S33 (7) 14 – The Name of the Doctor

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip – I thought the ‘bee-keeping’ line was there strictly as a Sherlock in-joke, and anyway was just a cliche of what someone like the Doctor thinks retirement is all about (and an attempt to lighten the mood when looking at the bleakness of Trenzalore).

You mention ‘Snowmen’ as being a retirement and although it was for the ‘wrong reasons’ as you say, it also shows how not doing what his calling is, puts him into a right dark funk.

Not sure how not having children to hand the name onto is relevant to the Doctor – he doesn’t hand it down to progeny, he regenerates himself to become the next person with the name of ‘The Doctor’.

But I like how you put this:  “He has a duty. ‘The Doctor’ is a promise.”  It doesn’t however, mean ‘happily ever after’ because his duty pretty much requires viewing death, perhaps causing it occasionally in the name of the greater good and sanity, as well as saving lives countless times over.

[brotherjohn @brotherjohn]

@Shazzbot – He’s a comic; very dark, ultra-liberal.  Facilitator bit is on his CD “Shut Up You F*%#&ing Baby!” Don’t think he would mind you using it 🙂

He also plays Tobias on Arrested Development, in addition to numerous movie roles.

[Anonymous @]

@timeloop – there are many reasons why I think that last scene with River spells it out as being her last appearance in the show; the Shakespeare allusion is but one.

– She said ‘Goodbye, Sweetie’ as a mirror of all the times she has said ‘Hello, Sweetie’;
– the loving kiss which mirrors her first kiss with him (well, the Doctor thought it was their first kiss!) when he is totally flustered by it;
– she got the Doctor ‘who doesn’t like endings’ to say goodbye to her, and a type of goodbye on her terms;
– and, of course, the fact that she’s dead now, so what relationship could they possibly have after this?  🙂

[brotherjohn @brotherjohn]

Or a completely bonkers theory, which we can call (for reasons about to be clear), “THE Bonkers Theory”.

The Doctor is crazy, and JH is only in his head.  He hasn’t ever really dealt with the horrible things he did in the Time War, and has compartmentalized the evil inside him into JH.

The 50th will take place completely inside the timeline world we saw at the end… inside the Doctor’s “head”, if you will.  It will be a struggle to decide if the Doctor’s evil side will win out and “escape” (and control him forever).

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud will guest star.

(The last part was totally a joke.  The first part?  Only half-joking.)

[Anonymous @]

@brotherjohn – re David Cross:  He’s a comic; very dark, ultra-liberal.  Facilitator bit is on his CD “Shut Up You F*%#&ing Baby!”

I like him already.  😀   I will check him out online, thanks for pointing me his way!

There are persuasive theories for both ‘0’ and ‘8.x’ separately (re)generated Doctors for John Hurt, and now you’ve introduced a new one, not a separate regeneration at all!  Y’know, we’re probably going to need the full 6 months to untangle all of this.

[davemorris316 @davemorris316]

@badwulf I think what we see is larger and in the distance, like a ruined building, but I’m happy to be wrong, as what happens is usually better than what I conjure up.

Ok, new theory…. What if…

What if the thing he has done is not the Time War. Worse than that, he has at some point made the decision to make himself immortal?

The old limit of 12 regenerations has been shown to no longer exist (there’s an article on The G which refers to this), but what if he had to kill to do this?

“What I did, I did without choice”

“I know”

“In the name of peace, and sanity”

“But not in the name of The Doctor”

We have seen through the last few series what would happen without The Doctor – stars and galaxies disappear, evils run riot through the galaxy. What if the Hurt Doctor (#12 in this theory), old and ancient after avoiding death for so long with no regeneration, realised that for peace to exist in the universe he must be around forever?

He therefore uses what he learnt when River gave him her regenerations, and decimated the timelords in order to become immortal.

When 10 went, he said “I don’t want to go”. There was also the grandeur of that Doctor – “The Timelord victorious”. What if some of these remnants have been left within the Doctor? The desire to go on, the desire to be the saviour? Is this why #10 is needed to help stop #12?

The promise of The Doctor was to help others, to heal them, to sacrifice one’s self if necessary. What if #12 thought the only way to do this forever was to sacrifice his kin to help the greater universe?

We have seen similar thinking before with Pompeii.

This indeed would be a dark Doctor. How they would stop this, and still have the regeneration limit removed baffles me even more than the theory I have presented.

Yowza. I’m not sure where that all came from…

[BadWulf @badwulf]

The promise of “The Doctor” – we have some possibilities as to what it could mean:

A) Healer – the Doctor’s role is to heal the scars in time and space left by his culture’s meddling in the timestreams.

