Extremis

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  • #58064
    pıtırcapaldi @pitircapaldi

    Hello and thank you @thane15 🙂 yes ı’m new member

    Doctor always does the right thing but ıs not ıt tıme for master to change ?

    ı think ıt is given chance to master 🙂

    #58065
    CountScarlioni @countscarlioni

    @missy Who is employing the Monks? I dare say we shall find out.  Perhaps the Time Lords? No, that’s too bonkers. Daleks?

    That’s a good reminder to never forget the Daleks! They do seem to be at least trying to keep tabs on the Doctor, and  told Missy the Doctor had been on Darillium.

    #58066
    Missy @missy

    @pitircapaldi:  Hello there. Welcome.

    Missy

    #58075
    Mirime @mirime

    <p style=”text-align: left;”>Or at least Missy said the Daleks told her about Darillium. The Daleks have never struck me as being the gossipy type!</p>

    #58076
    MissRori @missrori

    @missy @countscarlioni The Daleks would be an interesting reveal, but so far I get the sense these creatures are either working on their own or for some other greater force.  Perhaps Missy’s found a way to escape the Vault?  Or the Great Intelligence is back?  It once employed human monks to do its dirty work.  I don’t think Time Lords are completely out of the question — especially as nothing related to following up on Gallifrey’s fate and the Doctor’s relationship with it has turned up this season. Maybe they’re a ruined, splinter sect?

    #58078
    pıtırcapaldi @pitircapaldi

    thank you @missy 🙂

    #58080
    pıtırcapaldi @pitircapaldi

    @countscarlioni Daleks ? This is very amazing but ı dont thınk

    perhaps Missy escape the Vault such as @missrori’s said or maybe Doctor allow the Missy for quit the vault

    I look forward to the new episode

    #58087
    CountScarlioni @countscarlioni

    @pitircapaldi     Daleks. 

    The Monks seem likely to be an independent race acting alone. But once the Doctor has dealt with the Monks, then what’s the threat as we work towards the big climax to the series?? Or will the Doctor be fighting the Monks to the end?

    #58110
    PhaseShift @phaseshift
    Time Lord

    @pufferfish

    interjecting with a possible Bowie ref for this episode:
    On the day of execution/only women kneel and smile

    Hi! Now that is a good catch. I have to admit I’ve listened to Black star (the album) once and found it difficult listening at the time (just after his death). I’ve just listened to the track with the video for the first time. Wow – lots to chew over in that as imagery goes!

    #58132
    ichabod @ichabod

    @pedant  My first thought on seeing the monk, walking towards the Doctor bak-lit by the portal was “Buddhist” and they have monks too.

    Me, too.  It was the one bare arm extended out to the side when we saw him in silhouette.   Many of the Buddhist monks I saw in Thailand kept one arm bared, for doing stuff with, while the other was hidden by their robes — which were shades of deep orange and red and their heads were shaved (smooth like these mummy-guys’), so that’s what I thought of too.  They certainly prompt me to think of Christian monks.  And let’s not forget that the spokes-monk told the Doctor, “This *is* a game.”  I don’t see how the word “monk” would set off this reported-about-other-people outrage, when the image and behavior of the said monks have nothing to do with Christian monks (at least, as I’ve seen them portrayed, and in reality).

    @miapatrick  She’s says save me, not help me.  and the doctor did/was, he saved everything he saw and sent it on.

    Well spotted, although I think she actually said both things — I haven’t finished my re-watch yet.

    The very-temporary eyesight fixer as a possible game-changer at the end of the series: It will be called a deus ex machina by people who don’t understand the term.

    Abso-effing-lutely.

    @thane15  on the in-class story exam I got the top mark: A+ My teacher wants it in a competition.

    That’s fantastic!  And it sounds like a cracking good story, too.  I’m very glad I could be a little part of such a successful project, and thanks for letting us in on the outcome.

    @thane15  Puro  The Pope rushing into the room, bewildered is deeply offensive to your friends.

    I do hope our current pope watches DW (like your bishop!), because I think he’d get a good laugh out of it; and so would John XXIII, a mensch if ever there was one.  Great post, by the way.  And I like (but also cringe at) the idea of winged weasels.  Why the hell haven’t they turned up yet as baddies in DW?  Why, I ask you?!

    @craig  My thought at the moment is that Capaldi can now possibly regenerate into a new Doctor, but can continue living in the alien reality – and be back with River (after The Library).  There could then be an episode or two with the new Doctor in the real world, and Capaldi Doc in the matrix world, working together at the series finish, or at Christmas. That’s my bonkers for tonight.

