Death in Heaven
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Dentarthurdent 2 years, 4 months ago.
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18 May 2015 at 00:43 #40153
I would just add that Missy being a woman comes off very Dominatrix too implying
a strange fascination with submission on her part. So its more about her trying to
get the Doctor to surrender to her. Maybe its wrong to see her as a woman and should
be seeing her as transsexual? Its a kind of need for empowerment but not exactly
feminist what with the Edwardian Mary Poppins out fit. Who knows what mix of anatomy
is hiding under those clothes. Maybe she’s just playing that role when she wields
that lipstick before she attacks Osgood? Also when she tells people to say something nice.
I think that the Master is just exploring a new role as a means to assert her/himself over
the Doctor. That was what that whole ”Have I won’ question was about at the end of the
episode. Just think that might be what’s happening.18 May 2015 at 03:22 #40154Anonymous @
@Burrunjor @denvaldron Absolutely DV: it’s of “dubious canonicity” . Certain actors talk about their view on a commentary or on a panel -the Doctor, his companions and I think the Master has undergone continual changes which means that the homoerotic stance identified between Sim and Tennant as outlined by DenValdron is contiguous with the way Gomez and the showrunners have written this particular part. I wouldn’t agree, therefore, with this: “Still I just HATE the way Moffat made the Master love the Doctor…” I don’t believe the Master loves the Doctor in the way you describe.
It may be a sexual play thing as I have (rather) poorly explained. It’s yet another facet of the way the Doctor can be used by the Master. And, as I said before, it’s very effective because of your reaction -and many others. It makes us feel “yuck” and that is the kernel from which evil derives. Nonetheless, I do believe there is -in some deviant way -affection for the Doctor. Witness the Tennant and Sim era. Also, some of the other iterations of the Master. Certainly on Gallifrey they were the greatest of friends: at least that is what I’m led to believe. And I could be wrong.
It isn’t sexual on behalf of Gomez -at least that’s the way I see it. If she’s described that way in a panel I would be surprised. As I said upthread, it’s about dominance. I think the Master’s bored: he likes to create a persona and use the Doctor as a puppet on a string; making the Doctor feel discomfort is wonderfully humorous to the Master. She’d sit back and watch his reactions with great interest. She’d enjoy the discomfort of his companions. Is she overcome with jealousy and envy? I think so. Did her spontaneous reaction to Osgood come from a certain measure of envy? Possibly. I’m sure many 2nd year post modern, linguistic and psychological papers could be written analysing the Missy/Doctor/Osgood triangle. Though if there’s actually a triangle, remains to be seen.
Kindest, puro.
18 May 2015 at 05:13 #40157@arbutus and @purofilion excellent points made by both of you. I can only add one minor thing to your excellent arguments.
@burronjur It really annoys when when persons unfamiliar to the forum make gender assumptions about the people posting here. If you don’t know the gender of the person you are addressing then do not assume. Also please do not discuss information about the upcoming series in a thread about the past series. There are threads for that so that those who prefer to avoid spoilers, even the official ones, can do so. Personally I love spoilers, I always read the back page of a book first but I respect the wishes of others.
To insist that anything from BG Who as cannon is an act of willful blindness. I loved old Who but would have been the first to admit that there was no story consistency. The acting was often awful and there were some very dodgy scripts. The special effects were occasionally laughable and the “baddies” were comedic. It was and is one of my favourite TV series for all that for many reasons. (I don’t have time to list them all.)
As to the relationship between the Master/Mistress and the Doctor. They have the bond of shared memories. They are now two survivors of a lost world. Imagine being alone in the universe, the earth a burnt husk floating dead in space, and you meet another human, someone you knew from childhood, a reminder of your past, your home, a little remnant of all that is lost. The Doctor and Master have always shared that bond, even before Gallifrey was destroyed. In AG Who that is has come to mean so much more.
I have the impression that the Master chose to become the Mistress in order to be able to bait the Doctor. She could almost be River Song’s evil twin.
As to the return of Osgood, I have been aware of it for some time. I agree with Arbutus that death should be final and remain dubious as to whether it is a good idea but I suspect Moffat will not simply revive her to placate the fans who screamed about her death. There will be a trick to it, MOffat style of course.
I am not certain that we have seen the last of River Song, given that her time line loops through the Doctor’s and we saw her die in our first encounter with her. I feel that there are still some issues left to resolve also I always thought she had encountered more than two “incarnations”. Maybe this Doctor finds her in childhood and overseas her education prior to Let’s Kill Hitler. There are many possibilities and an encounter with R.S could go in more than one direction.
Cheers
Janette
18 May 2015 at 05:51 #40158@lisa I like your take on the Missy question (well, probably because it lines up with my own!). MissMaster is playing — playing a satirical cartoon of the femme fatale, playing the seductress, playing for power. Being female doesn’t seem to me to have anything to do with it. Being a *real* control freak (who is incidentally and for the time being, anyway, female) is this person’s nature, as opposed to, for example, Clara, who’s an amateur at this, willful and focused but not insisting on control of others for control’s sake. I think “Missy” is all performance, but the goal isn’t sex, although to such a person sex can always employed as a weapon or a means of control (not here though — “family viewing” — you want the kids behind the sofa, not staring at the screen and asking you why that lady is so mean to the Doctor). The Master’s goal is not just “You win (this round)” but total victory, the adversary captured, broken down, and re-shaped to suit her own bloodthirsty tastes. She wants to provoke him into some act of mad violence of the kind typical of herself, to *make* them “alike”. She wants him made capable of at act just as callous and wicked as the murder of Osgood.
If I’m right (and I have no special insight that insures that I am), we should have a very interested S9 indeed . . .
18 May 2015 at 07:16 #40159[quote]To insist that anything from BG Who as cannon is an act of willful blindness. I loved old Who but would have been the first to admit that there was no story consistency. The acting was often awful and there were some very dodgy scripts. The special effects were occasionally laughable and the “baddies” were comedic. [/quote]
What you are saying is that nothing has changed? 😀
Canonicity in Doctor Who is a dicey topic. Both the classic series and the new series contradicted themselves, separately and together. But having said that, the classic series is definitely canonical to the new series. That issue was completely laid to rest when Sarah Jane showed up in an episode with David Tenant.
Everything you’ve said about Classic Who is absolutely true. There was inconsistent stories, awful acting, comedic baddies, poor special effects and dodgy scripts.
On the other hand, this was also the series whose technicians and specialists Douglas Trumbull consulted with when he was doing the Academy Award winning special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was a series which for its first decade and a half was as often as not at the forefront of television effects work, it was a series which innovated and took chances Even as late as the Davison era… well, I stand second to no one in my condemnation of the Myrka, but I can at least respect the ingenuity, the creativity, the initiative that went into that epic failure – it was an attempt to create a completely nonhuman, dragon costume with multiple stuntmen and internal electronics and armature – they were trying to do something more comprehensive than Lucas struggled with at the same time, with a fraction of his budget.
As to awful acting? Yes, certainly. But also a great deal of very good acting, and an overall level of acting generally superior to American television of the era. The truth is that British television drew on stage tradition with centuries of provenance, and an acting and artistic community second to none in the world, and that certainly showed in Doctor Who.
Dodgy scripts. Oh my yes. From the Underwater Menace to the Twin Dilemma to Delta and the Bannermen, quite a few stinkers. But also the Unearthly Child, Edge of Destruction, the Daleks, Caves of Androzani, Pyramids of Mars, Inferno, Horror of Fang Rock, Warriors Gate, Terror of the Autons, War Games, Claws of Axos, Seeds of Doom… etc. etc.
Classic Doctor Who also worked a unique storytelling production of serial formats – multiple serials, each serial running from 2 to 10 episodes, with plot and subplots and internal arcs, a baroque storytelling system that allowed supporting characters to breath and establish identities, which allowed stories to progress in unanticipated directions, and which reduced the standard 3 act formula to childs play. I fell in love with the series because it was willing to tell stories in a way I’d never seen before.
I can both admit everything you’ve said, and simultaneously call bullshit on you simply because in the first 28 years, there is so much of it. What are we talking about? Over 600 25 minute episodes? 150 serials? Much of it produced at a breakneck pace, with far more episodes and far less money and technology. That’s a staggering volume of work, and when you have that much you’re going to turn up a reasonable amount of crap, of bad effects, inconsistent stories, poor actors, etc.
I’m not prepared to say that the classic series was inherently inferior to the new series. I think that is a conversation not worth having. We can criticize the rather laboured style and serials of the black and white era, but that’s like criticizing 19th century novels, or criticizing Charles Dickens. It was simply a different time, and conventions were different then. It’s unfair to measure the storytelling or pacing of the Hartnell or Troughton era by modern standards – you might as well say that Brando’s Streetcar Named Desire is crap compared to Bay’s Transformers.
Indeed, I could make an argument that the new series has failed to live up to the standards set by the classic series. I mean – what do we have? Daleks, Cybermen and the Master as major villains/adversaries? We’ve seen the Great Intelligence and the Sontarans recycled, the Ice Warriors. But what’s the new series offered in terms of similarly iconic or at least durable nemesis? – So far, the Silence and the Weeping Angels, both of whom have exhibited what I’d call…. limited staying power. Given the frequency with which New Who mines the classic series for adversaries, tropes and ideas, perhaps it’s New Who that should deserve contempt for being ultimately derivative?
New Who has the advantage of vastly larger budgets, of CGI, of digital photography, online computer assisted editing, a much smaller workload. Classic Who had plenty of constraints – in the early years, they were doing up to 42 episodes a season, editing involved physically cutting and splicing tape.
New Who doesn’t have those excuses – so what’s with the lousy stories, dodgy effects, bad acting? Is it really crafting an ‘arc’ to keep sticking ‘bad wolf’ or random clips of ‘Ms Gomez’ in episodes? No it’s not. Once in a while, they decide to impress us all with a two episode cliff hanger…. big deal, that was Colin Baker’s entire first season – two 45 minute episode cliff hangers. Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker could hold a half dozen episodes together.
