Death in Heaven

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  • #38833
    ichabod @ichabod

    @arbutus  Yes, Series 8 struck me as a very daring sort of story arc, actually — more like a tree, with a branch about mythic heroes, a branch about neurotic fears, a branch about the environment healing itself (and human helplessness and the destructiveness it can drive us to), and so on, all leading up to an open clash of ancient enemies and revelations.  I think a lot of the fans who hated the Series hated it because they’d become used to more conventional structure and this confused them, and confusion where the comfort of the familiar was hoped for can upset people a *lot* (another point about art and its functions, now that I think about it, in fact the function of cutting edge art although open warfare is not usually intended but does sometimes happen — see Charlie Hebdo in Paris).

     

    #38835
    lisa @lisa

    @arbutus @Janette and everyone That is a perfect quote. So why does MisMaster want to
    run the universe? Why did he turn into this sinister dystopian galifreyan that wants to
    re-engineer the universe? Was it Rasilon that injected him with something like a computer
    virus to do his bidding? There were hints about that in previous episodes. I think before
    that happened the Master was born a normal being of privilege into a utopian environment.
    It must have been before that change had happened that he knew joyous years with the Doctor.
    So that’s why I’m just guessing the affection confliction stuff is happening between them.
    I would really love to see more expansion on this because its one of my fav parts of the
    whole series puzzle but in small doses would be just terrific!

    #38847
    ichabod @ichabod

    @lisa — People who are desperate to control things are, in my experience, mainly motivated by fear of being fatally out of control, or controlled by others, at least at the outset; once established, the appetite for power feeds on itself and the connection to personal fear becomes obscured.  That’s why I am unconvinced by everybody calling Clara a “control freak”.  She’s not.  She has goals of her own (in Series 8, anyway) and tries to shape events to get her there (keeping two very different lives going simultaneously, for example), just as we all do if we want something badly (“Think about what you want most in the universe — “).

    On the other hand, she *does* try to control the Doctor’s behavior, some of the time — but that’s just another way of putting the notion that the companions are there to help curb the kinds of excesses and neuroses he’s inclined to when he’s on his own for too long with a bit of a wobble-wobble developing in his own moral compass as a result.  That’s not really being a “control freak” either — it’s a strictly situational behavior, so far as I can see, so I don’t accept Moffat’s thinking about Clara on this score at all, at least not in terms of her being a “control freak”.  The concept doesn’t fit her behavior, really.

    MissMaster now, *yes*, she’s my idea of the real thing — and she wants the Doctor to join her in being that, which is the purpose of handing him a whole army of dead/alive machines to control any way he sees fit rather than let them destroy the Earth he so prizes.  She’s a Master of indirect control, control by manipulation on a huge scale (suitable to a TL, of course).  And it’s far more typical of Moffat’s creative team to “solve” a problem by having the enemy’s weapon turn and cut him than to have love conquer all (although that’s not a bad pair of lessons to be teaching, when you think about it).

     

    #38855
    lisa @lisa

    @tenthdoctorftw Its amazing how dominant English as a global language is! I know the Internet
    has a lot to do with that. Id bet English was easier for you then ancient Greek. Your English
    is quite good.

    @ichabod Yes definitely Mismaster is a control freak! That’s never easy and often unpleasant.
    But where is the behavior coming from. I think perhaps he was a sensitive kid and was
    traumatized? So now he is insecure and it manifests itself as irrational control freak.
    Kudos to the Doctor for trying to manage Mismaster calmly and patiently!! Remember that the
    Mismaster keeps telling people to say something nice? He/she is hungry for praise because
    of feeling so undermined. So the Doctor thanks and praises and it has a positive
    effect but it wasn’t effective when the others said nice things. Shows that she respects
    the Doctor but no empathy for others.
    Btw- sounds like you might live in 1 of those mid century modern homes since you mention
    the flat roof? They are so super popular now. I recently saw something about Eichler in
    the LA Times and SF Examiner. I like them too. Especially the feeling of less is more
    in those designs.

