Hell Bent

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  • #49489
    Anonymous @

    @tardigrade

    Hmm, young Son is overreaching and being a bit of a di** or discovering the cocky so I shall offer him milk and cookies and tell him he’s grounded.

    I’m sure you’re right, besides.

    Kindest always,

    Puro and naughty Son

    #49490
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @puroandson

    I think River is dead? -just because we see her doesn’t mean she isn’t dead. It’s time travel man!

    Yes- she can still crop up- will be interesting where in her timeline the Xmas special has her placed. But regardless, within her own timeline, she dies and is uploaded to the Library computer, cheating death. She “faded out” last we saw her- not 100% sure that she’s altogether dead even then though.

    Point: “how’s Danny, still dead, Clara?”
    Clara: “yes, Missy, he’s still dead”.
    Therefore he’s dead?

    Yes- dead now, but that’s second time around. When he was hit by a car and killed, he had secretly been uploaded to Missy’s Nethersphere, so cheated death and could even have returned to life had he not sacrificed that chance.

    And so is Rory. These people didn’t cheat death. They died. It wasn’t “blech, blood and slump” but a far more sinister thing: we saw gravestones and the implication of that is inherent.

    Rory eventually died, presumably of natural causes. By again not his 1st time… he was dead, replaced by an auton and still ends up fully alive again.

    Not everyone is immortal- they do die eventually, but it can take a couple of goes to finish them off.

    #49491
    Anonymous @

    @tardigrade

    Yep, I see the point. Me, I’d be happy with less death but still.

    <slaps Son, hey you, calm down boy>

    Sorry Mum. Point taken.

    Eem, the errant Son.

    #49492
    Anonymous @

    @tardigrade

    Yes- she can still crop up- will be interesting where in her timeline the Xmas special has her placed.

    I think Moffat said it’s just after Angels Take Manhatten for her?

    #49493
    Juniperfish @juniperfish

    @Puroandson

    Yes but you’re saying -quite openly -that if people disagree wholeheartedly with the narrative of post structuralism and lit crit then it’s a “populist hack contempt based on a superficial understanding”

    Puro, not at all – I also write in my post #49484 “there are intelligent critiques of post-structuralism”. I was specifically replying to @pedant ‘s post #49418 hence he was name-checked – I thought you didn’t want to get into it!

    to me, the author writes the text -such as in Hell Bent, so his/her interpretation and meaning is more significant than the other, possibly lesser, interpretations. I know this is going to offend people but I can’t, in all honesty, really believe that all “interpretations are as valid as the original text itself.”  I don’t assume that the other interpretations are foolish or are not particularly “fun” to play around with, but in the end, surely, the writer holds the original intent.

    Post-structuralism was never about the validation of a random generator “anything goes” approach to textual interpretation. That is why to suggest the author is “de-centered” is more accurate than to suggest the author is erased (and, as debated above, a television text is multi-authored in any event). If you were to claim that Hell Bent is the touching tale of a pack of elephants adopting a baby crocodile, whilst that might be delightfully absurdist, it’s not of much use to us in discussing the text.

    Take James Cameron’s Avatar, for instance.

    • Indonesian protesters against rainforest destruction have dressed up as Na-avi as part of their activism. They read Avatar as a story about environmentalism.
    • Palestinian protesters against Israeli settler occupation have dressed up as Na-avi as part of their activism. They read Avatar as a story about colonialism.
    • The Pope (not the current one but the one in post at the time the film came out) condemned Avatar as promoting paganism. He and his supporting theologians read Avatar as a story about religion.
    • Finally, some academic film critics have pointed out that Jake Sully’s story is a classic Hollywood “white saviour” narrative, when the “morally good” white male outsider comes to help save a native tribe, in the vein of Fern Gully or Dances with Wolves. These critics also read Avatar as a story concerned with colonialism, but from a different perspective to 2)

    We could interview James Cameron, ask him what his intention was and decide that his interpretation and meaning was more significant than any of the others, as you suggest above.

    Indeed, from his interviews, he’d fundamentally go with 1), and 2) also to an extent (but there’s no word on whether he supports the particular Palestinian activist take on 2)). An approach to the text inspired by Barthes, or Derrida, would say, let us consider all the meanings of this text, which spring from within it, including those from the place of the other. It’s actually a profoundly ethical approach – to consider that readings other than ours, or the author’s, may have significant meaning in the world, from the perspective of readers unlike ourselves.

    I’m willing to bet Cameron would repudiate 4) but, him notwithstanding, we can marshal significant arguments both from within the text and from reading Avatar in its cultural context, to support 4).

    I think the playfulness in a piece like Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” is often missed. He was engaged in a game of Épater la bourgeoisie in other words, of teasing the bourgeois critical establishment of the time, because lord knows there was a tonne of turgid literary criticism which purported to mainline, from beyond the grave, the intentions of the author, generally in order to shore up the elitism of the critic.

    Anyhoo, I don’t want to become a fishy bore….

    And I cheerfully admit I know absolutely nothing about post-structuralism in the field of music.

    @tardigrade

    Oh no, I have just been hit by River feels, thanks to you 🙂 I always hated the fact that the Doctor uploaded River to CAL, because I thought he should have realised she was a free spirit and that would be like a living prison for her.

    But now, after Moff’s revival of the idea that Time Lords are uploaded to the Matrix when they die in Hell Bent, I realise <sob> that he was giving her the closest he could manage to a Time Lord funeral (having figured out her profound significance to him, when she whispered whatever it was to him that made him trust her in Forest of the Dead/ Silence in the Library – probably his name). Gulp.

    #49494
    Anonymous @

    @tardigrade

    Also:

    That left it far too open for my liking for a modified teleporter to be used to clone / restore to life anyone.

    My interpretation of this was that the teleporter hard drive was being reset to the state in which it had the Doctor’s information. One could consider a conceit whereby the process of constructing the information in the hard drive depends on the destruction of the information in the original body and, likewise, the reconstruction of the information in the teleported body demands the destruction of the information in the hard drive. I.e. there’s a restriction such that information has to be sent, not copied. However in this case since the sending of the information to the hard drive was an event occurring inside the energy loop, it effectively happened periodically.

    #49498
    Anonymous @

    I wish there were a way that we could convince Steven Moffatt to make a spinoff mini-series about Clara and Me flying around in the Diner. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

    #49499
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @morpho and @tardigrade

    My interpretation of this was that the teleporter hard drive was being reset to the state in which it had the Doctor’s information.

    The Doctor hints at the reason this would be the case: he dryly remarks that the victim is the only really essential person in a torture chamber.

    #49501
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @jphamlore

    Not that Doctor Who can get Cumberbatch…

    Cumberbatch as Rassilon- now there’s a great prospect- the role could certainly do with that sort of boost when it returns. But if he is available (in this fantasy world), then why not as the Doctor? Much as I like Capaldi in the role, if Cumberbatch was available, regenerate away 🙂

    @bluesqueakpip

    The Doctor hints at the reason this would be the case: he dryly remarks that the victim is the only really essential person in a torture chamber.

    I took that much more metaphorically :-). I don’t think that the TLs intended that the Doctor goes through what he does by killing himself to feed the teleporter repeatedly. Hence if the Doctor does intend that meaning, it seems he’s tacitly acknowledging that it is him torturing himself. Which of course really would make him the only essential person 🙂

    Unfortunately I think you’re forced to add some justification of why his original body needs to be destroyed each time that isn’t really supported (though not necessarily excluded) by the script, to avoid the teleport being too overpowered.

    #49502
    Anonymous @

    @juniperfish

    Well, I am slightly confused? Are you the same person? 🙂

    Roland Barthes was pretty much the reigning duke of lit crit in all its forms and in fact made it pretty clear in The Death of the Author that the author was autre! “Non-evocative” was in the ‘text’ I recall.

    Anyway, it seems you and I agree more than I thought.

    Still, one can recall that pre-po mo the author had one question to answer and it’s still the same today: “what’s your market?” Of course the words weren’t exactly the same and the ‘market’ wasn’t used except by Hobbesian espousers…..:)

    OK. Happy fish, happy fire (puro) and happy Son.

    Well, that sounded lame but you know….ahem   (happy fire??)

    Happy Christmas (that’s better)

    Puro and Son.

    #49505
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @tardigrade

    Having an active SF afterlife is not ‘cheating death’. The Time Lords upload people to the Matrix after death; that’s the SF version of an afterlife. You might as well say that Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life cheated death because he’s putting in some serious overtime as George Bailey’s guardian angel. 🙂 Likewise, River in The Name of The Doctor is having a very busy afterlife – but she’s pretty damn sure that she’s dead. At one point, she says so.

    Same for Danny. He has a virtual reality Time Lord style afterlife, followed by being zombified as a Cyberman. I fail to see how not coming back to life properly (because he gives the chance to genuinely live to the little boy) is ‘cheating death’. He cheats death by staying dead? Or does he cheat death by pointing out that he’s dead in Last Christmas?

    If you go back to BG Who, the only dead regular characters who stay dead are Katarina, Sarah Kingdom (both really one story characters), Adric and the robot Kamelion. That’s over seventeen years.

    The BG series killed-off-but-revived Peri and the movie-we-do-not-mention killed off and revived Grace Holloway.

    Whereas Steven Moffat has killed off River (before we knew she was going to be a regular companion), Amy, Rory, Clara – well, that’s everyone. Really. Technically speaking, everyone the Doctor has travelled with since Steven Moffat took charge is dead. They are definitely dead. They couldn’t be deader. The people we see after they’re dead tell us they’re dead.

