S33 (7) 10 – Hide
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Dentarthurdent 1 year, 1 month ago.
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21 April 2013 at 14:55 #6274
@Shazzbot Re Doctors getting progressively younger – I believe Moff is on record as saying they were looking for older actor after Tennant. Then they found Matt Smith. Who still seems to be relatively good at “blind” casting eg Hilaire being Emma’s distant descendant.
Interesting comments above re scared Dr (no bow tie?), unscared Dr (bow tie on) (Someone else posted a brilliant post about that last night).
ardaraith Was it not the bow tie he used to tie the doors? Which is later picked up in the forest. It looked a mighty flimsy way to keep out something so noisy! But agree red could be significant. Clara wears/carries a lot of red. Umbrella, bag etc Blood is red. And then there’s “crimson, petrichor..” etc from The Doctor’s Wife. Red for danger, but also for happiness if you are Chinese.
21 April 2013 at 15:00 #6275Incidentally, it was the bow-tie which was used to tie-shut the doors to the ‘heart’ of the house – the music room.
21 April 2013 at 15:02 #6276@shazzbot @ardaraith the arm around clara moment is really interesting:
1) as the doc says “this is a love story”, Clara smiles to herself in a very particular “I think he likes me” kind of way. The docs sudden embarrassment only underscores it. He’d only be self conscious if he actually did…
2) Clara’s “big chin” line – call back to aotd yes, but also as if the docs face is very much on her mind… It’s almost like at that moment she realises it.
3) is Clara an empath? There’s one very good bit of evidence – the “I dont feel happy” line of Claras (which drew stick as an immature line for her) is in the docs realisation flashback. The obvious implication is that Clara was picking up the earth bound monsters unhappiness, not feeling it herself I can’t see any other reason for it to be in the flashback otherwise.
4) Clara says regarding romance with the doc “I don’t think so” just moments after emma(?) says “(empaths) like me are very bad at reading signals of people we like”
And to cap it off, the whole love never dies / calls across time schtick may imply that Clara may mean something romantically to him (or will do). One possibility is of course that she is another incarnation of river, or his first wife that the doctors daughter implied that he had children with.
However …
All the indications are that right now Clara is a normal human. To me this implies that whatever makes her special lies in her future. So no descended from doc/Susan, probably no chameleon arch (although it s possiblity, I don’t think it gets into the spirit of moffatts maxim that it is all about the companions journey, not the doctors. We are therefore at the start of her journey, not the end. Timely wimey. I just don’t think we can therefore guess why she’s special because it hasn’t happened yet)
There’s another unspoken core maxim of Who (which lungbarrow/the other broke as did the tv movie to a lesser extent which is why I dislike both so much) which is this: neither the doctor or the companions are born to greatness. There are not superheroes. They chose to step up. The doc says this explicitly in Rings and Clara realises it in cold war (“that’s what we do, we save the world”). Meritocracy is fundamental to who mythology.
For Clara to step into the whoniverse with a special ability breaks that tenet, and no companion ever has. Amy turned out to be “special” because she met the doc, not the other way round. The same with donna, who also had early hints of special significance. (The tragedy of Donna was that she couldn’t live with the change that stepping up wrought on her, double by the fact she so clearly needed that change to be a complete person)
I do not believe moffatt will ever break this rule, if anything he’s underlining it 3 times in thick black marker. Ipso facto, Clara is not special – yet.
Re: sliver of ice; could be creeping dalekisation, could just be his deep dark secret (which incidentally the next ep hints could be that he keeps something prisoner in the tardis…)
Re chalk circle btw – I don’t think it was smoke, it was the chalk dust rising. I think the circle just emphisised that time traveller wasn’t moving. I don’t think it will be referred to again, personally.
21 April 2013 at 15:04 #6278It was interesting how many times in this episode how slow the doctor was. He kept getting so absorbed with what he was doing that Clara would have to tell him to look here or there. This was especially prominent in the chalk drawing scene and in the scene the first time the “mirror” appeared. This also happened when the ice warrior first appeared in Cold War. At the end of Hide we see him stating it outright, that he is so slow.
I’m not quite sure what this indicates, but it might be some evidence of a fracturing doctor. It also probably points to how “slow” he is with figuring out who Clara is. Probably her mystery something that he should be able to figure out right away, but is too preoccupied to see it.
I have a feeling it will be both. In the finale, we will see how “easy” it should have been to figure out who Clara is (Susan maybe) and then in the anniversary special we will see him having to deal with his fracturing self.
21 April 2013 at 15:07 #6279Anonymous @
Am I dreaming (can’t get the Library episodes on iPlayer), or does the granddaughter ^n character in ‘Hide’ look suspiciously like one of the people in the Library?
Am racking my brains but I’m *SURE* that this actress has been in a previous episode.
21 April 2013 at 15:22 #6280moffatts maxim that it is all about the companions journey, not the doctors.
I agree, need to keep that in sight. And yes, agree, this is the start of Clara’s journey. She’s very much still learning. The Dr is surprised when she doesn’t automatically do what all the other companions have done – she stays when he tells her to (but he expects her to follow). She’s scared, she doesn’t like the reality of dead bodies, her mind’s overwhelmed by the enormity that is “all of time and space” and how small individual humans actually are. She’s suddenly feeling less significant than an ant in the doctor’s presence. (And his answer isn’t exactly reassuring). But she wants to learn and she likes the idea of adventure. And agree too re suggestion she’s at least a bit empathic. I’m not happy could also be her way of saying actually I’m absolutely terrified out of my wits but I’m not going to say so!
Amy was ordinary girl till the crack appeared in her wall. It wasn’t the Dr who made her special, it was the circumstances. Although… it’s never been resolved why the crack was in her wall. Could’ve been random, but could it be anything to do with the stress on time that was presumably created when her daughter moved to Ledworth, but disguised as her best friend…?
21 April 2013 at 15:26 #6281@thedoctordude – and @HaveYouFedTheFish – that chalk circle is still bothering me. I don’t think its phantasmagoricness was simply due to chalk dust rising; it’s probably important that Clara stepped right through it, following the Doctor out of the room.
