Why River Song's Ending Is Darker Than You Thought
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2023
- Steven Moffat is one of Doctor Who's most controversial writers due to his mind-bending twists and chaotic narratives. But what you may not know is that Moffat told a MASSIVE lie when it came to the fate of his iconic character River Song...
Forgot to clarify in the video but the Soma game footage comes from / @superbestfriendsplay
► Patreon
/ harbowholmes
► Subscribe!
/ harbowholmes
► Twitter
/ harbowholmes
► Discord
/ discord
► Reddit
/ harbowholmes
#DoctorWho #Moffat 
Кино
Forgot to clarify in the video but the Soma game footage comes from www.youtube.com/@superbestfriendsplay
9:14 so what? Duplication not transference who cares? What makes the original the original is the same thing that makes the duplicates the original. And since the first original no longer exists the duplicates effectively become the originals. Essentially they are both the same person duplication is not the antithesis of transference it's just the method. So it's actually transference via duplication
Quantum physics says the cat that jumps, is not the cat that lands, so what!
I’m just saying, you could’ve ended the video off with a happy note talking about what twice upon a time is about.
I always thought it a massive security risk for the doctor to upload to only other mind to know his name to a giant database. Even if he did something to make River unhackable we've seen on several occasions that the doctors computer skills are at the top but not the very best. The dalek pathweb, Great Intelligence and Testimony have all been just a bit beyond the doctor computer wise.
Actually Sarah Jane Was also Teleported in Ark in Space
“Moffat didn’t understand the implications when he wrote this”.
He did, at least by the end of his tenure. He wrote a whole episode about this idea, twice upon a time, where he argues against your interpretation of consciousness and what makes you you. Yes river died, but the river copy is still river. It’s not a lie, it’s a philosophical interpretation. There may also be a testimony river out there, who is also sincerely river.
That clip of Flying The Flag from Eurovision brings back some memories.
I worked on Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up where they (Scootch?) were chosen. Had to pick up Lordi from the nearby Hilton in Maidstone, in full costume.
They would've fit right in to a Doctor Who episode
There's also the story with the doppelgängers that were used in some planet for dangerous works... both episodes argue back and forth about what makes you "you" and what it means to be human. I forgot the titles, but it's from 11th Doctor with Rory & Amy.
No, the problem is continuity of experience. The copy experiences having been River all along, but the original River doesn't experience being the copy-her experience ends when she dies. You can't just interpret that away. It's explained pretty clearly in the section on Soma. For us, for everyone but River, yes, she's the same person throughout. But not for the original River. If someone makes a perfect copy of me when I die, he's welcome to go on living my life, but I won't ever get to experience being him.
It's a P Zombie basically. Like someone else said though there is the problem of continuity of existence. It's not you, but something that for all intents and purposes thinks it's you.
@@thatotherted3555You exist exclusively in the present. You in the past cannot experience being you now. As people grow older, their very existence changes; they can experience their past, but their past cannot experience them. River being uploaded to a computer, Gangers replacing their originals, Testimony storing memories and producing replicas, Rory being resurrected as a plastic Roman and having his memories put into an alternate version of himself, Time Lords regenerating, all of these people are free to experience their past lives in memory, but their past selves cannot experience them.
I think it’s criminal how you didn’t mention twice upon a time because it’s whole message is about memories and how exact copies with those memories act, feel, and live
Or the gangas. Those clones people's memories were copied into. Now there's a story about copies finding out they're copies
@@jessicaable5095or Edwin Bracewell from Victory of the Daleks. At 14:24 I was thinking he was leading up to talking about him
Oh shit… was this a subtle story arc within the entire Moffat era?!
@@Cybermat47 honestly that’s what I’m thinking, so many of Moffats stories deal with memories, stories, or how we’re remembered
@@jessicaable5095 oh and don’t forget Rory specifically when he found out he was an auton
I think this very much misses Parfit’s ultimate point, though, which is that IT DOESN’T MATTER (or at least not that much) whether the copy is “the same person.” If you learned that tonight in your sleep you’d be atomized and then instantly replaced with an exact duplicate… you shouldn’t care. Everything important-all the reasons you actually want to wake up in the morning-would be preserved. The thing we care about when we care about people is the pattern of memory and personality, and whether it’s exactly the same continuous set of atoms just isn’t very important.
I actually did this as a part of my first year Philosophy degree. It’s even wider reaching than you’ve said. If we accept that the doctor is a copy in heaven sent (which I agree is correct) that means that the first teleported doctor is as well. Given the doctor calls this a “short range teleport” we can assume it’s similar to that used throughout the show like the sontaran teleport or the dalek one. Given this, we must also accept that every time a character teleports, they have also merely been copied. Therefore, very few people in the doctor who universe are their original selves.
There are some questionable examples. Like, the TARDIS is physically moving from place to place through the Time Vortex, and we can assume that vortex manipulators work the same way.
@@Quirderph that’s a good point, it doesn’t necessarily apply to all teleports, but there is still a high proportion we see on the show that do reduce people and save their pattern. The Titanic for instance must work this way for the Doctor to try and save kylie monogue
Not to mention the whole universe was rebooted with the pandorica so everyone is basically a copy by that argument
in Doctor's case, that's abou 1.3 trillion copies yeah?
You have a degree in Philosophy? What do you do for a living?
You call River's happy ending the dumb technicality, but I see calling it fake as much more of a technicality. She died and then essentially got revived in a digital form, from her point of view she simply got put there. She is River Song, she harbours the same memories and experiences, thoughts and opinions, loves as her. That's all we really are as humans. It's just her. There's no lie at all.
From her perspective, you are right, she is River. But from the perspective of the flesh body, she no longer exists. If you could somehow resuscitate the flesh River, she would have no memories of her time in the library computer. Because River died and a copy was put in the computer.
Same with teleportation. If you got beamed up, you would be dead and a copy would be continuing your life. Actual consciousness cannot be transferred to another media. We are attached to our bodies. Hit us on the head and cause brain damage and our personality could change. You can't separate us from our brain and our brain determines who we are.
