Spoilers (2)
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19 September 2015 at 01:19 #42876
Anonymous @
It’s also on Dailymotion, here.
19 September 2015 at 07:08 #42894About Genesis of the Daleks, the classic series showed a decline in the Daleks influence to a state where they could be absolutely defeated by an enemy such as the Movellans. Thus the Fourth Doctor’s assertion that the Daleks existence could contribute to the common good by forcing other species to unite in a common cause to contain them was somewhat plausible, if not shown.
But by the time of the new series, I cannot help but draw the conclusion that the Doctor by refusing to destroy the Daleks is a murderer of trillions if not more people. Now the Daleks cannot be contained by even the Time Lords. It is a miracle the Daleks did not set off a bomb (a popularization of destabilizing the false vacuum?) that would have destroyed all of reality across all dimensions. One can argue that the Doctor making himself know to Davros helped inspire Davros to attain a level of malevolent scientific evil far beyond what he would have achieved otherwise. The Doctor has no excuse because he actually witnessed the creation of the Daleks where Davros explained to him they were engineered to be irredeemably evil from the start.
Thus I suspect that Moffat will somehow square the circle and find a way for the Fourth Doctor to have made the right decision with respect to the Daleks, especially since Tom Baker was persuaded to make another appearance in the series. Perhaps this will involve the creation of an intergalactic security force similar to the United Nations but one with enough teeth to hold the Daleks in check and contain other obvious aggression between different species.
19 September 2015 at 08:05 #42897@brewski: Just from watching the series, it is clear there is some connection between Missy and the Great Intelligence? Missy actually knows of Clara being the “Impossible Girl” as shown by the advertisement in the newspaper in S8 “Deep Breath”. The technology of uploading minds to a cloud is also used by both the Great Intelligence and Missy.
Come to think of it, this is not the first time the Doctor has retreated somewhere quiet to think?
27 September 2015 at 02:06 #43502@jphamlore you know who else uploads their mind to a cloud? River.
27 September 2015 at 02:16 #43505Yep, she is a full upload sharing space in her mind folder, she is an external drive because the hard drive CAL was full, so she is not dead, she is just sharing space with CAL.
I can’t wait for tonight! This story arc is already awesome. Skweee!
30 September 2015 at 15:15 #43848Posting in here because I’m not sure whether it counts as Spoilers or not, but I’ve had a theory about Clara based on the Abbey Road promo picture. So in the TWF thread there is a lot of theorising about the dalek nanogenes working in Clara’s brain and the fact CapDoc echoed Ten with the “I’m so sorry” suggesting that he can’t save Clara. But in TMA there are hints he already knows about her fate, and that’s before she goes into the Dalek
Now flashback to the picture. The theory goes that it is a copy of the abbey Road album cover, which many Conspiracy theorists say reveals the death and replacement of Paul McCartney, and thus foreshadows Clara’s death. But what if she’s already dead? The Abbey Road cover supposedly has a “fake” McCartney on it, so what if the clara we’re currently watching is a “fake”, ie a Claricle? I know I’m not the first to suggest this, but I might have made some more links to it now.
Firstly, the “29 IF” Reg plate. what is the point in having that if she isn’t already dead? If she dies at the end of the series then Clara makes it to 29. Therefore she must either die early in the series or already be dead.
Next, the choice to make the other two members of the publicity shoot Daleks. This can’t be a coincidence. Moffat doesn’t do coincidences. Sure, it was released on the morning of TMA, but why choose the Daleks? Surely that would be a spoiler that they had returned? Why not someone else that was in the episode? Yes that rule would rule out Missy and Davros, but there were other available characters. Bors, Kate, The sisterhood of Karn, The TARDIS etc. No this was a deliberate decision, highlighted even more by the Oswin Claricle and Missy putting her inside one in TWF.
Third, we need to look at the nanogenes themselves. This is where Asylum of the Daleks becomes very important. Not just because it’s the first time we see Clara, but because of how much we learn about the nanogenes. We learn that they cannot be stopped, but they can be slowed (see Eleven’s explanation that Love helps to slow down how quickly they take effect). Presumably that is how the Oswin Claricle is able to fight the urge to Exterminate the Doctor: her love of humanity. She is still possibly succumbing to the nanogenes, responsible for her hallucinating mayhaps, but she fights them back very well. This ability to fight them back is shown again in The Name of The Doctor, when Tasha Lem is able to fight back her not-so-human dalekness. Now the version of Clara we are currently seeing has nanogenes floating around her head, trying to convert her. I would hypothesise that her love of travelling with the Doctor could allow her to fight them back until the end of the series, but ultimately she is doomed.
