Hell Bent
Home › Forums › Episodes › The Twelfth Doctor › Hell Bent
This topic contains 1,022 replies, has 101 voices, and was last updated by 
ps1l0v3y0u 2 months, 3 weeks ago.
-
AuthorPosts
-
8 December 2015 at 12:23 #49061
Did Me not already give the chip to the Sam Swift character played by Rufus Hound ?
I wouldn’t have thought Clara actually needed the chip, she already has no heartbeat so I would imagine it would be difficult for her to be killed or die in the usual way anyway. I would also imagine if the chip had the ability to make Clara immortal The Doctor would have had another he would have gave to her, rather than having to go through the memory wipe. Clara’s death in face the raven is a fixed moment in time, so I imagine she will have to die at that moment.
8 December 2015 at 12:25 #49062Not that I would ever have the cojones to take sides in a debate between that formidable pair, @bluesqueakpipand @pedant,
There are no sides, only perspectives.
but this: the title of the first episode in Series 9 is ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ and then in the final episode of Series 9 we see Clara flying off in a Type 40 TARDIS (with dodgy chameleon circuit), on the run from the Time Lords, with a companion is really clever.
It is. Of course, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice came unstuck too. (tum ti tum ti tiddly tum ti tum – that’s stuck now, isn’t it?)
All of the times I thought the Doctor knew something, those sideways furrowed-brow glances (leading to the whole “Are the episodes in the right order?” debate) can now be more easily and more realistically interpreted as becoming increasingly concerned: the difference between “bad luck” and “an accident waiting to happen”.
That’s what drove the Doctor on his 4.5 billion year quest – rage at having having seen it coming, but having done nothing. Self-disgust, if you like. And the price he paid for that was forgetting.
Utterly brilliant storytelling.
The lesson of Icarus isn’t “don’t aspire” it’s “don’t be a cocky twat”, (or, if one wants to bend over backwards to be generous, “don’t get drunk on the excitement” – either way it is gender, species and race neutral). One can only wonder at the grief of Daedalus.
(In another topic, can’t recall where, but I’m sure at some point in AG Who the Doctor stated that he was lying re being half-human)
8 December 2015 at 12:45 #49063She didn’t lie to the Doctor about where Galifrey was except for timeframe. So how did she know?
The Simm Master was last seen shooting regeneration energy bolts at Rassillon, as the link between Earth and Gallifrey closed and the Council were drawn back to Gallifrey. Since we next see a weak, aged Rassillon on Gallifrey, I think we can bonkerise that Missy knew where Gallifrey was because that’s where she’d escaped from.
The Simm Master might also explain why Rassillon is so very aged and far weaker/ineffectual than we’ve ever seen an actor previously play Rassillon. Given that Rassillon ‘made’ the Master, by sending him insane as a child, it’s entirely possible that the Simm Master’s revenge wasn’t to kill him, but to go as far as he possibly could towards destroying Rassillon.
Between the Master and the Doctor, I’d bonkerise, the Gallifreyan memory of Rassillon isn’t going to be of the Strongman of Gallifrey, the terrifying dictator-President who was nonetheless the best leader for Gallifrey’s desperate straits in the Time War.
The memory will be of a weak old man who was sent packing by the very people he’d tortured.
8 December 2015 at 13:04 #49064Is it ever explicitly stated that the Rassilon in Hell Bent is a regenerated form of the Rassilon we see fighting Simm’s Master? Could it just be that he is now very, very old? Age can change one’s physical appearance quite considerably, and extreme Time Lord ageing perhaps even more so.
For example, when the 11th Doctor got very, very old he stopped looking like Matt Smith and started looking like some dodgy rubber face mask. Oh. 😉
PS: I think I’ve seen the idea floated here (it may have been elsewhere), but I’d have found it very amusing if Dalton’s Rassilon had regenerated into one played by Pierce Brosnan… 😆
8 December 2015 at 13:17 #49065@morpho
Having watched both Day of the Moon and Let’s Kill Hitler again recently, sorry to contradict but that’s incorrect. Both of Melody’s regenerations were of the standard reboot format a la Eccelston-to-Tennant.
Took a look to see what you mean- and yes, River’s regenerations appeared basically as refined versions of the Eccleston-Tennant one. We come in on the general’s regeneration completing, so I wouldn’t be confident in saying that the effect was much different, particularly with the head down position used to allow for the gender-change reveal confusing matters.
I think the original comment was more referring to the Tennant-Smith and Smith-Capaldi regenerations which were much ramped-up versions. River and the general were on the “Cover your eyes- this will be bright” scale, not the “Run for your life- he’s gonna blow!” scale.
That’s what drove the Doctor on his 4.5 billion year quest – rage at having having seen it coming, but having done nothing. Self-disgust, if you like.
Interesting take- he certainly took to what the observers on Gallifrey clearly thought to be an obtusely tortuous task that he set himself with gusto- what Rassilon did to him in the dial hardly compares to what he did to himself. I certainly don’t buy the reason he gives of not confessing in the dial and keeping what turns out to be a pretty mundane secret, i.e. that he doesn’t have a secret. Didn’t seem that his potential knowledge of the identity of the hybrid is really that valuable as a bargaining chip, since he basically gives away that he doesn’t know that as soon as he’s in the citadel anyway. And it’s in point of fact advantageous for his plan to save Clara for him not to know, since it gives him an excuse to need to use an extraction chamber.