@@kirielbranson4843 "Who are we if not our memories?" -Bill, Twice Upon a Time
I genuinely don't get why people are so attached to the physical. Our minds are our persons, the body is just the vessel with which the mind expresses itself. If your argument for teleportation holds true then you should also apply it to every 5 year period of your life, as every 5 years or so we are completely ship-of-theseused as all of our atoms have been replaced with new ones. Does that make us a false version of our original selves? No, obviously not. Everything that River is got saved and put into the cloud, the person that she was lives on as herself and that's the end of it. The only "dumb technicality" would be to say that it's not really her because it's a copy of her consciousness. It's still 100% her, and I will die on that hill, the sams hill I'll die on with transporters.
In short, you talk about "the perspective of the flesh body", but the truth is it doesn't have one. It can't. It's just a flesh body. The omly perspective that matters is the perspective of the person, and from her perspective, she is herself.
Except she didn't get revived she got recreated. Her corpse is still in the library. Moffatt also confirmed this by saying the doctor died before his first regeneration as he was teleported in a way that destroyed his particles and put them back together somewhere else. The doctor was a copy. Same when the doctor was in the time dial he was copied multiple times his skull is still in the dial that version of the doctor, from then on we're following a new doctor
It's a ship of theseus, which river is real? Both or the original? The corpse will always be real but the copy is only real in a subjective form
When in Soma did humanity survive when they were put in the simulation or were they all murdered and became data
You're wrong because Donna Noble was also uploaded into the same network as River Song and then downloaded with no digital copy left behind. They also put the Tardis in a human body and then back again, the Who universe works different from ours and thats ok.
Well, no one's ever called Dr. Who hard science fiction. It's science fantasy.
Well, you could argue that the Doctor died when William Hartnell regenerated into Patrick Troughton, and that every regeneration, we are given a new Doctor. The device in the Confession Dial works very much the same way, since it uses the energy taken from the Doctor's body to trigger the creation of the next copy.
So, it is true in a way, the Doctor dies everytime they regenerate, and a new being replaces them, just with their previous memories still intact. New body, new personality, new person. That's why 10 said he didn't want to go right before he regenerated, he KNEW he was dying, and whatever iteration came after him was not him and would never be him but someone else completely different. Makes sense when you look at it that way.
@@kenthomas505 10 even says that exact thing.. "it's like dying and some other person walks away".
@@stacieclymo368510 was such a whiner. That's not what he 10 and 12 said when they newly regenerated. Maybe he should've added his memories to his clone. Or copied himself and joined river in the library.
The doctor died before then, he teleported without the tardis making his atoms destroy him and recreate him somewhere else he was dead from the start
This whole video feels like a "Well ackshually"
Also Star Trek teleporters.
Wasn't this idea explored in the flesh episode? You had the original humans and flesh people who the Doctor tried to convey were both the same people. I could swear even the doctor said he saved a "version" of River Song, knowing that is isn't the original her is gone. He was just trying to keep some form of who she was alive.
I haven't finished the full video yet, but I have some thoughts (shared with no malice):
1. Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to take conclusions from a seperate though experiment and assume it is the truth not only in general, but for all pieces of media it could apply to. This also includes taking a seperate piece of media (SOMA) with it's own storyline, and using it as if it is something objective enough to apply as a rule instead of created lore.
2. Similar to my first point, every media has its own ideas of lore, which are not affected by outside sources. New Dr. Who, specifically Moffat himself, has made it very clear that in this universe, your memories make up who you are enough for it to be significant (Danny post-death, the whole glass people-as-Bill plot). This is also backed up in RTD's Rose/10 body swap*. To me, it feels unsound to throw out established canon within the SAME media in favor of canon from an UNRELATED media that simply tackled a similar premise.
However, I do still believe that River's ending isn't quite "happy" here. For example, Donna had a happy life, but it wasn't full. It was fragmented, almost blurry. I know River can escape from time to time to hop around, and she might be somewhat happy with this life, but it feels less real and tangible.
(*I personally see John Smith and 10 [and other chameleon circuits] to be separate discussions from this ons, as it was less of a copy and more a specific creation made by Dr. Who)
The kid said it would be different now due to not holding as many people.
The skipping and copying of some things was likely a memory (RAM) saving measure to retain the people as well as it could manage.
Completely agree.
I'd add a few points.
The video repeatedly refers to the "paradox". If it's a paradox then there isn't a clear answer. So Soma is just one way of looking at it.
Most cells in the human body are replaced every 7-10 years. If you bumped into an old school friend you hadn't seen in 15 years, would you think of them as a 'copy' of your old friend and therefore not really them? Obviously not, but by the logic of the video that is the one and only way of thinking of them (every single visible cell you see is a copy). That's clearly nonsense, that's part of the paradox.
Philosophers can spend their entire lives trying to answer the question "what makes 'you', 'you'? I think it's bizarre to suggest that one computer game has answered the question once and for all.
Sci-Fi has a history of exploring philosophical questions. (If an android thinks it's alive, is it alive). The Doctor has faced "The Trolley Problem" many times (e.g. in The Parting Of The Ways). But it's entertainment, not education, and any 'answer' given is just the answer for that specific situation.
Is violence ever justified?... Well depending on which Dr Who story you watch, you'd be presented with different answers. That's philosophy... And Sci-Fi... For you.
I wouldn't say that taking conclusions from a separate work is bad, but I'd say applying in this manner is. And yes, Doctor Who is definitely on the boat that memories have purpose here. Another situation is the situation with the Gangers, and of course, the Matrix itself is just one big fancy supercomputer in the first place.
@ryan1696 yeah, I agree it's not only fine but fun to use other media as inspiration for your conclusions, but this case isn't for me
I haven't played Soma yet, but just from the footage used in this video it seems like they recognised all instances as valid continuations of that person. Otherwise there would be zero point in uploading themselves to safety at the end. Simon may be dead but Simon gets to continue. Harbo keeps saying 'mere' duplicates as though an exact copy of you isn't also equally you, and there doesn't seem any reason to believe that.
13:17 Technically, the 'original' version of the Doctor would've ceased to exist after the first time a teleporter gets used in Classic Who (the earliest instance I can think of is the Doctor + companions going from space station to Earth between Ark in Space and Sontaran Experiment)... so from that perspective, the show left the original behind AGES ago.
The 2nd Doctor uses a teleporter to get to the moon from Earth the first time we see the Martian Ice Warriors!
I was reading through other comments and totally forgot that the 1st Doctor used a teleporter wrist device in the Keys of Marinus!
The original Doctor hasn't been seen since the original Doctor 😱
There is some 3rd doctor too, but I can't remember the episodes.
