Under The Lake
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8 October 2015 at 13:37 #44321
@lisa You may be onto something regarding the Dalek nano-genes effect on Clara. Taking it a bit further, do you think Clara could have been affected when the Doctors Time lord regenerative energy was transmitted into all the Daleks on Skaro? While she was inside the Dalek, Clara may have “evolved” or taken on some of the doctors personality. Perhaps she knows how to read sign language now.
8 October 2015 at 15:30 #44322@happinesspatrol Yeah I guess its possible. There are all sorts of possibilities
for the impossible girl. I personally have dozens of theories about her 🙂
Think its very plausible @purofilion that we will get new info about this by the time
we reach the ‘Face the Raven” episode.8 October 2015 at 15:48 #44323not liking the recent trend that the episodes have taken, it feels like the monsters are now just a side story and the doctor and the companions talking about their feelings is more important. In the two dalek episodes, the daleks themselves did nothing at all and were just a decoration in the background
8 October 2015 at 19:34 #44329The more I think about it, the undersea base the Drum does not make sense.
Ostensibly the base seems to be there for resource exploration. But a trillion dollar base? Now obviously more than a hundred years from now inflation may have made what is a trillion dollars now be a billion or less, but I think the context really was Vertex and others had invested an equivalent of today’s one trillion dollars. That would have to be one GIGANTIC oil deposit to justify such a base.
The base is huge. Yet there are relatively few people on it. Perhaps this is due to budgetary constraints and story-telling purposes so everyone gets their moment of characterization. But the people on it are military? At least O’Donnell is mentioned I believe to be a lance corporal. (As an aside, it is somewhat a shame O’Donnell is military because that probably means the Doctor would never even consider her to be a long-time companion. The actress playing her Morven Christie seems very respected.) From my understanding the crews of modern oil derricks are far larger than just 6.
Offhand I would guess that “oil deposit” is actually a Sea Devil base, only there is seemingly zero indication of that happening.
This base reminds me vaguely of something similar to the base of the Fifth Doctor Davison era Warriors of the Deep, only this time period is considerably after that time period. Perhaps this base is converted after the Cold War type of hostilities of Warriors of the Deep had lessened on Earth.
8 October 2015 at 23:18 #44332Well that’s annoying.
I wrote a too long and clever-by-half reply to people and thoughts and stuff.
and it logged out so lost it.
Well that’ll teach me for not doing it in notepad first (like i usually do).
[sigh]
I can’t do it again, so now in abbreviated form:
Cass – how does she know its dangerous inside? Suspicious. Hired to lip read??Circles at the ack of the craft – yep, reminiscent of Quatermass and the Pit (though different). Though no character has mentioned “hobs” yet….
there was more but…. I’ve forgotten. Hey ho, can’t have been interesting! 😉
BUt what’s worse is I lost the Bassey marathon… bollocks.
That was more carefully curated from a standing start.8 October 2015 at 23:37 #44335Anonymous @
Bugger @whisht just Bugger!
Yes, good: Cass knows something is wrong. Or she doesn’t but the person who hired her does…hence, she doesn’t go into the capsule at all?
You do it in notepad first? This could be why you never ever have any mistakes: and have to edit the thing as I often do.
🙂
8 October 2015 at 23:59 #44336@bluesqueakpip true, The Moff lies. But I would add that Clara, in the truth field (@supernumerary thank you about how that would work also), speaks of what she herself knows as ‘truth’ (this is getting confusing!). We know there are pictures of her as an infant at home -not the usual hospital pictures ( I didn’t know that till you pointed this out) and we’ve got a Clara who is entreating Danny: “say something nice.”
This could be a rather large clue to the idea of @jimmythetulip, that Clara is actually….Missy.
So the base is gigantic: the town appears small? Nonetheless, underneath the town is a huge oil deposit and the creatures in the deep are sea devils ? Very good. I like it. The sunglasses would help would they not?
How this ties in with the ‘ghosts’ as @ichabod has also maintained is all a tad confusing to me. But we believe that the Doctor is keen as heck to bluff the characters: “yes they’re GHOSTS!” [no, they’re really not, you pudding brains”].