    What a nifty (and bonkers) idea!  Love it.  Also the musical analogy, from @arbutus — an excellent and clarifying approach, so thanks for it.  I’ll use it.

    @thane15  Puro  mysterious and odd, which is how I take my coffee Who.

    Okay, now you’ve done it: I want to know how your coffee is both odd and mysterious.

    @thane15  Puro  love the confusion. It’s good to be in the dark sometimes.

    Oh, delightful, and sometimes quite moving.  I’m reminded of the European version of Lem’s “Solaris”, so bafflling and troubled . . . Maybe the Doctor has some lessons to learn about the *good* aspects of being “lost in darkness”, hmm?  Along with us.  Good spot on no one can know I’m blind (except my worst enemy, of course, She Who Must Not Be Obeyed).  I’m still trying to figure out at which points Earth Prime switched over to Earth sim, and — back again, I think.  But I just sit back and wait for smarter folks to get it and pass it on; never could cope with Time switching, sometimes not even flashbacks!

    #58134
    Missy @missy

    @countscarlioni:

    That’s a good reminder to never forget the Daleks! They do seem to be at least trying to keep tabs on the Doctor, and  told Missy the Doctor had been on Darillium.

    Glad you mentioned that. I have often wondered how Missy got away from Skaro and the Daleks? Then again, as I said, it might be the Silence, they wouldn’t be fond of the Doctor after Day of the Moon, and the Time Lords too, as @missrori suggested he did kill one of them after all.

    Oh for crying out loud, it could be anyone!

    Missy

     

     

    #58375
    CountScarlioni @countscarlioni

    @missy   Oh for crying out loud, it could be anyone  A very belated thought. Perhaps the answer to most Doctor Who questions is, a) the Daleks or b) the Time Lords!

    #58380
    Missy @missy

    @countscarlioni:

    Aha! Multiple choice.  How about (C) None of the above.  they could simply be different aliens.

    Then again, their bosses could be Mondasian Cybermen?

    I was watching Wedding of River song last night, and of course there was a pyramid in that too.

    Missy

    #58382
    MissRori @missrori

    @missy I am currently reading a 12th Doctor novel, Diamond Dogs, and an early scene has him outwitting some security robots by effectively taking a very anxious Bill hostage.  As he’s explaining why they’re not going to harm him or her to the human authorities, he says:

    “Now, do you think that if she’s my friend, I’m really going to shoot her?  No, of course not!  Well…I say of course not.  I have actually shot a friend once.  But there were extenuating circumstances.  And it was on Gallifrey.  And he got better.”

    (heh heh)  That’s my boy!  (Don’t worry, she gives him a good kick in the shins when the crisis is over.)  😉

    #58383
    MissRori @missrori

    Also, @countscarlioni, it is a running gag in the Who reviews at AVClub.com that mysterious unidentified character X in any given arc could be either the Valeyard or the Rani.  😀

    #58387
    Missy @missy

    @missrori:    *snigger*

    Night, night.

    Missy

     

    #58401
    CountScarlioni @countscarlioni

    @missy   By this point, my own money too is firmly on an alien race running alone, but have a lingering hope for a connection! The red habits of the Monks are a bit suggestive with red being such a Time Lord colour. For fun, I took the Doctor’s advice, went to Google Images and spent ten minutes entering various search terms such as `Doctor Who and Evil Time Lords.’ Taking @missrori‘s advice and ignoring the Rani and the Valeyard (and ignoring other surely too obscure ones like Morbius), got to Omega, who I’d forgotten needed two Time Lords to defeat him. Get Missy out of the Vault! Also, the Peter Pratt and Anthony Beevor version of the Master in The Deadly Assassin & Keeper of Traken appear, if you squint, a little Monk like, though he has clearly been to a better dentist than the Monks. 

     

    Image result for Doctor Who Master Keeper of Traken

    Image result for Doctor Who The MonksImage result for Doctor Who The Master The Deadly AssassinImage result for Doctor Who Omega

    #58403
    Missy @missy

    @countscarlioni:

    Well we’ll soon find out won’t we.  I have to say that I’d rather not know until I actually see the episode – and THIS time, I shan’t watch the trailer afterwards.

    Missy

    #58992
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @tardigrade

    In religion it is used to mean “belief” without evidence,

    No, it most definitely isn’t and doesn’t. 😀

    Sorry, I was catching up on the earlier posts; the ‘belief without evidence’ meme is a propaganda slogan. It’s roughly as accurate as announcing that computer scientists and game designers believe in fairies because they talk about ‘sprites’ a lot. 😈

    You display ‘faith’ in the ‘technical religious term’ sense when you stand at a bus stop waiting for a bus you’ve never seen because someone told you it’ll be along in ten minutes. ‘Faith’, in the religious sense, means ‘trust’, or ‘confidence in’. It’s usually based on evidence – personal/historical accounts, personal experience, observing the experience of others.

