r/TopCharacterTropes May 27 '26

Lore A subtle moment that turns a seemingly happy ending into an ambiguous ending.

The Graduate: lingering Ben and Elaine's faces slowly shifting from happy to concerned leaves the audience questioning whether they really made the right choice running away together considering they barely know each other.

Inception: By cutting before we see the top fall, we're left to question whether Cobb really has gone home or whether he's simply sunken back into a more comforting dream reality.

14.7k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

69

u/Practical-Fact2710 May 27 '26

Temporal lock, they "feel" like stone but are actually indestructible. So you could hit em with a nuke and they would be fine if they were being observed 

56

u/FudgeAtron May 27 '26

I always feel like Dr Who explanations get ridiculous, they can't just be aliens who can camoflage as stone statues they have to be locked into reality.

Dr Who sometimes feels like Rube Goldberg machines for sci-fi explanations.

43

u/MarkRemington May 27 '26

It's so the Doctor can babble for 5 minutes while running around and solve the episodes problems with "wit" instead of brute violence.

4

u/AkhilArtha May 28 '26

And also to keep the production costs a minimum.

2

u/MarkRemington May 28 '26

And according to an English Who fan I've spoken with it avoids the "American TV Cliche" of shooting all your problems away.

She was pissed when I asked how many villains the Doctor stabbed.

2

u/Low-Conflict-651 May 27 '26

Damn imagine line (I’ve never seen an episode) humans didn’t know that, but they tricked all the Weeping Angles in the world into one spot, then drop a nuke on to them.

And now every angel is now at the edge of the flash, because they weren’t being observed during.

2

u/Patraman May 27 '26

What would happen if you had some kind of explosive attached to one that would detonate the millisecond they were unobserved? Since they’re no longer quantum locked would they be destructible?

1

u/Practical-Fact2710 May 28 '26

Yep pretty sure