Also how rare is it for River to be wrong? Very. River warned Clara against entering The Doctor’s timestream, saying it would kill her. It is very feasible that the real Clara died and in doing so created all her Claricles.
One last thing. The ship that the Oswin Claricle was on was called Alaska. A ship called Alaska crashing into a snow-covered planet? That seems far too neat to me and just smells of being pre-planned.My theory: By the end of the series, this version of Clara will nearly have turned Dalek. Rather than letting her die a rubbish death (note how upset she was at the original way Danny died), CapDoc will wipe her memory, then leave her in time and space somewhere with an application form to join the SS Alaska. This is the Oswin Claricle.
30 September 2015 at 19:07 #43853Excellent bonkerising.
Two small quibbles:
1. You misspelled “absolute steaming loonpants” as “Conspiracy theorists”;
2. Re: ” her love of humanity.” I would suggest it is the capacity for love that is the important bit, rather then the object – also, as you note, re the Pope, that tremendous willpower is a critical factor. We have seen Clara’s strength of will stretched a few times. It is almost as if she is being trained.
Also, around here there is a tendency to refer to the “real” Clara – Clara Prime – and the Claricles. I’m not at all sure that is a meaningful distinction. Moffat loves his closed loops and the thing with loops is they don’t really have an origin…
30 September 2015 at 19:48 #43854I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, not because I believe them (I would not want to be mistaken for an absolute steaming loonpants by @pedant) but because they have the appeal of the truly bonkers theory–they have a bizarre internal logic to them which part of your brain wants to accept, but the other part of your brain realises that they aren’t true precisely because the nuance and complexity of the real world has been jettisoned in favour of the “pure” internal logic of the theory.
Which brings me to Abbey Road. Clearly, the Doctor Who team have put a lot of effort into re-creating the original, even down to the VW (sorry @bluesqueakpip, the Volkswagen) license plate. But, surely, to use this as evidence that Clara is dead, sort of presupposes that the original photo was actually saying that Paul McCartney was dead. But he’s not! Rather, I think they did the recreation in a spirit of fun to make allusion to the conspiracy theory that Paul was dead, not to accept that Paul was dead. Therefore, I am not sure we can use the recreated photo to establish that Clara is dead. I think it was more about playing around with bonkers theorists like us.
As for the Clara of the Asylum episode, the nanogenes and your projected ending for Clara, that is really intriguing. Personally, I have never really fully (even partially?) understood the whole issue of the Claricles (if the Hartnell Doctor met claricle Clara when he was stealing the TARDIS to run away with Susan, then why didn’t all the subsequent Doctors say: “Hey, you’re the same person that encouraged me to take this TARDIS”? I am sure I will find enlightenment regarding Clara at some point though. Perhaps Moffat will explain it to me in the episode where Clara leaves. Or perhaps not.
Anyway, I think yours is a really brilliant bonkers theory, but I’m not sure that it is the way the Clara story will be resolved. (But I am wrong on everything else, so why not on this as well?)
30 September 2015 at 22:30 #4385730 September 2015 at 22:35 #43859@bendubz11 I love it! I’m somewhat disillusioned in terms of Moffat’s puzzle creation however.
The potential to create wonderful puzzles, for the clue minded, which the audience doesn’t have to follow to enjoy the show, has been so tantalizingly almost there during his reign, but a lot of it has been left by the wayside thanks to his greater love for teasing this part of his audience with blind alleys and non-sequiturs.
To be fair, some of it has come through – Melody Pond as River Song, the pregnant/not-pregnant TARDIS reading of Amy pointing to ganger Amy.
Unfortunately, a certain segment of the audience was very vocal in online spaces that count about Moffat’s “over complicated-ness” and so, he retreated somewhat from the puzzle aspects of his arcs. Yes, Clara herself was a puzzle, as the “impossible girl”, but I don’t think this worked as well, because it detracted from the character formation of the companion for some time.
It may well be that Clara is still the puzzle, because her connection to the Ponds was so highlighted earlier on (her knowledge that the word which would call the Doctor down from his blue funk after River’s death, was “Pond”, the leaf connection – she blew in on one, River’s name and identity was finally discovered by her parents on a leaf…). I hope there turns out to be a familial connection – it would neatly tie up Moffat’s reign.
30 September 2015 at 23:05 #43861@pedant Oh no, I’m a steaming loon pants person! I think I’ve referred to the claricles and Clara a lot.
