Death in Heaven

[lisa @lisa]

@scaryb I guess I’m differentiating between those Cybermen that we saw in the nethersphere and the
grave yard Cybers – to me the graveyard bunch are [and I cant explain why entirely] as low ranking
privates and the Cybers that were in the nethersphere as higher ranking “chosen” as in the
episodes where we saw Missy choosing certain people, Danny was chosen. So to my mind not all the cybers
do not get a return ticket to the nethersphere

[Anonymous @]

@apopheniac  whatareyoudoingtome?  With trololo? 10-freakin-hours!!  OMG as the younger ‘crowd’ would say.

burnin’ up.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@rob Well in the eternal triangle of Bucks, Oxon and Northamptonshire  where the winds blow, the rain cascsdes and the earth slowly liquifies into a soul sapping gelatinous ooze….

Does it continue to ooze all the way down the M40 to coagulate on the M25? This would explain a lot…

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@phaseshift Gosh – what a coup. Jacobi has dabbled in the world of the Whoniverse in audio, but it was a delight to have that reveal on TV, and see the cosy charm of Yana gave way to the hollow, bitter, megalomaniac who’d quite happily kill the lovely alien who’d been helping him. Because he didn’t like her.

The Yana Master is, for me, the one with the only genuinely shocking and terrifying moment – where his eyes go black and he murders Chantho. His psychotic turn at that instant is far more unnerving than all of Simm’s, Ainley’s or Roberts’ hamming it up.

I’ve not yet seen enough of the Delgado Master to pass judgement on the original. A situation I hope to remedy, as I build up my DVD collection. (So far, I’ve only seen The Claws of Axos, The Sea Devils and The Frontier in Space). For some reason, Delgado’s portrayal makes me think of Obi-Wan Kenobi gone over to the dark side.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@lisa The cybermen in the graveyard are described as “newborns”. They are still developing. I think there was a reference to a second cloud of “rain” which would deliver a chemical to complete the process to make them seriously scary

@badwulf Agree with you re Jacobi’s prtrayal. I felt as much shock and loss for Chantho’s death as I did for Osgood’s. (And apologies for not commenting on your Dr Who appreciation chart – excellent stuff! Will get on to adding my assessments soon 🙂 )

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Well, in regard to the ‘Bring back Osgood!’ movement.

I think Ingrid Oliver will be back. But as Zygon!Osgood. Why?

Because:

• it will keep the impact of Osgood’s death.
• it will give us a ‘good’ Zygon.
• a good Zygon will fit right in with the Moffat theme of ‘no race consists of 100% monsters’

We already know something about Zygon!Osgood. Firstly, they’ve got a really nice line in verbal knife-twisting (the first scene with Osgood). Secondly, they were happy to keep quiet – rather than bust up a fair treaty – when the two Osgoods discovered which race they each were. So they’re already a long way to joining Mme Vastra, Strax, Dalek Rusty, CyberBrig etc as an example of ‘monster on the Doctor’s side’.

A Zygon Osgood could be a lot of fun… 😉

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@bluesqueakpip

I agree that a Zygon!Osgood would be great. But do Zygons not revert to their original form if the person they’re imitating dies?

On this year’s theme of “what is a good man (or dalek)?” we also have the Master/Missy. You could see DW/DiH as suggesting that the Master could  have reformed, that she seriously just wants to be the Doctor’s friend again and to be “understood”. (Do I believe a word of that? Not flaming likely! I saw what she did to Osgood!)

[lisa @lisa]

@scaryb Yes- The graveyard Cybers were refered to as Newborns by the Doctor which reinforces why I think
they aren’t ‘completed” enough to be re-booted into the nethersphere
@bluesqueakpip I have a post a bit way up thread about Osgood- I had this notion that it might be Missy that
wants to bring her back as part of some ‘Master” plan. Missy has so much experience now with resurrecting
both herself and the cybers. It would be really something if she attempts to resurrect a Osgood/Zygon!
Its too soon for me to say why I think it could be a Missy plan other than she actually wants the
Zygon because they can shape shift and this Osgood version has knowledge of how to get into UNIT ? Regarding
the idea that the Zygon wont come back as Osgood if she’s dead- well there are a lot of dead in the
Nethersphere with their minds still intact ??
?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@scaryb

But do Zygons not revert to their original form if the person they’re imitating dies?