Interesting to posit that Clara’s various other incarnations are in the future. In which case, I’m still fascinated by the mother character who drew the Doctor into the Asylum by beseeching him to find her ‘daughter’ (and who later coldly laughed about watching her child(ren) die).
And, @HaveYouFedTheFish , you’re touching on an issue I’ve had with the Moffat series – that of the companion not being just a normal person. Back in RTD’s day, all of Rose, Martha and Donna were extremely normal (notwithstanding what happened later to them on their travels). Too many others here can enlighten me on previous, ‘Classic Who’ companions, but what little I know lends toward a fair few of them being normal humans (at the start, at least), mixed with a TimeLord or two later on. I would dearly love Clara to be the epitome of what all companions should be, i.e., that of the ‘normal person who provides the audience with their own perspective into travelling with the Doctor’. But I fear that for story-arc reasons, she’s going to be a version of ‘the little girl who grew up with a space-time crack in her wall’ which would be a bit of a let-down, and a bit of a repeat.
For the little person in all of us, I hope that the next companion (I fear Clara as a character is lost on this point) will be an eminently normal person who finds his/her (or their?!) strength in meeting the challenges of travelling with the Doctor. With perhaps a little less standing-around-screaming which apparently is what killed the joy for the actress playing Susan all those years ago.
21 April 2013 at 15:29 #6282@shazzbot – the actress Kemi-Bo Jacobs has only ever appeared on tv elsewhere in Lewis. But as noted elsewhere, the costume is familiar …
21 April 2013 at 15:42 #6283@scaryb – “Amy was ordinary girl till the crack appeared in her wall. ”
Sorry, I meant to @ reference you too in my last comment / lament about companions being ordinary people. That’s an interesting theory about the regenerated River in Ledworth, but … the flashbacks we saw were Mels and Amy and Rory as teenagers ( ? ) and Amelia was quite clearly a younger child with wall-crack issues.
But I agree with you whole-heartedly about Clara not doing what the Doctor tells her to – or, in fact, doing so. One of my favourite moments of re-booted Who is when Vincent asks Amy ‘you’re going to follow him, aren’t you?’ and Amy replies ‘Of course!’
21 April 2013 at 15:44 #6284@scaryb – totally could be read that “not happy”=”I’m terrified” and emmas observation as they leave the house supports that… Until the flashback then it becomes the evidence that they were not alone in the house. But you are right that that It’s not the doc that makes Amy special, it’s what happens to her by choosing to travel with him. Her choice. Meritocracy!
@scaryb and @shazzbot – personally I don’t think moffatt is breaking the “not special” rule, just that he keeps playing the timely wimey card – he shows the result of the end of their journey (eg Amy’s – um – crack) at the beginning of the story to confuse the cause and effect.
I don’t agree that Donna was portrayed as normal – there were increasing hints that there was something special about her culminating in turn left. Rose was not normal, since bad wolf was scattered all through series 1, which turned out to be her. The only difference with those 2 and Amy and Clara is then the doc was oblivious, now he’s hyper aware if it. Arguably the is moffatts only change to the formula.
21 April 2013 at 15:46 #6285Love and fear are once again fighting it out at the core of the story. As has been noted, it seems odd that the Doctor would be afraid of the crooked man. The instinctive fear of the alien, as well as his apparent fear of Clara, would seem to support the idea that he’s being Dalekised… And if he still fears Clara after learning she’s ‘just a girl’… well, a Dalek would, wouldn’t it?
Does it say something about the audience that so many people (at the Guardian, I mean) seem bothered by the love theme that recurs this season? That people want the alien to be a horrible monster that has to be killed? Who are the real Daleks, the Doctor and Clara, or the people watching at home?
When I saw all those spoilerific photos at the Radio Times site I wondered if that landscape which the spacesuited Doctor visited might be primeval Earth. I also wondered if the ghost would turn out to be a very old one, i.e. dating back to primeval Earth, a la the ghost in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. And of course that ghost was a sort of alternate version of Scaroth, who has inspired a number of Clara theories. Like others, I thought that blue crystal would turn out to be the (or at least a) Metebelis crystal. For an old-time fan it generated a fair bit of suspense, as the last time the Doctor gave a Metebelis crystal to a psychic hooked up to lots of high-tech psychic research equipment in 1974, he died of fright. Which would have been fair enough in this episode. Those photos came from somewhere very deep in the uncanny valley.
Carlisle or Carlyle? I’m just about persuaded now that that was just a cheap shot at a place called Carlisle. (As I understand it, it has a similar reputation in the UK to that of my home town, Adelaide, in Australia.) Initially I thought it must be a reference to a famous quote by Thomas Carlyle, along the lines of ‘Ignorance is the opposite of bliss’, which made me think ‘Hmmmm, Clara knows obscure literary stuff.’ Or even ‘Clara knows something that 19th century Clara might know, but 21st century Clara is somewhat less likely to know.’ But I can’t find any reference to Carlyle having said anything very much like that. My researches have, however, turned up some pretty interesting Carlyle quotes.
Carlyle, by the way, wrote a famous book about the French Revolution, and is the subject of one of the great literary anecdotes. (In brief: John Stuart Mill is asked to write a book about the French Revolution. He’s busy, so he suggests the publisher try his impoverished young friend Thomas Carlyle, who’s trying to make it as a writer. Carlyle takes up the challenge, and spends ten years [? Can’t be bothered googling it] writing his history of the French Revolution. If it’s terrible, this will reflect badly on Carlyle’s friend John Stuart Mill, so before sending it to the publisher, he sends it to Mill for his approval. Because Carlyle’s so poor, the whole manuscript is written on grubby scraps of paper, so when Mill’s maid sees it in his office, she assumes it’s a pile of scrap paper intended to be used as a firelighter… Oh, how they all laughed. Carlyle then wrote it again from memory, insisting it was improved by the opportunity to do a second draft.)
Anyway, here are the fun Carlyle quotes that seem vaguely pertinent.
‘Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books.’
‘The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could kill you only once.’
‘Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.’
‘I don’t pretend to understand the Universe — it’s a great deal bigger than I am.’
‘If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.’
One of the hazards of bonkers theorising is that you see clues everywhere, even when you look away from the show. Or is that just me? It never happened before this season. I started reading David Copperfield recently. David’s mother is named Clara. She was a governess.
