Death in Heaven

[janetteB @janetteb]

@ichabod I agree absolutely that Danny’s story is complete and the character is unlikely to be revived and nor do I wish it. However there are still questions about Danny that require resolution and there is still Orson to be explained. There are some interesting narrative possibilities involving the toy soldier that do not require Danny to be resurrected.

Cheers

Janette

[ichabod @ichabod]

@janetteb  Oh, right, I see.  Yes, there are certainly some loose ends.

[lisa @lisa]

@ichabod this is CAL —-http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Charlotte_Abigail_Lux

CAL is the matrix in ‘Silence in the Library” and ‘Forest of the Dead” and
its first appearance of River Song with the 10th Doc. Two great episodes!
SM wrote them and it shows that he is a big fan of the Matrix movies
and of the downloaded people concept. The people ‘saved” in CAL could travel
in in and out of this library matrix. So Death in Heaven SM is reusing
again the matrix device in a new way. There are some very key episodes
from past SM stories where he has repeated certain ‘devices’. I was thinking
about re watching at some point just the SM episodes from before he took over to
look for any other of those relationships.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@lisa  Thanks.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@lisa and @ichabod

Yes, it suggests that Missy may possibly have been successfully zapped by the Brig – but it won’t do a darn bit of good, because she was simply able to reconstruct her self- including body – using Gallifreyan matrix technology.

Basically, her ability to travel between the Nethersphere and the real world is a form of teleportation, only with the reconstruction part delayed in the same way the people in the Library had their reconstruction delayed.

Since she’s let the Nethersphere die, she probably knows she can’t use that trick again. 🙂

Steven Moffat doesn’t just reuse monsters; he reuses tech that he’s invented (the nanowotsits, first seen in The Empty Child, keep cropping up a lot).

[ichabod @ichabod]

Are we sure that the Nethersphere *has* died?  Last word that I recall is CyberDanny (or maybe the original stored Danny, before he or a copy of him was downloaded into the armor for DiH) telling Clara that the Nethersphere “is dying”, at the time that the Afghan boy is returned to earth — or, a download of his mind in a cloned body?  What is he, anyway?  And what are the ethics of sending a possible downloaded clone-y copy of a dead boy back to his family some years after the real boy died?  Or keeping him, for that matter?

Can you imagine the paperwork?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@ichabod – I’d go for the same explanation as Forest of the Dead – enough information was collected by Missy’s Nethersphere to record people’s souls and reconstruct the boy’s body. And as long as your body can be reconstructed and your ‘soul’ has been recorded, you are ‘saved’, not ‘dead’. An electronic version of suspended animation.

And what are the ethics of sending a possible downloaded clone-y copy of a dead boy back to his family some years after the real boy died? Or keeping him, for that matter?

In the Whoniverse, he is the real boy. They’re pretty specific on that. For the ‘some years after he died’ thing, two solutions occur to me.

The simplest is ‘I know a bloke with a time machine’. 😉

However, given that this was in the middle of the Doctor/Clara break-up, it may have been the second simplest: given that the Whoniverse has clearly accepted the existence of aliens, Clara asks UNIT to return the boy with a suitable ‘abducted by aliens’ explanation. Which is, in fact, true…

[lisa @lisa]

@ichabod @bluesqueakpip First, I love a good fun puzzle! About ‘Into the Forest of the Night”, in
that episode showing the return of the nanowhatsits from ‘Empty Child”, Yes! Also that young girl who
spoke with the nanowhatsits and who was looking for her sister that mysteriously disappeared {the sister returned in place of the hydrangea shrub? did anybody else think that strange}. I’m wondering now if she might have gone for a visit to the Nethersphere? Why am I thinking this? It feels like it could work in the Missy/Nethersphere arc- Missy did show up at the end of the episode and was surprised about something. I think it was that she was able to return the sister. Maybe it was that?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@lisa

the sister returned in place of the hydrangea shrub? did anybody else think that strange?

That did give me, personally, a very definite ‘returned from the dead’ vibe, yeah. But I hadn’t connected Missy’s comment about a ‘surprise’ with the sister – and you’re right, it works very well indeed.

[lisa @lisa]

@bluesqueakpip I’m not sure. Missy made her remark before the returning of the sister. I re-watched
the end of ItFotN and I cant decide what Missy was really surprised about. However, it might be that
it was the sister Annabelle that Missy used to make her clone DNA. But then why take that particular
girl and in fact why were both girls ‘tuned in’ as the Doctor says to a different frequency? A very
interesting choice of words. I wonder why the Sun also chose to act rebelliously at that particular
time? Why would it want to flush out of the earth? Maybe it was that Missy was trying to use it to
kill off everything so she would have more dead souls to make into cybermen but the trees stopped her
death plan. I think that’s also another option. But I still think it all ties into Death in Heaven.

[lisa @lisa]

@bluesqueakpip It also occurred to me that Anabel was being protected by the “trees life force”
by becoming merged with the hydranga bush in order to keep her away and protect her from Missy?
Why? It seems as if there is some special thing about her and it makes me wonder
if she might show up again. In fact, will we be returning to Coal Hill school in season 9?

[ichabod @ichabod]

@lisa —  Well, the tree thingies might have persuaded Anabel to join them so that she could help them tune their broadcast “ideas” better to Maebh, the more receptive sister.  Maebh, in her broadcast to the world, doesn’t ask the tree thing to return her sister, but asks her sister to come home, which her sister does.  Maebh is certainly “special”, but a bit too young when we see her to join the Doctor on any traveling basis — what about her mom, her sister?  But maybe we’ll meet her again, as a young adult, and more free to strike out on her own as she pleases.