Well, if the Eighth Doctor Audios are now canon – not necessarily.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@scaryb    I’d say that Missy definitely wants to be the Doctor’s friend again, and be understood by him as she understands herself. And we saw her try to convince the Doctor that he is just like her, so that this could happen. But that doesn’t mean that she has reformed in any way that we would recognize!

[BFINCH @bfinch]

I don’t know if this has been discussed, but think Santa may undo some of the wrongs that happened. Surely it can’t end on such a downer this season.

[Anonymous @]

@bfinch  yeah, I think it’s been discussed -Santa has implied ‘don’t leave it like this’. Then again, there were many positives this final episode: a salute to the Brig, his saving of his own daughter; Missy gone (for awhile); Danny returning the dead child and a knowledge of Clara’s love for him, and his toward her; The Dr refusing the army the Master had made and maybe, just maybe Osgood returning; but hers was a sacrifice and as others have said (up-thread) it’s a story of pain where good, harmless people die too. As the 9th once said, sometimes, “everybody lives”. Not this time.

Welcome to you BFINCH -are you a newbie on this Forum? 🙂 If so, have a great time here!  Did you enjoy this season?

Kindest, purofilion.

[BFINCH @bfinch]

My favorites this season was Deep Breath, Listen and Orient Express.  I think Capaldi is excellent. I think the Pink and Clara relationship didn’t have to be so toxic to the Doctor companion relationship. I never felt the relationship with Matt Smith’s Doctor was convincing, now with Peter Capaldi she comes across as shallow. I think the show will be much better without her. I have watched since Tom Baker. I used to live overseas in London and Aberdeen so the mass fandom is really cool to witness after being a fan for so long.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@bfinch Welcome – you’ll find this site an enjoyable place to while away your time before the xmas special.

It’s a shame that you find Clara shallow – I’ve found her much more enjoyable as time has gone on. Her appearance as the soufflé-girl Claricle in Asylum of the Daleks I found very smug and irritating, but as ClaraPrime she has grown a lot on me. It has been nice to hear an English accent from North of London in Doctor Who again – I don’t think we’ve had one since Ecclestone’s tenure.

We’ve had a few posters recently who have been fans since the Baker or Pertwee era who have also found Clara to be problematic – but I find her portrayal of competence coupled with an addiction to time-travelling shenanigans  to reveal a much more complex character than, for example, Rose or Jo Grant. In spirit, she is much more like Romana 2 or Sarah Jane.

[zeitgeis @zeitgeis]

Who thinks Santa will prove to be a bit twisted? A “real” Santa would be hard to swallow. Not Missy twisted, but twisted nevertheless. I am thinking that the mantra “who has been good and who has been bad” might be interestingly interpreted by our Santa (who surely will be an alien). Recall the Doctor deciding he wasn’t a good man. That would portend some nastiness for him. Clara has been an inveterate liar. That could be a problem. But Danny Pink has been a moral man. So he returns to his school to keep teaching math.

This is obviously not a spoiler. It is too nutty too be so. I so confused by prior posts, I felt like contributing some nonsense.

[Whisht @whisht]

ok – Bonkers theory!

Danny has been taken back to the Nethersphere, but it is collapsing and when it does he will truly ‘die’.
Clara manages to find the solution of pushing him into another dimension in order to survive.

This other dimension will be Flatland.

Clara will decide to leave the Doctor and her family and join her beloved in Flatland.

Where she will finally be forced to talk to him straight.

🙂

[Anonymous @]

@whisht  perfect!  Straight-talking people living in a flat… Xcellent. Good to see you ‘oot and aboot’.

 

[BFINCH @bfinch]

I dislike every time Clara is asked about the integrity of the Doctor and she always shrugs and says she doesn’t know. I have never seen a companion have such a low opinion of the Doctor. And the only change was really the appearance.  I thought they were over the hump and then it just goes back to her bad mouthing him.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@bfinch

When did she bad mouth him?

[BFINCH @bfinch]

Kill the Moon it was asked if he was coming back and she said she dint know or later just said he wasn’t.  There were other times when the question was brought up about the Doctor, I think it was also in the Daleks episode integrity or concern for others well being. She would always sat she doesn’t know or flat out dismissal.