And every time I see lights flicker, and hear or see something to do with eggs, I think to myself, ‘I Am Not A Dalek.’ I think I need a holiday.
The TARDIS and Clara. Does the TARDIS dislike Clara, or has the Doctor set it to be wary of Clara? He is pointedly failing to give her a key. And the ‘Next Week’ trailer has him confronting her with the very questions we ask: are you a trap, a trick? It seems rather early for these threads to come to a head.
Asking Emma about Clara. One possibility I have considered is that every episode since Bells has been about the Doctor testing his bonkers theories about Clara. When he goes away in Akhaten, I suspect he’s watching unseen, just as he was throughout her childhood, to see how she reacts when he’s not around. If she really is some kind of trap, maybe her persona is an act which she’ll drop when he isn’t around. And yet she still seems nice… or is she just clever enough to seem nice, because he might be watching? And then he makes the TARDIS go away in Cold War, and bingo, this seems to get a reaction. Now he’s consulting experts.
The more I think about it, and the more the seeming enigma of Clara is piled on, the more I warm to bonkers theory #712B: Clara is just an ordinary girl. This season seems so ripe for theorising, so full off odd lines and scenes that seem to fit into some currently unknown arc or arcs, that it would be a pretty good twist if it turned out there was no arc. Or if the only arc is that the Doctor’s becoming weird and paranoid. The oddness of certain scenes and lines encourages the audience to share the Doctor’s paranoia. If any other character in any other show said, when asked what she likes, that she likes ‘stuff’, we would happily interpret this as ordinary reticence, or an inability to express herself, perhaps exacerbated by stress. Only in Doctor Who (and perhaps only this year) does this make us think Android! Ganger! Dalek! TARDIS!
So, my new theory (#712c?) is that the arc is that the Doctor’s going a little nuts and imagining arcs and big bads that aren’t there… And finally the Dream Lord will appear and try to convince him that he’s being turned into a Dalek, and the whole season has been a dream (of sorts), and Clara is part of his Dalek conditioning, and the only way to save himself is to kill Clara, and when he does he’ll wake up to find his best friends, Amy and Rory. So Clara will have to overcome her innate distaste for talking about herself to convince him she’s a real person.
21 April 2013 at 16:06 #6286@HaveYouFedTheFish -“I don’t agree that Donna was portrayed as normal – there were increasing hints that there was something special about her culminating in turn left.”
Ahh, but here is where we happily disagree – I thought that Donna was being portrayed as the ultimate normal human, whose one single different decision could be the Butterfly Effect on acid. (not to mention her heretofore association with the Doctor, as a completely normal person who happened to hook up with a guy who had a Sarah Parrish-shaped hole in his heart 🙂 )
@PhileasF – I, and I’m sure others, agree with you utterly – this whole business of not giving Clara a Tardis key is verrrry interrrrresting. And your Carlyle theories are amazingly erudite and astonishingly research-worthy. You think he was watching Clara from afar in Rings when he disappeared? Wow, I just assumed he’d gone off to do other stuff but that is something to chew on.
” the only arc is that the Doctor’s becoming weird and paranoid”
That is the most bonkers theory of them all, and I love it! Which leaves Clara to really be an ordinary girl, but which also melds with the myriad other bonkers theories on this site about the Doctor’s fracturing. Well played Sir!
21 April 2013 at 16:11 #6287@phileasf Lovely post re Carlyle; it’s a tough life being a writer! Great quotes too.
haha – welcome the world of bonkers theorising, seeing clues everywhere. Gets us all in the end.
And I like your #712B theory – Clara IS ordinary! We’re assuming she’s someone who has been split/fractured/cloned/manufactured/chamelon arched, but maybe she somehow only provided the pattern/blueprint, that the other 2 we’ve seen are not actually her, just “copies” (in the loosest sense!) of parts of her. (Chameleon Arch still valid possibility in that case – a more naive, innocent, apparently harmless version of herself is created for her to hide in).
Re companions – have been many and varied. Dr has habit of finding them when they are at crossroads/crucial point in their lives (which obv makes more dramatic sense apart from anything else. If they were comfortable/settled in their lives they presumably wouldn’t chose to fly off with a complete stranger in a strange blue box to who knows where/when!). Ace in McCoy era had arc-type story. I’ve blotted the squeaky one from memory so don’t know about her. Leela was scarcely ordinary! I think the Davison era companions were also woven more into the stories but you’d need one of that period’s experts to confirm this.
21 April 2013 at 16:21 #6288@haveyoufedthefish 100% agree with you re meritocracy very important in Who. You become special depending on how you react to circumstances. Turn Left exemplifies it. Donna turns out to be special, but only because she makes the choice. You see how the world would have been if she’d chosen differently. Time Lords as aristocracy makes me very uncomfortable. (Hey, not my fault! I’m a child of the 60s). And the Doctor as part-human as per the McGann and Cushing films is just plain wrong!
21 April 2013 at 16:34 #6292@scaryb – “And the Doctor as part-human as per the McGann and Cushing films is just plain wrong!”
Ah, my ignorance of Classic Who is thundering in my ears. I think I would be crushed to find that the Doctor is part-human.
But it *does* beg the questi0n – of all the races in the universe, why does the Doctor keep returning to Earth? I’m not a complete idiot, I understand that our race is creating this telly and our daffodil-like self-fascination is all-encompassing. But wholly within the Whoniverse, why would the Doctor feel such a special connection to this inconsequential rock on the outer reaches of the Milky Way?
As much as it pains me to posit, it’s possible that the Doctor feels this special connection due to personal history — i.e., bloodlines. Can the 50th anniversary be the vehicle to explain why the Doctor invests so much into this third rock from the (a) sun? I.e. — Susan?
21 April 2013 at 17:19 #6294As the ‘3rd Dr Type Tale’ ,this featured the Doctor (posing?) as a Baker Street Irregular, which points to him working for Britain’s Special Operations Executive . Jon Pertwee had been a ‘Secret Agent’ in real life too.
As well as ‘Nightmare Man’ & ‘Sapphire & Steel’, this ep had a bit of a ‘Children of the Stones’ flavour too.
