khaosworks | (Reply)

From:

khaosworks.livejournal.com

I don't know. Father's Day's logic was pretty clear cut. You change history, you create a wound in time which attracts Reapers like some kind of universal antibody (all this is pretty much explicitly stated). The vanishing-reappearing car is the universe trying to repair itself. You don't need a sentient universe for that; you can analogize it to, say nature abhorring a vacuum. It doesn't make any scientific sense but you can understand that's the reason, and that's because a concrete reason does exist.

Even why the Reapers didn't appear before in the series can be sussed out through the Doctor's remark about how the Time Lords, if they were around, could have fixed things (presumably before the Reapers arrived, or perhaps the Reapers now exist as a result of not having Time Lords to fix things - take your pick). Either way, you actually have explanations your mind can seize on.

Here, nothing in the script tells us how the beetle works. In her mind? Transport her into an alternate? Create an alternate universe enclosing her? Rewrite the current universe like a palimpsest? Any of these explanations, by the way, begs how each of these interact with Rose the All Mysterious, and what precisely she's doing.

Davies has set no rules - the beetle can do whatever the story demands of it, Rose can do whatever the story demands of her, ditto Donna. This is the essence of magic: we impose our will upon the world and things change by sheer will, no other explanation sought, no other explanation required. It might be different if being mysterious was the point, but it wasn't.

The transference of memories is even worse. Even if there was some transuniversal bleedthrough as you suggest, how did Rose know that was going to happen? She doesn't know anything about the beetle, so it can't be that she thinks, oh, okay, beetle dies, Donna gets some psychic splashover. And again, why such a completely useless bit of information?

The other thing is yes, the human race is doomed because the Doctor isn't there. But why isn't the Doctor there? Because there wasn't a human around to help him.

Your mileage obviously varies, of course.