Doctor Who

actually there's more than that.
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this was on Reddit, sounds plausible.

1. The doctors death: There are TWO doctors. When the big bang happened, there was ALREADY a doctor in that universe, he just never landed at Amy's house because he didn't need to. Thats why you hear the tardis sound but he's not around when she checks the window. So, when she re-creates everything, she creates - a second doctor. The mischievous activities that the doctor is getting into is not to alert Rory and Amy about him being around, its to alert the other doctor. He is pretty clever (he's mentioned it a few times), so he realizes that there are two of him running around so he tries to make as much a disturbance as possible to alert the other one as to what is actually going on.

2. The child: the silents were trying to create a pilot, possibly to leave the planet. Amy seems to be the mother, but most likely the pregnancy was not due to Rory or the Doctor, but artificial. The duration of Amy's stay was much longer in the Silents tardis than they previously let on, and the child was born there. The child is at least partially time lord, but is not stable. The suit was created to keep the child alive without regenerating so the Silent could use it as a pilot. Unsure why it was important the child did not regenerate, but the suit seems to have been put in place to ensure just that.

3. Person who isn't in the suit: River. She is not the one killing the doctor at the beginning. Even though she goes to jail for 'killing the best man she ever knew', it wouldn't make sense for that specific instance to be it. The River they pick up is already in jail for that crime in the 51st century. This means that she already knows who she kills, and she wasn't wearing a spacesuit at the time. It also means it was in the 51st century or she would not be imprisoned there. For her to kill someone in another time period and be locked away in the 51st, the doctor would have to be judge and jury, and for whatever reason, drop her off there. Yeah, could be some sort of dumb causality loop, but I don't think thats it.

4. That suit: The child leaves the suit at the end of the ep and regenerates, so thats not the child in the suit. Its something else. Could be the original doctor, cleaning up his own timeline. Another one thrown around is that it was Omega, a time lord from the original series. He was crazy and stuck in an alternate dimension. The theory was that he created the cracks as a way to cause the tardis to explode, blowing up the universe and allowing him inside. Why he'd be in the suit I have no clue.

Ok, so theres a bunch of completely unfounded crap. Post your wild theories .... now!
 
In the words of Ten himself: What. What? WHAT?!

WTF?! But not in a "goddammit RTD, why did you create another deus ex machina to end a two-parter?" More in an "Steven Moffat, I love and hate you at the same time".
 
WTF?! But not in a "goddammit RTD, why did you create another deus ex machina to end a two-parter?" More in an "Steven Moffat, I love and hate you at the same time".

I have a feeling this will be us after just about every episode this season:

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Daily Fail is at it again and this time they've set their sights on the show.

It has been one of the BBC?s success stories of recent years. As Doctor Who begins its latest series with disappointing viewing figures, however, some fans are asking if the plotlines are too scary and too complex for its largely family audience. Early figures for the second episode of the new series starring Matt Smith as the Doctor and Karen Gillan as companion Amy Pond show that more than one million viewers turned off the show.
It secured 5.39million viewers ? down 1.01million on the series opener the week before. Overnight figures for that first episode were down by almost 1.5million on the equivalent episode last year, although ratings released yesterday showed it had a final total audience of 8.86million. Even so, the apparent downturn in popularity has led to doubts among some avid viewers over the plotlines being pursued by executive producer and main writer Steven Moffat.
Indeed, some fans are concerned the programme is no longer family viewing, especially at its current 6pm time slot on a Saturday. Speaking of the first episode of the new series ? in which an alien called a Silent killed a member of White House staff ? one reporter from TV website Digital Spy wrote that he was concerned at its 6pm start time. ?It?s debatable whether the unsettling scene in which a Silent confronts Amy and kills the White House staffer Joy should really be broadcast at 6pm,? he wrote.
An unnamed father told how his two children, aged nine and four, have now asked to record Doctor Who and watch it on Sunday mornings because it is too scary to watch close to bedtime. Another unnamed viewer, writing on a dedicated fan site, told how her six-year-old daughter, previously an avid fan, now never wants to watch the programme again because it is too scary. The mother added: ?Steven M seems to have no interest in making it enjoyable for children and just seems obsessed by how scary and complex he can make the storyline.?
Moffat recently admitted the first episode of the new series was ?darker? than any previous series opener. However, he added: ?Children absolutely rank Doctor Who stories in order of frightening-ness ? that?s what it?s about. I?ve got two kids of my own and I?d never do anything I didn?t think was acceptable for them.? Some fans also say the plots have become too complicated and involved, but others say it is important for the show to experiment. A BBC spokesman said: ?Doctor Who is a show for all the family. It?s well known for getting viewers hiding behind their sofas and children expect episodes to provide scares and thrills. ?Doctor Who is never gruesome, cold-blooded or gratuitously violent. All content is carefully considered for a pre-watershed audience.?

