Hell Bent

[jphamlore @jphamlore]

Once upon a time there was an astonishing, and too short-lived, British television spy drama The Sandbaggers, one that inverted all the spy drama tropes of the day by featuring far more conversation and office politics than gunplay or anything resembling action.  In this show the main character Burnside had grown somewhat fond of his second-level boss, but the time came when this boss had to be replaced.  Burnside is concerned that the apparent replacement is someone outside the department who is hostile to Burnside’s approach to the job, concerned enough for Burnside to initially push for his immediate boss to be promoted.  However Burnside is forced to realize his immediate boss is completely incompetent to be promoted and, regardless of Burnside’s preferences, the only choice was for competence.

To me Steven Moffat is the best possible showrunner with his combination of great writing, overall competence running the show, and love for all things Doctor Who including the classic series.  But nothing lasts forever.  At some point he will be replaced, and I am guessing he will have a big say in who this replacement will be.  Unfortunately I believe that best possible is no longer possible, but the choice will be more who will be the best showrunner possible.  There is not an obvious successor in my opinion with all of the positives Moffat brings.  And I believe Moffat realizes this, and that he will above all choose writing ability and competence over love of the classic Doctor Who series.

It is this gut feeling of mine that leads me to believe that Moffat in Hell Bent is consciously laying the foundations for what he knows will be the last classic series story, the one that brings together all of the threads of the Doctor’s youth, Rassilon, the Matrix, etc.  Because if he does not write it, there may never be another chance to “[paraphrased] say the things to one another that need be said now.”  And I believe that when it is done, Moffat will leave all possibilities open for the next showrunner to create his or her own version of the Doctor.

 

[ichabod @ichabod]

@tegan   Ok so the doctor has now forgotten Clara completely right? Including all of their adventures etc. But then how does he know anything about himself? He met her as the 11th and regenerated while with her, she has been his companion since the start so how does he know anything about himself

Do you mean how can he remember his own past, that has led him back to Gallifrey, if he can’t remember Clara?  Since she was a central character who played a vital role in all those events?  You have a very good point there — he must remember his own actions, but also that there was this hazy person he can’t quite picture accompanying him and working with him during those adventures.

We’ve been saying yes, he knows a woman was there, but he can’t recall anything else about her or how close and explosive their relationship was.  But if that’s so, then looking back, how does he make sense of his *own* actions in, say, The Girl Who Died?  Anything he did that was motivated by his feelings for Clara would need some other explanation because there no longer any clear reason for him to do it.  E.g., *why* did he break the rules and bring Ashildr back to life with the Mire chip?  He knows better than that, and he *knows* he knows better.  Without the conversation with Clara about that, and memory of the urge to do what he knows is forbidden as a flag of defiance to the TLs and as a sort of run-through of how it would be to do something like that later if Clara died, how does his action make sense?

Clara was a part of almost everything he’s done since he met her!  So if he remembers the events of that period but not the attachment to Clara, the person, how will what he remembers make sense to him?  If he thinks of *her* as an empty outline of an unknown person, inscrutable as to feelings or motives, he would have to see *himself* (in his past) the same way — like a game piece, with no understandable motives of its own, just being moved randomly about by the story.  Two game pieces, closely related in some invisible way that he can never get a grip on?

If that happened to me, it would drive me crazy all over again!

 

[ichabod @ichabod]

@soundworld  Rassilon and the High Council have been exiled, near the end of time, where there’s ‘only one or two star systems left’. In these ‘end times’ where is there left to actually exile them to?

“They’re on the shuttle,” he says, of the High Council.  Shuttles usually go back and forth between commuter stops or some such, but if there’s nowhere to go — has he simply condemned Rassilon and his gang (in two different vehicles) to die in empty space when their shuttles’ life support systems run down?!  If so, good grief, that’s cold — no wonder he admits to having gone too far!  I note that in the script, they’re put in charge of the Gallifrey Garbage System, which I think was cut because of the wisecrack by Ohila that accompanies that from Ohila, about him being a typical “high born” Gallifreyan who thinks necessary jobs done by lowly folk are punishment, not honest labor for the common good (and a wage).

So — *is* he “high-born”?  I thought it was the Master who began life as the son of a family with estates etc., but we saw young Doctor growing up in and around that tatty old barn . . . ?  Ohila should know, shouldn’t she?

[Anonymous @]

@ichabod @tegan

on the issue of high born I would recall the expensive establishments for young children of wealthy parentage -the idea is to provide some form of an ascetic or -bare – monkish environment. The barn etc makes sense in that light.

As for not knowing what to do, or how to do it, with Clara gone (never mind even ‘why’ he should or shouldn’t ‘do’ something) we might put it down to a TLs brain -he’s wired differently to us.

He may well know what he’s permitted to do and he will remember all the adventures -whether the Mummy or Robin Hood because to me the stories were very much still tales or adventures: he had to work out how to stop the Foretold and he used a range of experiments and witness recollections to do so.

Robin Hood was spent at times apart from Clara who was lately nicked by Hood or interrogated coyly by the Sherrif (or was it Clara being coy?). I think with the trees in London the Doctor’ll remember the annoying children trooping thru the Tardis and Danny Pink who died (yes to the fanwankers: SM actually killed someone!) whilst on the moon he’ll remember a blonde and aggressive astronaut and a small child who needed to be special. I think he’ll recall the lessons but not the teacher.

As one, I truly hope my students remember the lessons I teach but when it comes to me, the teacher, there’s a teacher-shaped hole. Not really defined by emotions or thoughts but possibly certain sayings -not actual conversations word for word: concepts not images; the repetition, the rote, not the romance.

Ahem: well, no, not romance. Not that: I’m being metaph….oh stuf….

Puro

[ichabod @ichabod]

@pedant  All those moronic comments about Moffat being lazy, when redshirts really are the gold standard of lazy writing.

It never ceases to amaze me, how ignorant people are of what it takes to do not just creative work, but *good* creative work.  The theme of the “lazy” writer is constantly coming up, and it is nonsense — for writers who are actually writing for a living and getting paid for it!  Truth is, if you’re “lazy” about writing, you’ll end up living on the street.  Which may happen to you anyway, even if you’re nothing of the kind.

Of the end-bit in the script about the Doctor recognizing the Clara’s portrait painted on his TARDIS — Not so sure they cut it, as much as it just didn’t come out when shot.

Yes, never occurred to me; but also it wouldn’t make sense.  *Why* would he recognize a black and white image of her, when he didn’t recognize her actual face in the diner?  Ah — if the their parting is engineered by the Doctor, manipulating matters as he is wont to do, once she was gone in her TARDIS he could stop pretending he didn’t know who she was — no witnesses.  Only I’m looking at that last bit in the antique TARDIS, and as written, there’s a lot more sentimentality there — he stroke her cheeks, he hugs her, etc. — that would support such an idea.  But as it’s played out on screen, when he moves to hug her she pushes his hands away and steps back from him, and there are no teary caresses, for which, IMO, much thanks.  Too much would be too much.

