I had a nightmare and am speculating about possible Doctor Who Plots

[eumelia]

Contains spoilers to "Blink" of season 3 and "The Time of Angels" of season 5 Doctor Who:

It's no secret that I take Doctor Who seriously. Earlier this week I saw the episode "The Time of Angels", the one with River Song as Indiana Jones James Bond (how awesome is that!) and later that night I had a nightmare.

Beyond the fact that the third season ep "Blink" scared the crap out of me - this episode was even scarier.

It spoke of invasion.

Invasion and taking over and conquest.

In my nightmare I am sitting in my Uni campus when very rapidly the Sun begins to set and the Moon is no where to be seen. The stars are hidden by clouds that seemed to converge out of nowhere.

The electricity ceases to work and all the lights go out, not grid by grid, but all together and without warning I feel cold hands all over me and I'm being devoured.

I woke up feeling extremely thirsty. Oh, and dead.

My nightmare was probably exacerbated by the paranoia fuelled by Stephen Hawking who had said, that same Sunday, If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America.

Yeah.

Now the episode itself "The Time of Angels" is also a tale of invasion and colonisation. The original inhabitants of the planet on which this story is taking place are extinct and the humans of the 51st century (I love that century) have spread far and wide and there are 6 billion (like rabbits we are, the Doctor says) colonists on this world.

In "Blink" we see a pack of Angels which the Doctor calls "the lonely assassins", among other things.

In the 51st Century, the Church (I'm assuming Catholic, but Anglicans have Bishops as well) has become militant and seems to be the colony's militia.

Am I the only one who thinks perhaps the Church plants the Angels on populated planets, waits for them to be extinct via Genocide(!!!!), terra-forms the place and then locks the Angels up in those catacombs, in the dark and then "forgets" about them.

Tell me I'm not alone!

Comments

[sollers]

Ahem, "non Angli sed angeli" as Pope Gregory said; not Angles but Angels! The Angles could be pretty scary, but not in that way!

[eumelia]

Damn spelling!

Thank you!

[sollers]

An easy one to make; I probably wouldn't have commented except that Gregory's pun fitted it so perfectly!

[delilahdraken]

You know, that theory makes sense.

I was wondering why the church would have gone militant in that time, as the soldiers didn't seem fanatic enough to me to be part of a crusade. That they would do this as some kind of trick to be kept in their jobs, to be able to keep on doing the 'rescue and protect our sheeplings' thing.

[be_themoon]

that is a terrifying theory. ack. way to hit my panic buttons!

but I have to admit it makes way too much sense.

[eumelia]

There's something we don't know, but we do know that the Church likes to keep secrets.

[delilahdraken]

What I'm interested in is why River Song is under 'protection' from church soldiers. And why did she promise them the equivalent of an army if they had already planned to fight the angels?

[aryas_zehral]

I'm not sure how practical it would be for the church to transplant the Weeping Angels from planet to planet. We saw how well transplanting one Weeping Angel went with the cruise liner. I'm not sure what I think about the Church having an army- perhaps the Church decided that it would take it faithful and set up its own range of colonies and an army would be necessary to defend it?- it seems odd to me but there doesn't seem to be a lack of planets and, anyway, given the danger the Weeping Angels pose it might just be easier to go in and kill the population in a more conventional way. Still, we'll probably find out on Saturday.

I'm glad, in a weird way, that I wasn't the only non-child to get freaked out by the ep. I honestly had to sleep with a light on because having the light off was creeping me out no end.

[eumelia]

I was just talking to a friend about my theory and she said: "You mean they're like the Morlocks?!"

I almost died, I won't sleep again tonight!

[silveradept]

This past episode made the Weeping Angels far more creepy than they did before, because the ones before, as Eleven pointed out, were "scavengers", and pretty scary then.

But using the Angels as a weapon of mass destruction, and then going in to clean it up and claim it for Mother Church...that is scary.

The other possibility is that this particular group of humans are have gone past the Seldon Crisis of the power of religion but haven't made it to the next one.

[eumelia]

It was the Church and Angels connection that got me thinking along those lines. It's too much of a coincidence.

Also, humans do bad things, I wouldn't put it past humanity to genocide an entire world using some kind of engineered weapon they don't understand fully and then bites them on the ass.

[silveradept]

I wouldn't either. In our own, still sadly Doctor-less time, we threw down two atomic weapons without knowing what their long-term consequences were, and we're always looking for new and better ways to kill each other.

The Angels as the Weapons of the Church, how poetic. I would like to know how they thought they could contain it, though.

[eumelia]

I would like to know how they thought they could contain it, though.

In the dark. It also wouldn't surprise me if these Church guys weren't aware of what transpired a few centuries beofre. If the Church "in the future" in anything like the Church today the memo may have gotten lost in the deluge of information regarding bad things.

[tree_and_leaf]

Obviously this is all speculation, but I think that the Church Militant is (a) slightly jokey, because it allows lines like "Virgers! How are we doing with those explosive?" which is just plain funny because it's grotesque" but also that (b) dealing with creepy bits of ecclesiastical furniture seems like an appropriate thing for the church to be doing. It's not that far from exorcism.

Fr Octavian seems, thus far, and despite the mysterious conversation with River, to be a decent chap; the Doctor's interactions with him are quite similar to the way he interacts with UNIT, which suggests to me that while the Doctor might not see eye to eye with them on everything, they're basically good guys (in the same way that UNIT's not perfect, but still basically decent).

Of course, this could all be a bluff; it's also possible that Fr Octavian and co are good guys unwittingly working for an evil organisation - we'll just have to wait and see. But if they were deliberately transporting Angels for nefarious purposes, why would they want the Doctor (or the unspecified back-up River promised) involved?

I think this is an appropriate moment for this icon *g*