@@Jerrytcalehe copied badly. Probably improved his surly mood
I believe consciousness is transferred with this technology, which means that whilst the 1.0 body dies, the consciousness transfers to the 2.0 version, allowing them to still be themself. This prevents every teleporter (eg The Ark in Space to The Sontaran Experiment) from killing everyone. The teleportation paradox too is speculative as we don't really have a way to measure what is killing someone and if such thing as the same consciousness or a soul even would come back
Heaven sent makes it quite clear this isn't the case.
The mountains of skulls at the bottom of the castle are all skulls of the doctor, burned to a crisp in order to print another copy, memories erased, and destined to perform the exact same actions in the exact same way. Billions of freshly printed doctors, each killed and burned to a crisp with ease in a matter of days.
Perhaps other teleporters work differently, it's kind of handwaved away how they work anyway 🤷♂
Wibbily wobboly, timey whimey, the individual's consciousness is transferred over unaffected, and there is no discontinuity in existence.
What happens in Heaven Sent invalidates this. Billions of copies of the Doctor and they are all The Doctor.
In the episode, he goes so far to explain he's in some sort of "closed energy loop" which implies the doctor is the only consciousness in there. There is no other consciousness being created or destroyed, it's still him every time. Think of it like you're resetting a live person, the memories are reset but it's still the same individual, stuck in a loop "killing" and restoring himself billions of times. This doctor is not a copy in the traditional sense, he's the one and the same consciousness we've been following all this time, all these years.@@Me__Myself__and__I
I absolutely agree with this. Unless a sci fi episode deliberately dives into this "copy vs the original" topic, I assume the person's original consciousness is merely transferred, not copied. After all no one's going to be interested in watching a show where the main characters are all copies of each other while the original ones were killed off years ago.
Heres the thing about the teleoport conundrum: we as normal humans also undergo the same thing every few years, Our cells are dying constantly and being replaced with new ones. There is not a single cell in your body that survives from just a few years ago. We ARE destroyed and replaced by the natural cycle of biology, it just happens slower and piece by piece
That's less the teleport conundrum, and more the Ship of Thesus again.
But that's okay, I got you covered: Have you ever gone to sleep? Cool, cool... so prove the you that woke up isn't a brand new iteration of you, created the moment you woke up, that just REMEMBERS falling asleep and everything prior.
@@benstevens44 I feel like that scenario is getting into paranoid conspiracy theory territory, id worry about someone irl if they believed that
@@emmiannon1266 It's less of a conspiracy theory, and more of just... a horrifying existential dilemma.
Suppose your consciousness is something your brain manufactures when you wake up to pilot your body through the day. What in your actual lived experience is different, in a way that you would be able to recognize from the inside?
Now, of course, this could be interpreted as "oh no, so every time I go to sleep I die", which... yeah, is a terrifying thought at first. But it also means, if this is true, that the answer to the clone dilemma, the "which one is the original" problem, is... neither. And that's okay. The original is long gone anyway, it's been copies all the way down, and each day we just build on the life the next copy inherits.
Of course, like anything in the theory of consciousness, it's impossible to prove or disprove, we don't know enough about the subject to even know what questions to ask to get the right answers. But hey, it's interesting to consider. And a little terrifying.
And if you end up deciding you're okay with the idea of consciousness being a daily prize instead of a lifetime accomplishment, well, you and your transporter clone are going to get along a hell of a lot better than those people who stress over who the "original" is.
The only difference is that there are cells that don’t get replaced, or rarely do, like in you eyes
No one talks about how weird it is that River settles down & has children. That’s really not like the River we got to learn in the Smith era.
I don't think she has children, she's just taking care of Donna's children in the Library, and technically this isn't talking about the linear 24 years River Song had on Darillium. A lot can change in that time, so, I think she'd learn how to settle down, especially since the Doctor should too during this time (actually he kind of did, if we're taking Series 10 in perspective).
Actually, she did want children. It's canon that she wanted her and the Doctor to have children, but she knew he would never want to and their lifestyle wouldn't suit it. But yes, River would've loved to settle down and have children.
@@ThetaSigma-vu1skCannon? Please explain.
@@imutia she mentions it at some point. i just dont remember when.
@@omega311888 In Re: River mentioning wanting to have children with the Doctor -- she never did that in any aired episode/segment. Is it in an audio? (Kingston has done a number of those for River's secondary cannon stories.)
But people are their experiences, not their biological, atomic construction.
You still need the biological and atomic structure to create that person to have those experiences
@@tgiacin435what about robot people then?
@@NaNNaNNaNNaNNaN robots are different, but that’s more the exception to the rule
@@tgiacin435 what about people in computers? They are basically the same in terms of their minds when compared to robot people, but their bodies are non-humanoid
@@NaNNaNNaNNaNNaN what people in computers? Are you talking about the dead timelords uploaded into the matrix
As far as I'm aware, this whole topic is entirely speculative, as we don't fully understand consciousness. We don't know if consciousness is transferred, but within sci-fi, I think it's safe to presume it somehow is. We can't say objectively whether it would work this way or not without fully understanding consciousness, which would likely grant us some degree of control over it given sufficient technological development.
_"We don't know if consciousness is transferred, but within sci-fi, I think it's safe to presume it somehow is."_ Not transferred, *duplicated.* Otherwise completely agree.
@@irrevenant3 Yeah but that's my whole point, in the case of ordinary teleportation, consciousness is naturally assumed to be transferred, not duplicated, so to say it is in fact duplicated when talking about something like Doctor Who or Star Trek feels to me just like fan fiction that I think the writers would probably disagree with in most cases. Sorry that's the longest sentence I've ever written.
@@BryzerseIf the writers really wanted to, they could likely tackle this issue by saying that psychic imprints temporarily bridge the gap between the two copies, and allow the consciousness to continue.
@@dominickeijzer5844 They could, but I don't think they need to. Teleportation is rarely explained in detail in sci-fi, because like FTL travel for example, we don't really know how it would work, or need to, we just accept it does within the story. We all assume our consciousness would be teleported if we were to be. Besides, explaining it in detail would probably come across as boring exposition to viewers who don't really care about this kind of stuff.
I appreciate and agree with this take, because it makes the most sense. Imagine if you were told all your favorite characters of doctor who were actually dead and their copies live on in their place. That defeats the point of the doctor, why bother to save everyone? We might just have to trust the narrative that anyone that gets digitized is in effect the same person as before, not a copy, and they have been transferred completely, not duplicated. Now, Moffat could come out and say that it is true the originals are all dead, but I'd still reject that idea.