B) Teacher – his role is to pass on knowledge, introduce people to new worlds and new civilisations, or train people to become time travellers.

I strongly think Moffat is going for (A), although the remit of the programme was originally (B).

Or could it be a combination of the two, or something I have missed entirely.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@davemorris316  – “We have seen through the last few series what would happen without The Doctor – stars and galaxies disappear, evils run riot through the galaxy. What if the Hurt Doctor (#12 in this theory), old and ancient after avoiding death for so long with no regeneration, realised that for peace to exist in the universe he must be around forever?”

I like this! Perhaps, in order to be around forever, he had to steal all the regenerations from the entire Gallifreyan people, by stealing the Eye of Harmony, and eliminating their ability to generate regeneration energy?

 

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

About CAL River ‘sleeping’; the Second Doctor mentioned his family sleeping in his head, those memories of them, and waking sometimes. I know someone posted a clip of it, more than once I think. There’s also a sleep mode thing?

Beekeeping? Perhaps he’s why all the bees have vanished in Ten’s lifetime! Or it’s just a little nod to Mr Gaiman 🙂

[Anonymous @]

@davemorris316 – That’s a fascinating – and certainly different – theory, coupled with interesting thoughts on 10’s ‘I don’t want to go!’ line.

I’ve said before I was a little frustrated that line got in at the time, because I thought it was more about David Tennant than about The Doctor.  ‘Just regenerate already!’ I thought.

What S Moffat has done with fragmenting Clara in TNotD, the more I think about it, is a game-changer par excellence.  Because it makes us view all past scenes with an eye toward not what was going on at the time, but their meaning in context with the 50th (and until we actually get to see that programme, discussing their meaning in context with bonkers theorising about the 50th).

OK, to summarise, we have :  a 12 who has, vampire-like, sucked all the regens from his entire race of people.  It was done for ostensibly noble reasons but there was always an underlying current of megalomania underpinning those ‘noble reasons’.  Hmm, there has been a vampire or two (even if implied) in this series so far … {strokes chin}

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@Shazzbot – oh, yeah, he’s trying to make a joke. But there’s a truth behind the joke; he never gets to retire. Heck, he can’t even take two kids and his girlfriend on a day out without it turning into a death-defying battle against the Cybermen.

Children have been a theme throughout Steven Moffat’s tenure; if you remember, in Journey Clara is taken by the TARDIS to see – an empty cradle. And an Encyclopedia Gallifreya where the words we can hear suggest she’s just knocked over the section on children.

Who is ever going to replace The Doctor? He’s the Last of the Time Lords. Sherlock Holmes, Moffat cheekily reminds us, got  to retire. But without The Doctor, the stars will go out.

And he didn’t start out this way. Before the Time War, he had back up. Now there’s just him.

[Drwho @drwho]

  Yesterday i red that CAL from the scilence of the libary is clara and she did try to protect the doctor but eventually River did. Its like moffat has been planing this for a couple years

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip – I’m going to ignore that ‘girlfriend’ reference!  Especially in light of the fact that you are one of the people who have started me on the road of ‘Clara is the next Doctor’.  🙂

“And he didn’t start out this way. Before the Time War, he had back up. Now there’s just him.”

And does the 50th, do you think, revive that backup?  Set The Doctor back where he started?  @davemorris316 has a verrrry eeenteresting idea of the Doctor vampirishly draining all the Time Lords of their regeneration energy.  Do you want to riff on that?  If his greatest evil was to relieve his entire race of their one unique characteristic, he would have to return those stolen regens in order to reinstate his people, and gain the backup he needs to stop being such a megalomaniac (‘I’m the only one who can save the universe!’).

I’m liking this, actually – well, the idea of having more Time Lords about.  The Doctor as ‘the saviour of the universe’ is a bit too God-like – a concept the Doctor has already been forced to face about himself since 2005.

On a religious note, the monotheistical God both kills and provides life.  The Greek/Roman god groups apparently did a lot of killing (and a lot of shagging) but didn’t do much in general about providing life, other than the individual gods/goddesses of spring and summer.  Analogy to DW?  It’s all about how you interpret the brushstrokes … 🙂

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Just saw an interesting post on the G blog – someone remembered that Clara was plugged into the Tardis. I got excited, then remembered it was early on, so the Tardis could get the co-ordinates that Clarence (the convict) had given them. But even so… she’s been directly connected up once.