    #38856
    TenthDoctorFtw @tenthdoctorftw

    @lisa Definately, I can speak English but I can’t speak Ancient Greek for sure. I started learning English earlier than I did Ancient Greek. I got my last diploma in English when I was 15. English has become an international language. Everyone can speak it now, if not well at least the basics. In school its a compulsory (if that’s the right word) lesson. They teach you the basics and then you have to take private lessons to advance.

    #38859
    lisa @lisa

    @ichabod – I really never felt that the Doctor would ever relinquish control of the
    situation to Mismaster. The Doc never lets her get away with manipulative games.

    I agree with you about Clara. She isn’t a total control freak but she does have
    insecurities that effect her judgement . She needs to feel that she is competent
    and up to the Doctors faith in her, Its been a turf season for her. I still think
    going into next season she is a little fragile.

    #38860
    ichabod @ichabod

    @lisa   I think MissMaster not only respects the Doctor — she’s utterly obsessed with him, and with some kind of fixation on their childhood days together, which she probably doesn’t remember accurately anyway, being more or less certifiable from way back.   As somebody else noted here earlier, she’s basically a crazy stalker, wants to own the Doctor, probably at some level wants to *be* the Doctor — very dangerous, and sad, too, which is certainly how the Doctor sees her and why his response is so compromised (she is a murderer, after all, so in some sense *any* effort to kill her is basically a defensive move — as with the CyberArmy that she wants the Doctor to use to murder sentient beings all over the place, and add their nervous systems or whatever to the Army that killed the).

    I did live in a flat-roofed house for about 15 yrs, when we first came to the southwest; it’s SW or “pueblo” style, like many homes here (even the wood frame ones can be made to imitate the softer, more organic lines of a mud-brick home, which is what adobe is).  It had been built by a latino guy right after WWII, behind the much older little farmhouse up front on the same property, so he could holler back and forth from the porch to family members living in the front house; then, the story goes, he slugged his brother in law with a rock, killing him in the backyard, and this being the still rather wild west, his punishment was that he had to leave the neighborhood, so the place was sold.  The house, an adobe cottage of one story, really, had a traditional roof on it — cedar rafters, planking, and a layer or two of cut turf bricks on top of that that were supposed to keep off (absorb?  Grass grew up there!) the rain, if any came.  Then, when that got leaky, a tarpaper and pitch layer, and another on top of that, and we had to add one more because with that kind of construction, when you get leaks the water can get into the walls and, well, melt them.

    It was tiny, with walls about 2′ thick, and we loved it.  But I got too allergic to the valley weeds (this was a sort of rural suburb — ? — about 7 miles north of the center of the city), so we moved down into town between the university and the town center, where I live now, in another older neighborhood.  This is a Queen Anne cottage on a street constructed around 1900 or so to house mid-level railroad staff.  The roof is in fact steeply pitched, and there’s a second floor that’s one big room.  The roof problem is on a small outbuilding with a flat roof — the garage, into which I can just barely fit a compact car (the garage was added probably in the forties).

    @tenthdoctorftw  There’s a theory around that English is now more or less the Latin of the modern world — being taught and spoken everywhere because it’s the language of commerce (as Latin was the language of European education), and that it’s already beginning to break down into sub-languages the way Latin did, with national dialects starting to diverge from each other in not-quite-yet significant ways.  With everything else in more or less wild flux everywhere, I guess that’s to be expected — but strange times, aren’t they!

     

    #38862
    TenthDoctorFtw @tenthdoctorftw

    Off topic question but i have to ask.

    Which Doctor is your favourite?

    @ichabod, @purofilion, @lisa, @jimthefish.