    But this is a story about time travel. So we see River before she dies, and Clara (or a combination of the Doctor plus Clara) uses time travel as a way to live an awfully long time before she dies.

    And this is a story where dead characters can be pretty darn active. That’s not a cheat, that’s a premise within the story.

    denying that’s a DEM, by virtue of God being a character that had previously been mentioned and established to have unlimited power, hence that action being consistent with known capacities of known characters.

    I really hate to tell you this, but if God is introduced in the beginning of your play cycle, uh, creating the world or something, then please do not be surprised if he turns up near the end of the play cycle to raise everyone from the dead. 🙂

    To put it in more Doctor Who terms, if one of the Time Lords reminds you in Act One that the Time Lords can bring people back from the dead, please don’t be surprised if they have brought Clara back from the dead by the middle of the episode…

    A Deus Ex Machina is when you don’t mention God at all throughout the play and he unexpectedly turns up at the end to zap the bad guys, or provide a miracle, or hold back the waters of the Red Sea. Tartuffe, by Moliere, has an excellent example of a deus ex machina. Or, rather, a rex ex machina, when the King entirely unexpectedly sends a police officer to arrest the villain and save the good guys.

    Clara’s extended detour along the dusty road to death isn’t a deus ex machina. Firstly, it took one and a half episodes to set up, then secondly the remaining half of the episode is spent dealing with the consequences. The writer has very carefully set up limits that don’t prevent the method being used again, but certainly make it something that isn’t going to be easy. The Time Lords themselves don’t like using this method, and don’t like making it permanent. They see it as risky – it’s just that the Doctor was willing to take the risk.

    My discomfort with that type of teleport being in the narrative though is that it gives a means of cloning / bringing back the dead, seemingly without limit

    The limit is set out in Forest of the Dead; the limit for humans is the amount of computing power and storage space needed to replicate a physical body. CAL is an enormously powerful computer – and saving that number of people nearly ‘kills’ her. River’s team can have their personalities recorded – but the amount of storage available in those communicators means that their physical bodies can never be replicated.

    Basically, bringing someone back from the dead via teleport is only possible if you’ve got the recorded teleport data, available storage space – and there’s a distinct hint from both Forest of the Dead and Death in Heaven that the personality needs to be kept going in virtual reality – so also a massive amount of computing power. The Time Lords, it seems, can dispense with the teleport requirement, but still need to keep the personalities running in VR.

    Unfortunately I think you’re forced to add some justification of why his original body needs to be destroyed each time that isn’t really supported (though not necessarily excluded) by the script, to avoid the teleport being too overpowered.

    I only watched Heaven Sent once, and have no intention of watching it again, so all I can say is that I had the very distinct impression that his original body was destroyed each time to provide the teleport with a power supply. It’s a Matrix joke; he uses his original body as a battery. Doing that burns it up each time.

    I’d also point out that if that wasn’t the Time Lords original intention (that he die horribly each time), they should have damn well pulled him out the first time he kills himself. Clara does a fairly good job of describing the type of person who’d leave someone to torture themselves for 4.5 billion years: the word is ‘monster’. 😉

    #49507
    Anonymous @

    Miss @tardigrade

    Yes, I loved the autons too. I was first introduced to them in what I think was the 3rd Doctor’s first episode? They looked pretty funny -basically actors walking in a wooden and stiff way!

    I loved the autons that appeared in 2005 as well – I didn’t remember any of that until I watched it again. I liked how Mickey ended up being “plastic” and growing a plastic arm? I think he was having dinner with Rose and started asking weird questions and then the Doctor appeared to save Rose and all the eaters at the restaurant too.

    Then Rory -he was probably an excellent auton. I t was so sad hearing him say “Amy, I’m just  a thing you have to go” and then he managed to save or look after Amy when he needn’t have at all? I think she would’ve been alright without him? I always wondered why he wanted to stay, as the doctor said “if you stay you could still die. Just because you are an Auton doesn’t mean you can’t be destroyed” -or something like that.

    After the Big Bang I’m guessing he was no longer an Auton but what always confused me was this: *with the big bang 2 does that mean that all the things which happened -like the Doctor being separated from Rose and the big Titanic in the sky never actually happened? I thought so but then in Under the Lake, O’Donnell says “I bet Rose, Donna and Martha didn’t throw up after their journey in the Tardis”. So this seems to be that they did exist even though the Doctor re-booted the universe?

    Do you think he re-booted it completely? @bluesqueakpip and @juniperfish do you think that when the Smith’s Doctor did the Big Bang that he totally stopped all the things happedning before? Like the void ship and the ghosts (the cybermen) coming? If that didn’t happen then the Doctor (that metacrises one) didn’t stay in a separate universe with Rose.

    So does Moffat rewrite all the ‘time’ with RTD? I read somewhere that this happened and tha tposter called Moffat ‘Noffat’ meaning that, well, obviously, they didn’t like him as a director/writer but mainly that he changed everything that Russel T Davies did!

    Thankyou for reading,

    Son of Puro. (Before, when Mum said Puro Solo I thought she should call herself Han? As in Han Solo -I did steal that from an episode of Fringe which I thought was going to be good but I’m barely enjoying it at all. The same plot and such predictable lines. Mum and I sat down and in 10 mins we put the bare bones together of a spy film for fun -if we had 300 million dollars I think we’d make it for fun. 🙂

    #49508
    Kharis @kharis

    I am so very late to the party.  Two weeks of Nutcracker is the partial reason, the other is that I was in a state of being blown away.  Both Heaven Sent and Hell Bent were stunning achievements.  The scripts, the directing, the lighting, the acting, the costumes, and the MUSIC!  I swear I heard musical moments/a nod from old Who in both episodes.   I have not read any comments yet, simply due to Nutcracker, but I wanted to add my compliments to both episodes.  Have a cast party tonight then Star Wars, but I fully plan to read every post this weekend.  Can’t believe how excited people are in the States over Star Wars when every movie is going to be anticlimactic after Doctor Who season 9.  It was pure brilliance.  I label Moffat the Shakespeare of the art medium known as TV.

    My only pondering is over the Dalek in the Cloisters.  A Claricle?  The Claricle issue is not at all resolved, and I did wonder if Clara failed to rescue a version of herself in that moment.  Just adding my usual strange pondering. 🙂

    #49509
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @bluesqueakpip

    Having an active SF afterlife is not ‘cheating death’.

    For most people, I think an afterlife is the ultimate form of cheating death, as it’s a form of immortality for the consciousness. Those who look forward to “the singularity” certainly seem to view it as a form of immortality, not death.

    If you go back to BG Who, the only dead regular characters who stay dead are Katarina, Sarah Kingdom (both really one story characters), Adric and the robot Kamelion. That’s over seventeen years.

    Adric was the only one I could think of. Kamelion I guess counts, though I think they were forced to kill the character off because it was too difficult to film with, if I recall correctly.

    Whereas Steven Moffat has killed off River (before we knew she was going to be a regular companion), Amy, Rory, Clara – well, that’s everyone.

    Amy & Rory we’re killed off by natural causes. If you allow that, then everyone in the universe bar 3 were killed off when the Doctor travelled to the end of time. Not everyone is immortal, just hard to finish off. Clearly that doesn’t bother many though.

    I really hate to tell you this, but if God is introduced in the beginning of your play cycle, uh, creating the world or something, then please do not be surprised if he turns up near the end of the play cycle to raise everyone from the dead. 🙂

    Never liked that book much- inconsistent characterisation of the main character, plot inconsistencies and holes, and a “preachy” tone. The movie adaptation (Star Wars) did the whole “I am your father” thing much better than the original book 🙂

    I only watched Heaven Sent once, and have no intention of watching it again, so all I can say is that I had the very distinct impression that his original body was destroyed each time to provide the teleport with a power supply. It’s a Matrix joke; he uses his original body as a battery. Doing that burns it up each time.

    It seemed it was used as a very basic power source- matter to energy conversion, so looked like a barrel full of bananas would have been just as effective. Wasn’t really established that it was a “one Doctor in, one Doctor out” proposition.

    @puroandson

    Miss @tardigrade

    Mr @tardigrade actually. It seems some tardigrades are parthenogenic though, so labels could be confusing…

    On the big bang- the intent seems to have been to put things back the way they were (except for where it didn’t). Can’t say I have a good grasp on what was meant to have happened here. It doesn’t appear to have any great effect on overall continuity.

    And you’ve reminded me that I should have had:
    Amy (Pandorica)
    in the list above of returns from the dead.

    #49510
    winston @winston

    Frankly one of the things I like about DW is that very few of my favourite characters die. If I want to watch a show like that than there is Game of Thrones or the Walking dead.(no job security there) I like knowing that Rose is alive and living with her Doctor, River is hanging with her friends in CAL  and that Amy and Rory lived together till a ripe old age.  So I also like Clara and Me travelling around in their own Tardis. I like happy endings, walking away after an episode saying “Just this once, everybody lives”. That is Doctor Who for me.

    Heres to imagining what wonderful adventures Clara and Me have in the future/past.

     

     

    #49514
    Arbutus @arbutus

    A couple of days ago, I had noted a few comments that I wanted to remember.

    @tardigrade   freed from the expectation of what it could have been, I was free to appreciate it better for what it was.   This is really to the point, I think. Any time there is a big episode, as here when we have the wrap-up to a series’ worth of arcs, we have  a vision in our minds even if we don’t realize it. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of that, even when what we get instead is terrific. The thinking behind this sentence is the polar opposite of the ARSE response, where nothing is any good that isn’t what we imagined.