I’ve watched a few times and there is definitely a mismatch between the Dr & Clara exploring deep in the Tardis, where we are told the dimensionality(?) is unstable (and OK, and am now convinced Clara saying “we’ve done this before” is a ref to JttCotT (wonder if she remembers being incinerated…? And was that epsidode GI influenced?) and the Dr appearing in front of Dr Simeon. Outside.

Agree with the poster above, there is also a mismatch with the Pater Gang when the first “land”.  It looks like outside, but the Tardis Police Box sign is definitely the wrong way round, suggesting inside. or a reflection. And why would the GI need the Dr to open the doors if they were already inside?

And yes, it is intriguing that the Tardis is in the new console room configuration, complete with the cracked window that it’s just acquired. Maybe the final battle IS sooner than we think.

Talking of which – this arrival at Trenzalore is not necessarily the one predicted (although I do like the catch on “Fall” being te tardis crash landing). Since the Dr’s grave – ie the decaying, dying Tardis, complete with “scar tissue” timestream – is definitely here, he has already “fallen”.

BUT if the Trenzalore defeat was down to the GI, how is that affected now that Clara has gone on her rescue mission? We’ve not stepped out of the Dr’s timestream yet, we don’t know what outside looks like yet.

Mad random thought – what if Trenzalore used to be Gallifrey??

@bluesqueakpip Re the Dr’s childminding skills – take them on an adventure?  He can’t even play blind man’s  buff in their own house without losing them! How does this man ever manage to defeat daleks, cybermen and whathaveyou?! (The scariest monsers in the universe aren’t half as devious as 2 human kids!):-)

Yup, think there’s lots of mysteries to be solved yet

[Anonymous @]

@drwho – where did you read that?

I believe that S Moffat* has not been coy about saying that he planned a very long arc around River Song’s character starting with ‘Silence in the Library’.  Since that was a fair few years ago, I would imagine whatever he planned then has been re-thought, re-written, and re-jigged many times since – but certainly containing the core concept of his vision.  Especially if he had any inkling at all, at the time of writing SitL, that he would be show-runner in this 50th anniversary year.

* ps for anyone thinking I’m doing an annoying personal tic with ‘S Moffat’ it’s because I can never remember if it’s ‘Stephen’ or ‘Steven’.

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@scaryb And why would the GI need the Dr to open the doors if they were already inside?

To get into the console room, location of the timestream. Although a sealed door in a dead TARDIS… Perhaps just mostly dead?

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – I’m pretty sure they weren’t outside, because Vastra looks up to see ‘Police Box’ written backwards, which indicates that they are inside the Tardis.  Could it look like outside because the Tardis has been dying for quite some time, and just as in the jungle-y vines we see in the control room (an Earth-trope for something long-abandoned), the corridor has become a bit, say, dusty?  (Remember, there’s a cracked window … )

I don’t think River opened the Tardis’s outer doors – she opened the doors to the consol room, where the Doctor’s ‘tracks of my tears’ wound powered the Tardis’s death throes.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot I think you’re spot on with that description of how the Moff (nah! I do’t do formal!) works – fits in with interviews. I think there’s often a long term plan, not necessarily detailed but key points which can be picked up when needed (in individual stories if he wasn’t the showrunner).

I agree  that was probably River’s goodbye in terms of post library River (although it was she who kept the link to Clara open (so she was able to confirm to the recovered Dr that Clara was still alive in his timestream (must be like having someone rummage through your diary, only worse!) ) so she could also be the one to actively disconnect it. Though the whole conversation about I can only go if you say goodbye like it’s not the end (paraphrased) and a time to live, a time to sleep does suggest that she finally let go. OMG, that woman can wait – 300 years for a kiss – takes after her parents obv.

But there’s absolutely no reason (as I’ve said before) why an earlier River can’t drop in and out of stories, if the writers find a good way to use her.  There will always be the poignancy of her end lurking about, even more so now.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@satsumajoe @Shazzbot

Could it look like outside

It could, but the floor is very earthy, leaf strewn, and you can see the mountains and sky in the background. And it matches with the later scene when all of them appear to be outside and the Dr appears suddenly.

Re inner and outer doors –

There’s never been a double entrance as far as I remember – you always came straight through the doors into the console room.

It’s odd I tells ya!!!

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – “man that woman can wait – 300 years for a kiss – takes after her parents obv.”

Hah!  This is why I need this community so much, I hadn’t made that connection!  Yes, River is certainly her Daddy’s Girl.  🙂

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – ahh, but which console room was it?  You’re assuming it’s the main one accessible directly from the outside doors;  I was assuming it was a previous one (which we know the Tardis keeps on tap).