21 April 2013 at 18:21 #6296ah – haven’t much time, so a short post.
Loved ‘Hide’.
As with others, I think Clara is a ‘normal’ person, but one reason why I like JLC’s characterisation so much, is because she is obviously intelligent.
I don’t think this companion will be saying “But Doctor, I don’t understand…” in a whiny way.Which is a darn fine thing (awaits to be proven wrong, so won’t eat my fez when it happens!).
But honestly – if there’s a good role model for kids, its that you can b smart and not be ashamed of it.
21 April 2013 at 18:24 #6298@phileasf – 100% agree! Although I’m not sure about the dream lord, but I think the idea that the doctor is starting to persecute (the thin end of the wedge being he’s being less than honest with her as Emma could see) an innocent girl is looking very likely. The ultimate horrible irony – and the final downfall for the doc – will be if his paranoia causes whatever it is that eventually befalls her. You can’t really fall further than that.
Is this dalekisation – or the inevitable result of a man discovering the woman he loves was his assassin, his companion (amy) was a doppleganger spy, everyone he loves is a target of forces unknown and there’s a shadowy galactic conspiracy out to get him? HANS being reactivated looks like an act of paranoia to me.
And yes I feel the same that everything looks like a potential reference. My first post this morning was essentially admitting clue-fatigue! It’s like they’ve raided the reference dressing up box and used everything.
21 April 2013 at 18:35 #6300@shazzbot – I agree that turn left ultimately was fairly banal, but for a while when rose shows up you are left thinking “who the hell really is Donna to warrant all this?”.
I can think of a specific scene set at the shadow proclamation; Donna is sat on steps, fiddling with an ornate ring I had never noticed her wear before, in the background you suddenly hear the double drumbeat of a timelord heart, and Donna clutches at her head in pain …
I jumped out of my seat and shouted “shiiiiiiiiit. She’s the frigging master!!!!!”. Turns out it was some foreshadowing of the meta crisis.
But you see what I mean. Even for “everyday, I’m dead ordinary I am” Donna they were dropping the occasional “something’s not quite right” hints.
21 April 2013 at 18:44 #6301@Shazzbot – re the Doctor as half-human – even I would stop watching if they did that! I think we’re safe on that one, especially the way Matt is playing him as being very alien.
When you look around at the other races the Dr has encountered (albeit seen thro human creators’ distorting lens) it actually makes sense that he likes humans! He has stated at times that some of the qualities he most admires in us is empathy and our resilience. We look a bit like Time Lords physically and we keep him grounded when he will tend to look at things from “all of time and space” big perspective. As he says at the end – what lonely monsters need is a companion
@haveyoufedthefish – re the Doctor’s sliver of ice – his coldness is compared with Palmer’s who admits he lies to protect the people he loves from having to face the horrors of what he has had to do (ie sending soldiers off to die for the greater good) and now has to live with. So the Dr may be coming colder/darker but it’s from the best of intentions. He has no-one to share the darkest stuff with. No psychiatrist’s sofa for the Dr.
And reposting the thought that occurred “in the other place” – ice in his heart – in both his hearts, or only in one of them?
21 April 2013 at 18:52 #6302@shazzbot – the 1996 American tv movie tried to answer exactly the question you pose, by introducing the idea that his mother was human (ie Spock). Feel free to gnash your teeth for a while. I can wait.
Ready? Ok. Personally I think the docs soliloquy in ark in space neatly does the job: he just admires our indomitable spirit and taste for adventure (in contrast to his own staid gallifreyan upbringing I suppose). From his perspective we crawled all the way off our rock and all over the galaxy in just a few centuries. Not to invade but just to have a look (just like he did). Basically, he likes the cut of our jib. Top notch!
21 April 2013 at 19:26 #6303“he just admires our indomitable spirit and taste for adventure (in contrast to his own staid gallifreyan upbringing I suppose).”
Nice thought, and one that occurred to me too – Gallifreyans are supposed to ‘look but not touch’ yet humans seem compelled to stick their oar in everywhere. For a transgressive Gallifreyan, that must be a refreshing and addictive quality in another life form.
However, in real life humans are quite awful, and something I thought was dealt with fairly adequately when the mother killed the Silurian and the Doctor seethed ‘but you can be so much better than that!’ It’s a children’s show ultimately, and we should be giving them positive role models to watch; but … but … , more humans would kill the alien – child in danger or not – and that is the reality. The tree people as in Rose’s second episode seem far more peaceful and worth saving than, frankly, the majority of actual humankind.
Oooh, bad vibes, sorry! I’m a little down on humankind outwith the Doctor Who world right now. Seeing what we’ve done to our planet, and our fellow humans, I’m not sure a real Doctor would try to save us.
I’ve been re-reading the 5 books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, and the Vogon destruction of the earth seems a far likelier fate than our race migrating out to the stars.
21 April 2013 at 19:41 #6304ice in his heart – in both his hearts, or only in one of them?
Wellllllllll – Emma is an empath, she doesn’t have X-ray vision :-). So, I imagine she simply said “heart” because she doesn’t know the Doctor has two.
On the other hand – maybe it’s a clue that 10.2 (metacrisis Doc) is crossing back over, as he really does only have one heart. But I don’t think 10.2 is going to turn out to be the Big Bad…
@phileasf On Carlyle (nice spot) having to re-write something (his book) from scratch.
Well, that’s what the Doctor did during his universe re-boot (Big Bang 2) and I’m pretty sure something went wrong about that juncture which will come back into play before we’re through with the adventures of Eleven, namely the reason why the TARDIS exploded in the first place (and that old hissing voice “Silence will fall”).
I am now going to have to go and re-watch Amy’s Choice (which by the way is just the cheekiest nod to the “sex pollen” trope ever) in order to think further about red balloon and blue balloon universes.
Damn you Moffat! <shakes fins> <and so does my doppleganger>.
21 April 2013 at 19:41 #6305Link to interesting background for Hide, on official Who website
Mentions Caliburn House as referencing Excalibur (@bluesqueakpip) and links that to Battlefield (ref me!)
Ha! Should’ve read this yesterday, would’ve saved a lot teasing out, haha.