I think we can bonkerise that Missy knew where Gallifrey was because that’s where she’d escaped from.
The scenario I had in mind was that the tussle between the Master and Rassilon left them both regenerating, and Missy locked up post-regeneration. Missy then re-entered the universe at large when Gallifrey did and cut some sort of deal with Rassilon to help entrap the Doctor in return for her freedom. Seems to connect the dots, but no real evidence for that of course.
8 December 2015 at 13:23 #49066Anonymous @
On the contrary, River uses her regeneration as a weapon in Let’s Kill Hitler, like Smith in TotD. Also I think the original comment was mine haha! But it’s probably not important, although I would like to see it toned down, it was always a bit OTT.
8 December 2015 at 13:59 #49067Once the Doctor, assuming he truly did not remember Clara in the diner scene, got back into his own Tardis, would he not immediately search the Tardis’s data banks for “Clara” and recover at least some of the lost memories? For him, it’s surely only a temporary loss of some memories. Have I missed something? Is there something extra clever about the neural block?
By the time the Doctor enters his Tardis he has already received enough information to have worked out who the woman in the diner was, and he could, as you say, consult the Tardis records; that is if the latter are still accessible, because Me/Clara could have tampered with those records as @tardigrade pointed out , or the Tardis herself could have done some editing, to protect him. But whatever he can piece together about her makes little essential difference, because what has been erased is far more than just the facts.
When Donna’s memory was wiped by the Doctor it was as if the whole section of her life involving him had been snipped out, and the cut edges joined seamlessly. On that occasion he used telepathy, but now he uses the neural block, which he says is a better way, and this seems to be because it can be programmed to be highly selective. The result amounts to a permanent disjunction in his memories, so that he can recall the adventures he had with Clara, even if the memories are a bit fuzzy – he mentions the ice warriors and the mummy on the Orient Express, he knows that he had a companion in these adventures and has worked out that her name was Clara, but even face to face with her and, as I still think, aware of who she must be, he cannot use that information to fill the hole where she was. The inner eye of memory is no longer capable of *seeing* her there, nor can he recall how it felt to be in her company; and crucially as @arbutus and @tardigrade observed, the emotional connection which bound them together so tightly has gone. This, it seemed to me, was what the Doctor is telling Clara in that last conversation in the diner. In its it own way it is as sad a resolution as if he had failed to recognise her completely, except that enough remains for the echoes of what was to be captured in a song or a story.
8 December 2015 at 14:11 #49068I think what we’re arguing about is who the hubris belongs to. You think it’s the pupil’s hubris, I think it’s the teacher’s hubris.
Arrogance has always been the Doctor’s flaw; he was arrogant. I would argue that he arrogantly presumed, in the face of mounting evidence, that he’d always be able to pull his ‘apprentice’s’ chestnuts out of the fire.
If he became increasingly concerned, what, please, did he do about it? Apart from encourage her to hang out of the TARDIS wearing the Sonic Sunglasses, which really was an accident waiting to happen. Basically, I can see three possibilities: either he was incredibly arrogant about his ability to protect her, or he was subconsciously treating her like a Time Lord who could regenerate, or he knew she was not going to live long anyway.
I’d agree that the Doctor was bloody furious with himself and thought Clara’s death his fault – but I’d say that he failed in his ‘duty of care’ to an apprentice by not teaching her about stuff like safety precautions for more fragile humans. Even minor things like not sticking a rope around her waist when she was hanging out of the TARDIS – which spoke volumes to me, even the first time I watched Face The Raven. She could’ve been killed then. We didn’t need the rest of the episode. 😉
Icarus – are you confusing the myth of Icarus with the myth of Phaeton, which is definitely about hubris? The myth of Icarus is about moderation – don’t fly too high, don’t fly too low (and listen to your old dad). In other words, the myth of Icarus is about limitations, and about not aspiring to be like the gods (and the Time Lords seem to play the role of ‘the gods’ in Moffat’s Whomyth). Phaeton’s the cocky young twat.
8 December 2015 at 15:11 #49069My default assumption with Time Lords is that if it’s a different actor, they’ve regenerated. 🙂
Incidentally, I did love the Doctor’s description of Time Lord death as ‘man flu’. Is this a tacit admission that he tends to milk his own regenerations for all they’re worth, lying in bed and getting people to bring him cups of tea?
Missy … cut some sort of deal with Rassilon to help entrap the Doctor in return for her freedom
The idea of Missy and Rassilon doing a deal strains even my bonkers theorising suspension-of-disbelief. I can just about manage to believe that Missy might possibly cut a deal on the grounds that – once the Doctor is trapped into returning to Gallifrey – she’ll make damn certain he returns ready to go all Time Lord Victorious on their arses. I suppose in that theory, she used the time she had the confession disc in her possession to adjust it as torture chamber, thus ensuring that the Doctor would not be a happy little Time Lord when he finally got back to Gallifrey.
