S33 (7) 14 – The Name of the Doctor

Home Forums Episodes The Eleventh Doctor S33 (7) 14 – The Name of the Doctor

This topic contains 1,041 replies, has 83 voices, and was last updated by  Craig 10 years, 10 months ago.

Viewing 50 posts - 501 through 550 (of 1,042 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #10137
    Anonymous @

    @lula, @brotherjohn – Perhaps the ‘canon’ now is, that Fragmented Clara called it the ‘Tardis’, and Hartnell’s Doctor told Susan, and Susan – who was very clever –  made up a name to fit the acronym?

    This is what is so exciting, so game-changing, about TNoTD – nothing is ‘canon’ any more!

    #10138
    WhoHar @whohar

    @lula @brotherjohn @shazzbot

    Myself and @mtgradwell (hello, btw) had a detailed discussion on this over on the G blog.

    His point was that the stories (as transmitted on tv) remain as they are (ie no change to what we’ve viewed) except Clara was in there somewhere (as she has always been – just we didn’t generally see her). ie the timeline is a closed loop. This was broadly my take too but I suggested, given Moffat’s previously stated views on the subject, that he may take this plotline as an opportunity to explain away some of the inconsistencies in the previous show. Somehow.

    #10139
    Anonymous @

    @whohar – you are such a card!  Sending us over to the Nesting Consciousness.  Like we could find your conversations with @mtgradwell over ‘there’ without a space/time coordinate map flung into the air,  formed out of timey-wimey floating crystal stuff, plus suspiciously-scented candles.  🙂  (translation: What the heck page was your conversation on?  in terms of 50 ‘conversations’ per page, please, and assuming no CifFIx.)

    Going strictly by what you wrote here, though, your agreed resolution resembles what I said long ago on this thread;  namely, that there cannot be any net effect on the past i.e.  ‘canon’ , because there is no way to change the past which has already been broadcast.

    I was advised very persuasively that the past had indeed been changed, not once, but twice!  (fragmented GI and fragmented Clara)  I have spent the last day or so wallowing in the certainty of ‘this is The Moff’s promised and spectacular Game-Changer of the series finale’; i.e., the whole point of TNotD is that The Moff changed everything that has come before, and we can trust nothing we’ve ever seen.

    And now you and MTG posit that the GI/Clara changes cancelled each other out, except where it pleases the writers to ignore seeming inconsistencies.  My race-track circuit has come back to the beginning with hardly a fuel stop.  However … my trump card is the re-written Hartnell moment, when Clara encourages him to steal a different Tardis.  That is not only a change in ‘canon’ , it alters everything we thought we knew about Doctor Who.  Because No 1 only took the ‘right’ Tardis, now, because he was directed there by Fragmented Clara.

    It’s not a ‘closed loop’.  It’s a massive change, because it includes Fragmented Clara, and assumes Sexy (who already told us that she chose her Doctor) is controlling Clara to ensure Clara entices Hartnell to the ‘correct’ Tardis.

    #10140
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    @Shazbott.

    While Clara suggested Hartnell take the other Tardis, we do not know that he took her advice. You may be right, but there is still ambiguity.

    #10141
    janetteB @janetteb

    A thought. What if JH is somehow the 11th, (not sure how) and the fall of the eleventh refers to his expulsion from the line of Doctors, a kind of internal killing off. The Doctor has to kill the dark entity within himself possibly by rewriting his own timeline. This might tie to @juniperfish‘s beloved two doctors theory. Possibly the graveyard and Tardis are projections from the Doctor’s mind. Trenzalore is his greatest fear. It may not be real.

    Sorry if someone else has thought along these lines. I am only up to page nine. the Day shift have been so busy I am still catching up.

    Cheers

    Janette

    #10143
    WhoHar @whohar

    @shazzbot.

    We never previously saw on screen how Doc 1 chose Old Sexy, so it’s not necessarily a change in canon. But, given Old Sexy said she chose him, that would imply a change from tDW or Clara is linked to the Tardis somehow.

