Hell Bent
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6 December 2015 at 15:43 #48823
Hm. Mixed bag. I prefer Moffat over Davies, but his finales are never very airtight — they’re huge in scope and impact (which is the part I enjoy), but there are always plot threads that they either don’t tie up or don’t tie up satisfactorily, or there are logical… issues. As an example of the latter: I’m perfectly ok with Clara “surviving” and the Doctor forgetting her. What I’m definitely not ok with is how she “survived”. I love her character, and no matter what, her fixed and known death greatly saddens me. But now she’s free to wander the universe for as long as she wants, as long as she has the right clothing and bodily condition in which to die later. And she’s doing this… without a pulse. Her body shouldn’t be doing anything at all. Yes, sure, Doctor Who takes liberties all the time, but this is a little too much. Even if we grant that she can live without a pulse, what happens if she gets injured? Unlike Me, she doesn’t have a repair chip embedded within her. I suppose we could just hand-wave it away by saying that we already saw her die, and thus we know the necessary conditions definitely will obtain for her (the ones I mentioned), but… but…. *sigh* I wanted either a Martha-style goodbye or a definite end, like with Amy and Rory. There are very creative ways to do either. What I got, instead, makes me feel like a parent whose child has run away and ceased contact. With the added caveat that I know how my child is going to die, and when.
And then there’s Me, whom I thought was going to have a much more important role this season than just to get Clara killed and talk to the Doctor at the end of time (which should have been trillions of years in our future, as was mentioned about Utopia upthread). What happened to the Doctor “remembering” her from his future, or whatever it was? And unrelated to Me, what about the huge potential importance of lines like “the longest month of my life” and, paraphrased, “I called you 127 times and you didn’t answer”? What about Missy’s “I have an idea” line in The Witch’s Familiar? Just as with Orson and the quirks of last season, I thought the Moff would take fuller advantage of what was put into previous episodes of this season.
And then there’s Gallifrey, which is, somehow, back in our universe. Frozen in time, but then not, by the machinations of the people frozen in time?! What? I could forgive Eleven for just guessing that the planet would be frozen in a single moment in time and being wrong, but we just entirely missed the planet’s universe-hopping! Forgive me for being cynical, but if there’s one thing I’ve come to expect from Moffat (who, again, I prefer over Davies, just so everyone’s clear), it’s that he doesn’t adequately — or, sometimes, at all — pick up and run with plot threads left hanging from past seasons. This far out from The Day of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor, I don’t think we’ll get much in Series 10 explaining how Gallifrey got from a pocket universe — and potentially frozen in a momemt of time — back into its home universe. I love this show, but if there’s one misgiving I have about it, it’s that it doesn’t constantly live with the expectation of science fiction that things need to make sense.
All that aside, I really enjoyed the rest of the episode. Everything else, everywhere, was excellent. The confession dial was perfectly explained. The Doctor’s emotional states, both during his revenge scheme and in the diner, were extremely well-acted. Well-done, Capaldi — between these last two episodes, you couldn’t possibly have been any more believable in your role! The general is a character I liked up until his regeneration. The regeneration itself, and the male ego comment, were completely unnecessary, as was the comment by someone upthread that conservatives should “suck it up”, or however it was phrased. There’s nothing wrong with casting women or non-whites — the issue is in casting people with certain characteristics “because there aren’t enough” rather than because of acting merit and compatibility with the script. Fortunately, the only problem I see with the general’s regeneration is that the episode shouldn’t have needed to deprive us of an actor we’ve come to like in the manner that it did (I’ve come to like him, anyway). I actually found the “my last body was the only time I’ve been male” comment rather funny.
But I’d say that the episode’s penultimate scene inside the TARDIS was perfection incarnate: the Doctor is reborn as the Doctor and gets a NEW SONIC SCREWDRIVER!!! Time to get adventuring again, Doc! As another Doc said in Back to the Future: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need… roads.” Can’t wait for next season and the presumed arrival of a new companion!
6 December 2015 at 15:50 #48824I should have read the entire thread before posting. Bravo @pedant on calling it (re: the Doctor forgetting Clara)!
