Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor
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19 July 2017 at 19:48 #61118
Now that Peter Capaldi has only one more episode to go, the Christmas Special, when he will regenerate into Jodie Whittaker as 13, we now have a few months to discuss his tenure.
Please let us know what you think of his time in the TARDIS. Was he amazing from the start, difficult for you to warm to, too dark, too light, dare I say it, too old? How do you feel he developed? Was he given good stories or let down by them? What are your thoughts on him going (and this is about Peter, not Jodie – we have another thread for that).
If you want refreshers on your thoughts, or on what we all thought at the time, you can find his whole career as the Doctor documented here (yes, we’ve now been around long enough to have seen through a whole Doctor’s time on the show):
https://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/forum/episodes/the-twelfth-doctor/
20 July 2017 at 17:39 #61170Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who tenure, eh?
It seems like 5 minutes ago that the Twelfth Doctor appeared with his first lines: ‘Kidneys! I’ve got new kidneys. I don’t like the colour.’The Doctor started off styled as a Suedehead, with short haircut & crombie. He did not suffer fools and it just so happened that everybody else were fools.
His TARDIS may have been warm yellow & bookish but he was going ‘Into Darkness’. The pragmatic Doctor, who either kills or incites suicide. Who will mourn later, because there’s no time now.Who frowned him that face? Turns out it was Caecilius’ (from ‘The Fires of Pompeii’) face. ‘Save somebody, anybody…’, Implored Donna. So he (No. 10) did, even though it was against the rules. Because he realised he was being ‘cold’ watching everyone die, especially as he’d caused the situation to stop the Pyroviles. By the time we reach ‘The Waters of Mars’, No. 10 had had so much ‘non-interference in death’ , that the knowledge that he could break the rules turned him into ‘The Time Lord Victorius’.
By series 9 (The Girl Who Died), we learnt that the Doctor’s message to himself was that of Donna – Break the rules a tiny bit & save ‘someone’. That had consequences of course…
This 2nd series saw P Cap with longer hair, hoodie, sunglasses & electric guitar – A mellowing but also a sort of ‘Mid Life Crisis’.
The Dr found Gallifrey & possibly became cruel & cowardly towards the elite there. 4 and a half Billion years of torture can have that effect…
The Doctor lost his companion, not really to death but to a (‘War Games’ inversion of a) mind wipe. He seemed to remember her in ‘The Doctor Falls’, though…By series 3 The Doctor was once again what was implied by Shada – A University tutor (with mad hair & a shabby-chic appearance). [Who wouldn’t want him as your teacher?]
A mentor not just to his students and to Bill but also to Missy. He was determined to save her, even though the task looked insurmountable – And by Jove, he accomplished it. I’m sure The Master will be back up to his evil tricks soon enough but it still counts.
By the end of the Doctor Falls, the Doctor had grown a massive Barnet and seemed to be fed up of running away from himself.He’d maybe been listening to Bob Marley…
Ya running and ya running
And ya running away.
Ya running and ya running
And ya running away.
Ya running and ya running
And ya running away.
Ya running and ya running,
But ya can’t run away from yourselfTo him, regeneration seems like a cop out, a cheaty way of being able to carry on carrying out the role.
The role of the Doctor, which Peter Capaldi embodied.20 July 2017 at 18:10 #61173I sometimes think that Doctor 12 started out as the dregs of ‘Malcolm Tucker’ and ended up as the very humanist ‘Peter Capaldi’…
20 July 2017 at 18:17 #6117420 July 2017 at 19:17 #61180@ wolfweed:
Yes! I aslo think Season 8 Calpaldi had that whiff of Malcolm Tucker about him.
Also, I “Follow the Hair”:
Short and severe in Season 8, longer (and my favorite) in Season 9 to go with his more laidback look and approachable demeanor, and full-blown Super Pertwee in Season 1o, indicative of…I’m not sure what.
Maybe his focus on reclaiming/reforming Missy, then dealing with his ineveitable regeneration make hair a lesser priority, or maybe he’s just chanelling a characteristic of a prior self that he enjoyed (comfort hair?)
21 July 2017 at 13:29 #6124121 July 2017 at 14:45 #61245One of the most persistent tropes of the anti-Moffat brigade is that Capaldi is a great Doctor who was poorly served with more than his share of bad scripts. I’m going to call bullshit on that right now because to my mind he’s enjoyed the best run of most consistent, strongly written stories of any AG Doctor. He’s never had to endure a Boom Town, or a Fear Her or a Love and Monsters. (It seems to me each RTD series had at least one, and sometimes more than one, absolute clunker that was near unwatchable even at the time). And even Matt Smith’s era had a serious slump in the middle before finishing strongly again. The ‘movie of the week’ half series really didn’t work for me and I think lost the show some momentum which Smith’s finally series struggled to regain, although it did manage it.
The Capaldi era has had its misfires — In The Forest of the Night, Sleep No More — but they seem to me to have been interesting ones, with the feeling of something interesting, something experimental, being tried but failing. But overall a lot of my favourite and what I consider the most interesting of the AG stories — Listen, The Zygon Invasion/Inversion, Kill The Moon, Mummy on the Orient Express, Heaven Sent, The Pilot, World Enough and Time, The Doctor Falls — have all been clustered in the Capaldi era. It seems to me that the arrival of Capaldi sparked off a fresh enthusiasm in Moffat that had perhaps flagged slightly towards the latter half of Smith’s tenure. And because the pace of the show became perhaps slower and more philosophical, that doesn’t equate to ‘bad writing’. Just ‘writing that some people don’t like’ and there is a difference.
Series 8 — the comments on the Capaldi blog I did a while back seem to suggest that this is a ‘Marmite’ series but it’s got some great stories in it and Capaldi is brilliant. But it is hobbled by a couple of stories, like Forest, which just didn’t work and Time Heist, which always felt to me like it was a Smith story that had somehow been carried over (for some reason I just kept imagining Smith, Amy, Rory and River in the story). The series biggest drawbacks were Danny Pink, a character it was hard to ever warm to and a finale that felt just a bit too much like an RTD pastiche for my liking. And the Doctor’s character was just a bit off. I agree that there was tendency to give him too many Tuckerisms and the hair and costume were wrong I think. He was too buttoned down, too restrained (I seem to remember someone saying ‘like a Dad at a wedding’) but this, I suppose, can be put down to regeneration angst.
Series 9 — A stronger and less sombre series and one that I really like. It starts off strong with a great Dalek two-parter (I don’t get why SM himself is so down on this story. I think it’s great). And then it’s also got the Zygon two-parter, which I think is a highlight of Capaldi’s run, and also Heaven Sent, which counts as probably one of my favourite Who episodes of all time and almost certainly my favourite Moffat episode. And as @wolfweed says, they’ve loosened up the character of the Doctor with the hoodie n shades, rock n roll, midlife crisis vibe, which I think really works. Capaldi riding in on a tank playing the guitar solo is surely one of the best entrances of the character ever. No real downsides for me in this series, although I’m not sure the character of Ashildr/Me quite worked — I think largely down to the casting. Getting Maisie Williams was a coup but her performance to me was a bit flat where I think the character needed just a bit more River-esque exuberance. (It’s one of the great shames of Capaldi’s run that we didn’t see more of River. Kingston and PC had great chemistry together. But I suppose the whole Missy arc wouldn’t have worked if River had been on the scene.)