I thought the claricles existed and in ref to @blenkinsopthebrave‘s idea about how doctors didn’t notice or recall the claricles, I thought it was because she worked “in the background” -except with Dr Hartnell.
To be fair the Doctor does forget faces. In Deep Breath he knew the face he was “given” but couldn’t remember that it was tied into the Roman family. He refers to Clara as ‘old,’ as having a “wide face” -when he saw Rory, for example, it took him a good 5 minutes to realise, “hang on, you, that face, is dead. How are you alive?” Even Rory, says, “erm, yes, wait for it. I think you’re missing something”.
I then thought Clara (as Prime) was born into a family (something vaguely normal) -this time for ‘real’ and as the Clara Oswald, a girl completely unable to work computers, but being an excellent and much loved nanny to two children who were also motherless.
However, there are inconsistencies, herrings, or at least conundrums. Why does the Clara in the episode with the spoonheads speak about soufflés? -we are reminded of her endless ‘attempts’ whilst she was Claricle Dalek.
How are the other claricles actually ‘born’. Are they in fact born at all: or do they simply appear, or become ‘substantial’ only as they floated into the Doctor’s time stream when Clara herself followed the G.I.? In this way, they wouldn’t need to be born but to simply, like the Tardis in The Witches Familiar, reanimate?
So @pedant if he likes closed loops: then are all the claricles still around? Nope, that can’t be right because they died saving the Doctor usually. But what if they didn’t exactly die but reanimated somewhere else, later -that’s what a claricle is (I think) and if Clara is really a claricle then there’s no difference between the claricles and ‘a Clara ‘ -they are all the same!
Help 🙂
30 September 2015 at 23:55 #43865I watched the trailer for the next episode that apparently has ghosts in it. So I got to thinking
of the other ghost stories of the Series. My favorite ghost story is the “Unquiet Dead’ with
Charles Dickens played by Simon Callow also starting Eve Myles, the Geth and written by Mark Gatiss.
(I particularly love the stories when we meet Agatha Christie or Vincent Van Gogh or Leonardo
DaVinci.) Anyway, The Geth turned out to be aliens taking over dead people while they were trying
to find a way to travel across a time rift. Could this story have some of that type of thing with a
lot of water?
Probably a very bunkering concept but putting this thought here in casa people haven’t seen the trailer.30 September 2015 at 23:58 #43867@pedant @blenkinsopthebrave @juniperfish is it bad that I’m very proud that I got such a good reaction?
1 October 2015 at 10:44 #43886@lisa: I am just wondering if there is going to be a connection to Arthurian legend and the Holy Grail or whether they are just going to randomly use the name “Fisher King.”
It seems possible to me stories this season are having a theme of magical resurrection and perhaps even raising from the dead. That might come in useful for the fate of Clara …
8 October 2015 at 16:33 #44325If there is it will most likely be thematic and conceptual, rather than literal (although Robots of Sherwood – an episode many totally missed the point of, despite it being spelled out in dialogue) suggests that there might be a little room for both.
11 October 2015 at 18:32 #44494Thinking about Clara’s future, via S9: I’m thinking about what Missy said (in TWF), about how the Doctor was in miserable retreat so “I gave him a puppy” to distract him with something to care about. This leads back to being blown in on a leaf as the Impossible Girl.
Now in S9, Clara mourns the loss of Danny (and of an earth-woman life anchored in home and family) by hurling herself into Doctor-like danger as a distraction. So: she’s either going to go a hurl-to-far and smash herself to death against the wall of being merely human after all; or she’s going to hit that wall (under her own power or due to some machination by Missy) and break it open, fulfilling (and ending) the whole Impossible Girl story line by transcending her mask of “mere” humanity in a final blaze of glory.
So, tragedy — or triumphant/tragic transfiguration? Or — something else?
Looks like Moffat’s take — that the DW stories are always about the companion — will prevail: Clara’s quite enormous story, taken as a whole rather than part by part (Impossible Girl – Crucial Companion – Would-Be Doctor), will be brought to a close, one way or another, by S9.
Leaving the Doctor — where? With a new companion; or alone and needing one. And, maybe, finally, wholly focused on a return to Gallifrey for some sort of reckoning, before a launch into another direction?
12 October 2015 at 02:20 #44545There’s also another possibility, and that is that Clara discovers that she is in some vital and potentially awful way Missy’s creature, manipulated and maneuvered by Missy for purposes entirely related to the Doctor. That whole “She was born to save the Doctor” thing *means* that Clara was *not* born to be a full-fledged human being, but to be operated as a purpose-built tool of some kind. If our current Clara had to see herself in that light — that’s a pretty precarious position, I’d say, for someone who’s shown herself to be smart, willful, impulsive, bold, devious, demanding, and otherwise pretty damned human.