[BFINCH @bfinch]

He was a good man. He is still a good man, if asked for a minute about Matt Smith’s Doctor being a good man she would say yes.  I feel like she is cruel to him. Not understanding of what he has been through even though she knows what has happened.

[Anonymous @]

@bfinch – It’s a pretty good question, imo.  I have never doubted whether the Doctor is a good man.  But maybe I should have?

I didn’t know about the Master turning into dead-scull-boy until PhaseShift’s Master Blog.  That happened when the Master went beyond his normal regeneration limits (if I read that right?). So maybe there was a possibility something went wrong with the Doctor too.  Clara might have been unsure about that?

It makes sense she wouldn’t know, because she never saw this Doctor when she was in the Doctor’s time stream. 

I think she knows he is a good man now, after he took her to find Danny.

[nerys @nerys]

Something I just noticed, watching this for the fourth time (and yes, I’m a bit slow on the uptake): When Missy uses her device to kill people, what’s left are effectively cremains, when of course cremation was the very thing 3W warned against. Was this to ensure that whomever she killed, like Osgood, couldn’t be uploaded to the Nethersphere, thus becoming Cybermen?

[BFINCH @bfinch]

I love the complex relationship and arguments but I never feel like she believes in him the way we all do as a character. I felt like Clara has scorned him and made him feel alien. He has this need to please her in some way is maybe why Missy put them together. “Do as you are told!”

[janetteB @janetteb]

@nerys. I noticed that too and thought it a plot hole. Hence not mentioning it because sometimes I prefer not to pick holes in the fabric of illusion but you have provided an excellent explanation for it. Must not forget there are no plot holes, only failures in interpretation. 🙂

Cheers

Janette

[elevenisrad @elevenisrad]

There was too much to take in… Overall, this is the most fantastic finale I’ve ever seen but I don’t dare to go into deeper analysis yet, as I should dissect the layers of all the goodies presented in the past episode. I think the Doctor and Clara are truly companions with the deepest parting scene, despite my bawling at Rose leaving Ten and Amy leaving Eleven. Though Clara might have gone a little too far in Dark Waters with her threatening and stuff, she was probably just shell-shocked from Danny dying and all that. In the end, I believe that they both lied to make the other feel less of a burden, which is extremely bittersweet–I teared up. Now I don’t wanna hug..

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@bfinch

She would always sat she doesn’t know or flat out dismissal

So not actually badmouthing then

And at the end of Deep Breath her answer was (paraphrasing) “I don’t know… but you try to be”. This sometime after she had displayed absolutely faith that he would be behind her.

She speaks to him as only a friend can – candidly and without awe.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@nerys @janetteb

A few people have wondered if all the people who died in this episode were uploaded to Missy’s Heaven. The implication is that they would be. Or maybe the automatic process stopped once all the minds were downloaded.

I thought that people who were cremated still had their minds uploaded, but that it would be problematic for them to find a body  to download to. Or maybe the cremation process deleted the uploaded mind as well. That’s still up for debate. As @mudlark and others have pointed out, not all the uploads would have bodies to go back to, as some of the very old ones would have disintegrated completely. It was pointed out in-espisode that the cyber-rain was only falling on the graveyards, so maybe Missy just accepted that there would be a whole lot of minds left over.

Poor Osgood. I liked that the Doctor noticed her glasses (impressively impervious to Missy’s “death ray”) and reacts as you would expect the Doctor to, with compassion and anger.

@bfinch I think one of the questions running through this series is about the nature of “being good”. What does it mean to be a good person? It’s a word that gets thrown about a lot.  Good at being something eg a good Dalek or a good Doctor, is not the same as the moral quality of “being good”.  The Doctor resolves this for himself by realising that the best thing he can do is to accept himself for who he is. He can strive to make the right decisions, but there’s a recognition that he can’t be right all the time for everyone.