Series 10 — Great. Really hard to fault. They’ve loosened up Capaldi’s character even more and he’s now completely nailed it. (I do really wish we’d started to see rock n roll Doc maybe about half a series earlier than we did.) And Bill works as a far better match for his character than Clara did. Rather than the buttoned down, sombre Doc of the s8, we’ve got this impulsive, erratic one who seems to me to be a strange fusion of Hartnell and Tom Baker. My one reservation is that the Monks three-parter doesn’t really work and kills the momentum built up by the opening half a dozen episodes. But it picks up speed again (WEAT just one of the best Who episodes ever to my mind) to end with what I’d say is the best finale the AG show has ever had.
And now we’re waiting for the Christmas episode, which promises to be special in all kinds of ways. What I’m looking forward to is seeing how 1 and 12 bounce off each other, some kind of meaningful statement on the regenerations of both Doctors and I’m also hoping that we see more Jodie Whittaker than just an end-of-episode regeneration. I’m also wondering if whether 12’s reluctance to regenerate is going to be seen as slightly more problematic, given that we now know that 13 is going to be a woman.
21 July 2017 at 22:10 #61268I need some distance before I know for sure, but Peter Capaldi’s Doctor may turn out to be my favorite AG Doctor.
I do think the writing during his era has been a tad inconsistent, although, as @jimthefish notes above, not nearly the number of stinkers as in the early RTD era. For me, the writing was more consistently good during Matt Smith’s tenure — I only discovered the show for real in the summer of 2013, so I binged through the end of Series 7 and didn’t experience the loss of momentum that the Fish describes.
That said, while some of Capaldi’s episodes have been on the “meh” side, he has been consistently compelling — a lengthy Capaldi speech will elevate even a so-so episode, and turn the good episodes into great episodes (see, e.g., the end of Zygon Invasion/Inversion).
Highlights for me are Listen, Time Heist, and Flatline in Series 8, the The Girl Who Lived/Woman Who Died two-parter, Zygon two-parter, and Heaven Sent in Series 9 (as well as the GLORIOUS Christmas episode with River Song), and Thin Ice, Knock Knock, and the last four episodes of Series 10. I probably would have considered Series 10 to be my favorite Capaldi season were it not for the fact that I really didn’t care for the monks three-parter.
Capaldi’s Doctor, for me, gets the best character arc out of the modern Doctors. He begins surly and confused, spends some time being angry and superior, and ultimately re-learns how to have compassion and empathy in a way that allows him to connect with others again. I thought that making him a college professor this last season was brilliant (and a perfect extension of the chalkboard stuff in Series 8) – he reads as a Doctor so in love with the universe that he just has to share it with everyone.
Nine could have had that arc, but could only do so much in 13 episodes (about half of which were pretty bad). I would have loved to have seen what Eccleston would have done with the role if he’d gotten over himself and stuck around. Ten had some wonderful moments, and Tennant is a stunningly good actor, but his Doctor is just too perfect for me. Generally confident, generally genial, just gallivanting around the universe doing his thing. My favorite Ten episodes are the ones where the facade slips and he loses it — Waters of Mars is the best example, but also Human Nature/Family of Blood and Midnight. For a show to have stakes and drama, you have to really believe that the hero could fail, and I rarely felt that during the Ten era. Eleven is equal parts wonderful and irritating — I thought Smith was at his best when he managed to portray an ancient, alien being in the body of a young guy (The Snowmen stands out in my head for that reason). It helps to put the silliness in context — Ten and Eleven are masks in their own ways, while Nine and Twelve show you more of the raw pain beneath.
All of which is to say, Peter Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor has been a master class of acting. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to watch without seeing Malcolm Tucker, and now I’m already mourning the loss of his Doctor prospectively.
@jimthefish – As for your question about whether 12’s reluctance to regenerate will be seen as problematic, I have in my head a view of how the regeneration will go (based on Moffat’s comment that it will be “different”). I assume that, by the end of the Christmas episode, 12 and 1 will have managed to convince each other that change is good and necessary, and 12 will no longer dread regeneration. Then, I want to see his regeneration be much more peaceful — not fire and destruction like 10-11, or crash landing the TARDIS like 11-12. Just a change, and 13 opens her eyes without confusion or dread, but in full awareness of her past and an eagerness to move forward. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
21 July 2017 at 23:17 #61270@drben–
I want to see his regeneration be much more peaceful — not fire and destruction like 10-11, or crash landing the TARDIS like 11-12. Just a change, and 13 opens her eyes without confusion or dread, but in full awareness of her past and an eagerness to move forward. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
Yes, it would be. I really like that idea. We haven’t had a ‘peaceful’ regeneration for such a long time. Since Hartnell>Troughton, interestingly enough.
22 July 2017 at 07:25 #61282The Hair — that early, short look went with the stripped down, peeled raw character who began S8 — a soul that’s been through the thresher and is staggering around trying to patch together its true nature again, which was *supposed* to have died with Eleven: “Here’s a crisis — what do I do in a crisis like this? What *should* I do? Why?” kind of thing. Robin Hood carries the heroics off with such idiotic panache and weird naivete — Doctor doesn’t like it, too flourishy (banter! he hates it!), but can’t help but admire Robin’s aplomb, and his equable acceptance of becoming a story-book hero with the passage of time because, don’t we all, at least for a while, to someone? And so it went . . . “What’s my style? What’s my function? What are my limitations? Who is this other person I need to have by me although she shouts at me?” I found the series rich and scrumptious in a particular way — keep thinking in terms of — jewelry? Armor? Like this (hope the link works):
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1912525632345978&set=pcb.1912527202345821&type=3&theater
S9 — balanced again, hair in robust rock-star style, a bit of swagger, and the unfurling of his rebel flag — “If anyone watching doesn’t like it, the Hell with them!” Yes, Ashildr was a bit half baked; too much of her story was left out between their talk in the tavern and their talk in the ruins of the Citadel, but these things don’t bother me. The nature of the show itself, as convoluted as it sometimes became during Moffat’s reign, is funny, serious, deeply tragic, and constitutionally *untidy*. This character who lives thousands of years never has time to clean up anything, deal with everything, there being so damn *much* of it packed into most of these episodes. Part of CapDoc’s charm is playing that messiness, half-cocked improv on the spot, with sudden pauses in which we can hear that almost-sound of that doomsday bell.