But my mind boggles a bit at the idea that Rassillon would be quite such an egomaniac as to believe Missy would ever do anything but stick a knife very firmly in his back. She now knows he’s the person who tortured her into madness (for the greater good of the Time Lords, of course).
Another problem would be – why Trap Street? Given that Missy, in the two episodes she appears in, both has access to the Confession Disc (to send it to the Time Lords) and has access to the Doctor. The whole of Trap Street appears to be a set up to have the Doctor put on a teleport bracelet and hand the confession disc over. We see Missy trick Clara into a Vortex bracelet, so why didn’t she do the same with the Doctor? Then all she’d have to do is send the confession disc over, abandon Clara in the 11th Century and skip off singing merrily.
I’d have to watch it again, but I think the Doctor doesn’t even realise that the picture on the TARDIS and the waitress in the diner are the same person. He twigs that Clara’s organised the meeting (and the return of his TARDIS), I’m sure, but I think the memory delete is so complete he now has no way of recognising Clara Oswald. Not even if he’s face to face with her. Not even if he has a long conversation with her. Not even if he sees her picture.
After all, if the idea is to protect Clara from ever being traced through the Doctor, it has to be impossible for him to even recognise her or ever work out who she is.
8 December 2015 at 15:15 #49070@ichabod Thank you! That opens the door nicely for me. Also helps me understand why he turned his back and played his guitar as Clara walked away. This explanation has turned what I had first viewed as a wasted scene into one of the most powerful moments in the Doctor – Clara story.
@puroandson. Yes. That works nicely. I like it. The neural bloc could possibly keep the Doctor from seeing Clara even though he is looking right at her. To further build on that concept….it might even be a case where the Doctor knows he is looking right at her yet still can’t remember their history together. A familiar stranger if you will….
8 December 2015 at 15:30 #49071On a phone so will be quick.
Seems an explanation for not recognising someone even after seeing them, evidence of them etc is that the neural block is not a single “wipe” but an ongoing block.
She is blocked from his recognition and yet he can almost break it (as perception filters were broken in trap st)
8 December 2015 at 17:14 #49072It seems to me there is going to be a vital difference in how Clara and Ashildr travel time as opposed to Clara and the Doctor’s traveling time. Because with her greater knowledge, I believe Ashildr still holds the balance of power as to what can be done if they arrive in a situation where there is some trouble. The Doctor is looking to see who he can save, whereas Ashildr speaks of how she has learned to love the entire story, including the endings.
I expect Ashildr to be the relentless defender of the status quo, what is recorded as having happened. So Clara’s scope to act as the Doctor would is I think going to be extremely limited. I expect that one of two things happens: Either Clara learns to think more like Ashildr, which would be Ashildr’s final victory over the Doctor, or Clara decides to give up and accept the end of her life.
8 December 2015 at 17:37 #49073I think there is no more misunderstood showrunner from fandom of a classic series than Steven Moffat at the moment. Because I think Moffat is going to gift the next showrunner the freedom to take Doctor Who in any direction by Moffat’s writing the last classic series storyline, given closure just as he gave the story of Clara Oswald closure in Hell Bent.
Look at what Moffat has set up in Hell Bent alone. I speculate the Cloister Wars occurred because the rest of the universe realized the Time Lords were building a first-strike inducing weapon. I think the Time Lords tried to extend the Matrix to predict possible enemies of Gallifrey well before their attacks were to have happened. But as a constant theme in the show, any sufficiently complex AI becomes self-aware. And in science fiction such as Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question, such a self-aware super-AI must eventually aspire to be a god.
I think the Matrix was originally programmed with the directive to predict all extraterrestrial invaders and exactly when was the moment of maximum leverage to thwart invasions. I think it decided once it became self-aware that it needed some fountain of creativity, probably among humans, to solve the question of how to become a god capable of creating a new universe, to escape this dying one. So when a young Doctor stumbled into the Cloister, the Matrix took the opportunity to re-program him to serve its goals, eventually leading him to flee with a Tardis that was also pre-programmed with where the Matrix needed him to go.
Throw in a Rassilon who is depicted as being so old he is on the verge of being regenerated, and it is easy to imagine a season or two long war between Rassilon and the Doctor where might even visit Gallifrey throughout its ages. And imagine a final battle where the Matrix achieves its godhood creating a new universe and where the Doctor is freed of all of his past questions. Everything is now possible for the next showrunner.
8 December 2015 at 17:40 #49074Frankly, given Clara’s success in getting the Doctor, Bonnie, Ice Warrior Field Marshals and assorted other aliens to think more like Clara, I suspect she’s considerably more likely to Clara-ise Ashildr rather than the other way round.
Ashildr may have lived over several billions of years, but it’s been stated quite firmly that she can retain only limited memory of that time. Clara, equally, has lived several billions of lives – but has limited memories of them. So they’re pretty equal in knowledge.
In the final scene with Clara, Clara is positioned in the ‘Doctor’ role. She’s the one operating the TARDIS (Ashildr is still reading the manual), she’s the one who decides where they’re going. Ashildr is now the companion.
Or the apprentice. 😉
8 December 2015 at 17:48 #49075@bluesqueakpip: Except the episode has taught Clara there are some things that simply cannot be done, that would endanger time and space itself.