So as the script is acted, that set-up of tenderness is gone — the set-up that would make recognizing the painting later work.  I have a feeling that somehow it became clear that it would be rather demeaning if the Doctor planned it all and manipulated events, and her feelings, to split them up effectively for good.  They’re unequal equals now — the TL and the almost-but-not-quite-dead human who’s turned herself into a version of him at his best: an adventurer with curiosity and eagerness, but compassion for other humans (without cue cards).  Her refusal of his “care”, in the form of “let me relieve you of those dangerous memories”, asserts this.  Her memories are not his to dispose of as part of his strategy for keeping her safe.

He’s not controlling things in the white TARDIS, as he would have to, to pull of that strategy, because Ashildr makes him *tell* Clara what he plans to do.  The two women force him to yield his plan to chance — because he knows women are smart, so he listens to women.

 

[jphamlore @jphamlore]

@ichabod: I do believe the Doctor obtained some sort of closure and at least for a moment he recognized that Clara was the waitress.  He had to obtain closure because for all he knew, if he did otherwise he could be blundering and cost Clara her existence.  Compare this to Amy in the Moffat-written The Big Bang having to stand up during her wedding reception to shout:

AMY: I remember you. I remember! I brought the others back, I can bring you home, too.  Raggedy man, I remember you, and you are late for my wedding!

I believe regardless of whether or not the Doctor remembers all the details of Clara’s life, at least after he sees her as the waitress he knows she still has some sort of existence, and that he will remember this at least on some subconscious level even if the neuro block reasserts itself and he eventually must forget again.  So I do not believe he planned everything from the start, at least as early as the barn on Gallifrey.  I think he knew he had lost control as soon as her heartbeat did not restart at the end of time.

We may find out as early as this Christmas special whether the Doctor retains the full memory of Clara or whether it got somewhat erased again.  But he knows enough now I think to have closure.

 

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@pedant

I, too, look forward to a female Doctor. I also suspect it might come sooner than most of us are supposing. Don’t ask me to pin down why, though

Because everything is now firmly in place. We’ve had the suggestion that Time Lords can change gender, we’ve seen a known Time Lord change gender (with the regeneration off screen). Given that particular Time Lady’s gender swap turned out really successful (reassuring the BBC suits, I’ve no doubt), we’ve now seen a Time Lord change gender by regeneration on-screen.

Not only that, but the line ‘That was the only time I’ve been a man’ sets it up that a Time Lord can have a solid run of one gender before a switch.

There’s now no script reason that the Doctor can’t switch genders. There’s also a provision that he can switch back – it’s not a permanent change, and there’s no reason we can’t have a female actor regenerating back into a male actor.

My guess is that they’re planning a gender-open call when it comes to cast the next Doctor; or, if Peter Capaldi’s exit date is set, they’ve got to the stage of ‘shortlist of possible female Doctors’

[Anonymous @]

@jphamlore

This is Puro’s son speaking. I don’t get this closure thing people talk about. Why? We don’t have closure in life. bad things happen and we think “I wish I’d said this to a person before they died and I never did”. This happened to my grandpa when he came back from work my grandma died. She’d been dead all day.

There was no closure. She was 47 and my mum was 7.

Bad things happen -they’re not just stories.

@bluesqueakpip @pedant and @ichabod

I think the white tardis was classic but mum and I watched Mr Hartnell’s speech where he said:

“until then, no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forwards in all your beliefs and prove to me that I’m not mistaken in mine”.

I see this story as full circle -almost.  Susan was leaving for another, different life.

The Doctor will remember her and she’ll remember him but it’s time for her to move on and just like Susan the Doctor may forget Clara but will not forget his adventures and with the breaking of the 4th wall, the audience is invited to remember Clara for ourselves knowing she won’t do anything except remember to be kind, to never be cowardly and if she is, she needs to make amends. She will go forward in all her beliefs and prove to the Doctor -through us- that he’s not mistaken in his.

I think therefore the doctor does not remember -there is no ‘out’ Mr @jphamlore because we remember her and that’s all that’s necessary. It’s sad but like the speech up top from Doctor One, it is also beautiful.

Son of Puro (bit sad now -that speech was really moving and I liked how in the Tardis the Doctor and Clara weren’t all sad and mopey -that would be too Aussie and soap (do you have soap shows in the UK? I know America do!)

[Anonymous @]

But It’s natural to need closure. I get that but I wonder where that concept came from. Phsychologists? Crap I can’t spell that properly. Anyway, I wonder why there is a need for it? I guess I answered my own question! It’s natural

:bangs head:

$3@(;&/!!

[ichabod @ichabod]

@jphamore  Moffat in Hell Bent is consciously laying the foundations for what he knows will be the last classic series story, the one that brings together all of the threads of the Doctor’s youth, Rassilon, the Matrix, etc. . . . when it is done, Moffat will leave all possibilities open for the next showrunner to create his or her own version of the Doctor.

I agree that SM is probably well aware of needing to settle some of the DW past and his take on it, to avoid creating a Dead Hand effect on the next showrunner’s choices.

@puroandson  I truly hope my students remember the lessons I teach but when it comes to me, the teacher, there’s a teacher-shaped hole. Not really defined by emotions or thoughts but possibly certain sayings -not actual conversations word for word: concepts not images; the repetition, the rote, not the romance.
Ahem: well, no, not romance. Not that: I’m being metaph….oh stuf….

(No “stuf” now, Puro solo.)  I think that’s pretty much what happens with the way people remember their education, but I have to add that most people *do* in fact remember their more idiosyncratic or charismatic teachers as persons, not just teacher-shaped sources of content.  In my experience, it’s more often the content that slips away . . . unless the teacher was teaching actual skills that the students continued to use quite consciously later in life (like music theory and practical technique that you need when composing or playing a piece for cello, say).

@jphamlore  We may find out as early as this Christmas special whether the Doctor retains the full memory of Clara

Moffat has talked somewhere about the placement of the Xmas special in the Doctor’s life, and it’s apparently well before S9 because River is dead by S9.  His comment is in a recent interview, can’t recall where.  So I don’t think Clara will be an issue at all, one way or another.  I think S10 will scarcely hark back to her at all.  The resolution of S9 is designed to move us all past Clara and into new companion territory (or an older, more casual companion style, if upthread comments about leaving behind the rather fierce intimacy of the Doctor/Clara relationship(s) are correct).  Maybe later on some sort of encounter will happen, rumors of another TARDIS traveler, or stray memories.  But the obsessional bond had to be broken, and I think it well and truly has been by his forgetting.  His closure, IMO, comes from letting go of the fruitless quest for Clara-the-unknown, since the Doctor now has his TARDIS back and can go anywhere in space and time, for any reason.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@puroandson   I don’t get this closure thing people talk about. Why? We don’t have closure in life. bad things happen and we think “I wish I’d said this to a person before they died and I never did”.

Son of Puro: No, we often don’t get “closure” for traumatic events in our lives; but we know that if you don’t at some point disengage from the emotional memory of the trauma, the rest of your life is likely to be badly compromised in ways that won’t make the rest of that life easy for you or for those who care about you.  For an extreme example, consider accounts of the lives in Israel of people who survived the Nazi death camps: I’ve read that many of these people remained in the shock of survivor guilt and paranoia for the rest of their lives, and forcefully passed their fears on to their own children.  That was traumatic experience for which no “closure”, I think, was even possible for many of the survivors.  There was a story in a magazine called “Tikkun” a few years ago about how these survivors were often so crippled mentally by their memories that many had to be institutionalized for long periods afterwards.