He doesn’t need Clara so much now — but she needs him now, she’s the one at loose ends. He’s taught her to be a “Doctor”. She still has things to teach him, though, big things, as they fall into the black hole of impossibility. The man who wanted to protect his “pet” more than anything submits to her instruction instead of addling her wits, and surrenders his memories instead of hers. All of this worked wonderfully well for me; Capaldi’s Doctor shared his stories and their risks with his human comrade-double, and the stories were fun. I saw “Sleep No More” as a failed experiment, but an experiment with a function — we needed to see the Doctor *fail* and be reminded that he *can* fail, because he fails big time in Raven, with dire consequences for all concerned.
S10 — Moffat says in an interview that he wanted to start off with the kindly grandpa side of the Doctor, via his professor role, so that Bill isn’t just hurled headlong into roaring danger at headlong speed, and the viewers who’d been missing his kinder self would be reassured and made more comfortable. It worked for me, but as my tastes lean toward the darker, more dramatic stories, I also found “Smile” and “Thin Ice” satisfying but a bit shallow. I loved “Knock, Knock”: Bill and her little mob of roommates, the wooden mother/daughter, and David Suchet, who I thought was wonderful in this; no worlds at stake, but a Gothic family tragedy and a haunted house. The monks — great start, fizzled ending for reasons that Moffat firmly took responsibility for in his comments on the ending episode. Mars was a silly pudding, but very cheering, and I liked the blue-ish, chilly look of “Death by Scotland”.
The Hair, of course, took off and became a wild, out-of-control lion-mane, what my sister calls “conductor hair”, carried off majestically by a guy who once said on an early panel when asked what he was afraid of, “I’m afraid of ma hair; ma hair is a nightmare! Nobody can do anything with it, so they just leave it up to me”, which is probably not entirely true, but that look sure fits the figure he cut in S10.
The resolution — more wild and wonderful stuff, the hero who’s “not a hero” expressing exactly the kind of heroism that the Doctor is made of: making it up as he goes along, utilizing whatever’s at hand, and making a last, desperate pitch to Missy. Nothing works out right or perfectly, except that Bill gets compensated for her sufferings (though I hated to see her go). This time this Doctor doesn’t try to prevent or remedy the changes around him (Cyberbill’s death, Nardole’s despatch to a different saga), but change in himself. He’s reached the end of his Doctorly resilience: The Doctor Falls No More. He *won’t* regenerate; he’d rather die.
And suddenly the Tardis takes us to a landscape of the past, where the “original article” looms out of the darkness and snow. Great! Loved it.
Through all of it, Capaldi’s Doctor navigated challenges from every quarter (blindness, two Missters and neither willing, as far as he got to know to help, the loss of Bill), on every scale, but when it comes down to the final one, the biggest one — No. He will not regenerate. He’s won through to this version of himself — heroic in practical terms and without witnesses (a far cry from, “I’m nothing without an audience!”), his emotions unshielded so that everyone *does* matter to him — and he balks at giving that person up some “some other bloke”(!) can “walk away” with his life. He’s even re-learned kindness; I do wish he’d gotten a chance to say something about how the thing about kindness is that it’s not just a feeling, it’s also a choice — and you can be a kind person and still fail at that sometimes, or fail to back it up with action (Bill into CyberBill). It’s not *automatic*.
Well, I don’t want to give him up either. I’ve loved and admired his work in this show, and that’s in spite of the fact that as a general rule, I’m not really a fan of this particular style of acting, which I think of, weirdly, as both broader and bolder than his work in “realistic” drama (TToI, sort of), as befits a larger-than-life character who is, in his own specific way, a “superhero” or at least a “super being”; and almost microscopically detailed, in the modulations of voice, the expressiveness of little muscles I don’t think most people even have in their faces, the way he put on the burgundy velvet coat or drank — and appreciated — his stolen coffee in the orphanage. This made him fascinating to watch. Capaldi’s Doctor is my Doctor, even where the writing or the editing didn’t completely support him or actually let him down (The Lie of the Land).
Time for some deep breaths, and other things; and then some binge watching of the whole deal (gosh, what a chore!). And I’ve loved the company of all of you here, too, with great comments and discussions — it’s made everything even more fun than it would have been without that.
22 July 2017 at 09:51 #61284I think the defining characteristic of Twelve is his rawness of emotion, even when it’s concealed behind practicality and frustration (as it is in Series 8; I still have some stuff to catch up on three by year’s end). Some of which are emotions too! 😉
Capaldi/Twelve is always a pleasure to watch even in weaker scripts (for me exhibit A of that is the Monks arc post-“Extremis”), or even as the Doctor has a bad time if it. I give the edge to Series 10 as my favorite season for its more satisfying ending (though of course there’s still one more to go). I don’t think I can add much else that hasn’t been said more eloquently…
Well, I am struck by the depths of his love and kindness for others (especially many antagonists) throughout his run. Even if he didn’t always express it in human and or “nice” ways…or the crisis at hand precluded reassurance that might prove false anyway…I got the sense of someone who cared about others and how others saw him, who didn’t ask to be loved even though he needed love, and reassurance, himself. He found it anyway, and lost it too. It will be interesting to see where he goes on this last journey.
24 July 2017 at 03:06 #61370Hi All!
To further wrap my mind around the 12th Doctor I’m doing a…rewatch! How original.
Now that Capaldi’s reign is over, I find I’m watching these episodes more intently than I did at first. Each episode provides so much FUN regardless of plot issues. Each episode advances the Clara /Doctor relationship (and I’m realizing now that’s what I’m here for, not necessarily in a full-blown Whouffaldi way, but the interaction between the two is a primary attraction for me.).
I am experiencing again that surprise at his callousness, not saving others, and in fact, lying or misleading them into thinking he was helping them when he was only using them to gather data. He’s insulting and cruel. I’m not sure that would have carried me through multiple seasons, but it was great in these first few episodes, differentiating him from his prior incarnations.
( I should provide a disclaimer: I’m NuWho so if he acted like this in the past (Collin Baker?) I’m unencumbered by that baggage.)
So, I’m just up to the ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’, but I’m lapping up every Capaldi lifted eyebrow, twist of the lip, roll of the eye, sigh etc.
@ DrBen Capaldi’s Doctor, for me, gets the best character arc out of the modern Doctors. He begins surly and confused, spends some time being angry and superior, and ultimately re-learns how to have compassion and empathy in a way that allows him to connect with others again.
Yes, thank you, I’m also running down that road. He has a real arc. He starts out seemly unable to remember anything he learned previously about human interaction, and builds his way back to a real relationship with both Clara and Bill, not to mention Missy.
Off to watch Flatline.
24 July 2017 at 12:38 #61378I’d agree with @drben and @hiker that Capaldi does have a definite arc and it’s a truly satisfying one.