6 December 2015 at 16:12 #48825If she “dies” before returning, does the universe end?
Hard to imagine how someone lacking an actual pulse could die. Contrary to the excellent argument posted earlier (that the Doctor was the only one to witness Clara’s death, and now he can’t remember her), I think her death is a fixed point. The Doctor remembers her story, and maybe that’s enough. But as long as she plays within that “wiggle room” she’s been given, I think the web of time is safe.
6 December 2015 at 16:31 #48826@Ozitenor- that makes sense with Clara, definitely, good spot. But Captain Jack had to heal, I’m pretty sure at one point he got blown up and had to come back ‘the long way’.
6 December 2015 at 16:32 #48827But as long as she plays within that “wiggle room” she’s been given, I think the web of time is safe.
What is the wiggle room? I just never understood what this is.
6 December 2015 at 16:38 #48828What is the wiggle room? I just never understood what this is.
If I understand correctly (and I might not, having watched it only once), Clara is stuck between heartbeats … presumably between her next-to-last and last heartbeat. So my interpretation of this is that as long as she stays within that between-heartbeat space, she and the web of time are protected. This harks back to the emperor/shepherd’s boy parable, and how much can happen in a second of eternity (which, come to think of it, is a very good analogy for the Doctor’s time-traveling existence):
“There’s this emperor, and he asks the shepherd’s boy how many seconds in eternity. And the shepherd’s boy says, ‘There’s this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it, and every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.’ You may think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.”
6 December 2015 at 16:39 #48829@miapatrick – yes, true. Now I think about it more, Capt. Jack is closer to Ashildr in the method of immortality. Although, as we know from the face of Bo, Jack definitely does age over time, while Ashildr does not. And certainly Clara will not either.
6 December 2015 at 16:41 #48830Thanks that makes sense now.
6 December 2015 at 16:48 #48831I’m a bit bemused by the fact that some here seem to have taken it that the Doctor has completely forgotten Clara, but his situation is not an exact parallel with that of Donna, who truly did remember nothing. I think it was @spider who was the first to point out that on some level he has clearly not forgotten, as is evident in the fact that it is he who is narrating the story we see. It is just that the memory of her is now externalised, as if she were in a tale he had read or been told, rather than personal to him. When he starts to tell the story to Clara in the diner he may not have recognised her, but he would have to have been pretty dense not to have realised who she was by the end; as I said in my post above, she did all she could to make sure that he would. In a way the scene in the diner was a reprise of the scene in the scene in the café at the end of Death in Heaven, where each failed to correct the other’s assumptions, but here I got the impression that, while nothing was said, they parted with a tacit understanding and mutual awareness. He hasn’t forgotten the facts, but he is distanced from them and the emotional tie is broken, leaving him to go forward.
6 December 2015 at 16:49 #48832Something I realized is that if we were to get a Clara and Me spin-off series we would probably need to wait until Jenna Coleman finished her part on the drama that she is now part of.
6 December 2015 at 17:25 #48833And then there’s Gallifrey, which is, somehow, back in our universe. Frozen in time, but then not, by the machinations of the people frozen in time?!
The subject of how it returned was raised, but skated over by the Doctor. I would have to check his actual words, but I got the impression that though the Time Lords thought that they had found a way to do it themselves, that might not have been what had happened.
I don’t think that there is necessarily any inconsistency here. What the 13 Doctors were hoping to do in Day of the Doctor was to use the stasis cubes both to isolate Gallifrey in time, as in the scenes in the pictures in the undergallery, and to remove it spacially, temporally or both. What they actually achieved may have been different, and if it was simply shifted into a pocket universe, then the Time Lords would not have been in stasis, and therefore could well have devised a way of getting back. Assuming that all went according to plan, however, there could well have been a time limit on the imposed stasis, as with the pictures containing the Zygons, and it seems probable that the Doctors would have tried to set such a limit, since the intention was that Gallifrey should at some point return to the universe. A time limit on the period of stasis would also explain why Gallifrey ended up four and a half billion years in the future, but with Rassilon and the General from the Time War still in charge.