    #38863
    ichabod @ichabod

    @lisa  Oh, Clara will still have her fragilities and weaknesses, I hope — otherwise, she’ll be flattened out again to a plot-mule instead of a real-seeming, engaging character.  Our weaknesses, and our ways of dealing with them, are a huge part of our effective reality in the world; this is why we instinctively distrust apparently perfect people who seem to “have it all” (or, if we’re semi-formed personalities ourselves, we worship them instead until we see their fraudulence, and sometimes even after, hence the pathetic farce of celebrity culture).

    And I like your pinpointing of *competence* as what she’s really after: demonstrable competence that will validate her small, pretty self in the eyes of others (and, on some levels of course, herself).  That works very well for me.

    #38864
    ichabod @ichabod

    @tenthdoctorftw  My favorite was Tom Baker, since it was during his time as the Doctor that my husband and I got really hooked on the series.  TomDoc was so capricious, so fizzily energetic, and so smart that he was riveting to watch.

    I thought Eccleston was very promising, but he was gone too soon to make a strong enough impression on me.

    There’s a good bit of TomDoc in CapDoc, as people with better memories than mine have observed, so maybe that’s part of it, but in any event there’s no doubt in my mind that Capaldi’s Doctor is my Doctor now.  His range — of expression, of layered meaning, and of acting skills (like comic timing) is phenomenal.  To be fair his very strong showing is undoubtedly helped by, and partly due to, the fact that Season 8’s Doctor was written to capitalize Capaldi’s strengths (the way George Ballanchine used to choreograph a prima ballerina’s role in a new ballet “on” that dancer, meaning tailoring it to all her abilities), and the actor was himself included in at least part of that process when he came on board.  He’s spoken of this unusual synergy in interviews (and it’s one reason that I try to ignore the all-too-common dismissals of Moffat’s writing as inadequate or ruinous to the show; acting is a *performance* art.  It’s — usually — a mess of sound and fury signifying nothing without a good script, just as even the best script is just a half-realized blueprint without actors to embody and speak it).

    By all accounts from the people in involved, this is the kind of ideal pairing of actor and part that you rarely see onscreen, and all the more striking because of that.  So I think CapDoc has already begun proving himself to be a great Doctor, insuring a future of being looked back on as a classic set of performances in its own right.

    IMO, mind.

    #38866
    lisa @lisa

    @ichabod So that’s an interesting story about 2 houses on the lot- “He killed his brother
    so he had to leave the neighborhood’ its sad and a tiny bit funny, btw- Imeant tough not
    turf [spelling issue there]

    Yes an obsession as in pathological fixation on constantly hacking into the Doctors life.
    Its also both an entertainment and a devotion at the same time for her.

    #38867
    lisa @lisa

    @tenthdoctorftw I would say pretty much the same as Ichabod did in her previous post about
    favorite Docs however I favor new who over the older series generally with 4th Doctor exceptions

    #38869
    TenthDoctorFtw @tenthdoctorftw

    @ichabod
    I guess you understand mine is pretty obvious. But I can’t be really subjective, I’m in love with David Tennant and probably always will be. I haven’t had the opportunity to watch the Classic Who. I’ve only watched Hartnell so far but will watch the rest of it soon. Everyone says Tom Baker is the best Doctor and I cannot wait to watch but I’m afraid it might be difficult for me since I’ve started with the New Who.

    I read an article about Christopher Eccleston and said that he had a lot of differences with the production of the series and didn’t want to follow orders of the director (i hope this isn’t true though cause it will really change my opinion of him as a person, according to the article he was pretty much a diva). In the end I really liked him, he was fantastic 🙂

    I really loved David Tennant because I admire him as an actor and I think he did a great job. He is very good at what he does and he along with Peter Capaldi where major Doctor Who fanboys when they where young and that’s what I think is what makes them great Doctors, because they really loved it. As for Matt Smith, he was funny, energetic, eccentric and I really ejoyed watching him but I believe that he was never the Doctor, he acted like the Doctor.

    Now I found this video a few minutes ago, I think its hilarious

    #38870
    ichabod @ichabod

    @lisa  Yeah, somehow the idea does make me laugh — I probably wouldn’t, if I knew the details, but for all I know the story is just a gossipy anecdote with some other story behind it.

