Heaven Sent

Home Forums Episodes The Twelfth Doctor Heaven Sent

This topic contains 628 replies, has 93 voices, and was last updated by  Missy 3 years, 4 months ago.

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  • #52581
    Missy @missy

    Obsession has set in. I watched this again last night and still love it.

    Oh, if only I were clever enough to write such a plot.

    Ttfn

    Missy

    #53828
    Missy @missy

    At this very moment I’m listening to the music from “Heaven Sent” on YouTube. superb.

    Missy

    #53829
    gamergirlavatar @gamergirlavatar

    <span class=”useratname”>@missy</span> The music from “Heaven Sent” might be some of the greatest from the series. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one listening to it on YouTube.

    #53835
    ichabod @ichabod

    The music from “Heaven Sent” — what a good idea!

    #53838
    Missy @missy

    @gamergirlavatar: I am sure that you and I are not alone.

    @ichabod: Afterwards, I tuned into the music from “Husbands of River Song”

    You can find almost anything on Youtube.

    Missy

    #53840
    ichabod @ichabod

    @missy   I did some wandering through some of the fan-vids on Youtube by people using pop tunes as musical scores for their clips — there are some very good ones out there, and I expect many more have been made since.  A couple of people set their vids of 12/Clara to “King and Lionheart”, by — oh damn, what’s that group called — “Trolls and Tunnels” or something?  Good, definitely SFnal song, too.  I listen to some of those fan vids now and then.  Amazing, how this show throws off so much fan creativity on so many levels — but that’s another topic.

    It still gives me a thrill to think of the whole crew putting “Heaven Sent” together at top speed, thinking all along, “This could be a disaster” and then seeing the final result — a small masterpiece in a little corner of media-land, flawed (like everything) but stunning.  What well-deserved joy, for them all!  I don’t believe in God, but sometimes plain old life is *good*, and we are good, to and with and because of each other.

    #53842
    Missy @missy

    @ichabod:

    I couldn’t see any flaws, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any. I was so entranced with the script, the acting, the music and the special effects, that I was oblivious to any short comings. It was  pure joy to watch, which I have, over and over and over and over again! My husband says that I’m obsessed – he’s right. *grins*

    Missy

    #53845
    ichabod @ichabod

    @missy  Oh, don’t get me wrong — I think the episode works brilliantly in almost every respect, but I am loathe to apply the word “perfect” to pretty much anything human-made.  I’ve gone back too many times to old “perfections” and found that what was perfect in my eyes then no longer is, now.

    For the moment, two niggling objections bother me.  First, the Veil will only accept truth from its victims, but the Doctor saying he ran from Gallifrey the first time because he was “scared” didn’t convince me.  Scared of what?  Of (as I’ve seen suggested) finding out that he was the hybrid himself (did they even *have* that prophecy back when the Doctor took off the first time?).  \Let me put it this way: if *I* were the Veil, I’d want further explanation than that, and I wouldn’t let my victim off until I got it.

    The other problem for me is that “cliff-hanger” at the very end: “The hybrid . . . is ME.”  That just doesn’t make sense, IMO, regardless of how Hell Bent plays around with possibilities of interpretation afterward, settling at length on Doctor/Clara as the answer.  I felt that that HS speech was misleading, distracting, and  unnecessary.  “Tell them I came the long way ’round” was more than enough for me.  It had a lovely flavor of menace to it, and would not have left some fans feeling bait-and-switched because no, the Doctor did not tear a million bad TLs limb from limb and stomp Gallifrey to dust, as the “ME” speech about the prophecy might rightly have led them to expect him to.  The issue of “the hybrid” in the prophecy did have to be addressed, once raised; but I didn’t like that way of using it as a tease at the end of HS.

    So my objections are structural in nature; given the number of and complexities piled up and demanding to be dealt with in the last two episodes, I have to admire the deftness with which most of them were handled and the major ones resolved.

    So yeah — I re-watch too, but sparingly.  I don’t want to run the risk of over-saturation.  Funny, I’m reminded of how my sister and I used to dash off down to Greenwich Village on the weekends to see Ingmar Bergman’s “The Magician” that was playing in an “art” house down there for months.  We ended up practically able to recite the whole thing to each other in Swedish, or our version of Swedish, just for kicks and giggles.  Our mother thought we were nuts.  She was probably right.  I’ve never been able to shake the sensation that Swedish movie actors might just as well just say their lines in English and stop pretending to speak a different language, for heaven’s sake!  Well, there are so many very similar (related) words, specially nouns, plus English expressions, and a similar subject-verb-object at the end of the sentence sort of structure.  Or so it seems to me (watching the original Wallander series on Netflix, with English subtitles, not that soppy Brannagh remake that’s much more polished and beautiful to look at, but too highly colored and — hot?  Emo? — for the original material, IMO).

    Oh, that’s the wine talking; and talking, and talking.  Fie upon it; off to bed.

     

     

    #53846
    Anonymous @

    hi Miss @ichabod. I was studying and read your post:

    the Doctor saying he ran from Gallifrey the first time because he was “scared” didn’t convince me.

    I believe that the Doctor ran from the prophecy -as he spent some time in the base of what I call the “doom room”. Except it was explained as a specific algorithm. This would possibly be sufficient to scare a young time lord guy.

    Thank you.

    Son of Puro  – I think it was @pedant and maybe Jim who said this as well. It wasn’t a prophecy but a serious algorithim. Hell, they terrify me. 🙂

     

    #53847

    @puroandson

     maybe Jim who said this as well. It wasn’t a prophecy but a serious algorithim.

    Indeedy. Not a prophecy, but a forecast (words that, semantically, mean pretty much the same thing, but contextually are entirely different – which is why argument by dictionary definition is so flawed).

    #53848
    ichabod @ichabod

    @puroandson  @pedant   An algorithm as a sort of scientific prophecy, then?  Like, analysis of data yields a pattern that means the data will add up to or produce a certain result in future (or a result that is already coming or has come into being)?  So, a prophecy with scientific teeth to it; but not absolute certainty, so “forecast” is a really good word, meaning in this case, such and such a storm is coming except maybe it might veer off or dissipate first, but it’s likely to hit.

    Great — that makes much more sense to me, and turns that problem into a non-problem.  Although, thinking about it,  seems to me that tying “I ran because I was scared” back specifically to the “prophecy” right there would have gone some distance toward helping to set up the Doctor + Clara = Hybrid thing in Hell Bent much more securely.  I’ve seen a number of complaints from fans that the whole Hybrid Prophecy concept wasn’t handled crisply enough to work well in that final episode, and the blame for a degree of murkiness about it assigned to the writing, ie Steven Moffat — either because he’s such a terrible writer that he couldn’t do better (Sarcasm, mine, With A Capital S), or because he has a habit of preferring to keep things a bit hazy rather than make them too clear-cut to be easily altered later on in the series for plot reasons etc.