For the normal losses that life brings, often people have to find or make their own closure, more or less effectively, so they can get back the ability to live in the present, not stuck in depression over past losses.  When my dad died, I wrote a book about what a strange, prickly, and funny person he turned out to be when he lived next door to us in his old age.  I learned some things by that writing, and it afforded me closure (and a lot of forgetting, once I’d made a place besides my own mind to “put” those memories — a book).  Some people create rituals of remembrance that allow them to live the other parts of their lives out of the shadow of perpetual mourning.  We find ways.

As for the Doctor and Clara, they still had a puzzle to work out when they were in the white TARDIS, so the urgency of the situation left them with no time for moping.  They got to do a bit of that later, in the diner, where it was just right . . . sadness, and resignation, and then — okay, now what?!  Clara will go the long way round to where she must end up; the Doctor’s TARDIS will take him where he needs to be.  Big sigh of (rather melancholic) satisfaction, and a lump-in-the-throat goodbye to an epic pair and their tumultuous adventures.

[Anonymous @]

@winston

I think Clara should call herself   The Carer

Makes sense. Her companion is a terribly old lady. 😉

[Anonymous @]

@tardigrade

With you on that one, although the problem with unsatisfying endings is someone at some point might want to fix it. And who better than us!!!! *adopts superman pose*

And if you ascribe a hidden agenda to the Matrix, then perhaps you could hypothesise that it is the Matrix that is the hybrid – it certainly qualifies as a hybrid – many TL’s plus a few others thrown in, including at least one dalek.

Interesting. I didn’t see the dalek, cyberman or weeping angels as being in the Matrix but rather like external memory.

… it really seems to me that losing Clara personally isn’t what bothers him so much as I read it, it’s his failure in his duty of care – so if he knew she was safe, he’d be OK without her. It’s not say Rose we’re talking, where his loss was much more personal.

I 100% agree with this.

@puroandson

I suppose I failed to communicate the question mark part of the question. I do not think for a second that the prophecy remains unfulfilled.

Ah sorry – mea culpa! We’ve already seen how easy-to-confuse my badly-wired headbox is. XD

@pedant

Fellow Salopian, eh?

@ichabod

*Why* would he recognize a black and white image of her, when he didn’t recognize her actual face in the diner?

Isn’t it that he recognises the image of Clara as the person he met in the diner?

@bluesqueakpip

if Peter Capaldi’s exit date is set, they’ve got to the stage of ‘shortlist of possible female Doctors’

Ooh I hope not. I’m hoping Capaldi beats Tom Baker’s innings personally…

[Anonymous @]

@ichabod

Well, we thank you for that.

As for my students, I’m probably not making myself clear. They do remember me (uh!) -I get letters, cards, emails and all sorts of little gifts and it’s sweet but I believe what matters  is: that they remember the things which were taught. If I were a teacher shaped hole, believe me, after the erm, marriage proposal, the attempt at a kiss (boy did he read that wrong!) etc… I would be a lot happier. 🙂

Right now, I’m dealing with a particular case of a young man who would like to share a ‘pipe’ with me -after the mention of my actual meds, I think he ran for the hills. 🙂 (LOL says Son!)

For me, it’s what I teach -yes, the memories and the “oh wow you made me believe I could play/sing/write/compose/read” is nice but I want the “you” removed and I’d like it to be -“I learnt to play/sing/write/compose/read.  After all, that’s their taxes but never mind…onto Son:

I think that’s what me, Son was trying to say about Clara: the Doctor doesn’t remember her. In his mind and in the minds of a few here, he simply doesn’t but it doesn’t matter because we do and the Doctor  -through us and in the invitation through the Fourth Wall this season-will continue to be proud of his companion even if he doesn’t exactly* remember who that was.

*it lives in the ‘exactly’ says Mum (not sure what ‘lives’ is)

Kindest

The Hybrid

(No matter. All is well. Though that young boy with his pipe is probably thinking I’m calling the police. Ho-Ho Christmas is here!)

[Anonymous @]

@morpho

Oh boy, that made Mum’s day and mine -we needed some laughs.

LOL

(stop slapping my head puro I can write LOL ocassionally.).

Also he “recognised the picture as the woman he met in the diner”. That. Is. Awesome. It fits the whole thing because he sees but doesn’t ‘see’? Do you see? Love that, thankyou

Hybrid better bred now.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@Morpho

I’m looking forward to a female Doctor.

Hear hear, me too! Any ideal casting choices?

Tilda Swinton!

@pedant

In the case of Who, one person is producer and writer of key episodes and is known to take a close hand in editing and “take” selection (as did RTD: see the three versions of Tennant’s “I don’t want to go” for the best known Who example). That is a very strong authorial voice (and even the most casual comparison of any Moff seasons with any RTD season would highlight this, since RTD has an equally strong authorial voice). It is not a democracy. What Moff says goes, and he has made it clear he will intervene in scripts when he has to.

What I saw on screen – and what the script supported…

Oh my pedantic friend… your argument contains a worm hole or two. What you saw and what the script supported (for you) is a reading, of the text, not the Word of God.

The finished Doctor Who text is what we see on screen, of which the script is one element.

As @ichabod has pointed out, and as you mentioned, Moff’s directions for Capaldi in-script are NOT what we see on screen in the final scene:

He stares. And stares and stares. Not just at the box, but at the mural still painted on it. He kneels by it, puts his hand to – the painted face of Clara.

Oh! It was her!

In the final cut of Hell Bent, the one put out to viewers, Capaldi does not kneel in front of the TARDIS and put his hand to Clara’s portrait, he merely stares at it.

Now, according to your own argument, Moff will have approved that tonal shift, which has taken place at the actor interpretation and editing suite levels of narrative production. That already means we cannot read the script at any point as the final Word of God (as you suggest we should do in your argument). The script is the first draft of a television narrative, not the final cut. That’s how television narrative rolls.

There are other places in the final cut narrative, I suggest, where the same ambiguity can be read (whether you read it, or not). I’ve already given the example of this exchange:

ASHILDR Will you tell her what you’re going

to do?

THE DOCTOR Of course!

ASHILDR When?

THE DOCTOR Now!

We know the Doctor puns on his relationship to time. He does it in the diner when he tells Clara-as-waitress that he has been travelling “from time to time” (that’s an in-script ambiguity/ double-meaning on the Doctor’s part). Therefore, it is a perfectly valid reading of the text to read the Doctor’s “Now!” above, to mean, “Right now, because I know she’s listening on the monitor,” rather than, “Immediately after we’ve finished talking.”

Both are valid readings, and it is even possible to enjoy them both (as do I) without having to pin down an “ultimate” reading.

I pick this up, because the attempt to “fix” the meaning of texts by reference to authorial intent is I think inherently counter-creative, on several levels:

1. Unless you are the author or the author’s best mate, you are always guessing, to some extent. It is not the job (or the desire of the more sensible) writers to create narrative certitude.
2. There is more than one author of a television text (see above) and the story does not stop evolving once the script is written – it continues to evolve from script to screen, (see also above)
3. The author is not the ultimate authority on the meanings of their own text. Once that text enters the world, it belongs then, to its readers. Sure, some readings may appear more plausible to fellow readers than others. If I said that, for me, throughout Series 9, it is apparent that the Doctor is in love with Missy, I might not be able to find the textual evidence to convince very many other people! However, I would still be entitled to hold that reading, if I so wished. The fun, however, lies in chewing over the possible interpretations of texts where some evidence from the text can be marshalled to support several readings.

