Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Wedding of River Song


 * The Teselecta in Let's Kill Hitler was stiff and expressionless, for instance Teselecta Amy. How can the Teselecta Doctor look so realistic and Doctorish? The Doctor wasn't even at the commands, he was in the eye.


 * He was only in the eye when he told River to look into the eyes. The rest of the time he could have been at the controls.


 * The Teselecta may have been modified to make it more advanced.


 * The Teselacta Amy was only 'stiff' because it had only just taken her form, and the pilots needed a while to get used to it. The Doctor on the other hand, may have had many hours (or longer) to practice.


 * Electronic Devices have been advanced several times through the Doctor´s Sonic Screwdriwer.


 * Teselecta technology advanced over time.


 * The TARDIS might have been connected to the controls, with the Doctor controlling it using the psychic connection. Otherwise there's a greater question to be asked, which is - how do the Teselecta crew know how to think and act like the Doctor on the spot.


 * Doesn't River telling Amy and Rory that the Doctor isn't really dead (just after having witnessed his "death") negate almost the entirety of series 6? The events following Lake Silencio should lead the group directly to meeting the younger Doctor and the events of the second episode, thus inciting all following episodes. Amy recognizes that River is her daughter at the end of the finale (possibly due to this information @#!*% through into the all-at-once time) even though she has not even given birth to Melody at this point. Is Amy still going to be kidnapped? How does this all work?!?
 * We dont know it was the early Rory and Amy from the Lake, it was my impression it was future Amy and Rory just before the older Doctor's death that was referred at the end as it seems it takes place in there house
 * It was indeed the "present" Amy and Rory, since they know River is their daughter.


 * It almost has to be early Amy and Rory (very soon after the shooting at Lake Silencio) because otherwise they would have met the Younger Doctor in the diner, and gone through series six again. I believe Amy also says something about the Doctor's death being recent, while if it was "present" Amy and Rory, they would have been travelling with him for months. Even if we're assuming the same "time travellers have different perspectives" can epxlain why Amy and Rory have knowledge that should not exist, it doesn't explain how they got out of the loop the show seems to have created when the series "folded back" on itself to fix time. Either time was reset and series 6 does not happen (meaning River/The Ponds should have a VERY different life) or there is a serious hole.


 * It cannot be past Amy and Rory because amongst other things in her drawings, a self portrait of her in Curse of the Black Spot is shown, which we know is post TIA/DoTM. Time does not move, but events still happen in a certain order, given she also remembers the post-hypnotic suggestion to kill the Silence (which doesn't happen until the future Doctor has died). The only time past Amy and Rory are shown is on the flashback to the beach as time is reset. There is no question that the end of the the episode is post-The God Complex, because the house the Ponds/Williams are living in is definitely the one the Doctor gave them judging by the style and definitely not the one they were living in when they received their envelopes. And yes, after time is reset, they do go on to meet the younger Doctor in the diner, we just don't see it, what we see is a flash forward from the death in TIA to the post TGC Amy and Rory (that does not mean the rest of Series 6 does not happen). Amy refers to the Doctor's death as recent because her perspective had changed, after the The God Complex, she didn't know that he was going to his death at that time, but with the memories of the altered timeline as well as the proper timeline in her head gives her a new perspective, because she knows now that at some point after he left her, he goes to the beach to die. @#!*%, the scene shown could set before Closing Time for the Ponds, it just has to take place after the God Complex.
 * The scene happens after the alternate 5:02 timeline and when Amy said the doctor is dead she meant. She had already seen his death and gone through the 5:02 events as she can remember them


 * Why isn't the TARDIS in the 5.02pm universe as it was at Lake Silencio why would it not go into the 5.02 universe like the Teselecta?
 * It was. If you look in the background of the close-up of the Teselecta's eye, the TARDIS is behind the Doctor.


 * How was the timeline restored if River kissed a Teselecta?
 * The doctor was inside the Teselecta, he described it like wearing a suit, and it was shown when he grabbed River's arm, that the restoration works through clothing, so the same princible applies here.
 * The scene that played out in The Impossible Astronaut always was the Teselecta being shot. When River managed to save the "Doctor", time fractured. That would make River and the Teselecta the "opposite poles" of the event. While the Doctor was inside it, the "fix" wasn't dependant only on him.