Why is season 8 such a listless, rambling, directionless mess? Why, with possibly the finest actor in the series history, has it produced some of the absolutely worst episodes of the in the entire 50 year history. Why did the Matt Smith era have to tolerate gigantic plot holes and loose threads.
Why can’t we just respect and appreciate the accomplishments of both the old and new series? Why is there such a need to take a shit? Why can’t we acknowledge that imperfection, that foibles and failures are part and parcel of striving and effort, that they are inextricable from greatness and accomplishment. Why can’t we accept that any large body of work will contain flaws as well as triumphs. That you cannot have triumphs without the failures, that by definition, the commitment of time and effort and creativity and talent that will produce a masterpiece will also combine to produce a disaster now and again.
18 May 2015 at 08:33 #40160@DenValdon I wasn’t bagging the old series. I love old Who every bit as much as the new stuff. I was just saying, it wasn’t perfect and I can see the flaws, when there are flaws without lessening my respect for the series overall. I think you are over reacting a little. I was certainly not intending to “knock” the old series. I was just responding to the “rose tinted glasses” brigade and pointing out that those imperfections did not lesson our love for the series because its strengths far outweighed the negatives. (Perhaps I should have take more time about what I wrote to ensure it wasn’t misread.)
I don’t compare new and old Who. They two different limbs of one wonderful tree, oak I think. I would have to agree to disagree regarding series 8 however which I thought had some very fine stories. Different episodes work better for different viewers. For instance in the thread discussing The Deadly Assassin some of the other commentators loved the action sequence. I watched it when I was fifteen and it was perhaps on of the only episodes of Dr Who at that time that I didn’t really enjoy endlessly re-watching. (In Oz we had repeats all through winter after the ABC ran out of new stories. It was shown four nights a week so we saw a lot of repeats.) I liked the Moon/Egg story despite the dodgy science because I saw it as being about a moral dilemma. I was less keen on the Forest episode but it had some good moments. Other episodes that I did not warm to on first watch like Time Heist, I have since grown to love.
Cheers
Janette
18 May 2015 at 08:37 #40161Just re reading my post and I see why you missed my point in that paragraph. I was going to list all the things that were good about BG Who but being in a rush decided that they were well understood and did not require listing so my apologies. I think you have done that for me now @denvaldron.
Cheers
Janette
18 May 2015 at 08:52 #40162@janetteb I do acknowledge that Season 8 had some good stories – Flatline is a standout and would be brilliant in any season, Mummy on the Orient Express is likewise a solid, polished piece, Time Heist is also well above average. On the other hand, certain other episodes make Dimensions in Time look like Shakespeare.
I appreciate the fact that Kill The Moon and In the Forest of the Night have their proponents. That’s fine. For myself, I consider them utterly disgraceful and catastrophic fails on every possible level. But I don’t feel the need to debate their merits here.
18 May 2015 at 08:57 #40163LOTS of discussion on here since I last logged in, but glad to see that civility and mutual respect is generally holding up.
I agree with those who’ve said that for the Master, Missy (and her sexuality) is just another way for him/her to explore being in control. Control has always been a defining charateristic of the character. The Master is a classic psychopath. It’s all about manipulating others to do what he wants. It’s not even about the end result, it’s the process. Death in Heaven is a classic example of that. Missy is happy to have spent eons setting up the situation where she can watch the Doctor squirm as he realises he’s done everything as she planned.
As to whether the Doctor and the Master are brothers, half brothers or even related at all – if it’s not on the screen it’s conjecture. It doesn’t matter what Pertwee or Delgado (or anyone else) may have said offscreen, to date their mutual early history is unclear and their actual relationship is only hinted at. It’s up to us to project on to those hints whatever theories we want. But we need to remember they are only theories, and my thoughts are as valid as anyone else’s. And equally invalid if the current writers chose to come up with something else… and write it into a story.
That’s where the fun comes from. There’s no need to get annoyed – just enjoy the journey! And be prepared to throw your pet thoeries on to the large pile of “ideas we came up with that we loved but have now been contradicted by what’s actually been written”
As for the possibility of Osgood or any other character being brought back (and I’m still holding out for a River Song return at some point!) – it’s a show that has time travel at its core – more so in AG Who than at any time in its history – so why not? It doesn’t invalidate the shock and sadness of hear death to meet her again at some earlier point in her timeline (so long as she isn’t killed in the earlier timeline).
18 May 2015 at 09:09 #40164They two different limbs of one wonderful tree, oak I think
Nice one.
BG Who was of its time and (as many others have pointed out, here and elsewhere), for all its faults, it was often (note that I’m not saying always!) cutting edge in terms of concept and attempts to make the special effects match the creative ideas the writers came up with. TV itself was also just a small child in the 60s, it was still learning how to tell stories in a different way from stage or film. Likewise the actors, many of whom had a stage acting background.
It didn’t always work, but then, as now, it was because it reached for the stars that it sometimes achieved escape velocity in wonderful ways that challenged and delighted.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I really enjoyed series 8, not least for its ambition in not being content to retread the successes of previous sereis and had the audacity to completely change the pace and to question and redefine who the Doctor is. I’ve enjoyed it even more on rewatching, with more of an appreciation of the subtleties of Capaldi’s performance and the nuances, tightness and details of the writing.
18 May 2015 at 10:12 #40166@janetteb @DenValdron @ScaryB I loved BG Who as a kid, but now I have a hard time watching the older shows. They just don’t hold my attention the way they once did. That doesn’t make them lousy, or invalidate my taste then or now; just c’est la vie, and more my loss than anything else, when I think about it.
As for S8, I liked it, partly because it was such a wild ride from one kind of story to another (that’s my take on what some see as a just mess), all built around what kind of person this old/new/Doctor is and can be. Capaldi just blew me away, and so did Coleman because I hadn’t thought much of her in S7. Suddenly she rose to the challenge of a terrific co-lead and some inspired writing (and also some less inspired writing, granted — which is a challenge in its own right). S8 renewed my interest in DW after some very desultory viewing of everything from the end of Eccleston through the end of Smith. It was the change of pace, that tighter focus on character, that daring variety of stories ranging from creeping terror to old-style SF adventure (including goofy science, as I remember it from the pulps) to fairy tale fantasy to Ten Little Mummians to dorky Errol Flynn pseudo-historical fiction to crime caper to the techno-Gothic horror of the Nethersphere — Hell, I loved it all.
Then, re-watching, I saw the details, and my god, what a feast! Beautiful details of writing (“The Doctor is lost in the ruin of himself” — what an elegant, brilliantly accurate line that is), fascinating details of acting technique (Clara standing in the street after Danny’s death with that dulled, flat look of the suddenly bereft), just amazing. Failures? Sure (oh, the skovox blitzer — too damn much damp graveyard in DiH etc/). But so many gems amid the dross — the more I look the more I see. I am a happy doggie, with high hopes for S9. It’s the constantly shifting synthesis of sharp, talented minds that so delights me. I’m a fan of chamber music, these past couple of decades — big egos + big talent, working together in service to the realization, however flawed, of an ideal that was never perfect to begin with. That’s life, that’s art — food for the hungry soul. Gotta shut up now, it’s late. I am not responsible . . .
@burrunjor I appreciate your kind remarks about my posts. I’m impatient by nature, and have consequently learned over 7 + decades that losing my temper, or venting frustration, is almost invariably a mistake for me. I end up realizing that I was either angry over a misunderstanding, or blasting the wrong person, or just too pissed off or cranky to think straight. So I try, not always successfully, for moderation and clarity, which also often makes my posts excessively long (*every* damn thing has a downside, as I’m sure you’ve noticed). Also I was a teacher, and still occasionally am, so I’m used to thinking out loud. All of that seems to help me keep my balance in discussion. Everyone has to find their own way to do that; sometimes advancing decrepitude is the only way . . . I wish better, faster success to anyone else who’s looking for moderation and for clarity. Or fun and pleasure rather than strife.
best,
ichi
18 May 2015 at 12:21 #40169See, here’s the problem with being indulgent to long-winded rambling egoists.
THEY DROP HONKING GREAT SPOILERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR RAMBLES because in their ARSE-driven rage they do not have the remotest interest in being respectful.
18 May 2015 at 12:23 #40170Ordinarily I’d have said please don’t feed the troll but on this occasion it has gleaned some decent discussion.
Leaving aside the idiocy of most of @Burrunjor’s post, I concur with most that it matters not a jot what Delgado or Pertwee or indeed the BBC canteen lady of the time thought was the relationship between the Doctor and the Master. If it didn’t come out of the mouths of either character on the screen at any point then it’s not canon (which is such a pointlessly limiting concept anyway). And I’m glad it never did too as it’s such a dull-wittedly prosaic interpretation of their relationship. There are far better, less toe-curlingly obvious directions to take.
Also not sure where we get to ‘the Master loves the Doctor’ comes from. The Master is the Doctor’s stalker. Always has been, ever since he rocked up in Terror of the Autons. That suggests there’s a clear element of sex but not really love. Most stalkers are romantically obsessed with their victims and they imagine this to be love but in reality it’s the last thing it is. However, the through-line that RTD put in between the Simm and Tennant characters and Moffatt between the Capaldi and Gomez ones can easily be found to have its roots in Pertwee/Delgado one. That it was possibly not intended in more innocent/less sophisticated times is neither here nor there. I think @purofilion and @janetteb and others have hit the nail on the head that the Missy relationship. It’s a power trip. It’s all about control in a vaguely S&M kind of way.
On the idea that having a female Doctor being ‘ill thought out’. That’s just the kind of kneejerk reactionism that I’d expect. It hasn’t been thought out at all yet because it has yet to happen. But there’s no reason — no reason whatsoever — that it can’t be done successfully and move the show into whole new areas (as @denvaldron illustrated in some of the fanfilm blogs.)
On Osgood returning. To be honest, I vary between being indifferent to mildly annoyed that she’s returning. I get that she may well be a Zygon duplicate, or more likely, that it’s the Zygon duplicate who was offed by Missy but this to me is unsatisfactory. Osgood’s death was in an important moment in the narrative of Death in Heaven and in developing the character of this new Master (and Doctor for that matter). I’m not suggesting that Who should go down the Game of Thrones route of endless bloody shock but sometimes you do have to have character deaths that are irrevocable and do actually mean something. If Moffatt has any failings, it’s that he’s too reluctant to bring real, lasting death into the show.