I don’t see a “Missy” link, but you could be right about that after all.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@lisa and @ichabod I don’t think a direct Missy link was intended but the story was a precursor to the Missy story. Anabel returning from the dead establishes the idea that the dead can return, that they can be stored somewhere, their consciousness preserved and downloaded again. Assuming that is what happened to the sister. We cannot be entirely sure. The explanation for her reappearance is left to the viewer.

@bluesqueakpip I like your proposed explanations for the return of the boy and I am certain that the parents would be overjoyed to have their son back, regardless of whether he had aged or not.

Cheers

Janette

 

[lisa @lisa]

What if there is more than 1 Matrix? In Utopia we had the beginnings of a Matrix
pattern with the resurrected Humans as the Toclafane. Missy was the architect of
Matrix patterns before. Why should we be assuming that there is only that 1
Matrix that UNIT has captured? There might be many possibly all interconnected
thru Missy the architect or ‘creator’ has hidden all over the place. How many
Matrix did the Galifreyans have. The painting ‘Galifrey falls no more’ was even
a type of matrix.
Btw, Missy’s Edwardian ‘fetish’ outfit reminds me of the Edwardian suit worn by the
‘Architect’ character in the Matrix movie franchise. He was the creator of the Matrix
in the movie versions and it just seems like another tie in to me with those films

[Anonymous @]

IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan you clearly know nothing about story telling.

Killing a character off for no reason like Osgood is hack writing at its absolute worst.

To start with it doesn’t make a villain scary. Look at the first Dalek story they kill one no name thal, but Nation actually puts the effort into the script to make them scary unlike Moffat who just went for the lazy shortcut.

Also how on earth does it make you think good guys can die more. Do you really think that Kate or The Doctor or Clara could have died? NO because ultimately they unlike Osgood are main characters.

Also what show doesn’t kill its main characters off nowadays anyway?

Also I might add Osgood got fridged too.

It was also an appallingly written scene. Osgood and the guards don’t react when she puts her lipstick on? The Doctor and Kate were watching it on the big screen?, How did the Master teleport behind her. Plus her death served no purpose in the story either.

I don’t understand all the praise for Michelle Gomez either. She mad Eric Roberts look like Roger Delgado.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@Bumunjor  Good grief, another one!   Yep, nobody here know a single thing about story-telling.  Moffat said exactly why Osgood was sacrificed, and you either accept that it worked or you don’t think it did.  I found the sequence logistically sound: the Doctor casually invites Osgood to come join him as a companion sometime, and does so in Missy’s hearing; Missy, whose plotting is intended to result in *herself* traveling with the Doctor instead of anybody else (she wants her “friend back”), retaliates with a spiteful murder aimed more at the Doctor than at Osgood herself.  Missy sings a little song (I take it to be an exercise of TL hypnosis that disables the guards, though more might have been made of its effect), works free from her bonds (typical Master talent), and kills Osgood.  The Doctor returns, and finding Osgood’s eyeglasses stomped on and Osgood gone, absorbs another loss brought on, really, by his cavalier dismissal of Missy and invitation to Osgood, and building up his dread of this madly murderous person that his old friend still is, even in her transformed state.  She is not just a bad person; she’s madly destructive, and her immediate instinct to destroy is all too easily set off by *his* behavior toward her.

I don’t know anything about telling a story either, of course, but just as an outsider and idiot I would venture to observe that that’s a pretty tight, economically written little story right there, serving as part of the plot line that leads to the Doctor determining to kill Missy himself rather than allow Clara to take on the necessary task for him.

Still don’t see it?  Look again; or don’t.  NMFP; yours.

[Anonymous @]

@Burrunjor @ichabod

goodness, I agree ichi “another one”

“hack writing” and @pedant “who doesn’t know a thing about writing” and he’s not here to defend himself!

There’s some bad mojo at work on the site this morning (or evening)

Gomez is certainly a fantastic actor with a marvellous sense of the witty and the malicious. Osgood’s character, I think, needed to die -you really need a good pay off in the middle of tense, immediate drama right at the end -otherwise the investment in the characters, and the show, is diminished to some extent.

 

[Anonymous @]

Purofilion I never said Moffat was a hack overall I loved series 5-7.

However in Osgood’s death scene he was guilty of hack writing. PS Moffat also called all of the original series writers hacks too.

Anyway Gomez is a good actress yes but she was awful as Missy. Tell me how she wasn’t. People slate Eric Roberts for being too hammy and John Simm for being too camp. Hello where none of you watching Gomez?

To be fair to Gomez though she was given some rubbish material so I can’t judge her too badly.

However no Osgood did not need to die.  It was nothing more than a cheap thrill designed to trend on twitter, it was a waste of a good actress and tell me how come Terry Nation was able to make the Daleks seem scary in their first story when they killed one person. Simple he put effort into the story. Would you have rather the Daleks just zapped Susan in that story. That would have been scary and shocking I am sure, but it would have been a waste and rubbish writing in order to show one thing about one character you have to kill another.

And sorry if I offended Pedant. I didn’t mean it as a serious insult just saying what he said in reverse. Maybe it was a bad thing to say I don’t want to get the reputation as the internet bully.

Anyway Ichabod that scene was NOT well written. You had the Master suddenly gain teleporting powers and appear behind Osgood. At no point is it said that the guards were hypnotized. And also the Doctor and Kate were watching it too.

Also since when does the Master want to travel with the Doctor. Since when does the Master kill his companions because he is jealous of them and wants to shag the Doctor?

I mean really does that sound like Roger Delgado or The Burned Master or Ainley.

[ichabod @ichabod]

Aye, well, it can’t be hearts and flowers and flying unicorns around here *all* the time <smirk>, can it.  I have to admit that I never got on the Osgood-love bandwagon, probably because I may have been a nerd in school but I wasn’t a *science* nerd, and besides, that was a long time ago; so she didn’t appeal to me that much that quickly.  Nevertheless, her evident good will, quick wits, and enthusiasm made me sorry to see her go.  As a reminder of the unfairness of not just the toxic nature of some people but the unfairness of the world, her death served a good purpose in the story.