    There was a good deal of kerfuffle about the Hybrid issue on discussion boards at the time, so I have reason to suspect that there is some clumsiness about the way it was handled that bothered a lot of viewers, and that that accounts in large part for the down-rating of Hell Bent as a falling-off in quality after the high of Heaven Sent.  So there’s some kind of a speed-bump in the road there, IMO, that interferes with what should have been a clearer run up to the Doctor + Clara = Hybrid reveal.  And I see that as a flaw, not because it bothered me much — it didn’t because so much else went so right — but because it does seem to have bothered a number of fans enough to partly spoil Hell Bent for them.

    Anyway, thanks for the clarification.

    #53854
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod @pedant

    Hi Miss and Mr P =Puro’s down for the count -resting I mean/

    So it’s just me but I think that that episode was pretty terrific. I’ve watched it again -listened to it only and I found that there were very good pieces of exposition which set up the whole hybrid algorithm. We knew it was an algorithm or forecast rather than a prophecy because of the diamond wall and the suggestion there of the story about the bird.

    I think “hybrid is Me” can mean a few things but I like the idea it’s exactly what he, the Doctor said. My opinion though.

    The combination of the Doctor and the forecast causing a problem. He was scared or nervous or frightened and then he also knew “they would kill” him (lady who boarded the young boys). Those were all the words we needed to know how the Council felt about him (ie putting them in a stasis cube), why they put him in the chamber, why they wanted the algorithm and what they would do to achieve that. If he states “I’m the Hybrid” or “it’s Me/me” then he’s buying time with words which fits since 1963 where the producers and writers said ‘this alien doesn’t use weapons but talks instead.”

    It could be said that Mr Moffat popped that in because he was following the tweets which said that he was being too obscure and confusing. It gave us the ‘pop’ that we needed for the following week and a lot of people liked that. Still, a lot didn’t but, you know, it’s a show about time, talking about time so hybrids exist and they’re likely to be obvious because other areas are not so obvious.

    I’m pretty young though and there’s a lot I’ve missed but that’s my small take on it Miss I.

    Son of  P

    #53855
    Anonymous @

    okay what I mean is that you start the show -or re-visit the bit where the bird is doing the pecking which is a story.

    After that part you then move to a different area: not a joke or a prophecy but a real mathier equation =an algorithm, that’s what I meant in the first lines above. O-O.

    It’s a ‘scales’ thing. One is a story, the other something different.  So if you mention the story you should mention what the prophecy is -the “me” bit. Even if it’s wrong it was shown to us exactly how the Doctor (Missy showed us) used whatever he had to save himself. Usually it’s words. Sometimes he’s only a tiny step ahead.

    Also, I think it was breaking the 4th wall thing again (or 4th estate?) which he did with Beethoven

    #53858
    Anonymous @

    Hmm, wrote a whole thing and it disappeared??

    This is a test 🙂

    #53867
    ichabod @ichabod

    @puroandson  — Son of Puro, The combination of the Doctor and the forecast causing a problem. He was scared or nervous or frightened and then he also knew “they would kill” him (lady who boarded the young boys).

    Okay, I hadn’t made that connection, thinking instead that if he originally fled Gallifrey because he was afraid that the hybrid “forecast” meant *him* so he was afraid of finding out in some terrible way that it *was* him, and that if he didn’t leave, he would destroy his home world (per the prophecy) just by being there.  It didn’t occur to me that he was afraid that the TLs would kill him over it, assuming he was the hybrid because — wait, who knew, back then, about the prophecy?  Was it told only to him, or was it common knowledge among the TLs so that they were in fact a danger to him because they knew about it and thought he was this dangerous hybrid?  But why would they?  Unless one of his parents was in fact human, and everyone knew that, so he might be a TL-human hybrid; and I thought that human mom thing isn’t canon now, if it ever was?  Hmm.

    And why does the “House Mother” at the barn tell him that they’ll kill him?  Is all of Gallifrey in on the TLs’ plot that got the Doctor into the Dial?  Not likely; so that does seem to mean that when he ran from Gallifrey the first time, it was because he thought the TLs wanted to kill him because he was the hybrid.  But how did they know, and why the heck are they so desperate now to get “the secret” of the hybrid if they already knew it was him back then?  I’m confused about this, probably because I don’t remember when (before S9) this hybrid issue was introduced, or discussed — if it was?  It just feels a bit glitchy to me, because I can’t sense of it.

    That’s part of why I can’t call “Heaven Sent” perfect, much as I love the episode for its great virtues: something just doesn’t quite fit, there, for me.

    On the other hand, I’m not a manic fan, and it doesn’t bother me that much.  The wonderful tone and execution of “Heaven Sent” and the deviously brilliant outcome of “Hell Bent” just make that hybrid blurriness insignificant to me as a viewer and a fan.  Still, I should probably do what you did, Son of Puro, and just *listen” instead of watching . . . so I will, and see if that clarifies the matter of the hybrid for me.

    @puroandson  You wrote a whole thing?  Is this you, Puro Solo; and what did you write?

     

     

    #53869
    ichabod @ichabod

    @puroandson  again, Son — oops, I didn’t respond to the bird/algorithm connection you raised.  I don’t think it’s breaking the wall — the Doctor is either talking to the Veil, or to fantasy-Clara in his mental image of the Tardis console room, or (after he gets through the asbandium wall) to the TLs through the Confession Dial, on the theory that they were listening the whole time he was stuck in the castle with the Veil and can still hear what he’s saying because the Dial, back in its normal physical form, is there with him.  Only (in Heaven Sent, that is) when he says, “I’m nothing without an audience!” is he breaking the fourth wall — speaking directly to us, with a conspiratorial glance in our direction.

    Well, he knows he’s a legend as well as a man, like Robin Hood — “You know who I am, you’ve heard the stories!”  For that instant, he exists both in his own immediate story, and in ours as viewers receiving the story.  So the Doctor, our clever boy, earns that magician’s coat, doesn’t he?!  Both of them, the black one and the burgundy, and apparently midnight blue in S10.

    #53870
    Anonymous @

    um @ichabod @pedant

    In your paragraph Miss I -the one before where you say the episode doesn’t work for you fully -it might have something to do with the part about not understanding that a lot of the episode is hooked on the one phrase the boarding mother said: “they’ll kill you”. Well, to me, anyway. It’s why that episode is so deft (that word is mum’s).

    I think these were points made a year  ago? I think she knew they’d kill him. Of course they trapped him so they could find the information about the prophecy and that’s why they put him in the dial.

    Remember that all of Gallifrey (the ordinary people) respected him. When he arrived they knew him. They fed him. They watched and waited quietly. They knew what was coming and so did we. When the battleships arrived the Doctor was disdainful but at the same time had no intention of talking to the soldiers. He wanted the puppet masters.