    I’d have to go back and look at the G blog again to get the coords but the above summary is pretty good.

    #10146
    MTGradwell @mtgradwell

    @Shazzbot:

    (translation: What the heck page was your conversation on? in terms of 50 ‘conversations’ per page, please, and assuming no CifFIx.)

    This particular conversation was on page 6.

    I was advised very persuasively that the past had indeed been changed, not once, but twice!  (fragmented GI and fragmented Clara) 

    Forget twice, think two billion, or trillion. GI changes things. Clara changes them back. Things are almost as they were, but not quite. In this subtly changed universe, the subtly changed Doctor and companions progress towards Trenzalore, meeting Claras (e.g. Dalek Oswin Oswald) along the way. They reach Trenzalore. GI changes things. Clara changes them back. Rinse and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Until the iterations are so similar to one another that there is practically no appreciable difference. A stable time loop.

    There presumably was an earlier iteration in which the Doctor survived the Asylum planet despite not being helped by Clara. Perhaps in that iteration a Dalek helped the Doctor, but it was just a mad Dalek that thought it was human, not Clara at all. The point is, we are never shown that iteration. The Dalek we are shown is definitely Clara. Too many coincidences for us to suppose otherwise (souffle girl, run you clever boy …) quite apart from the self-image and voice. And my contention is that it is the same throughout the entire series, going back to 1963. We are never shown an episode which was not shaped in some way by Clara’s (and the GI’s) intervention. She was intervening in the Doctor’s choice of Tardis, if not before. We can only speculate about what iteration zero (when she didn’t intervene)  was like, because we have never been shown it, or anything like it. We have only been shown the stable time loop that eventually arose after many iterations.

    It’s not a ‘closed loop’.  It’s a massive change, because it includes Fragmented Clara, and assumes Sexy (who already told us that she chose her Doctor) is controlling Clara to ensure Clara entices Hartnell to the ‘correct’ Tardis.

    Which has always been the case, although we didn’t know it. Except in iteration zero, which we have never been shown and can only speculate about. Perhaps in iteration zero the Doctor chose the right Tardis by chance, or perhaps he was guided by someone other than Clara, or perhaps he chose the wrong Tardis and had much less exciting adventures, which we have not seen but it’s no great loss because we have Clara’s assurance that they would have been less fun.

    #10147
    confuseus @confuseus

    @Shazzbot

    I tend to disagree a bit.

    It’s not a ‘closed loop’.  It’s a massive change, because it includes Fragmented Clara, and assumes Sexy (who already told us that she chose her Doctor) is controlling Clara to ensure Clara entices Hartnell to the ‘correct’ Tardis.

    Maybe it always did include Clara, but we didn’t know.  It always included the GI too.  GI knew which one was the right Tardis, therefore he misdirected the Doctor to the wrong one, Clara (who we know has had contact with her) redirects him back.  This always happened, but we didn’t know about it.

    Question is not, is the Tardis controlling Clara, but how did the GI know which was the right/wrong Tardis to choose in the first place?

    #10148
    topperofgallifrey @topperofgallifrey

    Why did Strax say that he had the Whispermen on the run when he was getting killed? He is strange/funny.

    #10149
    confuseus @confuseus

    So here are my thoughts on this episode (finally!).

    The Great Intelligence is actually the Doctor’s dark thoughts made real and separate from himself by some accident.  A Dark Guardian Angel, or his Devil Within, as it were.  The Great Intelligence seems to have only one, sole aim – to destroy the Doctor and everything that he stands for, and it gets stronger and stronger until the moments of the Doctor’s death on Tenzalore, where it enters the final battle – not with the Doctor, but with the Doctor’s Light Guardian Angel, his Concience, all the good things that the Doctor is – the one who was “born to save the Doctor”.  And how is that possible, unless that is also distilled into one being?

