various interviews, and The Writer's Tale. And Moffat clearly thought they were too world-changing, and that's why he undid them, as he's said in various interviews. It's really beyond question that "everything changed" in the RTD 21st century. The only question is whether that actually made it too hard to write relatable companions.

When I think about it more, the show worked with characters like Romana, Leela, and Nyssa; in fact, it often felt more "human" and relatable with Romana than with Peri or Ben and Polly. So obviously it's not that hard to write companions who aren't just like us. But there are still some kinds of stories—like the story of Amy and Rory that we've been watching these past two seasons—that would be. After wavering back and forth, I think RTD hadn't actually written himself into a corner, he just happened to preclude the particular story Moffat wanted to write first. --70.36.140.19 03:07, September 20, 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the main problem was the companions. As you say, there have been non-humans and humans from other times -- past and future -- who have worked well. Judging by the reaction to her appearance in A Good Man Goes to War, the audience would have accepted Madame Vastra as a companion. (The BBC might not be so happy, because of the expense of the makeup.) I think it's more that contemporary Earth couldn't have been used as a setting because the early-21st-century Earth of the show would have been too different from the early-21st-century Earth of real life -- and the differences would inevitably have kept increasing. The show's version of contemporary Earth would have been as much an alternate world as "Pete's World" (of Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel) and would have been both expensive to portray on screen and alien to the viewers. There's nothing wrong with alien worlds but the show would have ended up with nothing but alien worlds. Please note that I liked the RTD approach and I rather miss it; it's just that I can see it would have created steadily increasing problems for the show. Even by the time of The End of Time, the differences between the show's Earth and ours were slight -- mainly differences in people's attitudes -- but they couldn't stay slight. Eventually the show would have become more expensive and difficult to make. If "everything changes", you have to show the changes, which costs. In 1970, when the budget for Doctor Who needed to be cut back, they could save money by confining the stories to Earth. If the Earth they have to use is as expensive as an alien planet, that option isn't available. The only way then to save money is to make fewer episodes -- or none. --78.146.178.98 11:55, September 20, 2011 (UTC)

That problem isn't too difficult to solve. All Moffat would have to do would be to make major alien invasions less frequent in the modern day, and people's views would probably remain the same as they were around The End of Time. I also liked RTD's approach, but my one compalint about both him and Moffat is that the show is really much more human-centric now. Think about it, has there been any episodes of the new series that didn't take place near Earth or an a human colony or somewhere with Humans.Even last week's episode, we learn how the hotel kidnaps peope from all over the universe, and the pictures on the walls show tons of aliens have been there, but for some reason there are three humans and one alien in the hotel when the Doctor arrives. Back in the classic show there were plenty of episoeds where the only Human characters were the Doctor's companiions, while they weree on a planet inhabited by near-humans. Moffat has, however, seemed to have deccided not to spend as much time on modern day Earth as RTD did, which is good. Icecreamdif 19:18, September 20, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Moffat is definitely right about needing to change the Earth back to the real world, because it's the only real world there is to show. And I think RTD's idea that maybe it's more about the companions than the world isn't right—it's just that you couldn't take Donna any further in RTD's world (which is fine, he wrote her a great ending), not that you couldn't take any modern human any further.

Icecreamdif: I think what RTD was trying to do with Jack, and Moffat with River, was to use far-future human companions as a substitute for aliens. They're different and interesting, and yet they're cheap to portray and easy for people to relate to. And, as recurring companions, you can get much deeper into what makes them tick than with a one-shot guest stars or an alien planet set. But after a while, you're right, they're not quite different enough.

Rumors are that next year, the Doctor is going to have a sort of revolving door of recurring companions instead of a regular TARDIS crew. If that's true, it opens a door to solve your problem: Add a new recurring companion who's an alien, and who actually acts alien (unlike Nyssa, Adric, etc.). If Craig was just on last week, and Amy and Rory are coming back in the middle of the current story, you don't need to make G'xzyxp instantly relatable. --12.249.226.210 20:07, September 20, 2011 (UTC)