And off he goes to solve the problem and save the earth. At first I thought that the Doctor left Clara behind intentionally but on re-watch it’s obvious that she is a second behind and she urges the two people behind her to “come on” (quite obvious actually -she’s a fast runner -faster than the Doctor generally)
9 October 2015 at 00:00 #44337I used the word ‘behind’ three times in a sentence. 2/10 for writing. Back to school.
9 October 2015 at 00:20 #44341@purofilion: I’ve just had a better thought that might explain the anomalies. What if the Drum is meant to explore a hopefully abandoned Zygon base not a Sea Devil base?
Suppose that humans in that time had determined that the Zygons from the Fourth Doctor serial Terror of the Zygons, as part of their plan to terraform (Zygonform?) Earth, had created an enormous oil deposit near an abandoned base.
This then explains all features of the Drum: The personnel are mostly military, they are few in number, they have unexpected equipment and can salvage spacecraft from the ocean floor, and they apparently have to ask the outside world for rescue submarines to leave. They are few because they don’t want the Zygons to capture and mass impersonate, and they want the crew to know each other well. The lure of stealing tech from the Zygon base is worth the trillion, even inflated, dollar investment.
9 October 2015 at 00:29 #44342@purofilion: At first I too thought that Cass could be “involved” however after watching this episode another time I noticed that she was standing in front of the space ships engines when the ghost activated them. Moran quickly jumps and pushes Cass out of danger but in turn he gets killed. She would have died otherwise.- perhaps that was the initial plan? buggered if I know. Come on weekend !
9 October 2015 at 00:44 #44344I am wondering if this is possible: Could a Faraday cage or a modified version prevent the signals the Zygons use to synch with their captives? Do they need such signals?
Given that the Tower of London in the 2010s was Tardis-proofed, I find it difficult to believe it wasn’t enclosed in a version of a Faraday cage, so this theory is probably provably wrong.
But suppose by some miracle some sort of Faraday cage could unmask Zygons. This would explain why the members of the Drum stumbled upon a way to stay alive from the ghosts: They instinctively ran to the Faraday cage hoping the ghosts were some sort of Zygon weapon. While they were waiting in the Faraday cage daylight came on and then they discovered the ghosts had vanished. And they trusted the Doctor and Clara because they had entered the Faraday cage too.
9 October 2015 at 00:47 #44345Mega realisation!!!! (and this time there definitely can’t be any geographical faux pas’)
Clara’s mother’s maiden name = Ravenwood
Ravens = SONG birds
Wood –> “the only water in the forest is RIVER”River is in some way Clara’s mother, whether it be as a biological mother, or as I have been convinced off for well over a year now, her adoptive mother. I’ve found another clue that Clara = CAL @kharis
9 October 2015 at 00:50 #44346And in reference to the episode, I wonder if anybody else has noticed the possible hint as to who is in the box? I can’t remember the quote, but it’s something about the ghosts being unable to pick up wooden items. This smells so much like a hint that it is CapDoc inside it that it’s unbelievable.
9 October 2015 at 01:10 #44347Apropos of Finally Got Round to A Second Watch:
I pointed Joss Whedon nod with the reference to Cabin in the Woods. An unlikely thing for a 22nd Century gal to be referencing, you might think. Then you remember the premise of the film.
9 October 2015 at 01:57 #44348@pedant I don’t remember that and I’ve seen Under the Lake three times. Cabin in the Woods? OK, I need to google it!
@bendubz11 yes I think @whilst and others mentioned the nature of magnetic items being the things these ‘ghosts’ are able to successfully pick up.
Quite possibly, the Doctor is in the coffin. He is the ‘watery’ ghost after all 🙂 I love your theory regarding Raven’s songs and River. Good stuff indeed. 🙂
I wonder if the Doctor was able to learn something from Moran, the ghost, as he put his arm straight into the Doctor’s body? It reminds me of the occasions where the Doctor has connected with a human -Girl in the Fireplace, The Lodger, in order to ‘read’ the person or to give them important information.
@happinesspatrol I recall that you are right. It was poor Moran who saved Cass. But could she have been placed there by Pritchard’s organisation? And they were somehow aware of what could ensue? She remains unaware, however, and Lun also.
“Suppose that humans in that time had determined that the Zygons …had created an enormous oil deposit near an abandoned base. This then explains all features of the Drum: The personnel are mostly military, they are few in number…and they apparently have to ask the outside world for rescue submarines to leave. They are few because they don’t want the Zygons to capture and mass impersonate”
This is an excellent theory. It seems the zygons made a great impact during the 50th anniversary and I suspect that in Death in Heaven there were suggestions of Zygon involvement -but can’t recall or won’t, due possibly to a spoiler earworm. So we have quite the theories here: there are water spirits, dragons, serpent, zygons and sea devils… the latter very similar, obviously, to water spirits. One thing we can be sure of, is that there are watery ghosts, at least!