    Clara.  The battle is made real at the moments of his death, and then is shown inside his entire timestream, right from the start of the stories, where he chooses which Tardis to take on his journeys.  They have always been there as part of who he is, it’s just somehow they became outside of him at some stage in his life, after some crazy traumatic event.  The Great Intelligence and Clara both are aspects of the Doctor, opposites, mirrors.  Notice how the Doctor’s timestream turns red when the GI enters it?  Perhaps Clara’s real colour is blue, it just gets shadowed red when the GI is also around!

    Now.  We know that Matt Smith is the last Doctor, because this is his grave at Trenzalore.  It is his Tardis that is his monument, inside and out, with the cracks in the window and the internal decor.  We know that every Doctor changes the interior to suit himself, this is definitely Smith’s Tardis.

    And we know that the Doctor has twelve lifetimes, so it becomes clear that one is missing, unless he dies early for some unknown reason on the battleground at Trenzalore.  BUT, if he dies early, why is there a Twelfth Doctor in his timestream?  That cannot be possible.

    Therefore, the HurtDoctor is a previous incarnation, most likely between 8 and 9, and he was the one who did the horrors of the TimeWars, but not in The Name of The Doctor.

    #10150
    davemorris316 @davemorris316

    Just regarding the debates about the changes to canon, and the changes to the universe/timeline etc…

    Technically speaking, there are no changes to any of this. As with all time travel, you can’t actually go back and change time, because you already did. All time is happening at once. So therefore, Clara was always going to jump into the time stream, and therefore has always been there at every point through the Doctor’s history and future. She specifically states this, but that the Doctor doesn’t always hear her – in fact it appears that only 1 and 11 directly address her (and 10 in the 50th I presume).

    So therefore, there is no change to anything in previous series, incarnations. Clara being there always has been the case, we (and the Doctor) just didn’t see her.

    It’s for these reasons that technically (which is horrible really, because technically is SO boring) that something like Back To The Future can’t work – Marty was ALWAYS present in 1955, therefore couldn’t create an alternate 1985, because only that 1985 could exist. And I LOVE BTTF, and this pains me greatly to say.

    So I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about disrupting the time stream or events, as they have always been that way..

    #10151

    @shazbott @blenkinsopthebrave

    While Clara suggested Hartnell take the other Tardis, we do not know that he took her advice. You may be right, but there is still ambiguity.

    Nonsense. Chekhov’s Duck applies. “The navigation’s knackered…” is the key phrase.

    #10152

    @confuseus

    assumes Sexy (who already told us that she chose her Doctor) is controlling Clara to ensure Clara entices Hartnell to the ‘correct’ Tardis.

    Why? There is as much basis for assuming cahoots as coercion. And just as Clara always recognises the Doctor, she could equally recognise the correct Tardis to neither cahoots nor coercion are essential.

    @davemorris316 – yep. There as all necessary scope for retcon, but canon remains canon.

    #10153
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    @pedant

    I don’t want to be…well…a pedant…but I think you mean Chekhov’s gun.

    And I still maintain that what is not shown allows for ambiguity, my pedant friend.

     

    #10154
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @MTGradwell @davemorris316

    Love both your posts, I think you’ve picked out the intricacies of this really well.

    I think we’re safe to assume that Moffat goes with the “time is a big ball of…” etc since he was the one that started it, in Blink and has made several referances to it being non-linear

    I hadn’t picked up on the full implications of how often it would be repeated – that explains Clara’s “I’ve always done it”. Or not repeated at all! OTOH the Dr has been shown on several occasions to be “outside time” in some ways, because he’s a time traveller (and I loved the way Matt spoke about him being probably the most time-travelled being ever) – so does he have a sense of an “original” blueprint sort of thing?

    GI changes something, echoClara fixes it – does it change to the way it was before the GI changed it or does it change to something else, still a victory, but achieved in a different way? (If it’s been changed a million different ways at different points, that could drive him completely bonkers! So for that reason maybe I’d  lean more to davemorris316’s theory of nothing’s changed!)

    But the brilliance of it is that it retcons everything and nothing! Hartnell stole the correct Tardis because he always has. We saw Clara being hooked up telepathically to the Tardis (to get the co-ordinates) – that link could still be there in some form, so it’s not unbelievable that the Tardis could help her telepathically.