 * When Rory stays behind to face the Silents, he refuses to remove his eyepatch so as not to "forget what is coming", even though the others have removed their eyepatches and not forgotten.
 * Two possibilities:
 * The long exposure to the eyedrive allowed a buffer.
 * He was speaking specifically about the Silence that would come through the door.
 * I think it may be both. He would remember something is coming, but was concerned that he would "miss" one or more as they came in and he lost eye contact with the individuals.
 * (Side issue: Keep in mind that River, Rory, the Doctor and Amy-Ganger were able to escape a hive/nest when there focus could not have been on all he Silence present.)


 * If Time stops at the lake BEFORE all the event's of series 6, how does alternative "all of time at once" Amy remember the Minotaur even though they never met the Minotaur time changed at a fixed point at the lake BEFORE that adventure. And yet Amy has a drawing of the Minotaur from her alternative memories.
 * Because it was supposed to end with the doctor dying, the doctor describes it as different versions of the same event, happening simultaneously, as such it did happen, only it didn't.
 * The Minotaur - as well a Pirate Amy and Siren (both from The Curse of the Black Spot) - could be bled through. Same as River's presence - she was born after IA remember.
 * Three quarters are all "complex space time events" to one extent or another. In Amy's case that could translate into "remembering" the alternate time line.
 * The Doctor himself said that Amy has unique powers because of the Time Crack (even though they never technically existed). So Amy can remember an alternate timeline that didn't happen because of time being changed.
 * The answer given by the Doctor is that Amy can remember alternate timelines due to her long exposure to the time cracks. That means she has both memories of the (at that point) current 'time doesn't change' timeline and the original The Impossible Astronaut through The God Complex timeline.


 * Heading one comment off at the pass, the episode's treatment of the death of the Brigadier does not contradict what's been mentioned on TV or in the novels. On TV the Doctor said in Battlefield that the Brig died in bed, as he as done here. And in the novels the Brig has his youth restored around the year 2010 and continues to live for many more years; there is nothing in this episode that says when the Brigadier actually died (time machine, remember). The only possible flub is why the Doctor would be upset at learning of the Brig's death if he already knew the circumstances.
 * It could also be possible that it was an example of a fluctuating point in time. Perhaps this timeline's Brigadier never had his youth restored, and therefore died earlier than the Doctor expected, which would have surprised him.
 * The canon-status of the books, comics, etc are always subservient to that of the TV series - if the TV says something that counters an event of the books, the TV show's version of the events is considered correct. The Brig would die in bed, but the date is unclear. Indeed, the date that The Doctor called is unknown as well - it could easily have been several years in the future. He's not as good about hitting dates as he'd like - it's the whole dramatic point of The Girl in the Fireplace for example ````
 * In terms of in-universe, The nurse said that he always asked for an extra glass in case the Doctor came to visit. Hearing this, the Doctor knows that he didn't come back to visit, and therefore can't in the future. Also, in terms of production, it was a homage to Nicholas Courtenay, a way of the series showing it's respects.
 * On TV, in 2009, we see a retired and quite old Brig in Enemy of the Bane. Then, in 2010, he's on a top-secret assignment in Peru in both The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and Death of the Doctor. This is not impossible to justify without the novels, but it's much harder. (Meanwhile, the idea that "The canon-status of the books, comics, etc are always subservient to that of the TV series" has never been supported by anyone involved in the show. That's the policy of Lucasfilm for Star Wars, not the policy of anyone for Doctor Who. Andrew Cartmel is the only authority who ever answered this question, and he explicitly said the exact opposite. Moffat did once say that the novels are subject to contradiction if it makes for a better story, but he said the same was true of last season's episodes, and when pressed for further details, he refered to Paul Cornell's blog arguing that there is no canon and no continuity in Doctor Who.)


 * The events of Lake Silencio and the events of 'united' timeline all happen after Day of the Moon; hence every 'common' soldier should be imprinted with 'kill silent on sight' mission. We could imagine that the Kovarian's order was later reimprinted by silents by being imprisoned or something. But what about generic soldiers of captain Williams? Should we still presume that spreadout humanity fights The Silence across the Universe? In the way that they are still very oppressed 'parasite' race and hence need those religious orders?
 * The 'united' timeline only occurs 'after' Day of the Moon in a limited sense - it has a (sort of) history of its own, in which there was no "kill us all on sight" video, which the Doctor does mention.
 * Also, considering they know the Doctor's future, it's very possible the Silence/Kovarian found a way to cancel out the "shoot on sight".