    “Pathological fixation” is right!  And “devotion”, yes, in a weird way.  After all, MissMaster has no friends, does she? Not even colleagues.  She has “minions”, like SEB and Dr. Change, poor fellows.

    #38871
    ichabod @ichabod

    @tenthdoctorftw  HUGS AND KISSES, YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY!  What a wonderful, goofy, clever clip that is!  Where the HELL did you find it?  Loved it loved it loved it!  I’m watching again instead of having dinner, and *that’s* a first around here!

    #38872
    lisa @lisa

    @ichabod So at the top of the page I posted the term affection confliction to
    describe the pathology of Mismaster and I still like it a lot 😉

    #38876
    TenthDoctorFtw @tenthdoctorftw

    @ichabod
    Hahahahaha right back at you, I told you my love for David Tennant is what made me look the entire internet for Doctor Who related videos and well I have another one.

    #38880
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod and @tenthdoctorftw before the mods come out with the Dalek attack ships  🙂 you might want to post future vids (and they’re great -wonderful!) on the Sofa thread or the Cloven Hoof?

     

    #38882
    ichabod @ichabod

    @purofilion   Yes, of course, what was I thinking?  Not a lot, it would seem.

    best,

    ichi

    #38884
    Anonymous @

    @lisa the Master looked in to the …hell, the …thing…the black hole, the ring of bleble? And from there he heard the drumbeats and was never normal. Every 8 year old TL potentiate was taken there -like a Baptism I think? I’m probably vamping on this all wrong…but yeah the ‘thing of the thing’. It was there in End of Time?

    Or not?

    Also as to Clara and the control-freak, do you think it’s more women who are called control freaks than blokes or the other way ’round?

    (well, what a remarkably structured post, such sophistication. ‘Course I’m eating fries and gravy, it’s lowered my IQ and dissolved my memory).

    #38885
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @purofilion

    the ring of bleble?

    Good name for it. I think it was actually called the Ultimate Schism. Given Time Lords’ normal naming pattern, it’s quite surprising it wasn’t called The Schism of Rassilon.

    Control freakery in men is usually renamed ‘a natural leader’ 😈 But the term does get applied to men – it’s whether Steven Moffat is defining Clara as a ‘control freak’ because he thinks she is one, or because he’s noticed that women who do take charge are called that (to the extent that they think of themselves as ‘control freaks’).

    Possibly both: Clara’s natural type ‘A’ personality may have been aggravated into control freakery by her travels with the Doctor. She’s trying to juggle a normal life with TARDIS travel – and she’s also really, really keen on not letting even her close family know what she’s up to. Plus, the Smith Doctor was a bit prone to behave like a bored three-year old, which undoubtedly also encouraged her to see herself as the adult and the Doctor as the child.

    It took her the whole of Series 8 to realise that the Doctor wasn’t a child any more. He was a ‘daft old man’.

    #38886
    JimTheFish @jimthefish
    Time Lord

    @tenthdoctorftw

    At the risk of playing the heavy here, can we make sure that we try to stay on topic as much as we can? By all means, let us know who your favourite doctor is, as most of us have already done, in the Faces of the Doctor or the Doctor Who Memories thread. I think you’ll find them both worth a visit.

    Any Who-related tidbits that don’t actually qualify as news should be posted in On the Sofa, so that’s probably the best place for cast videos and such like. Any casting rumours and so on that you want to share should almost definitely go into Spoilers to avoid incurring the wrath of others who don’t want to see them.

    With regards to getting to see more BG Who, well, we’re deep into our between-season retrospectives at the moment. Why not dive into The Daemons parts one and two? It’s a bona fide classic and as good a place to get acquainted with Pertwee as any.

    But let’s keep a semblance of order about the place. Otherwise chaos ensues…

    #38887
    TenthDoctorFtw @tenthdoctorftw

    @JimThFish sure, it will take me awhile to lean but okay! will do.