Daily Fail

The Fansite that they mention is Gallifrey Base. Basically its a forum for Doctor Who fans where they are all a bunch of obsessed lunatics taken to the nth degree. When something goes wrong with the show, its pratically like they start declaring a jihad against the BBC and the shows producers.

SFX however looked at it all with a bit of optimism.

The Daily Moan is at it again. ??DOCTOR WHO SCARES OFF ANOTHER 1 MILLION VIEWERS? screams the headline, reporting the overnight viewing figures for ?Day Of The Moon?. The article continues: ?As Doctor Who begins its latest series with disappointing viewing figures some fans are asking if the plotlines are too scary and too complicated for its largely family audience..?
Well, yeah, some fans are ? it?s easy enough to find them on Gallifrey Base, and hardly incisive investigative journalism. And, if you have an anti-BBC bias like The Mail, it suits your agenda to quote them rather than the majority of fans who are calmly and sensibly pointing to the fact that the consolidated figures (those that include people who recorded the show and watched it later) for ?The Impossible Astronaut? increased the final viewing for that episode from an overnight of 6.5 million to a final figure of 8.86 million. That?s pretty much in line with the final consolidated viewing figures for every series opener bar the phenomenon that was ?Rose?. There?s no reason to assume that ?Day Of The Moon? won?t undergo a similar hefty time shift.
And yet some fans are still getting their knickers in a twist about overnights, partially this is because they fear headlines like the ones in The Mail. There really is no need to panic. The dip in overnights is not only offset by the time shift figures ? for fans, it?s actually a good thing. No, really. And I don?t even have to scrabble around using facts and figures in a kind of ?you can prove anything with statistics? scenario.