 * If the Teselecta was shot, how was it able to regenerate?
 * Well with the Doctor at the controls and to direct the look, it would have been easy for the Teselecta to project energy waves to create a simulcrum of a Regeneration. Keep in mind this thing fired beams of light out of its mouth in LKH. Projecting yellow energy subcutaneously shouldn't be beyond its capabilities.
 * As pointed out by Steven Moffat in response to this question, "It can turn its legs into a motorbike and snog Alex Kingston ... and you're asking about a lightshow??"


 * The Amy in the garden at the end of the episode remembered the events of the alternative timeline, but had shown no memory of these events earlier in the series (between the shooting in The Impossible Astronaut and her leaving the TARDIS in The God Complex. Why did she only have access to these memories after she had parted ways with the Doctor, and what triggered her memory of them?
 * There's a lot of timey-wimey stuff here. Amy didn't remember the alternate timeline in the rest of the series because the alternate timeline hadn't yet been created in her personal timeline. It's like how the Doctor altered Kazran Sardick's personal past: why didn't he remember the Doctor his entire life? Because the Doctor hadn't yet gone back and changed Kazran's past, according to the Doctor's personal timeline. When the Doctor changed Kazran's past, the altered memories flowed down the timestream and reached the Kazran corresponding to the Doctor's immediate personal past. So Kazran remembered the altered events for the first time after the Doctor had left Kazran's present. The same thing applies here: Amy didn't remember the alternate timeline because the alternate timeline hadn't yet been created in the past. When River created and restored the alternate timeline, Amy immediately remembered the altered events for the first time, because they had only now just happened, so to speak.


 * Have the Doctor and River had other adventures with each other yet (eg. Jim the Fish)? and is the doctor 1103 years old?
 * The Night and the Doctor mini-episodes chronicle several meetings between the Eleventh Doctor and River Song, apparently after the events of The Wedding of River Song; one also reveals that the Doctor often goes on adventures by himself while his companions are sleeping; lastly, one of the mini-episodes (Last Night) is set immediately before the Doctor's final visit with River before she goes on to her death in Silence in the Library, which could likely be the occasion he tells her his name and gives her the sonic screwdriver.


 * How are Dorium and the other heads alive? Don't people generally need bodies to live?
 * Presumably they have some kind of life support. Dorium has a "media chip", so it's possible they have cybernetics keeping them alive.
 * Considering the Headless Monks somehow keep their bodies alive without the heads, keeping the heads alive without the bodies isn't too big a jump.


 * When Amy returns to save Rory with a machine gun in hand, how is she able to remember that the Silents are about to swarm him if she had already removed her eye-drive?
 * The series of events goes like this:
 * Amy takes off her eyedrive. She forgets the silents.
 * Amy sees that something is trying to break down the door, and Rory is going to hold them off.
 * Amy leaves, realizes she loves Rory, and comes back to save him from whatever it is that's trying to get in that's clearly hostile.
 * I think you're understanding the Eye-Drives (or I-Drives) backwards. They were stated to record and then write directly to the memory centers of your brain. So, she removed her eyepatch and could not further receive new memories from it, but she still had the existing ones. With that context she can extrapolate the rest.


 * What's the logic behind River being able to intentionally cause this time bubble in the first place? Which iteration of River is doing this?
 * In her timeline, it's right after she shot him, a little after she was kidnapped from the university. The time bubble was caused because she managed to divert her gun from him.
 * River had only seen the Doctor a handful of times (as a Flesh baby, as a frightened child when Amy shot her, and in Germany circa 1938). She's a mental case at this point, brought up to be a psycho and then is obsessed with a man she doesn't know to the point of devoting her life for him. That's like a Matt Smith fangirl "wanting" to marry him. It would be wrong for Matt Smith to marry a fangirl who only met him once in her adult life, and it's wrong for the Doctor to marry River (except that he does that only to grant her permission to see that he's in a Teselecta so maybe that makes it all alright).


 * So, the "fixed point in time" is actually the Doctor's image being shot and not actually the Doctor's death. Coupled with the idea that the rest of the universe is convinced of his death... To the point of convicting and imprisoning River (albeit she can escape whenever she wants) in the Stormcage well into the 51st century, and the crew of the Teselecta being similarly convinced (in spite of them being from a significantly future time, where the truth is still unknown)... Unless this is all untrue... Indeed nobody seemed to know who was in the spacesuit (a clean escape for the "assassin") it has still only been implied that River was accused of killing the Doctor.
 * When watching the episode, I found myself wondering if River, in addition to causing the time bubble by "rewriting" the fixed point, also inadvertently caused the Doctor's "death" to become a fixed point in time by essentially broadcasting that the Doctor was going to die at that time and place throughout time and space with the "timey-wimey distress beacon". It's a bit of a paradox as each action leads to the other, but I wonder if The Silence just chose the Lake Silencio spot and let River do the rest (possibly under their influence).
 * BTW, this could be the reason why "Doctor Who?" is the oldest question. Her message reached into times earlier than the Doctor's ever been and the recipients got it and pondered who the message is talking about.
 * BTW, this could be the reason why "Doctor Who?" is the oldest question. Her message reached into times earlier than the Doctor's ever been and the recipients got it and pondered who the message is talking about.