Just for yucks, my favourite of his episodes would be:
1. Heaven Sent
2. World Enough and Time
3. The Doctor Falls
4. Listen
5. The Magician’s Apprentice
6. The Zygon Inversion
7. Kill The Moon
8. Hell Bent
9. The Pilot
10. Mummy on the Orient ExpressBut just going back over those episodes myself, I’m amazed at just how strong his whole run was. There’s a couple of clunkers in there but not many….
24 July 2017 at 19:07 #61383@ichabod raises some interesting points about Twelve believing he’d rather die than regenerate. I would be interested to hear from someone with more subject-matter knowledge than me on the subject of The Doctor as Manic-Depressive. If you think about, Eleven was ready to die. He was a Time Lord who had reached the end of his allotted regenerations, and had reached peace with his coming end. Clara (without asking permission, mind you) negotiates a new regeneration cycle, and poof! – crazed, angry Doctor Eyebrows.
In a way, it’s like the terminal patient who only wants to die with dignity, only to be kept alive through artificial means. Twelve, by extrapolation, is a Doctor with a death wish. He still has enough compassion for others that his instinct to save the lives of others generally wins over his desire to end his own. After Clara’s “death,” I’d postulate that it was only a chance encounter with River that allowed the Doctor to keep trying to live. But he has now lost River, lost Bill and Missy and Nardole, and is again being robbed of his noble death, being forced to live on despite never wanting further incarnations.
I think there are a lot of parallels to depression there. You can generally function, as long as you keep moving and don’t think about things too much, but sometimes the effort gets to be too much. Presumably, a visit from his younger (!) self will change his mind.
Also, one assumes that Thirteen will be far more pragmatic, as it is presumably true throughout the universe that, while men are generally allowed to rage and pontificate and feel sorry for themselves, woman are far more likely to put aside such useless affectations and get sh*t done.
25 July 2017 at 02:21 #61406@missrori I think the defining characteristic of Twelve is his rawness of emotion, even when it’s concealed
Steven Moffat said so early on — that this Doctor is “an exposed nerve” of emotion — and Capaldi played that beautifully. It helps to have a face that reads like a contour map of the Highlands, of course.
@hiker Each episode advances the Clara /Doctor relationship (and I’m realizing now that’s what I’m here for, not necessarily in a full-blown Whouffaldi way, but the interaction between the two is a primary attraction for me.).
I felt a personal investment in their story too, primarily I think because it was never going to be a kissy-wuv kind of thing (pace those who insist that it always was) but promised to be something much more interesting. Relationships between essential unequals have always have always been fraught with a particularly vibrant power for me (well, not just for me: Jane Eyre, Beauty and the Beast, Cupid and Psyche; hell, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Emma Peel and Mr. Steed, Holmes and Watson, Timmie and Lassie — okay, I’ll stop there — wait, Scaramouche and the Marquis de la Tour D’Azure, Billy Budd and Mr. Clagget). I picked up on it because Capaldi pointed it out, quite early on, when someone asked whether CapDoc/Clara was a love story, and he said it had romance in it all right (implying a larger dimension that our standard ideas about boy/girl/boy/boy/girl/girl attraction), but “sex — is just sex”.
Nobody on the team ever came back to that remark, but why should they? After all, the whole Doctor and Clara story *showed* us what that was, and why it’s not “the Impossible Girl” that’s impossible, but their situation itself. The draw of that kind of thing for me is the struggle to somehow balance the equation against all odds, and the degree to which that is achieved, and what the results from it (usually brief) achievement. That, for me, brings to life the central human dilemma — the fight to reach beyond protective individualism (with its burden of loneliness) to true intimacy with others (with its burden of risk, the risk — and the certainty — of pain). I mean intimacy in the sense of acceptance and trust (“Do you think I care for you so little . . . “).
In some ways, of course, Clara becomes — a Doctor-like figure by the end; just not *the* Doctor. They can feel equal, and act equal, but they’re not and never could actually be equal. Except in stories, maybe.
He starts out seemly unable to remember anything he learned previously about human interaction, and builds his way back to a real relationship with both Clara and Bill, not to mention Missy.
I’d say it’s not that he’s forgotten everything he’d learned — he certainly remembers what pudding-brains we can be, and scorns us for it — but that he seems cut off from the more positive understandings that 11 had gained. Maybe that’s what a completely unexpected and wrenching regeneration can do to a TL. Clara managed in hang in for the harsher edges of that, for which she does not get enough credit, seems to me, and helped him to do the rebuilding, as you say.
You’re gonna love “Flatline”!
@drben You can generally function, as long as you keep moving and don’t think about things too much, but sometimes the effort gets to be too much.
Gosh, yes, for situational depression. Been there, at any rate, like anyone who’s every had anything both crappy and irreversible happen in their lives. Isn’t depression a part of PTSD? Some vets re-up for war so they can have that necessary, adrenaline-spiked action again, I’ve read.
And I like your prediction for Thirteen!
25 July 2017 at 12:40 #61414This:
25 July 2017 at 14:18 #61415I’d say it’s not that he’s forgotten everything he’d learned — he certainly remembers what pudding-brains we can be, and scorns us for it — but that he seems cut off from the more positive understandings that 11 had gained. Maybe that’s what a completely unexpected and wrenching regeneration can do to a TL.
Yeah, he “took a level in cynic” at the start, as they say over at TVTropes — about everything, even and especially himself. He doesn’t think storybook heroes exist in the world, not even him! He just wants to get things done and dispense with the pleasantries. I can empathize with that. When I get hyperfocused on what I’m doing, especially if it’s important stuff, I get in a “Go Away Humans” mood too! And he is doing very important things most of the time! 😀 But it’s important to be soft too, even though it means risking being hurt.
And @drben I agree that he’s fallen into a very depressive mood thanks to recent events, which only exacerbates the broodiness he’s felt from the start, being “a clerical error” and all. I see a lot of parallels in Twelve to autism as well, being an Aspie myself — feeling things deeply, the need to tamp down rawer emotions just to function properly and not scare off or anger others, for instance, and just seeing things in a different way than others, which can be very problematic when those things are matters of life and death.
I thought of this the other day about Twelve’s character development (and wrote a poem about it over at Tumblr): He was born in Winter’s icy thrall, thawed in the warm of Spring beneath the Green (“In the Forest of the Night”), became the raging Summer storm, and finally ripened and fell with the farmyard apples of Autumn…
25 July 2017 at 17:34 #61422@drben and MissRori:
Regarding the Doctor’s present state of mind (and I’m sure I’m not the only one to say it), couldn’t this have something to do with the number of regenerations he’s had? Maybe there is a good reason for a max number of 12 (or was it 13?). Maybe living that number of lives (and they are different people in my opoinion or regeneration wouldn’t be so traumatic) is just as much strain as a Timelord can take!
Ten didn’t want to stop being his cute, fun self, but Capaldi is just tired of the restart process. He’s had a tough time of it, getting back to what passes for stable. Then he loses Clara, loses Missy, loses Bill!