The sequence of events that led to Clara’s death started with her asking the Doctor why couldn’t he do more to save Ashildr’s village. Ripples that turned into tidal waves.
8 December 2015 at 18:14 #49077Without unnecessary words that was the perfect ending.
8 December 2015 at 18:31 #49078the thing I love about the forum is the respect everyone shows for each other. @puroandson son is doing just fine.
for me, Clara is still just a companion. I don’t see her as more, that’s why I’m ready to see her go.
that is also why she will need to be actually related to the doctor for me to accept her being so special. River song was an exception in that I liked the uniqueness of the reverse time line, and despite the fact that I’m really excited to see her come back once with Capaldi, if that’s her last hurrah, I’m good with that. I just want to see the dynamic between them once.
part of the magic of who is the changes. it feels like they are dragging this one out. I’m ready for a new face (companion) and new exciting adventures. I know some of you don’t think that the point was to keep the door open, but that’s exactly what it feels like. or that they are setting up a spinoff. it’s like watching a movie and seeing the obvious set up for a sequel. this feels exactly the same to me.
8 December 2015 at 18:51 #49079@ozitenor right after she realized the Doctor suffered for billions of years for no reason other than to save her. She says “People like me and you, we should say things to one another, and I am going to say them now”. I wonder if it was just something simple and sentimental, an expression of gratitude and love. Anybody have any insights?
I think you’ve got it: simple and forthright. The things she stopped him from trying to say, just before she stepped outside to face the Raven, because there was no time and because she was afraid that if he spoke then her resolve to do so would melt away. There’s hardly any time there in the cloister basement, but she demands to get these things said anyway, this time with herself as the first speaker. Melting resolve is a surmountable problem for him, as we’ve seen in the Confession Dial, and he’s “spoken” his feelings already, by what he chose to do there.
She’ll answer in words, but the words are for him and for herself, not for us. I think this is an artistic choice that Moffat has made before — to draw back and give his characters the private moments that actual people sometimes need and deserve to have. He knows when to butt out, that man, and leave our imaginations to bridge the gap — a writer exercising his “authority” (in the fullest sense) over his material, his creations, and his audience. I can only admire.
8 December 2015 at 18:55 #49080I’m not sure that our interpretations are all that far apart, and maybe I didn’t express my ideas very well. I do think, though, that it is unlikely that all trace of Clara, who was threaded through his whole timeline since he first left Gallifrey, and had been a hugely important part of two of his lives, could be completely removed from his mind unless all memory of everything which had happened since The Bells of St John were also wiped.
Certainly I got the impression that when he walked into the diner he had a subliminal sense of some trace or echo, but I concede that I may be reading to much into the way he started playing Clara’s theme, and the fact that he needed very little prompting to launch into his story.
According to my reading of the scenes in the diner, therefore, the observant, logical, analytical part of his mind was able to work out the identity of the person he was talking to, just from the ‘tells’ in her responses to his story, let alone the dematerialising diner, his reappearing Tardis and the message on the chalkboard, but at the same time there was a complete cognitive disconnect, and it was this disconnection which I thought he was trying to communicate. @whisht likened it to the partial bypassing of a perception filter, and the same analogy had occurred to me. I agree, though, that it is unlikely that he would retain any clear recollection of the encounter subsequently.
8 December 2015 at 18:55 #49081…
8 December 2015 at 19:07 #49082Did anyone notice that the Doctor, on being ordered to “lay down your weapons”, dropped his spoon to the table?
Me too 🙂 that was a detail which leapt out at me on first viewing, and I grinned. Even Robot of Sherwood has its resonances.
Before that, I also enjoyed the double meaning of his response to Clara in the diner, when she asked if he had been travelling, and he answered, ‘Yes, from time to time’.
8 December 2015 at 19:20 #49083@mudlark: I think as far as ideas this season is very tightly written. In Under the Lake and Before the Flood we have already seen an ability to program sentient beings using something equivalent to a BIOS underneath conscious thought. I imagine the neuro block effect is a program that actively counters explicit recognition of Clara in the Doctor.
And there’s a good reason for Moffat to use this device. Because I think the Matrix programmed the Doctor in a similar manner back when he was a student.
8 December 2015 at 19:26 #49084@mudlark The inner eye of memory is no longer capable of *seeing* her there, nor can he recall how it felt to be in her company; and crucially as @arbutus and @tardigrade observed, the emotional connection which bound them together so tightly has gone.
@bluesqueakpip After all, if the idea is to protect Clara from ever being traced through the Doctor, it has to be impossible for him to even recognise her or ever work out who she is.
Deep Breath, Doctor: You look at me, and you don’t see me. Please. Just *see* me.
Last Xmas, Doctor: Clara Oswald, you will always look the same to me.
TMA, Doctor: When do I *not* see you?
If you guys are right, that question has been answered: ever again.
8 December 2015 at 19:34 #49085Except the episode has taught Clara there are some things that simply cannot be done, that would endanger time and space itself.
Ummm… yes?
I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say here. Apparently Ashildr is going to be so focussed on limits, that Clara will give up?
Or that Clara will have to choose to return to Trap Street? As she says in the end of the episode, she knows she has to do that. But she’s going to take the long way round.