Let me explain.
When Russell T Davies brought the show back, he made it unashamedly populist. This, at the time, was A GOOD THING. It may not have been the dark, gritty Doctor Who many fans wanted but it made the show a huge public phenomenon again. It put the show on the map. It secured its future. And it gave us five years of rollicking great adventures.
But there was always that niggle in the back of the mind of some fans. Could the show be a little darker? Could the show be a little more complex? Surely the viewers wouldn?t leave in droves if the fans got more of the kind of show they?d like?
Then along comes Moffat. After a transitional first series which seemed to be a bit of a mongrel between RTD era Who and his own vision for the show, his second series has kicked off in uncompromising style. ?The Impossible Astronaut? and ?Day Of The Moon? are creepier, more complex and more grown up than New Who has ever been. Downright confusing some might say. But the audience appreciation index has shown that the general audience doesn?t seem to mind, while online fans have generally been giving the two-parter an ecstatic thumbs up.
And yet, the overnights are down. The sky is falling. Fans run around like headless chickens blaming everything from the weather to scheduling to robot hares. Oh hang on. Wait a week. Add in the time-shifted figures and everything?s still rosy. Hurrah. But that?s not the whole story. Think of this way. Back in 2006, ?The Girl In The Fireplace? got 7.4 million on overnights and a final consolidated figure of 7.9 million. That?s an increase of half a million on catch-up.
This week, ?Day Of The Moon? got 5.4 million on overnights, and even the most conservative projections suggest it will get an extra 1.5 million viewers at least when the final figures come out. Let?s round that up slightly and say the final figure could be around 7 million. That?s not even factoring in that it could get easily half a million more on iPlayer (which didn?t exist in 2006). The figures aren?t, then, that much different.
But the real, crucial, fundamental thing to note here is that around two million extra people (maybe a little less, hopefully significantly more) are consciously deciding to watch the show. They?re not just catching it because it?s on, or because it follows another popular show, or because there?s nothing better on the other side. They?re making a deliberate choice. They want to watch it. That is significant.
And it?s also an audience that Moffat is cleverly courting with his approach to the show.
Think about it. All those dangling plot threads and unanswered questions. This is a Doctor Who for the Lost generation. It?s a Doctor Who designed to be discussed, picked over and analysed on the net. This is a Doctor Who that lives and breathes between episodes, buoyed up by discussion on message boards and fan sites. This is a Doctor Who that can afford to be more cerebral and confusing and not worry about overnight viewing figures.
This is a Doctor Who securing its future, in a television landscape where drama is being edged out of the overnight charts by ?live? events, soaps and sport. Increasingly, drama will live or die by how many will commit themselves to watch it. This is a Doctor Who that can afford to be more ?adult? and ?inclusive? and ?complex? because it doesn?t have to chase huge overnight figures by appealing to Aunt Maud and moody cousin Chardonnay who may just happen to have the telly on and nothing better to do.
Don?t get me wrong. I adored the RTD era, possibly a lot more than many fans. I loved its immediacy, its vibrancy, its energy and its ability to appeal on a lot of levels. But I am also loving Moffat?s vision for the show, and applaud the guy for not just giving us more of the same, and ingeniously retooling the show for a new era of television. Okay, as you?ll know from my reviews, I do worry that the Lost approach of questions, questions, questions and precious few answers could backfire if the eventual answers aren?t satisfying enough, but I?m more willing to go along for the ride, and speculate with the rest of you. But for all my doubts, I have to take my hat off to Moffat for having the balls to go in this direction. He?s proving there?s more than one way to make Doctor Who, and seems to be making a success of it.
Of course, you could argue that all this is down to naturally changing viewing patterns, and that if RTD was still in charge, his episodes would be getting bigger overnights and just as big time shifts. Possibly, possibly not. That we will never know. But what this change does mean, irrefutably, is that Moffat can do the show his way, and not have to worry so much about overnights. In other words, he can create a new Doctor Who more in line with what many fans always wanted (if the overwhelmingly positive votes on both our forum and on Gallifrey Base are anything to go by). So rejoice. Falling overnight viewing figures mean you?re getting what you want, and with no worries about cancellation because the catch-up figures are so fantastic. It?s good news all round.
Then again, if the consolidated figures come in next week and the show?s ratings are only bumped by quarter of a million, then clearly I?m talking bobbins. But somehow (he quickly checks iPlayer again and notes that ?Day Of The Moon? is still in the top five) I don?t think that will be the case. And besides, 5.4 million viewers for a drama these days is phenomenal anyay without taking any of these other factors into account.
Oh, and the Daily Mail? Didn?t that recently record its lowest circulation in 10 years?
SFX Website
 
"Lost" in space is a phrase that's getting mentioned a lot nowadays. I have much more faith in the Moff than in RTD with regard to tying them up in a satisfying manner, but it's still worrying when the threads keep building up. Did anyone else notice that the last time a walking spacesuit appeared in Doctor Who, the episode was called "Silence In The Library?" Silence...a coincidence or not, also helped by the fact that it was River Song's first appearance?
 
the mail ran that exact same story at the premiere of the last season.

i'm not joking, essentially the exact same wording.
 
"Lost" in space is a phrase that's getting mentioned a lot nowadays. I have much more faith in the Moff than in RTD with regard to tying them up in a satisfying manner, but it's still worrying when the threads keep building up. Did anyone else notice that the last time a walking spacesuit appeared in Doctor Who, the episode was called "Silence In The Library?" Silence...a coincidence or not, also helped by the fact that it was River Song's first appearance?
There were a couple of theories last season about the connection of Silence and that episode.
 