Take Heaven Sent as an example. The Doctor mentions being in some sort of "closed energy loop". Now, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so if we go off this rule along with the established statement about the loop, this implies each time The Doctor "kills" himself he merely winds up in a younger body with his memory erased of everything that just happened, but still retains the same consciousness ready to start the loop again. It's still him. I analyzed that episode for a while looking for clues, because the idea of The Doctor, the original rendition, dying and a copy stands in his place, doesn't gel with me. I fully expect disagreements, but from a story telling standpoint, killing off all your characters does seem pretty grim
I do feel in Twice Upon A Time he makes the statement that the memory duplicates aren't real because this time, they ARE actually just copies, which he does properly establish
This duplication reminds me of The Prestige and the show Living With Yourself (with Paul Rudd). Also, River's story is even darker than that. It would hardly matter if River's data ghost WAS still her, because The Name of the Doctor revealed that her data ghost faded pretty quickly anyway. The Name of the Doctor is River's final death.
I can't really agree with ya here Wholmes, a person is not their body but their soul, experiences, and personality, and the episode implies that River's exact soul is uploaded, not a copy of it, no matter how that works in-universe. It doesn't matter that you can't copy carbon to digital in our universe because the episode SAYS they do. Just because we understand that we can't doesn't mean in the show it doesn't happen.
You're assuming there is a soul, which is fine if you believe in that, but its not cientific to *assume* that's the case when it comes to something like this.
However I do disagree as well. It's definitely made pretty clear in-universe that an individual's memories do make them genuinely that person.
We are Brothers in profile pictures
@@Sivanot They're assuming there's a soul *in the show,* which we know is the case because it's been outright stated at points (eg. the Fisher King using the souls of the dead as communications technology). And it's "soul" in quotes anyway, meaning a person's fundamental essence, not necessarily anything supernatural.
@@irrevenant3 They didn't specify they meant in the show, so I read it as more of "I believe this to be generally true therefore I assume it's the case here as well."
@@Sivanot They said "the episode implies that River's exact soul is uploaded, not a copy of it".
.
That makes clear that they were talking about the show. What they believe outside it is neither here or there for our purposes.
.
To put my personal cards on the table, I figure "soul" means the distinctive patterns that make you the person you are. And for that understanding of soul, duplication effectively *is* transfer.
You missed out the second part of the ship of Theseus. If you took all the original planks and sails and rebuilt them in the exact same way they once were, is that the original ship of Theseus or the one that has been rebuilt and replaced?
The mechanism of how "Heaven Sent" kept creating the same copy of The Doctor really gave me chills when I first watched it. And for much the reason you said.
I haven't played Soma (and won't) but I watched a streamer play it. The twist at the end threw her for a loop, and all of us watching! It was a seriously dark moment. And the scene where we saw Simon on the Ark is a *post-credits* scene!
This reminds me so much of the novel "Shifting Reality" by Patty Jansen. The piece of tech core to this novel is in fact being able to copy consciousnesses and re-upload them into human beings (either real or synthetic). Wealthy people use thus as a way of 'taking holidays' to another space station because these scans can be sent at the speed of light, but bodies cannot.
It's also suggested that the end of each cycle before he's killed, the Doctor recalls all the previous experiences which is the real torture to get him to give up his secret. He remembers the billions (if not trillions) of deaths, and yet he kept going.
I think about it like regeneration. Sure they don’t look the same but underneath they just are. If you treat them any differently then it’s the same as suddenly starting to treat the original version differently, like how Amy treats the flesh version of the doctor which is why you should say yeah they’re dead but they’re also still alive.
Best response
I mean like, just picture the doctor off screen explaining that they figured a work around for this paradox by adding "quantum flim-flam inhibitors" or some nonsense and suddenly problem solved. This is a sci-fi show with a time travelling bigger on the inside police box, surely it's within this show's suspension of disbelief that the technology exists to genuinely transfer someone and not just copy them, especially in an episode in the far future. The doctor definitely did die in heaven sent though, but the episode was so explicit about the teleporter being a cloning device that that might as well have been common knowledge
I'm going to be honest that I don't agree with you on the premise. If I met another version of me who was an exact duplicate up to a certain point in time and then presumably had different experiences, that person is still me; we are the same person just different bodies.
River did survive but she also died; as her physical body died but a new digital body survived. This is even more a certainty given how the digital version literally has the same memories and the same personality as the physical version up to the moment she died and only then diverged.
This is why if I met this hypothetical copy of me I wouldn't be questioning who the original is because it doesn't actually matter.
It's one of those thought experiments that has no definitive answer to, and it's also not really worth thinking about that much since it hinges on a bunch of scifi tech that may not actually be feasible. Plus in the case of River, if that is the only copy and form in which she survives, then that version of her is effectively her because it's the only extant one.
It's the Human goal to be remembered, or substantiated, after death. If you can exist in some form after death, then you've won.
The argument in the video assumes that someone would want to be cut off at some point.
River being immortalised as a digital copy is better than her just dying, because something lives on. The Doctor dying and coming back in Heaven Sent is better than him just dying, because to the Time Lords he has information, but to himself he gets more chances and time to escape. Being teleported is better than just dying, because some form of you lives on where it's needed.
@@dominickeijzer5844 well the Doctor can't actually die because he's the protagonist of the series and Heaven Sent is also an obvious metaphor for something else.
Dying but still existing in some other form is a nice sentiment, but it doesn't necessarily always make for satisfying storytelling. Honestly not letting characters die and instead creating these convoluted situations where they still live on but are effectively dead to the Doctor is like one of the biggest flaws with the Moffatt era.
@@DioBrandoWRYYYYYY You miss the point. People often use the phrase that you die twice. Once when your heart stops beating, and again when your name is said for the last time. If you can exist and echo your own name, then you effectively never die. Some form of you, thought of forever, lives on. And that's better than just dying unknown.
I never mentioned convoluted ways that The Doctor never saw someone again. I used the example of Heaven Sent because it happened in the show and happened to The Doctor; it being a metaphor doesn't dampen my point.
@@dominickeijzer5844 yeah and there's funerary rights where a grave belongs to whoever is buried there as long as you can still read the name on the grave, which could be anywhere between decades and hundreds of years.