Yes, bring on the weekend.
🙂 Puro.
9 October 2015 at 02:08 #44349@purofilion
It would be better to watch the film – the trailers are, to put it mildly, wilfully misleading.
9 October 2015 at 02:38 #44350Will do, thank you.
🙂 Puro
PS: I’m always amazed at the ‘Englisher’s’ ability to stay up SO late. It must be nearly 3 am! Golly.
In Oz we need to be tucked up in bed by 10.30 pm on a work night but then in Queensland, come November, this could be because the sun makes a watery entry into the room by 3.45 am (eg: Morning Mode) -unless one invests in ugly (and often redundant) black-out curtains.
9 October 2015 at 02:43 #44351I love all your theories! Adds so much more to the experience of watching the show. Thank you to all !!!
Here is one of mine- admittedly its more on the micro scale of things…
There is definitely something going on related to magnetic forces. My observations:
1. It was revealed that the ghosts only come out at night time when the base is in power saving mode. One of the bases activities that don’t occur during the night was the constant testing of the magnetic locks on all the bases’s doors. They can still move through the bases walls, so not sure about that one.
2. The ghosts seem to only interact with metal objects.(possible affected by magnetic forces)
3. The doctor also stated that the 4 symbols on the space craft have a magnetic field.
4. Possibly related….There must have been a reason why the missing power cell of the space craft was mentioned and discussed – Perhaps when the doctor went back in time, he used it to do something really clever ? Perhaps it is the source of power that generates these ghosts? Or maybe the doctor did something clever with it to protect the crew from the ghosts (Faraday chamber power, life-support etc) as I’m sure if the ghosts can manipulate the systems like the time clock) and the communications systems (send more help!!!), they could easily shut down life support- remove oxygen, open all doors and flood internals, close the locks on the Faraday chamber and even pipe Peter Endre’s music through the bases audio systems. Using any of these tactics could easily kill all the crew and create more angry ghosts.
9 October 2015 at 03:21 #44352Your theory (more than observations I think: we can bring you up a category -first rate thoughts!) also raises some great questions -and summarises others I’d forgotten.
This is particularly memorable: “One of the bases activities that don’t occur during the night was the constant testing of the magnetic locks on all the base’s doors.”
I guess the fact they appear only during night time ‘imprints’ on the crew that these ‘people’ are ghosts and of course if the Doctor suspects treachery or wants to appear he believes this ghost theory to protect the crew and Clara, then it follows he would claim “they are ghosts!”
For some reason I understood that the untranslated writing on the craft’s walls was magnetic but in the sense that it acted like “that song you can’t get out of your head”: the repeated words are metaphorically magnetic, if you follow my meaning?
What intrigued me was that the Doctor and also Moran (was it?) looked at the writing and one could see it imprinted on their eyes. Like an ocular transmission? It could just be typically clever cinematography to show this: how many times do we see fire (in some film or another) shown in someone’s eyeballs? ! The Doctor has seen the code and so too must be ‘ghostified.’
I like your reference to this: “something really clever. After all, Clara says this quite a lot in order to encourage calm amongst others who have just met the Doctor and see that something horrible is afoot! – we know that monsters “follow the Doctor,” according to Mademoiselle Antoinette in The Girl in The Fireplace. I agree that the Doctor is going to need to do something astounding to protect the people left behind (which annoyingly is always Clara or Martha as @lisa pointed out in the episode 42).
As you say, the ‘ghosts’ can do almost anything to ghostify or imprison their captives. I’m surprised that more people haven’t been ‘taken’ as yet. Can they not find away around the Faraday Cage? If not yet, then I suspect soon! So, yes, the power cell is possibly something taken by the Doctor in order to reduce their versatility or perhaps …. + moving to Spoiler Thread 🙂
“and even pipe Peter Endre’s music through the bases audio” -would be the worst death by far!
<<*|*>>
9 October 2015 at 03:51 #44353@purofilion
“one could see it imprinted on their eyes. Like an ocular transmission? It could just be typically clever cinematography”
No, it’s definitely the reason that people get earwormed, and that’s why the Ghost didn’t killed that one crew member who hadn’t been inside the ship. Because he hadn’t been earwormed so couldn’t become a transmitter.