And on the old vs the new show, I do feel it’s a kind of pointless argument. The old show was adequate (for a time) but eventually it was being outstripped in terms of technology and narrative sophistication of the world around it. And it generally does not stand up well to the modern show. I’d concur with SM that the majority of it is shoddy and slapdash, even by the standards of the time. But its core format was still incredibly pliable and allowed to the occasional moment of absolute inspiration that periodically rekindled our love for it. And for a show that ran for 30-odd years in its original version, its misses far outweigh its hits (the new version has a far more favourable ratio). But that doesn’t mean we don’t still think of it with affection for all that.
Good to see @scaryb back in the fold. But where on earth is @bluesqueakpip?
18 May 2015 at 14:21 #40172Leaving aside the idiocy of most of @Burrunjor‘s post,
In the kindest possible way, even if you legitimately considered Burrunjor a troll and his post as being without merit….
Do you feel that kind of thing is actually constructive or helpful? Personally, I’m not a nice person, but I try to avoid that sort of thing.
Like it or not, whether you disagree, Burrunjor actually had some points to make, and even if I disagreed, it was the sort of disagreement that I had to contemplate, reflect upon and reach differing conclusions.
Less flame, more light?
Burrunjor’s arguments are not completely without merit. To play devil’s advocate, for instance, like it or not, the collateral evidence of actors or directors is often relevant to understanding characters and stories. Any good novel or movie or television series has a greater backstory than is shown on the screen. There’s always a background mythology. That mythology is relevant. It informs the Actors, their choices, the directors, the production processes. If Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado saw their characters as estranged brothers, simultaneously murderous towards each other, but with ties they could never truly severe, then that informed their performance. Information, insight derived or driven like that is often relevant. You can’t dismiss it entirely.
Rather, what we have is a process of nuanced weighting and interpretation. As I said earlier, before the Time Lords stuff, there were multiple interpretations of who or what the Doctor was. In the McCoy era there was the Cartmel Masterplan – a new backstory and history for the Doctor. There’s a great deal of nuance that affects performance and production decisions, we take it into account, but it’s not as definitive as what goes up on the screen. It has weight, but less weight than certain other things. Background decisions can be validated or invalidated as time goes on. Missy and the particular interpretations that Moffet spun her into were not inevitable developments. They could have gone elsewhere, they could have done other things. Perhaps they will.
Like it or not, Burrunjor’s argument was not illegitimate, particularly in a show like Doctor Who where it’s history is so massive. It warrants consideration. It’s a matter of weighting and sifting. I come to a different conclusion than him, but I come to it thoughtfully.
Burrunjor’s dislike of a ‘female Doctor’ doesn’t make much sense to me. But he’s far from alone in that perspective. Oddly, I think that people were much more open to a female Doctor in the 1980’s, we’ve become more regressive and repressive as a society. People are on the whole more narrowminded, less open to heterodox views. The internet offers up the world, but all too often, people simply use it as a mirror to reaffirm their prejudices. It’s called confirmation bias.
To suggest that the period between the sixties and eighties was ‘more innocent/less sophisticated’ back in the day is hardly accurate, and perhaps naïve. I would not say that about the popular culture. I would not say that about the show.
Was Osgood’s death important to the narrative of the episode? Only in the sense that Moffet had fifty minutes to occupy, and Osgood’s death helped him get rid of two or three of those minutes. This was not a Whedonesque moment. The character was created as a rather snide backhand to the show’s fans. Osgood wasn’t more complicated than that, and while she subsequently got a moment or two that suggested more potential, there wasn’t the sort of investment that you’d see in a Whedon piece or say the Walking Dead. Does it shock the audience that Moffet disposed of a minor supporting character? No. Is it transgressive to bring her back? No.
As to the old show versus the new show – I’d dispute much of what you had to say. I don’t concur that the misses far outweigh the hits. I am not a huge fan of the Hartnell and Troughton eras and feel that the storytelling is overly pedantic and the acting too formal, it doesn’t grab me. But the fact that it doesn’t grab me does not make it illegitimate or sub-par, it means that the standards and values, the likes of the era were different. I used the analogy of comparing A Streetcar Named Desire to Transformers. A Streetcar may not be to everyone’s taste, and it may not accord with modern tastes, but only the foolish would suggest that Shia LaBoeff or Megan Fox outweighs Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, or that Michael Bay is a greater artist than Elia Kazan or Tennessee Williams.
To call it ‘Shoddy and Slapdash’ for the standards of its time is, in my view, ill considered and not well founded. There’s a huge volume to select from, of course and you will find ‘shoddy and slapdash’ by any standards if you go looking for it. Is it legitimate to define the whole thing by its worst examples? I don’t think so. But on the whole, it’s much better than you give it credit for, and I’d argue that the storytelling and characterization was frequently more sophisticated than in the modern show.
The characterization of the classic series as some lumpen caterpillar from which the glorious new show eventually sprang… I don’t buy it. That seems prone to overlooking both the actual elements of the series and the real history of the classic series in which it was both a genuine popular success as well as a cult item for an immense span of time, and which could maintain an audience for a decade after cancellation. I feel that this is objectively wrong.
The internet is a strange place. Bereft of faces, posture, body language, stripped of the nuance of actual voices, there’s a weightless quality. We can go from casual conversation to full blown rage ons in no time at all. Does that stuff do any good? I don’t think so.
I think it’s best to keep in mind that there are objective and subjective matters. That often the line is blurred, but we can argue objective matters by resort to facts. Subjective matters are much more a matter of opinion.
Mostly, I think we do better and get further by trying to be polite and keep it respectful, even if we disagree with what’s said, or perhaps dislike the person saying it.
18 May 2015 at 14:58 #40173@denvaldron — sorry, but no. What points @burrunjor had to make were done in a combative way from the start and aggressive towards long-standing members of this site. And, yes, I consider much of it trolling, with more than a bit of ARSE about it. What’s more, it’s clearly affected the level of discourse on this thread and to pander to it is to encourage it further. So, no, I don’t think I have to justify my posts in dealing or engaging with them in the slightest.
18 May 2015 at 15:32 #40174@jimthefish And how are yours not combative, aggressive and with a bit of ARSE? You didn’t just make your point. You did quite a bit of drive by shooting.
Where I come from, Jim, there’s a saying “It’s all fun and games when someone loses an eye.” There are better ways.
As to the level of discourse on this Board… well, sometimes its not all that. My impression is that the ‘kool kids like to smack around the newbies’, that people who step out of line get shouted at pretty hard.’ Don’t bother me none. But I do notice.
And no, I don’t suppose you have to justify your posts dealing or engaging with people in the slightest.
But as I said, there are better ways.
Your call, Muchacho.
18 May 2015 at 17:05 #40178And how are yours not combative, aggressive and with a bit of ARSE
First of all, the use of ARSE on this site has a very specific meaning — A Raging Sense of Entitlement — used to describe a certain strata of fan,the key traits of which @burrunjor was clearly demonstrating. There’s a blog on it in the archives. I suggest you look it up.
the collateral evidence of actors or directors is often relevant to understanding characters and stories. Any good novel or movie or television series has a greater backstory than is shown on the screen. There’s always a background mythology. That mythology is relevant. It informs the Actors, their choices, the directors, the production processes. If Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado saw their characters as estranged brothers, simultaneously murderous towards each other, but with ties they could never truly severe, then that informed their performance. Information, insight derived or driven like that is often relevant. You can’t dismiss it entirely.
And no one was. But in terms of canon, which is what was being originally discussed, it’s utterly irrelevant. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage. It’s nothing more than trivia essentially and it doesn’t form any part of the overarching mythology of the show. Yes, it can be taken into account in discussions such as these, but, no, it has no real weight, unless it’s been made explicit on-screen. Certainly it’s not got enough weight that a user can come onto the boards and claim that the current directions of the show are somehow ‘wrong’ because they don’t accord with what they’ve decided is how the show should work (textbook case of ARSE).
Like it or not, Burrunjor’s argument was not illegitimate, particularly in a show like Doctor Who where it’s history is so massive. It warrants consideration. It’s a matter of weighting and sifting. I come to a different conclusion than him, but I come to it thoughtfully.
I consider my arguments against his stance just as thoughtful and argued out. They were considered and then rejected for the reasons outlined above. But can I just say, condescending much?
To suggest that the period between the sixties and eighties was ‘more innocent/less sophisticated’ back in the day is hardly accurate, and perhaps naïve.
No, it’s a fact. And can be see in all aspects of popular culture. Look at a political interview in 1970 compared to now. Or a soap opera. Or a medical drama. Or a cop show. People are much more media and narrative literate. Pretty much any show today has and needs a greater degree of sophistication. That really shouldn’t be in doubt. In terms of drama, British TV back then was also much more closely aligned to the theatre and this very much reflected production values and attitudes. These days, TV considers itself much more closely aligned to cinema and that has reflected a sea change in attitudes in how it is produced.
But the fact that it doesn’t grab me does not make it illegitimate or sub-par, it means that the standards and values, the likes of the era were different
Pretty much what I’ve just said above. But I’d still argue that even for the time a lot of Who stories were sub-par with what was still possible to create back then. There are extenuating circumstances — time, budget especially, but the fact remains the show barely winged it a lot of the time. Again, this is not controversial and these arguments were even being made at the time (the so-called wobbly set argument).
Your Streetcar/Transformers analogy doesn’t really work either. You’re comparing apples and oranges, basically. It would only work if you compared, say, Streetcar with Birdman or something else remotely in the same genre. And Transformers with, say, an action blockbuster of the time. Say Rio Bravo.
There’s a huge volume to select from, of course and you will find ‘shoddy and slapdash’ by any standards if you go looking for it. Is it legitimate to define the whole thing by its worst examples?