"Lost" in space is a phrase that's getting mentioned a lot nowadays. I have much more faith in the Moff than in RTD with regard to tying them up in a satisfying manner, but it's still worrying when the threads keep building up. Did anyone else notice that the last time a walking spacesuit appeared in Doctor Who, the episode was called "Silence In The Library?" Silence...a coincidence or not, also helped by the fact that it was River Song's first appearance?

That episode was also written by Moffat, iirc. There are "easter eggs" littering the past few series (especially Moffat's past episodes) that we really only realize as new episodes come out.
 
That episode was also written by Moffat, iirc. There are "easter eggs" littering the past few series (especially Moffat's past episodes) that we really only realize as new episodes come out.

there's one thing that occured in Moffat's Second Season episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" which sounded like he was seeding something. something that River picked up on in her first/last appearance, regarding the Doctor's name and there being a reason for it.
 
That episode was also written by Moffat, iirc. There are "easter eggs" littering the past few series (especially Moffat's past episodes) that we really only realize as new episodes come out.

Yup, it was one of his; it's just mindblowing that the seeds for the Silence may have been planted that far back. Not that Moffat is known for blowing the mind or anything.
If we're going that far back in the series, any bets on whether the girl will ask Amy "Are you my mommy?" [being American and all]?
 
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here; I highly doubt he knew he would become showrunner back then...

Unless if Moffat is actually a time lord himself.
 
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Let's not get ahead of ourselves here; I highly doubt he knew he would become showrunner back then...

Unless if Moffat is actually a time lord himself.

well, it was from about the Second Season onwards that the fans believed that Moffat would be the ideal choice to replace RTD when he would depart. more likely, he seeded ideas that he would be able to payoff far later on, but also would not be noticed if he was not able to carry on (like the series was a failure or he left the series)
 
well, it was from about the Second Season onwards that the fans believed that Moffat would be the ideal choice to replace RTD when he would depart. more likely, he seeded ideas that he would be able to payoff far later on, but also would not be noticed if he was not able to carry on (like the series was a failure or he left the series)

Maybe even just seeding ideas for later episodes, no need to be gunning for the showrunner job for that.
 
Contrary to press reports today we can confirm that no new episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures will be filmed following the tragic death of actress Elisabeth Sladen in April, 2011. As a tribute to Elisabeth the six episodes that were recorded with her last year will be broadcast on CBBC at a date to be confirmed.

Source

the remaining episodes making up the fifth season of the show will be shown likely towards the end of the year.

The Episode written by Neil Gaiman, 6x04: The Doctor's Wife will be screened at 6:30pm on Saturday 14th May 2011. This is due to a bit of juggling around with the schedules due to the Eurovision Song Contest next week. Basically the show has swapped times with So You Think You Can Dance and the awful Don't Scare the Hare is being moved to a earlier time.

also, a great article by the Guardian.
Is Doctor Who now too scary for children?
Has Doctor Who become too full of cheap shocks for its family audience? Two dads debate whether the programme is safe to watch with their kids

Yes: Clever writing, but not great for getting the kids to sleep
The new Doctor Who is too dark and convoluted. I'm a lifelong Whovian, but in the Matt Smith era there's been too much doctorin' of the Tardis by Steven Moffat and his writers. The opening scene of the new series had the Doctor being shot by an impossible astronaut and dying before he could regenerate. Yes, it was in the future and he may be rescued by a plot twist, but this would be deeply unsettling for young children (and indeed middle-aged dads). Most kids care more about the Doctor than God, and he shouldn't die just for the sake of a clever plot.
There's too much sex, too. The Doctor should be a father figure, but now every assistant seems to fall in love with him and on Saturday he was snogging River Song. My 10-year-old daughter had to turn away during this section with a cry of "Eerrgh! Yuk!"
The Silence ? who erase your memories of seeing them ? were a classic Who creation and my 12-year-old daughter now has symbols on her arm to remember if she's seen them (three so far). The series has become increasingly reliant on the internal fears of children. The crack in the bedroom wall that is really a tear in space and time and the Weeping Angels that send you into the past when you blink. Clever writing, but not great for getting the kids to sleep.
In the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, there was a clearer realisation that the monsters were men in rubber suits. It was fairly easy to explain to a child that a church gargoyle was not that likely to come to life and inspire the Brigadier to order "Jenkins, chap with the wings there, five rounds rapid!"
The Doctor should be a maverick wanderer, a rebel with a Tardis console, not a superhero. Now every plot seems to centre round the Doctor or his companions as being crucial to the very fabric of the universe. At the end of the David Tennant era the stars went out and the Earth moved, while in the last series we had the Tardis exploding and destroying the universe, at least until some more infuriatingly complex time hopping by Matt Smith. The death of Rory Williams was more gratuitous sensationalism; nice guy Rory is shot and falls through a crack in space and time and is then bought back as an Auton with Rory's memories who shoots Amy. Sometimes you just yearn for aliens invading a home counties quarry, and a simple good versus evil plot ? and with proper Daleks, not the redesigned Teletubby versions. The Christopher Eccleston story The Doctor Dances had it right: scary gas mask monsters but at the end the nanogenes repair the dead, and the Doctor exclaims: "Just this once, everybody lives!"
At present the writers seem intent on proving how clever they are through too much complexity and too many cheap shocks.