It would be a good thing if, the next time the Doctor wants to invite someone aboard to be a companion (he’s done it twice in S8, with Perkins and Osgood), he pauses to remember the loss of Osgood (for himself and for viewers) and perhaps temper his invitation with caution . . .

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@burrunjor

Well, your days of being taken seriously are no nearer a start.

you clearly know nothing about story telling.

I would point out how halfwitted openings like this are, but there are perfectly honourable halfwits out there who would, quite reasonably, take offence.

Killing a character off for no reason like Osgood

She wasn’t killed off for no reason, something everybody around here has been able to grasp (even when they didn’t entirely like the reason). Your inability to keep up is your problem, not the writers. They don’t write for the slowest kid in the classroom, so it is not too surprising that you can’t understand stuff.

Also how on earth does it make you think good guys can die more. Do you really think that Kate or The Doctor or Clara could have died? NO because ultimately they unlike Osgood are main characters

I’m sure there is a dialect of English in which this makes sense. OK, I’m lying. There isn’t.

Also what show doesn’t kill its main characters off nowadays anyway?

To the extent that it has become something of a cliché. Everyone wants to be Joss Whedon.

Plus her death served no purpose in the story either.

No purpose that you understood. Important distinction, that.

Now, your mum’s just phoned and asked me to remind you to take your Ritalin and go to bed. Also, heed the example of the gentleman from Tralfamador and at least try to uphold the honour of fools.

 

Hello @all. Ta for the tag @purofilion. Always enjoy a little Troll Flambé

(Still itinerant, but now with a shiny new car)

[Anonymous @]

I didn’t much care for the character either TBH. I liked the actress. She was great. She is very versatile. I remember her in Peep show when she played the character of Natalie who rapes David Mitchell https://youtu.be/EtxK7wNUBPk She couldn’t be more different to Osgood!

I also felt that Kate and Osgood could have been a good female UNIT family.  IMO a female UNIT family is much better than a female Doctor or female Master.

So yes Osgood may not have been the best character in the world, but it was a waste of potential and a good actress (a much better actress than either Gomez or Redgrave IMO) and it annoyed me because its symbolic of series 8. Shallow shocks like giving the Master breasts, making the Brig a cyberman that have no real depth.

Osgoods death served NO purpose in the story that was the worst thing about it. Tell me what was the purpose of her death? It didn’t show us anything about the Master we didn’t know and we didn’t even see Kate her friend and bosses reaction to it! Hell the Doctor didn’t even care. Within three seconds he was back to flirting with Missy as though nothing had happened. You could take Osgood’s death out of that story and NOTHING would be different. Its a rubbish end to any character.

[Anonymous @]

Wow IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan you just showed yourself up as someone who can’t make a convincing argument so you just respond with cheap insults and “oh you are so stupid because you don’t like what I like”

“I would point out how halfwitted openings like this are, but there are perfectly honourable halfwits out there who would, quite reasonably, take offence.”

Well actually I just copied yours and it was tongue in cheek because you said it.

“She wasn’t killed off for no reason, something everybody around here has been able to grasp (even when they didn’t entirely like the reason). Your inability to keep up is your problem, not the writers. They don’t write for the slowest kid in the classroom, so it is not too surprising that you can’t understand stuff.”

Go on tell me what was the reason. To make a villain seem scary? I have already pointed out why that is lazy and lame and you can’t respond in a reasonable way so you just resort to insults.

“To the extent that it has become something of a cliché. Everyone wants to be Joss Whedon.”

Exactly you are proving my point?

“No purpose that you understood. Important distinction, that.”

What was the purpose then? Did it change ANYTHING between the Doctor and the Master in the story? Did we even see Kate’s reaction to it? What was the purpose?

“Now, your mum’s just phoned and asked me to remind you to take your Ritalin and go to bed. Also, heed the example of the gentleman from Tralfamador and at least try to uphold the honour of fools.”

Ah more cheap insults instead of proper arguments.

“Hello @all. Ta for the tag purfillion. Always enjoy a little Troll Flambé”

Someone with a different opinion is a troll?

 

 

 

[ichabod @ichabod]

@burrunjor  Moffat may have called earlier writers hacks, but I betcha he hasn’t said that about anybody on his own writing team; and they are manifestly nothing of the sort, but I’m not going to waste my time arguing the redness of carrots to a blind fish.  Nobody *said* the guards were hypnotized; *I’m* saying it because it makes sense, in the tradition of fans finding work-arounds for whatever needs a little explication to fit; and because it’s written into the character of the Master that h/she can somehow escape whenever the needs of the story require it.

*Please* avoid this weird hater habit of blaming the writers for a characterization that you don’t like (an example of what might be called “hack thinking”).  When you do that, you insult the actors by ignoring them, or minimizing their abilities.  They do make a small contribution  — all their experience, talent, and skills — and that’s not chopped liver.  Gomez’ acting + the writing made MixMaster fun and horrible, which we did need her to be in order to believe in her grotesque plan to win “her friend” back by corrupting his ethical inclinations.

I do wish people who lob terms like “cheap thrill” about had some workable idea of what they’re talking about.  Do you really think Osgood’s death was a “cheap thrill”?  Okay, I’m not gonna go there — but you do tempt me to be cruel.  I don’t like that much.

I didn’t think MixMaster teleported; I thought she just moved very, very fast, an unusual power for Time Lords considering that the Doctor doesn’t have it, but possibly one a diligently obsessive and nuts Time Lord could develop.