    We know the GI works with whispers – it’s how he/it got hold of Simeon (footnote – love how loads of people were moaning about Richard E being underused in the Snowmen – and he only comes back as one of the biggest bads ever).

    It’s also incredibly cheeky. Deus Ex Machina resolution to stories? Well, yes, actually, very possibly!

    #10155
    confuseus @confuseus

    @IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan

    Quote was Shazzbot’s, not mine.

    #10156
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    Or maybe it was a continuity error.

    @mtgradwell – or maybe the Eleventh is the Final Doctor. 😀

    His introduction is in an episode entitled ‘The Eleventh Hour’. He’s Eleven, yes, and this is his ‘hour’. But The Eleventh Hour is also the last possible moment to avert disaster.

    Eleven is the last of the Classic Doctors. Unless they manage to pull off an ‘eleventh hour’ re-boot.

    #10157
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    but Susan coining the acronym is canon

    @lula and @Shazzbot – ever since we found out that the Time Lords also call them tardis’s, I’ve presumed that Susan made up the acronym in English. She invented the English language name for a TARDIS. The acronym only makes sense in English anyway.

    So the name of the Doctor’s ship is the TARDIS – and when people speak Gallifreyan we hear their name for their time machines translated as ‘tardis’. Because that’s what the English word means: the word ‘tardis’ in the Oxford English Dictionary means:

    1a time machine.

    2a building or container that is larger inside than it appears to be from outside.

    #10158
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @Shazzbot and others wanting to see how Clara and the GI make changes

    1 of the reasons could be that it could be very boring, and to work well I also think you’d need to know the stories well to get over how subtle it could be. Yes, it could be physical, like moving a boulder so the Dr has something to hide behind later, but I think a lot of it would be much more subtle.

    All the GI’s changes in the Dr’s timestream could be down to whispering in the right ears – people suddenly thinking of a name or an idea, seemingly out of nowhere, hearing rumours, suddenly deciding not to go to a particular place at a particular time because they had a “feeling” about it, being distracted at a crucial moment because of a buzzing in their ears, infiltrating computer systems etc. Clatra’s input could be similar, especially if she has the Tardis helping telepathically to guide her to “where she has to be”.

    Words and whispers are a theme of this episode. The Whispermen – extensions of the GI, no eyes, ears, nose – just mouths (and teeth!). They (ie the GI) set things in motion by whispering to Clarence which he passes on to Vastra.  We know from the Troughton stories that the GI is familiar with the astral plane, so it’s not surprising he could infiltrate the conference call.

    The Name of the Doctor is about the words, and the words people say about you – ie your reputation – and the power that has, for good or bad.

    #10159
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @bluesqueakpip

    Agreed re Eleventh Hour. Or possibly 12th hour but that doesn’t work so well, LOL. We are only halfway through this story. I suspect more gamechanging afoot 🙂 I’m sticking with my theory (pretty safe bet now) that by the end of the 50th all the sticky little problems from the backstory inc no of regenerations etc will be dealt with and resolved. Probably with an equally tantalising set of questions in their wake!

    And good point re Susan inventing the word TARDIS while translating it into English.

    Is Tardis really in the OED? *proud*

    #10160
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    given Old Sexy said she chose him, that would imply a change from tDW or Clara is linked to the Tardis somehow.

    @WhoHarGiven that Moffat both scripted this episode and script-edited Gaiman’s episode, I’d presume that the TARDIS scene was included here to show us that the battles between the GI and Clara changed continuity. It no longer exists; even the continuity of S6 has been changed. We have now seen on-screen continuity be changed.

    @davemorris316 – you may be correct that you can’t change time in our physics, but this is the Whoniverse. If you like, our physics isn’t up to the standards of the Time Lords. The most basic law of Time Lord physics is:

    Time can be changed.