Also mentions refs to the Bible, Carry On films and Sherlock (A Study in Scarlet) Which also suggests to me that any reference, no matter how far-flung it seems, shouldn’t be rejected just on that basis! Keep digging everyone 😀
21 April 2013 at 19:50 #6307@shazzbot– it’s a love/hate relationship I grant you! In spite of himself you might say.
But you said it all with “you can be so much better”. We’re in the quagmire, but from up there with a view of all our history, he knows the heights we’re capable of, even if we sometimes forget.
This crosses right over into my “meritocracy” thread – its a mission statement of the series to show what we humans are capable of given the chance, enabled by the doc…
21 April 2013 at 19:57 #6308My Morse code study will now go into your black books, I’m afraid, when I repeat something I said on the G site long ago about the ‘Girl Who Waited’ episode. (I know you were talking about Amy’s Choice but the two eps have similarities.)
Rory said ‘push the button’ as if he hadn’t, moments before, had to choose between two different buttons. But even before that, he and the Doctor strode off the corridor leaving Amy behind in the Tardis. Really? Latterly, why would the Doctor leave Amy behind when a big part of that whole series was his mantra ‘don’t fall behind’? And formerly, why not say ‘push the green button’ which is what Rory had just done?
I felt that those two plot points were clangers and only made sense if the episode needed Amy to go someplace/sometime different. Amy made ‘the wrong choice’ – but only because the Doctor and Rory didn’t give her enough information.
As to Amy’s Choice, I felt icky watching it. After the whole Martha-in-lurrrve storyline, the idea that yet another companion would be romantically inclined toward the Doctor was tiresome – a plot made more sticky by this companion actually having her own romantic lead. The most interesting thing in this ep was in the final reveal – that the Doctor was, in fact, the Dream Lord. Which at a distance, makes this ep feel even closer to ‘Girl Who Waited’ – the Doctor (and Rory) manipulated the situation so that Amy could have the experience that the ep required.
{feints against oncoming brickbats}
21 April 2013 at 20:15 #6309@HaveYouFedTheFish – “its a mission statement of the series to show what we humans are capable of given the chance, enabled by the doc”
This is straying far off this thread’s topic, ostensibly about the recent episode, but … but …
This is getting quite God-like; if we humans can only reach our potential with the help of outside interference by an almightly being (armed with a screwdriver that doesn’t do wood, mind) then are we really human at all? Do we have free will? Do we suffer the consequences of our collectively horrible decisions? Or are we saved by a mad man with a box, who is himself running from his own people for reasons not yet fully understood?
Looking at it through a child’s eyes, and being anti organised religion, personally I think it’s better to look to the stars and hope for a mad man with a box running from his own history to help us sort some issues. Because a mad man with a box running from his own history is so much more human than some all-seeing, all-knowing being who created the mosquito and that weird bug who lays its eggs in a beetle then eats that beetle from the inside out, alive (cf QI).
21 April 2013 at 20:21 #6310I think the ‘companions used to be ordinary’ lament is actually saying something about the Doctor. His companions used to be ordinary people who had the potential to be extraordinary (only an extraordinary person could survive the Doctor).
And his rule of thumb for companions used to be pretty much ‘oh, so you wandered into the TARDIS and survived? Welcome to the crew. ‘
But post Rose he’s been increasingly wary of taking on new Companions. As he says in Let’s Kill Hitler ‘guilt’. And then:
There must be someone left in the universe I haven’t screwed up yet.
And now, since his regeneration, he’s been refusing to take on anyone unless they’re a mystery. Even little Amelia was a mystery – all alone in that big house. Rory was the ‘ordinary’ companion, and that’s because he came along as Amy’s boyfriend.
And died. Repeatedly. 🙂
21 April 2013 at 20:21 #6311We still have free choice – to turn left or right. To travel with the doctor or stay on earth
21 April 2013 at 20:29 #6312Do we have a ‘general S7 discussion’ thread since we shut down the speculation thread?
Anyway: The Doctor as psychopath.
River called the Doctor a psychopath (“only one psychopath per TARDIS”). I know ‘sociopath’ is the more popular term right now, but if you look at the Doctor, currently:
Lack of empathy – growing. Check.
Criminality. Check. He’s a thief; it’s even referenced in The Eleventh Hour – where Amy points out that he didn’t just borrow those clothes temporarily, he kept them. A guy who basically has a magic wardrobe stole those clothes. Ten used to point his Sonic at the cashpoints and nick money. The TARDIS thinks of him as ‘her thief’.
Anti-social behaviour. Three was the most conventional; most other regenerations have had a fine collection of anti-social tendencies. Mostly a Check.
Egocentricity. Oh, dear lord. Definitely Check.
Superficial Charm. In spades. Who doesn’t love the Doctor (apart from Who himself). Check.
Manipulativeness. Couldn’t possibly be more Checked. Rule One, anyone?
Irresponsibility. This is a man who’s travelling the universe in a stolen TARDIS and his last regular job was seven regenerations back. Plus he has a habit of wandering off and coming back two years later. Or ten years later. Or not at all. Even when the person concerned is seemingly his only living relative. And long term plans? Definitely not. Check.
Impulsivity. Eleven is practically the poster child for this trait. Check.
The only thing currently between the Doctor and full blown psychopathy is remorse and whatever empathy he’s got left. He’s losing the empathy; what happens when he finally decides ‘sod the remorse’?
21 April 2013 at 20:35 #6313Now having digested the episode a bit more, here’s some random, probably barely literate, musings. Once again, apologies for any repetition with the excellent stuff already posted above…
1. Dougray Scott was great, I thought. He’s becoming more interesting as he gets older, more craggy and Richard Burton-ey I think. But I did think there was something slightly strange about the way he played Palmer. In the end, I thought that it was because he wanted to differentiate him a bit from Tom Jericho in Enigma. (For those who haven’t seen it, I’d heartily recommend seeking out that movie. Scott is great in it as, er, a mathematical code-breaking genius who is also terminally useless in his relationships with the opposite sex. I also thought the line about Palmer disrupting u-boat traffic in the Atlantic was a little tribute to the movie.)