He clearly cares very deeply for Clara – to the point that he thinks it’s so basic/obvious that he doesn’t think it even needs to be said. That goes for a lot of how he behaves this series, and why Clara is sometimes confused about how he feels, and hence her uncertainty about his motives sometimes, when he doesn’t explain. But she clearly still has enormous respect/admiration for him and will go anywhere with him.  Danny’s death is a chilling moment when RL suddenly blasts in on her. She’s used to being in control, being the one who fixes everything. Even her “idiot in a box” can’t fix death. Tho he’s prepared to try for her.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@lisa  @scaryb   you were discussing the difference between the cybermen in the mausoleum and those manufactured in the graveyards.  My understanding was that the cybermen in the mausoleum were the ultra rich who had been conned into financing 3W and who had knowingly elected to have their remains preserved in the mausoleum and their minds uploaded to the nethersphere.  Missy pointed out that there was one for each of the main population centres in every country, and I thought she said that once in place over the said population centres they were to explode/disintegrate into the clouds of nanomachines which would seed the graveyards – as appeared to happen over St Paul’s.  No doubt their original cyber-bodies they were then reconstructed by the same nanotechnology.

The ‘newborn’ cybermen in the graveyard emerged complete, I think, and with minds downloaded, but it took a bit of time for them to link up to the hive mind, and once they did so they had to await orders before they were able to act.  They were ready by the time Missy arrived to demonstrate their obedience – a perfect army.  Except, of course, that two who had been soldiers in life, Danny and the Brig, had instilled in them a rather different kind of discipline and sense of duty which overrode the cyber conditioning.

When we saw the scan of the graveyard, by no means all of the graves were ‘active’.  There was a reference to a second shower of rain seeded with nanomachines, but I thought that was to create more cybermen from the remains in the graveyards, not to complete the cybermen already activated.

It occurred to me that it would have been perfectly possible for the Doctor to have accepted Missy’s gift and then himself ordered them to self-destruct, but it was important that he should make his rejection of the offer as emphatic as possible, and important, also, that cyberDanny should be entrusted with the task, demonstrating the Doctor’s final acceptance of and confidence in PE,  as well as underlining for Missy the flaw in her grand scheme.

It wasn’t clear if the minds in the nethersphere were downloaded in the same way that we would download data to our computers, or if the process entailed removing the originals from the matrix data slice, but since Danny and the Afghan boy were still there several weeks later, it looks as if either the minds were retained in the data slice or they returned there after the cyber-bodies were destroyed. I would have thought that, of the two alternatives, the former was more likely.

 

 

 

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@scaryb  (also @arbutus )

You could see DW/DiH as suggesting that the Master could  have reformed, that she seriously just wants to be the Doctor’s friend again and to be “understood”. (Do I believe a word of that? Not flaming likely!

Of course she doesn’t want to reform; the idea would not even occur to her! She’s a complete psychopath with a side order of nuts – fascinating but eeevil.  In a sense she feels lonely and in need of an equal to appreciate her, but insofar as she wants to be the Doctor’s friend it is on her terms, after she has twisted him and brought him down to her level. She wants him not only to acknowledge his darker side but to give in to it.  She will never succeed, because of the crucial difference between them: she sees other people as things – disposable pieces to be manoeuvred and discarded in a long running game, whereas he is interested in people for their own sakes, and capable of caring for them deeply.

PS Sorry about the blizzard of posts. I have been busy over the past few days, so am catching up.

[BFINCH @bfinch]

I like the resolution of Deep Breath but then in Kill the Moon and Into the Dalek she has zero confidence in the Doctor or acts like she doesn’t know him Yes, she does finally admit what he means to her in the season finale, but the whole season is a back and forth. And really if 11 asked about his worth and reputation she would say yes he is a good man. She pretty much does that when she asks the crack in the wall to Galifrey to help 11.  She wasn’t conflicted then and it’s the same person.  To me that is human but flawed which is why I take offense. I feel like she is bad mouthing a good friend while getting to travel with him and constantly put him down.  Which of course makes for good drama.

[lisa @lisa]

@mudlark Thanks for properly fixing my memory of that !! Sometimes the little grey cells
don’t serve me as I would hope that they would. Your explanation was totally an “Oh Yeah”
moment. Although I still have a question about the graveyard cybers getting a ticket back
into the nethersphere – and for that matter who was the cyber that was inside Dr Changs office?
I recall Chang saying Dr. Skarosa but was it skarosa/cyberman that confronted Clara ?
Still haven’t been able to get my mind to a clear explanation for that one

[nerys @nerys]

@scaryb you are correct, I hadn’t quite thought that through. The issue wasn’t that people who chose cremation wouldn’t have their souls uploaded to the Nethersphere, but rather they couldn’t be downloaded into a Cyberman body. Hence Seb’s question to Danny about cremation. So Osgood and others who got zapped into cremains by Missy could be in the Nethersphere … but without a way out. Which may have been more merciful, considering the only option seemed to be coming back as a Cyberman (excepting the boy Danny sent back to Clara).