    To go back to the bus stop, you have two pieces of evidence – a personal account, and your own experience that bus stops are usually places where buses stop. You could be wrong – you might have asked the question of Michelle Gomez and the ‘bus stop’ could be a prop – but your faith is probably not misplaced.

    There are a fair few scientist-theologians, but the field of knowledge that is theology more usually demands expertise in academic history, language translation, text criticism and philosophy – as well as the ‘theology’ bit. In Extremis, Moffat quite correctly has the theologians do the translating – and also has them work out what they need to do with that translation. The scientists, bless ’em, would have been wondering what the funny marks meant. It’s not their field. 😀

    #59001
    Anonymous @

    @bluesqueakpip

    Can I say “thank God” you’ve shown up?

    Seriously, this was a ‘thing’ for awhile: munks as another religious ‘icon’ [icon’s not my word]  destroyed by Moffat and the idea of faith without evidence.

    Which, as you’d know, I don’t agree is the way to view the ‘concept’ . Have you listened to “The Infinite Monkey Cage” at all (probably not as you’ve study, study and study)?

    Puro

    #59005
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @bluesqueakpip
    I’ll just note that I’ve seen this and I appreciate where you’re coming from here, and although I’d be happy to discuss further, I’d prefer to avoid an extended off-topic philosophical discussion on an episode thread. The point I was attempting to make was about deliberately using the word “faith” to refer to science, which I perceive as often being a cynical attempt to delegitimize the evidential basis of science and put scientific conclusions on an equal footing with uninformed opinion, and hence dismissible out of hand without needing to counter with contradictory evidence. To be clear, I mean this usage of faith:

    Dictionary.com
    Faith: Belief that is not based on proof
    Take something on faith: to accept or believe something on the basis of little or no evidence

    I think that’s obviously the major usage intended when referring to scientists (although I think it’s reasonable to say that religious overtones are also intended – it suits some to allude to the “cult of science”). So I shouldn’t have described this as the religious meaning of “faith”, which can obviously be broader and much more nuanced. Faith, in my intended sense, being equated with belief without evidence, isn’t some “meme”, just using the word according to its established meaning. I certainly didn’t intend to imply that religious belief is baseless.

    @thane15
    I wasn’t commenting on the Monks and any religious symbolism. By themselves, I don’t think robes are overtly religious- if anything I tend to think they’re often used in limited budget Sci-Fi for very pragmatic reasons- so that creature bodies don’t need to be designed 🙂 . And given how well the Monks did with their faces, I’m happy enough to leave the rest to the imagination. However, when the Monks were introduced right next to Vatican priests, a religious comparison is inevitable, although I’m not at all sure that was intentional. I didn’t feel that was offensive, but equally, I can’t make that call for someone else.

    #59021

    @bluesqueakpip @thane15 @tardigrade

    When you wait at a bus stop on someone else’s say so, it is not an act of faith, it is an act of hypothesis testing. If the bus doesn’t turn up, then you revise the hypothesis. Eventually you may have enough evidence to propose a Theory of Bus Flows, but any new piece of evidence has the potential to completely destroy that theory, sending you right back to the drawing board.

    After a while you may even get to the point where the evidence on when and where the bus will turn up is so reliable that you can propose a General Law of Bus Dynamics, but that is a very high bar indeed. And even that can end up being incorporated into a much wider Theory of Public Transport Relativity. And then *that* might have to wait a long time until it can be integrated with the Quantum Theory of Travel, in which it seems the bus can both arrive and not arrive, and may become entangled with the White Van Particle.

    None of it is anything to do with faith.

    This episode works because the time Veritas was first translated was when  Church *was* the centre of inquiry (also true of Islam at the time). But had they not hoarded it for a few centuries, they may have got there quicker by showing it to Kepler, Newton or one of Ibn al-Haytham’s students (and then the Monks probably would have just run another sim until they got the outcome they wanted, being entirely stochastic in outlook).

    #59030
    Anonymous @

    @pedant @tardigrade @bluesqueakpip

    The White Van Particle -the God Particle, if the Universe is the answer to a single or even multiple questions then what are the questions? 🙂  Love it!

    Equally though, your personal experience of the bus stop, and the arrival of said bus or Ford Prefect, rest to some extent on faith that the hypothesis is valid and the deduction sound…

    Puro

    #59032
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @pedant

    None of it is anything to do with faith.