Missy didn’t say “I bought him a puppy”, “I found a puppy for him”, or “I made a puppy for him”, but “I gave him a puppy” is enough to give me the creeps about a possibly crucial connection between Clara and Missy that, if revealed, could have devastating consequences all round.
And what if Clara, rebelling against Missy, becomes a determined enemy to Missy — the villain who is also the Doctor’s oldest friend?
12 October 2015 at 03:34 #44557My first two bits of this but by no means new here due to trolling the wonderful writtings of this forum for some time. I have resisted joining far too long.
As far as Clara’s creation being of the master? Yes, and watch closer the Rings of Akatan and the scenes of her mother. She seems to be a bit Suzan-like in her philosophy and overall being. Could she be the Master’s daughter? Then Clara her/his granddaughter?
As for her fate, I see something more dark coming and it’s much like the Anikin to Vader creation where he turns to the dark side to save his Wife. Clara has been filled with regeneration energy from the dalek shell and is showing signs of TimeLord behavior as Donna did when touching 10s hand. She may encounter CyberDanny and use this energy to bring him back from the dead but at the despair of the Doctor. He made it clear to the fisher king that he detests the fiddling with life and death rules. I think this scene was a set up.
They then sever ties with him being distraught at Clara while giving us the happily ever after we wanted for the Pinks. Orson is proof they do survive and that cant be ignored.
So Clara dead? No, but the Dr will feel as she is to him.
Again, hello.
12 October 2015 at 03:51 #44559Oh yes, I like that a lot! And it’s not unlikely either
Hello and welcome! What a great theory. I think a few others have suggested the possibility of Clara as master and also as Granddaughter but I like the way you’re thinking. Certainly there is more to Clara than meets our eye and I think last night’s episode made that very clear indeed.
I like the mention you made of Clara filled with regen energy from being near to the Dalek -that may have some particular scary outcome which I think we’ve seen hints of already. Clara saying to her ‘companion’, “you wander off” which is normally a doctor line, per se.
There’s a big set up coming as Ichi, above, made clear.
Kindest and welcome,
Purofilion
12 October 2015 at 07:29 #44587@rorysmith They then sever ties with him being distraught at Clara while giving us the happily ever after we wanted for the Pinks. Orson is proof they do survive and that cant be ignored. So Clara dead? No, but the Dr will feel as she is to him. Again, hello.
Yes, hello, glad you decided to dive in! That is a very nicely bonkerized theory, though I’m not sure that the Doctor could ever feel that she’s dead to him, so long as she’s not actually dead dead dead, period, that’s all she wrote. The tensions holding them both together and apart throughout S8 now seem to have abated, but the bond is still strong — even though Clara plainly feels now that it’s not strong *enough* any more (“duty of care” is far, far from “Do you think I care for you so little . . . “). She went through the fires of self-discovery with him in S8, and I think she misses not just Dan but that scorching love-and-discord-closeness with the Doctor as well. A revived Danny might be enough (or seem enough) to ease her anxiety and pain sufficiently for her to leave the Tardis and go with her revenant-lover, but I’m doubtful — I don’t think Moffat would like it enough.
But, of course, we never know til we find out . . . that’s what bonkerizing is for — to get through the period of uncertainty and have some laughs!
ichi
13 October 2015 at 05:52 #44665http://www.doctorwho247.co.uk/news/the-girl-who-died-new-pictures
preview pictures
13 October 2015 at 07:11 #44671Cool pictures. The vikings have combs!! Very nice to see. I have been visiting a costume site recently where the tendency to depict ancient peoples with wild tangled hair is a constant niggle. The Maisie Williams’s character’s hair appears to be very nicely done. I also like the battered shields and of course the buildings.
The monster of the week monsters appear somewhat more threatening in those photos than in previous pictures which have focused only on the oversize head which make them look rather like rusty Marvins.
Really looking forward to the next episode. If I had a time machine then Viking Iceland would be high on my “places to go” list. A few years ago I became really interested in the Icelandic sagas. I still have a few to read though.
Cheers
Janette
13 October 2015 at 12:15 #44686@janetteb Indeed the Vikings had combs – not only necessary for tidy hair, but for controlling head lice and nits. I don’t know if you have seen any examples. Most of the ones which survive are carved from horn or antler, although others may have been made from some suitably dense wood. They are often quite elaborately decorated, and some have a neat little case to protect the teeth.
