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Amy did not "remember" the Doctor back to life.
MinkytheDog
Posts: 5,658 Forum Member
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It's bugged me ever since BIg Bang that Amy supposedly had to remember the Doctor before he could exist in the current reality. I'm not the only one who saw a problem with that - chiefly because River Song turned up to the wedding with a blank Tardis diary.
I've said repeatedly that I though the Doctor returned well before the wedding and there were things done during that time that might help explain the "two Doctors" in TIA amongst other things.
Well - I just had a brainwave - then another one - and another - and I defy anyone to prove these wrong - because they are all facts, in the script and in the show...
It's commonly held that Amy remembered the Doctor and then he existed. That also caused Rory to remember the things that happened to an Auton that looked like him. In this reality, the Doctor had never existed.
So - I was just thinking - how come Amy, Rory and Melody were talking about and playing games based around the Doctor when they were children? Why would Amy and Rory forget the entire existence of someone they absolutely knew about IN THIS REALITY when they were children?
The I thought - maybe those events only snapped into existence when Amy remembered the Doctor - all those events were effectively slotted into their "proper place" in history once the Doctor existed.
BUT - and it's a big but....
There's a great bug - in yer face - throwaway line from BIg Bang that proves that the Doctor existed BEFORE Amy remembered him...
Watch the scene - if not, at least try to remember it....
What happens when Amy says there's someone missing from the wedding - BEFORE she calls out and the Doctor appears?
Her Mother complains about all the money they (Amy's parents) has spent on psychiatrists because of Amy's belief in the Doctor.
Say that again Mrs Pond senior - you sent your daughter to see psychiatrists because she talked about the Doctor BEFORE she'd ever heard of the Doctor?
How does that happen?
So - if Amy's memory had nothing to do with recreating the Doctor, why did that memory affect Rory and give him memories of a plastic copy that never existed and wasn't even created in the first universe until after he died?
Go ahead - write all of that off by claiming that Moffat screwed up. Fact is, it was massively flagged up that the Doctor did not need Amy to remember him into existence - Amy's mother, River and now Amy, Rory and Mels clearly knowing about the Doctor long before then - and that means I was right all along to question whether or not he arrived at the wedding from some other place - that he had all the time in the world to do all sorts of things between Big Bang and stepping out of the Tardis in his tuxedo.
Slam - dunk!!
I've said repeatedly that I though the Doctor returned well before the wedding and there were things done during that time that might help explain the "two Doctors" in TIA amongst other things.
Well - I just had a brainwave - then another one - and another - and I defy anyone to prove these wrong - because they are all facts, in the script and in the show...
It's commonly held that Amy remembered the Doctor and then he existed. That also caused Rory to remember the things that happened to an Auton that looked like him. In this reality, the Doctor had never existed.
So - I was just thinking - how come Amy, Rory and Melody were talking about and playing games based around the Doctor when they were children? Why would Amy and Rory forget the entire existence of someone they absolutely knew about IN THIS REALITY when they were children?
The I thought - maybe those events only snapped into existence when Amy remembered the Doctor - all those events were effectively slotted into their "proper place" in history once the Doctor existed.
BUT - and it's a big but....
There's a great bug - in yer face - throwaway line from BIg Bang that proves that the Doctor existed BEFORE Amy remembered him...
Watch the scene - if not, at least try to remember it....
What happens when Amy says there's someone missing from the wedding - BEFORE she calls out and the Doctor appears?
Her Mother complains about all the money they (Amy's parents) has spent on psychiatrists because of Amy's belief in the Doctor.
Say that again Mrs Pond senior - you sent your daughter to see psychiatrists because she talked about the Doctor BEFORE she'd ever heard of the Doctor?
How does that happen?
So - if Amy's memory had nothing to do with recreating the Doctor, why did that memory affect Rory and give him memories of a plastic copy that never existed and wasn't even created in the first universe until after he died?
Go ahead - write all of that off by claiming that Moffat screwed up. Fact is, it was massively flagged up that the Doctor did not need Amy to remember him into existence - Amy's mother, River and now Amy, Rory and Mels clearly knowing about the Doctor long before then - and that means I was right all along to question whether or not he arrived at the wedding from some other place - that he had all the time in the world to do all sorts of things between Big Bang and stepping out of the Tardis in his tuxedo.
Slam - dunk!!
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The Doctor, when Amy was looking at the engagement ring "if something is remembered it can come back" - he meant that about Rory. But ended up being about him.