No, but then again no one was. But at the same time, pretending those examples don’t exist and that every week we got Genesis of the Daleks is pointless too. The original show did remarkable things. It occasionally made TV history. And that’s why it’s still here now. But 80% doesn’t really stand up to today. At least 50% didn’t really stand up to the rest of what the Beeb was outputting at the time. We watch it now while at the same time making allowances for its limitations. We forgive it much through nostalgia and affection. But on occasion it did work wonders. So, yes, there’s definitely storytelling in the original show that stands up to what’s produced now. But I’d argue far less in the way of characterisation (not none, but very little).
The characterization of the classic series as some lumpen caterpillar from which the glorious new show eventually sprang… I don’t buy it.
And again, just as well no one’s saying that.
Was Osgood’s death important to the narrative of the episode? Only in the sense that Moffet had fifty minutes to occupy, and Osgood’s death helped him get rid of two or three of those minutes. This was not a Whedonesque moment.
And again, no one’s saying that. Man, you just love your straw men, don’t you? No one’s saying that it was somehow earth-shattering but it was a significant narrative moment, not just ‘filler’ as you put it.
The character was created as a rather snide backhand to the show’s fans
Really? Is that why she’s proved so popular? I’d say she was created more with affection and that’s why she’s still around.
Does it shock the audience that Moffet disposed of a minor supporting character? No. Is it transgressive to bring her back? No.
Nobody’s talking about shock or transgression. But it was a significant character beat for both the Doctor and the Master. It emphasised that for all her whackiness, Missy is dangerous, lethal even. And it showed the Doctor that by not taking Missy seriously enough, he ended up getting someone killed. Of course, his battles with the Master lead to lots of collateral damage but it’s not that often that we see the Doctor forced to confront it in this way. It’s a significant moment because it changes our attitudes to both characters. And to roll back on it essentially undoes it. Or at the very least renders it less potent.
The internet is a strange place. Bereft of faces, posture, body language, stripped of the nuance of actual voices, there’s a weightless quality. We can go from casual conversation to full blown rage ons in no time at all. Does that stuff do any good? I don’t think so.
True. Some use forthright language on occasion. Some use passive-aggressive condescension, Muchacho. Neither is helpful.
My impression is that the ‘kool kids like to smack around the newbies’, that people who step out of line get shouted at pretty hard.’ Don’t bother me none. But I do notice.
I’d say that’s quite clearly not true. There are plenty of newer members who manage to get along on the site pretty well. The site’s etiquette rules are clearly laid out at the top of the page and most adhere to it. If someone steps ‘out of line’ as you put it then, yeah, they will be talked to by a Mod. Which is what happened here and was greeted by further rants and diatribe. @burrunjor pitched their initial posts in an aggressive and combative way and that’s set the tone for how people relate to them. That’s no one’s fault but their own. Although their later posts look as if they might be settling down a bit now.
18 May 2015 at 18:08 #40179I’m not weighing in as far as the substance of this discussion is concerned, as I’ve not been involved. But ‘the kool kids like to smack around the newbies’? No way. Whenever I join a new forum or group I observe how people interact, I listen and get the tone of the discussions, and join in as and when I feel I can – and I’ve encountered nothing but courtesy and good humour here, whether people have agreed or disagreed with what I say.
18 May 2015 at 18:47 #40180A Raging Sense of Entitlement, you say? Hmmm.
But in terms of canon, which is what was being originally discussed, it’s utterly irrelevant. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage. It’s nothing more than trivia essentially and it doesn’t form any part of the overarching mythology of the show. Yes, it can be taken into account in discussions such as these, but, no, it has no real weight, unless it’s been made explicit on-screen.
I disagree. You seem to adopt a binary yes/no, off/on approach to canonicity. Frankly, that’s a dubious proposition and supported by… nothing much. My own view, which is at least as legitimate, is that it is a matter of weighting and evaluation.
But can I just say, condescending much?
Hmmm. Was that a little drive by Jim? A bit of sticking the knife in? Was that the back of your hand? Is that a zinger there? Were you putting me in my place? Slapping me down? How amusing. Did I insult you Jim? Did I hurt your feelings? If so, please accept my apologies. It certainly wasn’t intentional.
No, it’s a fact. And can be see in all aspects of popular culture. Look at a political interview in 1970 compared to now. Or a soap opera. Or a medical drama. Or a cop show. People are much more media and narrative literate. Pretty much any show today has and needs a greater degree of sophistication. That really shouldn’t be in doubt. In terms of drama, British TV back then was also much more closely aligned to the theatre and this very much reflected production values and attitudes. These days, TV considers itself much more closely aligned to cinema and that has reflected a sea change in attitudes in how it is produced.
No, I’m going to continue to disagree. The notion that people of the past were somehow less sophisticated than they are now seems to be a common currency. But I don’t think it stands up. If we look at 1970, we see a set of clearly delineated cultural and political lines – it was the era of the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, the student rebellions, union activism, the environmentalist movement. It was an era where there were a dozen different graduations of communism, where the political spectrum was incredibly diverse. It was an era where people were actively re-examining literally every facet of life. Nixon’s impeachment was in the wings. It was the era of Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, William S. Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Robert Altman. It was an era when television addressed poor urban blacks with Good Times, feminism with Mary Tyler Moore, divided families and bigotry with All in the Family, the Vietnam war with MASH, when Monty Python overturned comedy and so forth. I simply do not think your analysis is accurate.
I should compare a political interview from 1970 with one from today? Again, in terms of sheer volume, you can find superficial blather. But on the whole, there was a lot more political sophistication then, than now. A lot more nuance and effort to grasp and wrestle with hard issues rather than reach for generalities and simple solutions.
Let’s take an example from the show – a recurrent theme of the Pertwee era was the complex and often uncomfortable relationship with the military industrial complex. Several serials explored that to one extent or the other – Inferno, the Silurians to name a couple. Pertwee’s Doctor was not a handmaiden to UNIT and the show didn’t celebrate UNIT as an unalloyed good, but as a matter of compromise. This is in the overall context of social examination of the military industrial complex, the shortcomings of official authority, the contradictions of third world military adventures versus the cold war. This was in a series where actual socialists were among the writing crew.
Now compare that to the approach to the military of the Capaldi era “Well… uh…. soldiers are icky, you see… and …um…. I don’t like them.” Which is resolved with a heartwarming sentimental moment. I don’t think you can say that the Capaldi approach to the military is more sophisticated and nuanced than the Pertwee approach. Quite the opposite. Now, I don’t particularly want to get into a raging debate over Capaldi. In my view, Capaldi’s Doctor wears his ‘war views’ on his sleeve, it’s a 12 year olds black and white sensibility. Now, maybe there’s room to argue about that. But my point is that we can’t argue that Pertwee didn’t approach the issue, or that his era didn’t approach the issue with some sensitivity and depth.
You argue that stage influenced television is somehow less worthy and interesting than cinema influenced television. That strikes me as a simple value judgement, rather than something intrinsically true. The stage has an extensive history and a vast amount of diversity in terms of handling stories, themes, subject matters. Production costs for stage has always been profoundly lower, and thus far more accessible. There was much more emphasis on stories and stories well told, on performances, on effective dialogue. I would argue that stage influenced television is entirely valid. To choose one over the other is just a preference between flavours of ice cream.
It’s very true that television in the day was constrained. They couldn’t get away with many of the things that are commonplace now. Mary Whitehouse would have conniptions. But that doesn’t mean people involved did not deal with real issues and concerns in sophisticated ways. It’s equally true that the very nature of the television marketplace has changed, with digital channels, a multitude of specialty channels, and the fracturing into niches which have allowed the production of very specialized works. I will acknowledge that modern television has an array of tools in digital technology that the medium simply could not access. But let’s not confuse better or more flexible tools with better concepts. To keep beating a metaphor – Michael Bay has better tools than Elia Kazan. It doesn’t make him a better director.
You can argue that 50% of Doctor Who was inferior to the contemporary british television of the time. That strikes me as a bold claim, but I feel that’s a rather sweeping generalization. I don’t know that it holds up in any meaningful sense. As you’ve pointed out, sometimes there’s an apples and oranges issue at work – how does one compare Doctor Who to Monty Python of Fawlty Towers when the two series were contemporary in the 70’s? Or how do we compare Peter Cushing’s production of 1984 to Hartnell Doctor Who? But assuming comparison – I don’t mind saying that some contemporary productions were better. But I’d also point out that the vast majority of contemporary productions are now forgotten.
You go on to argue that 80% of it ‘doesn’t stand up today.’ I’ll argue that’s a meaningless statement. I’ll concede that much of the black and white stuff is inaccessible to modern sensibilities. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t stand up. It means its different. “The past,” someone once wrote, “is a foreign country.” We don’t talk like Shakespeare no more, paperback sales of the Canterbury Tales are not selling, and Beowulf is not a hit. I would not argue for the inherent inferiority of any of these things. I would simply say that the past is a foreign land, and that we engage more easily with the contemporary.
I’m not arguing that there was no crap at all. Some amount of that’s kind of an inevitable outcome of any creative process. Certainly, I’ll happily be cruel to outright failures and substandard product. But I make a distinction between the objectively bad, and material which does not engage me because its sensibilities are no longer my own.
Now, full disclosure, a few years ago, I conceived a project – to collect and give my ex-wife as a present DVD’s of every serial of the series, old and new. It simplified things – birthdays, Christmas, special occasions, you name it, I always knew what to get. So I collected it all – all the Tom Bakers, all the Pertwees, the Davisons and Colin Bakers, the Ecclestones and Tenants and what there was of the Hartnells and Troughtons, I even picked up the Cushings, the McGanns, the Atkinson, the Grant. It was a lot. Something like 100 or 150 DVDs. I did something more, I watched them all, here and there, often in order, sometimes not.
I watched them with a certain degree of sophistication. I’m a published writer, I’ve got a bunch of short stories to my name, good reviews, written some novels, did a bit of journalism, collected a couple of university degrees, worked on some short films, even did an abortive book about the Lexx television series. I’d like to think I’m not a stupid man, and that I have some degree of insight.