Judging by those photographs there appears to be something odd going on with the costumes; more specifically with the arms and armour. Some at least among the group of men shown confronting the metal-clad monsters are wearing what look like authentic style helmets of the period (and for the rest; I have already had my say on inauthentic horned helmets). But where the Maisie Williams character is shown with two men, they are all wearing scraps of wildly anachronistic plate armour. Their helmets are also anachronistic; one looks to be of the 14th century, and the other two – the tin hats with a brim – resemble those worn by men at arms in the 15th. They also appear to be carrying long bows which would have been equally out of place.
Odd, and I trust that it will prove significant and not just the result of the costume designers failing to do their homework.
Sadly I will probably have to wait until the 27th to find out, as I will have visitors staying with me and, out of courtesy, I would not want them to feel obliged to watch something in which they probably have no interest.
13 October 2015 at 12:59 #44687@mudlark I am not sure if I have actually seen any images of Viking combs but I have seen Saxon ones turning up in digs. (obviously most designers of historical dramas don’t pay much attention to archaeology documentaries.) We visited the reconstructed long house in the Lofotons some years ago. The uncombed, tatted look tends to annoy me as does the lack of colour. They used berry based dyes which provided a wide range of lovely rich colours. I took note because on a now long gone forum there had been an ongoing argument about the colours favoured by Vikings.
I suspect that the anomalies in armour etc are due to the demands of the story. I hope so anyway as it does look as though some attention has been paid to getting some of the elements right. I hope that your visitors turn out to be fans after all so you won’t have to wait until the 27th to comment.
Cheers
Janette
13 October 2015 at 16:41 #44694@janetteb @mudlark thank you for the preview pictures @lisa
They’re great! Although, even I, with my limited knowledge of Viking History can detect some hideous little anachronisms -which is fine, I’m sure there’s a good and rational explanation. I always thought the Norse peoples were shaggy and unkempt-bad telly and films? Probably. But it makes perfect sense that their hair is kept ‘under control,’ as it were, for all the ‘pond life’ and other ‘life’ ‘renting’ a home from their ‘host’ 🙂
It does look exciting -But I’m afraid the monsters look like letter boxes in Oz …with legs. 🙂 cheerfully coming to the door to give out your bills….or else…it’s a red letter day.
13 October 2015 at 19:01 #44709@purofilion
Strictly speaking the term Vikings should apply only to those who went a-viking – i.e. adventuring and raiding abroad – but I will go along here with the general usage.
The idea that the Vikings were all shaggy and unkempt is indeed down to TV and film representations, where the producers and costume designers haven’t bothered to do any research. They were in fact highly accomplished craftsmen and sophisticated metalworkers, who traded as far abroad as Constantinople, and while villagers would have worn clothes of homespun fabric, probably dyed with vegetable dyes as @janetteb says, those of high status might well have worn imported fabrics, including silk. Since surviving fabrics reveal knowledge of quite elaborate weaves, even the homespun need not have been particularly crude.
Men would generally have worn a tunic over fairly close-fitting trousers, with perhaps a cloak when outdoors. For fighting they would have worn a bowl-shaped or conical helmet, perhaps with a nose guard. Some of them might have had mail shirts, though those would have been expensive. Typical women’s dress would have been a long-sleeved, ankle length tunic dress, over which might have been worn an open-sided garment like a tabard, fastened at the shoulder with long pins or, for the wealthy, a matching pair of elaborate and often large and heavy bronze or gilt bronze brooches. Dress pins are fairly common finds on Viking era sites.
14 October 2015 at 10:45 #44766@lisa I have had another close look at the photos, and what appeared to you as he roundish object hanging from Maisie Williams’s belt is in fact the rounded flap of a leather purse suspended from the belt by loops. Such belt purses were common throughout the medieval period, though I can’t say whether this particular example is copied from a genuine example of the Viking period.
The Maisie character is, of course, wearing male dress, though I’m a bit doubtful about the knee-high boots. Ankle boots or shoes were more the Viking style, judging by examples which have survived.
14 October 2015 at 23:24 #44800If our current Clara had to see herself in that light — that’s a pretty precarious position, I’d say
@ichabod interesting. I’m wondering, as an alternative to serpents and ravens being about death, if they’re symbolising knowledge and memory. Will Clara remember or discover something about herself? Although even then the association with death could very well still be relevant, it just might not be a physical death. It also isn’t incompatible with Clara as Hanged Man part of the tarot theory.