    Yes, it is. You are standing waiting at a bus stop to prove the hypothesis that a bus will turn up, yes, but that doesn’t stop your hypothesis testing also being an act of faith. If it’s important that you get somewhere else quickly, you will not have time for repeat testing. You have to trust a) the person who told you a bus was coming and b) the evidence of the bus stop. 🙂

    So, for Doctor Who: there is a wobbly looking bridge that the Doctor needs to run over. Or he can pick the roadside path, but then the Cybermen might catch up. Somebody yells ‘The bridge is fine; I came over it ten minutes ago!’

    Hypothesis: the bridge is safe. Falsification: it collapses and you die/regenerate. Personal account: it’s just been used safely. Personal experience: it looks wobbly.

    Since you don’t have the engineering specs (which you’d expect if you were road-testing a science hypothesis), and the Cybermen are enthusiastically planning to delete you, you have to do a faith test. Do you believe that personal account (was it Bill or Missy who gave it)? Is your action of running across the bridge instead of the roadside based on trust or belief?

    If it’s based on trusting your personal experience, your knowledge of what a bridge is supposed to look like and your belief that the person telling you it’s safe is truthful (at least in this case), it is an act of faith (in the technical religious sense). But at no point have you had a lack of evidence. You might not have enough evidence. But you have evidence.

    Oh, and when you get across the bridge safely, you’ll have proof that your faith was justified. But not until you get across the bridge.

    Both Kepler and Newton were profoundly religious – they’d have been fine if you wanted something in Greek or Hebrew, but that was because those were the biblical languages.

    Nowadays (and this story is set nowadays), if you want a document translated, you go to a translator, not a scientist. If you want to prove that Queen Elizabeth I owned a particular piece of jewellery, the only scientist you could ask would be a Time Lord – a physicist would be utterly useless and you’d need to go to a historian. If you want a piece of religious writing translated, you don’t ask someone who usually does legal documents – they will be adrift in a sea of unknown, probably very technical vocabulary.

    Science is one field of knowledge; a very important field of knowledge. But that doesn’t mean that you should denigrate historians, translators and theologians because their fields rely on different rules. There are certain situations where the scientists would be useless.

    @tardigrade – you should probably try the OED definition, which has ‘complete trust or confidence’ as the first definition. I’m using the 10th Edition, 1999.

    There are always problems when a technical term is deliberately confused with a general definition. Scientists act on ‘faith’ a lot – but that just means they sometimes have to go forward without enough evidence, not that they don’t have evidence. As I just said to pedant, an act of faith can also be part of hypothesis testing. But defining faith as ‘belief without evidence’ is wrong; ‘belief without final proof’ is a lot closer.

    #59033

    @thane15

    Equally though, your personal experience of the bus stop, and the arrival of said bus or Ford Prefect, rest to some extent on faith that the hypothesis is valid and the deduction sound…

    Nope. That is subject only to constant testing under threat of falsification. That is why it doesn’t get to be called a theory until it has strong evidence to support it (and why “evolution is only a theory” is such a stupid statement to use by creationists, not that they care).

    A Higgs Boson walks into a church.

    The priest say “We don’t allow fundamental particles in here”

    And the Higgs Boson said: “You can’t have mass without me”.

    There’s a reason the episode went to CERN.

    #59062
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @bluesqueakpip

    you should probably try the OED definition, which has ‘complete trust or confidence’ as the first definition

    I have a problem with a “complete trust of confidence” definition as applied to science. If a scientist says that have faith in the process of science, the meaning would typically be something along the lines of meaning that they have a high degree of confidence that it can achieve better understanding in a reliable way, over a sufficient period of time. While scientists have good reason to trust the process of science, based on a track record of increasing returns from following that method over hundreds of years, there is generally a good understanding also that it has limits, and that it can’t, even in principle, answer everything. Trust really doesn’t come into it- the process depends on treating every result as suspicious- not taking anything “on faith”- and a rigourous attempt to disprove every result. Confidence in the process of science depends on not having greater confidence in any result than is justified by the evidence, and that comes from repeated failure to disprove it. That definitely isn’t the case when applied to a hypothesis. “I hold my hypothesis in the tips of my fingers, ready to let it go at the slightest breeze.” is something I’ve heard repeated (but can’t find an attribution at the moment, so the quote is doubtless paraphrased also). Scientists have to be scrupulous in avoiding getting invested in hypotheses, and to make every effort to prove themselves wrong (in part, because if they don’t, someone else will).