So, in conclusion, make arguments for your interpretation, by all means have at it, that’s what we do here! But, the “my reading is the author’s intention, and therefore definitive” argument is always IMHO a fallacy.

@Puroandson

Yes, Puro, I agree that the barn and the Doctor’s “High Born Gallifreyan” status are not necessarily in contradiction. The Time Lords probably put all their kids out into the drylands and make them undergo a series of unpleasant tests to see if they are worthy to look into the Time Vortex – very public school.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@juniperfish, @puroandson- yes, definitely boarding school as endurance test, a kind of English take on the Spartans. I’ve always have that feeling from the boy in the barn scene. And the woman was able to recognise him, in whatever body he turns up in. Not quite as emotionally close as a former nurse, but a prep-school age housemistress, certainly.

I’ll admit orphanage was also an option, till Danny made so much of the Doctor being officer class and the doctor didn’t really argue. I think it would have come up if the Doctor was an orphan. Have you ever seen ‘If…’? I’m pretty sure The Master was in it.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@ichabod

So if he remembers the events of that period but not the attachment to Clara, the person, how will what he remembers make sense to him? If he thinks of *her* as an empty outline of an unknown person, inscrutable as to feelings or motives, he would have to see *himself* (in his past) the same way — like a game piece, with no understandable motives of its own, just being moved randomly about by the story.

That would indeed be intolerable, and I think unsustainable, but I think the text, however one reads it, is enough in itself to establish that this isn’t the case.

When Clara-on-Gallifrey first asks the Doctor about the neural block the scene cuts immediately to the diner and Clara asking ‘So what was it, the thing that you took? ‘ And the Doctor replies ‘There was only one way to keep Clara safe. I had to wipe some of her memory’.  Clara then asks ‘Of what?’ and he replies, ‘Of me’. 

So he clearly retains not only a detailed memory of what happened, he can remember his motives for acting in relation to her, and from that he has been able to deduce her importance to him, even though he is now emotionally distanced from what he felt at the time. It is as if, when he tries to focus his mind’s eye on the memory of Clara herself and anything personal that she said to him, there is a blind spot, although everything else is clear. The effect of the neural block is evidently very selective indeed.

[Anonymous @]

@juniperfish @pedant

There was some interest in English and Post Modern lecturing at a time during which I was involved which entrapped readers as ‘absolute’ co-partners in interpretation. It is a compelling argument and one for perhaps personal reasons -from a musical perspective actually – I have difficulty abiding.

Young Frederica in Babel Tower would write (by way of Shakespeare): “the thing which can flash into the brain a memory of this thing, is the repeated reading of words which like turf and stones are part of the matter of the mind”

Francesca’s idea (amongst many -she is verbose ) is that through 3rd person and the idea of the ‘personal-ity’ of the text, the author is Prime Mover. Lecturers in English fighting against post modern ‘reads’ of texts were aware that such trends removed the ‘primer’ or the main personality from the writer and in so doing thus removed discovery -that which is the writer’s to own, as it were. The writer’s discovery is prime. Any other renderings and further interpretations which step away from the text piece by piece creates (more) possible “indiscreet” layers of complexity and lapses, even, in continuity -hypothetically. From script to a billion dollar audience the complexity and possible lapses are increased.

But it’s an interesting argument and one from which I will step back as I fear I have intruded in another conversation far more interesting in the observation than in my rather poor intervention.

Kindest,

Puro and Son.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@juniperfish, @pedant and @puroandson

Hmm. Well, I’ll drop in some comments to the reader/author debate.

Firstly, we’re not talking about readers and we’re not talking about authors. We’re talking scriptwriters, actors and viewers – and that does make a difference.

A scriptwriter provides the skeleton for the final programme. The final programme will be a collaboration between scriptwriter, actors, production team and director – and it’s incredibly common for the ‘final’ script to not be genuinely final. Things get changed right up to the editing stage; nowadays, with playback and recording being so cheap, it’s much more common to take several alternative readings of a scene or a reaction, and then pick one in the editing suite.

Same with playscripts, except that they have a much longer rehearsal period to see if things work and to change them (which is why you often have the first castlist included in a playscript).

So the ‘final’ script that we have is not necessarily Steven Moffat’s final word on Clara and the Doctor; his final word would have been developed in collaboration with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. Notice how the sunglasses are marked ‘plot point’? Then notice how Capaldi puts them on the console. They aren’t placed, they’re almost thrown. Same with the Neural Block – flung down in frustration.

So I really don’t think that a reading that the Doctor planned the reversed polarity in advance is plausible.

Similarly, I would argue that the Doctor knowing Clara’s observing them on the monitor isn’t a plausible reading. This is not because of the ‘Now.’ That is ambiguous. It’s Peter Capaldi’s playing of ‘I thought you’d be more surprised to see her’ – which he plays as someone genuinely thrown by Clara not being surprised. He did not know she’d work out how to use the monitor – and that feeds back to the Doctor flinging the means for Clara to counter his plan down on the console in two parts, both in sheer frustration.

Yes, he left her the means to counter his plan – but if he didn’t intend her to discover his plan until too late, then he either left her those means by accident, or it was his subconscious rather than his conscious decision.

Or he simply underestimated Clara, by treating her as if she were a child in need of his care.

The author is not the ultimate authority on the meanings of their own text.

I can only speak for actors: our job is to communicate. The underlying assumption of theatre and film is that it is possible to have a meaning that is agreed by both performers and audience. Yes, that shared meaning can be very broad – but the actor is the ultimate authority on the intended meaning of their performance.

And if the audience takes away a meaning from our performance that is wildly different from what we intended to convey – We. Have. Failed.

Well. Either that, or it’s the director’s fault. 😉

[ichabod @ichabod]

@morpho  @jphamlore  … it really seems to me that losing Clara personally isn’t what bothers him so much as I read it, it’s his failure in his duty of care – so if he knew she was safe, he’d be OK without her. It’s not say Rose we’re talking, where his loss was much more personal.  [I 100% agree with this.]

Well, he was *trying* to set it up this way, on is how terms: wipe her memory, stash her somewhere on Earth where she could live as a normal human, which of course she absolutely is *not* any more, so that was a very Doctor-doesn’t-get-all-the-implications-of-his-own-actions moment.  Whether he (with his memory intact) would have been able to stay away and leave her to that forgetful Earth life is questionable; the nature of obsession/addiction is that you act on an irresistible impulse toward the thing/person you are obsessed with.  And for me, this relationship has been *more* personal at much deeper levels (Impossible Girl levels) than even with Rose, so I’m thinking no, he wouldn’t have been able to stay away.  When he tells her that he bashed his way through the diamond wall for 4 billion + years because he had a duty of care, that’s patently absurd, IMO.  It’s code for, “Just as I said it would be back in The Girl Who Died, I couldn’t bear to lose you, and I was punishing myself for having lost you anyway.”

*Why* would he recognize a black and white image of her, when he didn’t recognize her actual face in the diner?
Isn’t it that he recognises the image of Clara as the person he met in the diner?