    But the puppet masters were that scared of the Doctor (hence the dial and the fear on the woman’s face too) and the people knew it. He had saved them. He respected the young and the ordinary people of Gallifrey. He did not respect the Council and they knew it too.

    The episode hung on a few key phrases. I remember Moffat in an interview saying “you need to listen carefully” and we did.

    Son of Puro.

    #53873
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @puroandson  @ichabod   Your discussion of the hybrid has set me thinking.

    To summarise: the Matrix is a vast and powerful computer onto which the minds of deceased Time Lords are uploaded and, as I have understood it, these minds form a major part of both its software and its operating system.  It generates forecasts or predictions which are mathematical probabilities, although at least some of these predictions are referred to as prophecies and, like most prophecies, are somewhat Delphic in their ambiguity.

    In ‘Hell Bent’, at the meeting in the council chamber, the General says ‘The hybrid is a creature *thought* to be  cross bred from two warrior races’, and the assumption is that these two races are the Time Lords and the Daleks – an assumption which, as the Doctor later points out, has a serious flaw. The General then goes on to say, ‘All matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own’.   So the Time Lords do not know the identity of the hybrid, and they certainly don’t identify the Doctor as such.  They do, however,  think that the Doctor has more information, hence their plot to capture and torture him into revealing what he knows, and they do so now because, having hidden Gallifrey near the end of  the universe when the hybrid is likely to manifest itself and the events foretold come to pass, the question has become a matter of urgency.

    At the end of ‘Heaven Sent’ the Doctor says ‘… the hybrid is me’ – ambiguous on the face of it, especially as he later teases Me by suggesting that she is the hybrid;  but for what it is worth, in the subtitles on the Blu-ray, the m in me is lower case.  ‘In Hell Bent’, in the Cloisters, he tells Clara the story of the student at the Academy who disappeared for four days into the Cloisters and saidwhen he re-emerged, that the Sliders had spoken to him.  The implication is, of course, that the student was the Doctor-to-be and (maybe) that he had discovered, or that the Sliders had imparted to him the information that he was destined to be the hybrid.

    ichabod,  I think that your original assumption that

    he originally fled Gallifrey because he was afraid that the hybrid “forecast” meant *him* so he was afraid of finding out in some terrible way that it *was* him, and that if he didn’t leave, he would destroy his home world (per the prophecy) just by being there

    is more or less correct.  The Time Lords had no reason t0 identify him as the hybrid, and at that stage may not even have suspected that he knew who or what the hybrid was, and he lived for many several centuries more on Gallifrey before leaving, which does not suggest that he was in fear of his life.  My take on the subject is that his leaving was  an attempt to avert the prophecy, certainly, but that a more immediate reason, prompting the timing of his departure, was as he sometimes stated, the fact that he had become bored and restless and realised how much of a misfit he was in Time Lord society.  Insofar as it was an attempt to escape what was predestined, it led inevitably to an Appointment in Samarra, because ultimately the words of the prophecy were fulfilled, if not in the way anyone expected.  In his attempts to undo Clara’s death he travelled to the end of Time and stood in the ruins of Gallifrey, and he destroyed billions of hearts in his determination to avenge her death and heal the wounds of his loss, the hearts being his own.

    If the non-Time Lord population of Gallifrey feared that the Time Lords might kill the Doctor it was not because he was thought to be the hybrid; they would have had ample opportunity to attempt to do so earlier if that had been the case. I suspect that their reasons had more to do with the outcome of the Time War.  The Time Lords knew that he had stolen the Moment, and even if they were aware that there had been two time streams, that in one the Moment had been used, and that in the other Gallifray had simply been sequestered in a time bubble, they may not have been particularly grateful for the way in which their continued existence had been achieved.  The Doctor was a war hero to the grunts in the army and to the general population, but the attitude of the Time Lords towards him had always been, at best, ambivalent.

     

    #53877
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod @mudlark @pedant

    Yes Miss Mudlark that is a really great and thoughtful response.

    I appreciate the detail you went into too.

    I remember mentioning the idea that the Council was mad with the Doctor because of the stasis or cup of soup which had been done by the Doctor to protect all the people. I think I may have written about how the Council didn’t like him at all and it was due to the war. He did like the people of Gallifrey a lot and it was for them and the children that he saved them. They knew that the Council was angry with him though.

    But I did think that they suspected him as the Hybrid and this could have been because of what the Master may have told them. That’s not clear to the audience so I’m probably assuming that. And assumptions are bad things.

    If he didn’t leave Gallifrey straight away then I wonder if he told others about what he heard in the area below -where the sliders were (thank you for that because I couldn’t remember their name) and some of that got back to the Council as rumour and they may have investigated it themselves without going down to the Cloisters themselves perhaps.

    Certainly the Council was very angry with him and the people knew this anger deep down existed which led to the defining words “they’ll kill you”. Also the statement puts into perspective all the things which worried the Doctor about the high class attitude of the Council and he resented them for their behaviour during that Time War and maybe were angry that he didn’t just tell them what they wanted to know so he could get out of the prison chamber and they could begin to act. In the Council chamber the General says something like: “he doesn’t blame Gallifrey (“good, he shouldn’t), He blames you!” I think the Doctor’s attitudes to Rassilion were clear back in Tennant’s time and just how Rassy would do anything to ensure that his Council and the TLs would become like spirits without a body and existing all over time and space. He wanted to kill them and pointed a gun at them and also at the Master.

    All those things tell me that the lady was right about “they’ll kill you.” Mum was saying that in teaching and boarding schools these people (whether men or women) know a lot of “gossip and rumour and also have their ears to the ground predicting what’s going to happen to the students and the staff” It’s like that they know what the true feelings are of the head class or administration but just keep their heads down & as Dad would say “their feet off the grass”

    Some people used to complain about how the activity on Gallifrey was something we all “looked forward to and he was going The Long Way Round and therefore we should have seen a lot more of Gallifrey instead of what we did” however the people of Gallifrey were nicely placed in  that last episode. There was plenty of discussion with the general and Rassilion as well as the Karn ladies.

    Anyway, I am talking too much!

    Its good to see you back @mudlark and hope you are feeling well and that Autumn isn’t too cold for you all yet. I am looking forward to a soccer trip to London and the UK in November/December so Ill be feeling the cold like you all 🙂  🙂  🙂

     

    Thank you, Puro Son

     

    #53878

    @puroandson

    Certainly the Council was very angry with him

    Ah, the innocence of youth.

    They exhibited anger.

    But this the the person who had stopped the Time War and saved Gallifrey – and was worshiped by the common Gallifreyan. And they thought he knew who the Hybrid was.

    The felt fear. Deep, utterly paranoid fear.

    Read your history of dictators down the years and see who they are most likely to bump off (as I noted here – back on page 7!).