Another thing I want to know (and please educate me if I missed it) is why the TARDIS couldn’t translate the insription on the ship’s wall…
9 October 2015 at 04:43 #44355[Raven’s] Wood –> “the only water in the forest is RIVER
Excellent bonkerising again.
The ‘Water in the Forest’ line comes from both The Doctor’s Wife and When a Good Man Goes to War (at least it’s referenced in the latter upon the embroidered leaf) and we know that Clara (as a claricle) was able to correctly pick out the word ‘Pond’ when asked by Vastra. Does she unconsciously relate to the word pond because she is actually Amy Pond’s granddaughter, in your theory @bendubz11?
In biblical references as well as pagan literature, what does the ‘raven’ symbolise? @lisa would know this as well?
I must take into account that Moffat likes closed loops and as @pedant suggested, the claricles and Clara Prime might well be ‘one and the same’ which is further evidence (however tenuous, but I’ll take it) that Clara is: a) developing certain ‘powers’ with each claricle-isation or re-creation, as it were, causing her to recognise peculiar situations and act quickly (Flatline); b) focussing on travels with the Doctor (leading a life which isn’t fleshed out like other companions) and c) showing ‘doctory’ capabilities evident in Under The Lake.
The latter behaviour, however, could be attributed to residual mourning: “you’re itching to save a planet, Doctor” and “run” (read: “Run Doctor, I’m itching to save a planet and will do anything except face Coal Hill and the institution wherein I met my true love, now irretrievably lost.”)
As you say @bendubz11, River might need to be Clara’s adoptive mother. Or would she? As others have said, there are no pictures of baby Clara in the hospital -she’s brought home and there are photos beginning at that point. Perception filter? River as biological mother and adopted later. Her mother spoke about soufflés which is interesting but even more interesting in that scenario is Clara reminding us that her mother “would always find her.”
Did River somehow catapult herself into Clara’s time stream to keep her safe and to watch over her in Clara’s fate to protect the Doctor? Like mother, like daughter; both have died to save the Doctor. River did so in the Silence in the Library two-parter and Clara is always saving the Doctor. The throwaway line “she cares so I don’t have to” as well as the prompter cards, carefully designed by Clara, indicate that like the claricles and River, young Clara is still on a knight’s quest, or a fool’s errand to continually save her Doctor.
This is good!
9 October 2015 at 05:38 #44356OK, the reason they’re ear-wormed is that they have seen the words and the transmission – Cass and Lun haven’t gone inside -did O’Donnell see the ‘code’?
I don’t know if anything is “definite” at this stage. 🙂
The Tardis couldn’t translate it because it was magnetic – like repetitive ideas coming from a source. A little like in The Doctor’s Wife when the Tardis said to Amy to ‘think’ open the doors to the control room as @fivefaces has mentioned: petrichor, the colour of red, the smell of dust after rain (again I’ve mixed up these words horribly and it’s a disservice to Gaiman who wrote the episode but my memory is rather tetchy!). I interpreted the words as magnetic: because they were ideas in a way, rather than specific words. They were coordinates which normally are translated, or are they? In The Time of Angels, River leaves coordinates for the Doctor in a museum. These coordinates take him to the words: “sweetie” where there are coordinates in time and space for the Doctor to catch her as she flies out the safety corridor into the Tardis.
9 October 2015 at 06:10 #44357Great train of thought! This may be real “tin hat” bonkerism, could the space craft be the Tardis or a Tardis? Could explain why the blue box doesn’t want to go over to that side of the base?
9 October 2015 at 07:22 #44359Toby Whithouse has quite an impressive resume. I wonder if he is being considered by the BBC for a far greater role in Dr Who as a backup if Moffat should decide to leave. What would his grand vision be.
School Reunion was a big deal in many senses, with the return of the character of Sarah Jane Smith. But also there was a big idea, that there was some equation that, with some children’s imagination thrown in, could be the secret to controlling all of space and time. Think of this as assembly code to access the multiverse’s BIOS.
Now in Under the Lake there is apparently some kind of assembly code that can access across species the mind’s BIOS. Now we have been shown that the Tardis has some sort of consciousness but it is not an overt one since the end of The Doctor’s Wife. Perhaps that is why the Tardis could not translate the symbols nor apparently be affected by them.
