S33 (7) 11 – Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

[PhileasF @phileasf]

@HaveYouFedTheFish (message #7048) – re the illustration(?) in the book, which seems to reveal to Clara that ‘the Doctor’ is not the Doctor’s name.

The rather strained chain of reasoning I was following was this:

1. Clara sees the Doctor’s cot. Somehow she recognises writing on it as being the name of the cot’s prior occupant. At this time she has no way of knowing that this was the Doctor’s cot.

2. Clara finds The History of the Time War. She opens it and sees…

3. An illustration including the very cot she saw earlier, with a caption reading ‘The Doctor as a baby.’ Now she knows it was the Doctor’s cot, and that the name on it must be his ‘real’ name. As the name is in old High Gallifreyan she has no idea what it is.

Not that I think that’s necessarily what happened. Just a thought.

 

I just re-watched the episode, and made a few observations which seemed striking to me (though perhaps obvious to others, and possibly mentioned already.)

The cloth at the end. In the ‘new reality’ that results from the prevention of the TARDIS being damaged, the two crews never met. The cloth seems to be evidence that the Doctor has secretly visited the brothers in the past and rewritten their lives. Sinister much? What would Clara think if she knew he was rewriting the lives of random people they meet in their travels? She’d think ‘Has he done this to me?’ Is it not a coincidence that she’s so much like Oswin/Victorian Clara… because the Doctor has messed with her ancestors and her childhood to create the woman he wanted to find? (So he threw that leaf.) Think ‘Vertigo’ (1958). Dark Jimmy Stewart in that movie is about as dark as a good-guy gets. ‘Clara… I need you to be Oswin for a while.’

The TARDIS’s heart is broken. What could do that? The Doctor’s death? The Doctor doing Really Bad Things?

The writing on Clara’s hand — similar to the method of communicating with a person’s future self in the movie Looper. To say more might be a spoiler for the movie.

How many iterations of the loop do the characters experience? At least two… As I rewatched the episode, it occurred to me this story is like Groundhog Day from the point of view of any character besides Bill Murray’s. The Doctor has been through this before (and remembers) — he’s the Bill Murray character, who seems amazingly knowledgeable and prescient and lucky to the other characters. This is especially striking when Gregor tries to cut the TARDIS’s machine making machine, and the Doctor shows up just in time to stop him. I’m guessing bad things resulted from the laser-cutting, in previous iterations of the day. And of course the Doctor knows what the zombies are all along.

At 34minutes 35seconds the Doctor notices he has his hand on his face, and seemingly realises for the first time that the hand-stuck-to-face zombie is himself, having died moments later. This wasn’t at all clear on the first viewing. I couldn’t understand why the brothers touching would cause ‘reality to reassert itself’. This time it was clear: the Doctor had realised the fused zombies were the brothers, and the future that produced those fused zombies would be averted if they never touched (and thus couldn’t be fused).

The Doctor and Clara holding hands and jumping. Just like Amy and Rory undoing an unwanted version of history in The Angels Take Manhattan by holding hands and jumping off a building.

‘Lancashire. Sass’. I had no idea what this meant the first time. The second time I had the benefit of subtitles. I guess it’s a joke: the detector is detecting Clara’s sass. (I always thought sassy chicks had ‘sassiness’, not sass. )

Clara-zombie seems to be a person, at least when we first see her up close in the echo console room. She doesn’t seem like a crazed zombie thing; she just can’t speak. The other zombies, including the Doctor zombie, seem like monsters.

Clara not only understands the consequences of the TARDIS’s fuel rods cooling, she finishes the Doctor’s sentence, as if she’s remembering the previous iteration.

