Doctor Who/Headscratchers/Series 4: Difference between revisions

* Something always bothered me about this episode - is Miss Foster meant to be a villain? Because, really, all she wants is to convert babies from fat. Humans don't want fat; The Adipose want babies, so win-win. In fact all the bad events of the episode are the fault of the Doctor- if he and Donna hadn't stuck their noses in, Miss Foster wouldn't have had to use full conversion, and left after getting enough babies from the 1kg1 kg-a-week plan. The first death is actually caused by ''Donna'' fiddling with someone's pendant, and Miss Foster was killed because the Adipose got scared because they knew The Doctor found out about it; again, if they'd kept out of it, humanity would be fitter, and the Adipose get their babies, everybody wins.

** She never wanted to go with the Doctor in the first place -- theplace—the TARDIS door locked before she could exit it.

** The Doctor was just wrong about it. He is on occasion, you know. He took the Human/Gallifreyan fear of the dark and extrapolated from there to all life in the universe-- auniverse—a logical fallacy that many people fall into in [[Real Life]] too.

** Explained in "The Time of Angels" -- it—it's revealed that the Doctor will at some point provide River Song with a 'spotter's guide' of what he used to look like in order to enable her to recognise him in his different incarnations. Presumably he either didn't mention or she forgot which one he was wearing the first time they met.

* The episode. What was the point of it? To show that [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]]? I mean, an alien creature makes someone repeat the same thing everyone else is saying and the humans are "KILL IT! KILL!!!" Why does the Doctor even bother sometimes?

** The point of ''Midnight'' (besides what [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters|you mentioned]]) was to scare the pants off of us, something Who has specialised in since almost the beginning. I don't see why it needs to be anything more than that. Entire shows have existed based on far less substantial intent. You could also ask what the point was of a LOT of who episodes, and the answer would probably be along the lines of "entertainment."

** On the [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]] front, remember that the driver and mechanic both ''died'' before anybody really freaked out. Freaking out is a pretty reasonable response to death (especially when you might die next), so the human's weren't really being bastards at all.

** The only weird thing about all this is that Harold Saxon is established throughout season three, before the Doctor has made him happen, similar to the joke about wondering how he made an enemy of Elizabeth I and things like that -- sothat—so that when the Doctor is dead in the alternate timeline, the fact that "Utopia" et al didn't happen is represented by not having those pre-"Utopia" Saxon references. Either the Doctor can encounter things he'll cause before he's caused them -- seeminglythem—seemingly meaning that in those cases at least, he actually has no choice about whether he will eventually cause them -- orthem—or history doesn't change until he makes it change -- whichchange—which is pretty much the assumption most of the time, including in an episode that revolves around the question of what would have happened if he hadn't been around to change our history after a certain point. Having it both ways -- withways—with the odd [[Stable Time Loop]] -- doesn—doesn't make sense. (I know: wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, [[Rule of Cool]].)

** I think that's exactly why he exiles the clone. He knows that's an aspect of his character -- hecharacter—he came close twice in the first series, before Rose's rebuke and the Dalek Emperor's taunting made him realize what he was doing -- anddoing—and is deeply ashamed of it. If you take it a bit symbolically, you could say he's trying to exile or excise that element of himself, or perhaps distance himself from the act, since while it was the human Doctor who technically did it, in any practical sense, it was The Doctor who exterminated the Daleks. (Also, while pointing out that Nine alludes to committing genocide in ''Dalek'', it's worth noting that Ten compares the human Doctor to Nine during that final scene, which I think furthers that idea.)

*** Or, it's a Dalek version of [[Everything Is Online]], coupled with use by a trio of [[Magical Hacker|Magical Hackers]]s.

** Presumably because something was scheduled to happen to those worlds anyway before the Dalek plan went into effect -- Losteffect—Lost Moon of Poosh, for example, implies that it went bye-bye for some reason, and for all we know Pyrovillia and the Breeding Planet could have been destroyed centuries before the Dalek plan occurred anyway) and they needed them. The others, however, were more or less around anyway, so why not just get them all at once?