He might, but it would just be extremely puzzling to see the same face that he just saw *and didn’t recognize* painted on the TARDIS.  He certainly wouldn’t respond to the painting with a show of sentiment, because there is no sentiment attached to that face any longer, for him; it’s just the face of a pleasant young waitress who gave him some coffee, for a song.  “Clara Oswald, you’ll always look the same to me.”  But not now.  That deep connection has been obliterated.  I think that’s why they cut the touch-the-face bit: that’s not the meaning SM et al intended to convey.

Son of Puro:  Also he “recognised the picture as the woman he met in the diner”. That. Is. Awesome. It fits the whole thing because he sees but doesn’t ‘see’?

Yes, I agree — he looks at the portrait without visible reaction for a moment, and enters the TARDIS without another glance.  I’m not sure he even remembers waitress Clara’s face enough to identify it with the portrait, though: he’s shown blindness to human faces before, hasn’t he?  And that’s what waitress Clara was to him, a kind and interested human, all the rest forgotten.  But we remember (and can refresh our memories with re-watches).  He moves on into his future, with whomever the next companion turns out to be, never looking back over his shoulder at the triumph that he and Clara (with lots of help from the quirkiness of the universe) brought about between them: giving her her heart’s desire — to become a human TL in her own right, banging around the universe in her own stolen TARDIS.

And thanks for the “public school” connection to the barn; of course.

@juniperfish  Your three points +, #49378 — Yes!  I particularly like #1, It is not the job (or the desire of the more sensible) writers to create narrative certitude.  Especially not in a playscript!  Which is why the first thing many actors do with a fresh script is to cross out the stage directions, so that they can come up with their own moves and interpretations (within limits, of course) with the director.  Although I know some (usually newbie) authors who think it *is* their job to do just that.  It infuriates them to find that publishing a text means letting go of exactly that kind of control.

@mudlark  So he clearly retains not only a detailed memory of what happened, he can remember his motives for acting in relation to her, and from that he has been able to deduce her importance to him, even though he is now emotionally distanced from what he felt at the time. It is as if, when he tries to focus his mind’s eye on the memory of Clara herself and anything personal that she said to him, there is a blind spot, although everything else is clear.

Ah; yes, I missed that, thank you.  Selective is right!  The man who begged her to *see* him and who always *saw* her, looking right past the face to the inner being, is now blind to exactly that kind of seeing, but only in respect to her, his Clara no longer.  It’s like he’s permanently (?) wearing sonic sunglasses set to delete the emotional content of the “Clara” outline in his story.  Gawd.  What a very sophisticated barbarism, the careful cauterization of an essential part of the soul — and he was going to do that for (to) her . . . for the best of reasons, of course (clever boy — it’s worked, the only way it could have worked — on him, instead).

@bluesqueakpip  Thanks for that analysis from the actors’ point of view.  I remember being told that the first thing many actors do with a new script is cross out the stage directions, so that they can come up with their own physical and emotional flow through the story, in concert (one hopes) with the rest of the cast and the Director.

[lisa @lisa]

@bluesqueakpip

With you on seeing Capdoc hang around for a very long time !   TomDoc is also a big

favorite of mine.

and

@jphamlore                                   @ichabod                                @pedant                               @juniperfish

@puroandson

 

“The obsessional bond had to be broken”     is a post I’ve  read here.

If I may push back gently and suggest that perhaps when the Doctor realized that Clara’s

heart would not beat again we saw he became agitated and plan B kicked in. Why?   I believe

its because he felt in that moment “his duty of care” to Clara could continue with out end  and would

leave him in a very compromised state .  So he felt compelled at this point to revise his plan.

Also, he  knew he needed to make the 2 devices available to Clara because they would

still be pivotal tools in his plan .  But he had to do it in such a way that looked irrelevant

to her. So he tossed them away but still easily accessible and I think he managed to do that

expertly.  I think that’s his style.  Misdirection is a superpower of his (and Missy’s too)

 

I could be jumping to conclusions but that was my interpretation.  I might add that he

chose to take the sacrifice because if  Clara has a normal life span it would be probably

like Clara growing old in Last Christmas.   However now Clara is immortal  and  that changed

the equation.

 

[lisa @lisa]

I meant to say ‘changed the whole equation for the Doctor’  on the

last line on previous post .     🙂

[ichabod @ichabod]

@lisa  “his duty of care” to Clara could continue with out end

because now she’s immortal as TLs are (long-lived but not invulnerable to accidents, extreme events, etc., so ending in death one way or another but probably a long way off)?  Well, that would be a rather daunting prospect for him, I agree.  It can work.

But I’ll stick with the tidal-wave format, myself: the one he began with Ashildr’s resurrection, the one that has wiped his emotional memory re Clara away.  Talk about your consequences!  I’d say that’s some wave!

 

[lisa @lisa]

@ichabod

Actually  agree with you about how Asildr grew into a tidal wave.  Missy

more than likely also tried to use her against the Doctor just like she did

with Clara.  Me  became  pivotal to trapping  the Doctor..

Actually I bet they will have a meet up with some other Doctors.   There

might be some more saving in other Doctor timelines.

Maybe with some previous  or future companions too.

 

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@puroandson @bluesqueakpip

Well, I am very fond of Barthes’ “La Morte de L’Auteur” (the death of the author) and it’s a perspective especially applicable to television, as the title was a pun on Malory’s Morte d’Arthur which, Barthes convincingly argues, is likely a multi-authored text, transitioning over time. So, to pin its “ultimate” truths onto Malory’s personal life or authorial intent (both common forms of humanist literary criticism) would be patently reductionist.

The case of Moffat’s Who is different again. In an episode such as Hell Bent, Moffat is the script-writer, and the co-executive producer. So, he does have, as @pedant suggests, more power than an ordinary television show script writer in terms of input into all the stages of the  storytelling which come after the script (from script to screen).

What we can see, for ourselves, as the BBC have released the Hell Bent script, is that the journey from script to screen has added greater narrative ambiguity than a literal interpretation of the script would have delivered. Now, we don’t know if it was Moffat, or Capaldi and Coleman, or Talalay, or the editing team, or all of them in concert who suggested the tweaks. But we can see, as in the posts above, at #49382 @bluesqueakpip believes the Doctor did not “suggest” Clara into reversing the polarity on the neural block and at #49386 @lisa believes he did. I think both are plausible readings from the on-screen text.

Whether we treat Moffat as Word of God or not (meaning – the ultimate authority on the text) I think narrative ambiguity is part of the creative design of the show under his tenure. Contemporary television texts have learned, particularly since Xena and Buffy collided with the first waves of internet fandom, to include “fan fiction gaps”; deliberated spaces, into which readers can add their own interpretations/ extemporizations. A clear example of this, is Clara’s scene with the Doctor amongst the cloister wraiths, when she says, “People like you and me, there are things we should say to each other. And I’m going to say them now.” And then the camera pans away.

Goddamit, what did she say?! Half the internet thinks she said “I love you”, the other half thinks she said “Run you clever boy, and be a doctor.” There’s supporting evidence for both readings. Equally, you might argue she said, “It is time for you to let me go, Doctor.” That fits. The text purposively creates room to breathe.