And knowing that it’s a previous console room removes some of the theorising about how the dying Tardis is the one that the Doctor and Clara crash-land onto Trenzalore in.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbit

Ahh, but which console room…

OK I could go with it being a spare… But what about the crack in the window pane?

 

(River – and her mum’s – the original “girl who waited” 🙂 )

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@scaryb That’s true but I think TARDIS (does anyone use Idris?) has created a door to that room (then locked it) as in JttCotT. Seeing the Doctor’s fate, she would’ve had something in place to prevent all that time mucking up business.

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – “that crack in the windowpane” ?  Well, we don’t know anything yet about post TNotD adventures, so maybe the cracked windowpane remains a constant from here on in.  Or (as in the dread ‘timey-wimey’ phrase) are these last scenes in the wrecked Tardis, going to be re-written?

Oy!  I’m not ‘Shazzbit’.  That was probably for my stealing your fez, so I accept it.  🙂  And of course Amy was ‘the girl who waited’.  Both Amy and Rory waited – albeit the latter for a ridiculously long time – and River certainly has patience for what she wants.  But my ‘Daddy’s Girl’ reference was to the fact that Rory waited for someone who he knew didn’t love him the way he loved her; and in another mirroring bit, River loved the Doctor in much more a way than he could ever love her.

[OsakaHatter @osakahatter]

@brotherjohn –

…He could have “broken the promise” during his first generation.  This is equally as possible as him breaking the promise in any other generation after…

I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here.  But I think this shoots the whole “He can’t be pre-Hartnell b/c he broke the promise, and the promise had to be made” argument out of the water.

I agree in that being the Hurt Doctor being Doctor Zero is no less likely than his being Doctor 8.5 for the reasons you state, but to play a different Devil’s advocate, do you think that a promise once broken can be remade?

@phaseshift has raised the Hippocratic Oath in terms of the Doctor (and was pretty much on the money, given that the ‘Name of The Doctor’ is explicitly stated as being a promise) and whether the Doctor will need to renew his oath.  If we accept that he can renew his oath/re-make his promise, then the Hurt Doctor can fit into the timeline as Doctor Zero or Doctor EightPointFive.  If you feel a promise once broken cannot be remade, then surely he has to be a future Doctor?

@davemorris316 – lovely idea that the Hurt Doctor is Doctor Twelve and steals (or tries to steal?) his people’s regenerations for himself for the greater good.  Properly dark and delightfully bonkers, although may need tweaking so that the existence of the Doctors grave is explained?  However, it could fit with my theory that it was actually Twelve that went back in his own timeline and ended the time war, so I’ll back you on that one!  As he allowed his younger self (Doctor Eight or Nine) to escape, he knew what he was to become in the future (and knew it couldn’t be avoided as it would be a closed loop) and have been running from his destiny ever since.  Hence the subsequent unwillingness to regenerate and horror at brief moments of TimeLord Victorious, and expecting to see John Hurt.

[Timeloop @timeloop]

@scaryb @Shazzbot

It is definitly inside. The are leaves in the controlroom as well. She just blew out of proportion and is a bit leaky. The are in the upper window part. That is why you see stars.

[Anonymous @]

@osakahatter – “do you think that a promise once broken can be remade?”

Well, you perhaps have defined the entire post-2005 series’s Doctors.  They are continually trying to remake that promise, leading to 10’s ‘I can change time to save people’ megalomania in the sincere attempt to regain the name of ‘The Doctor’ as a force for good.  And to 11’s horror at being known as a force for evil, followed by his retreat from (but then re-entry to) doing good where he thinks he can.

Those more knowledgeable than me can point to particular arcs or instances of pre-2005 Doctors focusing on remaking the promise of The Doctor as a force for good.

[Timeloop @timeloop]

lol @Shazzbot

 

I just remembered something from the graun: Didnt Dorium say somthing like “when the question is asked silence must fall”? The Silence thought it was to dangerous and believed it must be averted?  Doctor Who is kinda answered. Still this is not “the dangerous knowledge that must never be spoken” ( as he said to churchill). And if the Silence did not want the timeline to be corrupted…. why kill him earlier? Or are they refering to the second time (when he actually dies) ??