    @mudlark   The truth about the hybrid was, I think, far less important than the fact that the prophecy had seriously worried the Time Lords. I agree. You also said:  That being the case, it would appear that the hybrid was not a hybrid in the normal sense, but the synergistic convergence of two beings of similar temperament and complementary character, one Time Lord, one human. I also like @winston’s Bonnie and Clyde comparison. I also see the Hybrid as the Doctor become Clara-obsessed, Clara-addicted. She gets in your mind and stays there. This allows the Hybrid arc to tie in with the Clara’s death arc, which half-human Doctor or Ashildr-Me would not do.

    @puroandson     Clara no longer the apprentice -I think many ppl called it; the idea that Clara was the apprentice to her Doctor. Adventures notwithstanding.  I remember some discussion after the first two-parter as to who exactly was the “apprentice” to the Doctor’s magician. I believe the question, if there was one, has now been answered with certainty.

    And to this:  stop slapping my head puro I can write LOL ocassionally,  I can only reply, “LOL”.

    #49515
    Arbutus @arbutus

    @winston    Frankly one of the things I like about DW is that very few of my favourite characters die.   Hear, hear! I have no objection to the sadness of goodbyes, but it is nice when characters can have some part of a happy ending, even if the Doctor has to lose them.

    #49519
    Anonymous @

    Mr @tardigrade actually. It seems some tardigrades are parthenogenic though, so labels could be confusing…

    On the big bang- the intent seems to have been to put things back the way they were (except for where it didn’t). Can’t say I have a good grasp on what was meant to have happened here. It doesn’t appear to have any great effect on overall continuity

    Hallo there. I am 14 so I don’t know what you were talking about with labels? As we seem to argue or repeat ourselves I really tried to talk about autons or other things to get a different conversation going? Mentioning Amy wasn’t about that you see. Anyway, that didn’t work so I won’t be doing that anymore. I apologise for saying “miss” I was doing this out of politeness as mum taught.

    And I like being happy! ( and I am  )  🙂

    Thankyou for reading Mr T,

    g’ night

    Son of Puro

    #49520
    Anonymous @

    dear @kharis

    Hallo Miss Kharis! Good to see you on boards and that you liked the two episodes. The posts here are really awesome and you’ll enjoy them I’m sure. I hope your Nutcracker went well -and that you’re not to tired.

    Thankyou

    Son of Puro

    #49523

    @juniperfish @puroandson @tardigrade

    Gosh, it’s hard to know where to start (which is pretty much the point of po-mo), so let’s start with @arbutus who  nails it in two sentences.

    The problem with having presented the Doctor in the past as the “man with the plan”, as in “I knew it all along and was ready for you”, the Doctor lies, etc., is that people are then tempted to apply that kind of thinking even when the creators didn’t intend it. So people choose to dismiss things that were said and done because the Doctor was lying, acting, or in some way tricking someone.

    The “Doctor was acting” thesis only holds up if you dismiss Moffat as the writer (lets have fewer bullshit weasel terms like “de-centre”).  Not only is there nothing whatsoever in the text to support it, but we know that Moffat is a fair writer – he plays his tricks to entertain and tease, not deceive. If the Doctor has lied we know about it because we were told explicitly in text. If the Doctor can remember we will know when Moffat (or a future showrunner) tells us.

    Now, to men of straw.

    Take James Cameron’s Avatar, for instance.

    Well, I’d rather not since it is a rancid pile of old dreck, buoyed for about two minutes by Michelle Rodrigues in war paint, but since you insist: nobody is disputing that there are different readings – there is nothing po-mo, or indeed post- anything, or for that matter insightful, about that.  And the last one is a critical reading that places the author very much at the centre by highlighting his cultural blindness.

    (a)ask him what his intention and (b) decide that his interpretation and meaning was more significant and meaning was more significant than any of the others, as you suggest above.

    Setting aside that (b) does not follow (a), we would then be in a position to judge how effectively he met his own objectives. That would be quite interesting if the film wasn’t such utter bollocks in the first place, but there you go. James Blish deployed the same trope (The One Tree) in A Case of Conscience much more effectively. He even makes the authorial choice to leave the ending ambiguous (he phrases it as “agnostic” for reasons that I won’t spoil).

    And I am sure people of the Philippines and Gaza are delighted that you are ethically allowing them a point of view (I know you didn’t mean to be that patronising, JF, but seriously…)

    Po-mo solves a problem that didn’t exist. To use an example from my realm, modernism created terrific dwelling spaces (almost any survey shows a high degree of satisfaction (unless poor build quality broke it) in modernist buildings’ individual apartments). But modernism utterly, completely and inexcusably failed to understand the relations between spaces that permit and support communities (true for commercial spaces as well – Centre Point and the NatWest Tower looked kinda cool from a distance, but were hostile and alienating up close). Po-mo does nothing to address this miserable failure but instead has decided that square corners are the problem. There’s a building on City Road in London that – quite literally – makes me feel queasy looking at it, because it is so fucking playful it was designed to look out of focus.

    Po-mo has nothing to say on relations, which is where the crass simplicities of structuralism failed, where genuinely interesting and important questions needed addressing, but instead it mainlined handwaveium. “I think, therefore it is”.

    – Characters die in Doctor Who – the shows central conceit gives some wriggle room, but even in this thread there are countless examples of dead characters.

    – The Doctor doesn’t always have a plan – no shortage of characters have sacrificed themselves for him, thanks to that, most recently Clara. Always analysing is not the same as always having a plan and when he has one we are told, in text.

    – And even though his brain is not as limited as Ashildr’s, there is plenty of evidence that he forgets, even without the help of a neural blocker.

    All of these are choices made by the writer (and for anyone thinks anything gets on screen without Moffat’s approval, the laudanum is on the sideboard). RTD was less subtle, but he approach was fundamentally the same.

    By all means have any interpretation you like (here is an interpretation of Santa Claus is Coming to Town as a fascist anthem). But don’t pretend it is a “valid reading” (whatever that means) if it is not rooted in a firm grasp of the creative process and its many, overlapping, contexts.

    #49527
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @puroandson

    Son of Puro – My guess with Big Bang 2 is that the universe was largely reconstructed the way it was before – but not entirely. It may be metaphorical – before Big Bang 2 we have RTD’s Whoniverse, post Big Bang 2 we are definitely in Moffat’s Whoniverse.

    The one thing I have noticed is that the Blinovitch Limitation effect is demonstrated in The Big Bang, but has vanished in A Christmas Carol. It’s also entirely possible that Gallifrey was genuinely destroyed before Big Bang 2, and genuinely not destroyed after it. 🙂

    The thing you have to remember with Russell T Davies is that he was producing the ‘one last go’ for Doctor Who. The BBC was rife with people saying Who was past its time, wouldn’t be a success, give it this one try and then put it to bed. They gave it a good budget, an excellent Head Writer/Producer, and found a heavyweight actor to play the Doctor – but there was no confidence that it would get past Series 1.

    So Russell T was not planning for the long term. Not in Series 1, and not in Series 2. He was planning for one last, brilliant hurrah – and then when they did get renewed, he was planning for a series of stories that would let people accept the very quick switch-around of lead actors (and get a renewal into Series 3). I’m not sure he ever got the luxury of planning for more than one series at a time.

    Steven Moffat didn’t have that. He had a terrifying first series, with no continuity from the RTD era – but when his new Team TARDIS proved successful, he was in the position of his Doctor Who being routinely renewed. So not only can he take risks, he can tidy up some of RTD’s short-term solutions.

    I think the two head writers do have differences in their core philosophies (to me, RTD has always seemed to have a nihilist edge); I do sometimes get the impression that Steven Moffat has deliberately revisited RTD scenes in order to give viewers his own viewpoint. For example, that the end of the universe can be terrifying and ultimately meaningless (RTD) or it can be something that is sad – and beautiful (Moffat).

    @tardigrade

    For most people, I think an afterlife is the ultimate form of cheating death, as it’s a form of immortality for the consciousness.

    ‘Most people’ being either from the West or from one of the Abrahamic religions? Even there, I think you’d need to distinguish between ‘cheating death’ and ‘defeating death’. And the Buddhists and the Hindus would definitely disagree with you about ‘immortality for the consciousness’.

    But basically, what you seem to be objecting to, is that the Whoniverse has different rules to our universe. Which it demonstrably does – because they have time travel, which (in our current understanding) would need faster than light travel. And in our current understanding, faster than light travel is impossible at a basic theoretical level.

    And you are objecting to the application of those rules. To be honest, I find this a bit like objecting to Jacob Marley’s ghost turning up in A Christmas Carol.

    Amy & Rory we’re killed off by natural causes. If you allow that, then everyone in the universe bar 3 were killed off when the Doctor travelled to the end of time.

    And now you’re starting to get it. Yes, they’re dead, Dave. Everybody Dave. Everybody’s dead, Dave. 😀

    But it doesn’t matter, because this is a programme about time travel. It’s a programme where medical technology has advanced to the point that you can revive someone who’s been dead for hours. It’s a programme with a VR afterlife that dates back to Before The Gap. It’s a programme where you can see somebody die, then meet them later in your timestream but earlier in theirs, and marry them.

    And she’s dead Dave, everybody’s dead, everybody is dead Dave. We just went back in time…

    Never liked that book much

    I was actually referring to the York Mystery Plays, which are a collection of plays (a ‘play cycle’), written over a short period of time, in the same language, to be acted out in front of an audience.