This might be bordering on the pseud… but this episode gives the Doctor the chance to experience an episode as we theorisers do. Over and over, until it makes sense 🙂

At the end, the Doctor asks Clara if she feels safe. One reading of this is that he isn’t concerned about whether she remembers the TARDIS being infested with zombies. He’s checking that she’s forgotten the conversation where she said she was afraid of him (the same conversation in which he confronted her about what she is). So…… a dark dark Doctor theory here. The whole exploding-TARDIS scenario was contrived by the Doctor so he could confront Clara about who she is at what would seem like the verge of death, and then rewrite her life so the conversation never happened. He wants to confront her about this stuff, but he doesn’t want to ruin their relationship by telling her about his suspicions, and about her predecessors. So he has the conversation and then makes it unhappen, but in such a way as he remembers it. The same thing happens with the self-destruct countdown. It’s creepy and kind of wrong, but it doesn’t matter if he can write it out of history. Sick man. Maybe this is how time wars start.

How much of the odd stuff we’ve seen this year can be explained by ‘the Doctor went back in time and fixed all his mistakes, and kept going back until he got it right’. It would explain the bow-tied Doctor suddenly appearing in the forest in Hide, when in the rest of the scene he didn’t have a bow-tie. And probably other stuff too. This might be how @HaveYouFedTheFish‘s three TARDIS’s collide: the Doctor gets careless while trying to revisit the same events multiple times.

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

@DrClara – 1n.b The Doctor could be the flesh version that survived, while Clara is the Doctor chameleon arched and held safely in “The Doctor’s” fob watch.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@PhineasF – you’ve just reminded me that – way back in the middle of Series 5 – I posited that we might well be watching a giant loop in time, where events repeat over and over again.

Because Rory, who really had only just met the Doctor, called him out on exactly what he did to his Companions (it’s in Vampires of Venice). So I wondered if he was able to do that because this was the second or third or even fourth time he’d been through all this – and he had a residual memory of it.

So now I’m wondering – are we looping? The Doctor keeps referring to himself as a ‘madman in a box/spaceship’. But – hiding in plain sight – a slang term for ‘madman’ is ‘loopy’. He’s gone loopy.

[Anonymous @]

OK, watched again, done a bit of cogitation (good word, cogitation) and am ready to get some thoughts in order. But being Scottish, I’ll start with the moans and negativity…

1. The Brothers were far to cardboardy. And as someone said over on the G, it really wasn’t for the want of something to work with. Either the casting was off or the direction was non-existent. Having said that, I don’t think a final pass of the script to give the brothers some banter — which presumably three siblings cooped up in a spaceship for months would indulge in repeatedly — would have been too much to ask.

2. Have to agree that for being ‘the smart one’, the fact that Tricky didn’t cotton on to the whole having to eat/defecate/generally perform biologically knocks too much credibility out of the whole ‘i’m really an android’ thing. Plus being pinioned by fuel rod must have been a big clue. ‘It’s alright, I’m an android, it doesn’t hurt. Oh wait, no, yes, it bloody does…’

3. The Eye of Harmony. I don’t really have a problem with the continuity aspect of things (which @phaseshift did a fine job of dismantling earlier anyway). I tend to look at it as any steam engine being a simulacrum of James Watt’s original. Plus what are the fuel rods for if the Eye powers the TARDIS? I guess that lends credence to the theory that the Eye only lends power to the time travel operations of the Ship and that there are other, more conventional, fuel sources for things like onboard systems and the like.

But apart from those minor niggles. A cracking episode. Loved almost every aspect of the library sequences. The TARDIS corridors were slightly too Daleky. I’m not sure the TARDIS should ever really be as claustrophobic as that but it really worked for this episode. Also loved the echoes from the past too. It was nice and subtly done.

I thought the FutureMonsters were great too. Some of the most genuinely unsettling creations in the show for some time. The technique of dropping out of focus on them too was a nice touch. And are we foregrounding the fact that the Big Bad of the season is going to be someone that we’d normally think of as the ‘good guy?’ Matt certainly showed enough edge in this episode to convince that he’d be able to pull it off with aplomb.

In fact, given all the DEM bleating over on the G, the great monsters and the incredibly number of lovely ideas in here I’d say that this story could easily have been a two-parter.