So, as I was saying, I actually went back and watched all these things, a lot of it I hadn’t seen in 20 or more years, or only dimly recalled. Quite a bit I’d never seen at all. I was surprised by the amount of nuance I’d missed. There was a great deal more going on in many of these stories than I’d picked up the first time around, possibly due to the circumstances of watching back then. I was less critical then, and perhaps less appreciative. What surprised me was how very much of it turned out to be very good. I expected a warm glow of nostalgia, a fond visit with toys now outgrown and left behind. But what I found were stories that drew my attention and kept it, performances that were engrossing, productions layered with nuance and subtext. Sure, there was dodgy bluescreen once in a while, there were things they tried that didn’t come off.
There were negative as well as positive re-evaluations. I’d been quite fond of the Peter Davison era and on re-watching, it was considerably more uneven. I had a lot less sympathy for Colin Baker’s first season, as an example. I had trouble with some of the Troughton and Hartnell stuff, but I could also appreciate and understand it in a way that in a shallower age I would not have bothered with. I’d hated Sylvester McCoy’s work back in the day, and I still found it ugly and difficult, but there were some surprising bright spots.
In short, over a period of two or three years, actually watching the entirety of the Classic and New series, I came to a whole new appreciation of the classic series. It was better than I remembered. A great deal of it, perhaps 80% is genuinely good to excellent. Much of it compares favourably with modern television. I’m surprised by how much remains contemporary. Certainly it holds up well.
So, Jim. I consider you wrong. I consider you decisively wrong. This is why I consider you wrong.
Now, maybe you’ll come back to me and say that you two have spent the last three years watching the entire classic series available to us, etc. etc. etc. Possible.
But for now, I disagree with your judgements.
Your Streetcar/Transformers analogy doesn’t really work either. You’re comparing apples and oranges, basically. It would only work if you compared, say, Streetcar with Birdman or something else remotely in the same genre. And Transformers with, say, an action blockbuster of the time. Say Rio Bravo.
I think it’s a perfectly apt metaphor. My point is that both the technology and the marketplace of movies has changed profoundly, but that does not lead to inherent superiority of one over the other. Both Streetcar and Transformers were ‘imports’ – not originally conceived as movies, they were adapted, they were the top dogs of their day.
True. Some use forthright language on occasion. Some use passive-aggressive condescension, Muchacho. Neither is helpful.
I’m sorry, Jim. Did that offend you? Did being addressed as Muchacho irritate you? To my understanding, there are no pejorative connotations to the term ‘Muchacho.’ As I understand it, it’s a term of endearment that means ‘friend’ or ‘brother.’ Does it offend you that I call you ‘friend’ in even a casual way in the context of an apparently civil disagreement? Did I presume too much? Sometimes, online, it’s hard to tell.
Just say so, and I will happily apologize. I politeness is important to me.
Just for the record JimtheFish, there’s absolutely nothing passive aggressive about me. I’m either polite or I’m not.
I’d say that’s quite clearly not true.
I’ll disagree.
18 May 2015 at 20:38 #40181@jimthefish @cathannabel @denvaldron
I’ve been a bit busy with other things (working on a new social network for a friend… thinks he’s going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg) so have taken my eye off the ball recently. For that I apologise. And for the lack of a Peter Davison episode this weekend. Will be one next weekend. Promise.
Den, the kool kids do not like to smack around the newbies. I’m not cool and, if I’m honest, non of the others are either :-). I know that you’ve had bad experiences here in the past and when you came back it wasn’t great either. I’m sorry that’s happened as I really respect what you do. I’ve told regular members off for being rude to you before and one of them hasn’t been back so I have no favourites.
I apologise. No one is smacking anyone around on my site. This forum mostly consists of people who like each other, or should do. Argument and disagreement is purely intellectual and should be discussed as such.
This is a site where people are nice to each other (mostly – mistakes are made). “I’m either polite or I’m not” is not the attitude. I’m trying to create something different – no flame wars, no trolling, an actual nice place to visit where you will find debate but not angry or abusive argument.
JimTheFish is a great guy, DenValdron is also a great guy, all of us have more in common than we have differences, or we wouldn’t be here. If we can all talk to each other as friends sat around the dinner table, rather than political opponents on other sides of the despatch box, I’d be happy.
Let’s try and keep the tone of this site different from many others.
18 May 2015 at 21:01 #40182@craig I will certainly apologize to you if I seem to be becoming short tempered. I note that this is the second time you’ve been forced to intervene.
18 May 2015 at 21:06 #40183I disagree. You seem to adopt a binary yes/no, off/on approach to canonicity. Frankly, that’s a dubious proposition and supported by… nothing much. My own view, which is at least as legitimate, is that it is a matter of weighting and evaluation.
No, I’m not a massive fan of canonicity anyway, which is why I applauded Moffat’s move to remove its sting in the 5oth anniversary. But as I said, while Delgado or Pertwee or whoever might have their own ideas about aspects of the show, it it’s not in a script and does not end up manifesting itself on screen, then it’s clearly not bloody canon. It’s side garnish for the geeks, nothing more. I mean, why stop there. Maybe Richard Franklin’s motivation for Yates was that he used to be the Doctor’s dog in a previous life. Why not bung that in too?
The question of how much aborted or unrealised plot points should colour our intepretation of the core text is an interesting one but the final answer must be ‘not much’ if we’re to approach it with any sense. To do otherwise is a bit like insisting that all drafts of a novel somehow have equal validity, even if an author excised characters and situation from the final draft. What is screened is the final draft of Who and the only authority for canon. And lobbing other stuff that maybe would have happened just because you quite fancy it doesn’t really wash, pal.
Hmmm. Was that a little drive by Jim? A bit of sticking the knife in? Was that the back of your hand? Is that a zinger there? Were you putting me in my place? Slapping me down? How amusing. Did I insult you Jim? Did I hurt your feelings? If so, please accept my apologies. It certainly wasn’t intentional.
No, that was me just pointing out that you’re displaying an attitude that is frankly kind of crappy. And there’s plenty that ‘s passive aggressive about your posts. Plenty.
If we look at 1970, we see a set of clearly delineated cultural and political lines – it was the era of the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, the student rebellions, union activism, the environmentalist movement
And another straw man. Oh joy. No one’s saying that the times weren’t more simplistic politically but that how it is presented within the media and the narrative grammar used is considerably more simplistic. Because it has taken this amount of continual narrative development to get to this point. That goes for everything from news to SF to almost any kind of drama you can name. And it’s not simply a matter of technology. It’s also a matter of the expectations people had of their media.
By the way, on this score it’s you that’s continually leaping to the value judgements, not me. I can happily watch an episode of, say, Callan from the early 70s and find it just as interesting as, say, Homeland. But the faculties that one brings to watching each are necessarily different.
You argue that stage influenced television is somehow less worthy and interesting than cinema influenced television. That strikes me as a simple value judgement
Well, it would be, if that’s what I said. But I didn’t. What I said was that until say the late 80s, British TV production was essentially coming from a theatrical tradition and culture and that was the prevailing attitude in which drama was made. From the 90s onwards, programme-makers more influenced by the cinema became the norm and the culture began to change. I didn’t say sod all about one or the other being better or preferable.
I watched them with a certain degree of sophistication. I’m a published writer, I’ve got a bunch of short stories to my name, good reviews, written some novels, did a bit of journalism, collected a couple of university degrees, worked on some short films, even did an abortive book about the Lexx television series. I’d like to think I’m not a stupid man, and that I have some degree of insight.
Well I can also claim pretty much all of the above (not the Lexx thing. There are limits to even my geekdom) but it doesn’t suddenly give my opinion any more weight. And you’ll find that there’s lots of scarily talented and accomplished people on this site, from musicians to scientists to writers. And we all bring something to the party but no one gets special privileges.
RE. UNIT and Pertwee. I fail to see why this is relevant. As well as no one saying ‘all BG Doctor was shite’, no one has said ‘the 70s treatment of the Army was without on occasion nuance’. Of course it was. When it wasn’t descending into comedy blimp territory or just basically ripping off Nigel Kneale, of course. I’m actually getting kinda fucked off at this accusation that I think all of BG Who is rubbish btw — and all I have to do is point to mu posts in the rewatch sections of this site to prove that. Nor do I remember saying that Death in Heaven was a devastating critique of the modern military mind, on a par with Generation Kill.
Talking of which:
So, as I was saying, I actually went back and watched all these things, a lot of it I hadn’t seen in 20 or more years, or only dimly recalled. Quite a bit I’d never seen at all. I was surprised by the amount of nuance I’d missed
I don’t really need to do a marathon rewatch as I pretty much have rewatched them continually ever since the advent of the VCR etc. There’s almost nothing in Who I haven’t seen. Some recently, some not so much. I’m pretty familiar with most of it. And yeah, as the rewatches we do here show there are always thing you miss the first time around. And that’s as much to do with you not being the same person you were last time around. I’m delighted if you find it endlessly engrossing. I disagree. I find it interesting to watch and it means a lot to me personally but I can objectively see in terms of both modern and historical production values, rather a lot of the time it was winging it.
I seem to be basically repeating myself here so I think; we should just agree to disagree.
18 May 2015 at 21:14 #40184@jimthefish I’ll politely ask you to reconsider some of the comments you’ve directed at me.
18 May 2015 at 21:16 #40185@denvaldron Many thanks, and no problem. We’re all still learning here – this is new. We’re trying to do something different. We’re trying to be a place where we’re all friends with a shared interest, and what we have in common is what brings us here.
I would like this to be a party for my internet friends. And at my party no one gets angry with anyone else. I’m not saying you did, but between you and Jim there was a tension that I wanted to dissolve.
Honestly, everyone here wants to be your friend (I hope) and have discussions like friends do.
18 May 2015 at 21:46 #40186@denvaldron @jimthefish @craig As the Doctors said in the 50th —
“Loving the posh gravity of brave words Dick Van Dyke” — or in other words
very interesting recent conversations here although a bit snarky but oh well still entertaining
– thanks folks 😉18 May 2015 at 22:03 #40187@ichabod – I’ve been wondering about Clara – the thing that I’m wondering is
how much Missy sees herself in Clara. Is Clara how she sees her very younger
self when she may have been the Doctors sidekick companion? Does that give us
any clues into where this story maybe going? I’ve been trying to ‘sleuth’
it out. Its recently been ‘Whosession’ to extrapolate something about that if
you get my meaning.18 May 2015 at 22:32 #40188This issue of canon seems to come up repeatedly, not only here. The challenge with an entity like Doctor Who (and really, is there any other entity quite like DW?) is that it is so massive and has travelled in many directions over the years. It’s a little bit like asking what is canonical in Batman. I’m not sure that they ever have this argument in Batman circles, if there are Batman circles.