    As opposed to a collection of sixty to seventy books, poems, biographies and letters written over a thousand years in three different languages. 😀

    #49529
    Arbutus @arbutus

    @pedant    I absolutely love your fascist take on Santa Claus. Brilliant!

    And now thanks to your reminder, I must get me to the Music Thread and post a little Springsteen.  🙂

    #49531
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @bluesqueakpip

    It may be metaphorical – before Big Bang 2 we have RTD’s Whoniverse, post Big Bang 2 we are definitely in Moffat’s Whoniverse.

    Love the idea that the reboot was as much metaphorical as anything. The show itself didn’t get a reboot, but by rebooting the universe, continuity before Big Bang 2 can be adjusted as desired.

    For example, that the end of the universe can be terrifying and ultimately meaningless (RTD) or it can be something that is sad – and beautiful (Moffat).

    I was one who commented that the end of the universe was different and on completely different timescales in the two- I suppose Big Bang 2, and the inherent wilful decision to ignore the continuity from earlier explains that.

    ‘Most people’ being either from the West or from one of the Abrahamic religions? Even there, I think you’d need to distinguish between ‘cheating death’ and ‘defeating death’. And the Buddhists and the Hindus would definitely disagree with you about ‘immortality for the consciousness’.

    By “most people” I was implicitly thinking of those in the Dr Who target audience and on forum, so yes primarily I was talking about Abrahamic religions, and those non-religious people who look forward to the ‘singularity’- or as Cory Doctorow wonderfully entitled it “The Rapture of the Nerds”.

    I’m mostly thinking of “cheating” death, in the sense of getting a second chance, rather than “defeating” it entirely, since there don’t seem to be any true immortals in the series. So those that “cheat death” die in the end (barring some bootstrap paradox that somehow keeps them looping or the like). My understanding is that some strands of Buddhism have as an aspiration the ascent of the consciousness, free from the body, after many cycles of reincarnation. I don’t know enough about Hinduism to comment meaningfully (though I recognise reincarnation features in the beliefs).

    they have time travel, which (in our current understanding) would need faster than light travel. And in our current understanding, faster than light travel is impossible at a basic theoretical level.

    There are theoretical ways that time travel could be accomplished without FTL travel, e.g. wormholes. Regardless I don’t hold Dr Who to be constrained to real-world physics- it’s not hard SF. And just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with people coming back from the dead and/or having a technological afterlife in some form or other- I just noted that it happened a lot, i.e. to every recurring character that dies – it wasn’t my intention to have an extended discussion (albeit a polite one) on what I thought was a fairly uncontroversial statement. Regardless, I think I’ve now said all I have to on that topic, possibly twice over, so I’m going to leave that alone now 🙂

    #49532
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @puroandson (son)

    Hallo there. I am 14 so I don’t know what you were talking about with labels? As we seem to argue or repeat ourselves I really tried to talk about autons or other things to get a different conversation going? Mentioning Amy wasn’t about that you see. Anyway, that didn’t work so I won’t be doing that anymore. I apologise for saying “miss” I was doing this out of politeness as mum taught

    No problem there as I said, and np either on trying to take a tangent to distract from another tangent that had gone on too long. I actually appreciated the reminder of Big Bang 2 and learnt something there. My offhand comment on labels was simply to say that if you were in a species where there are no males/females, then labels like Mr/Miss would be pretty meaningless. You’ll find other labels may get applied as you get older too – “nerd” is one for example – I’d suggest you ignore those also, and do your own thing.

    #49534
    Anonymous @

    @tardigrade

    Hallo! Yes, I totally get the label thing. I’m not a nerd or a swot (swat?) that term is given meanly to the Asians in my class because they are disciplined.

    I am part of the soccer academy at the school and certain teachers (like our maths guy) says “you boyz are playing away at a match and will miss revision but I bank on you failing anyway as you all think you’re gonna be the next Lionel Messi”

    Mum found out this guy is being moved to a different and harder or rougher school? I can’t help but go “na na ni nah nah”

    Good thing I brought up the Big Bang then too! I really loved that 2 parter. I remember people complaining when they heard there would be daleks and cybermen and sontarans and there were only a few of each species underground near the pandorica.

    I thought their ideas were  a problem as you couldn’t have hundreds of every species in the same cramped area -wouldn’t work! I think the whole things worked really well  with the script  and Puro mentioned the music as well -it had a big impact.

    I think that some people thought the music in Hell Bent and Heaven Sent was over-done or maybe they just couldn’t hear the voices properly? Still, I loved the rich fabric of the music. Mum said “tonal echoes” and I don’t know what on earth she means. She’s reading over my shoulder so I should go and find out!

    Thankyou . Son.

     

    #49535
    tardigrade @tardigrade

    @puroandson

    Good thing I brought up the Big Bang then too! I really loved that 2 parter. I remember people complaining when they heard there would be daleks and cybermen and sontarans and there were only a few of each species underground near the pandorica.

    I thought the concept of the Pandorica was a strong one, and the visual design of the Pandorica was well resolved and believable. With the time travel in the episode, the script was tight enough to keep that understandable. Plus an epic scope. So pushing a few buttons there for me and that was certainly a 2-parter I enjoyed also. I wasn’t fussed that there weren’t a squillion enemies in evidence, as the point was more that they’d acted together and there were representatives from the different parties there, rather than there needing to be a massed army. The Big Bang solution was a little extreme, and realistically could have raised the DEM flags (no real reason to think that a prison is just the ticket for recreating the universe), but I was OK with that – extreme problems call for extreme measures and I guess I was rooting for the universe to survive – I’m a bit biased that way 🙂

    I think that some people thought the music in Hell Bent and Heaven Sent was over-done or maybe they just couldn’t hear the voices properly? Still, I loved the rich fabric of the music.

    I barely noticed the music the first time through on each, which generally means that it was tonally appropriate for me, since it didn’t intrude on my consciousness. Admittedly though that may also mean that the sound setup I was using for viewing (a tablet) wasn’t ideal, and I’m also much more visually focused than auditory. I listened more on the rewatch, since people had made comment on the music, and enjoyed what it added. Generally I find that the music in the show doesn’t become too noticeable for me, unless there’s a particularly emotional moment and the melodrama slider has been pushed too far to the right, which thankfully isn’t too often.

    #49536
    ichabod @ichabod

    @arbutus  see the Hybrid as the Doctor become Clara-obsessed, Clara-addicted. She gets in your mind and stays there. This allows the Hybrid arc to tie in with the Clara’s death arc

    Interesting, that this had to be spelled out.  I think many fans had no trouble seeing Clara as unhealthily egotistical, especially in S8 (that’s what Moffat gets for describing her as a “control freak”, which never made sense to me); but seeing the Doctor as unhealthily obsessed by his feelings about her was more difficult. That “Romance” trope of the woman who enthralls (and, in the process, civilizes or tames) the unruly, dangerous male is very powerful, and very troubling, too.  At least modern people sometimes recognize the difference between love and crazed obsession, enough to ask some questions anyway.

    Moffat pushed that story to a very different place, giving us a man whose obsession was making him a potentially disastrous force — and who, upon being called on it by Clara, recognized what was happening and was willing and able to call a halt to it.  Without, by the way, murdering the object of his obsession in order to do so — another  classic ending to this sort of story.  Not bad.

    @pedant  we know that Moffat is a fair writer – he plays his tricks to entertain and tease, not deceive.

    I think people sometimes mix up his publicity strategies, which do use deliberate misdirection, with his writing and dramatic strategies, which are exercises in skill for the purposes you cite.

    – And even though his brain is not as limited as Ashildr’s, there is plenty of evidence that he forgets, even without the help of a neural blocker.

    Hmm.  This, I wonder about.  He does talk about deliberately “deleting” memories in his own mind as what sounds like a form of mental housekeeping.  I’m having a chat right now with someone close to me who does have an eidetic memory — much more so that I had realized, in fact, until she wrote a piece about it on the net — and I’m recalling 11, I believe it was, declaring that he remembers (by a deliberate effort of will?) everything, at least about his succession of companions.  I can’t at the moment come up with evidence that he does in fact lose memories by normal forgetting.  What were you thinking of, in writing that?

    @bluesqueakpip  the end of the universe can be terrifying and ultimately meaningless (RTD) or it can be something that is sad – and beautiful (Moffat).

    That is a pretty sharp contrast — two sorts of romanticism, one downbeat, one up?

    @tardigrade  I don’t have a problem with people coming back from the dead and/or having a technological afterlife in some form or other- I just noted that it happened a lot, i.e. to every recurring character that dies – it wasn’t my intention to have an extended discussion

    Just an observation here, then, not prodding for more discussion: In a fantasy as distinct from a hard SF universe, the whole issue is thrown onto authorial choice, so that when people object to a dead character nonetheless recurring as an active player in the ongoing story, they’re really making a critical remark about Moffat’s choice to make that happen.  IMO, it pretty much depends on whether a commenter feels that the resulting effect on the story is enjoyable or not.  Give me zombies that are fun and interesting, and I’ll take ’em; otherwise, phooey.

    @purosandson  Hi, Son of Puro —  I loved the rich fabric of the music. Mum said “tonal echoes” and I don’t know what on earth she means. She’s reading over my shoulder so I should go and find out!

    I loved it too, and “tonal echoes” seems to make sense to me only I couldn’t possibly describe in words just *what* sense, so do please bring us what your mum says it means when you find out, will you.