Though in terms of tarot cards I’m getting a Tower feeling.
Also anyone know of links or parallels between Bran/The Fisher King and Odin? They were both wounded and it looks like they’ll both have had hostile aliens using their names this season.
15 October 2015 at 00:04 #44801@mirime Offhand I can’t think of any thematic link between the Fisher King and Odin. The Fisher King’s wound rendered him impotent to rule his kingdom or father a successor, and the kingdom suffered in consequence, according to the ancient belief that the well being and prosperity of the land was tied symbolically to the health and strength of its ruler.
Odin lacked an eye, but he had surrendered that willingly as a pledge, in return for one cup of water from the spring of Mimir which was the source of wisdom and understanding. So the wound he suffered was, indirectly, the means of his gaining additional power.
There was no obvious connection that I could see between the Fisher King of the Grail legend and the monster in Before the Flood. How Odin is presented and to what extent he conforms to the myth remains to be seen, though we can take it for granted that he won’t be a cuddly character 😉
15 October 2015 at 03:49 #44815I found that the man that CapDoc played in ‘Fires of Pompeii’ was a name borrowed from
a real person that actually had a home in Pompeii and it still exists. You can go there
and see the ruins. The name is also connected to a Cambridge Latin textbook as a character
in a story in that book. What this might matter to the current situation about his face
I have no idea 🙂15 October 2015 at 05:21 #44821@janetteb I have been visiting a costume site recently where the tendency to depict ancient peoples with wild tangled hair is a constant niggle. The Maisie Williams’s character’s hair appears to be very nicely done.
No kidding — if you look at informal photos taken of tribal peoples by 20th c anthropologists and photographers, there are lots of examples of folks sitting on the ground together to comb and braid each other’s hair, paint or tattoo skin, etc. Hunter-gatherers in particular had, we now think, lots of spare time. They seem to have spent a lot of it on personal adornment (look at pics from New Guinea, or, for more settled farmers and flock keepers, the embroidery and other decorative details of regional costume in pre-industrial Europe — wearable personal adornment). Stuff got beat-up with daily use, of course, but that doesn’t mean that people neglected their own appearance. I think that came later, with beggary induced by agrarianism, urbanization, and industrialization.
@mirime Though in terms of tarot cards I’m getting a Tower feeling.
Ah, yes — that old Tower feeling . . . this whole series *looks* like just what they promised us — lively adventures, romps in time and space. But it *feels* like a tower frozen beneath slow-branching lightning descending toward a catastrophic strike. How crazy are we, to eagerly follow one set of linked adventure stories about solving problems and overcoming adversaries, as it plays out against a single, longer, and broader background story of what certainly feels like oncoming disaster? At least, for those of us tuned in to both surface narrative and submerged story vectors (a fancy way of saying “character arcs” I think), what the Hell do we think we’re doing?
This is a project of and for mad people. Sometimes it feels like an addiction — mild, but formidable, and also somehow nourishing. Very, very, very odd. Was just watching a show about how the brain constructs individual internal models of the world out of sensory signals from the environment, rather than directly perceiving that environment as it “really” is (whatever that would mean), so thoughts are untethered.
15 October 2015 at 05:34 #44824@lisa on Caecilius — mmm, tasty! Thanks! Though I don’t see a way back to Pompeii in what we’ve been shown so far of the next 2-parter — ? Unless Maisie W. is playing a character who escaped Vesuvius back then — Caecilius’s daughter, perhaps, who’s somehow become a time traveler herself who doesn’t age?
16 October 2015 at 02:48 #44850Here’s a link to my latest blog post, theorising and speculating on who (or what) the mysterious character of Ashildr could be. Feel free to leave a comment with questions or your own theory or speculation about Ashildr. 🙂
http://martinstenersen.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/doctor-who-just-who-is-ashildr.html
16 October 2015 at 08:57 #44856@jimmythetulip Thank you!
Kindest, puro
16 October 2015 at 09:14 #44858@purofilion
no thanks necessary, especially as I’ve been soneglectf of you this week, dear friend.
I enjoyed writing this blog.
16 October 2015 at 09:34 #44863Huh?
16 October 2015 at 09:37 #4486416 October 2015 at 16:47 #44870Further thought into the whole paradox and death theme; it is possible that Clara may do as she begged the Doctor last series and try to save Danny by taking the Tardis on her own.
I can see her rushing to save him by driving a car she borrowed. You can imagine the rest.
