Howling:Are the writers getting ideas from the EDAs?

The more I watch this season, and go back and watch last season, the more I'm becoming convinced that someone involved in the show is either rereading or remembering the EDAs and looking for cool ideas that can be put into new contexts and repurposed and made even cooler.


 * Fitz's 1000 years on his own as a Remote before being restored to his old self, his alternate version Father Kreiner who wants to kill the Doctor, etc. become Auton Rory's 2000 years, his illusory version's "Kill Amy", etc.
 * The Remote remembrance tanks seem like an obvious future development of the Flesh tanks.
 * The Doctor's future corpse is a major plot macguffin in both Alien Bodies and The Impossible Astronaut, but now it's his companions who have to keep the future from him instead of himself. (And I don't think the idea of people wanting his corpse is over—in the next two episodes, first the Siren and then the Flesh sampled his DNA…)
 * Human companion Compassion turning into a TARDIS becomes the TARDIS turning into human companion Idris, with very different ways of showing new insights into the Doctor-TARDIS relationship (both involving the "bigger on the inside" line).
 * One exploding TARDIS becomes the Edifice and nearly destroys the universe (and destroys Gallifrey); another becomes the Needle and preserves a pocket of civilization from a different destruction of the universe; in The Big Bang, it's just one exploding TARDIS that nearly destroys the universe and becomes the Sun and preserves a pocket of civilization.
 * Sam and Amy are both more than just another companion, both picked up for reasons the Doctor didn't at first realize, and in both cases the fact that their history makes no sense becomes a major plot arc, although with very different resolutions.
 * Amy pushes for quick intimacy with the Doctor only to be lectured that he's not a human, he's Gandalf; Guy Burgess and the Player Countess tried the same thing only to figure out the same thing without having to be told. Meanwhile, River took things more slowly and actually got close to him, just like Alan Turing.
 * The major themes of "history can be changed" and the effect on the Doctor of going to war were also the major themes of the Sam arc and the post-War arc in the EDAs.

There are countless other examples, but I've rambled on long enough. And, while there are a few borrowings from other sources (Inferno vs. Cold Blood, Benny vs. River, etc.), there seem to be a lot more from the EDAs. And RTD borrowed from the EDAs too (the Second War in Heaven vs. the Last Great Time War), but not nearly as exclusively as the Moff seems to.

It may just be that, just as the EDAs tried to be more about time travel and less about mythology than the NAs, the Moff is trying to do the same vs. the RTD era, and there are only so many ways you can write good time travel plots in the Whoniverse.

But I still think there's more going on here than coincidence.

Meanwhile, I haven't read Father Time recently, but I'm planning to, because I suspect there will be some interesting parallels and contrasts between Miranda Dawkins and Melody Pond. --173.228.85.118 03:23, July 23, 2011 (UTC)