    #49537

    @tardigrade

    My offhand comment on labels was simply to say that if you were in a species where there are no males/females, then labels like Mr/Miss would be pretty meaningless.

    Ursula Le Guin posed the question in a more interesting way in Left Hand of Darkness (have you read that yet, @Puroandson (both Prime and Puricle))? Gender in language has little to do with the concrete fact of a twin-gendered species (setting aside transgender for convenience here, not to diminish it). Icelandic, for example, has three genders which can generate six cases and if my memory serves(1), some of the languages that eventually led to early modern English and German had many more genders.

    And even today it is fluid. In English the nominally plural “their” is increasingly used and accepted as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and even in France young people habitually use “on” where traditionally “il” or “elle” (or even personal pronouns) or their plurals might be expected (presumably this is much to the dismay of the Academie Francais).

    (One of the reasons I don’t especially like “cis”, while having some sympathy with the case for it, it is exactly the sort of alienating neologism that po-mo fosters)

    And as Missy pointed out, our notions of love and gender and the whole general mish-mash looks positively primitive to people whose brains are the size of a planet. That’s why all SciFi shippers should be taken out and shot as a service to the gene pool.

    (1) By which I mean it is ages since I read it, not that I was there!

    #49538

    @ichabod

    I think people sometimes mix up his publicity strategies, which do use deliberate misdirection, with his writing and dramatic strategies, which are exercises in skill for the purposes you cite.

    Yes. Good point.

    and I’m recalling 11, I believe it was, declaring that he remembers (by a deliberate effort of will?) everything,

    But we know, from the text, that at the very least a regeneration crisis messed with his memory (see Deep Breath). It has never been stated how persistent this messing is, or can be (for perfectly sound story telling reasons related to Chekov’s Ducks).

    #49539
    ichabod @ichabod

    @pedant  (One of the reasons I don’t especially like “cis”, while having some sympathy with the case for it, it is exactly the sort of alienating neologism that po-mo fosters)

    It alienates me because I can never $%^&*() remember what it’s supposed to mean; “cis” doesn’t connect with any meaningful linguistic root for me.  Which is not to say that the people I know who use it (mostly SF fans in the Sexual Alphabet communities) have that problem with it.

    as Missy pointed out, our notions of love and gender and the whole general mish-mash looks positively primitive to people whose brains are the size of a planet.

    Well, it might, but no more than anything else that we keep in our little pea-brains.  There’s lots of SF out there dealing with far-future developments in gender and relationship matters, and most of it seems to take a continued evolution in the direction of what is today either liberal, progressive values (more legitimate choices) or crazed and evil nonsense (too many legitimate choices that “shouldn’t” be legitimized), depending on your POV.  But that’s an assumption only.

    That’s why all SciFi shippers should be taken out and shot as a service to the gene pool.

    Oh, godsakes, no shooting!  We’ve got more than enough shooting as it is, here in the US, and our gene pool just seems to get meaner and stupider.

    #49540
    ichabod @ichabod

    @pedant  we know, from the text, that at the very least a regeneration crisis messed with his memory (see Deep Breath). It has never been stated how persistent this messing is, or can be (for perfectly sound story telling reasons related to Chekov’s Ducks).

    You’re right; the post-regeneration period is a good spot for establishing some forgetfulness, for those perfectly sound story telling reasons.  Besides, after all these years, the writers need some leeway about what *they* remember from all that fictional history.

    #49543
    Juniperfish @juniperfish

    @pedant

    It doesn’t matter whether you like or dislike Avatar and/ or post-modern architecture. Taste is not the issue.

    I picked Avatar simply because it’s an interesting example of a text with global reach and multiple public receptions (not quite sure why you think acknowledging those multiple receptions is “patronising”).

    You write that “…nobody is disputing that there are different readings – there is nothing po-mo, or indeed post- anything, or for that matter insightful, about that.  And the last one is a critical reading that places the author very much at the centre by highlighting his cultural blindness.”

    Well, ahem, you were disputing that there were different possible readings of Hell Bent, by asserting that yours is the one true reading, because (you claimed) it is closest to the meaning intended by the author, and you called on the script as ultimate evidence for that assertion. Above, you acknowledge that the author is not the ultimate authority on their text. Precisely…

    What we are discussing, is where the “truth” of a text lies, specifically as we are here on the DW Forum, a television text. Which is a really interesting question.

    Is the “truth” of Hell Bent in the script (as you suggested upstream) the actors’ interpretations, the set dressing narrative (hello bow ties), the edits, the final cut, the director’s cut, the text, the subtext, the vision of the executive producer(s), the conscious design of all these creatives, the unconscious design of all these creatives, the critics’ interpretations, the audience interpretations?

    One reading practice is to create privilege at two sites – the “big author”, here Moffat, and the “authoritative reader”, here you. The “truth” of the text is then said to reside in the authoritative reader’s understanding of the intention of the “big author”.

    Another, is to suggest that there is no one “truth” of the text. All these sites within the text/ the-text in-the-world, are sites of meaning. The slippages, the spaces in between, the conversations amongst these different elements are where the interesting stuff lies.

    That does not mean throwing away the text (and it has never meant that).

    Hell Bent has room for both a reading where the Doctor planned for Clara to reverse the polarity of the Time Lord neural block, and a reading where he did not plan for it. Your declaration that one is the “true” reading (based on your psychic link to Moffat via his script) does not make it so – both exist, because we have seen posters on here cleave to each. The interpretive room for both lies in the spaces between script, performance, edit and audience.

    Funnily enough, our argument then has another layer.

    Is that interpretive room the intention of executive producer, Moffat?

    You, as it happens, say it is not.

    But, actually, we don’t know.

    Presumably, if you were to find out it was, you would then “allow” it. Whereas, to me, it doesn’t matter whether Moffat intended it or not – that doubling is there, because readers see it in the text and can support it interpretively.

    I actually think Doctor Who under Moffat is a television text in the process of consciously embracing its own indeterminacy. It leaves deliberate “fan fiction” gaps, as I’ve said previously. Did Clara say “I love you” to the Doctor amongst the Cloister Wraiths or something else? We just don’t know.

    This is because Moffat’s Who embraces its digitally connected “high engagement” social viewership, i.e. the kind of viewership which takes place communally in spaces such as our own Doctor Who Forum. The Doctor Who text under Moffat contains elements of indeterminacy which are designed to generate debate. One might say that it is a consciously “post modern” text in that sense.

    Incidentally, I would say that the post-modern, is an umbrella descriptor for a set of aesthetic practices, across a variety of art forms, from painting to literature to architecture, each with distinct debates around them. Whilst post-structuralism, is an umbrella descriptor for a set of critical practices. Both now, are somewhat dated, but are still continuing to reverberate significantly culturally. “Po-mo” is a garbled entity of evil.

    I am also a fan of The Left Hand of Darkness so we can agree there. Although I don’t see why “cis” is so hard – it means “on this side of” whilst “trans” means “on the other side of”, from the Latin.

    @Puroandson (Son of) and @bluesqueakpip

    Yes, I like @bluesqueakpip ‘s analysis of the reboot very much. I think of it as akin to DNA reproduction, where a few anomalies can get thrown in during the process (which is how mutations happen over time).

    In one universe, the stars went out (remember little Amelia looking at the night sky with her angry guardian and perplexed social worker) and in the other, they didn’t.

    All of which ties in with the above, because there is no way to pin down exactly what the implications of the reboot are. Moffat’s Who text is deliberately indeterminate about it!

    #49546
    Arbutus @arbutus

    @juniperfish      I believe that the show has become much more about metaphor during Moffat’s tenure. This has come up repeatedly in discussions here that have referred to myth, story, and extra textual references that might be similar to what in nineteenth-century music was called “programmatic”. The Tarot narrative that was discovered running through this series was fascinating in its implication of a thematic narrative that is universal- unless we think that Moffat was purposely referencing the Tarot, which might indeed be some people’s view, but isn’t mine. I am more inclined to view the connection as something similar to the Hero’s Journey idea (which has also come up here). But as a result, there is more room for speculation and diversity of viewpoint regarding the stories, which I think is interesting and fun.

    But it is this, I think, that the fans who have not enjoyed Moffat’s Who object to. They would prefer a more direct set of stories, without the meta content. They interpret this as “RTD was better at human emotions” and similar statements. Certainly the two showrunners are very different kinds of storyteller. I have been thinking for awhile that in the new year, I want to attempt a rewatch of the entire series from Rose onward, partly to revisit old episodes that I enjoyed and partly to get a look at the older in relation to the newer, and see what I think about it all and how it has changed.

    I want to say how much I appreciate all the different views I read here, and everyone’s erudition and broad range of knowledge regarding the arts and sciences generally. It’s never boring reading people’s thoughts here, whether I agree with them or not! Thanks again to @craig and everyone for making it such a great place. 🙂

    I love the “Christmas Doctor” on the welcome page, I wonder what he’s got in the box?   🙂

    #49557
    tommo @tommo

    @arbutus

    I have been thinking for awhile that in the new year, I want to attempt a rewatch of the entire series from Rose onward, partly to revisit old episodes that I enjoyed and partly to get a look at the older in relation to the newer, and see what I think about it all and how it has changed.

    funny you should say this as i also decided to do this a few months ago. i am now up to the forest episode of series 8 having started and continued chronologically from 2005’s series 1.

    one word – fabulous! hope you get the same enjoyment out of the marathon as i am having.

    I have the hobbit to do as well as soon as i receive the extended TBOFA this week. oh yes. the winter time is geek out time.