There are culturally radical and culturally normative interpretations of texts. There are also more plausible and less plausible interpretations of texts (although that, to large extent, depends on the skill of the critic). And those involved in authoring a TV text, from script-writer to actors, have theirs. It’s absolutely not that their interpretations mean “nothing”, but they are not oracles either. Their job is to produce, not to explain, as Barthes would say. And as @ichabod says – experienced authors learn to accommodate, and indeed even to encourage, audience interpretations other than their own.

As for actors, with all due respect to one in the craft @bluesqueakpip ! I have seen television actors give interviews in which they interpret their character’s behaviour or motivations in one way, yet when reading the performance in its context there are layers they have either chosen not to discuss or do not themselves read. Jake Gyllenhal for instance gave an interview saying he believed his and Heath Ledger’s characters were not gay, but just two men who fell in love with each other in Brokeback Mountain. Sure, that’s a valid reading. But another, is that they were primarily attracted to men, but in the time and place they lived, having a “gay” identity was not an option for them. I don’t think we should take Gyllenhal’s reading as the definitive one. He is the instrument, not the ear.

In short, yes oh Puro half of @puroandson , I definitely applaud what post-structuralism (Barthes being in that vein) did for literary (and media textual) criticism, in “de-centering” (not, as some think, obliterating) the author, in relation to meaning-making in texts.

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip

Yes, dear but I know this. I agreed!

Similarly, I would argue that the Doctor knowing Clara’s observing them on the monitor isn’t a plausible reading. This is not because of the ‘Now.’ That is ambiguous. It’s Peter Capaldi’s playing of ‘I thought you’d be more surprised to see her’ –

On script vs a novel.. no no, can’t sit with it….sorry just can’t (brilliant debate here** but I said I would step back….:) )

not me brilliant, I’m just ‘observer’

[Anonymous @]

@juniperfish

It’s obliteration all right.

I have spent years in the deconstruction industry as it were: in po-mo (thanks @pedant) and simply cannot revisit that all again here. I disagree with it on every level and in every ink blot! 🙂

Best for me to avoid it as I said: so imagine me waving a flag: “Author Is Prime” coz I did once. Post structuralism -oh Lord, let’s move on? Please? Pretty please?

Kindest,

Puro

[ichabod @ichabod]

So — his memory gets wiped instead of hers and drop him off — in London?  That’s where his TARDIS is, but on the other hand, so is Rigsy and others who might remind him, literally, of what he’s forgotten.  Or they don’t worry about that, trust the neural block, and drop him off in London so he can find his blue box.

Only he doesn’t (why not?).  From there he wanders around looking for it, and reconstructing the Clara-shaped blank figure in his memory while composing a song that keeps telling him what he felt about her, although his memories of her remain blank (this can’t be an instantaneous thing, right?).

At some not to much later point, they’re back to check, and see that he’s walking through Nevada, still confused and still grounded.  So they go grab his TARDIS from London (poor Rigsy, when he sees that his monument to Clara has vanished!  Though he might think the Doctor has come and reclaimed it and left in it).  Then they grab the Doctor in Nevada, knock him out, drop him by the road, and flag down a passing truck and ask the driver to take him, when he wakes, to the next roadside joint where he has a better chance of getting his next lift.  Then they move their TARDIS with his TARDIS inside it 30 m. down the road, turn their TARDIS into the diner (how do they know what that looked like in such detail?  Oh — his TARDIS must remember it), and wait.

Oh, am I remembering correctly that waitress Clara turns away to end the diner scene by slipping away to her own TARDIS just when he realizes (out loud) that it’s the diner where he met with Rory and Amy, not Clara.  If so, that’s her signal that all is indeed well: he doesn’t remember her, fine, but the neural block has left his memory in general intact.  (He didn’t know what it would do when they used it.)  So give him his TARDIS and leave him to find his new direction on his own.

She’s just fulfilled *her* “duty of care* to him; so she’s learned that from him, too.

Honestly, this thing is truly *awesome*.

 

[ichabod @ichabod]

@juniperfish  What we can see, for ourselves, as the BBC have released the Hell Bent script, is that the journey from script to screen has added greater narrative ambiguity than a literal interpretation of the script would have delivered. .  . . I think narrative ambiguity is part of the creative design of the show under his [Moffat’s] tenure. . . . Their job is to produce, not to explain

Better than I could have said it; thanks.  And okay, Puro solo, that’s me done with it — unless more brain fireworks occur.

[Mersey @mersey]

@puroandson @juniperfish

I definitely agree with @puroandson Barthes? Derrida? Who else? Pierce and his concept of sign? My position is that Jenna Coleman was leaving the show so Clara had to do that either. One way or the other. They wanted to do that smoothly without grief and sense of guilt and without any impact on the future events. I think they did it well, not without question marks (if Clara doesn’t need to breath, does she need to eat? I think that’s not impossible for her, but it’s not my problem) but it works. And for me that story is finished.

[Anonymous @]

@mersey

Oh dear Derrida Derrida dear! I understand. Not a fan of Derrida myself. I have had quite some experience with it and could go on about it but shall desist in favour of being happy!

But yes, the story with Clara is finished as you suggest.

Good to see you about.

Kindest,

Puro and Son

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@Puroandson

<laughs> fear not, I am not about to “talk shop” and expound upon Derrida, I promise.

I was simply assailed by the critical itch (as happens from time to time) to point out to our friend @pedant that a) relying on the script as the definitive meaning in a television text misses the fact that the script is only one part of the creative process and b) that calling upon the author to “lock down” one’s own reading of a text misses the (wonderful) complexities of the interpretive lives of texts.

I will now swim fishily under a rock!

[Anonymous @]

@juniperfish

Och no do not swim away  -I do adore your wonderful tone and intellect -I just wanted a break from, well, “shop” as you say. I’m not against a person/group/viewers interpreting what the author has written, and to be honest,  “Frederica’s” interpretation about filmic properties leaves me at quite the disadvantage as my area of interest would be novellas/plays/novels rather than script. It is interesting to view @bluesqueakpip‘s ideas as actor on this point -rarely do actors get that involved in the type of discussions we see here. It is refreshing to be sure.

I did adore David Lodge writings on the matter however!

Kindest, Puro

 

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@morpho

Interesting. I didn’t see the dalek, cyberman or weeping angels as being in the Matrix but rather like external memory.

Probably correct- they don’t seem to be integrated like the TLs in the matrix, or arguably the sliders. Perhaps the cloisters rather than the Matrix proper would qualify as the hybrid. I was thinking that the experience of those inside the Matrix proper would be of a virtual environment (so they wouldn’t be directly aware of the cloisters). We saw an example in Missy’s “Heaven” which was described as a Gallifrey Matrix Data Slice, so presumably similar tech. Though the behaviour of the sliders may suggest it may not be a pleasant experience, at least for them, so maybe more like hell than heaven.