    #38888

    @purofilion @bluesquekpip

    Ultimate Schism

    Untempered Schism.

    #38889
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @pedant

    Aha! Thanks, pedant

    #38894
    ichabod @ichabod

    What would a “tempered schism” be tempered with?

    #38895
    ThePapalMainframe @thepapalmainframe

    “The Untempered Schism was an opening in the space/time continuum, “a gap in the fabric of reality from which can be seen the whole of the Vortex”. (TV: The Sound of Drums) The Schism appeared to consist of an opening into the Vortex, contained in a circular ring. Before the Schism lay a plaque bearing the Seal of Rassilon.”

    So I guess that is a untempered schism, so a tempered schism would be the reverse.

     

    #38896
    lisa @lisa

    @ichabod —- Tempering is a strengthening process. Schism a sort of
    split or tear. So my interpretation basically is weakness in the structure and/or
    divisions in the Vortex [which means fluid or flowing]. Whoever came up with this
    threw together all sorts of physics. But it sounds really cool

    #38897
    ichabod @ichabod

    @thepapalmainframe   Okaaayyyy . . . so . . . not really something to inquire about.  It’s a MaGuffin until the writers need it to be something else, at which point they’ll come up with, um, some more words . . .

    I’m a fan of mysterious thingies, so, not a problem.  Actually, kind of a criterion for sticking with the Doctor, come to think of it.  Maybe the whirly tunnel of the credits is the Vortex?  Looks like a vortex, fluid-y like the vortex of water going down the drain in the sink . . . but with a Tardis bopping around in there . . . can you tell it’s near bed-time around here?

    @lisa   I’m not sure “physics” is what they threw together, but yeah, it sounds perfectly suited to its context.

     

    #38898
    Whisht @whisht

    ah… the Untempered Schism. Also known as ‘The Omphalos’ or ‘The Navel of Rassilon’.

    So-called as it was the constant staring into his own navel, contemplating his own existence, that sent him mad.

    #38899
    Anonymous @

    @jimthefish

    They. are. not. on. topic. (I did ask them, you know, before the Dalek immune system blobs started a full frontal attack (or should I say naval attack for @whisht ‘s benefit)

    We need the special weapons mod!!

    Someone needs to be sent to the untempered Schism. Thank you @bluesqueakpip and @pedant for the  ‘thing of bleble’

    #38901
    JimTheFish @jimthefish
    Time Lord

    @purofilion — yes, they can’t say they weren’t warned… 😉

    @ichabod et al — given its effect on the Master, I think a better name for it would be the bad-tempered schism….

    good word, schism….

    #38909
    ichabod @ichabod

    Well, just look at the off-topic havoc the fool thing is wreaking around here!  We need to stop looking at this blasted, bad-tempered bleble!  Can’t you hear the drums?!

    #38912
    ThePapalMainframe @thepapalmainframe

    @ichabod,

    Ha.

    #38913
    Barbara Lefty @barbaralefty

    Bleble? BLEBLE? What?! The good ship Off-topic has drifted into hazardous waters, indeed! I think  see wreckers rocks ahead! Funny vids, you people kill me.

     

    #38914
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @purofilion

    Well, frankly, I think your ‘ring of bleble’ is considerably funnier than my ‘nanowotsits’ (what ARE they called?)

    The said nanowotsits make an appearance in The Empty Child, The Big Bang and … Death in Heaven. Where they are used to build new Cybermen

    WE ARE BACK ON TOPIC! [punches the air and goes for a victory lap of on-topicness] 😉

    #38916
    Whisht @whisht

    I feel bad.

    I’m off to the ‘Naughty Step of Rassilon’.

    #38922
    ichabod @ichabod

    Bluesqueakpip saves the day!  Champagne, anyone?

    #38924
    Anonymous @

    @bluesqueakpip it came to mind as ‘ bleble due to a work colleague who, whilst not entertaining the least idea of Doctor Who, is a Buffy and Angel fan and is called ‘Beebe’.

