Cardinal Ratzinger "Not An Anglican" Shock

Fish Custard (7)

The one with the Vampires is an altogether lighter romp than the previous five episodes, driven by some perfectly harmless gobbledegook. (Naturally, giant fish with cloaking devises don't have a reflection in the mirror, except when they do, because, er...)

Where the one with the Angels was a backdrop for some heavy stuff between the Doctor and Amy and some more clues about River Bloody Song, this was a backdrop to develop the relationship between Amy and Rory. Although he appears in episode 1, this is the first time we've really seen him as a character: in terms of what is going to happen over the next two weeks, it's pretty imperative that we like him. Which, I think, during this story, we pretty much do. He's a buffoon, but a nice buffoon, pointlessly trying to repel the not-vampire with a cross; jealous about the Doctor and Amy but not getting into a Mickey type strop about it. A running thread through Old New Who was that the Doctor is an inspirational figure, changing the lives of everyone he comes across. So it is very pointed and clever for Rory, the gormless normal guy to see through this or at any rate spot the downside of it. The Doctor, just by being the Doctor, inspires people to take risks which may harm them or get them killed.

But mostly, this story was a very agreeable piece of padding; showing us the Doctor and Amy having an adventure and quite enjoying it -- putting across to us the idea that they travel together and have fun travelling together, and that while dangerous stuff happens all the time every single minute isn't as incredibly heavy and angst ridden as last week's story was and next week's story is going to be.

There are Vampire myths in every civilisation in the universe, because the Time Lords had a big war with creatures called The Vampire Lords who drained whole planets of their energy, but who, so far as I know, didn't have heralds on shiny surfboards. However, at the very end of time, the Earth becomes so polluted that the human race evolve into Haemovores who drink blood, dislike sunlight, hang out around graveyards, take boats to Whitby and recoil from crosses. And hammer and sickles. Hammers and sickle. (*) But that's no reason that fish people who drain the water from humans shouldn't have vampirey attributes as well, because the Doctor Who universe is a self-consistent fictitious cosmology which makes perfect sense. When the First Doctor met an animatronic Dracula at a futuristic funfair, he assumed that it was, not a haemovore or a vampire lord or a fish-thing, but that he was in an alien dimension where human nightmares had somehow come to life, and got a jolly stiff cease and desist letter from Universal Pictures a result. I'm sorry. What was the question again?

[*] Radio 4 newsreaders still say things like: "The MOD has announced that three soldiers will face Courts Martial...."

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Fish Custard [Intermezzo]

River Pond Song is Amy's daughter: a River Comes from a Pond.

The Doctor, by meeting Amy, has prevented her marriage to Rory thus prevented River being born.

We know that the Doctor encounters River at a place called "the Pandorica", and that she survives whatever Bad Thing happens there. Presumably River contributes in some way to the Doctor's victory.

So by meeting Amy and preventing River coming into existence, the Doctor has created a paradox which has brought about a space time split fracture crack thingy.

I assume that River is Amy's daughter by Rory: but it is possible that she is Amy's daughter by the Doctor. This would account for River's Time Lordyness. A lot of her flirting could be "grown up daughter" flirting rather than "wife" flirting.

But even if this is right, Amy's wedding day is still the epicentre of the paradox. What breaks time and space is Amy marrying Rory, as opposed to Amy not marrying Rory: the very actions which the Doctor is taking to prevent the paradox are, in fact, creating it.

Could it even be that the Crack is consciously removing the obstacles to the Doctor marrying / sleeping with Amy to bring River into existence and heal the wound in the universe? For example, it might be said to have dragged the TARDIS back in time 14 years in the episode one; and deliberately erased Rory from existence in the one with the Silurians.

I am somewhat afraid that we are going to be told that large lumps of continuity have also disappeared into the Crack; or even that the whole universe will be be sucked into the Crack and that Steven will say that, as of next year, the series is taking place in a new, post-Crack Doctor Who Universe to which the history of the pre-Crack Universe no longer applies. I hope not. It seems to me that if Doctor Who fans have spent 50 years happily believing that six impossible and mutually contradictory things happened in the same "universe" before breakfast; there's no reason to think we need a Big Continuity Clear Our this late in the day. But note that Moffat wanted to refer to Season 5 as "Season 1".

There's no reason that The Crack shouldn't be left lying around for fans to use as a hand wave. "The Romana regeneration doesn't make a lot of sense in the light of what we know about other regenerations, does it?" "Oh well, let's just assume it disappeared into the Crack."

Even before the trailer (and isn't Steven being good at keeping the trailers mostly spoiler free) we could probably tell that "The Pandorica", which is going to open, would be a box of some kind. There was a box in Greek mythology with a similar name. It contained something very horrible, I seem to remember.

Some people would like it to contain something Time Lordy: the Skaro Abominations or the Could Have Been King or something else that was referenced in The End of Time. Rassilon himself, maybe, or the whole of Gallifrey. I would cast my bet against "The Other" or "Omega": these are characters who only fans know about, and significant recurring villains in the new show have to be in the consciousness of the mainstream public. I can't believe that Moffat would be so boring as to make it the Daleks or the Master.

The Box is not the Crack, but opening the Box obviously has to be closely related to whatever caused the Crack. Several villains have implied that the contents of the box is obvious and it's funny that the Doctor doesn't know. The specific phrase "The Doctor in the TARDIS" has come up twice.

