Seriously? A leaf?
Theophile
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Is anybody else sick and tired of the stupid leaf?
The Doctor has created an infinite number of possible what ifs over and over and over again. The Genesis of the Daleks is just one example where he changed the entire fate of the Universe by his actions. He represents the very nature of infinity and infinite possibilities with his very existence, however, he was not enough for the "god".
What it took was a girl with a leaf and the incredibly (by comparison) limited what ifs that it created.
Does this seem like lazy, sloppy writing to anybody else or is it just me?
The amazing Time Lord who has lived a thousand years and represents an infinite number of what ifs across the entire spectrum of space and time is not enough to defeat/feed the "god", but a girl with a leaf can?
The Doctor has created an infinite number of possible what ifs over and over and over again. The Genesis of the Daleks is just one example where he changed the entire fate of the Universe by his actions. He represents the very nature of infinity and infinite possibilities with his very existence, however, he was not enough for the "god".
What it took was a girl with a leaf and the incredibly (by comparison) limited what ifs that it created.
Does this seem like lazy, sloppy writing to anybody else or is it just me?
The amazing Time Lord who has lived a thousand years and represents an infinite number of what ifs across the entire spectrum of space and time is not enough to defeat/feed the "god", but a girl with a leaf can?
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I can't speak for everyone, but it was three months ago. I've moved on.
Some of us, like myself, live in the US and don't have cable. I had to wait until I had purchased the episode on Blu-Ray so that I could see it.
The leaf is just a symbol of the idea, for the audience's benefit more than the monster's. The leaf didn't inherently have anything special about it.
Or to put it another way, anything could be the source of the same infinite possibilities - it didn't need to be the sacrifice of a being of infinite temporal complexity.
However even before that. The 1200 years of Doctor's memories are not infinite, they are 1200 years of the memories that he lived and there's nothing infinite about 1200 years. The Doctor didn't feed the "god" with infinite number of possibilities of what could have been, but with 1200 years of what actually happened. And although that's quite a lot, it's not infinite. Now if the Doctor had decided to feed the monster with some object of his that represented infinite number of possibilites that could happen he would have defeated the "god" with it. The thing is that unlike Clara he didn't think of that. It's okay for the companion to think of something before the Doctor does sometimes, especially when the companion is in their beginning and needs to establish themselves, And IMO it also serves to point out that just like the parasite "god" the Doctor isn't a god either and therefore isn't as perfect as some people believe him to be.
I appreciate your explanation, but it still seems like a cheap, easy cop-out to me. It was one of the most anti-climatic mumbo-jumbo endings that I have ever seen, and I watch a lot of bad movies because they are bad.
Yes, I have watched through Series 7 (Season 33) and I am even more sick and tired of that leaf. It is a crutch being used to make Clara special - so special that she can confound The Doctor. So amazing that she can defeat an infinitely old "god" with a leaf. So amazing that she can save The Doctor throughout all of time and space in every single incarnation that he has had. It is preposterous.
Fair enough, you didn't like the plot. But don't blame the leaf. Poor little leaf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_by_Niggle
Don't Beef About the Leaf.
I liked the leaf. Especially when it shape-shifted.
So when you view it that way, there were much more echoes of Clara than there were regenerations of the Doctor - hence why it destroyed the big evil sun thing.
Other than that I view it as a simple metaphor or personification of how opportunities can be missed and how many lives could mean so much more.
Good thought. And a leaf is something that doesn't exist alone. There are hundreds of leaves being born and dying all over the tree, year after year, each one the same yet slightly different. A bit like someone we know.
If you think it through further, the leaf, in allowing Clara to exist, allowed all the Doctor's stories to remain and not be erased by the GI. So the leaf did indeed contain more potential than the Doctor himself!
I think we're onto something here, guys!
No offense, but that is a lot of hogwash. The Doctor represents an infinite number of possibilities in and of himself. He has changed the past to fix the future so many times (Genesis of the Daleks just being one). He has himself been involved in so many wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that it is his life and his actions (and the consequences thereof) that spread out through all of infinity.
So, is this what Doctor Who is nowadays?
The Doctor: Hello, young girl.
Random Girl #8,549: Hello.
The Doctor: Want to come ride with me in my space/time machine?
Random Girl #8,549: Sure.
The Doctor: Ah, a crisis. Let me figure out how to save the world.
Random Girl #8,549: Well, what if we do this?
The Doctor: You can't know how to do that!
Random Girl #8,549: But I do. And I have exactly what we need to do it.
The Doctor: You saved the world.
Random Girl #8,549: Oh, and I saved my kids, an alien race and my husband all while I was at it.
The Doctor: It is a good thing that I picked you up right before I needed your hitherto fore unbeknownst talents so that you could save the world, the universe and everything.
Random Girl #8,549: Oh, and while I am at it, I will travel back into your time stream and save you at every single point of your existence.
The Doctor: Wait, I thought that I was doing all of this and that I was the competent, special one.
Random Girl #8,549: No, that is just me, the random female guiding you at every turn, the random female which you have with you at whatever moment saving the world and the female which is the Tardis guiding your way. None of it was you. Goodbye.
The Doctor: .....
Seriously, it has gone way beyond the pale.
Technically, what you just said is hogwash, as the episode proved. You might think the Doctor represents an infinite number of possibilities, but we actually have proof that the leaf holds more. We have this episode.
What proof do you have otherwise? Its only your opinion, which the series contradicts.
Don't get me wrong, that wasn't my favourite episode by a long shot. In fact, its probably my least favourite of the Smith era.. I didn't particularly like the way it played out, let along the ending. Heck, I didn't really care about the ending by the time we got to it. It's fair enough to not like it - I mostly agree. But Johnnysaucepn makes a logical case as to how it can make sense if we want to try and act like the series is real and needs to have consistency to it.
Its like how some people detest the "half human," thing from the TV movie. There have been many - some fairly effective - theories about how it can make logical sense in the universe. You can't knock them for their attempts to fit it all together. You can't really argue it, either, being that its all fictional and anything is possible.
The other side of it is to accept it all as either poor continuity or stories you don't like. But if you take that view, its best not to get too irate about it and just move on to the next story and hope its better. If not, then move on to the next one - or give up.
Now the explanation that it actually represented Clara's parents meeting and the universal consequences of if that event had never happened is a much better explanation imo.
You make several good points and I am sorry for becoming irate. I just can't stand the current direction of the show; the whole The Doctor can do nothing, but the randomly picked female sidekick with him this week will save the universe 15 times over schtick has gotten way, way out of hand.
An episode like Akhaten is deliberately designed to serve two purposes - one, to introduce the new companion as a competent individual, and two, to give an insight into how they see the world, establish their character.
Many people had the same problem with The Beast Below, that Amy should suddenly come up with the solution where the Doctor failed - but again, she took the Doctor's lead and applied her own perspective to it.
In both cases, the methods they came up with set the stage for later story points - Amy's guilty attraction to the Doctor, and Clara's later impact on the Doctor's history.