    So, bleble is workable but yes, on the topic of DiH (“topic topic topic” said in the voice of Nicholas whatshisname speaking as Dalek) the nanowotsits are quite workable too and possibly better than the actual description -which isn’t a word anyway (why would it ever be that simple?)

    So we have Cybermen, Cybermats, Cybermice or rats and…. now Cyber- rain containing ‘Cyber particulates”

    I was about to say Cyberraz which could be misinterpreted as something belonging to one of those sites!

    Not that I’d know.

    #39570
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    Among other questions the episode asks if the Doctor and Missy (Master) are the same.  On the surface it would appear they are not.  Yet why could the Time Lords not be manipulating the Doctor as much as they did the Master as a failsafe?  One supposedly rogue Time Lord a psychopath, a lunatic, the other a humanitarian, both of whom were very close as friends as children.  How symmetrical.  And Missy seems so desperate to be the Doctor’s companion.

    Gallifrey I think needs a huge favor as shown by this and the previous episode.  Someone I think needs to face the ultimate punishment for creating a time paradox that will free Gallifrey from wherever they are, where they are I believe to actually be just as Missy said, at the coordinates of the original Gallifrey only in some sort of different dimension.

    And perhaps that makes humans another Gallifrey failsafe.  Could Moffat be planning the ultimate unison of all Doctor Who stories, that Gallifrey is behind the Doctor’s needing companions, in particular, human ones.  Why exactly in classic Dr Who was the Doctor allowed to live on Earth, even have a family?  Why was he imprisoned for years on Earth forced to work with UNIT?  We have seen that humans for a very brief time can use godlike powers to manipulate time and space.

    The Doctor is more important than any single human being, as shown by his being appointed emergency President of the Earth by all the countries of the world in response to a massive alien incursion.  Earth’s leaders at least acknowledge the Doctor’s importance as Earth’s protector.  The Doctor will therefore I think be Gallifrey’s lever to force someone from Earth to pay the ultimate sacrifice to save.  It could be a companion, it could be a soldier, it could be an entire group of people such as UNIT.

    Of course the Doctor would never stand for this, and he may prevent it.  But perhaps we see an analogy to what will happen at the end where the Doctor and Clara both think they are protecting the other but are not communicating, thus risking the end of their relationship.

     

     

     

     

    #39599
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    Missy asks why no one has thought before of the idea of uploading minds to a Gallifreyan hard drive. Oh but they have. This is the technology of the Peter David-era Arc of Infinity.

    To me there is at least one classic villain left to re-introduce, Omega. However, Omega is relatively boring. There was to me one poignant interaction between the Doctor and Omega, and that was when Omega was failing to have his new body retain its integrity, his telling the Doctor that all he wanted to do was go home, back to normal matter space.

    So suppose that Moffat knows full well that Omega is boring and there is no point rehashing that story. Think bigger. What if all of Gallifrey is the new Omega, trapped in some alternate dimension with no possibility to come back to normal space. But information can be sent, uploaded to a Gallifreyan hard drive, and then downloaded to a new body if one has the body’s DNA signature.

    The original Arc of Infinity storyline had Omega wanting to transfer into a clone of the Doctor’s body. Let’s go bigger. The planet of Gallifrey needs a whole planet-full of bodies. But what planet could possibly serve such a purpose?

    And now we see maybe the Master isn’t the only one who has been manipulated since a child into being a failsafe for the Time Lords. For Gallifrey to return would create a new Time War and / or a time paradox. So they must hide, pretend to be someone else. And who better would that be than mere humans. If only the Time Lords had someone whose Tardis could scout all eras of human history, and record without anyone else knowing the DNA signatures of various humans. Then the Time Lords could disappear into various eras of human history just as in the original Star Trek episode.