But he still has his hair, so theres’ that. 🙂
Love the Christmas trailer. It’ll be interestng to see how he comes around to accepting the change, which I asume he will. Can’t see him leaving kicking and screaming.
Apologies in advance for typos. Reading my own posts is making me gag. Spell Check, wherefore art thou?
25 July 2017 at 17:42 #61423Peter Capaldi.
Like a Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker hybrid. Or a Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee one…
25 July 2017 at 18:49 #61427@wolfweed–
yes, I think PC was doing himself a disservice when he said that his ‘eyebrows’ shot in the 50th special was his iconic moment because to me this is it. This is his ‘do I have the right/small beautiful moments/one day I shall come back’ moment and it’s a great one. It speaks to his whole arc as the Doctor. He moves from ‘Am I good man’, to ‘I’m a madman with a box and a screwdriver’ to finally understanding what it means to be the Doctor. That he’s just figured it out is one of the key reasons why he doesn’t want to go yet. Getting to that point involved no small amount of soul-searching and pain and he’s scared that it’ll all end up being for nothing.
Of course, the other great thing about this scene is that it’s also John Simm’s defining moment as the Master. And possibly Michelle Gomez’s too. She does amazing work in this scene with barely a scrap of dialogue.
25 July 2017 at 21:50 #61438@jimthefish @wolfweed Yes, that speech is the iconic moment, to me. It’s where he’s come to, the penultimate self-realization — and gives him a stake in *not* regenerating [this is me, the kind of good man I am — I’m not giving me up now I’m found!]. Ground laid for Xmas story.
I also like @hiker saying that maybe more than 12 regenerations is more than even a TL can handle; that would be perfectly understandable. On the other hand, this is no ordinary TL, and he’s proven to be not just kind, but also brave, which he’ll demonstrate (under somewhat less extreme circumstances, I trust) in the end.
27 July 2017 at 16:15 #61484@JimTheFish yeah sorry im new to this site i did not know where to post it thanks
27 July 2017 at 17:49 #61487@doctor2222 — no worries at all. Thanks for doing that.
27 July 2017 at 19:30 #61489The BBC has just released this today, which was released at Comic Con so @wolfweed may have already posted another version of it. Apologies if so.
27 July 2017 at 20:34 #61491If I can only find the time, I badly need to re-watch series 8 – 10, and no doubt I could even now review and evaluate Capaldi’s Doctor analytically and in detail; but that compilation brings home why, for me, after more than 50 years of watching on and off, his incarnation of this mercurial, eccentric alien – erratic, funny and at the same time profoundly serious – has had the greatest impact. It isn’t just the subtlety with which he has been able to evoke echoes of all the previous Doctors whilst bringing something extra of his own, it is that of all my favourite Doctors, his is the one to which I have had a strong emotional response – the one who speaks powerfully to and for me personally.
It is, no doubt, very much a product of Peter Capaldi’s understanding of the character as a long-term fan, coupled with his abilities as an actor, but I think that it may also be the result of a particular sympathy between his and Moffat’s vision of the role. Whatever it is, it adds up in my opinion to the quintessential Doctor.
27 July 2017 at 22:04 #61492I must admit I thought this little tribute was done quite well too….
28 July 2017 at 12:47 #61506Such a lot to read.
Missy
28 July 2017 at 14:59 #61509It isn’t just the subtlety with which he has been able to evoke echoes of all the previous Doctors whilst bringing something extra of his own, it is that of all my favourite Doctors, his is the one to which I have had a strong emotional response – the one who speaks powerfully to and for me personally.
I think @mudlark has described it so perfectly there that I don’t need to say much else!
For me Capaldi was perfect from the start, he just was the Doctor from the start.
29 July 2017 at 00:22 #61518I will always see “Heaven Sent” as the episode that won me over to Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. It was just such a tour de force performance, and the fact that he carried the episode almost singlehandedly makes it even more impressive. It helped me see his entire run up to that point very differently, and I have appreciated him ever since. He’s had so many great speeches, but his speech on being kind in “The Doctor Falls” is one for the ages. I’ll miss him!
29 July 2017 at 04:19 #61521Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has always been a mystery to me. He is unpredictable yet you can rely on him, he can be cruel and yet so kind, cranky and bossy but easy and funny. He has so many personalties inside him he is impossible to understand and yet he wants us to and we want the same.Is he a good man? I still don’t know but I think he wants to be so badly that he must be. Yet he seems to just let some people die in a way that 10 or 11 would never do but then sacrifices his own memories to save another.There are just so many contradictions that he will keep me intrigued forever.
I wish PC didn’t have to go but Doctor Who is a richer, deeper experience because he was in it. He is a great actor and I can’t wait to see what he does in the future.
29 July 2017 at 09:47 #61528@wolfweed: The role of the Doctor, which Peter Capaldi embodied.
I second that. His Doctor was far more complicated – and yet more simple – than those who came before. As for Malcolm Tucker, PC was hilarious. It must have been exhausting all that swearing!
Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has always been a mystery to me. He is unpredictable yet you can rely on him, he can be cruel and yet so kind, cranky and bossy but easy and funny. He has so many personalties inside him he is impossible to understand and yet he wants us to and we want the same.Is he a good man? I still don’t know but I think he wants to be so badly that he must be. Yet he seems to just let some people die in a way that 10 or 11 would never do but then sacrifices his own memories to save another.There are just so many contradictions that he will keep me intrigued forever.
I wish PC didn’t have to go but Doctor Who is a richer, deeper experience because he was in it. He is a great actor and I can’t wait to see what he does in the future
He was simply superb and I too shall keep an eye out for his future roles.
Missy
29 July 2017 at 10:12 #61530Interesting article and I agree with most of it, except for Paul McGann and forgetting Peter Capaldi and embracing JW. Had I admired all four Doctors equally, then maybe (except for JW) but as PC became MY Doctor, I’m not likely to forget him.
@jimthefish
Time Lord: Yes, the hair seems to be key. (Odd how you can follow the trajectory of certain Doctors in their tonsorial styling. Pertwee, the first Baker, Capaldi.) Oh and that New Statesman article is great.</div>>One of the most persistent tropes of the anti-Moffat brigade is that Capaldi is a great Doctor who was poorly served with more than his share of bad scripts. I’m going to call bullshit on that right now because to my mind he’s enjoyed the best run of most consistent, strongly written stories of any AG Doctor. He’s never had to endure a Boom Town, or a Fear Her or a Love and Monsters.
>
The tousled locks, I always thought, were brought about because of his loss of River Song. and how right you are about the above episodes. Steven Moffat brought fresha air to the programme. As for Danny Pink, I found his character annoying, alwys wondering who actually did have a chip on their shoulder? The three parter you mentioned, surely Extremis was superb?Missy
29 July 2017 at 10:29 #61531Anonymous @
Mum said the same and I agree -on the Spoiler’s thread about the early seasons -the lighter weight eps didn’t tease me in all that much. Mum watched each ep three times or more, but me only once so I have to admit that Series 8 or 9 was terrific with the Christmas Special the Husbands of River Song being a great way to say farewell to that awesome, strong archaeologist Professor Song.