Snow Crash has the metaverse, but I suspect eventually for the Dr Who universe its equivalent of the metaverse will not be a combination of physical and online, but instead it will be physical and spiritual. For as been shown with Vastra, time travel is possible in dreams.
9 October 2015 at 08:39 #44360@jphamlore I’m eating strange pizza so my mind is going inactive with every mouthful but what is BIOS please?
Puro.
9 October 2015 at 09:03 #44361@purofilion: When one starts a PC the BIOS initializes the hardware and provides services so that the operating system can take over. What I am trying to say is that in the Dr Who universe, in analogy to ideas from Snow Crash, what we have seen in Under the Lake is that across species such as humans and Time Lords there is a lower level of communication that can be used to program the brain, a level lower than that of the words of language. I speculate in the Dr Who universe that there is also a lower level of commands, a lower level than physics, that can be used to (re)program all of time and space. This is where we get the tie-ins to mysticism such as Madame Vastra’s demonstration that time travel is possible in dreams.
So BIOS versus operating system, ear worm versus language, mysticism versus physics, I speculate there is a higher level of control that is easier to reason about and use, but underneath is a lower level that can be manipulated to subvert or override what is expected from the higher level.
9 October 2015 at 09:31 #44362@purofilion
PS: I’m always amazed at the ‘Englisher’s’ ability to stay up SO late. It must be nearly 3 am! Golly.
That’s just ‘cos I was making room for MY NEW BED!!!!!!! which is being assembled by the nice chaps from John lewis even as I write this.
9 October 2015 at 10:22 #44364At last you have your bed. Three cheers, as it’s been quite a wait.
! ! !
-though you obtained your ‘space’ some while ago, you now have the most important piece of furniture. Really, what else does one need? A bookshelf, a table and some chairs, I suppose.
So BIOS versus operating system, ear worm versus language, mysticism versus physics, I speculate there is a higher level of control that is easier to reason about and use, but underneath is a lower level that can be manipulated to subvert or override what is expected from the higher level
Gosh! This is very complex theorising. I shall have to read it again tomorrow: thank you for the explanation. So mysticism is the lower level (as it were) which subverts the expectation of the ostensibly ‘higher’ level -physics, for instance? The higher levels can be manipulated to achieve a task or objective -to get around the obstacles?
9 October 2015 at 10:34 #44366Clara’s mother’s maiden name = Ravenwood
Ravens = SONG birds
Wood –> “the only water in the forest is RIVER”An intriguing argument but, while your first and third points can be taken as valid evidence, ravens cannot, by any stretch of the imagination be described as song birds. The sounds they make are harsh quarking noises and anything but melodious!
9 October 2015 at 11:18 #44367The more I think about it, the undersea base the Drum does not make sense.
Unless my memory is at fault, I don’t think anyone in the episode was claiming that it had been built originally for the purpose of exploiting oil or other mineral resources. It is adjacent to or within what had been a military base prior to the dam burst which created the lake, and I got the distinct impression that it had only been leased to the oil company relatively recently. As @bluesqueakpip pointed out in her post #44102, in our universe major atomic research stations were sited on the north coast of Caithness – a suitably remote and relatively thinly populated location.
My theory, such as it is, is that it was a Top Secret installation built prior to the flood as a sealed environment, for the purpose of investigating and exploiting some kind of alien technology, possibly connected to the alien craft. Sea Devils or Zygons are always a possibility, but I would have thought unlikely in this case.
Being a sealed environment it could easily be adapted as an underwater base, probably before the flood, which I strongly suspect was the result of a deliberate breaking of the dam above the site and the building of another dam below it to contain the water and create the lake, perhaps to ‘bury’ whatever it was they found. If there were no obstruction below the burst dam, the flood would have been temporary and the water would have drained away in the usual manner, since dams are usually constructed across river valleys.
@purofilion
So the base is gigantic: the town appears small
To the best of my recollection the only reference to what had been there before the flood was to a military base, and such bases (as opposed to military barracks) are not usually sited in towns. If it was, as I surmise, a Top Secret establishment it would almost certainly have been isolated from any civilian settlement. If there had been a village on the site, it would have been taken over by the military and evacuated.
9 October 2015 at 11:39 #44368@mudlark you wouldn’t expect them to fall under the songbird grouping, but they do. Ravens belong to the family of crows, and they are songbirds despite common beliefs (which are mainly rooted from their seeming inability to sing). Corvids make horrible sounds, but still fall under the larger branching term, so Ravens are songbirds.