Probably 4.5 billion years or so. 🙂
8 December 2015 at 19:45 #49086I’d say the other way round; the level at which he knows what the diner is and who Clara is, isn’t the logical one. It’s the ‘something missing in the count’ one. The way they got into Trap Street.
He’s connecting the ‘something I’m not getting’ feeling he has in the diner with the ‘something is missing in my memory’ feeling he’s been having. So he talks about the memories he can no longer remember and plays the tune he associates with that feeling. But it’s a feeling, not logical recognition. An association with the story, and with the emotional feeling of the music.
Something he can’t quite ‘get’. Ever.
8 December 2015 at 19:50 #49087@notime You’re welcome!
@pedant All of the times I thought the Doctor knew something, those sideways furrowed-brow glances (leading to the whole “Are the episodes in the right order?” debate) can now be more easily and more realistically interpreted as becoming increasingly concerned: the difference between “bad luck” and “an accident waiting to happen”.
That’s what drove the Doctor on his 4.5 billion year quest – rage at having having seen it coming, but having done nothing. Self-disgust, if you like. And the price he paid for that was forgetting. Utterly brilliant storytelling.Thanks; I’ve been wrestling with that one, myself. And rage at his failure at exercising his duty of care (let alone love) does make sense of the mystifying secret/non-secret that he’s so desperate to keep. I agree with you too on Missy and Rassilon as co-conspirators: I could see it in the abstract, but it didn’t *really* work for me.
@jphamlore I think Moffat is going to gift the next showrunner the freedom to take Doctor Who in any direction by Moffat’s writing the last classic series storyline, given closure just as he gave the story of Clara Oswald closure in Hell Bent. . . . imagine a final battle where the Matrix achieves its godhood creating a new universe and where the Doctor is freed of all of his past questions. Everything is now possible for the next showrunner.
I like your reminder of how much more Clara knows than Ashildr does, at this point, about dealing with time TL style. And I like your big thinking in post 49075 — but maybe it’s too big for the reality-situation? An AI that creates its own new universe leans pretty hard toward ideas of God and religion, and while SF and fantasy fans have no problems, generally, about such things, the BBC Broadcast Lords might very well balk at this in a “family viewing” show.
Although judging by some of what’s gotten through in S8 and S9 . . . maybe not.
8 December 2015 at 20:14 #49090@bluesqueakpip: The point I am trying to make is the unique nature of the Doctor, his knowledge, his abilities, his cunning, made him somewhat of a demigod to Clara, and she began to assume he could conjure up a plan to solve anything at the last minute. This in turn egged her on to ask anything and eventually to just assume the Doctor would somehow save the day even if she deliberately did not tell him her plan. That whole dynamic I believe will not apply to Ashildr.
@ichabod; Moffat himself already played with the idea of rebooting the universe after the Tardis blew up, although there the objective was to restore as much as the status quo as possible.
8 December 2015 at 20:25 #49091Yes, but Clara’s wasn’t the only death in Face the Raven. Her complete faith in the Doctor’s ability to get them out of anything died too. The whole point of the ending is that she’s now making her own decisions; getting yourself killed is a particularly brutal way to discover that you might not always make the right ones.
That’s the difference in our views: you seem to think that Clara is going to be the junior partner in the Clara-Ashildr relationship. Whereas, my reading of the final scene with them is that the dynamics are very firmly ‘Clara Who’ as the person running this TARDIS, Ashildr as the Assistant.
8 December 2015 at 20:37 #49093@bluesqueakpip: Actually I think Clara and Ashildr will be somewhat equals, in part because their scope for interference will be far less than what the Doctor enabled, but that Ashildr will bring Clara back into line whenever Clara is interfering too much with what happened in history. But both will recognize there are severe limits to what they can do, far more than the Clara and the Doctor dynamic.
Although I suspect for Clara the problem will still be when it is the children who are suffering. Then Ashildr will have to assert her authority.
Because as has been said in another show, “Everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls.”
8 December 2015 at 20:40 #49094I suppose in that theory, she used the time she had the confession disc in her possession to adjust it as torture chamber, thus ensuring that the Doctor would not be a happy little Time Lord when he finally got back to Gallifrey.
Yes, it’s a bit hard for me to see how Missy could not be involved, since she was the one with the confession disc. So it really does seem she’s working with the TLs, hence the idea of a deal. Missy would certainly cut a deal to save her own skin (with plans to exact revenge later of course), and could have used Rassilon’s fear of the hybrid to get him to unwisely agree. Missy got her revenge quickly enough, simply by giving Rassilon what he wanted – she most likely realised that in any encounter with the Doctor that Rassilon would come off second best. Plus she gets to torture the Doctor in the process- a real red letter day.
I actually don’t think the Doctor needed additional reason to hate Rassilon- he blames him for the excesses of the Time War and specifically for forcing him into a corner where he had to use the Moment and be responsible for the genocide of his own people, something that haunted him for two generations.
The whole of Trap Street appears to be a set up to have the Doctor put on a teleport bracelet and hand the confession disc over. We see Missy trick Clara into a Vortex bracelet, so why didn’t she do the same with the Doctor? Then all she’d have to do is send the confession disc over, abandon Clara in the 11th Century and skip off singing merrily.