    #49567
    JimTheFish @jimthefish
    Time Lord

    Well, it’s taken a while to wade through all these posts. But critical theory — we’re going there again? Really? I shan’t wade into this again because I think I did so during the Buffy threads earlier in the year but thought I’d just say that @juniperfish‘s posts on the subject have been some of the most measured, thoughtful and just plain right that I’ve seen.

    The way I see it, as with many other things, the utility of these ideas is away from the extremes. But these ideas still have currency and they do have use. The raving second-rate academics who hide behind theory and cloak what are often prosaically commonplace ideas in layers of jargon actually do more harm than good. And at the other end of the spectrum (for example, take a look at the posts of asgill on the Graun rather than anyone on this site who are, let’s face it, a smart bunch) who rail against post modernity while betraying that they don’t really know what on earth they’re on about. They largely use ‘post modern’ to just mean ‘modern’ which in turn means ‘anything relatively recent that I don’t like and/or understand). Leavisites in geek’s clothing, if you will.

    But I think the idea of interpretative, ‘multi-authored’ texts are still valid and are quite useful when looking at Who. Although you’re always going to be on a hiding to nothing when you try and pin down an ‘auteur’ in Who. Even in these show-runnery days. (Speaking of which have been reading The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, which I cant recommend highly enough. Really interesting for those interested in Who, in the TV writing process, or both. I sincerely hope that SM will do us the honour of an equivalent volume at some point. That I’d like to read.)

    #49569
    Anonymous @

    @jimthefish @arbutus @pedant @juniperfish

    In History and Music there was a real movement towards post structuralism around the time I dipped my toe in (and was burnt!) and the problems were multilayered in themselves: that ultimately the world of humanity is based on language use or culture and that therefore we do not have access to any such thing as a real world – only to certain ‘texts’ or ‘viewings’ about the world. The author is (ironically) sub-prime.

    Within this there are uncertainties, changing truths and the misnomer: archival discourse by one Professor Vesser who went on to explain this: “by rigorously exposing the innumerable trade offs, the competing bids and exchanges of culture, New Historians and writers can make a valid claim to have found new ways of studying History in explaining how culture and History actually define each other.”

    Literary criticism suggests writers and writings are therefore not autonomous but bound always by a prevailing cultural system -the Avatar conjunction you mentioned above, J’fish is telling in that it exactly and rather profoundly dooms the process of authorial intent using the techniques that historians ( I would add those historians not of the cultuiral studies hue) view as a major predicament.

    What we have is a myopic system, apparently, where History and the facts intended by the writer (of stories, novels, episodes in a television programme etc)  are not a starting point for debate but are clarified (pretty much like butter actually) via an ideological position. So, it is possible to then move to the next position and that is if the writer intended a particular “reading” or “view” his intention is secondary to the cultural mores and interpretations of his audience and are even tainted with phrases such as the author meant this though he never realised this and so, due to our cultural position we must accept that his viewing, his assumptions, lack the prominence they once had -if ever.

    I understand that members may think structuralism itself is a powerful and layered approach different to post-structuralism. I think the former is quite problematic in itself.

    In fact I would state structuralism in either music, language studies and literature is equally concerning to the reader or viewer. Sassure was the biggie and believed that words are arbitrary and only exist by connections with other words: hence any real world can never be fully reflected in our minds so we are subsumed within a closed circuit world view of signs and ‘texts’. The second problem was the induction method implying that deducing conclusions  (one valuable element in a historian’s or composer’s/conductor’s bag of tricks) is the only satisfactory method of clearly distinguishing words in a pre-existing theoretical framework. This came from Sassure’s belief (amongst others in the field) where no facts are independent from one another -an issue I have difficulty with. Roland Barthes was basically his closest mate followed by one other, who went a bit further  -though sunk without a trace: Althusser, despite believing all signs showed meanings that constituted the underlysing capitalist system, stepped further out onto the moon base by stating that there is nothing outside the text; nothing outside the capitalist system enforcing this.

    Such a statement will sound familiar to Derrida fans as this famous aphorism was actually inherited from Althusser: “outside the text there is nothing” (it loses a little in the transl from the French). So meaning is relative, never says one particular thing, creates many different meanings, the meanings themselves are never stable, never anything other than ‘tricky’ in fact, and so the meaning is deferred.

    I personally found Derrida and even Foucault’s readings on the matter close to that of Nietzsche who also claimed that history and writings do not in any way form the will of an autonomous human subject or text. If you read it carefully, that concept is quite frightening: there is no free will, texts are subsumed to cultural norms and classification devised or created by social discourse fails to bear any direct relationship to an outside world. Like Foucault he claims it is our “bearing in the world” to acknowledge those in power and their cultural readings.

    Foucault moved this further into a claim that “oppressed peoples” are subject to historical and literary “faults” and we must demystify those arguments in literature and history which routinely repress and oppress the mundane and the “lesser”.

    In other words, like the people of Palestine and those of the Left Bank, we must learn to speak for them -that histories of those regions are merely stories, not exempt from critique and all language is a type of universal interpretative play with no hierarchy of meaning: the author is not prime. In fact they exist outside the writings they have concocted.

    In musical fora this would apply to all conductors which despite years of learning, and interpretation of selected works, are critically useless at attempting to move into the space of the composer and thus all interpretations move us away from the greater truth -this is all rather ironic as “greater truths” were concepts joyfully sneered at by Foucault and Derrida in the first place. Their re-joinder was to claim that the composer himself (and let’s face it, most composers in the 18 and 19th centuries were male) was secondary to any interpretations created by “viewers” and “listeners” -much like a group or audience watching a televised drama today and so the arguments have similar parallels.

    Our discussions fit more within the realm of Bakhtin who believe popular culture is much like the medieval carnival which subverts official institutions and any hierarchies which expel the elite within productive and “classic” literature or music.

    A problem with po-mo and its various cousins and franchises is that a lot of vague disclaimers need to be used in order to create a “space” of understanding -popular culture analysts are probably to blame for weak theorists bandying about terms associated with the post modern cultural ethic and this then causes exactly what the elites in writing actually seek: utter confusion and demoralisation of the writer and possibly even the viewer who may themselves wish to become ‘writer’). It places the viewer at a high point in the position of writing: as if the audience and the reader are not subservient to the original author and this personally I have difficulty with.

    It’s tough isn’t it, to admit that the viewer is not “prime” or equal to the writer -but actually in a subservient position. This doesn’t degrade the writer, the conductor or the viewer, it merely classifies them as one of a number of proliferating groups secondary to the writer. The writer in history, music or literature studies hold the empirical position or evidence. We, the viewer can interpret and play with outcome of the evidence to our heart’s content but I don’t believe we can really go so far as to confuse other viewers with elitist language and claim that our role, as viewer, or reader or listener is to reduce the speculative distance between ourselves and the prime mover, the writer (the concept ‘speculative distance’ is Baudrillard’s own).

    I’d wager, though, that most structuralist and ‘post structuralists’ would conveniently abandon any real understanding or ‘quest’ for a rational interpretation. And so this goes to Hell Bent and the extent to which Moffat threw down those glasses and the neural blocker in order to assist Clara to create her genesis. If the text states certain words which present that position and if the text in the script (ordinarily something we would not read) also supports a certain ‘viewing’ or interpretation and if, furthermore, that statement in the script is one written by Moffat (a person who is very attached to that which he writes and directs -like Whedon would be, for example) then we can probably, and with assurance, claim that is the superior view -the correct assessment, the closest interpretation of the prime writer’s intent.

    So @juniperfish in writing this:

    Your declaration that one is the “true” reading (based on your psychic link to Moffat via his script) does not make it so – both exist, because we have seen posters on here cleave to each…

    you may be adhering to the post modern and structuralist approach -which is that all ‘readings’ are valid if and when any viewer chooses it to be so. Such views are a commodification of the entire structuralist approach -it sounds fair, doesn’t it, to state if viewers claim such interpretations exist and are completely valid next to the author’s prime ‘take,’ then the speculative distance or position between author and viewer changes. Speculation becomes ‘prime’. From an historical perspective, Flow (and Oz critic) claims that different ages generate their own myths to suit their values so that in not knowing history or writings ‘as they really are’ is derived from an argument based on a point about what might have happened in history or in the mind of the writer (say in Hell Bent) and is derived from an argument based on a point about what really happened in either history or in an episode of a popular programme  (and therefore the case is totally contradictory because it’s based on the very myths one is claiming exist in the first place)     🙂

    So, Flow goes on to state that history and the mind of a writer and therefore his writings  is not something to discover or ‘learn’ but a mere procession of shifting interpretations made by different and successive generations. History and writing -from a literature standpoint -must come from a process that provides a record containing truths and that gives knowledge into the writer’s intent or process. So, ultimately there is a solid truth upon which a writer bases his intent or primacy -the writing and the writer is not an invention of the present ‘viewer’ but occurs independently of those of us inheriting its text and ultimate interpretation.

    #49571

    @jimthefish @arbutus @pedant @juniperfish

    There is an old Irish joke (that is to say, a joke of Irish origin) about an Englishman lost in a rural area of Ireland, who ask a farmer for directions. The farmer thinks for a moment and says: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”  (I am fairly sure that Dave Allen was the first I heard tell it. No clue if he or one of his writers came up with it.

    That was the first thing I thought when I read:

    It doesn’t matter whether you like or dislike Avatar and/ or post-modern architecture. Taste is not the issue.

    and again with this:

    Your declaration that one is the “true” reading (based on your psychic link to Moffat via his script) does not make it so – both exist, because we have seen posters on here cleave to each…

    because, at no time, did I assert that taste was an issue, nor that there was one true reading, only that some are absurd and wholly unsupported by the text or any of its creative context. But cleaving to a view does not stop it being folly;.