 * The Doctor asks: "Why Lake Silencio? Why, Utah?"
 * I ask: Why THAT question? Was anyone actually asking it?
 * The Doctor was. He wanted to know why he had to die there.
 * This is a rule of writing, if the story is written well then what Dorian said in response about the place being a "silent" (still) point and thus easier to create a fixed point should have an objective meaning in the story that we can learn from or else several lines of dialogue have been wasted on an technicality.
 * At what point does failure to answer the questions that are ongoing before adding new ones become a discontinuity or "plot hole"?
 * It doesn't stacking up questions until resolution of them all seems to suggest something too complicated to be plausible makes it look like they've been forgotten suggests an inevitability about it.
 * Why-did-the T-A-R-D-I-S-explode?
 * Steven Moffat said that all but one question will be answered in that final.
 * If it was the Silence then what were they thinking? They appear to be coporeal being and in as much danger as anythig else if everything was unmade. If they really consider themselves the "sentinels of history", an ironic choice of vocation given what they are, then if they did something that caused all of history to fall apart they should perhaps consider a new career path.
 * What happened when Amy pulled the trigger?
 * Why did they want Melody Pond?
 * They wanted Melody Pond because she's part-human and part-Time Lord
 * How does that help?
 * Maybe there are genetic advantages in that. Time Lord is sort of like genetic engineering that many Gallifreyans went through, maybe that helps her get near him or something.
 * "Maybe" is part of the problem. Speculation isn't an answer it isn't even part of an answer. "Maybe" is what you say when you inventing your own answer because you can't find sufficient information or evidence "in-show" to formulate one. It means you haven't been told enough.
 * What was the point Of River Song?
 * They wanted to create her, so they could.
 * Do Students Of The Silence do such random things?
 * If they just wanted someone to be in a spacesuit and fail to stop it shooting the Doctor why couldn't Madame K do it herself? ANYONE could do that.
 * Madame Kovarian did not want to go to prison. Simple as that.
 * Madame Kovarian was just an example and how anyone knows it was River is unclear
 * A. Then maybe everyone else didn't want to go to prison, B. Maybe that's how the suit works? As for how anyone knows it's River, maybe there are records of that or maybe she was later found near the crime scene with a gun that seems to have recently fired.
 * We don't even know how River got caught, she just walked back into the lake and vanished. As far as I could tell Amy, Rory, other River and III didn't report the death, they just disposed of the body. No one is looking for an assassin in the near future, she has plenty of time to get away.
 * The Tessalecta migth have reported the murder, and is also in the business of traveling through time to punish crime, so they may have followed and caugth her. They already tried to catch Dr. Song in Berlin, and would be eager to do it again. This would also serve the will of the doctor, who wanted to be declared dead.
 * Or so that she could perform the assassination attempt in LKH, creating a good diversion.
 * Diversion for what?
 * After the events in LKH they thought they foiled the Silence's plans to kill the Doctor and that they had an advantage. (This was also their strategy in A Good Man Goes to War - make him think he's doing alright and then easily turn the tables)
 * Did they? The end of LKH suggested they were somewhat concerned that River might still kill the Doctor in the future. Of course they were about 99% right.
 * Why an astronaut for that matter?
 * So the suit and person inside could survive in water and it included weapons.
 * Diving suit anyone?
 * Space suits seem to be a favored way to travel to odd environments in the future - they had them in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead too. Plus, by the time they finish trying to figure out what the heck an astronaut is doing in a lake, the Doctor will get shot.

Whose this "they"? The Doctor-lecta walked straight up to the astronaut knowing full well it would shoot him. It looked strange but the Doctor's actions made that irrelevant. If the Doctor wanted to respond to the threat of the Astronaut as a threat he'd do so and defend himself and put those sort of questions to the back of his mind until he had opportunity to address them.
 * If the fixed point was so important why did they have no problem with River trying to kill the Doctor in Berlin?
 * Who? Nobody wanted him dead in Berlin (other than psycho River)
 * But the Silence seem to be everywhere, they appear to have made no attempt to recover the child after her escape and if she'd pulled this off she could have wreaked everything. As it was temporal paradoxes ruined everything and River fell in love with the Doctor.
 * The Silence didn't attempt to recover the child because their plan was already in motion. (And hey, it even almost worked). Plus, she regenerated some time after that, that could make them lose track of her.