It also felt slightly like he was auditioning for the part of the Doctor. Which would be no bad thing, I reckon. It’s interesting for the last two weeks that we’ve had two ‘surrogate Doctor’ characters. If the first two had also had them then that would have been an interesting through-line. As it stands, I’m wondering if these characters are meant to accentuate how ‘our’ Doctor is not to be entirely trusted at the moment, that he stands in a less favourable light to these surrogate, more unambiguously heroic figures.
2. Which brings me to the Doc himself. Apart from the curious lack of kindness to Emily as she’s about to join with the subset Eye of Harmony, he does seem rather ignorant about a lot of stuff in this episode. There’s the emotional disconnect with Clara in the TARDIS — ‘we’re all ghosts to you’ — a lovely scene, I thought. But there’s also his lack of specific knowledge about how the TARDIS actually worked. I thought it was interesting how many times the Doc in this episode expressed his ignorance. It makes me lean more back towards the Ganger-Doc theory, with this one with the Doctor’s memories but not actually that much in the way of real life experience yet.
And then there’s the bow-tie thing. It could just be a continuity error — but we’ve been there before, haven’t we? I think we’d be foolish to make that kind of assumption just at the moment. My tendency is to think that there are indeed two Doctors running about in there. One scared (inexperienced duplicate?), one not so much. Or one on the way to becoming evil, the other not so much.
3. The TARDIS. What was that business with the hat stand? It could just be Sexy playing silly buggers but I at first thought it probably had to be a bit more than that. But a quick check on the interwebs showed that the new console room (still don’t really like it) has never had one. It could just be an in-joke pointing that out or could it be a pointer telling us that this isn’t ‘the’ TARDIS. I’ve also been noticing recently that the new console has exactly the same time rotor as the Silents’/Lodger TARDIS did.
4. Clara. Still not crazy about her but I liked her more this week. The basic reason for this is that she for once showed a bit of emotion at something. My main reason for not really taking to her is that she just seems a bit too cocky, a bit too blase about everything going on around her. This will make sense if she ultimately turns out to be a repository or computer program of some kind but it makes it harder to warm to her as a companion in the meantime. It’s odd. Normally it takes you time to warm to companion but this time it seems to be happening in reverse. I really liked her in Asylum and I’m growing less fond of her with every passing episode. I’m unwarming to her.
However, I’m finding it interesting that she seems to have to be told to do things, or at the very least be prompted into action all the time. For an ‘ordinary’ girl she doesn’t seem that curious, that impetuous. It’s almost as if someone has to press ‘run’ for her to get going. More a set of algorithms than a human personality, you might almost say.
5. Just some general thoughts. A great episode. Very reminiscent of everything from the episode one of Planet of the Spiders to Image of the Fendahl, to The Stone Tapes, to Sapphire and Steel. But rather than an out and out Pertwee homage I think this was much more closely related to Ghostlight than anything else. Not least because this seemed to be a very McCoy-esque version of the Doctor we seemed to be getting here. A hidden agenda, an almost heartless manipulation of those around him and a definite sense that he wasn’t telling everything at any given time. Plus isn’t ‘a sliver of ice in his heart’ an almost perfect description of the Seventh Doctor?
But I did like the story and it certainly kept me guessing. I was sure that the ghost was going to end up being Clara. (The Time Traveller character was a little hopelessly underdone though.) And then I thought it was going to be some kind of creature that fed on or was created by unrequited love. In a way, I would have preferred something like that as the end reveal just seemed to me to be a straight lift from Vincent and the Doctor. But then again, it was one of those Who stories where the monster wasn’t really the point, was it?
I’d say it’s one of the stories that increasingly points to the Doctor being the true monster. After a slightly wobbly couple of episodes, this series is becoming really, really quite interesting. Next week’s looks like a belter too. What are those things in the TARDIS? I’m guessing that they might be Silents/The Silence.
21 April 2013 at 20:40 #6314@shazzbot – if you “like” the idea of a bug being eaten alive by parasites eggs AND want to see a story that explains why the doc adores humans, man struggle with what it means to be human, what free will is, and ultimately what a human is capable of (leaving the doc a mere bystander to history – a common theme of Tom bakers first series) please do get hold of a copy of Ark in Space.
Substitute bug and parasite with “last human” and Wirrn, and you get the idea… Lord knows how they got away with that a tea time…
Good point about the doc being “our” god. Like a god he protects us (saying as much in 11th Hour), sometime from ourselves and maybe stops us from growing up and taking responsibility for ourselves (even turning on us if we try to, as happened at the end of the Xmas invasion). I really like that,it has huge implications. This is essentially the story of the Minyans in Underworld (Baker again) whose immaturity (due to timelords oversight) lead the timelords to withdraw from the universe. How ironic if the doc ultimately repeats the same mistake!
21 April 2013 at 21:01 #6315As I said before, Caliburn House. Caliburn is a ‘more authentic’ name for Excalibur. Arthur’s sword has had a long-ish Dr Who history.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Excalibur
In ‘Battlefield’ the Dr mentions that ‘the scabbard is worth 10 of the sword’.
In myth the scabbard can stop a person dying.
Excalibur itself was broken but miraculously fixed. If someone wields it they it they cannot tell a lie. It cannot be used for an evil act or it will break. It can heal wounds, and it inspires courage in all people that surround the owner. =D
21 April 2013 at 21:02 #6316My tendency is to think that there are indeed two Doctors running about in there.
Perhaps he’s a Zygon. 🙂
Well, we know they’re back. And the teaser for next week’s episode hints at a prisoner in the TARDIS, and Zygons have to keep the original alive to shape-change. And there was that very long gap where the Doctor vanishes in Rings of Akhaten, followed by Clara arriving back to find the TARDIS now locked.
And then in the very next episode, the ‘Doctor’ says ‘I’m breaking her in,’ as if he’s only just got the TARDIS.
Okay, so, bonkers theory number whatever: the ‘real’ Doctor was kidnapped in Rings of Akhaten and is now held prisoner in the depths of the TARDIS. 🙂
21 April 2013 at 21:12 #6317@Bluesqueakpip – thanks for the perspective!
“And his rule of thumb for companions used to be pretty much ‘oh, so you wandered into the TARDIS and survived? Welcome to the crew’ … But post Rose he’s been increasingly wary of taking on new Companions.”