So because the Doctor was consumed if you like by the crack (well the actual explosion that caused the cracks, which means the same effect) remnants of the Doctor remained in Amy's memory - including her toys she made of the doctor and the TARDIS(if you notice when she wakes up they're out). So she did remember him back into existence!
The Doctors dialogue when he first arrives at the Wedding makes it clear that he wasn't remembered into existence right there and then (and could have spent years doing stuff after Amy remembered him) but your point about Amy seeing psychiatrists is just explained by her dreaming about the Doctor and thinking he was real.
Even if Amy had only "imagined" the Doctor when he supposedly didn't exist, why would Rory completely forget the Doctor - didn'y even remember him from those games?
According to LKH, Amy, Mels and Rory were talking about the Doctor right up to a year or two - at most - before the wedding.
The Doctor was supposedly removed from existence - completely - as in, he never existed. It was assumed that Amy remembered him - in some locked-off portion of her mind - because she was special - because she grew up right next to the crack. She had no concious memory of him until she saw River's Tardis diary - that's why River gave it to them.
If the Doctor never existed, how could her mother react to the word "Doctor" and why would she have needed to send her daughter to a psychiatrist? If Amy had been "remembering" the Doctor andit was assumed he was some imaginary friend, why would Rory - who had know her all those years and had played those same games with her - have absolutely no memory of the Doctor - even the mention of the word shocked him?
It did. Amy's mind was affected by living right next to a crack in time her whole life. It was because of this that the Alliance were able to make auton Romans and auton Rory. Because they were deep down in here memory.
That was why she was able to bring back the Doctor. He talked to her and told her about an Old, New, Borrowed, Blue Box to plant a memory in her head. Then on her wedding day, this memory was triggered and because of Amy's...um...time head, The Doctor came back into existence.
I'm not totally sold on your theory, but it is an interesting one.
I'm not "complaining" - I think it was a deliberate part of the two series plot that Amy was made to believe that.
How do you explain River attending the wedding? She clearly knew the Doctor existed BEFORE Amy "remembered" him. On that basis alone, Amy's memory was not required to make him exist.
Even simpler - if the Doctor and the Tardis only existed at the moment Amy remembered him, why was he wearing a tuxedo and how did he get changed in that exact same split second?
I've said before, he didn't really need Amy to remember him - he needed her to remember HER time with him. In this reality, Amy and Rory never travelled with the Doctor -he needed them to remember that they had so they would happily step aboard the Tardis on their wedding night.
It actually makes no sense at all to say that the Doctor wouldn't exist in this reality. Why wouldn't he?
Everything except the cracks (and the exploding Tardis) was simply put back to where it was before the cracks messed up the original universe. The Doctor existed in that universe- he'd exist in this one.
Even on the most basic level, we saw what happened when the Doctor was removed from history from just a few weeks in the past in Turn Left. If he'd never existed at all, Earth would have been invaded and/or destroyed long before that wedding.
He was surprised they'd forgotten to invite the Doctor. He wouldn't be surprised that they hadn't invited an imaginary childhood friend.
I think you've misinterpreted Rory's surprise — if he was surprised then it was the notion of inviting an imaginary friend to a wedding and expecting him to come. The other comments are covered by other posters already, who have pointed out that the Doctor would remain in Amy's dreams as per explicit dialogue in the episode. So she would still be able to make toys and obsess about her imaginary friend.
The same way Amy remember the clerics after they were erased by the cracks. She got to know them after she had first time travelled. The same as River had got to know The Doctor after she had first travelled in time.
The Doctor states this in the Flesh and Stone. Amy asks why she could remember the clerics when they started forgetting about each other. He says 'Because you're a time traveller now. You see things in a different way.'
This is the reason Amy forgot Rory. She knew him before she ever travelled in the TARDIS.
Sorry if you misunderstood me. I didn't say you were complaining. You're one of the few that isn't
I posted this because I've heard a lot of complaints about it. You aren't one of the complainers.
If he didn't exist before Amy remembered him, there's a chance she wouldn't have existed either.
The historical events influenced by The Doctor wouldn't have happened as we know them eg., the mass extinction event in 'Earthshock, teaching the Tribe of Gum to make fire in 'An Unearthly Child', The Great Fire of London in 'The Visitation', etc.
Also, the human race itself might not even exist anymore.
The past invasions of Earth (eg., Daleks, Cyberman, Yetis, etc.) would have happened unopposed.
Well, there are obviously two camps in this argument. The complainers and the ones who see the logic behind it.
ALL HAIL CAMP LOGIC!
