Howling:Crash Of The Byzantium

The Howling → Crash Of The Byzantium

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In the episode " Crash Of The Byzantium" - River gives Amy an injection of some sort, with the excuse that it is to protect her from any possible germs/virus on the alien planet. But why, in all the episodes and planets I've seen, very very rarely is anyone worried about ambient virus infections. Is this just a way of bringing the characters together to talk, or is it a definate way of taking something from or adding something to Amy's dna/blood?

It could be that she was checking to see if amy was pregnant ... or it could be that they knew the Byzantium was leaking radiation. Besides that it could be anything Cory Jaynes 19:55, August 3, 2011 (UTC)

Three more possibilities:

• Companions are getting innoculated all the time, but we rarely see it on-camera. Just as they're presumably eating breakfast, sleeping, and using the facilities.

• The Doctor rarely thinks about it. When he is reminded by someone getting sick, he usually reacts with mild surprise and annoyance ("You humans, so fragile"). Maybe he gets away with it because the TARDIS can probably cure most things they're likely to pick up.

• They rarely go to places like grubby slums or failed colonies of near-future humans. In the present and recent past, their immune system is fine; on a world that's never seen a modern human, the germs probably wouldn't infect them; etc.

If you look at the novels, especially the EDAs, there are a lot more mentions of getting shots than on TV. But that doesn't really help. One sentence is 0.02% of a book, while one scene is 2% of an episode. On the other hand, Fitz loved to worry, and Sam was very cautious, and the 8th Doctor was (at that point) more in tune with humans than most companions. On the third hand, Sam spent half her time in 23rd century slums, and Fitz kept visiting Earth 30-40 years after his time, neither of which is common. So, all three explanations (and probably many more) are still plausible.

(PS, the episode's called The Time of Angels. But no big deal; anyone can tell what you meant.) --173.228.85.118 04:44, August 4, 2011 (UTC)

We don't know River Song knew something regarding Amelia Pond's health and was merely hoping to affect it in some way, in order to help Amy in here future when she'd need it.

Gallifrey102 22:22, August 4, 2011 (UTC)\

I was doing a cleanup of the article on Artron energy when I ran across this passage: Artron energy altered and enhanced human antibodies, making the immune system of the human in question better at fighting diseases. (TW: Reset). This may be significant to this discussion. Boblipton 14:01, August 6, 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure when the effects of artron energy on the immune system were first explicitly mentioned on screen but it's certainly been implied on occasions over a long period of time. In Survival, for example, the human who's best able to resist the cheetah virus (using the abilities it confers without letting it take her over) is Ace, the only one of the humans who'd been exposed to artron energy. --89.240.246.112 08:08, August 7, 2011 (UTC)

Good point. But it doesn't exactly explain why River would go out of her way to innoculate the only artron-saturated human on the planet other than herself; if anything, it just makes it more mysterious. But not that much more, and I think the explanations above all work just as well. (But maybe modify the second one in that it's not that River is more of a worry-wart in general than the 11th Doctor so much as that River is overprotective of her mother?) --173.228.85.118 09:43, August 7, 2011 (UTC)