Already in motion, the Silence plan required creating a fixed point of the Doctor's death at Lake Silencio. How they did it is unclear in the story, there are clues but it's speculation to talk about what I think. My point is, if I recall, the Silence had one plan for killing the Doctor and not attempting to stop River enacting the objective her own way exposed the Doctor to knowledge of what they were doing, if the events of Berlin hadn't happened, chances are River woud have killed the Doctor at lake Silencio.
 * Why did River Song not know about River Song, how did Amy explain getting back without mentioning her? How'd she manage to never mention her?
 * What? When?
 * Whenever! Melody Pond, when we met her, presented as the only person who believed Amy's stories about the "raggedy doctor" (is that right?). She turned up in that field knowing Amy and Rory's daughter had been taken and that Amy was trying to get her back. Amy had told her all sorts but River seems to have been consistently ommited which is why the use of the name piqued her interest. Why didn't she know?
 * Amy's memories of the Doctor throughout her childhood have been of that night she met him as a child only. Amy wasn't aware of River's existence until Time of Angels. Note that she didn't know about any of his enemies in her childhood either, that's because she hadn't heard of them yet.
 * But the events in Let's Kill Hitler are about more then Amy childhood memories. The story was set after River had returned Amy and Rory to Earth from Demon's Run while the Doctor was off supposedly looking for Melody though I suspect he knew she'd find him first. And so she did. She ploughed straight into their crop circle have come after them knowing they were attempting to contact the Doctor and wanting to find him herself. Any and Rory have been home several times now and Melody is presented as Amy's best friend and the only person who believes her about the Doctor. The idea Amy wouldn't fill Mels in on her subsequent adventures is hard to take, especially when it was presented that Mels interest in River Song was due to the fact Amy and Rory were discussing something she clearly wasn't privy too. But Why?
 * And given the very great gift of the Silence, why, when they have that and and already brainwashed their killing machine not just put her in the suit show her a photo of the Doctor tell her to "see and shoot" (a trick they learned from him) then clear off leaving her to subconsciously kill the Doctor of the shores of Lake Slencio as soon as they meet instead of having her fight a spacesuit?
 * She had escaped the suit (in The Impossible Astronaut or Day of the Moon)
 * But not before they had instilled some sort of kill the Doctor programming in her because, unless we hold that they did indeed catch up with her after she escaped it's all she's got in all those years between regerating and hijacking the TARDIS.
 * I can see how psycho training like this would make a child want to just run away. Anyway, the original question was why didn't they just make a killing machine in a suit of her, and the answer (well, my answer at least) is that she escaped the suit, and she was a killing machine, and their plan worked out pretty decently.
 * Not really, the Doctor and River fell in love and he didn't die.
 * Also, since she beat it so easily, why isn't the fixed point revolving around her draining a battery?
 * The Silence appear too be the most discontinuous element ever introduced - their nature helps that, of course - but even so nothing about what we hear about them seems consistent with what they do.
 * Basically we've, apparently, had two seasons now where River has managed to break spacetime and the Silence seem to be in their element.
 * I suspect either Stephen Moffit is deceiving us about motives of the Silence or else he hasn't thought this through properly.
 * Steven Moffat eats Whovian brains for breakfast and therefore needs to mess with our brains constantly.
 * The point is that if you keep putting questions upon questions constantly those self same Whovians provide their own internally consistent answers to their own satisfaction and then there's a danger they'll like their answer more than the official one and they'll lose interest or watch in fear that the real solution won't match up to theirs.
 * I'm not expecting anyone to try and answer all these questions. I just feel it's a lot left up in the air to keep back for at least Autumn of next year. And I don't really see space for much of it then.
 * Why did you list about 100 unanswered questions from the past two seasons and list them as one discontinuity with this episode? While the Doctor was worrying about his death, wondering why they killed him at Lake Silencio is a more important question than wondering why his TARDIS blew up 200 years ago. It would be the same as Dorium saying "So, Doctor, how did you and HG Wells survive certin death back in Timelash anyway?" It just wasn't on his mind. If you're looking for answers to the actual questions, many, though not all of them have been answerd. For example, you seem to be under the impression that the Silence are trying to cause timey wimey paradoxes. Really, the Silence just underestimated the impact of blowing up a TARDIS last season, and they expected River to kill the Doctor properly this season. All of their actions suggest that they don't want silence to fall. The Silence and Madame Kovarian didn't try to stop Melody from killing the Doctor in Berlin, because they pretty much lost track of her in Day of the Moon, and she just knew that she was suppossed to kill the Doctor. She didn't know about the fixed point in time yet. The fixed point in time revolved around River killing the Doctor because the Silence took a still point in time and turned it into a fixed point in time with River killing him. She tried to do what the Doctor almost did in The WAters of Mars, and ended up completely screwing up time. They wanted Melody Pond because she was concieved in the time vortex and so could be turned into a Time Lord, and for whatever reason they decided that it would take a Time Lord to kill a Time Lord. River Song didn't know about River Song because she wasn't River Song yet, she was Melody Pond. She only became River Song because that's what everybody was calling her in that episode. There arre plenty of unanswered questions in the past two seasons, but try watching the episodes to see if they actually were answered next time.