@lisa

If I may push back gently and suggest that perhaps when the Doctor realized that Clara’s heart would not beat again we saw he became agitated and plan B kicked in. Why?   I believe its because he felt in that moment “his duty of care” to Clara could continue with out end  and would leave him in a very compromised state .  So he felt compelled at this point to revise his plan. Also, he  knew he needed to make the 2 devices available to Clara because they would still be pivotal tools in his plan.  But he had to do it in such a way that looked irrelevant to her. So he tossed them away but still easily accessible and I think he managed to do that expertly.  I think that’s his style.  Misdirection is a superpower of his (and Missy’s too)

The Doctor is genuinely agitated when he throws down the glasses, so I find it difficult to believe that it was part of a plan, though with his speed of thinking, maybe I’m being too dismissive. He’d have to assume though what Clara would do is to attempt to reverse the effects of the neural block- I would have thought it more likely that she would disable or destroy it, since I don’t think that the reversal was a particularly thought out thing. While there’s no doubt the Doctor lies, I have difficulty in crediting him as a master of misdirection, since he is someone who apparently needs cue cards to show appropriate empathy, and effective misdirection requires a good understanding of how people will act and feel.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@juniperfish

So, to pin its “ultimate” truths onto Malory’s personal life or authorial intent (both common forms of humanist literary criticism) would be patently reductionist.

I cheerfully admit that I’ve never read Barthes. But either you’ve condensed his argument over-much, or possibly I’m confusing the religious studies term ‘reductionist’ (explaining religion using non-religious causes) with what it means in literary studies. It appears that you’re saying that Barthes view of those who re-work traditional tales was the now rather old-fashioned view that they didn’t do any actual editing and reshaping?

I think both are plausible readings from the on-screen text.

I’d disagree. I’d say that one (mine, obviously 🙂 ) takes account of the entire text, as seen. The other, @lisa‘s, incorporates selective aspects of the text as seen and rejects other aspects. Then it uses elements of the Doctor’s known character (he’s manipulative), and argues that those elements apply in all scenes, even ones where the face-value interpretation is that he’s showing surprise and confusion.

One is based on what is happening on screen, the other argues that what is happening on screen isn’t what’s really happening. In one type of interpretation you should be able to point to particular lines, particular actions, in the other you need a fairly large input of additional audience interpretation – and a fair amount of ‘that line didn’t mean what it appeared to mean, because the character was lying’.

Now, if you say that both readings are ‘plausible’, you’re arguing from (I think) two particular premises – which are firstly that the only ‘valid’ interpretation is the one that goes on in the mind of the ‘reader’ and secondly that the narrative ambiguity that is assigned to certain parts of the on-screen drama can be applied to all its parts, even in the face of the creative producers of that drama insisting that no narrative ambiguity was intended.

The first view takes a very individualistic view of the audience. You keep using the term ‘reader’ and ‘reading – which is the official term (I use it too), but treats a play or a TV programme as if it was a novel. Plays and TV programmes are not ‘read’ by ‘readers’, they are watched by an audience – and ‘audience’ is a group noun. And the audience, as a group, affects the interpretation of every individual within it.

How often have we had people post on here saying something along the lines of ‘I thought this, but after all the discussions I watched it again and now…’ ? Audience. Communal watching, even if we have to create a community via the Internet. Interpretations that often approach a group consensus, with a number of outlying or alternative views.

There are culturally radical and culturally normative interpretations of texts.

Yup. Group interpretation again, you see. Are we going with the group (normative) or against it (radical, but radical is usually an interpretation within a cultural subgroup)? What’s really interesting is when you get different cultures interpreting the same text. What’s culturally radical to one is culturally normative to another.

But if all interpretations are equally valid, why step outside your own culture to check out someone else’s interpretation? Your interpretation is just as valid as theirs – which means they can’t possibly be ‘right’ and you be ‘wrong’.

This site is actually a home for outlying or alternative views (see masthead) – because the ‘mainstream’ view is often just plain boring (at least, to the fertile imaginations of those of us who like to hang out here). If we posit that the Doctor planned the swap all along, that leaves the Doctor in charge – and allows an imaginative interpretation that he might have also planned some way to later remember Clara – and allows about ten tons of narrative space to fill with fan fics. 🙂 But if we take the face value view that he didn’t plan the swap, can’t remember Clara from Adam (Adam was in Series 1) and we’re probably never going to see Clara again, then the ‘narrative space’ is The Further Adventures of Clara and Ashildr.

The second is the more plausible interpretation. But frankly, @lisa‘s is more interesting.

Equally, ‘narrative ambiguity’ is frequently misused to mean ‘this is the interpretation that I want, and it’s the one I’m going to have’. Sometimes a sonic screwdriver is just a sonic screwdriver. Sometimes the Doctor looks surprised because … well, because something happened that he didn’t expect.

Their job is to produce, not to explain, as Barthes would say.

Of course he would. He was a literary critic. God forbid mere producers of creative work should tell the distinguished academic critics they were talking out of their collective arses with particular interpretations: they could put entire university departments out of business. 😈

Jake Gyllenhal for instance gave an interview saying he believed his and Heath Ledger’s characters were not gay, but just two men who fell in love with each other in Brokeback Mountain. Sure, that’s a valid reading. But another, is that they were primarily attracted to men, but in the time and place they lived, having a “gay” identity was not an option for them. I don’t think we should take Gyllenhal’s reading as the definitive one. He is the instrument, not the ear.

Hmmm… to me, that sounds as if, having been offered a really interesting interpretation of human love and sexuality as something so powerful it can transcend not just culture, but our ‘normal’ sexual orientation – you’ve gone for the ‘comfortable’ interpretation that ‘they’re gay really but they couldn’t admit it back then’.

From an acting point of view, Gyllenhal’s interpretation is far more interesting.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@ichabod

Regarding the ‘high born’ thing – I always placed the Doctor as an aristocrat, but a ‘younger son’. Not the heir, the one who has to go out and make a career for himself.

British boarding prep schools for age 7-13 are very often out in the countryside – there are historic reasons for that, but if you put it into a Gallifreyan context then The Doctor’s Daughter and The Sound of Drums suggest that young potential Time Lords were quite deliberately separated from their parents.

Which would mean their schools would have to be outside the city. And schools for privileged young folk often do deliberately introduce their pampered pupils to a rather more spartan life style than they’re used to.

Culturally, it’s true that British orphanages were generally for the lower classes – but that was because upper class orphans generally got dumped into a boarding school for both term time and holidays (J.K. Rowling uses that practice for Harry, but softens it by making Hogwarts his true home).

So that barn could belong to a Gallifreyan prep school where all boys of the Doctor’s social status would expect to go – or it could be the equivalent of an upper class orphanage; a boarding school for children of the Time Lord class who can’t live at home.

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip

I cheerfully admit that I’ve never read Barthes

If you read Roland, you’ll never be cheerful again!

He really does state that the writer is deniable and that he’s a mere passive scriptor.

It was a controversial set of works culminating, for adoration purposes and kudos (which of course meant tenure and remuneration) in The Death of the Author. Tis a work filled with blandishments and it’s why I come out in hives when Roland Barthe’s mentioned.

It’s an allergy I think   😈

Puro

[Anonymous @]

But I wouldn’t be concerned about plausible interpretations or not. They are interpretations and they can stand.

Whether they withstand a writer’s original intent is another matter.

Interesting perhaps to view those who were once avid ‘structuralist’ devotees and, like Helen Razer, are now no longer -now that’s a story.

Still, this is a re-freshing auditorium.

Puro and son (who is getting a fair amount of study of post modern criticism and lit crit in short order. It’s good for him!)