    #53881
    Anonymous @

    @pedant

    Yes thank you, Mr P, they execute the war heroes and those who help them -sometimes. I’m glad for the link. It helped me with my thoughts.

    History I am studying. I love politics and also the history of what is called the ordinary people here or social history.

    In my own history and I only found this out last year. But my grandpa helped some of the Russians  with fighting the Nazis as a member of a resistance group. He helped a little bit. He would have been 16.

    After, because he knew History and had listened to the tales of other wars knew the soviets would come and “bump off” those who helped them and were educated. My grandad was a graduate of engineering school and was a personable, handsome guy. He was the son of a publican (?) and people sort of looked up to him except my grandma’s family who were butchers and in that part of Europe there was a real obvious class system. So they left the place together and couldn’t tell anyone because of reprisals (?).

    This is why I liked that episode. The people, “the common Gallifreyan” loved the Doctor and would have let him stay in their house forever as someone they respected  -like a friend who drops in at 2 in the morning,crying and with a suitcase.

    “It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them”. This is a quote from Aaron Sorkin and it has no real relevance to this episode but I like the quote. Maybe it does because the people had to do the fighting in the big time war and I think the generals stayed in their war-room and watched what happen until all the Doctors came and cuppasouped the whole planet.  But we know that

    Son of P.

    #53882
    Anonymous @

    @pedant

    He’s giving out state secrets now! Bulls-eye.

    Now, is paranoia a mental condition? An actual clinical diagnosis?

    I’ve not worked that out. I could google it but I thought I’d throw it to you, as basically, you are google 🙂

    That is a compliment -evidently.

    Yeah, alright.  `-‘

    PuroSolo

    #53883
    Missy @missy

    @ichabod: I get what you are saying, but unlike you I rather enjoyed the “”is me.” Of course this doesn’t mean that he IS the Hybrid, but who knows what it means, when the writers get the bit between their teeth aything goes.

    Son of  P: No, you ‘re not the only one. I too found the episode terrific. Like Icabod, I feel that I shouldn’t watch it so much, but to be frank I cannot resist it – and I do try …honestly. *blushes*

    The only other epi I watch a lot is “Husbands of River Song”. It’ s so good to find that the Doctor has a romantic streak.

    @mudlark: Thank you for your very interesting take on the Hybrid puzzle. I am not an analytical person, so I read all opinions with acute interest. I wonder if we will ever find out the truth of the matter. for all we know, Missy could be the hybrid – if it actually exsists.. This could be exciting – hurry up April 2017.

    Missy

    #53887

    @puroandson

    Now, is paranoia a mental condition?

    More of a symptom, or modifier to other illnesses I’d say (although WHO might disagree). For instance, a schizophrenic is not necessarily a paranoid schizophrenic. Paranoia is simply fear beyond reason.

    @missy

     I wonder if we will ever find out the truth of the matter

    We have the truth of the matter. Moffat does not waste time on wordy exposition and what is said in-text is the current truth. He doesn’t fritter away 5 lines of dialogue and whole minutes of screen time where one passing remark and a shrug will get the job done. There is no shred of evidence to even suggest that Missy is the Hybrid. On the other hand, the Doctor accepted without question that he and Clara are the Hybrid the moment Ashildr pointed out the obvious.

    He doesn’t waste a lot of time explaining the class system of Gallifrey, either. Just “They’ll kill you.” Everything you need to know in less that 5 words.

    #53888
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @puroandson    (son)

    Thank you for the welcome back.  I’m doing well; fully mobile once again, even if my spine remains a bit stiff – and there is not much that can be done about that.  The weather where I am remains, as it has been for much of the summer, fine and pleasantly warm, and likely to remain so for the next ten days or so at least. Today it is 23C, with sunshine and a southerly breeze.  It won’t last until November/December,  but I hope that your soccer trip goes well, despite the inevitable cold and damp.

    I agree that the woman in the barn knew what she was talking about when she said ‘They’ll kill you’ – I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I was arguing otherwise – and  I  think that the Doctor was well aware of the risk.  I agree also with @pedant that the hostility of the High Council, and of Rassilon in particular, was rooted in fear.  As he (pedant) pointed out, people who seek and obtain absolute or near absolute power tend to develop a paranoid mindset, suspicious of anyone they cannot control or who they think might even remotely be a threat to their power, and the Time Lords have never had much success in their attempts to control the Doctor.

    When the Doctor first left Gallifrey he probably didn’t seem much of a threat, even if he was inclined to meddle in the affairs of the universe, and sometimes the Time Lords even found a use for him.  Over the centuries, though, his reputation grew, along with his power to influence the course of events and the number of occasions on which he managed to thwart the plans of the Time Lords, culminating in the events in The End of Time which you referred to, when he confronted and defeated Rassilon himself.  From that point, if not before, Rassilon must have viewed him as a personal enemy.  His popularity among the ordinary  people in and after the Time War could only serve to strengthen the High Council’s perception of him as a threat to their supremacy and, to cap it all, during his ordeal in the confession dial, he openly defied them (note his words as he emerged from the teleport booth) and was prepared to endure four billion years of torture – whether subjective or real-time – rather than give them the information they wanted.

    Like you I have always much preferred social history to the kind which ignores the lives of ordinary people, and that is where archaeology can contribute to building a rounded picture of the past.   I have also spent a good deal of time since I retired in collaborating with cousins on both sides of my family to discover more about the past of our families, going back to the 17th century; not just names and dates, which aren’t of much interest in themselves, but  their occupations and the communities they lived in, as well as significant events in their lives.  One of my distant relatives – a weaver and cousin of one my great, great, great, great grandfathers – was a prominent radical writer and agitator in the early 19th century before the rise of the Chartists, of whom he disapproved, for some reason.*  But I digress.

    Puro solo.  re paranoia:  I think that a distinction can be made between full-blown paranoia which, as @pedant says, is a symptom of some types of mental illness, and the paranoid state of mind which is manifest in the kind of personality disorder which drives many of the powerful or would-be powerful, and which seems to be rooted in a deeply underlying, and probably unacknowledged sense of inadequacy and insecurity.

     

    *perhaps because they didn’t accord him the respect which he thought was his due – I get the impression from his writings that he came to have a rather inflated idea of his own importance

    #53892
    Anonymous @

    Season 9 is finally prime on Amazon which means I finally got to rewatch this episode. I’m about halfway through the episode, but I’ve paused it to ask a question I’ve only just thought of.

    To make the creature freeze, the Doctor must confess something, but if he is restarting his journey over and over, does he have to think of a new confession each time or is he allowed to repeat himself?

    #53895
    ichabod @ichabod

    Thanks for all this good stuff, very helpful in perspective and backstory departments.