@lisa yes, I thought that was Dr. Skarosa’s Cyberman who was housed in Dr. Chang’s office, then emerged to confront Clara. My sense was that maybe that had originally been Dr. Skarosa’s office, which Dr. Chang took over.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@nerys I thought that was Dr. Skarosa’s Cyberman who was housed in Dr. Chang’s office, then emerged to confront Clara. My sense was that maybe that had originally been Dr. Skarosa’s office, which Dr. Chang took over.

Were we ever given any convincing proof that Dr Skarosa was a genuine person, and not just a name made up by Missy to be intriguing to the Doctor? A “Doctor Skaro” to taunt the man who was recently called a good dalek.

[nerys @nerys]

@badwulf – Interesting point about Dr. Skarosa. It certainly is an intriguing choice of name, but I’m not sure if that was intended by the writers as just a little in-joke, or something more significant. We certainly have no proof that the Cyberman in Dr. Skarosa’s dark water tomb was, indeed Dr. Skarosa … or if such an individual even existed. After all, the whole 3W scheme was a con, so it stands to reason that its “creator” could have been, as well.

However, it’s just as interesting to surmise that Dr. Skarosa was indeed an “idiot” who fell for Missy’s Poltergeist/white noise parapsychobabble and built an entire business around it, at Missy’s behest. Who better to be at Missy’s beck and call than someone like that? He might then be eager to join 3W’s other wealthy clients and be uploaded to the Nethersphere, his body in a dark water/Cyberman tomb. As the company founder, maybe that was one of his contractual benefits.

[Anonymous @]

 

@bfinch  I think that it was clearly pointed out that Clara isn’t really ‘bad mouthing’ him! She trusts him and indeed loves him!  At the end of Kill the Moon she’s thoroughly pissed at him and dreadfully upset -this means that she absolutely adores him. But wants him to be something he cannot ever be again. She still trusts him but she’s angry -in a way- that he has allowed her to grow up. The idea of “don’t wander off” is cancelled out -The Dr has wandered off instead – and that’s upsetting and it’s annoyed her. I mean, come on, how many close friends, particularly during those turbulent 20s and 30s have colossal fights? Then, they make up -look at The Mummy episode, she’s back to putting her head on his arm. She’s resolved (many of) her issues -and I think, personally, her anger at him, also comes from not being able to properly express her feelings for Danny to the Dr. We’re complex things you know -women. But I’m speaking only for myself here! Tongue firmly implanted in cheek.

“To me that is human but flawed which is why I take offense”

So, you take offence at all flaws? 🙂  The fact that Clara is so very human, so “melty” and “stop with the big eyes, they inflate”, indicates good drama, as you aptly said. If Clara just went along, then where is the necessary exposure of character? The digging for personality? This was just as much about looking for spare bodies in the dirt as it was about studying the human mind, above ground,  at work: far more interesting but more importantly, real. In so many episodes she implicitly trusts the Doctor -I think the ‘bad mouthing’ concept is not something I’ve seen? In fact, I just don’t see it! They’re good friends, good naturedly ribbing each other -he does it to her constantly with “5 foot 1, never stood a chance”; “You’ve taken your make up off”, “don’t worry, your fine, your hips, I mean” and “don’t worry you look fine from the back” -real worries women have about the way they look, and what does the Dr do, annoy the hell out of her. I’m surprised she’s not more pissed at him!

@mudlark

“She’s a complete psychopath with a side order of nuts – fascinating but eeevil.  In a sense she feels lonely and in need of an equal to appreciate her, but insofar as she wants to be the Doctor’s friend it is on her terms, after she has twisted him and brought him down to her level.”

Brilliant expose of the Master; indeed she is nuts (I think @lisa mentioned earlier, mentally ill) and a friendship for her is one of ‘user only’ or ‘read only’, She wants him doing what she alone wants; he isn’t to have any agency.