It could be as simple as Missy enjoying it playing out as it did, with the Doctor standing helplessly by as Clara died. Perhaps this was even Missy’s “brilliant idea” from ep 2? Sure she had daleks looking to exterminate her at the time, but hardly for the first time, so in Missy’s terms, that perhaps was a threat barely worth acknowledging.
8 December 2015 at 20:49 #49095@ichabod: I just thought of this wrinkle: Why exactly is Ashildr quizzing the Doctor at the very end of time about the nature of the hybrid?
My speculation is that eventually Gallifrey appears to be destroyed, or at least its population mysteriously disappears. I believe this will occur in some “white event” where the Matrix achieves godhood. Thus it will still be a mystery what if any role the hybrid played in the apparent destruction of Gallifrey.
For the new showrunner anything at all will be possible once again for the fate of Gallifreyans, possibly even being distributed throughout human history as I have speculated.
8 December 2015 at 21:13 #49096Yes, it’s a bit hard for me to see how Missy could not be involved, since she was the one with the confession disc.
Missy only has the confession disc from the (unknown) point at which the Doctor sent it to her, to the point when Colony Sarff confiscated it on Skaro. After that, the Doctor has it until he gives it to Ashildr at the end of Face The Raven.
Presumably it then gets sent to the Time Lords who are, well, Time Lords. They’d get it in plenty of time to reprogram it and see that the Doctor’s teleport delivers him inside it to be tortured, because they’d make that time.
The torture is completely in keeping with Rassillon, because Rassillon has canonically done it before (to Missy when she was a little boy) – and in that case, too, he did his torture at arms length, by remote control, for the ‘greater good of Gallifrey’. Sending a small boy insane was an unfortunate side effect of using him as a signal transmitter, just as there’s no one important outside the Capitol and the Doctor could have got out at any time if he’d only told them about the hybrid.
Actually, y’know, just asking people doesn’t seem to be one of Rassillon’s things.
Missy’s perfectly happy to torture the Doctor, but she prefers it to be more hands on and/or on video stream. And it’s for fun. She was looking downwards when she mentioned a ‘brilliant idea’, so I’ve always presumed that Moffat was making a joking reference to his own The Curse of Fatal Death. Missy is about to spend 936 years in a sodding sewer. 😉
Honestly? I suspect Missy’s ‘escape’ has a lot to do with The Moment. Without Clara, the Doctor will never change his mind about destroying Gallifrey. If it wasn’t The Moment, then maybe The General.
But it really doesn’t need to have been anyone; whether she’s Missy or The Master, her ability to escape from the inescapable is easily equal to the Doctor’s. 🙂
8 December 2015 at 21:26 #49097@bluesqueakpip Missy is about to spend 936 years in a sodding sewer. 😉
Fingers crossed . . . she’s certainly stuck somewhere, since she doesn’t appear to be on Gallifrey where if she could, she would surely be, to see how the Confession Dial event plays out.
8 December 2015 at 21:44 #49098Well!
I’m a bit late to the party and don’t think I can add anything new to what all of you have so eloquently expressed.
I was a day late watching, by which time you were up to page 4, time has been very limited so a rewatch late last night – and now you’re on page 7!!
Its great to rewatch bearing in mind all the wonderful comments, theories and noticings-of-things.
Some great lines: ‘Clara? Clara Who?’
‘Have you been travelling?’ – ‘Yeah, from time to time…’I noticed, right at the very start, with the truck arriving at the diner, the slogan on the roadsign outside:
‘Wherever you go – there you are’ suggesting to me how linked all of time and space is, and the possibility of finding yourself.A Diner (-soar?) In Space! (sorry) 🙂
Add in CapDoc’s poignant guitar playing ‘Clara’s theme’, stunning performances all round.
I’ve enjoyed reading @puroandson hybrid comments – I apologise I’ve had no time to be here and discuss things with you, but your comments, analysis and insight are great.
Run you clever boy and – well, he can’t remember.
What else? Oh yes, @pedant, I believe you called it?!
I also have my stash of original off-air recordings of HHGTTG with the Pink Floyd. I was 13 at the time, very much the geek listening to the radio instead of watching TOTP like everyone else, and – well – its shaped my life.
@arbutus I too no longer own a cassette deck on which to play them.Douglas Adams leaves his traces all over the place.
@jphamlore I like your theorising above, I agree that Moffat has done incredibly well to clear up all sorts of long-standing threads to give the Dr a chance to move on unencumbered by the past. Although, once you’re at the end of the Universe, I suppose the past is all there is!
8 December 2015 at 22:54 #49099Missy’s perfectly happy to torture the Doctor, but she prefers it to be more hands on and/or on video stream. And it’s for fun.
I think she might well be on video stream watching what’s happening in the dial. On getting out, the Doctor does address the dial, speaking to someone presumed to be listening in, then separately sends word to the TLs that he’s arrived. Maybe he thinks he sees Missy’s fingerprints on this business.
But, as you say, Rassilon is capable of this all by himself- he was willing to burn the universe to save his own skin. And Missy can escape certain death 3 times before breakfast all by herself, so the connection isn’t essential.