On the whole, I tend to view anything that happened in the TV show (and the TV movie) as canonical, although I will admit to a willingness to ignore a few things I just can’t bring myself around to (half-human Doctor, anyone?). I have a certain amount of space in my personal canon for the Big Finish audios, because they (mostly) feature performances by the original actors. This is arbitrary, I know, and won’t matter to everyone. But it seems to matter to me. I do not include novels or comics in my canon, although lots of people do. I have seen writing of baroque complexity that seeks to reconcile the conflicts between storylines in various media, and it is quite impressive.
But one thing relevant to the current discussion that I do not consider canon is anything that was conceived or planned but never made explicit in the show, such as the “Cartmel Masterplan”. Someone may go there in the future, and if they do, then there goes my argument, because I’m not making the show, so I don’t get to decide! But for now, I feel justified in saying that if we weren’t shown it, then it didn’t happen.
18 May 2015 at 22:43 #40189@lisa Is Clara how she sees her very younger self when she may have been the Doctors sidekick companion?
@purofilion made this comment about Missy and Osgood: Did her spontaneous reaction to Osgood come from a certain measure of envy? Possibly. I’m sure many 2nd year post modern, linguistic and psychological papers could be written analysing the Missy/Doctor/Osgood triangle. Though if there’s actually a triangle, remains to be seen.
There’s also the fact that Missy killed, or tried to kill, Kate Stewart, who is in a sense a companion of the Doctor. So it seems to me that there is very definitely an element of competition there: Mixmaster wants to be the Doctor’s companion, she “wants her friend back”, and doesn’t want anyone else standing in the way. I too wonder where this will go in the coming season. It’s not hard to imagine a confrontation of some kind between Missy and Clara!
18 May 2015 at 23:11 #40190A further thought on the Master/Missy that has just occurred to me: I realize that I am not altogether seeing the character as female, but more as a Time Lord who is currently female. In much the same way, I never really saw Eleven as a highly strung, energetic young man, but as the Doctor currently dressed in the body of one. This brings back the whole endlessly fascinating (to me, anyway) notion of regeneration and what it would actually mean. One of the reasons I have personally never been interested in the notion of a female Doctor is that the Doctor has also felt very male to me. By which I mean, whatever his incarnation, his personality treats, his strengths and weaknesses, seem to be what I think of as male ones. Now obviously, we have not seen nearly as much of the Master over 50 years, and don’t know him nearly as well, but I’m not sure I feel this so strongly in his case. Maybe its just that I haven’t seen enough of his character to make a judgement of that sort. Or maybe, the character that we have been given just works a little better in that regard, for me at least. In any event, I would think that switching gender on regeneration is probably not all that common, so it wouldn’t be something you would usually expect to see until it actually happened. When Ten changed into Eleven, he thought for a moment that he might be female, and seemed quite shocked by it. I wonder if the Mixmaster was shocked?
18 May 2015 at 23:33 #40191@arbutus @ichabod So if Missy is seeing herself at a distance in Clara maybe she is also
attempting to restage some aspect of her much much younger life when she and Doctor were
possibly not adversaries thru Clara? I mean Missy is the control freak (but Clara is a bit too)
and there is a relationship between coping and control. Missy has said she chose Clara and has
already been influencing the relationship between the Doc and Clara. I guess what I’m getting at
is Missy clinging to some perverted pipe dream about herself thru Clara? I also got the hunch that
she will be wanting to expand this latching onto Clara even more to re-capture/re-do something from
her own past and yes I agree there will be a psychotic confrontation and maybe a few! I think this
is part of where the story is going for season 9. Look out Clara- a storm is rolling in your
direction!18 May 2015 at 23:40 #40192This doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere, DV, as there’s a sense of combative straw man arguments. Just from a quick scan, I can clearly see that Jim’s identified the BG series as having some truly “inspired” moments. I personally think there’s nuance and some sophistication but due to public sensitivities, political and social restraints, the old series tends to come off as less sophisticated.
I’d also agree that media presentations in the ’60s and ’70s were naïve and simplistic compared with today’s spontaneous and more sophisticated expectations and presentations which reasons are due to a diverse series of issues including 24 hour, digital, multichanneling and the inclusion of minority group holders with ‘radical’ opinions. Sometimes a certain medium delivers, and sometimes it doesn’t. Print and television media were conservative even if academia and public psychology were ahead of the game.
I don’t think anyone (much less Jim) was defining the BG Who era as illegitimate, sub-par or defined by its “worst examples.” Anyway, Jim has spoken for himself but I guess I wanted to make a comment about the need for some members to lecture or highlight and catalogue, on a number of occasions, their credentials and publications. I guess I could add my own little list but I don’t feel the need. I get judged on what I write here and that’s probably enough.
There’s also a tendency, for some members to really lecture others -I don’t like the overblown quality of that but it’s a personal thing and despite the length of some posts, I’ve found I’ve learnt a lot -particularly on re-reading. You yourself have a tremendous knowledge of Who, in general and I thought your comment: “….Kill The Moon and In the Forest of the Night have their proponents. That’s fine. For myself, I consider them utterly disgraceful and catastrophic fails on every possible level. But I don’t feel the need to debate their merits here” interesting as I personally loved those episodes. They appeal on a metaphoric level and I think you probably could debate their merits -that would be the point and I’d enjoy that. I think @ichabod has mentioned they’ve enjoyed those episodes (to a degree) as well, so a debate would be grand.
Do newbies get smacked around? I find this, personally, untrue. In the last year, I’ve welcomed most new members where possible. When I first joined, I made a serious error of getting involved in an argument which preceded my membership. It was a silly thing to do -and I didn’t really understand at the time why I was ‘clocked on the head’. Looking back, though, I do see that it was necessary. I was veering towards a sarcastic, negative approach and I’d barely introduced myself!
I’ve been clocked since and probably will again. 🙁
on DiH (desperately grabbing the aeroplane before being thrown out!), I’d repeat what I’ve said upthread, Osgood was a fabulous addition. Her death, like any well put together character was unexpected but necessary as a pay off; as a reminder that Missy wasn’t just a playful baddie but represented an omnipresent evil. I wouldn’t agree that she was a “character [was]created as a rather snide backhand to the show’s fans.” I can understand her being a fan of the Doctor and the scarf was a sweet touch: but “snide,” no I don’t think so. It wasn’t some ‘fan wank’. There seems to be a general love of the character whilst accepting that she fulfils a necessary role -a nod, sure, towards the Doctor’s fans but then being in modern UNIT would give her the excuse to play the fan.
As a science buff, she completes the role of a certain male scientist in UNIT who appeared in one of Tennant’s Easter specials -where they found themselves on a desert planet in a London bus. There could be an underlying implication that the combination of ‘fan’ and ‘female’ is derogatory, naturally. Also, by nodding to the fans of this series -some in their ’70s and ’80s it acts as celebration, surely, rather than condescending offering. I would think taking that latter view incorporates, rather subtly, the notion that the writer is perhaps better than the fan or the follower; that Osgood is a backhand compliment to the dummy viewer.
So, her presence had a significant role -it wasn’t just an appearance in DiH but in Smith and Tennant’s anniversary episode and so she had longevity and certainly the boards, all over, defined her as a fully rounded character. Killing her off was a definitive tactic -I’d argue it was every bit as powerful as a Whedon comparison: witness Anya’s death in Buffy 7 or Lindsey’s in Angel 5. Bringing her back irritates me (again it was @Burrunjor who popped that Spoiler in and did so, I’d argue, deliberately, to piss people off) as the payoff is made redundant but I imagine Moffat and writers will provide a sufficient in- story reason. Perhaps it will act as metaphoric attribution, also, whereby ‘the fan delivers’ or ‘the fan lives on’ -or some such basic and elemental ‘idea’. Who knows!
Kindest, puro.
18 May 2015 at 23:57 #40193@arbutus oh yes, to the idea of Missy not “as female, but more as a Time Lord who is currently female. In much the same way, I never really saw Eleven as a highly strung, energetic young man, but as the Doctor currently dressed in the body of one.”
Totally in agreement there. I see the Master as a she/he in this past series. Witness my comment above where I said something along the lines of “Missy was…..and he…..was able to manipulate his body, looks and character’. This is sufficiently interesting as a debate in and of itself because, as you implied, it can be applied to the Doctor as TL, or ‘person’ with a current ‘aspect’ rather than a specific gender. It’s why I don’t have an opinion about a regenerated female Doctor: they’re alien. They’re infinitely older and very different from us earthlings so they generally don’t fall in love and do the snogging routine -except for the romantic Tennant! Smithy’s love for River is compatible with her TL DNA and so I can respect that particular relationship.
@lisa I also agree with the Master’s choice of Clara possibly as a rekindling of a ‘connection’ between the Doctor and the Master. Certainly using a companion to manipulate the Doctor’s world (as it’s seen as his weak leak) is the Master’s privilege!
Back to Osgood’s return – I’m just as unimpressed by this reveal as I would be about a River flood. I enjoyed her character (most of it) but I think her time is complete. That final kiss and conversation between Smithy and herself was quite sublime. To return to this (though understandable, it’s a show about time travel) would considerably devalue her role, for me.
19 May 2015 at 00:12 #40194@jimthefish (I think) re Osgood’s death: “. . . it was a significant character beat for both the Doctor and the Master. It emphasised that for all her whackiness, Missy is dangerous, lethal even. And it showed the Doctor that by not taking Missy seriously enough, he ended up getting someone killed. Of course, his battles with the Master lead to lots of collateral damage but it’s not that often that we see the Doctor forced to confront it in this way. It’s a significant moment because it changes our attitudes to both characters.”