 * I seem to have not been alerted to this response or would have counter responded sooner and you seem to have misunderstood my point.
 * The Silence, or someone, hijacked the TARDIS while it was under River's control, no easy task this is was implied, parked in front of Amy's bedroom wall on that oh, so special date, and blew it up. The Doctor spelled this out at the end of season five, he said that "the universe isn't safe yet" if the universe is still in danger this is massively important and for the Silence to overcome all the technological difficulties in hijacking the TARDIS isn't hard to believe they didn't get the ramifications of what they were doing.Of course I can theorise my own answers and can look at the likes of A Good Man Goes To War for support but that's just guessing. My point is that questions are stacking up and we will soon be at a stage that we won't be able to keep up with all of them and so the imapct will be lost when they are answered, if they are.


 * It is 5:02 in Utah when the event happens. How come in Britain, a different time zone, the time is also 5:02? And if time has 'stopped' how come only timepieces are effected, when the rest of the world is progressing normally?
 * It' 5:02 everywhere in the universe. The different time zones don't matter in this case. Either that, or the Tesselecta was just iving the British time o fhe Doctor's death. Also, what do you mean the rest of the world is progressing normally? Did you notice how Silurians, dinosaurs, mammoths, Churchill, Dickens, the Roman Emoire and about a million other things were all coexisting. Time didn't stop; it just all happnened at once.
 * But things happen. You can be 6 years old and starting 1st grade, and after enough learning, have the knowledge of a 2nd grader. Then a year passed for you. You can watch a TV show and after that, 30+- minutes passed for you. Time has not FROZEN, it's just sort of packed uncomfortably and in an unstable way.
 * But things didn't happen. Who in the 5:02 world did you see learning anything new or changing in any way before the Doctor met up with Amy? We didn't see what happened before the episode started, obviously, but all of the hints we got are that essentially nothing happened. Winston Churchill has been asking every day why it's always 5:02, and he never learns. Amy has been looking for Rory forever and has never found him. Or, alternatively, there was no day before that. Either way, no one has any new knowledge, nothing has progressed, no one's getting older, etc. Of course once the Doctor and Amy get together, that starts to change. And that's reflected in the control room measurements—time isn't frozen anymore, it's cycling through a tight and gradually widening loop.


 * The "oldest question in the universe", and one that must "never be answered", is supposedly "Doctor...who?". As it thus pertains to The Doctor, how can he, at only 1100+ years old, possibly be the source of the oldest question in the universe?
 * In the same way that River wrote the earliest message in the universe... "hello sweetie" on Planet One.
 * The Doctor wasn't born 1103 years ago, though. He's travelled all over time. And my theory is that that's the oldest question because River sent the message "The Doctor is dying" to all of time and space, including the most ancient civilisations who don't know him yet, so they wondered who that "Doctor" who's dying is.
 * There are TV stories that clearly imply—and novels that definitively state—that Gallifrey's "present" that the Doctor left from (and occasionally revisited) was millions or billions of years ago. Rassilon led armies in the Dark Times of the early universe. So if the Doctor was born around 5000-5500 years after Rassilon, he's one of the oldest living things left around. Of course there are also TV stories and novels that clearly imply that Gallifrey's present was the same as Earth's, and at least one episode implies it's 2 billion years in the future. But the point is that if the story is only inconsistent with the "present Gallifrey" theory, that's hardly a discontinuity in this story.
 * Of course Moffat's answer to the "when is Gallifrey's present" (before the new series) was that all of the conflicting versions are true—it's in the distant past, and the present, and the far future—and if this makes no sense to you, that's probably because you didn't study temporal physics for a few decades at the Prydon Academy.
 * Also, don't forget that RTD wrote that after the Time War, Gallifrey is now in the past of every moment in history. There may be a few things like the Beast that are even older than that, but not many.