MixMaster was jealous of the offer to Osgood, but sexual jealousy isn’t the only powerful jealousy, just as “shagging” isn’t the only form of friendship (this, by the way, is a *really* important lesson to learn).  S/he and the young Gallifreyan who became the Doctor used to “run together” as kids  — we’d say “hang out together” now, probably — as best buddies.  The grown-up equivalent of that for them would be to travel together now.  That’s what s/he wants — Missy is lonely; s/he wants the Doctor to value her company *at least* as much as he values the company of Who-the-Hell-is-this-Osgood-person-anyway — and he clearly doesn’t.  So, murder.

Hi, @IAmNotAFish — good to see you here again.

[Anonymous @]

I do blame Moffat for Missy being pants. Moffat NOT Gomez made her in love with the Doctor, Moffat NOT Gomez wrote her as a one note boring psychopath, Moffat NOT Gomez made her into a jealous ex.

The Master is not any of those things.

And yes I am aware that friendship does not have to be about shagging, but when you have Missy force herself on and sexually assault the Doctor, have every remark she makes to him being a flirtation and innuendo of some sort, and you have the actress playing her say that Missy wanted to go the whole way and shag his brains out then yes I think its a fair analysis to assume that she wanted to shag him.

[nerys @nerys]

Hello, all! Been away a while. It’s a joy to return and find some mostly scintillating discussion about this episode. Some are addressing the hope that Capaldi’s Doc (took me a while to work out who CapDoc is) might revisit some past mistakes. This wasn’t a mistake, but rather a case of the Doctor doing the right thing (thanks to Donna), but does anyone think he might revisit Pompeii to see where he got “this face”? I would enjoy a return of Tate for this sort of reunion, not with “her” Doctor but Clara’s. (It’s still tantalizing to think this might be the very volcano at which he and Clara found themselves at the outset of Dark Water.) I would love to see Donna get a more satisfying “end” than what we got with Tennant’s Doctor. A girl can dream, eh?

[ichabod @ichabod]

@Brrunjor  — Whoah — where did Ms Gomez say that Missy *wanted* to “shag” the Doctor and that’s why she assaulted him?  The incident didn’t read that way to me.  I thought of it as Delgado, more or less, playing in a ruthless, campy way with his new, female identity, using it to tease and to be physically aggressive toward the Doctor in a sort of deliberate parody of courtship.  But I don’t read that as being “in love” with the Doctor at all, and hope my posts didn’t suggest that I do.

My take on her was that s/he’s very lonely and wants to reconnect  with the childhood that she and the Doctor shared back on Gallifrey.  Also he’s a famous and formidable figure now in the universe, and s/he wants to hitch a ride on his fame (nobody talks about “the Master”, so far as I’ve observed, but the Doctor’s name is known far and wide).  I’m still seeing the masculine Master in Missy, using an outrageous parody of the femme fatale as a weapon against the Doctor, but by no means feminized within.  Everything that looks sexual from her is aggressive in a sort of macho way, and aimed at making the Doctor play the “weak” feminine role, to humiliate and control him.

It’s Clara who loves him; Missy is perhaps what Clara might be (toward him) if Clara did *not* love him: predatory, cruelly playful, vampiric even.

Can’t *wait* for S9.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@nerys  Oh good, come and scintillate with us!  Thing about Pompeii — *did* he do the right thing?  Isn’t Lobus’s descendant John Frobisher, who is forced to make deals with devilish aliens and who then kills his family and himself, thereby “righting” an imbalance created by Lobus and *his* family having been rescued by the Doctor in Pompeii?  It’s a crude equivalency — Lobus must have lots of other descendants, not likely only one branch — but metaphorically the reversal later of the good deed the Doctor did in Pompeii reminds us that all deeds have their good *and their bad* consequences (so it takes tremendous and steady nerve to act heroically at all if you think about it).

I don’t think the scene in Dark Water took place at the eruption near Pompeii, only because the volcano in Dark Water was in fact an illusion that the Doctor provided for Clara to work out her stratagem in, using the “dream patch” to distort her perceptions.  It wasn’t a real location at all, and vanished as soon as he took the patch off her palm.  Although he could have used memories of Pompeii’s volcano as the model for the illusion on, I suppose.  Still, that was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream . . .

But none of that means he can’t revisit the Pompeii of his past and reconnect with Lobus.  ??  Time will tell . . .

[Anonymous @]

@Burrunjor and all. No, come on, let’s step back and take a breath. In all honesty, if I opened up this page as a newbie and then read the etiquette page I would think “is this a place where people get on and play nice? No sir-ee, they aren’t!”

And yet we normally do. I understand your points and I did think you said “hack writing” and I suppose in this corner of the Whoniverse we tend to write something a little different: “I don’t like Osgood because…. Not because Moffat can’t write but because I, me, mine happen to disagree”.

That way, there’s no ad hominen attacks and we all get on well without everyone yelling ‘troll’.

I think @pedant picks up on some points which would irk me, for sure, so it’s best just to leave well alone and move on to a less ‘disturbing’ issue.

Whedon, and other good writers, tend to suggest (and I imagine Moffat too) that a character who is loved and ‘good,’ in some cosmological way, and then dies (like Osgood) is an important ‘pay off’ for the setting up of the villain -in other words, Missy/Master is a nasty piece of work (and a villain) so without a serious death that threatens our position and safety, we can’t be terrified enough.

I think it works as a device.  I’ll tell you why it worked. You’re angry about it! It annoys you, seriously, that she died. Ergo, Osgood’s death had purchase: it meant something. It seemed awfully wrong somehow, didn’t it? And I think that’s Moffat’s point. Although, to be fair, it’s not always Moffat -it’s a whole room of writers, ideas people and show runners. Not everything is about Moffat. He’d have to be a TL to have done all that’s he accused of!