I see a lot of Donna themes here as in Turn Left and Stolen Earth. The very point made to the Fisher King about cheating death was very blunt. I am dicounting the next episodes as not hinging on the events of the finale. I think Maisie is a distraction for us deep thinkers. LOL
16 October 2015 at 17:11 #44871Oh, and why did I not think about Father’s Day when Danny got hit? I am so stupid for not seeing parallels here. Did Russel almost get ran down by Steven once?
16 October 2015 at 18:05 #44872@rorysmith it is possible that Clara may do as she begged the Doctor last series and try to save Danny by taking the Tardis on her own. I can see her rushing to save him by driving a car she borrowed. You can imagine the rest.
!!! Yes — as handsome a bootstrap thingie as ever was!
18 October 2015 at 05:02 #44993Here’s my bonkerizing re “The Girl Who Died”, what with those resurrection chips and all: I’m suspecting that things work out so badly, in terms of the Doctor’s new bravado about saving people regardless of the effects of those actions on the future, that he will cave at the end and under extreme duress try do some clever, desperate things that involve — “Each man kills the thing he loves” — like that. But Ashildr (who can “see me again whenever she likes” he says here) returns, and uses the second chip to make Clara an immortal hybrid too. They both leave the Doctor (you refuse any more losses? We’ll give you losses, boy-o!) on his own and go off to do their own heroic things.
No, never happen, I know. Just dreaming.
So, if it becomes clear in S9 that Clara *must* be subtracted somehow to preserve the bleble of Rassilon or whatever, the Doctor can, perhaps, go back to the end of DiH (to right after the coffee shop farewell), and after the goodbyes are over, lock himself into the stasis bed (conveniently stowed in the Tardis) for not 62 years but 162, so that when he does wake up, Clara has in fact been left to have her normal life and die of old age without him coming back for her at Xmas. The rest of her life, as she described it to him in Last Xmas, takes place while he’s sleeping, and it’s all ancient history when he wakes up. No Xmas do-overs (Last Xmas is now a dream), no second chance after all.
S9 then goes up in smoke, and Clara with it; but hell, he did say that he never gets second chances. I’m just filling the prescription here, written in the Doctor’s own hand . . .
19 October 2015 at 08:43 #45104So you’re saying that the Doctor would prefer Clara to not live forever? That he’d go back into his own timeline and allow Clara to live happily without him -she’d learn to fly a plane, travel here and there, teaching in every country etc….then he comes back as per Last Christmas -when she’s an elderly lady. Is that what you were outlining, or did I get it wrong?
Despite the adventures with the Daleks, being with Missy (specifically ‘hanging with her’ hehe) and meeting the Norse people (Ashildr) the Doctor really wants Clara to separate herself from him -knowing that otherwise her ending could be tragic (or is tragic, because, sadly, he’s seen it)
19 October 2015 at 09:42 #45109@purofilion So you’re saying that the Doctor would prefer Clara to not live forever?
No, but that he’s over-reached himself into a corner in which it becomes clear that for any tolerable future to survive, Clara must die, regardless of what he does or doesn’t want, ditto Clara herself. And that he can’t stand the idea of coming back for her too late, as he did originally in Last Xmas just before her normal human death at 84 or whatever, so he arranges things so she has all those years without him (or Danny) that she describes to him in Last Xmas, while had sleeps through those years and only wakes when she is, indeed, safely and naturally dead — and he had no hand it in it, except to stay away til it was over. That leaves the parting in the coffee shop, end of Death in Heaven, as his last contact with her (unless he goes back into her past later, to places where he wasn’t with her, to see her again while she was still alive).
19 October 2015 at 10:09 #45113I recall, ichi, you once saying you had no ‘hand’ for the timey whimey stuff and yet I see you have far exceeded initial ‘abilities’! Wow. That would be tragic -not a dry eye. And certainly the Doctor would not be blamed. He looks concerned, worried -not that whirly-gig that Twelve was, full of hugs ‘n’ kisses, omelettes and soccer, fish fingers and custard and “bow ties are cool.”
Mr Tulip, this man, this doctor, is wholly alien if not a little depressed as well. The statements: “am I a good man?” and “I’ve got to fix some mistakes” are still incumbent his (huge) mind.
Perhaps more than ever he’s the Doctor who ‘remembers’ not the one who ‘forgot’ or “snogged and partied” till he near did forget. I think this Doctor, on his own, has tortured himself with thoughts -no wonder that conjecture about “the perfect hider” in Listen was an appropriate ‘distraction’ because in the end, other, deep tangential worries are all encompassing and could drive any good man quite mad. Look at the Master, for example.