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6 December 2015 at 17:40 #48834@puroandson: Like I said, I thought Moffat way exceeded my expectations which is why he is the one running the show. 🙂
I really think the horror of what Rassilon is about to unleash has only begun. He is very old so he will regenerate to a new face, probably much more younger, energetic, maybe more obviously cruel. Missy and the Doctor might not need armies but Rassilon does because he thinks he’s right.
I am thinking Rassilon becomes almost the Morbius as far as raising an army. It will be some Frankenstein-stitched horror of the scum of the universe. I think he’s going to be the one who creates a version of a hybrid.
I also think the Doctor was the student who succeeded in escaping the Cloisters. He describes his younger self who stole the President’s daughter and lost the moon as a bit mad, same as that student. What I now suspect is the Matrix itself, which was said to be able to make predictions of the future, programmed the young Doctor with some future knowledge like hypnotic suggestion and then wiped part of his memory of what it did.
I am fully expecting to one day see a sentient Matrix, probably in the guise of a woman.
6 December 2015 at 17:49 #48835@mudlark- yes, at first I disagreed with you, but he would have to be stupid not to know who she was. I agree. He realises, but it doesn’t matter, and that is the sadness in both of them. The love is gone with the memory, though the reasons for love might remain with the information. She tried twice, in Face the Raven and Hell Bent, to persuade him that she didn’t want him to tear up the universe for her. But this is the only way he could be stopped.
6 December 2015 at 17:50 #48836I believe that the time Matt Smith regenerated was supposed to tell Galifray back to the universe so when they knew not to return there but instead they went to the end of the universe so they could be safe. So when the Doctor went there the long way round it showed that he knew at least for some time where Galifray was.
6 December 2015 at 18:09 #48837I think since the sisterhood of Khan knows a lot about timelords and even can force regeneration on one I personally believe they just know where timelords are when they are in the universe… if that makes any sense
Yes, it does make sense. But it also raises the question of why, if the Doctor wanted to find Gallifrey, he didn’t just go to Karn and ask them.
I suppose that is one of those questions, as Mrs Blenkinsop would say, “you’re just not supposed to ask”.
6 December 2015 at 18:15 #48838I remember in the episode we’re the Doctor is hiding from the man who is supposed to bring him deveroros (don’t remember the name) he was at Khan so he might have just asked them while he was there.
6 December 2015 at 18:23 #48839@puroandson (son)
I don’t like it when tv patronises me all the time. I can think for myself and I like to. So, maybe that is what the writer was suggesting? That we need to conclude for ourselves and also to listen really carefully
Very well said! A good writer does not condescend or ‘write down’ to his/her readership, whatever their age, and Moffat is, in my opinion, a very good writer. He has to address a potential viewing audience spanning all ages, and he does so, not by spelling things out but by providing layered and complex narratives with something for everyone, especially if they are prepared to pay close attention to the detail and tease out the potential meanings, as most people on this forum do. Some people prefer to be entertained by a straightforward narrative with a relatively simple plot, lots of action and all the loose ends tied up in a neat little bow by the finish, and that can be fun if it’s done well and provided it isn’t the only thing on offer. There are some very competent writers who seem content to provide such fare, but in the end it doesn’t do much to enrich the life of any reader or viewer.
I thought also that the TLs were seen as the ineffectual people they had become. They would send an army of people to kill the Doctor: they were now frightened of him. They would put some distance between him and themselves -always send the soldiers: that’s a metaphor for the whole of the Time War isn’t it?
Exactly so, and I wish that I had referenced that comment in my first post on this thread, as a particular illustration of all that was wrong with Gallifrey. I read all the preceding posts before I started to write mine, but once my essential impressions and thoughts on the episode started to come together and gel I was in a rush to get them down while they were still fresh in my mind, so didn’t take time to check whether there were points where I needed to make acknowledgements. Easy to do, I’m afraid, when there is such a lot to keep track of 😳
6 December 2015 at 18:25 #48841Well that explains the cover of doctor who magazine #493. Clara is actualy traveling in a bambaTARDIS whit Ashildr. Frozen in a moment, a reversed DoctorDonna. Doctor Who is back on a weird track. Hope that the TARDIS meets the BambaTardis, their interaction would be great fun!
PS Awile ago there was a discussion on the lack of food in New who. Did you see any in the bambaTARDIS? I didn’t.