    To take an example, quantum physics and general relativity are two of the cornerstones of “modern” physics. They both make predictions that are exquisitely accurate, and as a result both fully warrant the label “theory”, in the scientific sense of something that has a high degree of confidence, rather than the perjorative sense of a guess. However, these two theories are, at their base, fundamentally incompatible. Physicists know that they don’t – *can’t* – make up a full description of reality, and have confidence that the scientific method will one day help to come up with a theory of quantum gravity that resolves this. Empirical science doesn’t deal in absolutes.

    I actually think that a modern definition of “faith”, when used divorced from any religious meaning, is closer to “optimistic confidence”. I think the absolutist definition pretty much only applies in a religious context. A phrase like “have some faith” wouldn’t be meaningful if faith is an absolute. That’s really a call to optimism (or trust if referring to a person).

    I don’t think you would say that your bus example shows absolute trust either- if you were to allow the stranger to blindfold you, put earplugs in and stand you on the edge of the road with the promise of giving you a hearty shove when the doors of the bus are open in front of you, you might be closer to absolute trust 🙂

    #59126
    Missy @missy

    Blimey!  Posts are getting too complicated for me, too intellectual. All I know is that I loved this episode and keep watching it.

    Missy

    #59302
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @tardigrade

    ‘complete trust or confidence’ is not the same as ‘absolute trust or confidence’. Which may be why you’re uncomfortable – if you think that having a complete trust is the same as some kind of ‘absolute faith’.

    For example, Bill probably has complete faith in the Doctor, but the evidence suggests that she doesn’t have absolute faith in him. That evidence also suggests that her complete trust in him develops according to evidence.

    If a scientist says that have faith in the process of science, the meaning would typically be something along the lines of meaning that they have a high degree of confidence that it can achieve better understanding in a reliable way, over a sufficient period of time. While scientists have good reason to trust the process of science, based on a track record of increasing returns from following that method over hundreds of years, there is generally a good understanding also that it has limits, and that it can’t, even in principle, answer everything.

    Yup. That’s faith. High degree of confidence, check. Understanding changing and developing over time, check. Looking back over the track record, check. Awareness of limits, check. We’d generally add in evidence from our personal experience of God, and our methods of cross checking new theories are rather different, but that’s pretty much ‘faith’.

    🙂

    #73026
    Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent

    My impressions of Extremis:

    This is really two episodes intercut into one. Missy, the Veritas; plus a subthread of Bill’s attempts at a romantic involvement. And the Veritas thread is quite hard to follow – until the truth is revealed.

    I love the neat little reversals in the intro. The planet dedicated to executing people is delightfully grim. Who thinks it’s the Doctor who is under sentence of death, until Missy is brought out?

    I had to laugh when Bill’s foster mother relaxed when she found out Bill’s guest was a girl – how little she knows! And then the Pope walks out of her bedroom. This is hilarious (though I can fully understand Bill’s frustration).

    The Moff does have an excellent grasp of psychology –
    NARDOLE: Okay, so you’re blind and you don’t want your enemies to know. I get it. But why does it have to be a secret from Bill?
    DOCTOR: Because I don’t like being worried about. Around me, people should be worried about themselves.
    NARDOLE: Yeah, shall I tell you the real reason?
    DOCTOR: No.
    NARDOLE: Because the moment you tell Bill, it becomes real. And then you might actually have to deal with it.
    DOCTOR: Good point, well made. Definitely not telling her now.
    – and that just feels so true.

    Pope Benedict – the Doctor’s mediaeval ‘friend’ – was certainly a fine looking woman. And maybe that is not so impossible as one might think, there were apparently legends or rumours of female Popes.

    The Veritas thread is engagingly spooky – what could be so terrifying that everyone who learns it, kills themselves?

    Then we have the white room, with doors on the Pentagon, the Vatican, CERN – this is fascinating. The CERN staff all appear to be remarkably upbeat about their impending mass suicide. Stranger and stranger.

    Then the CERN scientist explains they’re in a simulation – using the same ‘choose a number’ routine that the Doctor used in Last Christmas. And CERN – exploded their own simulation.

    And the Doctor subverted Missy’s execution for his own – conscience?

    And then it turns out, the ‘main plot’ with Veritas, was just a digression, a virtual occurrence in a simulation, the details of which get emailed to the Doctor outside Missy’s vault door.

    I can understand (though I don’t agree with) fans who complain that the Moff’s plots are ‘too complicated’. To me, they work fine on two levels – one, the braindead approach, just sit back and enjoy the surprise twists and witty dialogue without trying to understand it. Or two, the geeky approach, concentrate enough to understand what’s going on, sometimes on a re-watch. And it’s the multi-level plotting that makes a re-watch so rewarding.

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