    Of course this will not be the resolution. The Time Lords will not be allowed to steal human bodies. What I suspect will happen is there will be two factions of Time Lords, one who wish to steal by force, one who wish to peacefully coexist. The peaceful faction will propose that the Time Lords live on only non-materially, sort of as guardian angels for humans.

    #39600
    lisa @lisa

    @jphamlore Interesting view! the particular word that grabbed me is ‘clone’!
    What if the cybermen in the tanks were people that had been cloned? Davros knew
    how to do cloning or maybe I should say that’s Dr. Skarosa? Then there is that Matrix.
    Could rogue Galfreyans have downloaded themselves into that Matrix and are hiding in it?
    Then they could possibly download themselves into the newly minted human clones?
    Would that work? I’ve been stuck on that Dr Skarosa character as if it were some sort
    of big in your face clue since the first time I saw the episode! Any thoughts?

    #39601
    lisa @lisa

    @jphamlore Btw- so what if Missy isn’t a Master regeneration but rather a Master download??
    How’s that for a bonkers theory?

    #39608
    Whisht @whisht

    @jphamlore – ahhh at last! Some bonkerising!!

    lovely!

    #39617
    ThePapalMainframe @thepapalmainframe

    Wow. I never would of thought to think of that! Great pondering @lisa!

    #39618
    lisa @lisa

    @thepapalmainframe Ok so what if River Song was trying to find a way out of CAL?
    We saw that she sort of did so already once. I imagine that maybe since CAL is a
    kind of matrix and maybe River found a way to download herself from there into a clone.
    We have seen clone episodes before too. Perhaps we can imagine that River become Tasha
    Lem in her new cloned body? Because Tasha means rebirth and Lem is Mel backwards.
    So why would River choose to do this? She does this because this papal army kidnaped her
    mom and also turned her into a psychopath and so now she get to have a kind of vengeance
    on this papal army. The psychopath running the asylum!
    The reason I mention this here has to do with the bonkerizing I posted about downloading
    and cloning up thread of the Galifreyans and Skarosa etc,. Because of the similarities.
    In other words it seems plausible to me as a theory in both story arcs and just wondering….
    ya know 😉

    #39619
    janetteB @janetteb

    I was thinking through last series that cloning was going to be important to the arc in some way as there were quite a few references to cloning and that would explain the Danny/Orson riddle, which events in Death in Heaven leaves crying out for a solution.

    My thoerising, when i have time for it, centres around “Dan the Soldier man.”  I have even tried drawing “maps” of his movements and trying to create a timey wimey circular paradox for him. I have found plenty of ways of getting from the Doctor’s toy box to Danny or Orson but the missing link is how he gets from Danny to Orson. Everything indicates that Danny has no family. I get the impression that he was a very solitary, lonely person with no real “life” outside his job. He is like a clockwork character who only comes to life for the purposes of the story, like a clone that has one function. If Clara was set up by MIssy to be the Doctor’s companion was Danny created by Missy to be Clara’s lover then killed by Missy. That car did apparently “come out of nowhere”.  @ichabod had complained that Danny was undeveloped as a character but I have a feeling that might have been deliberate and has yet to be explained. (at least I hope so.)

    Cheers

    Janette

    #39620
    janetteB @janetteb

    That line of thought has just provided me with yet another explanation of how Danny get’s hold of “Dan the Soldier” man, through Missy who stole it from the Doctor when they were children back on Gallifrey. Still can’t work out how the toy gets from Danny to Orson… If if Clara were pregnant which she almost certainly isn’t, I doubt very much that she would inherit anything from Danny’s estate.

    cheers

    Janette

    #39621
    ichabod @ichabod

    @janetteb  Yes, I *do* complain about Danny’s shallowness; I think if was a huge waste to leave him as pretty much nothing but, er, “top layer”, as it were, when it would have taken so little to give him some reality-weight in the story.  That was an authorial mistake, and I think it cost them later, in terms of viewers being able to credit Clara’s attraction to him.  His shallowness made her falling in love with him look like shallowness too — manipulation for the sake of what he represented rather than what he might have been had his obvious personal warmth been given some play a few supporting scenes — just glimpses would have been enough.  But instead we got the clockwork boyfriend; too bad!