    When a philosophical movement has to rely on:

    Equivocation;

    Appeal to authority;

    Appeal to popularity;

    Straw men;

    And that perennial favourite, flexible goal posts;

    all of which are fallacies of deception (more often deceiving the user than the recipient), then it is not much of a philosophy.

    It is not as hilariously incompetent as the other end of the ideological scale (enjoy an objectivist reading of A Christmas Carol. Thank me when you have recovered from the stupid), but in a way it is worse because it is fatuous. It absolves the second-rate writer of the need to come up with their own worlds and characters with which to populate them; it absolves second-rate critics of the need to understand their subjects; and it absolves the viewer of the need to think, rather than merely decide and then seek confirmation.

    Not only is it fatuous, but it is profoundly insulting both to writers and their craft.

    Moffat writes stories that ask profound questions in a way that is accessible to teens and pre-teens. He knows what question he is asking;

    Whedon did much the same and I really wish he would get back to it, and in the Objects in Space episode of Firefly created one of the most accessible ponderings of existentialism around;

    Sorkin does the same for adults (and Puricle), to such effect that many perfectly sensible Americans rather wish that Bartlett was real;

    Shonda Rhimes asks potent questions about both the role of women (and black women especially) in situations of power, the way in which all peoples’ pasts can break them, and how bad people can do great things and good people terrible things because of this. And, in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy I watched this evening, in about 7 minutes of ‘flashback’ screen time one of her writers, Zoanne Clack, utterly captured the fear and paranoia in the medical profession surrounding the disease still in 1982, called GRID (Gay Related Immunity Disorder).

    The reason we still talk about Chaucer 800 year later is that he took a trip to Italy and discovered an alternative to alliterative poetry, changing completely the direction of the English language. Of course, he could have been a crap story teller, or have fallen out of favour with his patrons, and seen it all go to waste.

    But he wanted to tell the best stories he could and we all benefit from it. His stories can be, and have been, reinterpreted through many lenses both metaphorically and literally but it began with an act of authorship. Without it, there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

    Anyway, Puro Prime has said it more fully, and she is in hospital without her books. Fear her once she is not just working from methadone-addled memory.

     

    #49575
    Anonymous @

    @pedant @juniperfish

    yes, well, it was a bit addleheaded  – a bit rat-shi*  This is the thing with po-mo -it causes a normal brain (well, normal-ish) to melt! Add some methadone (“oh no, she’s a heroin addict!” Not at all. Methadone is the general choice of pain relief for Crohns -but it has a pejorative implication) and whoa….

    *

    So, to simplify, and imply I have something left in the noggin….

    Thinking is thinking. Thinking is interpretation. When the interpretation is based on very little except a wide variety of ‘possible outcomes’ then I would be concerned about the interpretation and the reasons for the interpretation. I know that sounds simple. Reasons for interpretations? Do we need any? Can’t we just ‘do’ it?

    Nope.

    Interpretations without goal posts is problematic as Mr P said above. Is any and all thought about an episode, novel, story or composed musical piece, acceptable? Sure it is as long as impressionable people don’t write it all down and go publish  🙂

    Heidegger certainly believed all interpretations of any work were useful and I cannot agree with this.

    If we use structuralism and “embrace wider readings of texts“, we ought for the sake of correctness trace back the phenomenon of po-mo wherein it suggests several things: it eschews the writer’s primacy as well as degrading the Historian’s role as discoverer of evidence who creates an hypothesis around such evidence (and not the other way around: wherein some create a theory and stumble about finding evidence to support same theory: hallo Cultural Studies at the Univ. of Melbourne and QLD!). Further, Structuralism “de-centred” the author and I find this a problem too.

    It seems alright though, doesn’t it? The author can live with others suggesting “hey, I saw this in your writing!” and someone else saying “no, I saw this!” when in fact the author (composer, conductor, writer of telly episode) has lost a major portion of their autonomy. But they’ve earned some respect, some dough and they’re fairly happy – though miffed.

    And that’s still OK. To a point. But if you go one step further, a group of people within the elites start intercepting the writer’s original aim and then start speaking for, and about, a particular cultural group. They will start using languages and codes of language so remote and removed from the original writer and their target market (and yes that part is important) that they will focus on ideology promoting signs and language practises beyond the conscious wishes of the men and women who read, listen to and watch the works espoused by writers or composers.

    They do this until they refute the most important element of our consciousness: human agency which exists outside cultural norms created for, and about, elites, which exist to merely apply methods to literary analysis.

    And I would hope to oppose this: for by speaking on behalf of closed groups of people, the intended audience is lost as someone else speaks for them or for us, for that matter.

    But how do they do it? They start by stating that all truths are relative, that ‘texts’ are always ambiguous and then they march further into territory purporting to show that a text never just says what the writer consciously intended. Even the meanings expounded by the ordinary citizen according to Derrida and Nietzsche are arbitrary because only the elites have sufficient grounding in classifications of language codes.

    Further, Barthes and others within his group believed that progress isn’t progress at all -accumulation of thought in History, music and literature is non-existent because it is not possible to depend on conclusions drawn from any area of Science, Music, History and Architecture (ask Kev McCloud about Architecture and “po no”. He started in the world of music as I did and then literally walked across the hall to Architecture as I did. He stayed and because I couldn’t draw a straight line I decided I’d probably kill people if I built so much as a shed, and so backed smartly away) because there are no actual facts, no certainty at all and no objective truths.

    I suppose what upsets me about lit crit and the dozens of disclaimers that go with it, is that it pretends to have egalitarian motivations and protestations whilst presenting itself through arcane language codes marketed to an educated elite which is emblematic of a technocratic or totalitarian state, even.

    In case you think I go too far (or have pressed the morphine button!) I refer to Jurgen Habermas who believes truth is a form of rational consensus which, separated from the consensus of mob rule, snob rule or money, is reached via the force of the better argument -so if we all weigh the same evidence then we should reach the same conclusion. But what if we disagree then? Because in Habermas’ world, there is no objective truth. It is consensus thought only. The force of the best argument prevails. But how does that not bring to ruin those elements of the enlightenment when truth was discovered and not ‘decided’? When independent thought was considered a victory and individualism respected?

    Of course, you might say “but that’s what we mean: we want individual thought! We need independent analysis! You’re in my school of thought exactly, Puro! That’s what we’re doing when we say “read the text of Hell Bent anyway you like. We can hold both or several readings in our hearts at once.”

    Except it really isn’t (if you haven’t gone “oh shut up Puro!” and turned me off) because if you use the language of lit crit and espouse the ideal of post modernism then it is important to recognise how far these predictions about writing, subjectivity and relativism go. Often, we say “I can read this truth into this text because of the context” which is really saying that context is fine because it’s “my own” context. But that is going to change. In 200 years that context will cease to exist and another one will take its place. Where is the truth then? So my issue with reading a text like Hell Bent in a “new” and “interesting” way is that some theorists and reviewers will re-evaluate a text, rather than discover it according to the writer’s prime intent and so will re-invent a “voice” or “interpretation” for their own purposes. That is bad 🙂

    Or they will provide an interpretation that sounds ‘really great’ but is absolutely not the intended ‘inference’ (we refer, they infer, right?). I suppose in music it’s like singing a pleasant 12- note melody and passing it along to 100 musical people. By the end you’ll still have Stockhausen unless you stick to some basic rules.

    I think that even the story of Heaven Sent and Hell Bent was very accurately placed to imply that the writer had a particular aim which we were to discover and not decide -even after 4.5 billion years.

    This was that “context” is not the main issue which follows all interpretation around like a dog’s tail, and neither is the time which passes (right to the end of the universe). It is simply the author’s own voice. It is his voice, now and in the future. It can resonate but it cannot change so much that his very meaning and beliefs are altered. It needs to remain objective and it mustn’t be re-manufactured to exist outside his orbit.

    Some literary theorists such as de Certeau actually hold the principle that knowledge and writing can be divided into what can be forgotten and what can be understood. I think both of the last two episodes of this season ironically provide sustenance for those of us who see that de Certeau’s form of post-colonial thinking has failed.

    @jimthefish hmm, I know you said “oh no, not again, we did all this during Buffy” -but I wanted a turn!!!  🙂

    I know, silly right? I was the one who gave a blow by blow appreciation factor for pretty much every Buffy episode for seven seasons. You were incredibly patient. You all are. And yes I know I ought to stop, but the discussion is interesting and it’s wonderful to share terrific thought with passionate and open-minded members of this Forum.

    But my pondering and moulderings will move onto Christmas. Less boring? Yep, I’d say so!

    Puro and Son -yep he typed the whole thing. So if the punctuation is a problem, blame the puricle

    @pedant on Le Guin? You asked if I’d read Left Hand of Darkness. People: some months ago, Mr P very kindly (and actually others did too) wrote out a whole list of sci-fi and fantasy literature. It would have been very rude of me not to have made inroads and I did. In fact, I’m trying to read Left Hand Of Darkness to the Puricle (my second time) but w/o a great deal of success. I think it’s my inability to pronounce ‘Orgoreyn’ correctly. 🙂

    xoo

    #49580

    @puroandson

    I think it’s my inability to pronounce ‘Orgoreyn’ correctly.

    How did the author intend it to be pronounced?

