Douglas Adams Continuum (DAC)

I recently saw the last episode of the current series, where River gets married and time is all messed up .

It seemed to me that the doctor tricked time by allowing the little cops to make a replica of him, so when River kills him, she is actually killing the robotic replica, and not the real Doc, so everything is alright in the end - time goes back to normal and Matt will be back for a Christmas special

maybe i missed something, but how can "Time" be fooled by a disguise?

sounds like a case for Sapphire and Steel to me..

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if you can keep your head whilst all around you people are losing theirs, you may have misjudged the situation

I thought the same and blamed the Rani. Or Eric. Artistic license beats logic, I guess!

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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
(Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See")

it's unlike them in this day and age to cut corners like that

tho it might open up a possible story line with a robot acting like a sort of Dorian Grey's picture for the Master, or something, but they'd have to back it up with some meaty nerd fodder/back story

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if you can keep your head whilst all around you people are losing theirs, you may have misjudged the situation

I think the fixed point in time was actually the Doctor appearing to die. Everyone just assumed the Doctor's actual death was the fixed point, but it wasn't, it was the robot replica thing.

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You know what you are? You're a beard with an idiot hanging off it.

*Trying not to read the above posts*

i am definitely missing something! and it is the last 15 minutes of the last episode! every single version i manage to, er, find, seems to be corrupted, so it stops before the finale. i suspect a sinister plot. but what am i going to do? can someone help?
*wrings hands*

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"The human gene pool needs more lifeguards!
Either that or stronger chlorination...." (Pitbull)

Help!

Or you could visit me back home, the last episode is still on my recorder!

If you fail to grab either of those intriguing opportunities you could simply read the transcript.

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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
(Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See")

okay, that is clever! because it´s true, time never stepped forward and said, "yes, the doctor really, really dies." but something fixed happened - and it turns out it´s just it looks like the doctor dies.
at least, i really hope this is the case, because, well, cheating destiny is what the doctor is all about, but it would diminish the impact extremely.

another question: i gahter that in the end, time has returned to the "normal" version, continuing right after the doctor gets shot at lake silence, right? but amy remembers the different time line? does rory, too? and river? why?

... in case you wondered, i managed to watch the ending!

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"The human gene pool needs more lifeguards!
Either that or stronger chlorination...." (Pitbull)

I think River and Rory can remember it too... probably because they were near the center of the event or something like that?

I'm glad you managed to watch the ending! Did you like it?

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You know what you are? You're a beard with an idiot hanging off it.

i did! although i regret that i didn´t get to watch it in one go, it felt a bit disconnected to me this way. all in all, maybe there were a bit too many things in it, it was a great rush of very different pictures and impressions, you could feel that they had to wrap up an awful lot of plot elements. it was not on the same scale as the last season´s finale - but then again, what could be?
obviously i´m glad the doctor lives. but i wonder: is this the end for amy and rory as companions? right now, i´m completely out of the loop, production-plan-wise, so i just know that we´ll get a christmas special, but i have no idea when the new season will start.

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"The human gene pool needs more lifeguards!
Either that or stronger chlorination...." (Pitbull)

I think (and hope) that Amy and Rory will be back for next year. But I believe that they'll try to scale down the stories a bit. The Doctor not as a kind of intergalactic superhero, worshipped or feared in all the universes, but back to the concept of being "just" a traveller in time and space. We'll see what the Moff's brilliant mind has in store for us!

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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
(Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See")

hmmmmmm

ok, so i get it that the doc appearing to die is the event..

but it sounds a bit contrived to me cos essentially the fact that its a pretend doc being killed by a pretend astronaut are meaningless coincidence - you may as well have the fixed point as Winston Churchill blowing his nose in 1946, cos that has as much 'temporal significance' as the death of the robodoc, it's just not as dramatic a plot line

it's a bit misleading, maybe there was something about the robodoc which was special.. or maybe i am looking for something that's not there

again

thanks for the explanation, tho i'm not 100% convinced the writer actually meant it that way lol

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if you can keep your head whilst all around you people are losing theirs, you may have misjudged the situation

The way I see it is that the fixed point in time and space was simply the 2011 whichever month whichever day at Lake Silencio that kept popping up - now well, I'm not sure whether it has ever been cleared that these fixed points have to be significant (so if there's a logical connection between being a fixed point and the point's significance, e.g. either it's significant because it's fixed, or it's fixed because it's significant), but if it hasn't been said outright, then I think it's safe to assume that just because something is fixed that doesn't automatically make it an important point in time as well. It's just random wibbly-wobbly time-wimey stuff that time-wimey stops being wibbly-wobbly at that point. And I guess that there's no Big Book of Fixed Points, so they just know it is a fixed point, but they (whoever 'they' may be... The Doctor, the Silence, etc.) have no idea why. But what they know for certain is that the Doctor has to be there at Lake Silencio and that there are eye-witnesses who saw the Doctor die at that moment - so the most logical explanation for the Doctor being present and him appearing to die at the same moment is that he actually does die at Lake Silencio. But that is not set in stone, that is... mere surmise. And I guess the Doctor realised this, and came up with this Tesselecta way of getting around the problem: he was there and he did appear to die, but he didn't actually die. There was an attempt on his life, but it failed.
The only thing that bothers me is that before River shot for a second time, the Fauxctor started to regenarte (emanating yellow light) - how did the Tesselecta fake that?
(And by the way, I liked the episode, but was kinda let down by ending - it should have been a two-parter, for sure.)

EDIT: To put it simply, what I mean is that we cannot be certain how well the nature of fixed points is defined, but after this season finale I guess we can assume that the fixed point wasn't "the death of the Doctor", more like an unchangeable point in time that was known to contain these elements: the actual Doctor, the death of someone looking like the Doctor, maybe even the fact that it is River shooting at him. But the actual oversimplified label that this point was given (the Death of the Doctor) was merely deducted from these elements.

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Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
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You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing. - Bertram Wooster, The Code of the Woosters

WAUX!

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(... don't piss us off)

I have become a quite regular lurker. I guess I'm in Read-Only mode - like in university which is what I have been busy with lately. I hope everyone is still doing splendidly around here!

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Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
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You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing. - Bertram Wooster, The Code of the Woosters

Well, you know what they say about butterflies and hurricanes and things! Anyway, maybe it's the fact that most everyone thinks the Doctor is dead that is significant?



Yes, that bothered me too!

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You know what you are? You're a beard with an idiot hanging off it.

WAUX!!!


as to the discussion: i do have the sneaking suspicion that indeed the ending wasn´t as well thought out as we are used to from the moff.
then again: the doctor chets. time and again, he has cheated death. so why shouldn´t he also cheat time/fate? if someone can do it, it´s surely him.

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"The human gene pool needs more lifeguards!
Either that or stronger chlorination...." (Pitbull)

The Doctor is a cheetah.

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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
(Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See")

Waux Waux Waux! I think of you all the time! Why, you might ask, does a 49-year-old American suburban housewife think of a young uni student in Europe? Good question. But, I remember when you were going to the world debate event years ago. Vagababy went off to boarding school a couple of years ago and joined the debate team. She's aiming for worlds this year. Right now she is at an international event in Vancouver, BC.

So anyway, it is really nice to see you. What are you doing in uni?

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vagabond
birds, any birds, anywhere, any time