....NEW DR WHO TONIGHT, 14/5/05, EPISODE 8, FATHERS DAY...

[LARF]

In contrast to Dr X - I thought it was the best episode yet.

[GordonR]

I thought it was pretty great.  Paul Cornell is sometimes accused of laying on the sentiment a bit thickl in his work, and this one was definitely a bit of a weepie, but definitely still one of the stand-out episodes of the series so far.

It's about a simple human drama question that any non-spod casual viewer to latch onto - if you can travel in time, wouldn't you try to go back and stop bad things happening to the people you love?

Real pathos and character drama in Dr Who - who could have imagined it?  

[Steamboy]

woo-hoo, this starts over here(in OZ)this Saturday.  So looking foward to this, but only one episode per week!!! will this be enough to sate my Who cravings?

CU Krestel

[Oddboy]

That TARDIS can be pretty acurate when it wants to be... I was hoping they'd start off with the emotional "let's go back & save my dad" plan, they type in the destination time, date & place, and then spend the rest of the episode battling Quzzzke Beasts on Exxxon IV, because the TARDIS doesn't work very well.

But as it was, I enjoyed it.
Except for the 'paradox' of Rose touching herself (oo-err). Surely that's no more paradoxial then her seeing herself?

[Bad Andy]

Watching Dr Who confidential and they said that the touching paradox had to be written in because of a storyline with Peter Davison's doctor where the brigadier touched himself (enough already) and there was a big explosion (I said enough).

[Tu-plang]

Despite the fact that Rose touching herself (quiet up the back there) and causing a paradox doesn't make sense, the episode was tops.  Shaky Doctor/companion relationship, churches, good monsters, tears - a real throwback to Cornell's Who novels in the 1990s.

I also like the way that other people are getting a chance to save the day apart from the Doctor.  We've had Rose, Tree lady, welsh girl, Mickey, Rose again and that other girl last week and now Rose's dad.

Krestel: There's still the Tom Baker episodes on weeknights to keep you busy...

[WoD]

I liked it a lot (as did the Mrs).  It pulled a bit hard on the heart strings, and some of the paradox issues probably don't suffer detailed examination, but for story purposes they worked pretty well.

Miss Piper's a good enough actor and did blubbing well.  I thought she more than held her own with the older members of the cast, and for me I'll be sorry to this Doctor regenerate at the end of this series.

What's the viewing figures then....?

[Tu-plang]

Doctor Who - 7.5 million (42%)
Celebrity Wrestling - 2.3 million (14%)

[the other dredd]

"2) Rose saved her dad. That creates a paradox along the lines of the chestnut "what happens if you kill your grandfather". The point is if she saved her dad then she wouldn't want to go back to 1987 later on, meaning that she wouldn't go back to save him, so he would die, meaning that she would want to go back, so he wouldn't die. ETC. "

Not sure about that.

Every incident has a starting point - by that I mean Rose's dad died in the original time stream. For Rose to go back and alter that moment she has to meet the Dr and use the TARDIS. Once she goes back, the original time stream is changed but the significant thing is Rose's dad still dies. She changed the way he dies, or rather, the point at which he dies, but he still dies so there is no real paradox. Obviously, had the older Rose decided to stay in 1987 there would have been a huge time paradox, possibly a time loop.

Something like this:

Two Rose Tylers co-exist in 1987 and this would continue up to 2005 when the older Rose meets the Dr, takes her back to 1987 and we have the time loop. Only way to avoid that loop would be for the Dr to come back to 1987 or a following year after that and remove the older Rose from that year. Time loop is broken, and just one Rose Tyler in 1987.

I think that all makes sense.:)

[SamuelAWilkinson]

Whew... my own take on the whole paradox business was this:

When Rose saved her father, she didn't change her own timeline, but rather opened a new universe in which her father didn't die (in accordance with that theory that says that whenever something that could've happened didn't happen, it happened in another universe).

The incarnations of the Doctor and Rose who saw it happen and then disappeared did so because they were a part of the original universe, not this new one.

The universe was all unstable and full of Reapers because it was based on a paradox, and therefore couldn't logically have come to be. A weak argument, I know, but it works.

And, for those who want to know, the episode where the Brigadier caused a paradox by touching himself was, if memory serves, the final episode of 'Mawdryn Undead'

[Richmond Clements]

Another superb episode I thought.

I really really looked this time, but didn't spot the Bad Wolf, where was it this week?

[Roger Godpleton]

It was scratched into one of the posters on the wall just before Rose's dad got run over.

[Richmond Clements]

Thanks!

[Artificial Idiot]

Can I be *really* horridly stupid and ask what the Bad-Wolf is?

[The Amstor Computer]

No-one knows yet. There have been little mentions of the phrase throughout the series so far, and the penultimate episode in the first series is called "Bad Wolf", so it is building to something. Very intriguing...