It looks very like next week’s is just going to be a runaround romp. Which is fine. And yay for Strax, Vastra and Jenny! And then we’ll be into the last two, which look very much like they’ll be the heavyweights of the season.

oh, and @dr-clara, welcome. That’s a great first post, if you don’t mind me saying so…

[HaveYouFedTheFish @haveyoufedthefish]

@jimthefish – where’s the cup holder? 😀

Actually, didn’t we once see the masters tardis uncamoflaged in the pertwee era? The one in Atlantis where the baddy turned out to be a chromakeyed pigeon.

Just a white dome I think?

Thanks for everyone putting me straight on infinity and gantries. I especially like @bluesqueakpips point that a dangerous gantry is just another tardis ploy and @thommck‘s “infinite configurations, not space”. Both very very plausible!

[Bobbyfat @bobbyfat]

Just going back to the point at the end of the ep where the picture of the brothers is altered etc…

at 32.40 ish when Tricky attacks Gregor, the Doctor tells Tricky that Gregor couldn’t cut him up because he still had a scrap of decency, and then says to Gregor “don’t ever forget this”

at 42.29 in the reset world, the other brother is bossing Tricky and Gregor defends him, the other brother says what happened to you? and Gregor says “maybe I’ve just got a little tiny scrap of decency”

so what we see is a kind of backward remembering, that events in a possible future can be remembered in the altered past

i suspect this timey wimey point could prove quite significant in eps to come, especially re run you clever boy and remember

it also seems to resonate with the notorious maple leaf containing all possible futures

I suspect the fact that JLC at the end seems to have come back from the swimming pool is a deliberate teaser with no evidence either way as to whether she has remembered anything that happened in the now erased future…

PS scrap of decency mirrors sliver of ice?

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Hey everyone, if you want @dr-clara ‘s name to go “live” it needs a dash between Dr and Clara…

@phileasf I LOVE the idea that the whole thing was a set-up by dark-dark Doctor.

AND this ties in exactly with what I had to say about Amy’s Choice over on the Hide thread (and indeed at the time).  I wondered whether the Doctor had set up the whole “space pollen” deal to make Amy choose between him and Rory i.e. to get her to realise that her choice was Rory so that the Doctor could have both Amy and Rory as travelling companions without the awkward sexual tension.

Would he, could he, trick his companions in these dark ways? Oh I think so….

This also ties in with @bluesqueakpip ‘s looping theory because events do keep happening in different yet similar ways over and over again.

Not only as @phileasf says did Amy and Rory have to jump off a building in The Angels Take Manhattan and thus re-write time/ escape from a negative/ false reality, just as the Doctor and Clara did this episode, but that is also what Amy and the Doctor did in Amy’s Choice – they committed suicide by deliberately crashing their VW camper van in order to escape fromt the “reality” in which Rory had died.

Yes, I continue to be a bit obsessed with Amy’s Choice as significant to the arc narrative !

The looping ties in with the on/off switch between different realities the Doctor mentions in JttCotT. Perhaps we’re flickering back and forth between two different universes/ time-streams and have been throughout Moff’s tenure thanks to the collision of the TARDISes in the Eleventh Hour, The Big Bang and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.

[Anonymous @]

Aw Jeez, I’m getting totally Alexandered over on the G blog. When will I ever learn?

[thommck @thommck]

While defending this episode from the terrible review it got on the sfx blog I thought of another couple of points

Tricky, the android brother, is another example of someone living a lie, a person unaware they have another identity. He thinks he was a robot but was human all along.

The brothers names were a bit odd, Bram and Gregor, is that a Bram Stoker reference? Can’t think of a famous Gregor?

This next bit goes against my previous theory that the TARDIS is actually protecting Clara…

The TARDIS exploded/ruptured/broke when it was in the Mag-field so it protected the Doctor by ejecting him. It couldn’t care less about Clara so she was left inside to burn! Can’t think how else he ended up outside

[Anonymous @]

@thommck — Gregor Samsa, maybe? Woke up to find himself suddenly transformed into something monstrous. That’s surely got some resonance with some theories at the moment….