@mudlark @winston – I agree. You expressed these things about him so much better than me.
What a great site!
Thank you, Thane
29 July 2017 at 10:31 #61532<i>I’m going to call bullshit on that right now because to my mind he’s enjoyed the best run of most consistent, strongly written stories of any AG Doctor</i>
@missy I totally agree with that @jimthefish
I think patient and articulate people should write this on your London papers in the comment section!
Thane
30 July 2017 at 05:13 #61543@mudlark a particular sympathy between his and Moffat’s vision of the role. Whatever it is, it adds up in my opinion to the quintessential Doctor.
I’ve felt that, too — two talented men with a background in “Scottish philosophy” pooled their gifts and gave us the Doctor in middle-age: old enough to be weary and cynical, but with flashes of youthful energy, humor, and optimism. Plus a consistent layer of that self-deprecatory wit that you see sometimes in gifted people from smaller, poorer nations. These two have all that in spades, and I suspect that part of Capaldi’s resignation from the role may have been an awareness that *that* relationship would never be as solid and mutually reenforcing as working with Steven Moffat and crew has been for the twelfth Doctor. I certainly can’t blame him for that.
@thane15 I think patient and articulate people should write this on your London papers in the comment section!
Yes. Don’t give the haters, the carpers, and the Mean Girls stuck in their cute-young-guys-or-nothing the last word about the gifts we’ve all been given.
I noticed something Capaldi said in an interview at ComiCon, I think, about having been such a long-time DW fan. He talked about having been shaped in his ambitions by the program, saying it was partly because of DW that he did become an actor himself — and, he added, “the kind of actor that I am.” I wonder what he meant by that last phrase? What “kind of actor” do you suppose he is? Operatic rather than “kitchen sink” or naturalistic (although playing the Dad in “Skins” contradicts that)? A light baritone taking the weightier tenor roles? Whatever it is, run-of-the-mill he is not, which is pretty much what SM said early on that he looked for in actors he asked to play the Doctor — quirky, a bit odd, but attractive.
30 July 2017 at 10:12 #61544A lot of reading to do, and I shall.
Missy
30 July 2017 at 13:58 #61550Lots of great comments and I’m pleased we’ve got a thread to celebrate Twelve – thanks @craig .
@drben and @ichabod Yes, I think there’s a reason why Twelve doesn’t want to regenerate, beyond that he’s grown attached to this version of himself (that was Ten’s schtick). I do think he’s tired, and part of him would just like it all to be over. He’s now over two thousand years old. That’s a long time to be running through the universe. As for whether he’s manic depressive. Well, certainly some neurodivergent viewers, particularly those on the autism spectrum, have read the Doctor as someone they can relate to. So, perhaps some bipolar viewers might feel the same.
My pet theory re the reluctance to regenerate has been that he’s still worried about becoming the Valeyard, but I’ve just re-watched The Time of the Doctor (as part of a full Capaldi Doctor re-watch currently in progress) and I’m guessing not now, because I forgot that Ten regenerated as himself. Time of the Doctor lays it out so that Smith’s Eleven is actually the Doctor’s thirteenth incarnation (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, War Doctor, 9,10,10, 11). So our Twelve is actually the first of a new regeneration cycle which the Time Lords grant him, at Clara’s insistence, through the crack in the universe at Trenzalore. In other words, he’s got over his Valeyard hump already.
Still, the fact that we are going back to the start and meeting the first Doctor again at Christmas, does point to a crisis of self brought about by the new regeneration cycle. The Doctor we know as Twelve (who is actually One of the new cycle) needing to be convinced by the original One that he needs to carry on.
@drben and @jimthefish I share some of your combined Season 8 favourites – Listen, Time Heist and Mummy on the Orient Express. It’s a delight watching Capaldi now. I do think the initial encounter with a new Doctor, at first, is always coloured by the grief of losing the last one, for those not coming to the show fresh. I was very sad to see Smith go and it took me a while to get over that, so Capaldi didn’t feel quite “right” to begin with. Now, on re-watch, I can see how much that was about my own emotional processing, and in fact I think he nails it right from the start – just – his version.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned on this board, it’s that all of us have slightly different elements of Who which work, or don’t work for us. Personally, I struggled, on and off, with Clara as a character and that affected my enjoyment of the Smith/ Clara and Capaldi/ Clara eras compared to the Smith/Amy/Rory and River era. Whilst I loved her introduction as Dalek Souffle Girl, she never really lived up to that initial promise, for me, and the “Impossible Girl” narrative didn’t really do it for me either. I do think framing her that way was a mistake or a flaw in Moffat’s writing. Amy and River had both been mysteries for the Doctor, and that worked as a self-contained arc. Making the next female companion a mystery too, suddenly began to look like an inability to write a woman companion who wasn’t a mystery. Not the fault of Jenna Coleman, who is clearly a very good actor.
By the end of her run with Smith, I thought their dynamic, of fancying each other, but dancing around it, knowing it wasn’t right somehow (for either of them) was wearisome. I was very committed to Eleven and River of course, so again, I acknowledge bringing an emotional dynamic of my own. I wanted Moffat to write something un-flirty, for once, post-River. He got there eventually, with Bill.
This is on topic (promise!) because Capaldi inherited that awkward flirty dynamic with Clara from his predecessor, and although he immediately changed the relationship up-front, by telling Clara he wasn’t her boyfriend (whilst admitting it was his mistake in the first place) their subsequent relationship, because of that history, was tangled, complicated, scratchy, addictive, push-pull. It made Capaldi’s initial run somewhat difficult, I think, because his central relationship (which is always with his companions) was difficult. This is all perhaps entirely subjective, however, as I know many adored Clara and celebrate her as their favourite Nu Who companion.
I’m still mulling Twelve’s run over, as I get further into the re-watch, so I’ll be back!
31 July 2017 at 13:45 #61561@juniperfish — I too am enjoying a Capaldi restrospective at the moment. But I am finding that my list of faves is shifting slightly under the rewatch. The Zygon two-parter has definitely slipped in my estimation but some others like Listen and Face the Raven have shot up the list. And Heaven Sent is still for my money the single best episode of Who in its 50-year history.
Capaldi has never been anything less than amazing. Jodie Whittaker has got some seriously big boots to fill when her time comes.
31 July 2017 at 22:56 #61566@jimthefish Capaldi has never been anything less than amazing. Jodie Whittaker has got some seriously big boots to fill when her time comes.
Wow, yeah — I wish her the best. If Capaldi’s run was contentious among the fans who post about DW on the net (although most of the actual hate-mail centered on Moffat’s work and Moffat’s personality as perceived by twisted minds, IMO), what’s it going to be like for Whittaker?! The yap-meisters are already foaming at the mouth over a story on Radio Times, I think, about contrasting Doctor 12 and Doctor 1 in the Xmas special by (presumably among other things) differences in their gender attitudes, and that’s re an episode that Whittaker and Chibnall barey have a hand in and that hasn’t been seen yet, but is already a hot potato!