[Anonymous @]

@timeloop – The whole Silence (Silents?) thing may have been left in the dustbin of the previous series – or maybe not.  In this episode, we went to Trenzalore which we as an audience first heard of in the series with the Silents(ce).  Is that the end of that mini-arc?  Was that whole ‘no-one can speak falsely’ business wrapped up in TNotD, because the Doctor refused to say – or lie about – his name to open the doors to save his friends [only to have River open the doors for him]?

I’m sticking with my earlier observation, that what appears to be a loose end may be addressed later, or may simply be something we don’t have to worry about.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot – oops sorry about your name – shit typing skills! You should’ve seen what I called Phaseshift once 🙁  (I think your dog suits the fez down to the ground, LOL (very cute))

@timeloop

Sorry, am still not convinced they are inside, though it’s difficult to work out the scale and the exterior shots of the giant Tardis don’t help. They could be on the window ledge – but the light source is coming from inside. But then the doors being where and how they are don’t make sense. (19.50-21.36 approx)

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@Shazzbot Yeah, that surprised me even with the habit of misdirection. They were trying to stop him from, what, visiting his eventual gravesite and having his entire history rewritten so he never had the impact he did and they didn’t have to put up with him in the first place. Yeah? How do they do that? By repeatedly trying to kill him.

Suppose it’s notable that River’s first meeting with him is mirrored here.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

Hello all, some interesting thoughts to dwell on who “Doctor Hurt” is.

I think I agree with the missing ninth incarnation. It really is that bit in JttCotT and the book on the TimeWar. It has his name in it. Written about the past so maybe he has been judged by whoever wrote it that he was unfit for the name? Clara doesn’t recognise him from the Timeline, but the events of the Time War are “timelocked” (whatever that means) so a version that exists only within that frame. Clara’s attempt to salvage that reality may have had the consequence of releasing him somehow?

@osakahatter

the Hippocratic Oath in terms of the Doctor (and was pretty much on the money, given that the ‘Name of The Doctor’ is explicitly stated as being a promise)

Very kind. I still like those thoughts. The start of the oath:

I will keep them from harm and injustice

Does read like a promise. If you take the back end of the oath

If I fulfil this path and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honoured with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

…and this is true. The incarnations that carried out the promise are “honoured with fame among men for all time to come”. Unless it gets convenient and he erases that information.

The one who has “transgressed and swore falsely” has been forgotten.

Who was the promise made to? I think that could be left in the air as another mystery, although my favourite would be initially to Susan’s parents.

River said that the title of “Doctor” has been used throughout time and space as a wise man. What if he’d grown up with tales of what a Doctor is, decided to use that name for it’s oath, not realising it’s his own actions that have led to the oaths creation? Very timey wimey.

@jimthefish (@JimTheModerator) 😀 spanky new (and appropriate) avatar you have there.

[Anonymous @]

@satsumajoe – “it’s notable that River’s first meeting with him is mirrored here.”  River’s first meeting with him?  My head is swimming with timeyness so please remind me of which moment you’re speaking of!  Is it that one in SitL where there are ‘ghost’ voices, and now River is essentially a ghost in this episode?

You seem to have a better handle on the Silents(ce) than I do – I would appreciate hearing your recap on what was going on from the beginning of Utah until now (with respect to the Silence, not every other thing, because frankly that would require a novel!).

@scaryb – in hommage to your apology, I have now nicked your blue fez. 

[Anonymous @]

@jimthefish – I don’t care what @phaseshift says, your new avatar is frightening!  THIS IS NOT WHAT KIDS WANT.

If you don’t change your avatar IMMEDIATELY I will stop reading this forum and my children will stop reading too (when I make them against their will but that’s not important right now).

[chickenelly @chickenelly]

@drwho

Yesterday i red that CAL from the scilence of the libary is clara and she did try to protect the doctor but eventually River did. Its like moffat has been planing this for a couple years

Coincidentally I was watching Silence in the Library & Forest of the Dead yesterday on the hunt for clues, and I got excited about that idea for around a minute.  They both have the same haircut (check), a single parent father (check).  However in the flashback clip you see of Clara in the Library it is her as an adult.  Also in her voice over she does say that she’d been trying to contact the Doctor all those years and was only heard a few times – essentially only Eleven saw her.

Mind you, one of my older Bonkers Theories™ was that Clara was a kind of ‘Boys from Brazil’ figure, perpetually generated by the GI.  Admittedly the last bit was wrong but the rest could be right.  Hmmm *no pipe in my bell jar, besides the lack of air it could set fire to my lovely new bonnet*

[Anonymous @]

@phaseshift — many thanks. I thought I’d get a bit more into character… But if it continues to frighten @Shazzbot and her children then I may have to change it back… 🙂

 

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

We’ve not stepped out of the Dr’s timestream yet, we don’t know what outside looks like yet.