 * In her final scene, how does Amy know that the Doctor is dead? Assuming the events of Series 6 occurred in the order in which they were broadcast (there is evidence that they don’t – and plot holes that would be fixed if they didn’t – but that’s a discussion for another article), then, starting with “The Impossible Astronaut,” Amy reconnects with the Doctor and witnesses his death, before learning that the Doctor who died is not “her” Doctor, but one from 200 years into the future. She continues to travel with “her” Doctor and has the adventures seen from “The Curse of the Black Spot” through “The God Complex,” where the Doctor leaves her to continue the “bigger, scarier adventure waiting for” her as a married woman. While she ostensibly knows that his death still looms in his future – she fretted about it throughout the first half of Series 6 – she makes no mention of it here. The next time we see her chronologically, she has become a model, and has been crying in her garden, saddened that the future Doctor died at Lake Silencio. What event occurred between “The God Complex” and the finale that alerted Amy to the fact that the future Doctor was “dead”? Was it the restoration of time to it’s proper place after the Doctor kissed the newly-married River?
 * As noted above, part of the explaination is it was more raw and clear because she could now remember the 'all times at once' timeline. As also noted elsewhere we can presume she could remember because of her ability to remember stuff through alternate time lines which is connected to her exposure to the crack through time (which never existed). And it's clear she did remember since she remembered killing Madame Kovarian. (She also suddenly realised she was the Doctor's mother-in-law, from memory River had mentioned beinged married to the Doctor in front of Amy before but this was more of in a joking fashion. I think it's clear one of the reasons it occured to her was because of her memories of the wedding in the alternate time line.) We can presume this experience helped confirm her fears, the Doctor was going to die and there was nothing to do to save her and that it was her daughter River Song who was in the astronaut suit and who killed the Doctor, even if River wasn't really in control of the suit. (Remember that until then, this wasn't clear to Amy, River never revealed it to Amy in the proper time line AFAWK and she couldn't see who was in the suit. There were a lot of hints it was River/Melody but it was never directly confirmed. In the alternate 'all times at once' line it finally was confirmed to Amy that it was indeed River/Melody.) This meant the wound was still 'fresh', not helped when River came along. And they could both talk about it freely since that was probably the first time they met where they both knew all there was to know about the Doctor's death (well Amy didn't know he didn't die, but that's beside the point) and the Doctor wasn't present, so no spoilers. As to why Amy only remembered the alternate time line now, well as noted above there's always a 'time-whimy' paradox here that can never really be resolved, as with most cases when there is intersection of time lines. When did the alternate time line happen? at 5:02PM 22th April 2011? At all times? Not really answerable. Remember that theoretically (I don't think this will actually happen, it's just for emphasis) there could be another future Amy somewhere 5:02PM 22th April 2011, perhaps even watching the death if they're careful. Since time travel exists, you can't say there's only one 5:02PM 22th April 2011 for Amy, all you can talk about is a moment in her life and even that gets confused once you have alternate time lines. And Amy was just a spectator in the events leading up to the creation of the alternate time line, she did see the doctor getting killed (and not getting killed) but unlike River and the Doctor, she didn't create it. In other words, you can probably say it wasn't really in a fixed point of her life. (Hence as others have noted the minotaur.) As noted below, it's likely from Amy's POV she doesn't expect to see the doctor again which also doesn't help. TL;DR, there's no way you can resolve a time paradox like this, just accept things happened as they happened.


 * It is the oldest question in the Whoniverse. It appeared in big letters at the beginning of the very first episode.


 * Because in The Pandorica Opens the the Silence, so we understand, caused the TARDIS to explode thus destroying time, the universe and everything in it. In order to fix this before the universe was gone for good the Doctor piloted the Pandorica into the heart of the explosion in order to ignite Big Bang 2 and create a "second" stable but otherwise identical universe, being present at the creation of this new universe makes "Doctor Who?" the oldest question therein.


 * Amy knows that after the Doctor has dropped her off, that he will not come back for her. As she has seen the older doctor die, she knows that she will not see him again before his death, and therefore cannot stop his death, and therefore his death has/will/always happened. He is dead to her.