Thanks for that point — that not only was it a casual show of favor from the Doctor that put the final nail in Osgood’s coffin, but that *he didn’t notice that his invitation to her was a problem until he came back and found Osgood’s glasses and got the message. I hadn’t thought of this in terms of it being his fault for not having the nous to avoid stinging MixMaster like that; which is, of course, also part of his basic nature as well as his slowly resolving internal discombobulation through S8. The death did certainly highlight MixMaster’s spitefulness in a way that should serve as a warning to the Doctor henceforward to *pay better attention* to the negative capacities of the Master, even the cheery, flirty Master in Victorian/Edwardian drag (including, perhaps, the female body as part of the “drag” aspect).
@lisa Re the MixMaster/Clara relationship; there’s some tricky twist at the bottom of it, so it’s hard to get a firm-feeling grip on what, exactly, MixMaster sees when she looks at Clara, and what she means by her comments. Whatever their background relationship, I agree with @puro and @arbutus that MixMaster is definitely jealous of the intimate personal entanglement between Clara and 12 because she wants to have some version of that with him herself. I doubt that she sees her younger self in Clara, because I don’t think MixMaster sees anyone as “like” her in any way — except the Doctor, who, maddeningly from her perspective, refuses to acknowledge it. S9 should throw some better light on the situation.
@denvaldron @craig Well, when newbies come bounding in announcing that Clara is rubbish, or that the only worthwhile Doctor was 10, or that x or y on the creative team is a lazy bum bent on “ruining” the show, they do tend to draw some well-deserved fire from the locals, who are past such flat, self-important inanities and aren’t too interested in spending a lot of time educating an obstreperous newbie who hasn’t bothered to glance over the FAQ. The newbie either catches on quick and hangs around for the good stuff, or takes off in high dudgeon (good). People who come to Craig’s party with their manners turned on while they suss out the local culture are, AFAICS, welcomed in and treated kindly. So “smacking around” to any degree is strictly case by case, I think, and never arbitrary. Which is one of the great attractions of Craig’s “party” for fans who love the show more than they love showing off, IMO.
19 May 2015 at 00:32 #40195@purofilion
My theory about Time Lords, regeneration, and love, is that the extent of regeneration, the depth of it, would make long term relationships like marriage fairly difficult. We’ve never (to my knowledge, anyway) seen a depiction of marriage on Gallifrey (someone correct me if I’m wrong, there!). I suspect that intimate relationships are more ephemeral, although in the normal lifespan of a single regeneration, that could potentially be a good long time. But the idea that intimate relationships/love affairs don’t normally survive the regeneration of one or both partners would actually explain quite a lot! It would explain why the Doctor’s relationship with certain companions could change considerably in nature from one regeneration to the next (Sarah Jane with Three vs. Sarah Jane with Four, for instance). Rose is an excellent case in point here. She and Nine share a warm relationship, and view each other as special for some very good reasons; shift ahead a regen and suddenly they are “in love” in an often exclusive and not always admirable way (although I have written elsewhere that, in my view, the Doctor was more wanting to be in love than feeling the real deal). She gets jealous and behaves badly; he gives her up and treats Martha badly while he mourns her. And then he regenerates and lo and behold, Eleven never mentions Rose, or appears to even think of her, ever again. Similarly, Twelve doesn’t seem to miss Amy, he’s all wrapped up in Clara now.
This is why I am not sure that River Song could convincingly return; there’s no evidence to suggest that Twelve would view her with anything other than a warm nostalgia (much the way Ten seemed to view Sarah Jane when he ran into again).
Interestingly, this ties in to @ichabod‘s thought about Missy: I don’t think MixMaster sees anyone as “like” her in any way — except the Doctor, who, maddeningly from her perspective, refuses to acknowledge it. Yes, it must be highly aggravating for MixMaster to see that the Doctor seemingly invests more emotion and trust in these human companions, whose part in his life can only ever be temporary, while he pushes the MixMaster away. I wonder if he/she regrets the choice made as the Sim Master, to die rather than regenerate when the Doctor was pleading with him to live?
19 May 2015 at 00:38 #40196And @purofilion, I would guess that Moffat already knew at the time of Osgood’s death that she wasn’t gone for good. He seems to play the long game most of the time. So my hope is that her return will be both convincing and cool!
19 May 2015 at 01:14 #40198@ichabod — Okay but tell me how it is that Missy dresses like Mary Poppins the ultimate
nanny and Clara was also a nanny and both of them are very proficient in various hacking
skills? Lots of instances of that for both. I still have this feeling that there is some
very odd hard to pin down relationship of Missy seeing herself in Clara thing going on here.
I let you know if I can follow up with better clues19 May 2015 at 01:27 #40199@lisa and others — I agree that the Mary Poppins persona of the Mixmaster and Clara’s previous occupation are no coincidence. It did make me wonder in a more fanciful moment if this Claricle isn’t going to turn out to be a chamaelon-arched future Missy. But that’s probably too much.
@arbutus — I’ve wondered many of the same things about regeneration and Time Lord marriage. Their attitudes to sex and love must be quite different. I did used to wonder whether ‘irreconcilable regeneration’ might be a recognised ground for divorce on Gallifrrey. Not unreasonable I would have thought.
19 May 2015 at 01:51 #40201@arbutus Mmmm, I agree — it would be awfully tough to synchronize enough of the changes involved in Regeneration x 2 such that the couple involved could keep a satisfactorily balanced relationship going for more than one lifetime or two, and that’s assuming that TL’s have some conscious control over the regen process, which doesn’t seem to be the case (at least not commonly, or in predictable ways — “I never know where the faces come from”, for example). Long life (minus regens) has been addressed by several good SF writers as what do you do with marriage when humans routinely live to be several hundred years old? Most solutions are either short-term contract marriages (20 yrs renewable), or flexible affiliational groups within which couples, trios, etc. shift and change with the changing desires of the members concerned. *Nobody* assumes that X marries Y and they stay married (in the 1:1 sense til death that’s the ideal in the West) for 150 years.
Reminds me — Jarmusch’s recent vampire movie, “Only Lovers Left Alive”, posits a vampire couple (probably Adam and Eve) who drift around without seeing each other for centuries and then come together again for sex and companionship for a while . . .
Anyway, MissMaster’s fixation on the Doctor suggests that she broods a bit on past relationships, though she’s so fiercely concentrated on herself and him *now* that I doubt that she goes so far as to wish she’d stayed alive back then. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who second-guesses herself that way — to egotistical for regrets. You’re right about the perversity, in her eyes, of the Doctor’s penchant for human company — she refers to us, dismissively, as his “pets” in DiH, which is not an unreasonable take, IMO. It’s the *intimacy* (not sexual so much as emotional and psychological) that the Doctor manages to achieve (to one degree or another) with humans that makes us so valuable to him, I think; and that’s what MissMaster is jealous of.
it is, after all, what everyone seeks: “Just see me,” whole and complete, as my unvarnished self. Not just trust, but ultimate trust is the prize — that even betrayal can’t make a dent in. Who doesn’t hunger for that? And how maddening, how unfair it must seem that the Doctor somehow manages to find it, alien and crazy as he is. But not with the one other surviving member of his kind (never mind that s/he is lethally nuts). Clara better watch her own back in S9, when MissMaster is around . . .
19 May 2015 at 01:54 #40202@lisa — well, you’re onto something there (Scary Poppins the nanny), but couldn’t it also be that MissMaster is framing herself as Clara’s stronger, smarter, more connected-to-the-TL-Doctor rival for his regard? Too soon to tell, I think.
19 May 2015 at 02:14 #40203@arbutus @lisa yes, I agree with you there and @jimthefish and @ichabod
regarding marriage and relationships. Again, we pin a lot on the Tennant doctor being virtually human in his approach and so many fans became quite obsessed with the Rose/Dr phenomenon which, I suppose, was something RTD thought would encourage the reboot and he was probably right -though it seemed a bit odd for an interstellar creature some 1000 years old to fall in love with a 19 year old girl; barely a woman, really (don’t shout me down 🙂 )
I imagine they’re rather sophisticated. Could that mean that ‘true’ marriage in some conservative circles would outlast regeneration? Or the opposite? Based on Arbutus’ comment where the Dr barely acknowledges Rose (when he’s 11), I would say the latter! Handy, eh?
As always, what about the kids? 🙂
What about when they regenerate and there’s grandkids? You’d need a decent family tree with uploaded regen photos so you don’t screw up the Gallifrey Independence Day (GIDDY) cards.
Och! humour. ’nuff of that.
19 May 2015 at 02:18 #40204@ichabod Yeah It could be that Missy is using Clara as a template for what
she thinks is the Doctors concept of what are very acceptable attributes
of a companion. I still cant shake off the feeling that Missy is latching on
to Clara for the purpose of some perverted pipe dream. Possibly to re-do some
aspect in her own past. Maybe I have some of it backwards in that she doesn’t
see herself in Clara but just sees aspects she needs to emulate? Not sure
More sleuthing required19 May 2015 at 12:17 #40219I am not entirely sure that each regeneration is an entirely new person as it were. CapDoc tells Clara “I’m still me,” or words to that effect when she receives the phone call from SmithyDoc. To use some outdated Freudian terms, the Id does not change, just aspects of the ego. The greatest change is in appearance there are some changes to the outer manifestation of the personality but the inner consciousness remains the same. It is difficult to extrapolate too much from that however as in the same episode he appears to have difficulty remembering the experiences of previous incarnations. We also have that lovely line in the 50th Special, “What you do in the privacy of your own regeneration is your business”, but I don’t think that was overly serious.
I think, hope even, that there are some mysteries about regeneration that we will never fully understand. A little ambiguity is handy for script writing purposes too. I am certain that Moffat doesn’t want too much to be set in stone. Canon as @jimthefish has pointed out, can be a creative millstone around the neck.
Going way way back to last week’s rewatch of the Deadly Assassin it was apparent in that episode that Time Lords could recognise each other despite changing appearances. The reporter recognises the Doctor and comments upon his changed face. It would appear that the War Council recognised the various faces of the Doctor but then they might just have seen them or at least most of them, in the records.