6 December 2015 at 18:29 #48842@Toleledo
Besides the lemonade there was no food shown in the Bambatardis but in the episode the Doctor did eat soup while at the home.
6 December 2015 at 18:32 #48843Okay. I was not expecting that in any way. I wasn’t sure at first that I was liking the direction it was going in, but it surprised me and I’m pretty happy with it. I know I will have lots more thoughts once I have had time to digest it, but randomly:
In the end, Moffat managed to take us back to Gallifrey without really revealing anything new about the Doctor’s origins.
That was a nice poke at the Time Lord gender change deniers!
Ohila’s character is going from strength to strength, I think.
The Doctor really did live through billions of years. But not for the reasons that we thought.
Missy brought Clara and the Doctor together to create chaos, but they outfoxed her in the end.
Frozen Clara and Immortal Me, adventuring together in a shiny new TARDIS!
6 December 2015 at 18:36 #48844@blenkinsopthebrave Mrs Blenkinsop is on the ball. The dialogue is exactly this:
Clara: I thought you said Gallifrey was frozen in another dimension?
The Doctor: Well, they must have unfrozen it and come back.
Clara: How?
The Doctor: I didn’t ask. It would make them feel clever.
6 December 2015 at 18:43 #48845I forgot to say that I liked that the Doctor didn’t altogether forget Clara and her importance to him, but he forgot enough of the emotional connection that he is essentially free of her. This was nicely done. I liked him at the end, making his new sonic screwdriver and facing the future. Being a doctor. 🙂
6 December 2015 at 18:47 #48846@doctordalek17 @blenkinsopthebrave
In DotD 11 declared that he was still running, but now running home (having improvised a way to make Gallifrey safe – I suspect it went awry and they ended up hidden at the end of time).
In TotD 11 found that bringing the Time Lords back would restart the Time War. But he also discovered where they were (behind the crack). Clara demonstrated that they could be communicated with;
12 was still minded to look for Gallifrey in space-time until Missy gave him false co-ordinates. He came close to despair then;
But then the Matrix came up with its forecasts (lets be scientific and not call them prophecies). It was well enough known that even the Daleks had heard of the Hybrid. The Time Lords wanted to know what the Doctor knew (and before the Daleks found out), but being led by an embittered and megalomaniacal Rassillon, they hatched a plan to intimidate him into giving up the knowledge, rather than just politely asking. It is quite obvious to me that, somewhere inside, The Doctor knew Clara was the crux, but was in denial and Magical Heal-Chipping Ashildr gave him a nice displacement object;
And then it (to use a term from the philosophy of science) went totally tits up. Because the Time Lords killed Clara. They were wholly unaware that they had killed the hybrid and carried on with their plan.
I believe it was Jeff Goldblum himself who put it best when he said: “oops”.
And I am pretty sure the Karn Sisters came to The Doctor, rather then him asking them, in the teaser – because I am pretty sure they hold him in the highest esteem (even if they would die rather than admit it) and didn’t fancy him going to his (likely, from their PoV) death on Gallifrey. They have their own agenda so, when the Doctor got to Gallifrey, butted in to keep an eye on things (and, interestingly, Rassillon was powerless to stop them).
By the way, I may not have mentioned this, but totally called it!
6 December 2015 at 18:51 #48849@puroandson
And also:
I don’t like it when tv patronises me all the time. I can think for myself and I like to. So, maybe that is what the writer was suggesting? That we need to conclude for ourselves and also to listen really carefully.
What Spawn of Puro said! ^^^
6 December 2015 at 18:55 #48850@doctordalek17 Interesting point. Even if the Time Lords had been in stasis, it is clear that they no longer were so by the time of the events in Time of the Doctor, since they were communicating through the crack in the universe. That doesn’t mean that either of my suggested scenarios is necessarily wrong – they could have been trying to get back from a bubble universe outside our own or, as now seems more likely, from the far future, after having been released from a time limited stasis. The key to their return was, supposedly, the Doctor saying his name, but he refused to do so. Instead, Clara negotiated with them, pointing out that the only name he really needed was the one he had adopted, the Doctor, but if there was any indication that this served to bring them back, I’m afraid I missed it. Maybe, as you say, the crack in the universe closed because they had returned, but realised that the universe, as it stood, was not a healthy place for them, and so fled, but that wasn’t the impression I got from what little was said on the subject in this episode; and would even the Time Lords been able to shift a whole planet forward in time by several billion years?