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@thommck Upstream I mused that Gregor was a reference to Kafka’s character Gregor in his story Metamorphosis – a man turns into a monster… And that Tricky, as a cyborg (although not an android) was a hint/ mirror for a dalekising Doctor…

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@jimthefish Jinx! And yes what are you thinking re the GBlog. You will only get yourself in a mither 🙂

 

[Anonymous @]

@juniperfish — apologies fellow fish. Didn’t realise you’d raised the Kafka parallel already. Didn’t mean to tread on your fins….

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Great fish minds think alike 🙂

And now we have our own Omega-3-Fish (as @whohar coined it) in the form of @holymackerel !

[Anonymous @]

@juniperfish — excellent. Our plans near completion. Nothing in ze wuuurld can stop us now…. mwah ha hah….

[Anonymous @]

@haveyoufedthefish — I think the white dome of the Master’s TARDIS was in the Claws of Axos. Plus we did see the SIDRATs in the War Games, which didn’t seem to have Chameleon Circuits as far as I can remember. Plus did we see some dormant TARDISes on Gallifrey in that story too? It’s been a long time, I can’t remember. I bet @htpbdet would know….

[HTPBDET @htpbdet]

@jimthefish    No Tardises on Gallifrey in War Games, just SIDRATs. The SIDRAT’s had no chameleon circuits.

🙂

[Anonymous @]

@htpbdet — many thanks. My bad. I thought there was a scene where the Doc, Jamie and Zoe try to sneakily escape, the TARDIS was parked with a load of other ‘normal’ TARDISes. But it’s distinctly possibly that I imagined it…

[Dr-Clara @dr-clara]

@juniperfish

Hey everyone, if you want @dr-clara ‘s name to go “live” it needs a dash between Dr and Clara…

Thank you! I’ve regenerated and added a dash. [A dash of what, though?]

And thanks for adding the ‘sliver of ice’ to that theory. I think Clara as the other half of the Doctor’s whole is my preferred version (of my own theory!) so that fits very nicely.

But when did one become two? And does the ‘flying the tardis for 900 years’ when we know he’s older mean that it was a long time ago, or has that been satisfactorily answered upstream in this thread? @bobbingbird mentioned the lost 3 months in Impossible Astronaut / DotM, and we know the Doctor went AWOL for 200 years so if it was in that gap wouldn’t this Doctor be under 1,000 again?

Hmmm. Actually I don’t like that. It feels like if Moffat hid something that big he’d have done it either more recently or less recently – and TIA/DotM was complicated enough without this too!

Another hint that Clara is the Doctor: the TARDIS presented her with the image of the person she most esteemed and we know (Impossible Astronaut again) that the Doctor is the person he trusts most in the universe.

And following that thought a bit further I’m cogitating [word of the week, thanks @jimthefish] on the Doctor’s room in The God Complex and the recent cloister bells. More Hmmm.

 

[Anonymous @]

Also meant to add — as others have pointed out too — that the sudden appearance of a fob watch on the Doctor’s waistcoat is surely not going to be coincidental…

I think it’s likely that some of nu-Who’s ‘greatest hits’ are going to play a part in the upcoming finale. We’ve already had Amy’s crack. I think a chameleon arch is becoming more and more likely too…

[Lula @lula]

Speaking of the fob watch, two things about Clara’s jewelry caught my eye while watching this episode.  First, her earrings are triangle-shaped, which works for obvious reasons.  Second, one of the the bracelets on her left wrist looks a lot like a strand of  many clock faces–a clock face charm bracelet, if you will.  Of course it could just be stones of some sort and I’m merely seeing things that aren’t truly there, but the timey-wimey-ness of something like that would be a nice Easter egg.

I’ve maintained since the release of the Series 7b promo pictures that the Doctor’s new fob watch is not going to be a coincidence. He’s now wearing both a fob watch and a wristwatch!  And yet is it coincidence that his own wristwatch is constantly backwards?  Sure, a fun character trait of the madman who can’t be bothered to properly adjust his watch so that it’s on the outside of his wrist.  But maybe it’s indicative of something more?