Perhaps time makes monsters of us all?
Ooh, I like that one, ichi!
🙂
19 October 2015 at 17:20 #45133@purofilion I recall, ichi, you once saying you had no ‘hand’ for the timey whimey stuff and yet I see you have far exceeded initial ‘abilities’! Wow. That would be tragic -not a dry eye. And certainly the Doctor would not be blamed.
Why thank’ee, puro; it was probably the wine last night, first glass in a while: cheap, red, a blend, very good! As for blame, well, the Doctor would certainly blame himself for something inthere, but I think most of the guilt he now feels (“Oh, Clara, what have I made of you?” not to mention a dread-full bass line of What awful fate has travel with me insured for you?) would be relieved by this extreme time travel stratagem. Then he could set off on his adventures in S9 as we are now coming to know them, only without Clara they would focus on the Doctor and his antagonists old and new, back in the groove of the adventure Doctor of old, with nostalgic memories of Clara only when he looks backward — which he doesn’t do much of, as I recall, for that very reason.
First we would have had S9 and its delights — which *we* could then mourn the loss of, as they’d be replaced by a new line of related stories (soon to veer off on their own of course) *without any Clara*. Maybe a dream or two . . . We would have a “new” S9 (in fact S10) haunted by memory-ghosts of a beloved friend parted from after S8, who later died (a century ago) of old age . . .
Oh, ack, why does this line of thought (?) make me want to crawl back under the covers? Maybe it’s just not having had breakfast yet? But yes, as a large and scary, risky plan, it does have its bleakly yummy side . . . Anyway, glad you enjoy it. It can’t happen, of course. All over the world, fan heads would explode . . .
Oh, I think you meant 11 was the whirligig, right?
20 October 2015 at 02:13 #45174@ichabod yes, Eleven was the whirly-gig, right.
On occasion I have this bonkers theory that Clara is going to implode or, worse, end up experiencing either some immortal life or living over and over certain stories so I think (with a glass of red) that perhaps when she’s faced with this re-Impossible Girl situation that she begs the Doctor to give her some great stories: stories where she meets Robin Hood’ where London and her dear Danny are part of her life with the Doctor and where Dan saves her (like the knight he is) from a tiger; where the students she loves come on the Tardis with her, where the Moon is an egg and where (in Listen) she gets to ‘be’ the Doctor and also, loving mystery and the themes of the 1920s, goes aboard a train space ship where she finds a mummy and helps a grand daughter of a difficult woman understand her life and reconcile her memories of that vivid, and bossy grandmama. The teacher and counsellor in Clara, always listening and sometimes giving sage advice.
It seems crazy of course but I used to think these single, rather other-wordly episodes based on people’s much loved icons and legends would be Clara’s dream-state -perhaps permanent as she loops about always saving the Doctor, sometimes dressed like a Medieval princess with long hair in magnificent scarlet velvet, at other times, walking the moon in a space suit with Courtney and fighting gigantic spiders. It seemed very neat: particularly as there were no tides causing tragic coast line devastation and everyone seemed to go back to normal as the moon dragon flew away and left an egg in its place…
Well, it’s silly, but it’s how I justified some of the loopy fairy stories of S8 and the fact that after Deep Breath, the Paternoster Gang were nowhere to be seen.
I sometimes wonder whether the ‘trips’ they had ‘last year’ happened in that order -I know Danny was alive and there were phone calls back ‘n’ forth in Listen and Mummy on the Orient Express, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense! Still, rationalising it away…..:)
20 October 2015 at 02:18 #45175@purofilion — what a lovely idea. But nah, we know better: I’m pretty certain that it really will all end in tears.
Time for wine: toast your Doctor’s girt to Clara of a charm-bracelet of wonderful adventures.
31 October 2015 at 22:00 #45997I know the resolution to TZI’s cliffhanger, and I’m sorry but it’s ruined the cliffhanger for me..
A few months ago there was a filming on Barry Island where Capaldi had a parachute… it was for The Zygon Inversion.
31 October 2015 at 22:43 #46000@doctordoctorwho
Is the Pleasure Park still open?1 November 2015 at 02:40 #46024Hi, I’ve had to post on this 3 different threads now, I wouldn’t have minded if the people said it a bit nicer rather than stuff like “It’s kind of in the title?” or stuff like that but I digress.
I reckon I know the resolution to this week’s cliffhanger, a few months ago there was a filming on Barry Island which featured Capaldi with a parachute…and he was wearing the same costume as this week’s episode.
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