    While there are certain fixed points in the Doctor’s life, points where changing them will cause the breakdown of time itself, most of his life isn’t a fixed point. How do we know that?  Because the GI (an external force) could change the history of his life. Clara (who may be an internal force) could then repair it – but sometimes she had to change what originally happened to get things back to what should have happened.

    In some cases we’ll have watched the repairs (Dragonfire). In other cases (The Doctor’s Wife) we were told the original version – and it’s now changed. In still other cases (Asylum of the Daleks) we watched the original (no Daleks survived Exillon in Death to the Daleks) and then saw the change (Clara is present in Asylum, and Dalek survivors of Exillon are also present).

    #10161
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @blenkinsopthebrave @pedant

    I don’t want to be…well…a pedant…but I think you mean Chekhov’s gun.

    Not all information passes through the portals of the Quantum Club lounge I see. Ref an extremely long tussle, sorry – discussion on the G-blog a couple of weeks ago (JttCotT I think) which involved many definitions and disagreements about the uses of  DEM and Chekhov’s Gun tropes in the episode (you can check it out, or if you’re wise, leave it your imagination – many good posts were lost that day!!). Chekhov’s duck was born from the wreckage ;-)

    Incidentally – any takers for my suggestion of Webley for NiS’s Chekov’s gun…?! :mrgreen:

    <got coat, going! >

    #10162
    SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe

    @Shazzbot Yeah, realise I didn’t really answer your question on the Silence. Well… I think there’s maybe two possibilities after Utah. If they were all on Earth, having all moved in there to parasitise, then they’re likely extinct. That might be the case going by their… hubris towards their hosts. On the other hand, they might be elsewhere as well – it’s clear they’ve done the same routine before, with those TARDIS replicas in The Lodger and Day of the Moon – and have just gone, well, silent from believing the Doctor dead. Their aim achieved. The species would presumably still exist, as would Madame Kovarian; she only died in a redundant timeline.

    Why have they not continued on from subsequent evidence that he’s alive? He’s been wiped from history. Perhaps by someone with the ability to affect all of his timestream. Perhaps it means their war never happened. Yet River exists? Yes; Amy and Rory still travelled with him. The only (possible) difference is her never being fashioned into a weapon. I think. It’s tricky!

    I had thought them responsible for the exploding TARDIS (well, there were a few of them weren’t there?) but that could be the GI’s influence. Which means it has also been undone, I think. Oh, and perhaps that mystery room in Amy’s house was similar to that in The Lodger; I forget if they explained that beyond being Prisoner Zero’s hideout.

    Erm, think that’s all!

    #10163
    Anonymous @

    My thinking on the Doctor’s timeline shenanigans is that the previous adventures haven’t gone back to as they were before. Otherwise it’s hardly the ‘game-changer’ promised by Moffatt (who we all know lies anyway) and Smith (who seems like a nice boy, so I’m going to believe him).

    What we’ve previously seen up until Saturday’s episode was how the Doctor’s life had unfolded without the interference of either the GI or Clara within it. Remember, we’ve been told over and over again during Moffatt’s era that time can be rewritten and I think this is why. And we’ve only seen the pre-Clarafied, unrewritten versions which now no longer exist. All the adventures still happened, I think, but perhaps not in the way that we’ve seen them. Sometimes the changes might be huge, sometimes they might be subtle and sometimes they might well be nonexistent. But we haven’t seen them so we’ll never know.

    Or will we? It could well be that we’ll see some in November and beyond. And it’s a great opportunity for spin-off books etc. We could get Doctor Who Redux — all the classic adventures rewritten to incorporate the GI and Clara.

    This is Moffatt’s version of the reset switch that some of us have been talking about. The show — which is surely unique in now having 50 years of continuity baggage to lug around — has essentially been freed of that baggage. We don’t know for sure any more of the Doctor’s past than we did when we first saw him in Totters’ Lane. Any subsequent encounters with the Daleks and the Cybermen can take place without us stressing about Davros and Dalek civil wars, whether any Daleks survived Exilon or not, whether they’re Telosian or Mondasian etc. Because we simply don’t know for sure anymore.