Lastly, is the ‘kiss’ a  “sexual assault”? Can we really go that far with the Doctor and Missy? Two aliens? I think not. It’s not right, but ‘sexual assault’, no.

But you see that’s just my opinion and I’m always up for a lesson in cosmetic battles. 😉

Anyway, let’s be civil, peeps.

Kindest, puro.

[Anonymous @]

@Burrunjor I absolutely love that expression of yours! “I do blame Moffat for Missy being pants”

See, from Oz, we don’t say that here! It’s great! I’ve heard it on the occasional telly show but not in writing. I think I’m gonna use it myself if you don’t mind?

Kindest, puro

[ichabod @ichabod]

@purofilion  Oil on troubled waters, always good.  And yes, the device of Osgood’s death seems to work very well, more so the more a viewer is invested in Osgood — but I’ve had my say about Clara until we get some new material to think about, so no worries on that score.

The “sexual assault” comments about Missy kissing the Doctor may come from some remarks I came across right after Dark Water first aired here, to the effect that Missy’s surprise attack was pretty much what the Doctor had coming to him because of SmithDoc’s repeated behavior of grabbing women and kissing them without invitation or leave, back before S8 started.  So, some said, now the Doctor knows what it feels like to be treated in a similar manner.  I can’t say for sure, having missed a lot of S7 because I didn’t care for it, but that was the gist of the “sexual assault” charge.

Well, there’s something to it, I think: you don’t show someone respect by French kissing them against their will and then laughing it off as a “joke” or a “compliment” (or “part of our welcome package”).  In this case, the two being aliens whose long past relationship is still pretty murky to us, I’m not sure we can go as far as calling it a “sexual assault”, particularly since MixMaster seemed perfectly ready to do the same to Clara.  That does seem to complicate the issue a bit.

But the kiss certainly wasn’t a *friendly* gesture between two people who see each other as equals.  With all that dominating aggression on one side, and a clear, cringing desire to escape on the other, “unhealthy” would be a better term, at least?

 

[ichabod @ichabod]

Damn; my say about Clara *and* about Osgood, sorry.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@Burrunjor

 “oh you are so stupid because you don’t like what I like”

<snipped drivel>

What was the purpose then?

This has been repeatedly explained in this thread and in direct response to you. Sorry, not playing your juvenile game.

Someone with a different opinion is a troll?

No, someone who behaves in the manner of a troll is troll.

If you wish to be thought as something other, then lose the sweeping statements and the pants. Make an argument in the manner of a grown up.

[Anonymous @]

Purofillion I think it could count as assault only because she forced himself on him and kissed him against her will.

And I am sorry but just thinking Osgood’s death is a waste of potential does not mean it was an effective death scene. I mean Tara in Buffy’s death was horrible, but it didn’t feel ike a cheap shock or a waste of potential. It was well written.

[Anonymous @]

Ichabod  I am sorry, but in no way could I imagine that Delgado and Missy are one and the same. That’s what annoys me about Missy people say her kissing him was just the same type of trick the Master would always use. No it isn’t even if the Master became a woman he would never do that.

Also Gomez said in an interview that when she kissed the Doctor it was hell for Missy to pull back because she wanted to take it all the way and shag him there and then.

Plus she said her hearts were maintained by the Doctor which pretty much conforms that she was in love with him.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@Burrunjor

Oh dear. Having a bit of a Missy Hissy Fit are we?

no way could I imagine that Delgado and Missy are one and the same

The failure of your imagination in these circumstances has nothing to do with the show, casting and writing I’m sure. Especially as you’ve expanded on your reasons in the guise of “Joseph” on another forum today. PC gorn mad. Don’t want the Doctor as a woman. Etc ad nauseum.

You also “delighted” the crowd on Digital Spy as “Matt Wilson” didn’t you? Same shit, different forum. Are the diverse names some feeble attempt to generate the feeling that more people are unhappy about the things you’re unhappy about? Whatever. I merely point this out to inform other forum users that you are entirely the kind of boring monomaniac who will spend his Bank Holiday peddling his stodgy unimaginative generalisations to whichever audience is available with no hope of anything approaching reasoned debate.

Have fun with that.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@Burrunjor  Thanks for the cites re MixMaster’s being acted as in some kind of twisted but sexual love with the Doctor in The Icky Kiss, and her weirdly seductive comment that her “hearts are maintained by the Doctor”.  I’d missed the first, and forgotten (!) the second.   It’s possible that she made that remark in the interview to bolster her presentation of Missy as an extravagantly loony character, but also possible that yes, she was playing the scene as derived from the ravenous sexuality that misogynistic men like to attribute to “women of a certain age” but restrained, in this case.   Although the three ridiculous little kisses on the nose before pulling away again made the entire incident self-consciously ridiculous at the same time, so I’m not convinced it was serious on her part.  There was an overblown, clownish vibe to it that rather undercuts the “out of control passion” demonstration and turns the whole incident into parodic humor, IMO.  Still, Gomez said what she said, so doubt remains.

As for her hearts being maintained by the Doctor, that’s part of her grabbing his hand and pressing it to her chest, and again rings as dark humor to me, because I see it as part of her elaborate teasing of him, telling him he *knows* who she is and showing him her TL set of two hearts, but holding back her identity in a sort of mocking dance.  But also the gesture harks back to the Simms Master, which was played with a strong erotic current uniting Master and Doctor, and it seems to me to be a deliberate echo of that connection — it’s about the two hearts, as I see it, not at all about the now-female breasts — that slots into meaningful place when the “Master” identity is outed.  The gesture confirms to me that this woman is the Master, flaunting his/her female form like a drag performance by a man.