This is where my lack of familiarity with classic Who is most stark. And I’m re-evaluating how ‘normal’ Donna was, considering that the Tardis got her in a very Mission Impossible way. So, I’m back to Martha being the only ‘normal’ companion, sucked up into the hospital-on-the-moon scenario seemingly without any bedroom wall cracks or previous Doctor clashes.
Perhaps I should ease up on my Clara antagonism (with respect to wanting a ‘normal’ companion) ? But all signs so far in this series point to Clara being ‘the impossible girl’ which means some awful story arc akin to living with a crack in spacetime in one’s childhood bedroom wall.
@jimthefish – “I’m finding it interesting that she seems to have to be told to do things, or at the very least be prompted into action all the time.”
Clara makes emotional contact with someone in each of her episodes to date. She’s not the Action Girl, she’s the I-Feel-Your-Pain Girl. Which interestingly, Rose was in her early episodes, and Amy definitely was in Beast Below and Churchill Daleks ( ? ); but both of the latter were *also* Action Girls later on. Perhaps we need to see what Clara does next … ?
21 April 2013 at 21:15 #6318@bluesqueakpip — nice idea about the Zygon. Could well be true as I thought it kind of odd that we got a reveal about them coming back in the 50th so soon. Strikes me as a bit of misdirection from the real big bads of the 50th.
And maybe Clara doesn’t have a key because the ‘Doctor’ doesn’t want her poking about in there without him around.
21 April 2013 at 21:20 #6319Couple of thoughts I had waiting for the kettle to boil:
1) surely e-space is a pocket universe (nice callback to logopolis with the entropy references)? In which case, why did the tardis operate fine in e-space rather then immediately expiring?
2) Now I think about it, the tardis entered e-space in Full Cirle by apparently exploding (on a string, blatantly)…
21 April 2013 at 21:35 #6320And a thought about zygons. Although I love your idea @bluesqueakpip, @jimthefish I think you’re right, there is no way they would reveal the real baddie. I think the zygon is a total misdirection, I bet they don’t appear at all. I think they just picked a nice recognisable costume. Also – literally a “red” herring. Arf!
21 April 2013 at 21:44 #6321I forgot to say that in ‘Battlefield’, Excalibur is the starter key to an inter-dimensional spaceship.
21 April 2013 at 21:48 #6322In The bells of Saint John Clara tells one of the children that “Chapter 11 is the best ..it will make you cry” and in this talks about the 11th worst whiskey ever invented. Another reference to the split/two sides of the 11th Doctor – the best and the worst?
21 April 2013 at 21:52 #6323The real value of announcing now that there’s a Zygon on board the 50th Anniversary episode is that it completely negates the value of any snatched ‘spoiler’ photos. We haven’t a clue whether any picture is Ten, Ten Point Five, Zygon-Ten, Dark Doppleganger-Eleven, you name it.
So, yeah, total misdirection. That said, they’re probably in there somewhere – I don’t think they’d pay for a Zygon costume unless it’s used at some point.
21 April 2013 at 21:56 #6324more rose imagery
21 April 2013 at 22:13 #6325Apologies for the length of this post!
I’ve just re-watched Amy’s Choice as part of my interest with the old red/ blue bow tie dealio. I want to have a think about the red and blue balloons in Hide and possible correspondences.Quick refresher – this is where Amy and Rory are living in Upper Leadworth and Amy is pregnant but at the same time they are travelling with the Doctor in the TARDIS and all three of them keep hearing birdsong and then falling asleep in one “reality” only to wake up in the other one. Turns out they were being messed with by a character called The Dreamlord who tries to force Amy to choose which “reality” is the “real one” (and hence to choose between Rory and the Doctor)…
Right, so, bow-ties and pocket universes…
Roses are red, violets are blue…
Amy’s Choice is even more brilliant on a re-watch than I thought it was the first time around, because now you can see the foreshadowing.
Amy pregnant? Yup, happens for real further down the road.
The TARDIS blows up? Yup, that happens for real further down the road too (in this ep the Doctor blows it up in one of the dream worlds).
Dark version of the Doctor? Yup, well, you see where we’re going with this…
The (Upper) Leadworth Doctor is in a blue bow-tie and the slowly freezing TARDIS Doctor is in a red bow-tie. Both are dream worlds. The restored real universe Doctor is in a red bow-tie.The Dream-Lord wears a red bow-tie on the TARDIS, but in Leadworth he doesn’t wear a bow-tie, he wears other ties (blue, then yellow, then no tie at all). This coding suggests the Doctor in the TARDIS, in general, has “something of the Dreamlord about him” (because it is there that the Doctor/ Dream-lord ties match). A supposition confirmed when, having blown the psychic pollen out of the TARDIS doors at the end of the episode, we see that the Dreamlord is still present (in the Doctor’s psyche) because when he looks down into the shiny surface of the TARDIS console, that’s who we see reflected back up.
Moreover, The Dreamlord zaps in and out of vision on the TARDIS exactly like the TARDIS interface which we have seen most recently take on the form of Clara.
There is an interpretation, which we touched on at the time of original air, that the Doctor engineered the entire scenario in order to get Amy to realise her heart lay with Rory so they could all go on travelling together without awkward sexual tension. In that interpretation the Dreamlord was the TARDIS interface. Very dark indeed…And pretty dark in any case, as The Dreamlord is an undoubted creep and, yes @bluesqueakpip, a bit of a psychopath.
“Psychic pollen,” says our Doctor, “it’s a mind parasite – feeds on everything dark in you, gives it a voice, turns it against you. I’m 907 – had a lot to go on”
The red bow-tie universe in Amy’s Choice was the one where the Doctor, Amy and Rory were still travelling together and the blue bow-tie universe was the one where he’d left them behind and was travelling on his own. “Reality” ends in a red bow-tie, with them all together and the dark side of the Doctor (the Dreamlord) banished (contained).
So the message is one we are familiar with as it has continued down the road – the lonely monster needs a companion (or companions) to stop him from being a monster. The “resolution” is that the Doctor gets to keep his companions.
