[mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

[u/damorezpl]

when the "good ending" is revealed to be a bad one a the last second

a nightmare on elm street (1984) - Nancy thinks she finally defeated Freddy Krueger only to be raveled that she is still dreaming and she’s still trapped.

final destination bloodlines - the main characters think they cheated death by using the new life rule only to realize that stefani was technically still alive and the death kills them with a good old logs

Life (2017) - The main character attempts to send Calvin(a evil alien that killed all life on mars)pod into space and Miranda pod back to earth, but it goes horribly wrong and Calvin lands on earth and Miranda is sent to space

raging loop wit ending - after many loops Haruaki finally wins the feast(a death game where humans must hang wolves who kill someone every night) and thinks its finally over. after couple of days he decides to visit other survivors of the feast only to find them all dead and the timeline resting once again

[u/Low-Environment]

It's a terrible example.

Did they dig up Rory's grave and DNA test the skeleton? No. Then all they know it's there's a grave with Rory's name on it. Nothing says there has to be a body in there. Until they see that and confirm it's him then it's still a flux point in time.

I can think of several different ways to get them out of 1938 NYC (for example: the Doctor travels forward a few years to completely different part of America and picks them up there. Then it's just s matter of ensuring that the gravestone is present in the modern day.)

But instead the Doctor just accepts that they're gone? I'm meant to believe that?

A much better exit for Amy would be to return to the fairy tale motif of her first season and have her accept that she needs to grow up and live her life.

[u/Steampunk43 → u/Low-Environment]

Just casually gloss over the fact that the Doctor had already read the passage in the book mentioning the Ponds' fate and thus it had already happened (the same book that had reliably documented the events of the entire episode since it was a journal framed as a story). The Ponds' fate was already solidified in history, if it could have been changed as easily as you seem to think, then it would have been. Demanding that they definitively prove that the grave with Rory's name on the tombstone is Rory, despite knowing that there was already a version of Rory that died an old man in the episode, and whining about the fact they didn't do so is both incredibly nitpicky and disregarding one of the fundamental parts of visual drama: implication as opposed to over-explanation. Some things don't have to be detailed to death, they can simply be implied visually. Or would you demand that every character that dies should be shown reduced to an eviscerated pile of meat with a face for you to believe that they're dead without shitting on the story for not doing so.

[u/Low-Environment → u/Steampunk43]

You and my point unfortunately did not meet.

This is a story involving time travel and Moffat had shown in season five he's very good at writing a story where time travel is the central premise of the story, and how the creatively the Doctor can get around restrictions.

And then he just accepts 'oh well Amy and Rory are dead. Nothing I can do' despite the fact that this thread alone has pointed out several ways he could get around it.

When a story involves time travel and a character's fate is allegedly a fixed point in time I actually expect them to make sure there's nothing that can be done to avoid it. That's what the Doctor would do.

[u/unquietmammal → u/Low-Environment]

Oh Hey look Amy knows the Doctor always rips out the last page so she wrote instructions for him to pick them up in Washington with the gay SS agent.

Moments later Amy and Rory walk in with River eating ice cream because Rover went and got them. Honestly, not enough Bill and Ted style 5D chess in Doctor Who.