Loved the Curse of Fatal Death reference btw. Well worth a look for anyone who missed Rowan Atkinson’s turn as the Doctor. Yes- could simply have been an in-joke.
8 December 2015 at 23:33 #49100@morpho
Are you being funny or are you a hybrid too?
You are the one who typed this: How can you have lost me if you typed it: these are your words man;
You might be right, but am not totally agreeing with that prognosis. When clever people are involved, there’s not necessarily a contradiction between devious and honest.
“Sheesh” says me , son of Puro. It’s OK -the two of us communicate. Maybe there’s two of you and you don’t know it? 🙂 LOL.
No worries dude.
dear @pedant Mum says this. One way to tell if a person hates an episode -they write a steam of consciousness. Or something like that -one big long thing with no paragraphs.
We absolutely have to write paragraphs at school. If we don’t, we fail the test matter how good it looks.
One girl, a really nice Asian girl -very musical, handed in a whole page of writing which sounded great but got a C-. She was crying which I thought was rude as other kids fail all the time and don’t cry.
I got an A- on that particular history paper. History’s my favourite and I like it most of the time.
On hols now -lots to do 🙂
But it’s way hot.
Thankyou.
Son of Puro
Son of Puro
8 December 2015 at 23:34 #49101Yes I can see that too about the energy bolts. Didn’t Simm/Master prematurely age the Doctor in
Sound of the Drums.
and
It seems to me Missy gets something out of this more than just a tortured Doctor. She wouldn’t
just hand the Dial over without compensation. Her new regeneration was part of some other ‘trade deal’
so I wonder what she asked for?
“madness and obsession from the inside” – yes! So when the Doctor takes a new companion he wont
want to find himself in emotional limbo again. He might now be all about choosing someone that doesn’t
have “you might be manipulated thru me’ written on their resume.
8 December 2015 at 23:40 #49102So – just a quick one.
I had suggested (and I don’t think I was alone) that this episode would be The World as its Tarot card.
I’ve just looked up what that card is meant to be, as I’d been a bit glib and simply thought “last card in the journey” and “world” = Gallifrey.
Instead the card seems to be a more ‘positive’ card, about not only the completion of a cycle (still good for Hell Bent) but a more positive outcome, self-integration, attainment and satisfaction.
Now that could still hold true but its a bittersweet attainment.
Perhaps like the other two-parters in my list it is still linked to Judgement (the judgement of Rassilon and the High Council etc).
Perhaps Christmas will be The World card…(btw I don’t watch spoilers or even “the next episode” previews, so I really have no idea!)
But I do agree with the idea that we’ve been watching Clara’s journey from Apprentice to Doctor-esque, and that her folly
damn nearkilled her.*though obviously this whole Tarot thing is all bonkers, its our bonkers!
8 December 2015 at 23:41 #49103dear @soundworld
Mum says hi to you in Scotland – think it’s there and yes, we loved those lines; Clara who.
Then the diner in space (dinosaur?) lovely.
I must read that sign again.
@tardigrade I think he knew the TLs had put him there and so was speaking to the dial which was to them and also covering himself by asking the boy to run to the city.
“the lands where nobody matters” I thought the way Rassilon viewed his people was terrible -he was no carer for his people or his planet and it was right to exile him in my opinion. Harsh but necessary and ohila called it too (“he just blames you for the horrors of the Time War”)
From son of Puro
8 December 2015 at 23:56 #49104Random thought: the whole stand-off on Gallifrey cloaked Rassillon with a distinct Soviet vibe, willing to execute war heroes when they become a threat. Exiling him felt a little like dispensing with that past.
Perhaps a little Glasnost on Gallifrey will make it a more interesting place, with fewer daft costumes. It can only be a matter of time before they enter the Eurovision Song Contest…
@puroandson
Yup. Totally get the stream-of-consciousness thing (although it is a better way to detect amateur trolls)
What else? Oh yes, @ pedant, I believe you called it?!
Why thank you for noticing that I tota++++CONNECTION TERMINATED BY HOST++++
8 December 2015 at 23:56 #49105It seems to me Missy gets something out of this more than just a tortured Doctor. She wouldn’t just hand the Dial over without compensation. The regeneration was part of some other ‘trade deal’ so I wonder what she asked for?
I speculated that her freedom might have been part of it, plus maybe getting rid of the drum. Plus she might have agreed to it, since she could see that it would backfire on Rassilon and she’d get her revenge on him that way. I can see Missy being pretty happy with the way things turned out whether she had a hand it in or not.
9 December 2015 at 00:04 #49106eerm excuse me I say: I mentioned the perception filter first didn’t we boy? I think @notime is aware of this! 🙂
Oi Mum, this aint a competition. 😉
Well, yes it is because I never think of clever things and this time I actually did so I am determined to re-mention the neural block as a constantly manifesting perception filter which I believe I turned into NMFP or something like that
dear @whisht -mum says she beat you to it. heavens knows why it matters to her but you know Mum
Thankyou from Son of annoying
Mumhybrid Puro 🙂oi!! You: go back and empty dishwasher. Leave me to it spawn!