    @pedant  so true about Moffat’s economy with words — I think much of the criticism of his plots as being too “convoluted” (usually linked to some resentful remark about “showing off how clever he is”) really boils down to “How dare he make me feel not as smart as he is?”  Missing the (rather obvious) point that a good part of why Steven Moffat has been show-running Who is that he *is* smarter than a lot of DW’s fans (which is saying quite a bit, considering that DW fans tend to be pretty smart folks to begin with).  Yes, Son of Puro — you *always* need to listen carefully, when Moffat’s in the mix.  If you can’t keep up, he trusts you to catch up at least.

    @mudlark  If the non-Time Lord population of Gallifrey feared that the Time Lords might kill the Doctor it was not because he was thought to be the hybrid; they would have had ample opportunity to attempt to do so earlier if that had been the case. I suspect that their reasons had more to do with the outcome of the Time War.

    Great analysis altogether, but why “they’ll kill you!” isn’t that clear to me.  I could understand “HE will kill you”, meaning Rassilon, who has plenty of reason to hate the Doctor, and who has engineered the whole Torture-castle-Confession-Dial situation to get at the secret of the hybrid and then just left the Doctor there to die (and die, and die, and die).  Rassilon himself could be scared enough of the Doctor to try to kill him, and certainly shows willing at the barn in “Hell Bent”.

    But, “they” will kill you?  All the Council (or all the TLs)?  He’s been a rebellious damn nuisance but has also helped rescue his home planet, and the TLs from their own folly, in the Time War, so . . .  Son of Puro is right that heroes have been killed by their own “leaders” in history for being dangerously “upright” and also popular.  Does “they’ll kill you” really mean, *while Rassilon still dominates them*, the Council Lords will do what he wants and kill you (or let *him* kill you)?  Or are they out for his blood too?  Probably.

    Maybe the real threat that all the TLs feel from the Doctor is his refusal (several times in the past, and again in “Hell Bent”) to validate their high and mighty status thing by accepting either their authority, or the “Presidency” of anything for more than a short time (for his own purposes).  And yet — as Son of Puro notes, the common folks revere him, and when he faces down everything the TLs throw at him in the barn scenes in “Hell Bent”, he serves up fodder (his actions) for their reverence (new stuff-of-legemds re the Doctor), not any sort of warmth toward them (let alone concern for possible damage to them during his face-offs with his opponents).  in context, that can be taken as part of his single-minded “madness” around retrieving Clara from death, a foreshadowing of how reckless — about others — he might be if he continues as part of the Clara/Doctor hybrid.

    @mudlark  That’s my favored kind of history, too — what’s *behind* the legends that get handed down as official truths and recorded in official documents; what people experienced (so far as we can discover) as well as what they did, and not just the leadership, either.

     

     

    #53901
    winston @winston

    @mudlark  @ichabod and @puroandson   I just want to thank you all for once again helping me understand the show even more and for opening my mind to possibilities and theories I sometimes miss. Your conversations enlighten me and add to my enjoyment of Doctor Who.

    #53902
    Anonymous @

    @mudlark

    Oh no, Miss M, you were not arguing -and if you were that’s good too because you state right things. That’s bad grammar on  my behalf!  Mum read your post and is glad that its warm where you are and she also hoping -and I am – that your back gets much better. But if its cold that may not happen which is  a concern to us. Wow! Your ancestors were really interesting. Mum tried to explain the chartrists and I nodded really hard because I didn’t want another 30 mins of explaining things which is probably bad to admit!

    @ichabod

    Yes, “they’ll kill you” means what you ultimately said. It’s really hard to explain it so much for that kind of stops it being absorbed at the point it’s written.

    @winston Same back to you!  You always offer terrific theories and answers.

    #53905
    ichabod @ichabod

    @puroandson  Son of Puro, Yes, “they’ll kill you” means what you ultimately said. It’s really hard to explain it so much for that kind of stops it being absorbed at the point it’s written.

    Oh, absolutely — that’s why I’m still chewing these issues over many months later — I don’t think about it that way while I’m watching an episode, especially not the first time.  I just want the impact, unfiltered by my own thoughts as much as that’s possible.  I’m not there, in the first place, for my thoughts, but to be as observant and receptive as I can re the thoughts of others — the creative crew, the actors, the writers.  The rumination and chains of speculation come later, particular in a setting like this where there are so many good minds putting their own thoughts about DW out there.

    @winston  Your own contributions ain’t too dusty either, friend.

     

     

    #53907
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @ichabod

    why “they’ll kill you!” isn’t that clear to me

    I took this to be the generic ‘they’ with which ordinary people who lack power or influence tend to refer to Authority. Furthermore, Rassilon, as one of the founders of Time Lord culture resurrected, would appear to be the focus of something like a personality cult, having been accorded almost god-like status,  and when the Leader is the centre of a personality cult, blame tends in any case to be deflected onto to his or her henchmen, whether because people are genuinely fooled by the propaganda, or because it is too risky to place it where it primarily belongs.  Certainly the High Council seem to have been more than willing to cooperate with Rassilon, and the Doctor holds all of them responsible. All of them end up being sent into exile.

     

    #53908

    @ichabod

    but why “they’ll kill you!” isn’t that clear to me.

    Oh, come on.

    Anyone who has ever paid attention knows who “they” are. “They” are:

    • “The Man”;
    • “The Powers That Be”;
    • “The Lever Pullers”;
    • “Those in the Castle”;
    • “The Inner Circle”;
    • “The Insiders”;
    • “The Politburo”;
    • “The Powerful”;
    • Those with power, which on Gallifrey means the Time Lords – Rassillon and everybody he has cowed and bent to his will. The entire corrupt structure of Time Lord power. Except it turned out he had less control over the common soldier than he (and, I imagine, civilians) thought.

    Baffled that you are having so much trouble grasping this.

    #53909
    ichabod @ichabod

    @mudlark  @pedant  Maybe because the Doctor himself doesn’t seem to grasp it until pretty late in the day — in “Heaven Sent”, I think, when he figures out that the hybrid secret is what his torturers are after, and who would that be other than the TLs.  I must be, you know, slow . . . well, maybe I am.  Thanks for prodding me to look back and think it through.

     

    #53910
    Anonymous @

    Kind of answering my own question lost in the sea of posts above and having a follow up question. The Doctor says, “…so long as I don’t run out of confessions.” So he does have to keep thinking of new ones, but does this mean that he has over 1 billion confessions?

    #53912
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod Hi there

    This is mother of the Spawn today.

    And yet — as Son of Puro notes, the common folks revere him, and when he faces down everything the TLs throw at him in the barn scenes in “Hell Bent”, he serves up fodder (his actions) for their reverence (new stuff-of-legends re the Doctor), not any sort of warmth toward them (let alone concern for possible damage to them during his face-offs with his opponents).  in context, that can be taken as part of his single-minded “madness” around retrieving Clara

    I think his mind is trying to sort out the variables in order to remove all the idiots (the council. And I know he feels some days what with my job ‘n’ all) and get himself into the medical area after he’s located Clara in order to collect the human-mind/TL wipe.