@bfinch Interestingly, this is the opposite of what the Dr needs of Clara -to go it alone, to trust but to make her own decisions. For this, she’s understandably annoyed: she’s had this remarkable relationship with the Dr -I saw all her episodes yesterday, and boy are there some deep seated attraction issues, and of course as Vastra said, he’s young, he wants people to think he’s “her gentleman caller”. He wants above all, to be accepted. As we all do.

Our new Dr isn’t that interested in acceptance -but that’s surface only, I believe, and that’s why Clara and the Doctor get into verbal stoushes.

Kindest, puro

[Anonymous @]

@elevenisrad  welcome I noticed you arrived not that long ago. Hope you have a hugely good time here! I think it was a great episode, layered, as you say and filled with narrative power: in ‘Dark Water’ you were very disappointed in Clara? But you’ve changed your mind? I too thought her betrayal quite despicable, but who knows how a person would react knowing that a friend, the Doctor, has a time machine and could change time to bring back her Danny? Of course, a more calm, thoughtful person -not having lost a boyfriend due to a phone call she caused, would still have to accept that the Doctor cannot re-write time when a paradox would be the result.

[BFINCH @bfinch]

To paraphrase from Dark Water he says what did I do to make you think so little of me that your betrayal would mean I would ever give up on you? So she has done all this but doesn’t trust him to help her. I think you all have a way more romantic view of their relationship.

[Anonymous @]

@bfinch ! you are probably right! I do have a romanticised view of their relationship. If I, say, hadn’t seen Clara at all and had gone from Amy to River to the Doctor ( I  recall River in Flesh and Stone saying “I trust him, with my life. In this room, right now, your job is to make sure the Doctor is safe”) then I would have ‘eyes a-flashing’  at her behaviour. The Doctor, in the end, wants to make things right for her. Does she respect that though, by the end of the series? Has she come to completely trust and love the Doctor? I hope so.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@bfinch

He is still a good man, if asked for a minute about Matt Smith’s Doctor being a good man she would say yes.

No – that’s your own projection I think. You want the perfect hero. Clara knows he isn’t perfect. Always has. As to eleven, in his own words:

Madame Kovarian: The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules.
The Doctor: Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.
Madame Kovarian: Give the order. Give the order, Colonel Runaway.

Stripped of any romance, The Doctor has never been a good man. The Fourth Doctor is often summoned in these conversations. The one who asked “Have I the right” while contemplating the extinction of the Daleks. The Triumph as he lays down those wires before the next act. In which he happily blows the shit out of those Baby Daleks.

[lisa @lisa]

I was thinking about Dr. Skarosa maybe aka Davros?? so why? well wasn’t he also trapped in the time bubble?
Could Missy and Davros have joined forces together in a pact to escape the time lock – Missy gets from
Darvos the DNA tech to make an army to gift to the Doctor and Davros get a new mobile body plus the ability
to sabotage the cybers and maybe rebuild a new Skaro on Earth to fight against the galifreyans ?
{this is what came into my head while I was having a bike ride with my kid- obsessed much?? lol]

[BFINCH @bfinch]

I view the Doctor as a good man for all the times he has saved the universe. He has sacrificed his own life multiple times to save his companions. I agree that Clara has the most realistic relationship with 12 that probably has ever been portrayed in a Doctor companion relationship but that doesn’t mean I have to like or support that character.

[BFINCH @bfinch]

5 sacrificed himself to save Perri and 9 saved Rose. To me he isn’t perfect for sure. She isn’t perfect but everything he did to help save the world a thousand times would make you a good person.

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@bfinch I agree that Clara has the most realistic relationship with 12 that probably has ever been portrayed in a Doctor companion relationship but that doesn’t mean I have to like or support that character.

One doesn’t have to like or support a character to find them highly entertaining to watch, that is true as well. What tends to sustain my interest is seeing a character develop, and I feel that Clara has done that very interestingly, and in a way that a companion has not done explicitly before. Probably the closest would be Tegan, who started out just wanting to get back to Heathrow, but afterwards found that she still couldn’t give up travelling with the Doctor. When at last she does leave, it is because the violence and bloodshed have become too much. And yet – we see that after the TARDIS has dematerialised, she comes back once again, and it is only the fact that the Doctor has already departed which prevents her from succumbing to her time-travelling adventure addiction.