@scaryb – Oh!! What IF, when they finally step outside that timestream, everything has changed!  What if the Time War didn’t end due to the brutality of Hurt Doctor? What if The Doctor ends it, with healing?  What if The Doctor is married, with little people?  What If…that world is a better place??

[Anonymous @]

Interesting little tidbit of a conversation on the Steven Moffat piece on the Guardian which I thought might be worth cutting and pasting here — discussing the number of regenerations left, if we assume that the ones ‘gifted’ by River in LKH do in fact count.

Someone called rockyrex said:

 she had regenerated twice, so if the old ‘only 12’ still applies, she gave the Doc 10 extras, giving him 22 regenerations – we don’t now know how many he has actually used up before Hartnell or between McGann and Ecclestone

I was just wondering if the cryptic last line of Moffat’s in the article ‘Ten plus 11 gives you…’ might be considered a confirmation of that. A little extra ‘Easter Egg’ for the fans for not spoiling the finale?

[brotherjohn @brotherjohn]

@ardaraith –

Oh!! What IF, when they finally step outside that timestream, everything has changed!  What if the Time War didn’t end due to the brutality of Hurt Doctor? What if The Doctor ends it, with healing?  

Oh!!! Oh!!! best idea for the 50th yet!  We get to SEE the Time War!

Whether all played out within “the Doctor’s timeline”, whatever that is, or after they leave because something has gone horribly wrong.  BUT… it’s not all good yet.  The Doctor has to set things straight, and we get to see him win it… “the Doctor way” this time.

The Time War would seem to be something they’d want more than 1.5 hrs to depict, but it sure would be a good setting for the 50th!  Then again, they could also use the 50th as a jumping off point for it.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@chickenelly Your avatar is a hoot (although you do look, worryingly, as if you might have been in the microwave).

Anyway you’ve picked the red side of the chess board – the side with heart. @scaryb and @Shazzbot are currently batting for the dark side of the force with ice in their hearts.

Sorry you missed out on making a sixties style sci-fi outfit with your baked potato foil wrapper 🙂

@phaseshift Good spot on the Hippocratic Oath.

Now, what do you think happens when you not only cross your own time-line once, which we know is a “bad thing” but when you cross it at all points simultaneously?

I can’t believe the Doctor just hopped in there after Clara. What a catastrophe not just for the Doctor but for the universe, surely?

Of course, my Osiris/ Isis parallels are happy.

River (as Isis) “made” the Doctor tell her his name at some point in her past so she has his “word of power” (just as Isis “tricked” Ra into giving up his name and so had power over him). This word opens the Doctor’s tomb (the door between life and death).  Isis was able to use this word of power to help resurrect Osiris. River is able (using Clara) to save the Doctor.

First Clara and now perhaps Eleven (?) are scattered across time as fragments. Osiris was dismembered and scattered across the world. This does point quite strongly to the possibility that Clara is the Doctor a la @bluesqueakpip and others’ musings.

The Doctor has just crossed the threshold of his own death. He has, in effect, entered the underworld, just as Osiris did. This is both literal and figurative, as he is going on a journey to the “dark side” of himself – aka the Hurt Doctor.

Now, a la Clara’s phoenix jewellery, he needs to be resurrected at the 50th.

Score for both dark Doctor and Osiris/ Isis 🙂

 

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

Thanks, @brotherjohn !  I think it would be amazing, and create a clean slate for the Doctor to move forward, his conscience healed.  And what a treat for the Doctor to have that chance to go back and rectify his past mistake – and for us to see part of the time war!!  Then…..when he and ClaraPrime finally hop back into their right timestream, they will both realise she *was* River – that River was one of her echoes – and they are…. married!  :gasp:  Surely not!  It would be a funny scene, though!

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@Shazzbot Ah, that. No, first meeting with Eleven. Although that makes me think their meeting here might well have been just after she’d been uploaded into the Library. She dies in front of a bemused Ten, he ‘saves’ her, the conference call is gathered then Trenzalore.

Phew.

The Silence, blimey. What do I think/remember… Misguided crusade; a religious order without a leader though? Odd. Kovarian was unlikely to be it. Papal Mainframe? Perhaps but I thought that was a woman/female in charge of the Headless Monks alone. Didn’t one Monk summon him to the Asylum? Hmm… Only really thought of their weapon against him being a Song; that was always going to go well eh? 😀

They can build TARDISes, well get someone to build them. That’s never been explained either, I don’t think.  A rogue Time Lord or someone with that sort of knowledge? Omega with those symbols all over the place? I know next to nothing about him.