[OsakaHatter @osakahatter]

Hi all

First post, used to comment occasionally on the Gruniad but generally got there too late, so had to content myself with reading your theories… hope I can assist with the bonkers theorising here a little more often!

Just a couple of thoughts on Clara from this ep:

The more I think about her calm reading and reaction to the (a?) history of the time war ‘So that’s who…’ comment etc, the more it just doesn’t sit right.  My initial reaction was that it was about the doctor, possibly related to someone in our history (Merlin came to my mind too – not sure who mentioned it upstream, but that may just be my Arthurian-nerd side coming out).  But if it was someone mythological or historical surely the reaction would have been more extreme (Merlin was real!? David Beckham is a 1200 year old timelord!).  I’d expect at least a ‘Well I never…’  Which leads me to think whatever she saw/read (and I’m inclined to agree with the speculation above  – @phileasf I think, apologies if not – that it was likely to be a picture rather than text) was information she was already looking for. Is she some kind of double agent (Was governess by day, barmaid by night in the Snowmen a hint at dual identity?) or did she find some information that related to her personally?

This however is in complete contrast to my gut instinct that Clara is an ordinary girl that is going to have something awful happen to her, scattering her across time and space .  I suspect the Tardis is being difficult with her to protect the doctor – if she doesn’t travel with them, she doesn’t get scattered across time and space, there’s no Os-lek threat in the Asylum so the doctor doesn’t go and get dalekised.  Or will the trauma of letting something happen to her again cause him to go dark and fall at Trenzalore?

Anyway, thanks all for picking up details I’d have missed without this website and the Guardian, your sharp eyes and bonkers suggestions have enriched my viewing no end!

[Anonymous @]

@lula — it is a nice detail, although not sure if it’s unique. My uncle used to wear his watch with the face on the inside of his wrist — to save it from getting unnecessarily scratched, I believe…

[HolyMackerel @holymackerel]

I am giving a lot of thought to the Doctor continually looping until he gets it right and the rule that you are not supposed to alter your own timeline. Does his looping lead to a terrible error and therefore his statement that good men don’t need rules and to think about why he has so many?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@lula The way he wears his watch could be more cultural than anything else. My mum used to call that the American way (from the GIs in WW2). But I do agree there could be something in the jewellery.  She does have a lot of it doesn’t she? And we know that at least 1 of the rings belonged to her mum. Triangles. huh? <makes mental note to go and squint harder at freeze-frames!>

@OsakaHatter ‘So that’s who…’ It’s odd set-up. Also she mentions “in the tiny…” when the Dr tells her to Sssh – that book couldn’t be described as tiny!  As you say, almost any recognition of (presumably) a picture, should result in more surprise, whether it’s a well known figure or a relative/friend.

[chickenelly @chickenelly]

…it’s taken me an hour and a half to get through all the above, haven’t bothered with the Grauniad of course (for nesting and moaning minnie reasons).

I’ve not watched the episode again yet, just off to do so now but initial thoughts:

1) I agree with @phileasf‘s Groundhog Day idea, that Clara & the Doctor are learning each time they go through the loop.  Clara reads the Time War book before the History of Gallifrey bottle dribbles all over her, but the latter puts the former in context.  We cannot be seeing just one of these loops (hence toasty people) but fragments of a few strung together.

2) The Time War book isn’t in Gallifreyan as who would have written it?  As the old phrase goes, history is written by the winners, the Timelords are all in a time lock somewhere.  Going right back to the second episode in the Ecclestone series, the tree lady knew who the Doctor was and his history.  Instead the book will have been written by some intergalactic Pliny the Younger figure.