 * Still, that's not a good way to answer the question about where in her timeline

she is at the moment.


 * Look, the doctor left amy in The God Complex, this amy already knew he was going to die, this amy wasn't invited to the doctor's death this is the amy that River visited later, she just assumed the doctor would die, that's why she told her that, the amy that the doctor encountered in The Impossible Astronaut is the amy he left after her honey moon with rory, this amy didn't know about his death, it's difficult to comprehend but try it, it makes sense, in any case, wibbly wobbly, time-y wime-y

The Silence would have evolved to be able to remeber themselves. Other wise, their speciea would have died out very quickly.
 * It was stated that no living mind could remember the Silents, but they seem to be living beings themselves, so how can they remember each other? They don't use eye drives
 * Even more simply put, look straight ahead. What can you see? Most people can see their nose a bit, even if you look away from your arms and such you can't avoid looking at that. Since they are always seeing a bit of themselves the memories are always there. What we should be asking is how the Angels survived all this time.


 * If the Doctor needed to know he's going to die at Lake Silencio to get the Teselecta, then in an earlier iteration of time he was indeed shot. (Chicken and egg issue, only this one has a clear answer: the death came before the Teselecta). In the current iteration of time, the fixed point is the Doctor's "suit" getting shot. In the original iteration, the fixed point is the Doctor himself dying. Then he did change a fixed point in time, though it's not visible. How?


 * Why couldn't it have always been the Teselecta that got shot? The 900-year-old Doctor didn't know that, of course, but the 1100-year-old Doctor could have known that the first time through, because the first time through he'd been through all the events of series 6, just as we saw, and done everything exactly as we saw. Sure, there's a causal loop, but it's no more mysterious than the countless other causal loops in the show, from Day of the Daleks through Melody being named after herself.


 * A loop like that starts somewhere doesn't it? Again, chicken and egg.. The egg came first, and the gunshot came before the Teselecta idea as I see it.
 * I get the feeling it doesn't work like that, the Silence were trying create a fixed point out of still point and I think that's possibly the key here. But again it's speculation which would take a while to go into a perhaps is beyond the remit of this section.
 * The whole point of a causal loop is that it doesn't start somewhere; it always is. That's why it's not a real paradox. (That being said, Moffat is not against writing true paradoxes. Using your second example, it's possible that Amy always grew up with a best friend named Mels and named her daughter after her; it's also possible that "the first time through" there was no Mels and it only became circular after her past was rewritten to include Mels. The first wouldn't be a paradox, the second would, but either one is consistent with everything we've seen in the show.)
 * Or, alternatively, he did change history, but he didn't change a fixed point in time. The fixed point was the Silence seeing the Doctor killed. The Silence still saw the Doctor killed, whether it was real or faked, so the fixed point is unchanged.


 * The Doctor's plan to survive his death without breaking a fixed point is functionally identical to the Dalek Prime's plan for Skaro to survive the Hand of Omega without damaging the timeline in War of the Daleks. Forgetting about whether out-of-universe Moffat realized that and borrowed the idea (while throwing out all of the crap ideas that surrounded it—as he's done repeatedly), in-universe it seems like the Doctor should have realized it was the same thing. Which raises the question of why it took him 200 years to figure it out.

The doctor spent most of that time in dernial, not willing to face his problems trying to have fun and forget about it, like everyone does when they have major problems but they don't want to face it,. Plus he was also starting to question his will to live, don't forget, he'so over a housand years by this point, he has done and seen and lot, and were ever he's gone,he's been forced to kill, forced to let the innocent die, imagine how much that must be weighing on him, so He also spent a lot of time, debating weather or not to let himself die.


 * Most readers assume the Dalek Prime's plan was nonsense, and he made the whole thing up as disinformation to trick Davros's supporters into coming out of the woodwork. If the Doctor believed the same thing, it wouldn't be likely to spring to his mind as a good idea to try later.


 * Also, there's no evidence the Doctor ever recovered his memories of what happened between the TV movie and The Ancestor Cell. He dumped those memories to make room in his head for the Matrix.


 * If the Doctor is so terrified that his name would be revealed to the universe, which will in turn result in some terrible thing, then why didn't he choose to die? I'm not taking in the fact that he didn't opt dying because he wanted to live and see time and space and that stuff.
 * Well you should, because thats mostly it, the other half is, he also does a lot of good, he may cause great destruction, but he only does it trying to save, if he's gone, whose going to do it? No one will, plus as he showed in this story he can beat fate.