6 December 2015 at 19:13 #48855Would it be boasting immoderately to point out that my theorising about the nature of the Cloister Wraiths/Sliders on the Spoilers thread was pretty accurate? And I wasn’t all that far wrong about the intended purpose of the Confession Dial, either. The Doctor’s explanation in the this episode chimed very much with my ideas on the subject, whether or not I expressed them very clearly 😉
6 December 2015 at 19:17 #48856By the way, I may not have mentioned this
I am sure I speak for everyone when I say that we are humbled by the opportunity to share the internet with you.
It was, indeed, a brilliant prediction, my friend.
And I am pretty sure the Karn Sisters came to The Doctor, rather then him asking them, in the teaser – because I am pretty sure they hold him in the highest esteem
On the other hand, as I recall it, the teaser/prologue opens with an explicit statement that the scene takes place on the planet Karn. Which would imply that the Doctor goes to them.
6 December 2015 at 19:33 #48858@arbutus: Au contraire, we may have found out something astounding about why the Doctor no longer uses his original name on Gallifrey.
What if he was the student who escaped the Cloisters and was so traumatized by whatever happened to him that he afterwards refused to use his given name, but instead used other ones to describe himself?
The Doctor: Ah, no, he didn’t tell anyone anything. He went completely mad, never right in the head again. So they say.
6 December 2015 at 19:59 #48859@pedant Congratulations! What drink can I get you?
Re HHttG radio play: I have a set of cassettes like that as well! Sadly, I no longer have a cassette deck on which to play them.
I also thought that Coleman was fabulous in this. In addition to the scene you mention, I loved the spot where she realized what the Doctor had put himself through to bring her back to life, her horror that he would go through that for reasons that were so completely wrong (as we now know they were).
I agree that the exiled Rassilon has loads of potential as an enemy, and a change from Missy. I’d love to learn a bit more about the “resurrection” of Rassilon, as I have always assumed that they brought him back to help them win the Time War, but I don’t remember if that was ever stated. But I think Moffat has left some useful threads dangling here.
You said this: The Doctor found his way home and found the meaning of the old adage: You can’t go home again. But your friends will still give you soup. Nice.
6 December 2015 at 20:15 #48860@supernumerary @tardigrade
You both make some good points. The fact is that those who feel strongly that Clara should have died will of course not be happy with this outcome, and fair enough. I could have lived with her death because it was well done, and appropriate in all the ways we have discussed. I’m not unhappy with this outcome, however, because my main feeling was that it should not be a “no strings attached” revival. We have now seen that the Doctor’s apparent calm in the face of her death came from his apparent belief that he would still be able to cheat it, to “fix it” as he always had before. But between them, he and Me showed him that this was wrong. In the end, he realized that he needed her more than she needed him, and he made the choice to let her go the only way that would really work, by removing her from his memory (not the other way around, as he presumably now realizes that he had no right to make that choice for Donna).
@supernumerary Props for this phrase: rather than regenerating into a tear gland like Smith in Angels of Manhattan. 🙂
I’m still not sure that the Doctor originally ran from Gallifrey because of the hybrid prophecy, because he seems to have returned to Gallifrey thinking that the prophecy referred to Me.
I agree that the shooting was definitely out of character. I think that was supposed to be the point, that the Doctor’s relationship with Clara has become unhealthy, wrong, for him.
Regarding Gallifrey, it hasn’t actually returned. True, it has emerged from the pocket universe, but I thought that was made clear as long ago as Listen. But they have hidden it at the end of the universe. Almost no one would be able to find their way there, given the need for time travel to do so. So they are still safe from reigniting the Time War. I assume that Moffat was leaving the explanation as to how and when they emerged from the pocket universe for another story at another time.