[CountScarlioni @countscarlioni]

I’m days behind with the comments so apologies if this has already been posted, but the script with Moffat’s directions for Hell Bent has been posted on the official BBC Doctor Who website:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/isite-static/doctorwho/scripts/DW9-EP-12-Hell-Bent.pdf

At the top of p. 56 we get:

And standing facing him – left behind by the parting TARDIS/Diner is the police box shape of his own TARDIS. He stares. And stares and stares. Not just at the box, but at the mural still painted on it. He kneels by it, puts his hand to – – the painted face of Clara. Oh! It was her! On Clara’s face we -DISSOLVE TO: 57 INT. CLASSIC TARDIS –  On Clara’s face. She’s grinning, flying the TARDIS.

So some differences in the script from from what we saw (nothing either on squishy pears in SM’s script).

 

 

[lisa @lisa]

@tardigrade

I agree that the Doctor lacks  diplomacy skills. That’s where his companions can assist him

with cue cards or whatever. But he never lets that get in his way and is always  a step ahead.

I can’t  equate that with a lack of empathy.  Seems to me he has buckets of empathy.

It drives his choices but its not always critical to his success.  He’s still the  alpha leader.

He still manipulates the action and he’s positively  confident and  clever.

Yes, he’s definitely agitated because Clara isn’t getting a pulse and Clara had in a previous

episodes opportunities to learn her way around the sonics so she may have been able

to ‘reverse’ the neural blocker?   Also think that he has in every episode surprised us with

his strategies.  To me that implies great misdirecting.

But that’s just my way of seeing it.

 

 

[Anonymous @]

dear @countscarlioni

if you look at the last few pages a few people have been commenting on the script and what that script then means.

Thankyou

Son

[Anonymous @]

dear @tardigrade

when people are say, doing magic, they are misdirecting people: not sure they’re needing empathy to do this?

But I agree that the Doctor @lisa has empathy -he had with Ashidr in the Girl Who Died and in Under the Lake. Also, with Danny Pink last year

Thankyou

Son

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@lisa

I can’t equate that with a lack of empathy. Seems to me he has buckets of empathy. It drives his choices but its not always critical to success. He’s still the alpha leader. He still manipulates the action and he’s positively confident and clever. Yes, he’s definitely agitated because Clara isn’t getting a pulse and Clara had in a previous episodes opportunities to learn her way around the sonics so she may have been able to ‘reverse’ the neural blocker? Also think that he has in every episode surprised us with his strategies. To me that implies great misdirecting. But that’s just my way of seeing it.

No- a lack of empathy isn’t something I’d ascribe to the Doctor, so I shouldn’t have used that word, though a lack of tact perhaps, e.g., looking at his actions of Gallifrey in Hell Bent- they may have been strategically reasonably sound, but tactful – not so much – I wouldn’t expect a manipulator to take on Rassilon head on, but only when he’d sown the seeds and knew his victory was a fait accompli (so the Doctor is no politician, which I’m sure we can agree on). He definitely directs the action where he can, not sure that’s often through misdirection though. So it’s not empathy that’s lacking, more an understanding of people at times, that manifests as lapses in tactfulness.

Missy however, has a strong grasp on how people will react and does employ misdirection heavily- with the lack of empathy of a sociopath though, of course.

When it’s clear that Clara’s pulse isn’t returning, the Doctor is agitated in a way that we’ve rarely seen. He certainly seems to be doubting himself at that point, so I have difficulty in seeing him putting in place a plan at that moment. That’s admittedly a difference in interpretation though- he can certainly think quickly when he feels cornered.

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@puroandson
when people are say, doing magic, they are misdirecting people: not sure they’re needing empathy to do this?

In the sense of understanding how they will react, a magician does. Oddly, so does the observer of the magic- the autistic spectrum person who doesn’t follow the normal cues, and say follow the magician’s gaze as she mimes taking an object from one hand into another, is less likely to be fooled.

In a novel situation, you need to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and the Doctor’s cue cards are an indication that it can be something he struggles with, so perhaps it’s actually fairer to characterise the Doctor as sympathetic rather than empathetic much of the time (look up the comparative definition if you’re not sure what I mean). I don’t mean to imply a lack of caring – it’s perhaps more an indication of his alien nature, even after so much time amongst humans, that he can’t always put himself altogether into human shoes.

[CountScarlioni @countscarlioni]

son of @puroandson  Thanks! In catching up with my reading, I’d made it to Friday’s comments, then on the BBC site saw the script had been posted and got excited. So now I’m writing out my 100 lines “I won’t make any postings until I’ve caught up with the latest comments.”

[ichabod @ichabod]

@puroandson  Damn, I am not deniable, that’s for sure!  I must admit, though, that I have some colleagues who insist on telling their readers, “My characters take over, they tell the story and I just run after them, writing it all down.”  Which kind of puts legs under that nonsense which it does not deserve.  It can feel like that sometimes, but the writer’s job isn’t to be a psychic journalist.  It’s to fasten upon ideas (of character, incident, environment, etc.) and develop them (some rise from your internal psychology, some your mind sieves out of the cultural flow of ideas around you, many from other fiction); and the rest is choosing words, and then editing — carving away the dross to the best of your ability so that the reader doesn’t have to do any of that.

When you turn it over to the public, that text becomes a script in that each reader mounts their own on-going production of the story you’ve laid out, but inside her own mind, fleshed out from *her* life experience, not yours.  Each reader has an interpretation by his own imaginary cast of mental “actors”, and for that person, that interpretation is valid, and also changeable with time and with other input.  As author, though, your own interpretation, the one you’ve crafted on the page, is, IMO, primary and to some extent lays down the parameters of interpretation that can be justified from the text alone.  Cutting out and setting aside the writer’s version as *less* meaningful than those of readers is just plain stupid — bad *science*, is how it feels to me.

On the other hand, I have learned things about my own work from readers who saw something that I didn’t, but that I see as valid anyway; and it’s in the friction of varying interpretation, and the discussions that come from that — reinterpretations in the light of discoveries of influences not seen before etc. — are part of the resonance that keeps a story alive into some part of the future.  Re-visions of established works can be good teachers, too.

That’s how it looks to me, anyway.

 

[ichabod @ichabod]

@tardigrade  When it’s clear that Clara’s pulse isn’t returning, the Doctor is agitated in a way that we’ve rarely seen. He certainly seems to be doubting himself at that point, so I have difficulty in seeing him putting in place a plan at that moment.

Let alone a plan that he has developed in anticipation of this no-pulse-return development, which he clearly anticipated as happening, but being easily canceled by a bit of distance travel.  He’s so upset that he loses his temper with Clara and goes on the attack — “Oh, you don’t trust me any more?!”  I don’t believe that he’s even thinking fast enough at this point to set up a plan that reads as A (he wipes Clara’s memory) but is secretly B all along (he manipulates the situation so that Clara wipes *his* memory instead because he’s realized that he is the one who has to forget, not her).

On the other hand — he demanded a neural block “compatible with humans” back in the extraction room, didn’t he?  What for, if he didn’t have *some* plan to use it — on a human?  And Clara is the only human at hand except for Ashildr (does Ashildr count as fully human any more?), and he doesn’t seem to have any cause to use it on Ashildr.

[Anonymous @]

@ichabod

Yes, as you say it’s primary or prime but other readers can say ‘sure I see this’ whilst you go “really?”

:gobsmacked:

🙂

[Anonymous @]

eer @tardigrade

thankyou yes, I can differentiate between sympathy, empathy etc

But I’ll be sure to look all that up.

Son

[Author]

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