[lisa @lisa]

Or maybe Davros didn’t get trapped in that time lock? In which case it would still be interesting
The Master/Missy is one of Davros great rivals but they both hold similar grudges and
are equally ruthless. [Actually he might be really upset with the daleks after that 10th Doctor
crucible incident and maybe he has it in for them especially considering the betrayal by Dalek cahn]
I think I saw someplace that it was implied that the Supreme Dalek got Davros out of the time lock
so that would mean that Davros knew how to get out and could of gotten the Master out too?

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@bfinch     Your paraphrase is slight, but it makes all the difference to how I would read the Doctor’s words. He said: “Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” He says, in essence, “Do you really not know how much I care? I care so much that I can understand and forgive.” His statement isn’t about what she feels for him, as your paraphrase suggests. She knows, she has seen, since his regeneration, that he is prepared to let things take their course when he deems it necessary. She has every reason to believe that he will refuse to try and change history to save Danny, and is desperate enough to try and force him to do it. And in fact, he offers something completely different. He agrees to try and find him, where he is now, after death, instead.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@bfinch    I should add, I’m not approving of what she did. I think her desperation comes from her own sense of guilt. I didn’t care for her treatment of Danny throughout the series, or her lies to both him and the Doctor. I enjoy Clara as a character because she is interesting and real, and her motivations can be understood if not approved. If I knew her in real life, I would probably be frequently frustrated and want to give her a good shake sometimes!

But I don’t think that any of her words and actions come from disloyalty to the Doctor. I do think that she is pretty complicated!

[Anonymous @]

@phaseshift @arbutus  @badwulf I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. There’s a sense of easily projecting our own wishes onto the Doctor. He’s a good man and so, even if I may romanticise him a little, I can see that through the evident dialogue,  the Doctor is ‘good’ and that Clara, despite her conflicting feelings and actions, sees this. When she leaves the Tardis (or starts to), she too, recognises she’s done something irrevocable and says “fair enough”. But the Doctor stops her and she’s amazed he does. Would anyone else, after such an act?

Also, she did jump into the time stream for him. A 20-something, willing to sacrifice her life for her Doctor. Not bad at all.

@lisa  I’m working on that!  Davros somehow involved in the plan -but not pulling the strings of the puppet, The Master, but going along for the ride!

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@bfinch

But you have suggested that others, on these boards, have somehow romanticised the Doctor. And then you post

I view the Doctor as a good man for all the times he has saved the universe. He has sacrificed his own life multiple times to save his companions.

and then

5 sacrificed himself to save Perri and 9 saved Rose.

I can’t help thinking either I’m confused, or you may be. Because you are surely the one romanticising the Doctor here.

Do any of these actions negate the “judgement on Solomon” in Dinosaurs on a spaceship?

Do they excuse the judgement on The Family of Blood?

Do they make the extermination of the Racnoss easier?

Do they excuse the destruction of Skaro, with potentially the Thals and an entire eco-system as collateral damage?

Do I need to go on? The show has made clear that the Doctor has blood on his hands. If you want a simple hero, I’m sure you can find them. If you want a complex hero, in which motivations are ambiguous and important questions about what is right and wrong can be asked, well – the Doctor is available for an appointment. But I don’t think many regular contributors on these boards need a lecture on romanticising the Doctor. We know he has a dark side.

[lisa @lisa]

@purofilion hi ! So wouldn’t hiding inside a cyberman be a perfect place for Davros!
Ok so I looked up some stuff -Dalek Caan escaped the time war thru a temporal shift and
rescued Davros. Caan also stole a prison ship made by time lords and escaped with it inside
the void by using [that was the doomsday episode] some special ship that had tardis tech
– Missy mentioned a Dalek camp in the episode? Maybe Darvos plans to
deceive everyone the way Dalek Caan deceived him ? Also – the master was resurrected
by Rasilon but ‘ran away’ to the end of the universe but then found out what Rasilon did
and fell into the time lock with him – So maybe Davros thinks he could use te Master’s
hatred and anger over what happened to him and he rescues the Master out of the time lock
with the knowledge he had from Dalek Caan how to do that
I like your notion about going along for the ride but not pulling any strings of the puppet/master –yet

[Author]

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