9 December 2015 at 00:11 #49107It’s occurred to me that Rassilon’s resurrection was never explained (to my knowledge). Had assumed it was a ‘timey-wimey’ thing, but following this episode, it seems more likely that he was restored from the matrix somehow. In the episode, the General does chide his soldier for using the term “sliders” within hearing of Rassilon. He’s not a particularly delicate flower, so perhaps that indicates Rassilon might have a sensitivity to that particular term, having spent some time as a “slider” himself.
Also, it seems that the wraiths told the young Doctor more about the hybrid than they let on to the wider TL audience. Which would suggest that the vagueness of the prophecy may have been deliberate.
9 December 2015 at 00:23 #49108Great spot by @puroandson on the song playing on the radio when the Doctor walked into the diner. I’d missed the importance, but isn’t this grist for the bonkerising mill?
As pointed out, it was Foxes’ version of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now that we heard in Mummy on the Orient Express (which was also supposed to be a Doctor/Clara parting).
“Don’t stop me now, I’m having such a good time, I’m having a ball.”
“Don’t stop me now, if you want to have a good time, just give me a call…”
9 December 2015 at 00:25 #49109@pedant Perhaps a little Glasnost on Gallifrey will make it a more interesting place, with fewer daft costumes. It can only be a matter of time before they enter the Eurovision Song Contest…
Thats given me a great mental image – ha!
No wonder the Doctor left rather than hang around that lot. In the words of King Arthur on Camelot ‘It is a silly place’ – but full of arrogant monsters in charge who took themselves far too seriously and view the actual people as being below notice. Now – where does that remind me of…@puroandson (son) Scotland, yes. I can send you some sleet-snow-rain anytime you need cooling off from your heat. In exchange for s-u-n (please). You can’t wear sonic shades when you’re permanently in the twilight zone.
@whisht Its our bonkers … and ‘in the name of the wee mannie’* we’ll make the theory fit the observed facts! I would say you’re correct on Judgement – the Doctor has been through a whole load of self-judgement (4.5 billion years worth) and Hell Bent was still dealing with the consequences of that. He still hadn’t learned his lesson about Clara, until forced to through the memory wipe.
* an expression my old Latin teacher at school used. He was Glaswegian with a great sense of humour, and occasionally he allowed us to trick him into telling us his war experiences from when he was a very young man, but somehow he managed always to turn it around and bring it back to the lesson. To the few who took his class he was gentle, warm and humorous. To the rest of the school he seemed feared, and order always reigned in the corridor outside his room. Quite doctor-ish qualities. Sorry for diverting the thread.
9 December 2015 at 00:34 #49110@puroandson
Well, I am a gemini. 🙂 Yes, I know what I wrote. It just means that one can use truth in devious ways. You’re asking me about cleverness leading to deviousness or making it hard to distinguish between honesty and deviousness? No, I don’t think so. That’s why I didn’t write it! 😀
I think, especially given the confusion of the two of you using the same username and asking different questions then responding to answers to one as if they’re answers to the other, this conversation is doomed to perpetual misunderstanding haha
9 December 2015 at 01:15 #49111@morpho
Oh yes, Mum agrees. Generally though I only type what
she/hybrid tells me to but I can say that we’ve never had a problem before! The problems must be starting now as I’m the apprentice and she reckons she’s the magician.I was just highlighting what you yourself typed and asking about it. I think that when you said this: When clever people are involved, there’s not necessarily a contradiction between devious and honest I was just responding to that. I thought you meant that there’s no real contradiction between being devious and being honest if you’re clever (see what I did there? I just re-wrote what you said!).
No, I’m just being annoying now. No worries: no we’re not doomed you have written some great ideas on this thread and I hope you continue to do so as that would be awesome for me to learn from.
Son of Puro (the younger of the hybrid. Or the youngest? Younger? I think it’s younger when it’s two and youngest when it’s more than two. Who knows?)
🙂
9 December 2015 at 01:27 #49112@countscarlioni Indeed! And, in Hell Bent the Doctor specifically mentions he remembers there was a Mummy on the Orient Express. The parallel perhaps being that in MOTOE the Doctor took on a similar challenge of certain death within minutes unless the puzzle was solved, as Clara went on to do.
9 December 2015 at 01:29 #49113@puroandson (Hybrid the Younger)
Ah yes, I see your thinking now. But no those two sentences aren’t quite the same. I was just saying that honesty doesn’t *always* preclude deviousness. In a similar way, we can be dishonest in order to be kind, but that doesn’t mean kindness and dishonesty are always compatible. Cleverness is of course a necessary component of deviousness, but I assure you most clever people are very nice haha
9 December 2015 at 01:37 #49114I’m sure there must have been some theorising about why the confession dial entered into the story in the first place and why it was given to Missy, but as a noob I probably missed it all.
We learn in Hell Bent that Rassilon initiated the plan regarding the confession dial. When we first see it, it’s in Missy’s possession, and she claims the Doctor gave it to her, which seems inconsistent with it being Rassilon’s plan.
Missy could be lying and, as @lisa said, Missy and Rassilon might be in cahoots. But if so, why did the Doctor throw a party in such a manner that, on the assumption he was going to die and use the confession dial, Clara managed to track him down?
Me being thick? Story not yet over? Gaping plot hole? Other? 🙂
-
AuthorPosts
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
