Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1506468-20180414104725/@comment-28349479-20180416214431

Hrmph. I rather disagree with your conclusions, but I notice you’ve already made the proposed changes, so I don’t know if there’s much point in this comment. Maybe this was more of a “Here’s what I’m gonna do, PSA” thread than a “Let’s talk about this idea” thread? Either way, I think it’s worth noting that I disagree with several parts of your assessment, and I think the text of The Eyeless backs me up.

For one, I don't think it's fair to say that "the book is super vague on what The Weapon is, and when and where it was used." Throughout the novel, the weapon (and the Fortress it inhabits) is extensively physically described, and the Doctor actually spends several pages in the book doing a Socratic-questioning-style explanation of its function to the other characters. And while you're right that its builders are never explicitly named, there are a number of specific clues indicating that it was built by the Time Lords. For instance, just off the top of my head, the Doctor describes it as having “dematerialized” into its current place; he repeatedly emphasizes how he’s the only person alive who can disable it; and then there’s this exchange:"‘They’re aliens,’ Alsa said impatiently. ‘If they’re not the people who built the Fortress, are these the aliens that the Fortress was built to fight?’

‘No.’

‘So they’re a fourth lot?’

‘Third, surely…’

‘The ones who built the Fortress. The ones they were fighting. You.’

‘Ah. Well, yes, then they’re a fourth lot.’"

- The Eyeless in which the Doctor and Alsa come to different counts because the Doctor was including himself among the “lot” that built the Fortress (and the weapon inside it).

And just to rule out the idea of the weapon being first used in some other, non-Last Great conflict, we get passages like these:"‘Well, if I knew my enemy would destroy themselves when they fired, I’d know they’d never actually fire it. When it came to it, they’d hesitate and –’ she mimed herself smashing them.

‘When it came to it, they didn’t hesitate,’ the Doctor pointed out."

- The Eyeless "‘Do you know what? In the end their sacrifice made no difference. Because they survived. Thousands of them, millions. Just one. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. And… do you know what?… life is always better than death. Always. Yet I want all of them dead. Every single last one of them. When did I become someone who wanted to exterminate? When was that? When did they win?’"

- The Tenth Doctor, later in the book That's about as close as you can get without actually saying "Dalek". Not to mention that Arcopolis, the place that the weapon’s builders chose to deploy it against their enemy, is defined by its placement in the Seventh Galaxy ... which is the typical placement for Skaro, as testified in Parkin's previous book The Infinity Doctors!

As far as I read it, the whole matter is pretty unambiguous: this is the weapon that destroyed Gallifrey; this is the weapon that ended the Time War. And in that light, I should mention that the description of its function actually perfectly matches the “modified De-mat Gun” explanation of the Moment given in Don't Step on the Grass and shown in The Forgotten! Those stories contradict The Day of the Doctor at least as much as The Eyeless does, but they still happily coexist on the article.

So here's my counterproposal: You're absolutely right that the undifferentiated blend of information between the pre- and post-DotD versions of the Moment on its page was really confusing. Does the Moment destroy its user or not? Does it run off the observer effect or not? Did it end up in the Fortress? But rather than splitting the material between two pages just because it's contradictory, I suggest that we should just make a firmer separation between the "two accounts". I've drafted a potential fix on my sandbox, where you'll see I've rearranged all the conflicting or contradictory information about it into paragraphs labelled with "According to another account".

I think this would be a better solution to the problem than "The weapon" is, but I'd definitely be open to compromise. Does anyone have a problem with my suggested approach?