    I don’t recall him “serving up fodder for their reverence”? I do believe that his actions were very much shown to protect the people. He was right there standing beside them. He drew a line in the stand -a wonderful connection to a an excellent western from many years ago. The very reason he stole The Moment and in the end saved the people -the women, the children, the ordinary people who are not TLs (it was never their war) was to save the people.

    I think he has a pretty good idea of how the TLs are going to react. In this particular situation (as evidenced previously with the zygon two-parter) he understands diplomacy and history. I think that’s why, as @pedant mentioned, the Doctor exiles the lot: a wise move.

    He didn’t show his hand too soon, either. He knew he could be killed and Barn Lady said it all in four words which response indicates exactly what the people knew, why they loved him, what they themselves think of the Council, what the Time War meant to them, how they knew and understood the Doctor’s role and position, why they felt safe because he was there, and, possibly, that if they themselves -those near the Doctor when the attack fleet arrived – were to die (as a prelude to any ‘discussion’ the Council might have with the Doctor) it might be considered an acceptable loss because millions of people were originally saved by the Doctor’s actions on the day of The Moment – Gallifrey survived after all.

    The secret to understanding Moffat -and I think that’s why Son was talking about “absorbing it at the time” is that one really needs to keep up as the episode unwinds. I guess I watch things that way -absorbing it all -particularly dialogue in such a short finale so that the whole backstory unfolds itself in one part of the mind whilst the other part pays attention to what’s happening on screen.

    That’s strictly my way of looking at things, anyway.

    I can vouch for Son’s knowledge of History. In this country students study over 210 minutes of History per week from Year 5-6 with many schools exceeding this minimum to five or six  hours per week with emphasis on democracy in western countries, revolutionary wars across Europe and their consequence together with mass migrations following wars including 1939-45, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Falklands and specific issues associated with our closest allies such as the American war of independence, the real reasons behind the American Civil War,  Contra-gate, Watergate, the collapse of Tsardom and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Even in Year 10, students study the development of neo-fascism in Australia, Germany and the US, and on the other hand, investigate the enormity and complexity of genocidal activities in Africa. They are expected to follow the money as well -looking specifically at Afghanistan and the sale of weapons to this region. They investigate Iran and geographically pinpoint name changes (Tehran) as well as following on from basic geographical studies

    Following the knowledge and factual elements, students participate  in application activities during debates, speeches and independent research/ mini theses and this all before they move into Year 11 (From 4); once referred to as the Leaving Certificate.

    #53913
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod

    Goodness, I’m sorry for that long ramble and digression into Aus Curriculum. I should have checked for typos -there’s a helluva lot there such as “before they move into Year 11 (form 4)…rather than “From 4.”

    🙂   It’s what happens when this new laptop suddenly ‘goes dark’ and the cleaner arrives and then I forget about it, turn it on, and the actual page is still there. But I still hit ‘send’ because, well, the cleaner arrives and…. It’s my own time paradox, really, coupled with a brain that lacks any kind of sharpness.

    These days people no longer refer to ‘forms’ but grades such as “grade 12” or “year 11”. Terms like Junior High and Middle School are not really used although ‘Middle school’  is word-creeping. 🙂

    Yes, on balance Heaven Sent is a complicated episode with food for thought months and probably years later. I’m reminded of the conversations subsequent to Blink,  the first episode of Mat Smith’s Doctor coinciding with the ‘Moffat take over’ as well those posts defending the terrific episode, The Girl in the Fire Place.

    I’m still bemused by posters who turn up here and emphatically state “it’s time for Moffat to move on. He really has no more left in the bag and the ratings for Season 9 weren’t good.”

    I’m reminded that ratings are often people’s interpretation of ratings! They don’t often highlight the Same Day + 7 viewership and downloadables. But that’s an entire other conversation for the Pub…

    Kindest,

    PuroSolo

    #53914
    ichabod @ichabod

    @puroandson  I don’t recall him “serving up fodder for their reverence”?

    I put that clumsily — I didn’t mean that the Doctor was deliberately putting on a show to impress, but rather that his actions would become the stuff of more legends about him as a hero.  He fulfills the role they expect of him — war hero, Time Lord, rebel who sides with the people rather than with his TL peers.  And he’s also banking on them to be his witnesses if need be, while endangering them by being there in the first place.  As you say, He was right there standing beside them.  Yes; and they were willing to stand *in danger*, alongside him.  The pilot of the gunship appeals to the locals to stand away from him, and they refuse to budge — but that pilot is showing more concern about them than the Doctor shows by not ordering them to move away from him.  12 hasn’t turned them into warriors, as Davros charged — but he accepts them as possible cannon fodder should things turn nasty (well, nastier than they did).  This doesn’t, IMO, make him a bad guy; it’s just who he is, at that moment.

    Why go to the barn in the first place?  Why not go right to the Citadel and call Rassilon out there, without putting innocent locals in the (possible) line of fire as at the barn?  Sure, the Doctor needed to rest, planning how to get old of the extraction chamber, because that’s really all he has in mind — getting Clara out of Trap Street alive.  Everything else — other people’s risks and safety, even his need for revenge for the Confession Dial ordeal — takes a back seat to that.  If he weren’t so single-mindedly obsessed with protecting Clara, even after death (as she herself rightly protests later), maybe he would realize that by waiting in the barn he’s putting the people who gather there at risk.  People do tend to die around the Doctor, and nobody knows that better than he does.  He is, as usual, unarmed by preference and prepared to be killed if the soldiers don’t take his side.  That’s all very well, but it makes him completely unable to actually protect those people from Rassilon should Rassilon kill him on the spot, and then choose to have the civilian witnesses eradicated.

    For me, the barn scene does not redound to the Doctor’s credit.  He *should* send the women and kids, at least, away, as the pilot suggests.  But he doesn’t.  There’s a strong whiff of class privilege here — the Officer ordering the battle lines with the country folk as part of his army (except that they are unarmed and helpless); the Time LORD taking the stance of protector for people he might not survive to protect, let alone avenge.  The Sheriff in “High Noon”, yes; but also the Lord (however temporarily) of the Manor.  Those people are there to serve his only true purpose, which is controlling the situation so he can rescue Clara.

    Along the way, of course, he simply consigns Rassilon and the Council into outer space, as coldly as you might tell a servant to walk your dog because you don’t have time to do it yourself; and that’s probably a help to the rural people outside the Citadel, since Rassilon is clearly a crazy tyrant.  Which is not to say that another bunch of high-falutin’ thugs in tall collars won’t replace him and the Council with an authority little better — but the Doctor *doesn’t care*.  He doesn’t care what comes next.  All he wants to do is to use the extraction chamber, grab a neural blocker, and get Clara someplace safe, and blank, for her.