Gonna be a wild time in the old town next year . . . a safe prediction, but also, IMO, a very interesting way of making DW a center of attention around issues that are legitimately hot and spiky in our reality these days (and, I suspect, for many many days to come). That’s a great way to rev up DW with modern energy. Lots of fans will hate it. Lots more, I think, will find those folks’ outrage anywhere from comical to incomprehensible. The times, they are a-changing, and as the man said, Not a moment too soon, my dear.
1 August 2017 at 02:12 #61571@juniperfish I agree with you completely about Clara. Like you, I was blown away by her introduction in “Asylum of the Daleks” (which held so much promise, yet I think, in subsequent episodes did not deliver with that character quite as I’d hoped). I liked Clara, but I also found myself worn out by her. I kept wondering when I was going to get to relax with her, and that never happened, I think for many of the reasons you described. When Bill arrived on the scene, then I could relax with her and the Doctor.
1 August 2017 at 12:04 #61574@nerys Yes, like you, I relaxed once Bill arrived!
However, I am appreciating the tricky and difficult Clara/ Twelve dynamic more now that I have begun a S9 rewatch. In hindsight all the tarot card speculation makes complete sense not just for the Doctor with his re-birth/ return to Gallifrey, but for Clara, with her re-birth as a time-traveller in her own right.
Michelle Gomez needs her own thread I think. I love her take on the Master/ Missy. She is full of tics and twitches and mercurial danger made all the more terrifying by the Mary Poppins attire.
Having just watched The Magician’s Apprentice/ Witch’s Familiar two-parter again, it’s also interesting to note another hint that the next Doctor would be female. Missy says to Clara that she’s been friends with the Doctor since he was a “girl” (although she allows she may be lying). In addition, there’s the intriguing and still left unfinished mention of the Doctor giving her a brooch on the occasion of her daughter… I would LOVE it if Susan did turn out, as we’ve speculated before, to be the grand-daughter of the Doctor and the Master.
Capaldi and Gomez are absolutely gorgeous together right from the start. Gomez conveys both her desire to hurt and to love the Doctor in equal measure in a really consummate performance. Missy is genuinely worried when the Doctor sends her his time-dial confession and also genuinely delighted at the ruse which may get Clara inside a dalek, killed by the Doctor himself.
Capaldi conveys, better I think, in a more reserved manner than the high emoting of the Tenant/ Simm combo, that the Doctor both loves the Master/ Missy and is appalled by him/ her. In fact, he is so patient with Missy, that, combined with her “daughter” reference, some backstory involving them both where the Doctor feels he made a mistake and owes Missy as a result, would make a lot of sense.
1 August 2017 at 22:54 #61578@nerys and @juniperfish–
I must admit that I have to share a bit of Clara-fatigue in the current rewatch. Jenna is great but Clara is definitely hard work. (I’m sure part of it is because I could never quite forgive her for not being Amy though.) While still disagreeing with ‘waaah it’s just the Clara Show now’ buffoons, I definitely to get the feeling that the fit with Capaldi’s doc was slightly off and it never did quite recover from the flirty dynamic laid down in the Smith era.
13 August 2017 at 03:47 #61702So, a funny thing happened on the way through this 8/9/10 rewatch…I fell in love with PC’s Doctor .
How awkward to fall like a brick at the end of a Doctor’s timeline! And I really don’t have time for this. Game of Thrones is almost half over! I should be all about Brienne and Arya, but here I am instead, trapped in a shipper’s pocket universe.
By way of explanation, I think it’s a by-product of watching the series one after the other and seeing certain things fall into place. You stop griping about specific episodes as you tend to do when all your attention is on that one weekly event, and you start to focus on through lines. And the one that struck me was PC Doc and Clara.
‘They’ (wisdom of the internet) say she had too large a role, too much Clara’s story at the expense of the usual ‘Brilliant Doctor defeats awesome monster and saves the day’. Yeah, they may be right, but Clara was specifically put in the Doctor’s path by Missy, calculated to have max appeal as a companion and destined to push him to (and beyond) his limits. Perfect Missy: gives you an ideal partner meant to cause you eventual boatloads of pain.
But it’s that ‘too much focus on the companion’ thing that contributes so much to this Doctor’s arc . We saw what happens when he’s matched with a companion so close that he literally cannot imagine his life without her in it. He breaks all his own rules (a bit of gun play included). I don’t know that we’ve seen a Doctor so desperate, so angry, as we do in Hell Bent! I do believe the return to Gallifrey got short-sheeted, but loved the way it played out. I hope we return there, but sparingly.
I intended (as befits this thread topic heading) to provide some comments about Capaldi’s era, how I felt Capaldi was perhaps the best of the nu Who Doctors. (I’d say all, but can’t since I’m not a proper Who wonk with instant recall or even pleasant hazy memories of all prior Doctors.) By now many of you have posted on his acting ability, his love of the material, and just how watchable he is. And I’m mostly with you for favorite episodes: the moving speech in the Zygon episode, Season’s 10 ‘The Doctor Falls’. Yes ‘Listen’ is great, and so is ‘World Enough and Time’ but,…
The ‘Fall of the Raven’, ‘Heaven Sent’ and ‘Hell Bent’ trio of episodes are basically where I got stuck and turned into a …shipper. Everything up to now has been put in place defining their relationship and now we get to see Missy’s plan played out. I’m past trying to determine what kind of love PC and Clara share, except that it’s clear they do love each other, and the outcome, having his memories erased, is a fine and moving ending. He does know Clara exists, which is more than we can say for Donna, and knowledge of that feeling is enough to prevent him from doing the same to Bill.
(As an aside, I think not having Clara die in Raven, never to appear again, isn’t a problem for me. This is Scifi/Fantasy after all, and major characters should have more inventive ends than ‘Poof, you’re dead’. If I want people to stay dead, I’ll just live my own life, thanks.)
Even though I could go on, I’m hoping this post suffices to ‘cap’ (groan) my current fixation.
Thank you for your indulgence.
Hiker
————————————————–
Ooh woo, I’m a rebel just for kicks, now
I been feeling it since 1966, now
Might be over now, but I feel it still – PTM14 August 2017 at 04:03 #61709Very well put, @hiker. Thank you!
Many of you may remember me whining when Netflix was set to drop Doctor Who. Where was I to find my Doctor Who fix? In Canada, CraveTV has carried on with the licensing, and we signed up over the weekend. I was finally able to watch “Heaven Sent” … sans commercials. What a difference! I knew it was a brilliant episode, having watched it on Space. But how much better to see it uncut, flowing as it must, without interruption, in order to be properly absorbed. I can’t wait to see Season 10 in this way!