6 December 2015 at 20:22 #48861@jimthefish But opening with Skaro and ending with Gallifrey and with more than a few serious Who highpoints in between, that was, in my view, one of the most accomplished series of Who, either BG or AG. Oh, I definitely agree with this. I loved Series 8 but this was better. At the moment, I can’t think of a misstep, and the whole thing felt both concise and spacious, due to two-part stories throughout. Possibly the best-constructed series arc yet.
@rorysmith Yes, I thought for a minute that Orson was waiting outside the door, at the end of the universe. And then I saw who it was and thought, Of course, Me, I’d actually forgotten about her!
@jphamlore Au contraire, we may have found out something astounding about why the Doctor no longer uses his original name on Gallifrey. But the key is “may have found out”. Hints and speculation for sure, but nothing solid. Things that can be revisited later on, if desired. Early on I feared that I was about to be given more specifics than I wanted. But I didn’t view any of this as game-changing.
@true-space-wars-lover @puroandson The thing about a prophecy is that unless it’s pretty specific, you might never know for sure whether it has been fulfilled, and there will always be room for disagreement. Maybe the Doctor/Clara has fulfilled the hybrid prophecy (although it never did stand in the ruins of Gallifrey, possibly because they outsmarted fate in the guise of Missy?). But maybe not. There is no way to know for sure, unless another hybrid shows up later on. I am fine with this, myself.
6 December 2015 at 20:44 #48862Which would imply that the Doctor goes to them.
Sorry – wasn’t clear. My assumption was that they summoned him.
I think a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster is indicated!
That should shut me up.
6 December 2015 at 20:56 #488636 December 2015 at 20:59 #48864This was a great episode. The ending really showed that The Doctor is moving on. The Doctor has gain a new sonic screwdriver, proving that he is still The Doctor, however I really like the sonic shades and I’m sad too see them go but this is the best looking sonic screwdriver. Bringing Clara back was wonderful and the writers didn’t undo the power of her death. Clara returning was great for The Doctor and Clara fans to move on. Now that The Doctor can’t really remember Clara, a new companion can come onto the show without The Doctor moping. It was fun to see the restaurant that Amy, Rory and River were once in. I’m sure that after the final episode of this season (the Christmas episode) a new chapter will be reveal in the next season.
6 December 2015 at 21:00 #48865@stara I think this quote:
At the end of everything, one must expect the company of immortals.
covers how the Sisterhood were there.
6 December 2015 at 21:24 #48866I do hope there will be a new Rassilon story sooner or later. More Missy too please.
As for Clara, she will be back at the very least when its time for 12’s regeneration.
In the meantime there is a book coming out soon about Ashidr/Me’s travels and
I bet Clara is in many of the chapters. Also, Clara was an English teacher and loved writers
so I can imagine a few chapters will be about meeting some of those writers including Jane
Austen ?
6 December 2015 at 21:33 #48867@avaris BBC can really do a Paternoster Gang and Clara Who Spinoff. It will be quite (a-hem) interesting character relation between Vastra, Jenny, Clara and Ashildr. This will be just very weird. But I bet every episode will pass the Bechdel Test for sure. Throw in River Song! How anyone can say that Moffat doesn’t write strong female characters is beyond me.
@starla Ohila said that she was there because she had heard that the Doctor had come home. I think she feels some sense of responsibility for the Doctor. And her “Face me, boy” line was very interesting, I thought.
I agree about the BBC approved spoilers, mainly because I prefer to know as little as possible going in. It’s hard enough avoiding the random spoilers in the media, without the “official” ones showing up everywhere.
@miapatrick @tardigrade The iTunes subtitles have mistakes fairly regularly, so they are obviously not getting them from the source. I usually catch them, if not the first time around, then the second. I saw the same “death” for “tenth” mistake, but didn’t catch it on my one viewing so far. That one was a pretty critical one, I must say! 🙂
@mirime If I were going to guess, I’d say that Moffat was poking a bit with the half-human reference. That point was possibly the most universally loathed by fandom in the whole of the TV Movie. So I personally wouldn’t expect Moffat to seriously address it. But hey. You never know.