Amy knew the Doctor years before she travelled in the Tardis and we really have no idea how much time travel River has actually done - we just assumed she'd been travelling for years with the Doctor but events in LKH suggest that may never have happened.
Amy also knew Rory AFTER travelling in the Tardis - they were both time travelling in it before he died.
Damnation! I was never going to mention that episode again.
And yes, you're right, I am a complainer.
Ideas, anyone?
The Big Bang did make sense.
Hi Fez
Related to the thread - just reading your comment has made me think...
... would years of living by a crack that was allowing all of time and space(?) to pour into Amy's head effectively have given her a 'time head'?
Would it have affected her DNA too? (She was still a growing child, after all).
I'm glad you think so. I don't. And even if we posted "It did", "It didn't", for evermore we are not going to convince each other, so lets agree to disagree and discontinue the conversation.
But it did
No! No! I am not falling into the trap!!!
*whispers* "But it didn't".
I didn't think you meant that - I didn't mean that to sound defensive - I just meant to say that I actually think that a number of the elements of series 5 that don't add up are deliberate - not a result of bad writing or any fault or misunderstanding on the part of the viewer.
I've been saying all the way through this series - the story is ongoing and there are things we "know" that aren't actually true - at least, incomplete.
With the revelation that "River" was in Leadworth at or around the time of 11th Hour (though I've got half an idea that she wasn't and those memories were "false" - I'm keeping that one in a box at the back of my brain for now) and the hint that the Doctor picks up on and responds to desperate children, I think that revisiting 11th Hour and Big Bang is even more likely. If not literally visiting - as in time travelling to them - at least mentioning them and explaining events in a way that says "you didn't get the whole story at the time".
I know there are some things in a show like this that don't get explained - but I also think that Moffat is too good a writer to have left so many key elements that require guess work. There are some people who prefer to invent back-stories - they say "what if Amy did so and so the night before the wedding..." - I prefer to see if there are things that are actually in the show. Without that, we may as well say "Maybe some alien landed and wiped her mind - and stole all her dolls and cardboard Tardises".
I'd say you're both right - it made perfect sense - and none at all.
Big Bang 2 made sense (within the DW scenario). The "DNA" of the universe existed within the Pandorica much as it does in each cell of the human body. With the Pandorica at the heart of the exploding Tardis, that "DNA" was used as the building blocks to create a new universe (like having someone travel back in time and leave a single hair that falls into a warm puddle and actually creates all life on Earth). The "new" universe is identical to the previous one in all respects - but as it was prior to the appearence of the cracks. As such, it is not "identical" to the previous one as WE saw it - because we only saw it AFTER the cracks had altered it. It's the universe we would have seen if the Doctor had landed in Leadworth before the first crack appeared.
However - the way that the new universe was porttrayed in relation to the Doctor and his friends was seriously flawed. There are a number of logical inconsistencies - like suggesting that the Doctor wouldn't exist or that he could be "remembered" by someone who had never travelled in the Tardis is silly. (Sorry but the Amy who travelled in the Tardis ONLY existed in the previous universe. The Amy in the new universe didn't travel in the Tardis - she never lost her parents or had a crack in her bedroom wall and the Tardis never landed in her garden. Moffat can add as much magic and mumbo-jumbo as he likes but if we're only talking about "logic" rather than what looks good on screen or is entertaining, the "time travel changed you" explanation is just a get out of jail free card for the writer.)
I think Granny's similar to me in this respect - I can suspend disbelief and enjoy the plot whilst still spotting the faults in the science of logic. It doesn't detract from the show - it just stands out and is interesting to discuss with other people who don't accuse us of "taking a kid's show too seriously" and many DW fans are also "serious" sci-fi readers and/or have an interest in real science.
I actually really enjoyed TBB when I rewatched it a few weeks ago. It is such fun. I just let all my criticisms fly out of the window.
But don't tell anyone - it will ruin my image.:o
Our little secret.
Some of my favourite episodes and scenes are the least sci-fi or "logical" - I love the Spitfires and the Silents but neither stand up to even the slightest scutiny.
As entertainment, the scenes in BIg Bang with the Doctor and Rory (still at Stongehenge) are priceless - as is the scene with River and a Dalek begging for mercy. You could drive a tank - towing the QE2 - through the holes in them but you can't help smiling. It's like people who hate Quo - but nod their heads and tap their feet when they're on the jukebox.
For slightly more "serious" sci-fi - I don't think there much to beat TIA/DotM - though LKH came close in many areas. It's interesting (to me) that the more sci-fi there is in an episode, the more it gets rated as "confusing" or - worse - "confused".