15 August 2017 at 02:24 #61720@hiker I agree 100%. PC grows on you and then you love him and then he leaves.
I know what you mean @nerys ,I watch on Space and hate the commercials, I can’t wait till I own them and can watch them like they were meant to be.(for hours in a row till my bottom hurts.)
When I first saw that Peter Capaldi was to be the new Doctor I thought “who?” and then “oh he’s old” and then “I want Matt Smith to stay!”. As usual the regen shock was setting in and I was fighting the change.”I don’t like it!” “Oh you never do”. But I had months to wait for Deep Breath to see what he was like so I watched some things he was in like The Thick of It and waited for the series to start. A few minutes into the first episode and I liked him. I thought he was quirky and crusty and very vulnerable and I was ready to give him a chance. Then came the scene under the restaurant when the Doctor left Clara behind with the bad robots and I really disliked him.Get back here 12 and save Clara, 11 would never have left her behind. What were the writers thinking? Of course he does come back and save Clara and by the end of the episode I too could see him as the Doctor.
PC has been a mysterious and magical Doctor who took us for a rollercoaster of a ride through space and time. We went places with him that scared us or broke our hearts or made us giggle like children but as long as he was there we felt safe. We have questioned his actions but never his motives which are clear- to help where he can and to be kind ,without witness or reward. I will really miss Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, he was great!
15 August 2017 at 15:30 #61725@winston I thought about buying them, but it would be an investment to get all the episodes I want. So I’m happy with my new CraveTV subscription. Not only do I get post-gap Doctor Who, but a lot of other stuff besides. It will be fun to review more episodes, including some I’ve not watched in a long time.
20 August 2017 at 08:10 #61762@winston: PC has been a mysterious and magical Doctor who took us for a rollercoaster of a ride through space and time. We went places with him that scared us or broke our hearts or made us giggle like children but as long as he was there we felt safe. We have questioned his actions but never his motives which are clear- to help where he can and to be kind ,without witness or reward. I will really miss Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, he was great!
My feelings exactly, and it is just feelngs. I can’t help the way I feel, but can help what I do about it. I shall watch the 11th series so that I can have an opinion. But, as far as I am concerned, a female Doctor is all wrong.
24 August 2017 at 08:49 #61790@hiker He does know Clara exists, which is more than we can say for Donna, and knowledge of that feeling is enough to prevent him from doing the same to Bill.
Yep; this is deep learning, to come from experiences no longer consciously remembered, so it is a signal itself that the Twelve/Clara relationship was a particularly powerful one. What made it more interesting, for me, than Clara/11 was that it was weirdly clear that she was addicted to his kind of life but not addicted to him as 12, not 11; but he became addicted to *her*, as Missy would have known he would, so it *had* to end in very gratifying (to Missy) a painful and tragic parting for him (Missy doesn’t give a hoot about Clara’s feelings, of course).
But — this being DW — the Doctor and his Doctor-like human partner worked out a different ending — one that rewards Clara for sticking with him but also calling him out on the Donna Ploy — and releases the Doctor from Missy’s Clara-trap while still leaving him the prize of that experience: the understanding that the Donna Ploy is demeaning and unfair to both him and his companion. Pretty neat.
@winston We have questioned his actions but never his motives which are clear- to help where he can and to be kind
I wonder whether, if the show were not “family viewing”, he might have added the rest of that nugget of wisdom (as I see it, anyway): “Be kind — because the universe isn’t.” It’s a grim thought, not suitable for young kids who have enough fears of their own as it is, when it’s dark and they’ve had a bad dream. On the other hand, there’s that line about the universe showing us its real face when it asks for our help. Does the Doctor really believe that? I don’t, and DW hasn’t convinced me otherwise . . . And let’s not forget, “Space — it’s trying to kill you!” Damn, I’m going to miss him, contradictions and all.
24 August 2017 at 11:26 #61795@ichabod: Damn, I’m going to miss him, contradictions and all.
Oh, so shall I.
I was watching Extremis last night. My OH walked into the room just as it finished. Feeling sad, I said (out loud)
meaning PC, “I hate you!” To which my OH replied, “No you don’t!”
He’s obviously been paying attention. *chuckles*
Missy
24 October 2017 at 09:12 #62227Had a birthday Sunday (I slept through it, actually, an aftereffect of a bout of food-poisoning), woke up today thinking about CapDoc and “I don’t want to go!” And the rest of it — I can’t keep on becoming someone else, someone else walks away as me, etc. I thought I’d like to hear him say — this Doctor more than any of the others, because of the struggle over his own identity early on, and what happened in the Confession Dial — I want to hear him say something like this: “This is me, this is my self. I’ve fought and I’ve died to achieve this self, warts and self-knowledge and all, and that’s what I won’t give up!”
Well, that’s about me too, or me *really*, of course. I’m 78, with a patchy memory, this and that physical ding getting more troublesome, a future more uncertain than it’s ever been in nearly every way possible, and my damned impatience and judgmental tendencies still erupting into my saner moments — but that’s all me, the good along with the bad and the absurd. This is what I’ve made of myself; and at this age, I suddenly feel that I am, in fact, crossing a threshold that divides me, now, from me, tomorrow — the me-to-come, that forgets some crucial act, the me that just doesn’t ever fully recover from some minor illness, the me that weirdly (joyfully/guiltily/ridiculously) blossoms into a Merry Widow when that time comes, the me that manages to write a last masterpiece/decent/bad book or story, the me that outlives her younger sister, the me that —
It’s all waiting up there, possibilities and probabilities and of course the final certainty.
And I don’t want to go.
Not that I’ve stopped thinking in terms of reincarnation — but I see it as a bit like the Doctor’s regenerations, only on a (so far) much wide spectrum of future possibilities. And those successors of me-just-now will still be me — but not me, regardless of what they remember or don’t remember. They’ll each be “some other bloke” . . . walking away.
Well, change is the rule, and stopping time, even just personal time, looks like a crappy idea. I know all that. It’s not that I’m terrified of change — we all do it, all our lives, so many times. It’s that I don’t want to give me, my self, up. It’s a decent self; it’s taken a lot of work, and growth, and failures that endure and even repeat themselves in new forms. I like this self. And it’s leaving even as I type these words, increment by increment, so all right, accept.
And yet, it’s got to be right to recognize fully the previous, receding self; to thank it for having existed; and to resist letting it go. I want to see 13 refuse to go, to fight his regeneration hard, to reject what he knows is both inevitable and necessary — before coming around, just as inevitably, to accepting it. I feel that that fight, that resistance, is honorable and true. And Capaldi’s Doc would be the guy to make that case with the power it deserves, before going gentle into that good night (with the power that deserves).
I’ve always disliked that poem; it seemed so — melodramatic!! Still does. *sigh* It’s just like how the stuff my parents told me keeps turning out to be right . . . embarrassing, that. And funny. Apologies, by the way, if my post comes across as this somewhat blurry me being self, as it were, indulgent.
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