3) Bonkers theory (a).  I like the idea that Clara is a construct of the Doctor to remind him of something.  It puts me in mind of a number of other sci fi movies/stories such as (a reverse) Total Recall or Zaphod Beeblebrox in the second radio series of H2G2.  Alternatively his memory could already be gone and it is more along the lines of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

4) Bonkers theory (b).  I’ve been cogitating (©Jimthefish) on the idea that perhaps instead of the Tardis not liking Clara it is trying to protect her from the Doctor.  For instance not letting her in is its way of trying to put her off travelling with the Doctor.  Again, to reference the second radio series of H2G2, the sentient lift doesn’t want to take Zaphod Beeblebrox up to his destination as it is scared for the future.  The Tardis can see all the future, so it might be its way of trying to prevent it.  

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Aw Jeez, I’m getting totally Alexandered over on the G blog. When will I ever learn?

@jimthefish – Bad plan. I remember when I once proved him wrong – y’know, with an actual reference – and he still wouldn’t accept it. He’s like Humpty Dumpty

When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.

 

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip — yes, he’s gone strangely quiet now though. Although I notice that my posts on that thread are starting to slowly but surely disappear (including my rather natty Raiders of the Lost Ark analogy), so I guess he’s getting the mods to retrospectively erase me from the timeline….

[Anonymous @]

@chickenelly — I like your idea of the TARDIS trying to protect Clara. But did anyone else get the impression this week that the Doctor’s attitude to the TARDIS was actually a little bit more cowed and fearful of it than normal. Perhaps it’s just for obvious reasons but it didn’t seem very Doctorish somehow. (Or maybe I’m still trying to cling to my multiDoc theory.)

Also while I’m still not that crazy about Clara (still seems a bit too cocky for my liking) I thought she was much better this week. But I think this was maybe because she got put through the wringer a bit more. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person…

[Anonymous @]

@jimthefish – “this week that the Doctor’s attitude to the TARDIS was actually a little bit more cowed and fearful of it than normal”

My take on that was that it was all his fault, for taking down the defences so that Clara could play, and being defenceless Sexy was drawn into the salvage ship and slightly wrecked.  So he was right to be wary of her being mad at him.

What does that all-white room at the end remind me of?  There’s something in nu-Who which had characters walking around in a similar dream-like, all-white space.

[Anonymous @]

And speaking of Groundhog Day / loopiness, my first thought on the ‘other’ Doctor coming back in through the crack at the end was that was him, coming through the crack on the other side over Rory in the Silurian space.

But how does that work?  He brought out a piece of the Tardis there, but here, he was handing over a Big Friendly Button.   I’m now thinking there’s no theory bonkers enough to loop that into the same moment.  But if there were – he would have glimpsed Clara in the control room which maybe fits into JLC’s spoiler that Clara has met the Doctor more than three times …

[Lula @lula]

@scaryb  I do lean toward the wristwatch facing inward as nothing more than a quirk of Smith’s Doctor, however I do love to speculate, so…there you go.  But I must admit that I’ve never once heard of that being described as the “American way,” and I’m American!

 

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@ardaraith – thinking about the ‘children’ reference in that encyclopaedia (and I’m pretty sure one of the other indistinct words was ‘child’) – is that the key to the Doctor’s situation?

The ice in his heart, the ‘madman’, the increasingly ‘dark Doctor’ – are these all Moffat’s interpretation of what happens to someone when there’s no future beyond themselves? Not in some Darwinesque sense of ‘all must reproduce’, but the disconnect that might happen when there’s NO next generation to tie you to the universe.

No kids. There’ve been an awful lot of stories about having kids during Moffat’s reign. Amy and Rory have their child stolen, the adopted baby Tenza, the little Queen of Years who holds all her culture’s stories, the Ice Warrior’s daughter, the descendent of the Prof and Emma, Avery’s son Toby, the Widow’s children. Ganger Jimmy’s little boy makes him human. Craig and Sophie not only get together, they have baby Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All.

And Kazran, in A Christmas Carol, is childless, alone, and emotionally frozen. Abigail, while childless, connects to her family and her sister’s children. Amy and Rory, we know, later recovered enough to adopt their son.