Moffat has already responded to this after confusion over heaven sent:
[Extract from The Sun Magazine]:
" Doing little to assuage their fears, Moffatt shot back: “He first teleported in [1964 story] The Keys of Marinus - he’s been a copy since then - deal with it, kid.”
Well, consider us told. "
It’s interesting that Moffatt later had the 12th doctor not acknowledge the copy of Bill in his last episode.
At 11:54 I'm sure you meant Donna Noble 3.0 - No.1 is the original flesh & blood human, No.2 is the digital copy and finally, No.3 is the version travelling with the Doctor.
I suspect that all the shenaigans in the Confession Dial were all in a digital simulation, because the device itself is apparently the size of a pocket-watch and so there really only ever were three versions 1)the original Doctor 2)after being scanned/vapourised and uploaded in the Confession Dial and 3) being teleported/resconstructed into the real world after chipping through the wall, which just seems like a continuous action (flash of light, stepping out) to him.
The confession dial was physical, it was just bigger on the inside since it was Timelord technology.
That was sort of explained in series 6 in "Almost human", when the Doctor considered his own flesh-replica just as much The Doctor as himself. It was Amy who couldn't accept it at first. Also since every cell in our bodies gets renewed every 7 years or so, that means that you yourself are version 3.0 or 4.0 or whatever of yourself, while previous versions of you are dead and you just have their memories)
P.s. Unlike humans with their fragile ego the Doctor can accept the idea of not being 'unique'.
Personally, I'd argue that while River and the like, *are* copies, that the doctor in heaven sent, is the doctor due to timelords being more dimensionally transcendent.
Based on certain reactions, it's even implied he ends up *remembering* all of his prior deaths upon reaching the wall which is why some cycles just end with him breakingdown and wait for the Veil to come.
He's the same doctor because he's connected to every version of him up to that point, with the memories being the sign of when his actual self/consciousness is restored to the current body. He's a timetraveler so every version of him, would be him, and remain him as his consciousness itself isn't bound to the physical flesh.
Theres also the matter of timelord science, for example I'd argue that, because the cloud that Missy uses to store human minds in Death in heaven is able to have things PHYSICALLY pass back into the land of the living. And that Missy herself can hop two and from using her weird wristband device, that there its more of a physical dimension that minds just before death get pulled into rather than simply uploaded.
Also it’s a mind prison, the Doctor himself wasn’t physically in the confession dial
@@tgiacin435 Is that official?
cause dude... the way he exits it was in no way mental, it just *drew* from his greatest fears.
@@craytherlaygaming2852 he doesn’t age the entire time he’s in there. If it was real, and the idea of teleportation killing you and making an exact copy means the Doctor has been dead since he was 2. Check out Diamanda Hagan’s twatty who review of hell bent, she goes more into detail why the confession dial is more of a mind prison than a physical prison
I alway had the theory the doctor leaving the dial is the same that entered it and the whole copy making was to prevent the simulation from ending and him then starting from zero again. I just cant imagine the time lords risking that he gets killed prematurely before telling them what they want to know.
@@rakdos36 of course not, that’s why I say it’s a mind prison controlled by the timelords to try and get the info about the hybrid otherwise the Doctor either died when he was 2, and every Doctor after is a copy, or he died in face the raven and is now a copy.
twice upon a time is about this. but also i think if i met a clone of myself who had all my same memories and experiences and held the same beliefs and was completely indistinguishable from me in every way, they'd just be me. the copy of river is still river. the copy of donna is still donna. the copy of the doctor is still the doctor. this isn't a ship of theseus situation. every part of them isn't changed.
I can't believe this man could lie to us (i have no idea what he lied about)
YEAH! (me neither)
What?
By this rationale the doctor died in The Keys of Marinus when we first see him use a teleport
If the copy of River in the library isn’t River, and if that’s the case, then the Doctor died when he was 2 when he used the T-mat to get from the moon to the earth. And any other time the Doctor was transmatted meaning there were at least two time the Doctor died before heaven sent. The moon base when he was 2, and the Big Brother house when he was 9
Oh damn -- I always thought the "The one of you that goes into the transporter will die, and a copy picks up where you left off" was a very new and niche concept; had no idea that it originated decades ago.
On that note, The Doctor has been transmatted/transported numerous times, such as The Sontoran Strategem, The Five Doctors and Resurrection of the Daleks, some of these involving instances where the Companions also teleported. It really does add a slightly unnerving element to each of these episodes when keeping this in mind.
It's even already than that. It's why Bones refuses to use a teleporter in the original Star Trek show.
13:37 By that logic, the Doctor died all the way back in the William Hartnel Era (1st Doctor) when he first went through a "transmat" (teleporter). Also, considering the Doctor's familiarity with transmat technology before he stepped into it during that episode, it's likely he had gone through a transmat before, which means we have NEVER even seen the original Doctor 1.0 (Chibnell's 'Timeless Child' nonsense notwithstanding.)
The same would be true of Danny Pink in the S8 finale, right?
Twice Upon a Time tackles the concept of "memories = same person ??" quite in-depth
Also like anyone who's ever teleported either using a vortex manipulator or project Indigo like Martha in Stolen Earth, Jack even warns her that she would die and be scattered into atoms.
I guarantee that Moffit was aware of the idea of the concept, given that it's been in the geek circles (of which I am a part) for decades when talking about Star Trek, made really relevant in TNG episode "Second Changes", and the concept even being called out in an episode of Enterprise. And guess what? Most people don't care because in the end, the copy is still a living, breathing, human being. Not to mention, Moffit himself directly referenced it when he had Matt Smith's Doctor call the digital River an echo.
Also, the Doctor at the beginning of Hell Bent would certainly not be Doctor 1.0. While I could have sworn I remembered the Doctor being "beamed" at some point, even if he hasn't been so on camera, it's a guarantee it would have happened off camera at some point.
Once you're done counting versions of River Song and Donna Noble, it's worthwhile to ask yourself just how many times Jim Kirk, Leonard McCoy and Spock got executed and reconstructed by the fateful words "beam me up".
Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Did you sleep last night? There was a version of you who existed, and felt tired, and so willingly surrendered consciousness, turning their identity off and giving in to oblivion. This morning (or this afternoon if you're a Uni student) a version of you with almost identical memories became conscious. Are you the same mind in the same body, or are you a brand new mind inhabiting the place where an older mind died?