    In my view, what all this does is *not* make the Doctor a careless aristo throwing his weight around with no concern for the consequences.  What it does is strengthen the most important point of the episode: the ruinous, destructive force of obsession.  He’s *not* thinking about “the people”, and he should be.  In his usual frame of mind, he *would* be.  But he’s been twisted by the power of the Clara connection, and he finally sees this, regains his true perspective, and submits to the breaking of that ruinous bond.  I think “Look how far I went” also applies to the barn situation, the Council, and Rassilon, as well as shooting the General.  The Doctor has gone very, very far — from himself, the “idiot” who stops by and helps and moves on.  That’s what obsession does.  It not only objectifies its object; it deforms the obsessive as well.

    This is a scathing indictment, if you care to look at it that way, of the idealization of “romantic love” in popular art.  “I loved him/her so much that I forgot everything else and risked all, thereby turning myself into a monster of selfish need, destructive (at least potentially) to all around me except (but sometimes including) the one I loved.”  It’s Moffat’s answer to demands for a Jane-and-Rochester love story about the Doctor and his (human) companion.  You want it?  Here it is.  And it’s a glorious, awful spiral toward mutual destruction that threatens to rip all of space and time to pieces AND turns the Doctor into a monster of indifference to all but his beloved.

    *She* has to kick him hard to restore his sense of right and wrong.  And it works; because *real* love, not the romantic B.S. about it, means you *listen* to the one you love.  You see that person, and you hear that person, and you put the obsessiveness aside and accede to that person’s justified demands of you.  That’s what I meant to say.  I don’t know if it’s what Moffat meant, of course, but it’s what I see here, for what that’s worth.

    Speaking of rattling on!  And, by the way, I think it’s amazing that your Aussie history courses cover so much modern history — after your objections to the way education has been screwed up there!  If only US ed at any level short of college taught recent history like this!  When I was teaching, at least, history/Social Studies didn’t get past WWI in Secondary School — too  much political dissention, even then (mid-sixties) in the US.

     

    #53915
    Anonymous @

    Miss @ichabod

    than the Doctor shows by not ordering them to move away from him.

    Because the Doctor and the Council -and Rassilon are different. He wouldn’t order them which we think was the point. It was also why he didn’t:

    go to the barn in the first place?  Why not go right to the Citadel and call Rassilon out there…

    He always said he wanted to come home “the long way round.” His real, true home (I’m reminded of what Jane said to Edward as her equal because we studied that) was amongst the people. Also they (the Council) absolutely had to come to him. This could be seen as a mini revolution which is a little bit like what Mr @pedant said in his last post where he spoke of how truth speaks to power, how the potential leader is with ‘his’ or her people.

    If he had gone to the citadel, fez in hand, then the people wouldn’t have heard would they? The citadel would have made sure he would be captured and if not, made up more lies to give to the people (if they have The Moment then they’re gonna have an awesome propaganda MACHINE, LOL). No, he had to exile one, and then the rest who blindly would have followed him.

    When he shot the general he may have gone too far. Personally I don’t agree because on Gallifrey changing  form as TLs do is easy. In any case I don’t think that he’s apologising for having exiled the Council leaders. These people stayed in their citadel while woman and children -the innocent died. Exiling was the nicest thing he chose to do, frankly. Also, going to the barn from a writing point of view was a bookend to the whole last two series -remember the Barn and the lady in Listen. He liked the Barn. There were memories. Also, he never likes the soldiers. But the people, definitely!

    I think all this is extremely simple. Still, you know, good chattin’ about it. I enjoy a natter as Mum says.

    I have to study for an English script now.

    Cheers!

    Son of Puro

     

     

    #53916

    @puroandson

    Quite.

    He didn’t got to a barn, he went home and they didn’t grass him up, turn him in or drive him away. They made him soup.

    #53920
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @ichabod

    Why go to the barn in the first place? Why not go right to the Citadel and call Rassilon out there, without putting innocent locals in the (possible) line of fire as at the barn?

    I’m not sure that I can add much of substance to what @puroandson (both) have already said, but perhaps I can expand a little on the points they made

    When confronting an enemy/preparing for battle, it is best to do so on a ground of ones own choosing. If he had gone directly to the citadel he would have been in the territory of Rassilon and the High Council, the advantage would have been very much on their side, and there would have been no witnesses.   Instead he forced them to come to him at the barn in the dry lands, where representatives of  people who mattered to him were assembled to witness.

    Admittedly the Doctor took a risk, gambling on the likelihood that the army would take his side when it came to the crunch, and  he had no right to expect or demand that other people put themselves at risk also, but they came to him of their own accord, knowing the danger, and they stood with him, and that was their choice and their right.  Rassilon, when threatening the Doctor, discounted them entirely, ‘…no witnesses’, – just as, in The End of Time, he was prepared to consign them and the rest of the universe to oblivion in order to ensure the survival of himself and the Time Lords.  Here, though, the Doctor provided an opportunity for them to assert themselves. It may have been incidental to his principal objective, but in extremis they were his friends and allies and I don’t think that for a minute he took them for granted.

     

    #53921
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod @pedant @mudlark

    Just to expand on Son’s analysis I recall an epigram of Xenophon who said: “in times of trouble it is always best to go to one’s own people”.

    PuroSolo

    #53922
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod -rather a large cut and paste here!

    For me, the barn scene does not redound to the Doctor’s credit.  He *should* send the women and kids, at least, away, …..as the pilot suggests.  But he doesn’t.  There’s a strong whiff of class privilege here — the Officer ordering the battle lines with the country folk as part of his army (except that they are unarmed and helpless); the Time LORD taking the stance of protector for people he might not survive to protect, let alone avenge.  The Sheriff in “High Noon”, yes; but also the Lord (however temporarily) of the Manor.  Those people are there to serve his only true purpose, which is controlling the situation so he can rescue Clara.

    Along the way, of course, he simply consigns Rassilon and the Council into outer space, as coldly as you might tell a servant to walk your dog because you don’t have time to do it yourself; and that’s probably a help to the rural people outside the Citadel, since Rassilon is clearly a crazy tyrant.  Which is not to say that another bunch of high-falutin’ thugs in tall collars won’t replace him and the Council with an authority little better — but the Doctor *doesn’t care*.  He doesn’t care what comes next.

    I think that’s an extraordinary rendering of the situation to say the least.  To say he doesn’t “care what comes next” is probably not backed up by evidence. His faith in his own people -the rural people as you suggest – is always strong and immense despair (as the 9th and 10th Doctor explain) regarding how he used The Moment (before the 50th anniversary) is the colour palette of his existence.

    His actions are not Lord of the Manor -he doesn’t ask for anything from them. There are no demands or even expectations but rather a line drawn in the sand.