Tardis stuck as a diner – seems very Douglas Adams. But then every time a perception filter is mentioned or other ways of hiding things in plain sight, I automatically think “Somebody Else’s Problem field.” Ha. Yes. 🙂
@mudlark Great post. I too found the portrait of Clara disintegrating off the TARDIS at the end moving and appropriate. I also thought the whole set of scenes in the Gallifreyan desert was very evocative, and a nice parallel to the American desert where Clara listens to his story in the diner. I’m looking forward to getting a second look at the whole thing.
6 December 2015 at 21:46 #48868@arbutus Thank you for those appreciative words. I’m afraid I tend to get carried away, and my initial posts can be over-long as a result. I imagine that there are more than a few here who take one look at those great wodges of text, roll their eyes and skip to the next, and who can blame them 🙂
6 December 2015 at 22:07 #48870@miapatrick The love is gone with the memory, though the reasons for love might remain with the information. She tried twice, in Face the Raven and Hell Bent, to persuade him that she didn’t want him to tear up the universe for her. But this is the only way he could be stopped. Oh, nicely put.
@mudlark @pedant @everybody else who guessed something right! We have now reached that point in the series that is known as “payoff time”. If you guessed something right, you get to brag. And you should, because most of us by now will not remember who guessed what and who got what right. So brag on, my clever friends. Pan galactic gargle blasters in the pub for all of you. 🙂 And one for me because I have managed to get through three pages of intelligent commentary over the course of the morning, and it is now after two and I guess I can have a drink if I want one. Plus the tea is cold.
6 December 2015 at 22:15 #48871I have to say I loved this episode. I was going to watch the second showing of it after Graham Norton was over, went downstairs to spend some time with my Mom and ended up staying and watching a christmas movie on tv and setting up our Christmas tree and thus missed it. I am looking forward to seeing it again though. (I hate GN which is why I left the room as I did, but wished to watch what came after so left the tv on)
The woman finding him in the barn, and all the common folk of Gallifrey gathered as he ate some soup outside was grand to see. I do think he should not have made an enemy of Rassilon. Still, he’s had a rather on and off relationship with him all through the series from the first time Rassilon was mentioned.
6 December 2015 at 22:16 #48872@arbutus Pan galactic gargle blasters it is (hic!), and I’m perfectly happy to drink mine here rather than trek over to the pub. It will do very nicely as a nightcap 🙂 Funnily enough, after reading through the posts as of this morning, my coffee, like your tea, was cold. In fact I think at some point I had re-heated it in the microwave, but it was still cold when I got round to drinking it.
6 December 2015 at 22:42 #48873Enjoyed the episode on the whole. Think I would have liked some kind of big reveal as to who or what the Hybrid was a la John Hurts appearance in NoTD rather the current uncertainty, is the Hybrid really just a myth?
I think the most logical is Ashildr’s final theory, with the Hybrid being Clara and The Doctor. Half Dalek Half TimeLord, is it possible the legend classed Clara as a dalek due to her extensive links with them? Technically one of the claricles was a dalek…
On the flip side not sure if anyone else has picked it up but towards the end of the episode Clara says the following: “Memories become stories when we forget them, maybe some of them become Songs?”
Is that just another Moffat tease? Surely we haven’t seen the last of Clara?
6 December 2015 at 22:50 #48874Anonymous @
Halloo I’m 14 and I know this is not quite right:
it doesn’t constantly live with the expectation of science fiction that things need to make sense.
Sorry, what I mean is, is that Dr Who isn’t sci-fi. Nope Mr Moffat (that’s weird). Also, Gallifrey is fine where it is. It still functions because it always has -people move around and do things within their planet.. Now it’s moved from the pocket to the end of the universe only the Karn sisters can find it. I believe ends have been tied up!
Just Son
6 December 2015 at 22:54 #48875During the episode the Doctor kept correcting people when they said it was a myth plus he corrected them when they got information wrong so I think the hybrid is real.
6 December 2015 at 23:06 #48876@arbutus @starla Ohila says, “I heard the Doctor had come home. One so loves fireworks.” Seems she had rather voyeuristic reasons for being there.
@the-war-doctor I thought the Doctor was playing a riff of Clara’s theme on his guitar. Wasn’t that what it was in reference to? That he remembers her story and song.
