The Curious Case of Orson Pink

Author's Note: Nothing is more disappointing and frustrating than working long and hard on something only to have it erased by a button.  I had a much lengthier post about this situation, but somehow it got erased and I could not recover it.  I'm most frustrated because I put a lot of effort into it.  However, I'm not going to be defeatist.  I'm just going to make it shorter and more direct.

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

In Listen, a well-praised Doctor Who episode, we were introduced to Orson Pink, which the episode strongly suggested was the descendant of Danny/Rupert Pink and/or Clara Oswald.

Well, in The Wrath of Missy Parts 1 & 2 (Dark Water/Death in Heaven), Danny was killed off without having children.  Clara, perhaps, might have been pregnant (a curious Post-It reading "Three Months" was seen).  However, SHE was killed off in Face the Raven.  She was not shown to have given birth.

Now, in Listen, Orson Pink had a family heirloom, a toy soldier, ostensibly the same toy soldier Clara had given Rupert/Danny as a child.  He also talks about how his great-grandparents told him stories of time-travel.  Granted, Listen never overtly stated Orson WAS Danny and/or Clara's descendant, but it strongly suggested it.

With both Danny and Clara dead, we are faced with a quandary.

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

Kyle Anderson, carrying water for The Moff, came up with some interesting theories via Twitter (before he blocked me): that time can be rewritten, that Danny wasn't dead, or that Orson wasn't Danny and Clara's descendant.

Moffat himself in Doctor Who Magazine offers that Orson may be descended from another branch of the Pink family (one of Anderson's theories).  Clara went to them and gave them the toy soldier, and from them sprung Orson.

I argue that theory makes no sense.  If it was Rupert/Danny's brother, Stanislav Pink, he himself didn't travel through time and space.  Come to think of it, neither did Danny.  He was always waiting for Clara to come back from one of her many journeys, but as far as I remember never travelled in the TARDIS itself.

Furthermore, Rupert/Danny was in a children's home (read, an orphanage).  Where were these phantom Pinks all the time he was away in this lonely place?  Or was he adopted by a family with the same surname, or adopted and allowed to keep his original last name?

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

For me, this is yet another example of a larger issue: Doctor Who's inability to have any sense of continuity.  I found a few examples to back up my idea.

Series Five's The Eleventh Hour: Amelia Pond is left waiting by the Doctor, and she grows angry and resentful regarding her "raggedy man".
Series Seven's The Angels Take Manhattan: Amelia Pond is visited by the Doctor early the next morning after her encounter, with him correctly dressed.

For the sake of an admittedly cute scene, Steven Moffat, who wrote both episodes, contradicted himself.  He also erased two season's worth of character development. What was Amy's motivation, her emotional arc?  Her anger at The Doctor for leaving her waiting as a child.  With The Angels Take Manhattan, she wasn't left waiting.  The Doctor came to her, late but now by mere hours rather than years.  Therefore, why did she have this anger for years, or say he didn't show up when he clearly did, or go on about a 'raggedy man/Doctor' when he wasn't in regeneration rags when she technically saw him last? 

Series Six's The Doctor's Wife: The TARDIS in human form tells the Doctor she picked him.
Series Seven's The Name of The Doctor: Clara is shown telling the First Doctor which TARDIS to pick.

For the sake of showing how important Clara (and by extension, Steven Moffat) is to Doctor Who, Moffat contradicted The Doctor's Wife, which was written by Neil Gaiman.

Series Seven's Asylum of the Daleks: Oswin (a version of Clara that spread through time and space), is able to say "I'm Human, I am NOT A Dalek" clearly, with the Doctor able to hear her exact words.
Series Nine's The Witch's Familiar: Clara, inside a Dalek, says "I'm human" but it ends up coming out as "I am a Dalek".

For the sake of drama, Steven Moffat, who wrote both episodes, contradicted himself.

Series Eight's Listen: a figure named Orson Pink, who looks like Danny/Rupert Pink, has as a 'family heirloom' a toy soldier that originally belonged to Danny Pink.
Series Eight's Dark Water/Death in Heaven: Danny Pink is killed, turned into a Cyberman (albeit one who cries), with no known children.
Series Nine's Face the Raven: Clara Oswald is killed, with no known children.

It cannot be both.  There can be no Orson Pink if he has no ancestors.  Orson Pink cannot exist. 

Yes, I know Moffat said Orson was descended from another branch of the Pink family, but I cannot accept speculation in Doctor Who Magazine as Canon.  As previously stated, Rupert/Danny had no known family, no known children (legitimate/illegitimate), and with him dead he could not father the child who would become Orson's grandfather (assuming Danny would have been Orson's great-grandfather who told him time-travel stories).