So my money is on the Pandorica containing an evil future incarnation of the Doctor. Fans will be able to say "The Valeyard" to their hearts content, but he won't be called that on screen, or only in passing. Seasons 1 – 4 kept on telling us that the Doctor would turn evil one day; and we've had the Toby Jones anti-Doctor to lay the groundwork.

Who will be playing the evil version of the Doctor?

I can't believe that this wouldn't have leaked out, but I do have to point out that in the one in the flat the Doctor becomes Craig's lodger. A person who pays him money to use a section of his property.

That is to say, a tenant. I've been wrong before, of course.

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Fish Custard (6)

Moffat is doing rather more bleeding of stories into other stories than Davies did.

Davies seasons had running plot arcs, but they never amounted to much more than easter eggs for the more earnest bus enthusiasts to spot. It was quite fun to see the words "Bad Wolf" in the graffiti in Episode 1.4 and remember that the same words had been used by the clairvoyyant girl in Episode 1.3, but it didn't really have much bearing on either story. (The resolution -- that the word "Bad Wolf" appeared in every episode because when Rose became a demi-god she dropped the phrase Bad Wolf into every episode in order to give herself a clue that she should take the name Bad Wolf and drop that name into every episode when she became a demi-god was not very satisfactory. Couldn't she have just tied a knot in her hanky?)

This year's story arc is about Amy's crack. Er, the Crack in Amy's wall. In the first story of the season a Baddie said "The thingy will open! A bad thing will happen!" very much like baddies have been saying "He will knock three times on the window" and "You will soon die, metaphorically at least" pretty much since the show rebooted. I thought the Crack was going to turn out to be another case of the Bad Wolves. I thought it would appear in every story and that it's meaning would be revealed in the final two-parter, which would feature the end of the universe, the Daleks, and Amy temporarily becoming a demi-god.

But then, in the one with the statues, the back story came to the front. The Weeing Angels were feeding on a Crack in the space time continuum through which weird-crack-in-the-space- time-continuum energy was pouring. The question which had been set up the previous week (why doesn't Amy know about the Daleks, given they invaded earth only last Tuesday?) is more or less resolved. Things have been being sucked into The Crack, and things which are sucked into The Crack aren't merely destroyed, they never existed to begin with, so not one remembers them (except when they do.) That's why Amy Pond knows that the Pond in her village is a Duck Pond, even though it has never had any Ducks on it. (NOTE: Leadworth is an anagram of Dr Who Tale.) That's why everyone has forgotten about the giant Cyberman from the year before last's Christmas special. (I have certainly been trying to forget it.)

And The Crack was started by a Big Bang which the Doctor traces to the the day of Amy's wedding, which is also the day she joined him on the TARDIS and also (by a staggering coincidence) the day that the final part of Doctor Who Season 5 will be transmitted. And all this leads us straight into a huge odd soap operatic thang. Amy tries to kiss the Doctor, a scene which the Daily Mail thought was sordid, sexy and possibly a cure for cancer. This, in pretty short order, makes the Doctor decide that his preventing Amy's marriage is what has caused the The Crack and that it's his job to ensure that she and her fiance, the gorm free Rory (indistinguishably from Larry, Sally's boyfriend in Blink) should get back together, whereupon....

"Everybody" complained that Davies' plots were too rushed, but I rather like the speed with which Moffat is advancing the back story. Oh, it's clear enough what he's doing: Amy's sudden urge to kiss the Doctor, and the Extremely Unexpected Twist Ending to the one with the Silurians don't arise particularly naturally from the action which preceded them. They could have been dropped into any story and they would have made just as much sense. Amy kisses the Doctor because a bad scary thing has happened in which she nearly died: but bad scary and nearly fatal things happen to Doctor Who girls every week. It's an occupational hazard. I think that there may be a subtext about the way in which childhood dreams shade into wet dreams and imaginary friends turn into erotic fantasies. Poor Rory is, in every possible sense, in competition with the man of Amy's dreams.

I could have done without the "You, Amy Pond, are the most important being in the universe" speech. We've already had a "You, Donna Noble, are the most important being in the universe" speech and Rose actually being the most important being in the universe. Martha had to content herself with being the most important being on earth. What happened to companions who failed general science A level?

The Doctor says that for him, every day is a big day: he skips the little ones. In the same way, Moffat jumps over extraneous material and transitions. This works rather well: much better than Davies squishing long stories into small spaces. We go straight from the Angels to Amy

declaring her love for
revealing that she'd like to sleep with the Doctor; and straight from there to the Doctor popping up on Rory's stag night; thence to Rory already being a passenger on the TARDIS (and then to a point when he has been travelling on the TARDIS for some time).

And note, by the way, that there were no spoilers about Rory being a new member of the supporting cast – no press calls for for Arthur Darvil, no interviews with Peter Purves or Matthew Waterhouse about the weight of expectation about being a Doctor Who "boy", no articles about whether or not he is "something for the Mums". Okay, he doesn't get star billing, but he is very clearly a companion. Is this because Moffat is working hard to keep Doctor Who spoiler free (the man in the Grauniad keeps moaning that he doesn't get preview discs) or just because newspapers are irredeemably sexist?

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If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider buying a copy of The Viewers Tale or Fish Custard which collects all my writings about Doctor Who to date.

Alternatively, please consider making a donation of £1 for each essay you have enjoyed.