No: It's important for kids to learn about fear
My seven-year-old son fancies himself as fearless. All it has taken to disprove his belief in his own bravery these past couple of weeks has been to turn on BBC1 on Saturday tea-time. He'll crouch down at one end of the sofa, curling himself into a ball, until I ask if he wants a cuddle. He'll scuttle over, and squeeze himself into me, without ever daring to take his eyes off the screen.
What's scared him so much, of course, has been The Silence, the swollen-skulled, black-suited monsters of the opening episodes of the new series of Doctor Who: a bizarre almagam of Reservoir Dogs and John Merrick. Matt Smith, the actor who plays the current Doctor, has already claimed they're the scariest ever Who monsters. But too scary? Nonsense. Doctor Who's great gift has been to introduce generations of kids to dread, with the safety net of knowing, first, that the Doctor and his assistants will prevail, one way or another; and second, that the fear will pass in less than an hour.
It's important for kids to learn about fear, to experience the rush of adrenalin it produces, to recognise their own reactions to it, and there's no better way than Who. It's in the same family of experience as learning about risk: after a couple of decades of trying to eliminate that factor from play by sanitising playgrounds, it's now understood that children need to learn to assess risk, and so playgrounds are becoming more challenging again. The similarity between the two experiences lies in the elimination of hazard, that being a danger that cannot be assessed.
There's no hazard in Doctor Who: if it's too scary, a child can leave the room, or turn off the TV, or hide behind the sofa, like an older generation did when the Daleks rolled on to the screen. Yes, today's monsters are creepier than the Daleks, but so what? The Hammer version of Dracula was terrifying once, but now it's about as unsettling as Anne of Green Gables. The threshold of horror rises with every passing generation and always has done, but there's no reason for Doctor Who to remain stuck in the past.
And just as kids like the thrill that comes from leaping around a good playground, so they like being scared. Not too scared. Not so scared they can't sleep at night, but just so scared they can't quite tear themselves away from what frightens them. That's certainly how my son reacted to The Silence.
What the best Who monsters do is teach our children that the world is an uncertain place, that there can be dangers in our everyday world. That is true; it's also something most parents teach their children. What Who also does is remind kids that there is someone doing their best to protect them from these dangers, again something most parents happily do. But the scariest-ever Who monsters? Has Matt Smith already forgotten the Weeping Angels?
Guardian
 
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Press details for 6x05: The Rebel Flesh, the first episode of a two parter. This episode will air 21st May 2011
A solar tsunami sends the TARDIS hurtling towards a futuristic factory on Earth, where human doppelgangers are used to mine dangerous acid, as the time-travelling adventures continue.

A second wave hits and the "Gangers" separate. They can remember every second of their "original's" life and feel every emotion they've ever experienced. But are these memories stolen or have they been bequeathed? Are the Gangers merely faulty machinery that must be shut down or are they living, breathing, sentient beings? Can the Doctor convince the terrified humans to accept these "almost people" and prevent an all-out civil war before the factory explodes?
 
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