But sometimes we see what we want to see, and you clearly are repulsed by the idea of the Master regenerating as a woman, or by the idea that the Master in a female body would play with that body’s sexuality that way.  I’m not, so where you see It-couldn’t-be-the-Master, I see that self-same Master making the most of shocking the Doctor with a bizarre parody performance of coy but barely controllable female lust.

I like my interpretation better.

 

 

[Anonymous @]

Phaseshift I have no idea what you are talking about. I am not Joseph on whatever other forum you are on about. I do admit to being on Digital spy yes that was me, but big deal so I have two accounts on two seperate forums? Its not like I was abusing anyone on the forums? Remind when I abused someone again? I have not said anything offensive to anyone here. The only thing I did say that could be said to be offensive was “you don’t know anything about storytelling” to IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan but I was simply using the quote he had used to someone else, the EXACT quote.

If you can’t argue rationally and have to resort to calling me names and insulting my intelligence and I don’t know calling me a virgin neckbeard any other unoriginal insult you can think off then fine I shall stear clear of this forum forever as its clear no one is willing to discuss this rationally.

Last post from me here goodbye.

[lisa @lisa]

@ichabod and everyone — Hello! I’ve been MIA cause of overwhelmingly fabulicious road trip !
Missed you guys and tried hard to not fill my head with Who-ness whilst away but cheated a little.

So now about Missy. So yes S/he is a strange conglomeration of a character[s] and it is a great
puzzle yet to be solved. I have my bonkers theory about that which is she may not be a
typical regeneration. Actually she could be a download from the Matrix into a cloned body that
may possibly be the work of Davros [Dr.Skarosa] and this may explain some stuff. Further, if this
is so then is it possible that Davros could have chosen a conglomeration of various Masters as
the template for Missy? Some of these Masters may have been very early on versions in which the
relationship between the Doctor and Master could have know some unusual intimacy? Now believe me
when I say that this is a theory which is likely to be filled with all kinds of loopholes that you
can drive a car thru. Plus if Davros is back that means in a way he is back with a plan to fight
his nemesis the Doctor. When Missy is saying that she knows where Galifrey is does this also mean
that Davros has it and if in fact he has returned could he pulling Missy’s strings after a fashion?
So ok peeps- go forth and try to find some of those looholes for me if you feel so inclined !
I’m ready for anything you got !

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

Oh, don’t be such a coy tart @Burrunjor

Of course you’re Joseph on Planet Mondas. Ever since I was pointed in the general direction I’ve been laughing at them. I mean

Joseph on Missy:

He had her want to shag the Doctor just because she was a woman. I mean how sexist is that? Just because the Master is now a woman he wants to shag his mortal enemy LOL. Plus there is also the fact that she called herself Missy just because she was a woman I mean WTF.

You appear to have a problem with shagging. I make no value judgement.

Joseph on Ingrid Oliver:

for me the worst was Ingrid Oliver. She played Osgood. She is actually a great actress. She appeared in Peep Show as Natalie who raped David Mitchell. You could not have imagined a more different character to Osgood if you tried.

All sounds drearily familiar doesn’t it? You have a gift for disguise that is only matched by Inspector Clouseau in the old Pink Panther movies.

I genuinely don’t mind what your views are. I welcome views opposed to mine as long as they are well argued and don’t rely on the sad detritus of uninformed generalisation to try to provoke argument. The “Soap Operas” and your “Hack Writers”. At the end of the day all these things are your problems because I’m revelling in the show at the moment.

However this attempt by a very few people to try to make out these are widely held viewpoints because they want to sign in and scream the same message on every different forum under different names is just so sadly inept that it deserves to be pointed out. And laughed at.

You don’t want to debate. That’s not the point is it? Monomaniacs like yourself don’t want to debate. That’s why I’m being deliberately and pointedly insulting. Because you are a fricking idiot. And your blog sucks.

Last post from me here goodbye.

You hear that sound? No? That’s because it’s a sad song played on the world’s smallest violin. Cheerio.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

it was hell for Missy to pull back because she wanted to take it all the way and shag him there and then.

Ignoring our sockpuppet friend, I’d go with that one; it’s pretty much a progression from the Simm Master. Not only was in-marriage rape with Lucy strongly implied, his relationship with the Doctor brought the long-standing subtext for ‘sexually attracted’ up to pretty much ‘just below the surface of a kid’s paddling pool’. 😉

Missy is the Doctor’s stalker. Looking at his/her past history, the only thing saving the Doctor from outright rape is the real-life point that there are children watching. In-story, it’s probably Missy’s sense that that would be something the Doctor could never forgive; though she is completely bananas, so probably better to rely on real-life considerations.

I think Clara’s metaphorical status as ‘daughter’ to Missy and the Doctor is probably as far as they’re going to go in that direction. Missy gave her the phone number, the Doctor took her on-board, together they’re responsible for Clara ever existing in the first place.

Space Dad and Wicked Stepmother.

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@burrunjor — It looks like you’ve been successfully put right but just to add my tuppence.–

First of all, what makes you think that Delgado and the 3rd Doc didn’t want to shag each other? I think you could make (and some have) a pretty good case that they do. Personally, I have no problem believing the Delgado and Gomez Masters are one and the same. Frankly, I’m increasingly of the opinion we should have a female Doctor sooner rather than later solely because it force some elements of fandom to grow the hell up.

And Moffatt is quite right in that ALL the writers of the original series were hacks. They were jobbing writers who were contracted to write X episodes of a children’s teatime TV drama. That’s the very essence of being a hack, whether it be in journalism, writing pulp quickie novels or in TV scriptwriting. That they often produced something rather wonderful in the process doesn’t mean that they weren’t hacks.

And you can’t steam in with insults to regular contributors to the site and then moan when they kick your ass in return. The most cursory look through the site would have told you that, even if basic common sense or politeness did not.

