Continuity Error in Silence In The Library
tomwozhere
Posts: 1,081
Forum Member
✭✭✭
I hadn't watched it a while so I thought I would and I noticed something that has annoyed me.
When River gets out her diary, she says judging by his eyes it's early days. She then asks him if they had done crash of the Byzantium yet and then picnic at Asgard. When he says no she says it's very early days and then realises this is his first time meeting her.
I know Moffat probably was intending on using the Byzantium later on but they used it and it's messed with what River said. If the Doctor had done the crash of the Byzantium he must have regenerated (from matt to david) since then, that means it obviously wasn't early days.
Why couldn't the wrighters have just called the ship in Time of Angels something else to avoid the error?
When River gets out her diary, she says judging by his eyes it's early days. She then asks him if they had done crash of the Byzantium yet and then picnic at Asgard. When he says no she says it's very early days and then realises this is his first time meeting her.
I know Moffat probably was intending on using the Byzantium later on but they used it and it's messed with what River said. If the Doctor had done the crash of the Byzantium he must have regenerated (from matt to david) since then, that means it obviously wasn't early days.
Why couldn't the wrighters have just called the ship in Time of Angels something else to avoid the error?
0
Comments
Yes I've always been confused by this. Perhaps River is so old at the point she meets the 10th Doc that she forgot what he looked like when she met him then.
But if he had done the Byzantium he would have already have been Matt and must have regenerated since then and considering this was the end of River she would have had many adventures with Matt's Doctor so it doesn't make sense.
But what I'm saying is that if he was a later doctor that would have come after Byzantium and it wouldn't be early days.
Sorry, my brain hurts from thinking about this whole thing, what do you mean?
Except it wasn't.
Dialogue in the show and Moffat himself have implied other meetings between River and Ten.
The Byzantium line can be explained by River only meeting 10 a few times and being (before the Library) not totally sure if he is before or after Matt Smith.
this... I think... it's implied they meet again... also Byzantium is his first 11 adventure but they're already well aquainted... the keeping score etc...
But why did she say it was early days if she thought he could be after Matt's doctor.
I'm sorry too,when I have read it back it is a bit strange.:D
There are two Tenth Doctors, one of them being Rose's Doctor. Somehow a version of River could go on to meet Rose's Doctor, he would be an older version of the Tenth Doctor that she didn't recognise at first with older eyes. It could even be that the older Doctor lets a tear fall and so then it all makes sense.
Actually it still seems strange:D
So he had met her more than once.
Now unless these meeting happened in the 12 or 2 year gaps that the Doctor left Amy for in The Eleventh Hour then these meetings had to be with Doc Ten.
Moffat also described the Byzantium meeting as "their first Major meeting since the Library" and for this to be a major meeting there must have been other meetings Moffat classes as Minor.
It makes more sense now though, thanks for explaining.
Byzantium may well have been 20 plus years in her personal past for all we know.
Or maybe she considers all the meetings with 10 & 11 early days for the Doctor, this would be true if she knew 5 later Doctors for example.
But wouldn't her memory be nearly as good as the doctor's (I'm only assuming though, we don't know how Human+Time Lord minds work). Surely she would remember Amy's first meeting of her.
While it was Amys first meeting with River* it wasn't Rivers first meeting with Amy nor for that matter her last so for her it would be just another meeting.
*Not including the Mels incarnation.
But it's still an important milestone. And The Web Of Fear was hundreds of years ago so that's easier to forget. I don't think it's down to her forgetting, I think it's just a really annoying fault.
Ok, try this one
How about the Timeline is rewritten at some point.
When we see River in SitL she actually recalls that it was Doc 10 that she met at the Byzantium.
However at a point after SitL when 10 was about to visit the Delirium Archives and discover the Black Box of the Byzantium (and thus rescue River)something happens to distract him and he doesn't go.
So Rivers History changes, in the original Timeline it's 10 she meets in ToA but in the rewritten one it's 11.
We know Rivers life can be changed as we saw in Time of Angels where she had been released from Stormcage due to there being no records of the Doctor when previously she was doing stuff like the Angels mission in order to earn parole.
Ordinarily, it would be obvious because I'd know that I had travelled back in time by more than the ten years from when you created this thread - but you also have a Tardis so you could be in 2003 but originate from 2033 having written your post in 1066 and not posted it until 2013 - so the time of the meeting does not indicate the position on the personal time line for either of us.
Since I don't know what you look like, I'd have to ask at least one question to which I already knew the answer in order to determine where you are in your personal time line.
That's the key - there were two time travellers involved so they'd need a common frame of reference to determine each other's relative age - in this case, the existence of a shared adventure.
It obviously wasn't thought through at the time of writing TSitL; he probably thought at the time that DT would stay on and he would write the Byzantium thing for him. As that didn't happen, it just makes the comments by River about the future Doctor seem very odd.
No way round it, imo, just as there's no way round the fact that she behaves very oddly in TIA/TDotM pretending she knows nothing about what's going on with the shooting of the Doctor and the identity of the little girl, when of course she does.
I love River as a character, but the way her story has been written is a shambles. It's OK if you just watch the programme then forget about it immediately; but it's not good if, as a dedicated fan, you delve a bit deeper.
From your analogy, would the thread be still there in ten years time for you to know that someone started the thread at that point
And if the answer is no, would that remind the person to make the thread?:D
Then why is it early days? She wouldn't har said that if she thought he was 12 or later because it wouldn't be early days.
No, she says "judging by your eyes it's early days" then after asking about the Byzantium she says it's very early. And even if it was a later doctor, it really wouldn't be early days because she's had loads of adventures with matt.