And the Doctor is childless (he thinks), searching for Companions, and has a sliver of ice in his heart. Going back and forth in the blink of an eye. Checking out Clara from before birth to the present day. Seeing everyone as ghosts, already dead – though maybe he’s the ghost, the ghost adrift in time, left behind to haunt the universe after his entire race died.

 

[Lula @lula]

@Shazzbot       The center  (centre!) of the Tardis reminded me of Apalapucia–from The Girl Who Waited.  But I thought I was alone in finding in familiar (whether or not you meant that particular episode), so thanks for confirming that I’m not as bonkers as I sometimes feel.

[HolyMackerel @holymackerel]

@Shazzbot There is the white space from The Girl Who Waited but also the place where the Doctor, Amy and Rory landed when they were acquired in Asylum of the Daleks. There might be more…

[Anonymous @]

@lula and @holymackerel – yup, that’s the one – ‘The Girl Who Waited’.  (That Dalek Asylum scene was indeed all-white but not so dream-like.)

Is it important?  Also is it important that the bits of things hanging down in the Tardis scene looked like stalactites?  Ice – like the ice in his heart(s) …

and @lula – who says you’re not as bonkers as you feel?  😉

[Whisht @whisht]

its a while back now (busy thread!), but just wanted to say thank you to @whohar for your collected list of theories in post #7140

for me its:
1d (though I was once a 1e and 1p via poor anagramming)
2a although also like 2c; 2f (my Silence theory which may be connected to 3b) which is all rather opaque to anyone reading this but does give me the chance to also thank you for one of my favourite quotes from a post:

“one parent is dead and the other is plastic.”

[Whisht @whisht]

for exploded but frozen things, here’s what sprang to mind for me (but has nothing to do with the series per se or even bonkers theories)!

Cornelia Parker’s Cold Dark Matter – an Exploded View

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

@bluesqueakpip – My heart is breaking!  That is such a tragic tale.  Say it ain’t so!  Not our Doctor!?  :'(

Could his name have come about because of the children?  Doctors deliver babies.  Well, not always, there are midwives.  But “who” he is, and why, is an important element woven into this tale.  I certainly think children are involved.  You have highlighted numerous instances where children, or the lack thereof, are significant story points.  Add Clara’s connection with children, and there seems to be a solid clue.

hmmm

[Whisht @whisht]

btw – if it is an illumination that Clara has seen in the History of the Time War, then yet again we have “paintings” being important….

as for why it falls open on that page…. well, a well thumbed page will always fall open on it (he says covering over any dramatic license of Clara having enough time to scour all the Books in the Library!!)

btw#2 – When Clara says “…in a tiny corner..” she might just mean “in a tiny corner of that bloomin’ enormous Library”.

sigh… very tired and no new insights (but lots of nodding as I’ve been reading through!).

I’m just glad the red/blue isn’t connected to Bluebeard and that Clara doesn’t stumble into the wrong room….

[eek! waayyyy too dark!!]

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@thommck

While defending this episode from the terrible review it got on the sfx blog

Ha – I just had a look at your comment on the SFX blog. I loved

If you want to discuss DW without the hate come and join in all the bonkers theorising at thedoctorwhoforum.com

Welcome to the marketing team! 😀

On your previous comment

I’ve come to realise that whatever errors/mistakes the writers come up with the viewers can always cover it up with a bonkers theory!

I think it’s always been like that to a certain extent. I wrote a long comment on the G about it (continuity/bonkers theorising, etc) which outlined my own feelings towards it and why I resist the urge to criticise over perceptions of them. I won’t repost, but here is a link if you are interested.

http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/18441264

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@jimthefish & @lula

It was quite common to wear your wristwatch facing inside when I was younger (I still do). It has a couple of advantages, apart from damage.

– Much easier to surreptitiously check the time if you’re bored by rubbing your head,etc in meetings/lectures/talking to someone you find dull.