Ultimately pawns of something or someone else. Think that’s my take.

@juniperfish Shadow Doctor as Set?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@timeloop – Re the Silence – see my earlier post #10046 (squeals! we’re 10k+ ) re the timey wimey nature of Trenzalore and why the question Simeon asks may not be the question in Dorium’s prediction…

@Shazzbot

 

But my ‘Daddy’s Girl’ reference was to the fact that Rory waited for someone who he knew didn’t love him the way he loved her; and in another mirroring bit, River loved the Doctor in much more a way than he could ever love her.

 

Ah, but Amy also waited, in similar circumstances, thinking she’d been abandoned. And remember the (slightly awkward) conversation in AotD when they clearly demonstrated that their love for each other was pretty much equal. I think the depth of the Dr’s feelings for River is very clear in this episode. He can touch her virtual self physically.  She’s the one who “always knows”, he didn’t want to revisit her in the Library because it would hurt too much but that “you’re always here to me”.  She says it’s hard to leave when they haven’t said goodbye, and the only way she’d accept (a goodbye from him) is “if you ever loved me then say it like you’re going to come back”. And he does. She gives him the get-out so he can keep up the facade and not break down. You want more evidence? When have you ever seen Eleven instigate a kiss before? (and in front of other people – even tho they could only see half of what was going on!) The Dr’s at least 300 years older than he was when he left her in the Library, but he’s clearly still carrying a very big torch for her (and not the one he dropped in the underbelly of the Tardis!). <sniff> That’s about as honest and raw as you ever see the Dr get re personal feelings.

 

@satsumajoe technically it’s not River’s first meeting with him (in SitL), it’s her last (physically anyway), his first! But yes, 10 in the Library (we think!) is a poignant ref to it

 

<dammit, there’s a lot grit flying about today! >

[Arkleseizure @arkleseizure]

I saw a book about oxbow lakes today that got me thinking: maybe the Hurt Doctor is a sort of temporal oxbow lake. Just as an oxbow lake was once part of the river before the meander doubled back on itself and the river short-circuited (so to speak), so the Hurt Doctor was part of the Doctor’s timeline, but is now separate, cut off from the main flow. Hence 11 really is 11. The Hurt Doctor used to be 9, but Eccleston is now 9, not 10.

The further thought occurs that maybe the Time War itself is an oxbow lake to the history of the universe. Cosmological history now runs direct from the day before it started to the day after it ended.

[MTGradwell @mtgradwell]

@thommck

I thought it odd how the Tomb TARDIS looked the same on the inside. Does that mean the Doctor never changes it? That will probably be explained as all the versions of the TARDIS console where there, that’s just the one they happened to walk in to.

I’d guess that the Tardis, while dying, was still sentient enough to recognise which Doctor incarnation was entering, and to reorganise itself according to his preferences, placing his preferred control room just inside the doors of the inner sanctum, rather than one of the other control rooms.

The secret entrance to the catacombs confused me. Who put it there?Was it in the Doctors last will or do all timelords get a secret entrance with their wife’s name on it!?!

I suspect it was put there by River. She sent a memo through time to her younger (i.e. still living) self: “You need to travel to Trenzalore, to these exact space-time coordinates <co-ords go here>. When you get there, You’ll see what looks like the ruins of a giant Tardis. Don’t worry, it’s just the Doctor’s grave. You must set up a fake grave of your own, again at the exact coordinates specified, which will actually be a secret entrance to the catacombs below….”

Clara And the Doc said they were walking through the broken TARDIS but when they re-emerged they were outside the doors. What went on there?

The dying Tardis’s outer shell is broken. Some of its rooms have “leaked out” and merged with the catacombs below ground, forming a seamless whole. However there is an inner core which is still intact and unbreached, which can only be opened by saying the Doctor’s name. This is the control room. Note that in Journey to the Centre of the Tardis we were told that the Control room is the safest part of the Tardis.

River Song – I need a diagram to work her part out! I think it would’ve been helpful to signpost she was the Library version from the start. It leads me to wonder why they chose to do that? Why not just have the real River?

If the real River had spoken the Doctor’s name, all those around might have heard it. It wouldn’t have been a secret any more. And it was important for it to be kept a secret. Also, the Library version of River is near the end of her timeline. She knows many things, including much that the Doctor doesn’t know. It was important for her to be knowledgeable. To know, for instance, the Doctor’s name. To know that she could say it, and the consequences wouldn’t be too terrible (and how did she know that? That has to be a revelation for another day. Spoilers. I’m guessing that she either meets the Doctor again, in his future, and gets the full story from him, or she gets it from fractured Clara.)