Sweet dreams!
If I recall, the 11th Doctor even said explicitly to "River" in The Name of the Doctor that this version of her was just a copy, uploaded to the hard drive of the library computer. So I think Moffat did recognize that. After all, when exactly was she scanned? It wasn't just when she was about to die. So I think you're definitely correct on this, and Moffat at least eventually realized it.
As for Heaven Sent, I think there MAY be something different because time lords are inherently psychic, and the Doctor more so than many--he can talk doors into unlocking themselves through empathy, for crying out loud. And when he gets to the aszbantium wall and says, "Bird," he says, in his Storm Room/Tardis, "THAT's when I remember. Every time." Not "that's when I realize." And after all, he literally burns and disintegrates his original body to make the next one, each time. It is, after all, wibbly wobbly/timey wimey. The Doctor's mind may literally be able to travel into his newly constructed body rather than simply being recreated.
Great episode, I need to finish reading my copy of Reasons and Persons. But there are--in the real word at least--interesting twists to the whole teleportation thing. In order to make an actual copy of a being, a complete one, one would have to measure and duplicate the quantum state of each particle of the person--probably using other, entangled pairs of particles--and that ALWAYS will destroy the original as it creates the quantum teleported new version. And according to quantum mechanics, a new "particle" with the same quantum state as the other is literally the same particle.
I wrote a story called Son of Man in which the copying/destroying problem was gotten around by going through complex time, so one could scan the original orthogonal to ordinary spacetime and thus not disturb the original particles. I'm not trying to plug it, though it is available on Kindle Unlimited, and it deals with some of the issues of perfect copies versus originals and moral culpability or lack thereof for what's been done, using a metaphor of god the father, god the son, separate but consubstantial and all that.
Anyway, that was a tangent. GREAT video as always!
He doesn't call her a copy, he just knows she can't leave the library computer without mentally linking with someone. He still treats and loves her the same as he ever did.
Doesn't it take something like a month for every living cell in your body to have had every atom in it completely replaced? Does that mean every month you're a new copy of yourself?
This has always been my thinking. You could argue that our existence is only fleeting, we have the memories of our lives from moments before the present but we are *not* the same entity. Only an entity that has a memory of before.
"Poor River Song. Sacrificing herself to plug in a cord."
"River Song lives on in the memory of the Library."
"WELL THAT'S ALL RIGHT, THEN!"
Well done, sir!😅
A concept the Prestige did the best. " it took courage. Never knowing if I would be the man in the box or on the stage"
The scary thing about this concept is, even if its untrue and you ARE transferred... you still can never prove it as you would never know if you were you or the copy
Basically it's just a long winded way of asking if there is a soul
I never realized how big a theme this is throughout the whole show. Personally, I am of the opinion that identity and consciousness is all about memory, and therefore if someone's consciousness is transferred or uploaded then it is still the exact same person, and this is true within the Doctor Who universe. There's the episode Twice Upon a Time, where the whole point is that even though Bill physically died, the glass copy of her is still entirely her because she has the same memories. Also, there's the episodes with the gangers (The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People) where the validity of the identity of the flash avatars is debated, but ultimately we come to the conclusion that these avatars literally are the people that they're copies of and have just as much of a right to exist. That little boy's dad is replaced by the flesh avatar, but it's still his dad.
Something that I think is really interesting is the situation with the metacrisis doctor. It's established that he has the exact same memories as the doctor and is the doctor in every way except physical. I've heard a lot of debate surrounding Rose ending up with him and not the "real" doctor. The doctor's conciousness got split in two. There's a version of the doctor who ended up with Rose and a version who didn't. The version of the doctor who ended up with Rose is the same doctor who travelled with her, loved her, lost her, missed her, and found her again. Same goes for the other doctor, but now he loses her again. From this point onwards, however, they become different people, or at least different versions of the same original person. One of them is a time lord who regenerates and will live on for thousands of years, travelling through time and space, and the other is a human who will settle down and grow old with Rose. Both of these lives happen to the doctor, but only one version gets to experience each of them. This is potentially comparable to the likes of a Mickey/Ricky situation, where they're the same person but from a parallel universe so really not the same person at all. I don't really remember where I was going with this lmao and I don't know if any of it makes any sense but I just think it's an interesting thing to think about.
I always hated Moffat's "everyone lives" mentality, because it never felt like he was doing it for the audience's benefit but rather because he was too in love with his own characters, creating these convoluted and unsatisfying scenarios where a nice and proper death scene would have served better.
What happens here and in Soma is almost exactly like what happens with Testimony in Twice Upon a Time. Maybe you should make a follow up video that talks about what was said and done in Twice Upon a Time.
I guess, the same could be true for when the 9th doctor said “everybody lives” in the Doctor Dances.
McCoy doesn’t like teleportation either . “Spraying my atoms all over the universe “ 😊
I try not to take this show too literally, but it works metaphorically, too. In Silence in the Library, we’re seeing the Doctor’s unwillingness to truly accept loss. In Heaven Sent, the show is saying you’re not the same person after intense grief.
I forgot Moffat did Press Gang. Press Gang was brilliant; it was Moonlighting meets Grange Hill.
There have been several works of science fiction and delve into this theory of clones being copies or a continuation, including a pretty thought provoking Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. What we can either also conclude that you’re just a copy of yourself, as in every seven years, your body has completely replaced all of your cells. When you replace all parts of a ship, one piece at a time, it’s still the same ship, if you consider how living beings replace all of our cells. When you get your organs replaced due to organ failure, or whatever, your new organ is still your new organ, if it hasn’t rejected you, and one by one, you replace parts of your body. Until you only have your brain left, the only part of you that’s you, because of your memories and consciousness. Once we learn to transfer our consciousness and memories, then you’ll be a copy of you, but you’ll also be yourself version 2.0 in laymen’s term, but technically, you’ve been replacing yourself at a molecular level since your conception.
It's why physicists refer to consciousness as "the hard question." The brain is simply hardware and we have no idea how consciousness really works. This was the dark ending of The Prestige. DARPA is investigating memory implantation and removal to control soldiers and covert operators and to heal PtSD (though I doubt simply removing a memory can remove the damage as we've seen trauma carried genetically).
River dies but a digital copy with her memories is uploaded to the Library. Oh well that’s alright then.