9 October 2015 at 12:03 #44369Yes, no doubt you are right. What I was attempting to communicate to another, different poster (as a response) was that the underwater base was not actually or necessarily inhabited. I certainly agree and to my recollection it’s pretty unusual to have an underwater military base where there are people living and going about any business. That’s what @jphamlore is suggesting -where are all the people? A small group is necessary for character demonstration I suppose and I agree with that as a point.
as @jphamlore suggested, Sea Devils or Zygons might be possible. As you said yourself, “Sea devils and zygons are always a possibility, but I would have thought unlikely in this case”.
Well, what’s the point of bonkerising if we can’t have any fun with it and throw around some ideas?
In my case, I wasn’t really assuming much about a town -just a base with oil deposits..
Kindest and off to bed. Lots to do and to welcome in the weekend.
Puro
9 October 2015 at 12:15 #44370@bendubz11 I stand corrected 😳
I hadn’t come across the term in that context, and it doesn’t appear in any of my books on ornithology, though admittedly the latter are chiefly reference books for identification.
@purofilion I wasn’t disparaging the bonkers theorising. I just prefer the notion that the big bad in this case is something new and exotic.
9 October 2015 at 12:16 #44371I have heard a lot of ravens in my time. The popping call is often listed as a ‘song’ -not much of one but it could be described as one. Not necessarily melodic but it’s interesting as a bonkers idea -or even more than that.
9 October 2015 at 12:40 #44372Regarding the base – it’s entirely possible it’s an experimental military base and then they discovered what looked like an awful lot of oil underneath it.
It’s certainly odd that there seems to be no on-site means of evacuation. That suggests that somebody knew that the base might need to be cut off. That’s also suggested by the ‘cooling of the nuclear reactor’ method being ‘flood the entire base’. Again, somebody knew that sections of the base might need to be completely cut off.
How much of this will be explained tomorrow, I don’t know – but this ‘advance knowledge’ might be explained by the Doctor’s rather dangerous foray into the past. He may well have left UNIT with an unpleasant bit of foreknowledge – that they have to send this particular group of people to an underlake base, even knowing that they’re sending at least some of them to their deaths.
9 October 2015 at 17:30 #44377This is speculation about what I believe will never be confirmed in the series.
I conjecture that around the time of the Fifth Doctor serial Warriors of the Deep, 2084, the two superpower blocs were looking for excuses to hide nuclear missile launch bases. So under the pretext of looking for oil, there was a boom in constructing underwater bases with nuclear reactors in them.
After the Silurian / Sea Devil attack in Warriors of the Deep, it was realized that the deep water floors needed to be examined for other species bases. Near the Caithness Drum base’s location both a gigantic oil deposit and advanced technology were discovered. But instead of the advanced tech being from a Sea Devil base, the tech turned out to be Zygon. A search of UNIT records revealed a likely explanation: This tech was from abandoned Zygon installations used by the group encountered in the Fourth Doctor serial Terror of the Zygons.
(To me this also gives another reason why the Zygons sent out their monster in Terror of the Zygons to attack the oil platforms: The Zygons wanted to preserve as much of the oil as possible because they needed it once they conquered the Earth to induce a shock greenhouse effect to terra(Zygon)form the planet.)
I conjecture the Drum therefore has a dual mission: Explore the oil deposit and scavenge advanced technology left behind by the Zygons. The corporate guy Pritchard might not have been let in on part concerning the Zygons; on the other hand, he would still have great influence, as due to the cold war blocs, that world would likely be still run by their military industrial complexes.
9 October 2015 at 18:47 #44378Here’s why I think Clara will turn out to be baseline human: Because Moffat needs to show her being vulnerable as a way to wound the Doctor as he has never been wounded before.
In Under the Lake the Doctor and Clara have an exchange where states his responsibility to keep her safe. But by the end of the episode the Doctor appears to be a ghost. But we the viewer know the Doctor will somehow escape from this condition.
Time Lords as this season has been emphasizing are aliens, they are different. In many ways they are better suited for the dangers to be encountered out there in time and space: Two hearts, stronger, more knowledge, and as a last resort, regeneration. The Fourth Doctor could be “killed” by one of Sutekh’s robots in Pyramids of Mars and seconds later hop up and be perfectly fine.
Humans compared to Time Lords are both fleeting and fragile.
