Options
River in The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
[Deleted User]
Posts: 28
Forum Member
✭
Hi guys, I rarely log in to post on here, but I've been doing a rewatch of Nu-Who and have a few questions about River in TPO and TBB..
So when the story starts, Rory has been erased from time, he never existed, so if he never existed, he was almost certainly never around to conceive Melody with Amy in the Tardis.. So how can River be in the episode? Surely if her father never existed neither did she.. And then at the end during the Wedding, how can River be there if the Doctor never existed to give Amy the book to bring the Doctor back? Because surely for River to exist (in that form anyway) the Tardis needs to exist for her to become timelord and therefore the Doctor needs to exist.
Can anyone shed some light onto the situation?
Thanks!
So when the story starts, Rory has been erased from time, he never existed, so if he never existed, he was almost certainly never around to conceive Melody with Amy in the Tardis.. So how can River be in the episode? Surely if her father never existed neither did she.. And then at the end during the Wedding, how can River be there if the Doctor never existed to give Amy the book to bring the Doctor back? Because surely for River to exist (in that form anyway) the Tardis needs to exist for her to become timelord and therefore the Doctor needs to exist.
Can anyone shed some light onto the situation?
Thanks!
0
Comments
That's the problem with Science Fiction stuff, a writer such as Moffat probably hasn't truly planned out from the outset the plot, just had some good interesting plot lines, as a result he can get so tangled-up in paradox's that you just use the timey-wimey excuse to hide bad writing. Plus fans often "cover" for the plot holes with interesting ideas, probably addressing the issues (but not necessarily thought about by the actual writer)
Amy was able to exist even though her parents were erased from time. River is able to exist at one point even though neither her father nor her maternal grandparents ever existed, And they call Clara the impossible girl....
It's nothing compared to the fact that in the same story the Doctor is able to escape the Pandorica because his future self appears.
Not Timey-Wimey at all. Most wrongly used phrase on this forum!
It was explained earlier in the season that even when something is erased from time through the cracks, it leaves traces, and the things that it influenced before it was erased, remain influenced.
For example, the duck pond in The Eleventh Hour. There are no longer any ducks, no-one can remember it ever having any ducks, but they continue to refer to it as the duck pond.
Whether this rule makes sense in the personal opinion of an individual viewer is beside the point, it's science fiction. As long as the rule is established (which it was) and followed (which it was) then there's no problem.
No continuity problems at all, nothing to do with Moffat not planning anything.
Amy herself still exists even though her parents have been erased from time.
I understand this, but surely River hadn't even been conceived yet so how can she still exist? The cracks left traces but how can it leave a trace of something that hasn't happened yet?
What has this got to do with a paradox you might ask, and well you would do so to ask. The answer of course is this linear dilemma is what Moffat was probably thinking about when he wrote paradoxical plot holes. If he had spent more time thinking about the mechanics of time and the entropy of chaos then this could be neatly explained by the disorder or the universe that has occurred due to the absence of the timelords.
How can Amy exist if her parents disappeared?
How can River exist if one of her parents disappeared?
How can the Saturnynians exist if their planet was swallowed?
Why did Amy run away with the Doctor if she didn't have anyone to marry?
How can it be a duck pond if it's never had any ducks?
How could the Byzantium have crashed if the Angels didn't exist?
For that matter, how could the soldiers still be dead if the Angels didn't exist?
How can the Pandorica exist if the Alliance that created it no longer exist?
It's not just a case of ignoring the paradoxes, it's a question of accepting that paradoxes themselves just don't apply.
Okay, you want an analogy? Buy a book. Rip out several of the pages at random. Read the book. You have no awareness or memory of what happened on those pages that are missing, and yet the characters and events still exist - the later pages don't just turn blank.
Granted, the characters in the book aren't able to perceive the ripping of the pages, like the Doctor, the Alliance and the Saturnynians could - if they could, they might react the same way.
As was pointed out continuously throughout the series, things that are erased by the crack disappear from existence, but their effects stay behind.
Quite a few examples of this happen in most episodes, not least Any herself - who has had her family erased before the Doctor even gets there. It was explained using the duck-pond analogy (how can a duck-pond be a duck-pond without any ducks? Because of the ducks having been there before).
So, clearly planned out, with the rules set out over a period of time, and the inherent logic of it in place before that happens.
Why not just use the explanation from the episodes? The one that was set up and explained throughout the series?
I'm not sure how entropy fits into this picture at all, let alone how the presence or lack of Time Lords affects it at all.
entropy is commonly associated with the amount of order, disorder, and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system
A thermodynamic system is a precisely specified macroscopic region of the universe, defined by boundaries or walls of particular natures, together with the physical surroundings of that region, which determine processes that are allowed to affect the interior of the region
As for the Time lords, one of the things (according to Dr Nine and Ten) was that they maintained the universe, essentially balancing out the chaos (see fathers day and rise of the cybermen.)
The Reapers and travel to Pete's world are a result of chaos. Entropy leads to chaos, chaos leads to holes in the universe etc etc
There is a bit of timey wimey to it. The explanation of the episode doesn't quite cover everything and timey wimey covers what isn't covered. That's the thing when you get problems like that (in time travel in general not just in Doctor Who) timey wimey (though a Who invention, as far as I'm aware) is a good way of explaining such a resolution. You'll find that it is not used wrongly that often.
I never said Chaos theory made sense, just that it could be used to answer questions such as this, it doesn't alter the theory that entropy leads to chaos, or doesn't lead to chaos. My head hurts, it's friday and all these numbers are now in my mind and I started this *groan*
Where are the Black and White guardians when you need them
I guess the essence of the argument is: regardless of how causality usually functions, like most things, you can't really expect it to work the same when you start blowing bloody great holes in it.
Truly a mantra to live by, and is the reason why the seemingly paradoxical nature of Pandorica \ Big bang is apparent.
By Jove, by working together we have solved this conundrum : - All the events happen because the universe has a bloody big hole it it.
It's actually incredibly simple.
River existed because she WAS born and she WAS conceived in the Tardis because the Doctor DID exist.
The River we saw was from a far later point of the timeline that we were seeing being created - she was the end result of ALL of the events - including the ones we had not yet seen transpire - such as the Doctor being "remembered" by Amy and Rory.
It only APPEARED to us that she couldn't exist because we had not YET seen Rory and the Doctor returned to existence - but from River's perspective, all of those events had already happened.
Basically - everything we've ever seen of River with the exception of her death in the library and her "virtual" appearence in the last episode was River's life-story - her personal history - which included her dad and the Doctor temporarily ceasing to exist.
From River's view point, her dad and the Doctor "nearly didn't make it to the wedding" - that's all.
Thread over; we have a winner!
A rewatch might be easier, there always seem to be parts of the story you come across, you missed the first time round.:D
Rory could have possibly just paused but to him, he could be just waiting and then bang, River appears, just like that and then she's gone until the next time.:D