With Clara dead and without her having children, she could not have been related to Orson Pink either (which makes her connection to the Pink family that got her sent to the children's home where Rupert/Danny lived in all the more bizarre given she was using the TARDIS' telepathic link that should have been keyed into HER lifestream, not Danny's).

By killing off BOTH Danny Pink AND Clara Oswald, Steven Moffat, writer of two of the three stories (Listen and The Wrath of Missy Parts 1 & 2, with Face the Raven written by Sarah Dollard with Moffat as the showrunner/producer), Steven Moffat has essentially rendered Listen illogical and impossible. 

If Danny and Clara are both dead and without having had children, Orson (assuming he was indeed meant to be the descendant of either one or both of them) cannot exist.
If Orson cannot exist, he cannot be the first human time-traveler.
If Orson cannot be the first human time-traveler, the events of Listen could not have taken place.
If the events of Listen could not have taken place, Clara could not have gone to Gallifrey to inspire the future Doctor on his course to being the Time Lord he grew to be.

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

I cannot find a way, a logical way, to reconcile the contradictions and discontinuity between the events of Listen and those of both The Wrath of Missy Parts 1 & 2 and Face the Raven.  At least Back to the Future, which faced a similar situation with the future children perhaps not being born due to changes in the past, made things logical.  Doctor Who can't be bothered to do that.  More on that in a bit.

Going on to the other contradictory episodes, one thing is clear.

It cannot be both. 

IF Oswin could say "I'm not a Dalek.  I'm Human" and have it come out as such (despite being in reality a converted Dalek), how is it possible then for Clara, who is merely inside a Dalek, to have the exact same words come out completely differently?

It cannot be both. 

IF the TARDIS chose the Doctor, why would Clara tell him which TARDIS to take?

It cannot be both. 

IF the Doctor failed to return to Amelia until twelve years later, how was it he was shown returning the very next morning to a waiting Amelia?  Why would she maintain all that anger and keep referring to him as "the raggedy man/Doctor" if technically, the last time she saw him, he was perfectly dressed and not in the disheveled clothes from his regeneration?

And those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.  Therefore, I ask again...

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?

No television show gets away with such massive continuity errors as Doctor Who.  Moreover, no television show not only gets away with such massive continuity errors as Doctor Who, but actually gets praised for them as Doctor Who.

It's a curious thing to me that programs of all stripes, even soap operas, strive to maintain continuity, but Doctor Who not only doesn't bother to, but that this lack of continuity is seen as one of its strengths, not weaknesses.  I remember well when after asking about points of logic after The Day of The Doctor theatrical screening, the exasperated NuWhovian replied to me, "It's NOT SUPPOSE to make sense!  It's British!".  I can argue with the fact that it's British being the reason for its lack of logic, but from my vantage point this captures all that is wrong with NuWho and its fans (including professional rimmer Kyle Anderson).

Doctor Who, for them, is not about logic.  It's not about stories tying together as a cohesive whole.

It's about the emotional response.  It's about which Doctor Who episode can make them cry the most, the hardest, the loudest. 

I for the life of me cannot understand why NuWhovians would take the answer about how Orson Pink can be when Danny Pink is no longer with us either seriously or rationally.  I believe plot holes and continuity questions should be answered within the confines of an episode, not a writer's commentary in a magazine. 

Imagine if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, rather than answer the mystery in a Sherlock Holmes story, opted to give readers tidbits and then take to The Strand to give the answers.  Then again, most Sherlockians hold that ACD wasn't as good a writer of Holmes as Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, or even really bother to read Canon (which is thoroughly unimportant to them).

Yes, again and again Doctor Who contradicts itself, sometimes within the same series/season.  And again and again NuWhovians and critics don't seem too bothered with that.  Moffat takes the applause, the praise, the awards, but when it comes down to it he cannot keep things straight (not even his own writing).  However, he didn't have to worry about that then and doesn't have to worry about that now.

I figure we'll never get an answer to my original query, or on how Sherlock Holmes survived The Reichenbach Fall, or how a Dalek can say one thing one day, and NOT say the exact same thing another day, or when exactly the Doctor returned to Amy Pond, or how the "Ponds" could see themselves happily in the future in one episode only to be zapped back in time in another episode, or how Clara could read 'the name of The Doctor' in a book but have this big mystery built around 'the name of The Doctor' when the answer was so easily available (or who actually wrote The History of The Time War and manage to include 'the name of The Doctor' in it).

So long as you cried...

Alas, my question, in a shorter version than my original (but still wordy) essay, remains The Unanswered Question:

 

WHO BEGAT ORSON PINK?