Time Lord attachments are an interesting question. Until the Day of the Doctor it was implied that the citizens of Gallifrey were a bunch of crusty old men wearing baroque robes, with the not so notable exception of the rebels whom Leela encounters. The ability to regenerate creates a lot of issues and the scenes from Gallifrey throw up a lot of questions about how that is dealt with by the society. Does adults ever regenerate as children? Love must transcend regeneration if children can regenerate. It is clear that the young are raised in family situations. If a child regenerates it will still need the unconditional love of the parent/s.
Longevity would certainly test a relationship and I am certain many would not survive that however I would dispute the assumption that no relationships could last 150 years. My aunt and uncle were married for well over sixty years and very much in love until death separated them. I really think they would happily have been together for 150 years. They were fairly exceptional though and it would certainly prove the exception rather than the rule.
It is hardly surprising that MixMaster is obsessing about the Doctor. As well as being the only other of his/her kind he had been his/her foil for so long. Given that he/her has always believed him/herself to be the superior of the two the possessiveness is a natural extension of that obsession. If she set up Clara to lure the Doctor to her “netherworld” then, given that that plan failed, I would agree that Clara is now in severe danger.
And August is tooo far away….
Cheers
Janette
19 May 2015 at 12:31 #40220Eleven never mentions Rose, or appears to even think of her, ever again. Similarly, Twelve doesn’t seem to miss Amy, he’s all wrapped up in Clara now
I think you are perhaps underestimating how much time has past – Moffat was quite careful to spell out the centuries that past between Eleventh Hour and Day of the Doctor. I do not think that was accidental. Ten immediately twigged the Bad wolf reference. But to Eleven it was centuries ago. (And did any Doctor mention Sarah Jane before School Reunion?)
19 May 2015 at 12:39 #40221It might be worth lobbing in (in a what if the Master were the Doctor’s bruv kind of way) that we’re never really given any idea of the mechanics of regeneration, except in Marc Platt’s novel Lungbarrow, which suggested that Time Lords were grown in Looms rather than born. But as Lungbarrow was rejected as a TV series and only exists in the world of the Virgin novels then that’s hardly canon and can’t be relied upon.
20 May 2015 at 03:05 #40228@pedant @janetteb @arbutus @jimthefish
I’m confused. So, between 11 th hour and Day of the Doctor, centuries have passed. Have they? I know there was a loss of maybe 150 years outlined during the Silent’s visit where they’re having their ‘final’ picnic in Utah but I thought the real passing of time (as in substantial time, even for the Doctor) was in Time of the Doctor?
I get the impression that some details are simply missed by the Smithy Doctor -all the twirling and furling and the ‘bow tie, pocket watch-type academic’ ‘confused,’ fussy and forgetful behaviour was part of the Smith Doctor’s personality in that regeneration so he would look ‘confused’ during conversations in the cell during the Day of the Doctor. I get the impression the War Doctor was more switched on. Even Tennant’s mad running and general style didn’t eclipse his excellent memory.
As to Bad Wolf, could it be that Smithy thought it wasn’t relevant: “not my regeneration,” therefore something to ignore?
It’s been an awful long time since I watched it so I need clarification.
I should add that as a TV serial, perhaps current showrunners don’t mention companions for different Doctors and their particular showrunners.
Partly, it’s a ‘thing’ (yep, boy am I clever) where you don’t mention Martha if you’re not writing for her and she’s not on screen and the other reason might be for the new viewers whereby a standalone regeneration doesn’t refer to other companions for simplicity’s sake. Sarah Jane was very different, obviously, and it was great that she worked so well with Tennant (I presume RTD had already conversed with the BBC about the Sarah Jane Adventures by then?).
Kindest, puro.
20 May 2015 at 03:27 #40229@jimthefish you’d know these things and @bluesqueakpip too (where is she btw?), hallooo??
If an actor has ‘done’ their part (as in Dr Who), and a new showrunner -Moffat – comes along and there’s a new Doctor, Smithy, with a companion and a whole vision is established for the next three or so, then would it be frowned upon to bring up names of other companions not just for the sake of clarity but because they’d need some remuneration? Or is that fanciful?
I don’t mean a one-off mention but a more regular reference -a photo of that companion/actor (take Martha for instance) or her leather jacket that perhaps she left on board, or a journal referencing the whole nightmare whereby her parents, held captive by the Master, still remember experiences, whilst the rest of the world has been retconned.
I can only think there’d be ‘issues’ but the more likely scenario would be people asking “who is that?” Most viewers aren’t the sort who necessarily remember every companion. Nor do they watch every week; Real Life: small children, parties on a Saturday evening etc… So, putting in references to former companions would confuse the 44 min schedule and it wouldn’t have literary sense. So does the Doctor remember everything and everyone but as viewers, we don’t, so we’re not given a ‘key’ to this particular part of the Doctor’s memory?
@arbutus what do you think? Have we constructed this idea of the Doctor ‘not remembering’ because any regeneration implies the construction of a quite separate personality (to the point they’re very different people)? Have we done this to understand why the Doctor doesn’t refer to earlier experiences and people very often (other than a flippant reference)? However, Deep Breath with its phone call from the past and Capaldi’s “it’s still me, Clara” suggests otherwise but I’m not entirely sure the “it’s me” phrase would work if Amy suddenly appeared or Rose, for instance. It’s a new Doctor with a new storyline. There’s not going to be an Amy or a Martha or anyone else not related to the Clara storyline. Danny, yes, (Clara related) and Osgood, yes, as she’d be seen as an ongoing UNIT connection.
I’m an overblown windbag. Sorry!
20 May 2015 at 08:04 #40233@purofilion — The Doctor’s memory . . . He’s said, from time to time, that he remembers everything, every detail, presumably as a way of honoring the reality and events of each segment of his lives and each of his companions with their mayfly lifespans, or at any rate of assuring them that long as he lives, each matters to him and he will never forget them.
But I think he does forget them by compartmentalizing, the way people who live a long (for us) time don’t keep everyone they knew along the way present and in mind all the time. He says he remembers; so either he’s telling the truth or he’s lying to make the mayflies feel better about not staying in his life for good. If he’s telling the truth, and every moment impresses itself indelibly on his memory, what does that mean for someone who has lived so many moments? I can’t help but think of it in a practical way, because I tend to think that way.
If you had ten lifetimes of different lengths but adding up to a couple thousand years, there’s just no way, IMO, that you could keep all of those memories at the top level of your memory — where the short term memories of “just now” are kept but just below them the longer term memories of “a few years ago” and “when I was a child” and everything in between. This allows you to be present in this moment, undistracted by the past(s), so that a) you can deal with *now* however is required, and b) so that you can pay it enough attention to turn it into an indelible memory in its turn. So I think that CapDoc, for instance, *can* remember, say, Amy, but normally he simply doesn’t. When Half Face has captured him and Clara in those elevator-chairs and CapDoc needs her to pass him the sonic, he mutters, “It’s times like this I miss Amy”, who had long legs and so was better suited than short Clara to reaching out and grabbing the dropped sonic with her feet. Those little asides referencing long-past experience indicate that he does have it all stored up, as promised — but mostly tucked away out of sight and out of mind so he can freely and clear-sightedly deal with the demands of the “top layer” of now.
To my mind, it’s a similar arrangement to the way we humans deal with our own successive reincarnations: we don’t (normally) remember our previous lifetimes because those memories would be dangerously distracting and confusing *now*. I can’t imagine another way (but multi-compartmentalizing) of retaining all of that many lives’ experience (ours of the Doctor’s) that would be completely crazy-making and paralyzing if constantly all top layer, no matter how many pianos’ worth of brain you might be stocked with.
And you’re no windier than I am, puro.
20 May 2015 at 08:17 #40234@janetteb I agree, each new Doctor isn’t exactly “a new man”; he seems to be an amalgam of his previous selves, but subsumed under a fresh mix of the elements that make up his present personality. There are memories of his previous personalities, but they’re mixed in now as memories, not as the discreet, living moments of awareness that they once were. SmithDoc foresees the winking out of his living awareness, his particular personality, during regeneration when the new personality is stirred together, which is also what TennantDoc means by “I don’t want to go”. “I” is that personality, which won’t be lost as a set of memories but will shut down as an active, integrated awareness that once was this “I” Doctor. That’s what makes sense to me, and also correlates with our human stages of growth in a given lifetime: I have (some) memories of my childhood including feelings (some of them) attached to those memories, but that child’s awareness is gone, grown over, by later stages of me leading up to now, this stage, which is in some ways a different personality that that kid-me was (and, in memory, remains as a fixed being).
Why is it so much fun to chat about this stuff? I guess because we only find out what we think about it by actually thinking about it, and putting that into words? Brain exercise; thought maneuvers. Love it.
20 May 2015 at 08:20 #40235@ichabod “To my mind, it’s a similar arrangement to the way we humans deal with our own successive reincarnations: we don’t (normally) remember our previous lifetimes because those memories would be dangerously distracting and confusing *now*. I can’t imagine another way (but multi-compartmentalizing) of retaining all of that many lives’ experience (ours of the Doctor’s) that would be completely crazy-making and paralysing”
Now, isn’t the reincarnation ‘crazy making’ aplenty? 🙂 You speak as if reincarnation is a fully accepted reality. Bah!
I kid.
Maybe it is! As for “windier” well, ichi, you’re a writer, you’re allowed to be. 😉
20 May 2015 at 09:10 #40236@purofilion Reincarnation not only isn’t much accepted in the West, it’s also not a uniform belief system where it *is* accepted. There are a number of different versions of how it might work, e.g. the Dalai Lama probably believes that it’s a straight progression from “lower” to “higher” spiritual awareness, with detours to live a bug’s life when you’ve been bad. I don’t think of it that way at all. Luckily for all those Buddhists out there, I guess, including the ones who believe in demons and lots of other frills left over from previous religions in Buddhist areas, I’m not the Dalai Lama . . .
But I like the analogy, in this case, between regeneration as portrayed in DW and what I think about how reincarnation works.
“Bah!” is a perfectly appropriate response; so is “I kid”. Can’t prove anything one way or the other, so not to worry. And thanks re long-windedness, but it should work the other way around, shouldn’t it? I’m a writer by trade, so I should be skilled enough to be more *concise*! (Alas, it seems — not in this lifetime!)
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