– You didn’t fall prey to a particular “joke” that did the rounds on a night out. You wait until someone gently inebriated has a pint in their watch hand, and ask them the time. You hope that the muscle memory and relaxed state makes them tip the pint over themselves (I’ve witnessed this on a few occasions). Wearing your watch on the inside means you rotate the other way – throwing your pint onto your tormentor.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@jimthefish

I take it “time was rewritten” by the Mods in that thread? I never saw what happened, but two modded posts by you together would indicate some “truncation” of the converation.

If TS was insulting, he may be in Pre-mod. If he was clearly identified as “Undead” he may be banned, if he had been previously. Since the change in profiles, it can be difficult to tell (all the “Dead” appear live).

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Lindalee’s review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdm0Eyu4LWU

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

Lindalee is adorable!  “They’re best friends!!!”

[Lula @lula]

@Shazzbot —Okay, I’ll admit that I’m most certainly bonkers sometimes.  A popular saying here is, “Southerners don’t ask if you have crazy people in your family–we just ask which side they’re on.”  In my case, it’s both sides of the family.

@PhaseShift–that’s a terrible trick!  I love it and will, naturally, attempt to pull it on someone the first chance I get.  I don’t wear a watch because I use my cell phone as a timekeeper–but my husband wears one.  When I asked if he’d consider wearing it on the inside, for protection, he replied, “No way–then no one could see it but me!”  Vanity will get you every time.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@whohar and @juniperfish Excellent list(s) of current bonkers theories.

I would add a sub-heading to 1n: Clara is River and the Doctor’s daughter

1n (a): Clara is River and the Doctor’s daughter–but not necssarily the 11th Doctor.

On the other hand, re-watching JttCotT last night, I am starting to wonder if Clara really is, in reality, “just an ordinary girl”. So confusing when one starts to doubt one’s own bonkers theories.

On the question of the Doctor’s name, when Clara points out that she had read his name in the book, the thing he seemed to get quite upset about was the issue of why he called himself the Doctor. As I think has been established now (by @phaseshift ? sorry, I cannot remember) all the references to Doctor Who are just a blind to to the real question of why Doctor Who.

On the question of children he knows he has children (surely he has not forgotten his grand-daughter). Or does he? He was very cagey when Amy asked him if he had every had a child, and, unless I am mistaken, Susan never exhibited any overt characteristics of a Timelord, other than being quite clever for her age. Then again, back in Hartnell’s day, neither did the Doctor really. And, for what it is worth, Verity Lambert never wanted Susan to be his grand-daughter, but was forced to have it that way. (hmm, I wonder if that point will come up in An Adventure in Space and Time?)

I am sure I had a point at the beginning of this post, but for the moment it eludes me.

[Anonymous @]

@phaseshift — I remember that post of yours. A particularly good one, if  I may say so — and one that should stand largely as a mission statement for this very blog…

RE. ol truckles. He was getting a bit intemperate it but then I was getting a bit testy meself. No need to go back into it all again he was a bit mean about dear old @juniperfish and this site is a ‘circle jerk’ apparently. But I do feel bad if he has been banned because he is clearly a fan and is passionate about the show. I just wish he wouldn’t get so fixated — and it’s usually over something that’s not worth the grief over.

@wolfweed — thanks for the lindalee. I’m dreading the day when she discovers boys and pop music and stuff and doesn’t like that stupid Dr Who stuff anymore. (Despite the fact that it’ll be her in the right.)

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip — liked your ideas about the ongoing ‘children’ theme of Moffatt’s era. I think that’s spot on — right down to the fairytale vibe. Does that mean that we’ll be seeing Jenny again in some shape or form do you think?

[Anonymous @]

@wolfweed – wow, Lindalee has a theory so bonkers no-one here thought of it yet!  ‘The Tardis was protecting Clara’ ; ‘because she and the Tardis are BEST FRIENDS!’.

Come to think of it, Clara’s burnt future-self might have been steering her through the corridors (leave that telescope and that swimming pool ’til later, my friend) into the Library.

[Author]

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