    #49584
    Anonymous @

    @pedant

    I have absolutely no idea but it requires some semblance of confidence as Richard E. Grant would say. Have you seen his interview with Andrew Denton in Enough Rope? It was just as the film Wa Wa came out. Stunning. Grant starts interviewing Denton (a frickin diva in ‘real life’) about his marriage, of all things.

    You should hear him on po-mo. Unfortunately not in that interview. Still.

    <wrong thread. oops>

    #49590
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    The Doctor’s death as shown in The Wedding of River Song was also a fixed point in time, recorded in history apparently by many.  Yet the Doctor found a loophole.  Why couldn’t he find a loophole for Clara other than his desperate attempts at the very end of time that didn’t seem to be working very well until Clara and Ashildr’s intervention?

    I think it is because some combination of Gallifrey, the Time Lords, the Matrix, and Ashildr create a harder fixed point in time than even the one the Doctor faced for his own death.  The Time Lords have access to the time vortex.  The Matrix makes prophecies.  Ashildr lasts until the very end of time, minutes before the end.  How fortunate for the Doctor that Gallifrey was out of this universe when he faced his “death.”

    So in some sense I think the Time Lords and Ashildr did owe Clara something, because they are the ones who have set her fate in concrete through their knowledge of time.

    #49595
    ichabod @ichabod

    @puroandson  @pedant  I think it’s my inability to pronounce ‘Orgoreyn’ correctly.
    How did the author intend it to be pronounced?

    I think it’s “OR-go-rain”.  She had a linguist friend generate a language for that book, I think (or maybe it was for another one later on . . .).  I can ask about the pronunciation, if you like, via e-mail.

    @jphamlore  Why couldn’t he find a loophole for Clara

    He thought he *had* — he clearly expected her heart to start up again once he’d moved them far enough away from Gallifrey into the bit of the future that was left.  When that move failed, he clearly panicked for a moment; which, considering that the crazy ordeal he’d undergone in the Dial had already overwhelmed him sufficiently for him to grab a gun and shoot someone, not to mention shooting the High Council into space in space shuttles at a time when there was hardly anyplace left to go, isn’t surprising.  He was also expecting organized pursuit from Gallifrey (“All we have to do now is shake off the Time Lords — “).  I think he was pretty rattled and running on the fumes of some massively depleted adrenaline (or whatever the TLs have for emergency energy).

    He didn’t seem to realize that if the tampered-with blocker wiped *his* memory instead of hers, she would still be in danger from TLs chasing her based on her (retained) memories of *him* (the reason he gives for the using the memory wipe in the first place). Although maybe “This is right; I accept it” was a recognition that he was the one, instead, who needed to forget in order to keep her a bit safer by not compulsively tracing and following her, thereby leading the TLs right to her . . .

     

    #49602

    @ichabod @puroandson

    I think some people have missed a perfectly worthy gag there 😉

    It’s the way I tell ’em…

    #49623
    MikeofMcr @mikeofmcr

    14 pages of posts and I am only in the middle of page 5. So apologies if some one has said what I am saying below or I don’t acknowledge some one I should.

    Overall initial reaction, One of the best series in the modern era. And a very strong finale. I loved all the concepts in including Clara and Me running off in a stolen Tardis (to have a spin off show, please)

    @mudlarkI got the impression that even when he first walked into the place he had some subliminal awareness of its significance, else why did he start picking out Clara’s theme and launch into his narrative?

    Generally I love the music in DoctorWho, though I think in recent series Murray Gold has been running dry, at least  he has not been hitting the same high standards. May be RTD was better than SM at scripting scenes to give a musical interlude.

    But the music this time had a DoctorWho twist. Either the music is part of the story, as in The Rings of Akhaten, or it is  background, mood and themed. The story took Clara’s theme and brought it into the story. I think that is a first for DoctorWho. It was a way of denoting that the Doctor was aware of the hole left behind by not remembering Clara. which is more or less what you are saying.

    #49626
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    @mikeofmcr:  I argue below that the Doctor has to recognize Clara, at least for a moment, from Rigsy’s artwork on the TARDIS, so that subconsciously he will no longer have a mystery gnawing at him, because the show itself asserts the Doctor cannot resist a mystery.

    I contend Hell Bent and in fact the entire season after the first two Davros / Missy episodes are meant to be understandable to anyone who has seen only the 50th anniversary The Day of the Doctor and this season itself.

    Therefore in the context of this season, I contend a reasonable explanation for the neuro block is that it is a program that can act on the brain’s equivalent of a BIOS, a program that can access functions below the conscious level. The existence of such programs that can even work across species was shown in Under the Lake and Before the Flood.

    I contend much of the results of Hell Bent are actually similar to what happened in The Day of the Doctor. Once again Clara saves the Doctor from himself, nudging him to make a choice that saves lives, here the universe from being endangered by a time paradox, and once again (some) version of the Doctor must forget the exact details.

    The difference is The Day of the Doctor left the Doctor with a mystery, whereas the intent at the end of Hell Bent was to persuade the Doctor to forgo further pursuit of the mystery of who was Clara Oswald in his life. Thus I believe it is intentionally shown that the Doctor does recognize who Clara is when he sees Rigsy’s art on the Tardis, but just like The Day of the Doctor, the neuro block program will eventually cause the Doctor to forget the exact details of Clara again. Nonetheless the Doctor will at a subconscious level be reprogrammed by this revelation to emotionally accept Clara’s absence.

    #49642
    Anonymous @

    First post….Wanted to ask if The Doctor knows that Clara is alive.

    In S09 E09, Clara refers to a “Space Restaurant” (which becomes her Tardis in this ep.)

    Clara: Looks like a Japanese restaurant. Have you brought me to a space restaurant!
    The Doctor: People never do that, you know.
    Clara: Do what?
    The Doctor: They never put the word “space” in front of something just because everything’s all sort of hi-tech and future-y. It’s never space restaurant or space champagne or space, you know, hats. It’s just restaurants, champagne or hats, even if this was a restaurant.

    Then in S09 E11,

    <span class=”character”>Clara</span>: So, you went back to your hometown?

    <span class=”character”>The Doctor</span>: Something like that.

    <span class=”character”>Clara</span>: Glasgow?

    <span class=”character”>The Doctor</span>: Ah, well, sort of Glas… “Space Glasgow”.

    Now, I know he’s supposedly had his memory wiped concerning Clara, but this wouldn’t change things like his attitude to people putting “space in front of something”

    I think his reference to “Space Glasgow” is a “nod and a wink”, from The Doctor.

    Sorry if someone had posted before (never read all the threads)

    Discuss…

    #49655
    Oswino @oswino

    DO you know what i have just realised that when the doctor and me where talking she suggested that clara and the doctor may have a kid?.He shuts this down but I don’t know how I feel about if that actually happened….I mean I know he’s old but I would have loved if Whouffle had a baby if anyone knows of fanfic where this happens let me know I need some whole I miss it

    #49666
    Anonymous @

    hallo @oswino

    did they? A reference to a child between the Doctor and young Clara? Eueeu or whatever gals say! (I’m  not a  girl  ) but I don’t recall that anywhere. You could be absolutely right.

    Fan fic is not actually my thing. I really like what is already written and stick with that quite happily.

    Happy New Year

    @bafamal halloo and welcome to you too. Yes, that sounds great. I think you’re right. We heard the space restaurant with the space ‘stuff’ but no “space dad” (which I wanted to hear myself) so a great pick-up there.

    From Son of Puro (who has eaten waaaay to much jelly/jello and mince pies AND fruit cake with grog in it!)

    #49667
    Anonymous @

    @pedant LOL

    “gag with intent” LOL again. Mum got it, two days late! I am having major heebies with that book. It just goes on and on. I think I had a ‘b’ in English on the mention of that author to my teacher who looked at me beaming or either I misunderstood him and he;s seriously mad instead.

    I have been reading the discussion about po mo (my god in heaven help us all-stuff) and can see the connection between “how was it meant to be said?” but the rest of the writing? No way Jose.

    I am finding the sentences too long and the odd names too hard to get my head around.

    Puro needs another hobby!! 🙂

    hehe.

    Son

    #49668
    Anonymous @

    @mikeofmcr

    Generally I love the music in DoctorWho, though I think in recent series Murray Gold has been running dry, at least  he has not been hitting the same high standards. May be RTD was better than SM at scripting scenes to give a musical interlude.

    Ooh no, that I will not abide. As a musician and teacher of same -and conductor, nope, just nope! 🙂

    But that’s OK, me saying “nope” aint a valid argument  but I can say that the swells of tempo and pitch, the beautiful rendition of the Doctor’s ‘new’ theme over the past 12 months ‘mixed’ with the Gallifrey theme and Ten’s and Eleven’s has, in my view, been the best ever: the music perhaps last year whilst sweet and gimmicky has been replaced with a gorgeous sonorous tone, rapid changes in pulse and most interestingly, changes, quite exorbitant, to time signature -we have 5/4, 6/8, 9/4 etc… The use of percussion has been elevated, for a change, instead of the strings which Foster generally orchestrates (from Gold’s ‘scribbles’: he cannot do all this alone) together with some excellent use of Beethoven, Liszt, Davies etc… it was a very mercurial setting this season which demanded tonal echoes from years or seasons before -even the actual Doctor Who theme has found its way wrapped in score throughout the episodes which hasn’t occurred since the re-boot.

    Still, all just my views/opinion and you are happily entitled to yours 🙂

    Happy New year to you and very good to see you around the boards and hear your input.

    Kindest Puro and Son.

     

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