    They don’t scatter but he doesn’t “order” them to either. I don’t necessarily believe that this particular situation is one engineered because of an obsession with Clara. Certainly in the previous episode as he exits the transfer chamber he clearly states there are no places these people can hide and that his memory is very long. But upon arriving in Gallifrey he needs to clear a few things up first. Removing Rassilion the Resurrected and his clan is very important and not done just so he can snatch Clara back from Trap Street.  Clearly that’s a large part of the motivation but not the only thing. These people were foul, bitter tyrants who, as @mudlark wrote, saw these rural people as nothing: “no witnesses” and had previously consigned them to fire as they remained in their protected Citadel. Yet, the Doctor spared the Council’s life. He’s a better man than most!

    I don’t think the Doctor discounted the people’s values or involvement. He wanted them to be a part of the next stage. He wanted them to see how he would deal with the Council for their sake and for their children. They respected him and gave him soup.

    The soldiers also did not kill him despite being ordered to. They too knew they’d been pawns. The Doctor had faith in them to do the right thing. Still, if his life had ended there then so be it. He would have tried. Not by using The Moment -or not using it – but by being right there beside his people.

    I suppose if there’s any “whiff of class privilege” it’s that he knows exactly what the Council thinks of him and acts according to his own belief system. The Council has never understood how he isn’t like them -privileged, demanding, staying on Gallifrey and being its president (which I believe is one theory or associated back story not always fully explored in my mind), using the people as a barricade and shield or demanding they take up arms to defend the Lord’s fiefdom. He never asks or demands. He says almost nothing. And yet they stand beside him and do not step away.

    I think they respected him and understood. Had he “ordered” them away that would have been hypocritical. The Doctor tries his best to avoid such behaviour -not that he always succeeds. Certainly his attitude to soldiers early in the peace was problematic and I think that was the author voice coming through in the previous season with Danny Pink and his remarks. In the end, Danny sided with the angels and understood the Doctor. Danny saved Clara because he loved her. The Doctor saved Clara because he loved her too. He loved the people of Gallifrey because he was theirs and they were his.

    PuroSolo

    #53923

    @puroandson

    He loved the people of Gallifrey because he was theirs and they were his.

    And he saved them(1) too.

     

    1. With a little help from his friends and a weapon with a conscience.

    #53924
    Anonymous @

    @pedant

    yes true: “with a little help from his friends.”

    Interesting that Clara was essential to that day when minds were changed. She also begged the TLs to help the Doctor when he was on Trenzalore.

    His anger on Trap Street and in the Confession Dial/Torture chamber was about finding those who had helped to take Clara’s life. How ironic that she was involved in saving the people on Gallifrey including those in the Citadel -whether they be soldiers, ‘butler’ figures or members of the War Council or cabinet.

    #53925
    ichabod @ichabod

    @mudlark  @puroandson  @pedant et al, great responses; thanks.  You’re all right, my “analysis” is an example of “overthinking” stuff from a start that was sketchy at best.  Well, that’s one way the Long Delay gets to me, I suppose.  I should be made of stuff both sterner and less cynical, perhaps.  Or I could blame US politics — currently more than enough to drive anyone round the bend.  So let’s put that one down as “bonkers” in an off-the-charts way.  I like all of your insights much better.

    Puro solo, on the Doctor deliberately rejecting privilege (that the other TLs would see as his/theirs by right) by walking (or running) away from “Presidency”, on Gallifrey or probably anyplace else — people described as rebels tend to have big problems with authority, don’t they?  If you can recognize the abuse of authority by others as such, and know yourself to have been raised to be one of those others, there’d likely be not just a touchiness about its exercise even by yourself, for fear of getting it wrong and abusing it too, without even realizing it (or, worse yet, realizing it and excusing it).  He’s certainly got reason to be cautious in that respect by this point in his lives, if not well before.

    #53942
    Missy @missy

    I  hope that I don’t miss anyone, but you would not believe the trouble I have had getting on to the forum. Every time I tried this notice appeared: SURESUPPORT and suggested I click onto their site – I didn’t naturally. When it was clear, I didn’t have the time – now finally……..

    @mudlark:  ….   in The End of Time which you referred to, when he confronted and defeated Rassilon himself.

    This sounds picky and perhaps I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but surely it was the Master who defeated Rassilon?

    @ichabod: Of course, I agree with you. Nothing is perfect, life would be very dull if it were.

    I’ve enjoyed reading all the posts and have nothing to add. As mentioned I’m not at all analytical, which on this forum is a pity. However, one interesting moment came up whilst I was watching BAD WOLF last night. DW and Rose meet the Emperor of the Daleks and he tells of harvesting the dregs of human society, filleting and pulping them, and using the best of the bunch to breed a new Dalek race to which rose exclaims ; “That makes them half human!”

    What say you on the Hybrid- if there really is a Hybrid  – being half Human half Dalek

    Missy

     

    #53947
    Mudlark @mudlark

     

    @missy

    surely it was the Master who defeated Rassilon?

    I think that you are forgetting the sequence of events.  The Doctor gate crashes – or rather, skylight crashes – the party just as the link with Galifrey is established and Rassilon and the High Council appear.  After making a brief attempt to persuade the Master of his folly, he uses Wilf’s gun to fire at and destroy the white point star diamond which is amplifying the drumbeat signal and is thus the crucial element in the Gate apparatus. This destroys the link, and Galifrey and the Time Lords are pulled back to where they belong

    Even after Rassilon has foiled his plan to gain control of the Time Lords, it takes a while for the Master to realise that they, the Time Lords have used him for their own ends, going back in time to implant the drumbeat signal in his brain, and that they have no intention of rewarding him by including him in their further plans.  It is only at the last minute that he turns against them, steps aside to let the Doctor take aim at the diamond and, as the TLs disappear, attacks Rassilon and is sucked back with him into the Time Lock.

     

     

    #53948
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @missy

    What say you on the Hybrid- if there really is a Hybrid – being half Human half Dalek

    This wasn’t addressed to me, so apologies for butting in with my unsought opinion.   As I see it, though,  if the Daleks did succeed in using Human DNA to breed a new variety of Dalek, the results would indeed be chimeras- or hybrids if you like, but not, I think *the* Hybrid

    #53949
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    Just re-watched both parts last night (perhaps first time since initial viewing).

    That latter fact interesting in itself, as I have a tendency to re-watch episodes that “speak to me” multiple times.

    I am sure many others have pointed this out, but the narrative device used in “Heaven Sent” seemed strangely familiar. And it was. It was a version of Sherlock’s mind palace. And to be honest, I think it worked better in “Sherlock”.

    Reflections on “Hell Bent” should be on another thread, of course, but since I watched both parts together, the stand-out moment for me was when Clara pleaded with the Doctor to tell her why he had spent billions of years trapped in the confession dial and he replied: “I had a duty of care”.

    Wonderful and heart-breaking.

    #53950

    @mudlark

    Yes – a key difference between a noun and a proper noun!

     

    (Anyone else have issue logging in recently due to an attempt to brute force a password?)

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