RTD also played with this concept in Years and Years. A character's consciousness/memories were uploaded into a (water?) computer. But he kept it open-ended and didn't really confirm whether it worked.
I’ve always thought about this. My gramps in 2005 mentioned how computers will upload our consciousness. But I thought…isn’t that just a copy. Unless it’s the actual material and person then it can only ever be a copy.
teleportation would make you scream - it would be so painful! And wouldn't you need resuscitation at the other end?
Well in heaven sent the doctor needs "energy" for the teleporter to work. The scene does make it seem like its just enery to power the device but the fact that he plugs it into his head and you see some regeneration energy type effects going on suggests that that this is something metaphysical, that the doctor's soul is being transported. This also explains how the doctor seems to remember all the past attempts when he gets to the azbantium room and says "i cant keep doing this." I think this solves the paradox, you cant just keep 3D printing as many doctors as you want, river song's soul is uploaded into the computer along with the digital information of her consciousness and donna noble is the same donna noble just potentially composed of other atoms. Not entirely scientifically grounded, but its doctor who.
The Doctor has been teleported many times in the classic series, say Five Doctors and the Death zone, or the fourth Doctor’s debut season, or Mawdryn undead. By your argument we haven’t seen the real Doctor since the Keys of Marinus.
When Moffat wrote Silence In The Library, I'm not sure he ever intended to bring River back again. She was seen more as a one-off character. Therefore whether she was truly alive or not had less consequence and demanded less scrutiny.
I have a better question for you. If Donna and the others died and their consciousness were copied 1:1 to the library... what happened to their bodies? Where are they? They're never shown. After they're "reinstated" to physical form... where did these bodies came from? Some of these people have been in the library for decades, wouldn't their bodies be already gone? Why are we not finding piles of corpses or bones from the people who died and got uploaded to the library?
Because their bodies were saved. As the Doctor explained, CAL used emergency teleport to get everyone out, but the emergency teleport can only teleport people from one place in the library to another place in the library. But because nowhere in the entire library was safe from the Vashta Nerada, CAL kept their minds and bodies safe in the hard drive
Well,using your logic, we saw the Doctor die as Tom Baker before Genesis of the Daleks, because he,Harry and Sarah Jane ended up on Scaro when the time lords diverted his transmat beam.
the fact that so much work went into those folder names we saw for about 3 seconds,,,
This is true which also means that Donna and the others are not the originals either as they were converted into digital forms within that matrix and then converted back same as any other transporter. Same is true of Martha in the series 4 finale.
Now as for The Vortex Manipulator or the crossing between worlds device, That all depends on if they work like a transporter does or if they just shunt the body into a different world or time rather than breaking it down.
Gotta love that philosophy argument. If it is the sum of your experience that makes you or the physical form? So the question is if you remember everything up to the point that the other ends then does it matter?
That means Capaldi's Doctor was the last one, and everything after is not Doctor Who. I like that.
That reminds me of a book series.
"Boy in a dead End" and "Boy in a white Room" explain the concept of transferring a consciousness very good.
The series is about a boy, who is slowly dying and he is being offered to get his consciousness digitalised. And the scientists explain, that his brain will be scanned and his consciousness copied, but the brain will be destroyed in the process. In the end, the boy agrees to it but loses all his memory and he is a real artificial intelligence in the end
I think you might be right all the way up to the confession dial because you’re missing one simple thing, what was never pointed out how he entered what happened when he entered and how he exit it.
If you saw him open the door and walk out, then you would be right, I would say It’s a new copy of the doctor, but there is no enter or exit of the confession dial.
How’s this for second idea for you then the confession dial actually takes you into a new space like the tardis, an alternate dimension where you are putting stasis and you are plugged in into the virtual world exactly like a video game, and every time he dies he’s reset back like it shown in the it doesn’t actually mean that he is actually dying. It just means that he’s being reset to a particular safe point inside the professional dial and it never actually points out if he actually remembers Doing any of it he just shows himself going through the entire motion every single time time in time out time in time out that could just be the way he knows that he will survive the confession dial. If he doesn’t do it this way he may die.
So when you see him leave onto the planet, it is exactly the same copy that enters the confession dial, not a new one
This being a work of fiction implies that the writer literally decides the implications of the tecnology they use. Just because something can't be explained in the real world doesn't mean it can't be real in fiction. The real world's rules (theories, tests, expiriences) don't apply here.
in my mind you are your memories, and if i lost all my memories that would mean i who i am now would be dead. and so if all my memories are transferred to somewhere else then that's me
you're choosing for it to be darker you can make the same argument for Bill, Nardole, and others. also just any time ANYBODY uses a teleport ever
By this logic the Doctor has "died" every time he's teleported in any episode. This is more a philosophical debate than a straight "lie". What is consciousness? Do memories make the man? I don't think we can definitely say that River "died" when she was uploaded because the same memories live on in a new form. Are the memories "River" or the body?
I'd say the episodes with the gangas depicted the nightmarish scenario of copies finding out that they are copies pretty well
Thing is during our life our cells are repeatedly replaced. We're all a biological ship of Theseus. So even without brain scans and transporters and so on we're still just ongoing copies.
I didn't know how much I needed a Stephen Moffat version of the "Obama giving himself a medal" meme until I watched this video
as Moffatt himself already mentioned, the doctor has been a clone since the first doctor, there was an episode where the first doctor dies and a copy of him, Ian, Barbara and Susan go on.
1984??? Dude, the teletransportation paradox was introduced LONG before that. It's the entire basis for the problem in Star Trek's _The Enemy Within_ episode by Richard Matheson, and the classic 1976 Star Trek fan story "Ni'var," by Claire Gabriel, in which new transporter protocols are experimented with precisely to deal with this concern.
It was the Doctor's old friend, Ashildr, that eventually executed the plan, teleporting the Doctor inside his own Confession Dial and handing it over to the Time Lords. He spent over 4.5 billion years trapped inside the prison, chased by a creature that only showed mercy when he confessed details about the Hybrid.
I'm pretty sure Time lords are able to get around this conundrum with their 4th Dimensional biology or whatever.
Will always wonder what Moffat's real story was...
The God Complex: "Do you know, there's a planet whose name literally translates as Volatile Circus?"
Volatile Circus = RAM Disk.
This debate is one of my favorite things to think about, because I am firmly of the camp that "yes, that person is you."