How could River open the tomb doors if only the Doctor & Clara could see/hear her? Are we meant to believe the TARDIS could also see/hear her?

Yes. She said as much: “The Tardis can still hear me. Lucky thing, since ‘im indoors is being so useless.”

You’d think the Doctor knew the name of all the planets so why was this a mystery to him.

The Doctor’s good, but not that good. There’s billions of planets out there. He’s lived a long time, but not long enough to learn all their names. And this planet lay in his future. Timelords try not to find out too much about their own personal future, because of the dangerous paradoxes that entails. The Doctor didn’t try hard to find out what Trenzalore was because he had his suspicions, and he didn’t want to see those suspicions confirmed.

a) Old Who happened,
b) The GI changed everything
c) Clara got rid of the GI timeline virus meaning they had not changed anything

I don’t see it that way, quite.  How did the Doctor encounter Dalek Oswin and Victorian Clara in “Old Who”? “Old Who”, from its beginning, is and always has been the timeline in which the GI and then Clara changed everything. There is no pre-intervention timeline, or if there is then it is very different from anything that has ever been televised, all the way down to the first Doctor selecting a different Tardis.

You spotted a lot of other interesting things, and raised other questions that I don’t have answers to, but I hope that what I have written is of some use.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@satsumajoe Hurt Doctor as Set

Yes quite possibly. Or perhaps every dark thing in the universe now has a little bit of “dark Doctor” in it.

@arkleseizure Love the oxbow lake thought – trapped in a “bubble iniverse” inside the Doctor’s subconscious perhaps? That would makes sense of all the alternate/ bubble universe parallels.

Perhaps the Doctor used some of the Gallifreyan tech with which he put the time lock on the Time War to also put an internal lock on his Time War dark incarnation.

Is his name the key to both as well as being the key to his tomb?

Yes, I do think and hope the TIme Lords are coming back.

I’d also be delighted to see some of the TIme War as @ardaraith and @brotherjohn were speculating. Perhaps that is the “endless bitter war” of which Kovarian spoke…

 

 

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@scaryb Yes, sorry, you’re right. Time travel! I fall into a trap of thinking of each incarnation separately, a bit, which could get really complicated if I’d seen BG series! In any event, her first and (perhaps) last meeting with Eleven.

I did say phew 😀

@juniperfish OK, Hurt Doctor! Or Doctor Hurt? Yeah, maybe not. Anyway, interesting idea. He’s fighting against himself forever. Blimey.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@jimthefish – cool avatar btw 😉

NotD has a few interesting refs to regenerations, well, no of Drs anyway

Clara definitely refers to Hartnell as the beginning (tho admittedly that could be just of he adventure).

But she also says (at the end) – just after they’ve found HurtDr – “But I saw all of you… 11 faces, all of them you, you’re the eleventh Dr”

He doesn’t disagree with her. So given that his timestream was supposed to contain his future versions as well (he says so!), where does that leave us?  Continuity error…? (Where’s @htpbdet when you need a ce fixed – hope he can join us soon)

[davemorris316 @davemorris316]

First off…. apologies to @badwulf, I have now rewatched for the third time, but this time my screen wasn’t subjected to glare from sunlight, and you are right, it is Trenzalore, not Gallifrey…. unless the two are one and the same?….

Second, I just thought, and I don’t know if anyone has said this at any point, BUT if Clara has occupied the Doctor’s ENTIRE timeline, and recognised “all eleven faces – you’re the eleventh Doctor”, how can she ask who the Hurt Doctor is? Surely, she would have seen him somewhere in the timeline?

Does this suggest that he in fact isn’t the Doctor? Surely she would have seen him and know him. So where or what is he?

Clara, who has seen the entire timeline, also confirms that 11 IS 11. Surely she would have seen Hurt as the first or 8.5 if he had been. Even 12 as well…

Unless the GI didn’t see fit to interfere with Hurt’s actions, as they were already destructive and diabolical? Therefore Clara had no need to involve herself?

There seem to be big contradictions/clues in that passage.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@satsumajoe I may be mis-reading  you in which case I apologise – River/Dr = Complicated –  but by the time River gets to the Library she’s already had her full relationship with Matt, and any future incarnations of the Dr!

Btw – does anyone know how to do a screen grab from iplayer?

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