Doctor Who Goes Bill & Ted

Got to view the Season Five finale over the weekend, and it left me very, very angry.

The show has never been big on clear cut rules of time travel.  But there have always been certain things that they seem dedicated to avoiding just on the grounds of common sense.

This weekend, for the first time in 31 seasons, they stooped to Bill & Ted time travel.  Specifically, the current version of the Doctor is rescued repeatedly by a future version of himself...a version who could only exist if the current version was indeed rescued.  It's the equivalent of Bill and Ted commenting "After all this is done, we've got to remember to go back in time and drop an anvil on this guy's head," and then see an anvil fall out of the sky.  (Ok, it probably wasn't an anvil.  It's been a LONG time since I watched it.  But you get the picture.)

Bill & Ted got away with it because it was a comedy.  It wasn't supposed to be taken seriously.  But Doctor Who is a tad more serious.  More importantly, it's a series.  By allowing such a ridiculous mechanism to work, the writers have removed any future challenge to the Doctor.  Someone can always say "Well, why doesn't a future version of himself just rescue him again?"

And they didn't just do it once: the entire episode is rife with it.  It's like it was mocking those of us who expect competent writing.

In addition, most of this nonsense was yet again accomplished through the random introduction of a piece of technology. This time it's a bracelet that can time travel.  Apparently it can do everything the Doctor's TARDIS (which is large and bulky) can do, except it fits on your wrist.  Thanks for making the staples of the show obsolete, all because you were too lazy to write a real plot.

Finally, I'm left with a few, teeny, tiny questions, like:

• Why does Rory eventually remember the events of the episode, even though he was very, very dead for all of it?
• Why I am expected to believe that the power of one person remembering the Doctor can pull him across the boundaries of the universes?
• Did the villians really create fake Romans in *real* Roman Britain?
• BTW, how does basing their inventions off of things in Amy's head make it more compelling mystery to attract the Doctor?  I mean, other than it allowing River Song to easily figure it out by wandering through Amy's bedroom.
• Why, as the universe is collapsing, is the Earth the last to succumb, especially since the Sun was already eradicated?
• Why, if the TARDIS is exploding in all point of space-time, it also just happens to be burning in space at the exact right location to keep the Earth livable?
• Why, if the villians could finally agree on working together to get rid of the Doctor, could they not comprehend that getting rid of the Doctor does not stop the TARDIS from exploding, which was their ultimate goal?
• The Pandorica needs living DNA of Amy to revive Amy.  Check.  Yet it only needs one molecule of the universe to revive the universe?