@pedant and @phaseshift — nice to see you both. Wonderful weather for a(n un)pleasant troll….

[ichabod @ichabod]

@bluesqueakpip  Poor Clara, if that’s how it is, and I’ll certainly second the Master as the Doctor’s “stalker”, always with a thread of homoeroticism mixed in there someplace; that was certainly played in by Delgado, and played outright with Simm.  MixMaster, though?  Still only a thread in the weave or her craziness, or a big fat stripe across the cloth?

Being the metaphorical “child” caught between the doting Dad and the loopy Mom — I know of at least two real-world examples, one quite close to me, and the amount of genuine pain and personality distortion spawned by it is so massive that I’d be very leery of a show like DW getting into it, even for dramatic purposes.  Although Clara is *already* an unworldly child, what with that leaf and all, so maybe the magical element would be enough to de-nature the poisonousness, even for kids watching who are living with something all too like it.

@jimthefish  Yes, they were jobbing writers, and the aim was initially not much higher than standard TV fare for youngsters at the time, I suppose.  The show outgrew them, and is now outgrowing many fans who still think in those terms, only with tastes somewhat elevated above Buck Rogers and Tarzan.  I don’t think a female Doctor will have the slightest effect on most still hanging onto that mind-set, except to drive its holders away cursing and snarling.  The longer the Doctoressa is postponed, though, the fewer fans will flee, given what seems to be a solid liberalizing movement among young viewers (though not all of them, by any means).  Still, that will be a fascinating and rambunctious day, I think.

[DenValdron @denvaldron]

I do not wish to flame anyone.  But I would suggest that we have a little respect for writers.   To shower the writers of the classic series with contempt is both unbecoming and misguided.  Some quite talented people worked on Doctor Who as writers and script editors  – Douglas Adams, Robert Holmes, Malcolm Hulke, Barry Letts, to name a few.  It’s quite insulting to these people to simply dismiss them one and all as ‘jobbers’ and ‘hacks.’

These gentlemen worked under conditions of a far more intense production schedule – 24 or even 40 half hour episodes a year, not twelve or thirteen.  They didn’t have the luxuries of computer generated imagery, to composit backgrounds, add to scenes, create effects or characters.  They certainly didn’t have the budgets or the array of resources.  They didn’t have the advantage of the modern internet, search engines, email, word-processors and all those wonderful things that make writing and the business of writing so much more efficient.  They certainly didn’t have the decades of post-modern awareness and half century of evolution of the television form.  They worked under far more onerous restrictions in terms of censorship and acceptable content.   And they had to do this, in a serial format ranging from 2 to 12 episodes, which meant that you had to create incredibly layered narratives, with multiple concurrent plots and subplots and bring them to maturity and resolution in a measured way.

I have nothing but respect for the writers of the classic series.  The best of them, and their best work, holds up against modern standards even today.   Certainly no modern writer for the relaunched series has been able to come up with aliens or threats as enduring and iconic as the Cybermen and the Daleks.

As for the worst of the classic writers….  well, I’ll acknowledge that the Twin Dilemma and Underwater Menace are wretched to the nth degree.  But personally, the bottom has now been claimed by Kill the Moon, and I can’t imagine a story that will pry it loose from its death grip on the abyssal ocean floor.

As for the Female Doctor, my own sentiment is that the Female Doctor came and went, and she was very nice, thank you very much.  But in that respect, I will refer you too my blog reviews on the Seattle International productions of Doctor Who.  One might argue that it’s not official, which is a perfectly fine argument.  But it’s certainly proof of concept.

[DenValdron @denvaldron]

@janetteb   I assumed that Clara Oswald was pregnant.  That was why she was calling Danny Pink and having that bizarrely narcissistic conversation with him as he walked into his death.  She was working up to telling him.  Seriously, she must have had a point in that conversation.  So she’s knocked up, has a baby, names it after his father, and thus the Pink line.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@denvaldron

From In The Forest of The Night:

DANNY: I just want to know the truth. I don’t care what it is. I just want to know it. Like Maebh said. Like the forest. Fear a little bit less, trust a bit more.
CLARA: Okay. Well
DANNY: No, not now. Go home and do your marking. Think about it, then tell me. I saved you from a tiger today. I deserve at least that.
CLARA: Yes, you did. And yes, you do.

The next scene we see with Clara and Danny together is her phoning to tell him the truth. It just happens to be at the start of the following episode.

[DenValdron @denvaldron]

@bluepipsqueakpip   Hmmm.  Never thought of it like that.   It’s a workable theory.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@denvaldron  I am a professional writer, and I thank you for the kind words about my ilk.  I will, though, point out that you can be highly talented and still be a hack, when hackery pays better and the table needs food on it.  Many of my colleagues have written SF and fantasy that’s made the Nebula and the Hugo ballots while also turning out series novels (of higher than usual quality, usually, which readers are quick to note) to pay the bills.  I expect if you’d asked some of those early writers of the Doctor, more than a few could have been persuaded to admit that they had unfinished novels and short stories at home that they prized as their favored work and hoped to find markets for.

In my experience, working writers (and actors) seldom turn down a work opportunity (unless it’s really awful, maybe like being in 50 Tons of Trash or one of its inevitable progeny) that pays; that’s part of the job, and if you are a free lance, you can always run into a bad market or a shift in taste and find yourself to be also a hungry lance.  Some writers use pseudonyms for this work, some proudly put their own names on it; depends on the author.  Unless you hit the big time and/or good, steady money — George Martin doesn’t feel the need to write anything but what he’s writing — you keep your options open, but you don’t throttle down your talent.

p.s.  I like Kill the Moon.  Except for the spiders, because I’m an arachnophobe.  And thanks for the Benedetti Doctor; I liked her too.