The wings of Icarus Clara has been getting are from being around the Doctor, learning to think on her feet like the Doctor. In last season’s Flatline she had to play the full role of the Doctor leading a group to try and survive monsters. At the start of this season UNIT and even Kate Stewart respects Clara enough so they listen intently to everything she says in a quick analysis of why the airplanes are frozen. And then Clara undergoes training from Missy. In Under the Lake the Doctor says that everyone in the room should be smarter just by being around him.
But the problem with the wings of Icarus is they will melt when they get too close to the Sun. And so I fear this will happen somehow to Clara. For she is not the Doctor and I think she is not a Time Lord. That I think is Missy’s point, how Missy tries to get back her friend the Doctor.
10 October 2015 at 03:57 #44396@phamlore But the problem with the wings of Icarus is they will melt when they get too close to the Sun. And so I fear this will happen somehow to Clara. For she is not the Doctor and I think she is not a Time Lord.
Exactly. She *was* the “Impossible Girl”, but that’s faded away; then she was the damn-near impossible companion to a damn-near impossible Doctor, but they managed to lurch and shove and tumble their way to a kind of mutually accepting friendship and, inside the frame of discreet adventures on or near Earth, a good working relationship of Doctor Prime and pseudo-Doctor-sub-1. But on the huge stage of the universe *plus characters from the Doctor’s past who are often also superhuman and also new to Clara* — the Karn sisters, Davros, Zygons coming up, etc. — she is in reality “the puppy”.
A puppy with wax wings can only fly so high, trying to keep up with eagles. This is not going to be pretty, but it will be deliciously sad, IMO.
10 October 2015 at 09:37 #44408I have to say, this is likely the best start to a season i’ve ever seen, the acting is truly great and i feel capaldi now owns the doctor, i believe i may be in love with missy and clara is fast becoming my favourite companion (move over rose). But i digress, when i saw the sunken city, as im sure Others have mentioned the first thing that came to mind was atlantis, thats just me im obsessed with atlantis, clearly this is not atlantis…. Or is it ( no its not) but in my defence atlantis was mentioned in the fantastic two parter we were treated to in the last weeks, so you cant blame me for getting excited.
10 October 2015 at 09:57 #44409Also I forgot to add and I’m unsure if it has already been mentioned, my apologies if it has but the name of the petroleum company, Vector.
Being a physics guy when I hear the word Vector I think and ill use the dictionary definition for clarity “A quantity having direction as well as magnitude, especially as determining the position of one point in space relative to another” which has obvious parallels with the story.
However vector also has another meaning again for clarity here is the dictionary definition “An organism that transmits a disease or parasite from one animal or plant to another” again obvious parallels.
Now the conspiracy theorist in me can think of all kinds of wacky theories surrounding Vector, the fact that their representative is “dead” crushes some of the more plausible ones but nevertheless, my money is on Vector being controlled by Atlanteans 🙂
11 October 2015 at 18:37 #44496@fivefaces @bluesqueakpip Yes, she does seem to attract a lot of paradoxes and issues with time. Hmmmm. Like the bonkers theory about a password The voice of the Fisher King sure sounded like House from the episode with Idris.
12 February 2016 at 00:47 #50952Watched this again yesterday. I really enjoy the bootstrap paradox theory.
Now then, is it me, or is it Peter Capaldi playing the Doctor Who theme on his guitar? Nothing in the credits.
Cheers,
Missy
ps If this has been mentioned before – sorry, be gentle with me.
13 February 2016 at 07:00 #50959no, I’m not sure if it is PC actually. In these situations, agents and managers are all over the joint ensuring the actor (PC here) would receive notification for playing it. Personally, I think it would be played by someone else -dubbed over and that wouldn’t make it into the standard credits. But I’m happy to be corrected.
We’re all gentle Missy! 🙂 Well, maybe
Hope you’re enjoying your re-watch. I watched Hell Bent again and thought what a miraculous episode it was -despite the criticism of it. Actually, I do mix up the titles -Heaven Sent -the torture chamber; Hell Bent -trip back to Gallifrey via the ‘torture chamber’ 😉 ??
Kindest,
PuroSolo
13 February 2016 at 07:32 #50963@puroandson
Have answered your post on the Before the flood thread.
You’ve all been gentle, even when some idiot comes on board.
Cheers,
Missy
25 August 2016 at 21:04 #53783Scary at first, but brilliant at the end. My favourite was Moran, very creepy. My favourite out of Series 9.
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