The things that make up something are irrelevant. It's the memories that are important. The Ship of Theseus may have been repaired to the point where every part of it is a new part, but it's still the Ship of Theseus. The memories the crew had of sailing on it, the battles it's seen and places it's visited, that's the important part, that's what makes it the ship, not some dinky ass wood.
If a clone of me has all my memories, remembers trivial things like where i grew up or what my childhood friend was named, then they're me. It doesn't matter whether or not they were born from a womb or created by a cloning pod, they are me.
Yes! and this is why we do not clone people.
Great video! I noticed you didn't mention "The Keys of Marinus" where the Doctor and company die the first time from this.
Every molecule in our bodies is replaced roughly every seven years, and our memories are basically just our neurons playing telephone, so does it really make a difference?
The last thing I expected when clicking on this video is to hear Pat ranting about how teleports aren't real lmao
The Teletransportation Paradox is a prime example of sweating the small stuff. There's no true meaning in contemplating it unless the transported "2.0" version of you loses rights for teleporting, digitizing, etc. If no loss of person, mind or rights occurs for the transportation/copying, then those of us that do not suffer from "Transporter Phobia" as shown in Star Trek with Leonard McCoy and Reginald Barkley, shouldn't sweat it.
Star Trek: "Hold my pint"
The thing to understand about computers is that when moving data, it is always a copy. Everything else is a metaphor for the outcome. If I copy a file, the original remains intact. If I move a file, on certain systems, the directory or index information on the file is changed, but nothing happens to the file. Until you verify, it is safe to assume a copy is made and the original is deleted, the file appears to have moved, but it did not. It was copied.
The River Song "living in the library computer" is a SIMULATION of River. Not even a copy. River is dead.
You would hate the show Dollhouse. 😅
The Doctor has been using teleportation devices for ages, since the beginnings of the show. I remember T-Mat in Seeds of Death off the top of my head, but yeah, the current Doctor is really the 742nd Doctor or something by now.
But on Earth what was T-MAT replaced with? The Interstitial Mass Transit system, which would eventually go Interstellar with the STUNNEL. These worked by shoving a bit of matter, or a person, through a portal that linked 2 points via a different dimension, and popped them out the other side whole and intact. Quantum movement based on space folding would work the same, there would be no destruction of form and recreation. So if not all teleport systems kill you, then why not digital copying if it Isn't copying? What if, computing in the far future doesn't take place in Cyber-space as we know it, but in order to have infinite space to store data, we instead use a different dimension similar to hyperspace to store data. We're talking miles ahead of quantum computing, but Extra-dimensional computing. Who is to say that physical objects or beings could not penetrate this space in a very real and tangible way?
9:20 Yes, this is Impossible so far as we know within our current understanding of how modern computing works. We don't have the scientific comprehension of how to transfer yet, no more than the caveman can fathom the internal combustion engine. It is possible there is a way, we just don't even have the field of study yet to even fully imagine it being a real possibility yet. But that could change. Either the way I postulate above, or in some way none of us have thought of yet. We've got centuries and millennia of future scientist to build on the work of one another to suss it all out eventually.
Oh and my theory works for explaining the Library but not Heaven Sent, that does seem like copy after copy, so yeah, you got me on a way out of that being death and the Doctor just being a copy.
Came across this same theory as a Star Trek fan. Technically, no character in Star Trek is the original person who was born of their mothers and retains the same consciousness. You can count the number of times each character is transported throughout each series, and that is not even close to the number of copies of them that have been made, as they all had years of service in Starfleet (or whatever organization they were part of) long before we come across them as characters in their storylines.
Interestingly, Will Riker unwittingly comments on this issue in the second season TNG episode "Up the Long Ladder":
"One William Riker is... unique, perhaps even special, but a hundred of him, a thousand of him... diminishes me in ways I can't even imagine."
Donna was transported before the library episodes when she was pulled from her wedding onto the TARDIS. So she was already a copy. The Doctor had been transported many times before the episode as the 12th doctor, and River had been transported before the library as well. So none of them were originals by the time they reached the library.
WELL this was a fairly toothless one, I don't think I'm gonna finish this. This is like an ancient philosophical debate
This is exactly why I wouldn't want to be immortalised in a digital reality, because I'd still be dying, and a copy of me would be living on. I'm good thanks 😂
The whole nature of regeneration that has been shared so far means the second doctor was doctor 2.0 since the body is broken down and reformed into a new body but with the same memories (brain scan) the 3rd is 3.0 and so on. Which gets even worse abd more confusing if you throw in the timeless child.
Interesting idea, but how would you deal with Captain Jack Harkness? He can't die so does that mean every time he teleports, a new copy of himself is created but the original lives on? The copy would carry on with Jack's life thinking he had been teleported but the previous Jack would be left wondering why he didn't teleport.
For the moment, I'll leave aside the idea of Jack meeting himself as RUclips probably wouldn't allow such shenanigans.
I suppose it depends on how teleporters work in Dr Who. Do they actually send the structure across? Would they need to break the structure down? If so, COULD they break Jack down? I mean, if he IS the face of Bo, then he isn't technically immortal, just really hard to kill. Maybe he has a limited amount of deaths, kinda like the original idea of regeneration. It really raises a lot of questions we never actually get any answers to.
Love your videos! You’re my go to when it comes to Doctor who.
Arguably not darker than I thought, because that's exactly how I would assume 'transference' of experience to be. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm likely to wonder if there is some sort of way to actually transfer consciousness given the available technology, since the Doctor is so convinced he's saving River rather than just creating an eternal digital memory of someone he wishes didn't die. Unless the Doctor is just some sort of vain egomaniac who needs to present the idea of having saved someone's life (which, admittedly, might not be entirely inaccurate). But then, also, light entertainment sci-fi can often be kind of hand wavy about what all this sort of stuff means - if it's all vague and unexplained I have to assume that it does exactly how the writer believes it works, because that's the story they're telling.
The argument is silly. To reduce it to the absurd, past you can never be future you because only future you can remember the time in between. Past you has died, apparently and is no more.
I always thought this about the 12th Doctor. The original died in the scanner, but there were multiple duplicate copies.
I think therefore I am.
See a ship is many parts, but what makes you, you? It's only your brain, your thinking. If you were a brain in a jar, you'd still be you, so a brain in a computer is still you. Therefore infinite lives is possible......I'd say a computer could never 100% replicate how a human thinks, but I could be wrong and Moffat wrote it like it was possible.