 

[DenValdron @denvaldron]

@ichabod.   I look at it this way.  Certain terms are inherently derogatory.   It is derogatory to call a lawyer a ‘mouthpiece.’   It is derogatory to call a policeman a ‘pig.’   It is derogatory to call a woman a ‘whore’ and it is derogatory to call a writer a ‘hack.’

Let’s look at the word ‘whore’ because it is strong, blunt and admits to no misunderstandings.   For some women, the word certainly applies in the clinical and narrow sense of the term.   There are people who feel it is appropriate to use generally, either as a misogynist sentiment or as some philosophical reflection, or just generally disparaging.   On the other hand, if you use it with respect to other women, then you should expect to be picking your teeth up off the ground.  But pretty much wherever you use it and who you use it for, it’s derogatory.  You would trust that I would never refer to your mother this way, regardless of her habits.

Hack is a derogatory term.  There are certainly writers out there, and writers in the history of the old and the new series, to which the term Hack would apply.   There are writers who are not Hacks, but who, like all of us, are sometimes required to do ‘hackwork’ to pay the bills.  Doing hackwork doesn’t make a writer a hack, any more than having had multiple partners makes a woman a whore.  There are certainly writers out there who will have you pick up your teeth neatly off the floor, should you refer to them such to their faces.   And as a general observation, I would counsel you as a courteous and decent person not to use the term generally to writers.

Now, I’m not a professional writer, but I have recently had a novel accepted for publication.  I’ve published numerous short stories and received honourable mentions in several Years Best collections.  I’ve got a few small credits on the imdb.  And I’ve had enough credibility as a writer to apply for and receive arts grants.   So I do admit to being sensitive to slurs on a field I have some love for.

I am also not a nice person.  But I am polite.  I set great stock by that.   Hack is not a polite word, and it should be used sparingly, if it all.

[ichabod @ichabod]

From Burrunjor, who has since left the building — but still, this disturbs me:  “He had her want to shag the Doctor just because she was a woman. I mean how sexist is that? Just because the Master is now a woman he wants to shag his mortal enemy LOL. Plus there is also the fact that she called herself Missy just because she was a woman I mean WTF.”

This is so marked by a desire to be anti-sexist, coupled with a very common level of ignorance, that it is very dismaying.  The idea that the Master wants to shag the Doctor “just because” the Master is now female is given the lie by many examples of pretty easily detectable erotic tension between the Master and the Doctor in earlier seasons of DW, with the Master occasionally making insinuating advances; so this supposed wish to shag the Doctor predates the Master’s switch to a female body and is a part of the Master’s domineering and, presumably, sensual nature.  Well, plenty of people have missed that, from what I’ve read.  Okay, not such a biggie.

What *is* a biggie for me is the matter of Missmaster now calling herself “Missy”.  As far as I can see, the “Mistress” is still the Master in every respect except for his/her physical form, including being a rather old-fashioned serial villain complete with the usual sexist assumptions that go with such a stereotype.  He has merely acquired a nifty new toy: a female body, with which to play-act a masculinist parody of femininity complete with the voracious sexual drive that so many cultures project onto women and then punish them for (supposedly) having.  His “femininity” is a game; its all show, and hasn’t altered his inner self one whit.

Look at the sort of woman he’s playing: she’s handsome, attractive in a dominatrix sort of way, clearly rich and powerful (you don’t support a Nethersphere and a Cyberman army as your hobbies on the pay of a call center worker), well and classily dressed Victorian style, and not (apparently) under the thumb or any kind of control by a father, brother, son, husband, estate executor, or other more socially powerful male.  She has all the advantages, it seems, of your standard upper class male human being (compare and contrast Rose).  He’s certainly not the equivalent of transgender M/F, since (as far as we know) all he had to do was regenerate; he’s gone through none of the mental and physical ordeals of a process meant to transform the outer self to match the already feminine inner one.

So what is he?  He’s the Master, playing and enjoying what I feel sure he regards as a jape, a gas, a temporary role that he means to savor to the full in terms of using it to torment his antagonists.  The leering, taunting way he informs the Doctor that he couldn’t very well keep calling himself “The Master” makes this pretty clear all by itself; and personally I find it depressing that a fan like Burrunjor could see all of this as the program being “sexist” and the creative team making decisions about Missy’s behavior and character on that basis.  The sexism is there, all right, a full-blown cartoon — all on the part of the Master him/herself– and that’s a huge part of the joke.  This isn’t Jane Eyre we’ve got here; it’s more the guy in black stockings in the Rocky Horror Show, or maybe Vampirella.  If fans think they’re defending feminism when they attack this gender switch as “sexist”, well, that I just find that dispiriting in the extreme.

Which is why I *hope* our departed friend is young, and has many years to grow past his (or her) shallow assessment of “Missy” as DW sexism (not that there isn’t any — but this ain’t it).

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@denvaldron

Hack is not a polite word, and it should be used sparingly, if it all.

I don’t particularly use it myself, but I should point out that, on this side of the pond anyway, it didn’t always have such negative connotations. It was just used to describe writers who write as a job rather than for “the art”.Fancy that. It’s quite common to find writers of the 60s and 70s in TV who will self-identify as “hacks”. For example you mentioned Robert Holmes, surely one of the greats of Who who said he was “just a hack script writer”. (The book about him A life in Words is a great read from a writers perspective).

A key writer in his tenure as Script Editor, Chris Boucher, once said:

“I’m a hack writer. As it happens, I think I’m a damn good hack writer, so that’s alright”.

And so he is/was.

Language changes of course, but I don’t think the term is inherently derogatory. If these guys were hacks they came from a literary culture where self confessed “hacks” have included Swift, Dickens and Beckett. Good company.

Let us remember the wise words of Samuel Johnson “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for the money.” What a fine hack that man was. 😉

[Author]

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