    For him to be given some character now would mean bringing him back from the very very dead, as in exploded in a sort of fire-canopy high in the sky: like, cinders, if that.  People have pointed out that bringing him back after such a grand and generous gesture — saving Clara, and the rest of us too — would cheapen that very act and reduce it to a bad melodramatic joke.  I can’t help but agree.  They threw the poor bastard to the wolves, and bringing him back would only make things worse.  Not to mention a revived him now being completely superfluous to the Clara + Doctor relationship, bc of Old Clara’s having got past the grieving and gone on to a pretty good life of her own, and those memories coming back with Young Clara so that she could blithely run off with the Doc at the end of Last Xmas.  Moffat is brilliant, and could find a way to do it — but I don’t think that the character development as it stood at the end of Xmas could work with that to make a good story.

    I looked at the bits of the aftermath of the hit and run again, and noted that this was not a hit-and-run incident; it was a hit-and-stay-for-the-consequences, since the car was halted right in front of his body, and none of the police were grabbing witnesses to ask about the homicidal vehicle — since it was still sitting there, presumably with its driver taken away to hospital to be checked out (for injuries, drugs/alcohol, etc.), although we don’t get to see that person at all.  It’s such a — sorry — pedestrian sort an accident that I really doubt very much that Missy was involved in staging it, though of course there could be surprises (always).  And I doubt that Danny left an estate of much significance — an orphan, he’s inherited nothing himself, and neither soldiers’ pay nor teachers’ pay leaves much to save up.

    His only legacy is that everyone is still alive and Missy’s cybermen are gone; and that little boy returned to life with Missy’s bracelet.  I do hope they don’t just drop that character!  Too many got left by the wayside — Journey Blue, Perkins (though that was the character’s choice, if not the actor’s), Rigsy (*great* possible companion, IMO!  Think of the wonder, think of the joy, to expand the horizons of a young man like that, and with talent of his own, too!), Psi and Saibra (very science fiction), Courtney (though I’m more partial to Rigsy, in quite young companion material) — lots to choose from!  But — probably Maisie Williams as someone entirely new . . . Okay; but . . . ah, bah.  This is why I don’t *read* much SF any more; always wanting to fix it my way.

    Which reminds me — people object to Danny and the Brig maintaining enough “self” as cybermen to defy MissMaster, but aren’t her cybermen different from the old form of Cybermen?  She says their minds have been “downloaded” into their suits, along with their skeletons, meaning an electronic transfer of — brain waves? — plus a physical transfer of bone.  I thought the old Cybermen were made differently, which is how come MissMaster is so smug and pleased with herself over making “cybermen from cyberspace!” rather than — ?  A new process invented by her (and maybe Dr. Chang or Dr. Sarkosa) perhaps being a way to excuse some kinks and fault that let people with strong trained-in discipline (in this case, military men) secretly retain some autonomy?

    Oh, that’s just bonkers, isn’t it . . .

    #39622
    ichabod @ichabod

    @lisa  I generally draw a blank when it comes to River Song, mainly because she was so time-hoppy that I could never figure out what the hell she was doing or trying to do — so I sort of stopped paying attention.  I recall her as pleasingly bold and tough, and I should have liked her — strong feminist overtones, and I liked her parents — but I just couldn’t hold the character together in my head long enough to form a liking for her.  Maybe I’ll get another chance, if they bring her back and not go popping her all over the place like a cork (I had that problem with Clara too, prior to S8).   Too much timey-wimey can sap character pretty badly, at least for me, because it tends to be confusing about motivation maybe.

    What’s CAL, where she’s supposed to be stuck?  Somehow I thought she’d died — ?  Or did she just vanish “for good” into some timey-wimy anomaly?  Old brain here, needs a bit of a leg up.

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