6 December 2015 at 23:07 #48877@all
Son’s gone to school so we can use punctuation now.
gorgeous explanations as always
@pedant you called it buddy. Drinks on way -the long way round but.
Brilliant episode -so lush and vital and sad all at the same time.
I am also bemused by some who claim Moffat hasn’t tidied up the ends, as it were. No? Moffat! Surely not! I think he pretty much has but there were a few things that I need to plot back and reconfigure and it is TV. But I truly loved it.
@pedant spot on explanation by the way (notice you’re writing more than one line which is wonderful and I echo @blenkinsopthebrave‘s statement. We are lucky indeed)
@supernumerary
I don’t know what my son was apologising for but if he needs a swift kick up the bottom then surely this will be after he gets home to live either in middle of road or middle of lake and after he licks said road with tongue.
Kindest,
Puro Solo
6 December 2015 at 23:11 #48878I loved the episode right up until the time that the Doctor was the one erased and not Clara. My first thought was simply “What a copout.”
Some of you say that it didn’t diminish her death in Face the Raven, but for me it totally did. I fell for the setup that it might be Clara who had had her memory erased. And you know what, I might have been OK with that. It’s no secret that I never did really care for Clara. By the time they made her a character worth caring about, it was too late for me. I’ll admit that I didn’t mind her as much this season, and I thought her death in Face the Raven was quite poignant. This ruined that for me.
The ability for River to come back due to time streams being out of sync, and her being uploaded to the library computer was clever. Here just feels like we got to that scene and it was “Well, we already did this to Donna, so we can’t do that again.”
I’m as sick of Clara now as I was of Rose by Season 4. She has completely overshadowed the Doctor for me. I love Capaldi’s Doctor. It took a bit for him to get into it, but he was absolutely fabulous this season. Can Clara just go away now? Let Capaldi shine on his own for a bit. But no, no one is allowed to die anymore in Who. Got to leave it open for her to come back. The only way that she can be redeemed in my eyes is if she actually is related to the Doctor and/or River.6 December 2015 at 23:25 #48879so much to say, so little time
I was in the underwhelmed camp until the type 40 got stolen, and thereafter it was pure love…
memories become stories – in a series that has foregrounded stories so much this opens up so much possibility – that everything we watch is the half forgotten echo of what really happened – all those loose ends and weird moments we seize on – who really wrote on the chalk boards in listen – a now forgotten clara? etc etc – this is moffs hybrid get out of jail / middle finger up to the literalists…
i thought the point of the hybrid was that it was the dr himself who started the prophesy when he broke into the matrix – he was talking to the wraiths but the wraiths don’t talk – was he talking to clara – did she help him escape – or a claricle – and if she was there and the hybrid is the doc/clara then the prophesy is predestined to become true
cloister bells ringing – many on here have claimed to hear cloister bells on the soundtrack – will the bells stop
not sure why some think orson pink resolved – it has opened up the possibility of resolution i suppose but…
oh and the real hybrid is of course the MoffCap. I have a theory that post 50th moff feels totally liberated and with cap on board has really pushed the boundaries – what a series this has been – proper grown up sci fi (appreciate some don’t like the sci fi tag, but i quote back someone (forget who) who said genre fiction is too good to be wasted on genre writers)
6 December 2015 at 23:36 #48880During the episode the Doctor kept correcting people when they said it was a myth plus he corrected them when they got information wrong so I think the hybrid is real.
I think you have misread that a little. He was correcting them when they were being vague, when they were prevaricating. He was making them be concrete, making them take the political spin off.
6 December 2015 at 23:43 #48881@puroandson
I am also bemused by some who claim Moffat hasn’t tidied up the ends, as it were. No? Moffat! Surely not! I think he pretty much has but there were a few things that I need to plot back and reconfigure and it is TV. But I truly loved it.
I think people forget what an economical writer Moffat is. He doesn’t waste time on cruft: you get one line of explanation and if you miss, well you will get it on the re-watch or not at all (think when the explanation of Amy’s kidnap happen: “Dunno. Probaly be we went to America”. And that’s in. That’s canon).
And such economy can be used to devastatingly efficient impact: “They’ll kill you.” Not an exclamation – a recognition.
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