There’s quite a compelling case therefore that the Doctor did engineer the entire thing (consciously or sub-consciously) to avoid losing Amy and Rory (because of the unresolved sexual tension with Amy) thus helping himself avoid being more open to being “monstrous”.
So, coming back to the balloons in Hide and their possible correspondences with the bow-ties in Amy’s Choice (significant because this is the first episode where we see the two coloured ties appear together)….
@feralcat said:
As noted by other here, we have blue and red balloons representing the two universes. The doctor blows up the blue one first to represent ‘our’ universe, the red second as the pocket universe… it’s our (blue) universe he lets down, not the pocket universe!
So, bow-tie theorists, which is the real doctor / real universe?
If there is a colour correspondence with Amy’s Choice, then the Doctor “lets down” the universe in which he is alone and without companions (the blue balloon universe) in his demonstration of his proposed solution to Emma.
The “solution”, for all our sakes, should always be that the Doctor travels with people (the red balloon universe) to stop him going dark-side. Nu Who has made that pretty clear (look at Waters of Mars).
@scaryb ‘s question upstream about whether there was any significance to Emma sensing the Doctor had a sliver of ice in his heart (one heart, not two) might be because there are two (possible) universes. One universe/ heart is symbolised by red (bow-tie/ balloon), the colour of love, and in that one the Doctor has companions and he loves and is loved. The other is symbolised by blue (bow-tie/ balloon), the colour of ice, and in that one the Doctor is alone and dangerous.
Hide itself, as I’ve said upstream shows the Doctor in two states in the pocket universe, one without his spotty bow-tie and one with it – one afraid and running away from the monster (which represents his monstrous self) and one running towards the monster to help it find love. See correspondences above…
So perhaps Clara wears red a lot because she represents the importance of the red universe (the one in which the Doctor has companions and love). The red settings on the sonic may also key into this colour symbolism, as the red-setting sonic was the one which enabled the Doctor to “save” River, the Doctor’s beloved.
But @Feralcast noticed that “our” universe was represented by the blue balloon in the Doctor’s demonstration to Emma. That’s not good. That means that, presently, in “our” universe, ice in the Doctor’s heart is coming.
The task will be to switch those balloons/ universes around again and make sure (as the Doctor actually does in the demonstration) that we return to the red universe, in which, of course, love saves the day.
And that my friends, is some colour symbolism, it-all-hangs-together, bonkers bow-tie theorising for you! J
Congrats to anyone who made it this far!!!
21 April 2013 at 22:24 #6326I’ve been re-reading the 5 books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy
You reminded me of something I meant to post on the speculation thread to @miapatrick when she talked about Hitchhiker/Who crossovers.
Around the time he was Script Editor for Who in the Tom Baker years, Adams was a bugger for getting references to his own universe in there. One of the best is The Doctor trapped in “Destiny of the Daleks”, killing some time reading a book called “The History of the Unverse”, picking faults with it and generally abusing the author.
The author was shown to be Oolon Colluphid (author of “Where God Went Wrong”, “Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes” and “Who is this God Person Anyway?”).
Made me laugh.
Loved the checklist of psycopath traits 🙂 Brilliant.
21 April 2013 at 22:45 #6327Congrats to anyone who made it this far!!
(Gives self pat on back – dislocates arm).
And that my friends, is some colour symbolism, it-all-hangs-together, bonkers bow-tie theorising for you!
Bravo! Imagine the sound of enthusiastic applause (unfortunately, it will have be the one handed variety). I enjoyed reading that. Take me ages to think it through, but I’ll get there before the next episode.
(Resolves to go away and think up new theory)
21 April 2013 at 22:59 #6328Imagine the sound of enthusiastic applause (unfortunately, it will have be the one handed variety). I enjoyed reading that.
That’s uncommonly kind of you 🙂
TBH I posted it with a slightly evil grin as I imagined those few who did get all the way through wondering nervously whether @juniperfish actually has a sense of humour or not.
Improbable stretches aside… red as the colour of love and blue as the colour of ice does have a pleasing simplicity, which I’m not saying I could have said in one sentence but… 🙂
And I suppose, all dancing on the head of a pin for fun aside, that may have some credibility if the red settings on the sonic and the red outfits of Clara become more apparently linked to love and the ice metaphor more apparently linked to dark Doctor as we go onwards through the time vortex.
21 April 2013 at 23:00 #6329@bluesqueakpip – aaaaah but it’s interesting how little redesign has gone into the zygon, and it’s not a great realisation. Like they didn’t spend *that* much on it…
Also it seems to crop up in the background of every pap shot … Suspiciously so!
Seems like quite a small price to pay for a complete misdirection (and a lot less than occupying trafalgar square, which plenty of people were happy to write off as a distraction for filming elsewhere)
21 April 2013 at 23:03 #6330@ardaraith – jeez lady, great observation work!!!! Those are some peepers you have there!
21 April 2013 at 23:04 #6331Hi all, fab site, I’m totally hooked.
I’m really rather freaked by the on/0ff bow tie business so went to have a closer look, and on re watching, found the scenes in the forest to be very strangely edited indeed. It may just be directorial trickery, with lots of jump cuts, but it left me with a strong feeling that there are two versions of the doctor in the forest, it just doesn’t flow right. One second he’s still, next second he’s mid twirl, and at 37.15 there’s a really odd flash of the back of his head that seems disconnected, and all that before the bow tie reappears. Probably haven’t explained it very well but have a look and see if I am making sense.
ps the official bbc site quotes “slither of ice” not “sliver”, just to throw that in.
21 April 2013 at 23:10 #6332Hi @bobbyfat Welcome! Yes it’s like Who theory crack on here 🙂
Yes I definitely think there are two versions of the Doctor there, and that the bow-tie is a clue. What we can’t tell is whether this is two versions of the Doctor overlaid in time – the first and second times he was there OR two entirely separate Doctors.
I’m leaning towards the first and to the “two different doctors” as a metaphor for an approaching dark Doctor at the moment rather than a literal ganger Doctor. But, I’ve been open to the idea of a return for ganger Doctor for a long time, as has my good comrade here @jimthefish .
Either way, I’ll wager the Doc is heading for the dark side.
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