    This is the game-changer, I believe. Moffatt hasn’t erased the last 50 years but he has negated their gravitational pull on the future. The show has been unchained to go into the next 50 years with a spring in its step.

    Moffatt has just put the ‘Who’ back in Doctor Who.

     

    #10164
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @bluesqueakpip

    most of his life isn’t a fixed point

    I think that’s debatable. My understanding of a “fixed point” is that it has to be fixed for the desirable future to happen. If it’s changed, a different future happens.  It’s not that they can never be changed – everything can be changed – as the Dr showed in Waters of Mars – but the consequences of the change may not be good for us. After the GI starts altering the Dr’s timeline we see stars go out, the death of Jenny and eversion to type of Strax.

    For me, for this change to work (been thinking about it a bit more since my earlier post), then there has to be a sense that there was an original timeline where the Dr won his victories fair and square. By himself. Otherwise he’s emasculated and all his victories and achievements are down to Clara’s interventions.

    However, what is wide open to debate is whether what we, the viewers, have seen the “original” or Clara’s retconned version. As @phaseshift and @bluesqueakpip both mentioned – what do you mean no Exxilon daleks left? there are now! It’s going to drive the continuity-obsessives compleetely bonkers, LOL

    MEGA META-REF – all those 60s episodes which are missing or have been reconstructed using audio, still pics and animations 😀

    #10165
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @jimthefish

    Moffatt hasn’t erased the last 50 years but he has negated their gravitational pull on the future…

    How did you manage to sum up in 1 sentnece what I’ve been trying to say in 3 posts!!

    Grr 😉

    Beautifully put

     

    #10166
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @jimthefish

    OTOH he has to be careful with this reset switch or he’s going to get bogged down in a whole new set of problems! Agree that what we have seen is probably the original – but not necessarily.

    eg Pandorica/Big Bang is clearly GI driven, surely, as the rumours and the words used are the same as the ones the GI says directly to the Dr in NotD. So – as this ended up in a Dr victory – is that something he did himself, was it Clara-driven, or has Clara changed it since we viewed it? Or was it Clara’s influence which maybe affected Amy’s dreams of her raggedy man? Or was it just GI driven but in the “real world” not from fiddling in the timestream?

    If Kovarian hadn’t heard the rumours and stories about bad Dr (not as in Hurt Dr!) would the whole River plot have come about?

    Where does all that leave Amy and Rory in this alternative timeline? And River?

    <aaaaaaagh! my head needs a lie down!!>

    #10167
    thommck @thommck

    When Idris says she “chose him”, she obviously didn’t mean she physically called him over and said something like “come inside you clever boy”. Rather, when the Doctor escaped in her she decided “this could be fun” and started their adventures. This could be why the TARDIS doesn’t like Clara as she wants to be in control without thinking Clara has been influencing her all this time

    I’m trying not to think about the past as that is becoming too confusing! I’m with @davemorris316 that time all happens at once (to those outside of time) meaning the GI & Clara-Splitz were always around.

    So, thinking of the present, ClaraPrime & the Doctor are trapped in his timeline. His timeline seems to be a physical realm outside time (like where the Time War is locked and timelords/daleks are trapped), so a bit like the pocket universe shown in Hide.

    This throws up some questions as to how ClaraPrime and the GI is affecting the Doctor’s timeline.
    • The GI isn’t human, so presumably can change shape or affect things differently to Clara
    • Is the GI also floating around in this timeline realm as well?
    • Clara went in after the GI, so she has the upper hand and can see what the GI did.
    • Hurt-Doctor is in the timeline too, does that mean he went to Trenzalore and jumped in to the timeline? This could point to him being a future Doctor as he presumably would know the outcome of 11 jumping in to save ClaraPrime
    • Is there a pocket-universe style time limit on how long ClaraPrime will stay in there before burning up or could she potentially stay in there forever?
    • Could Clara prevent the Doctor dying at Trenzalore?
    • She can see his future but does she change it? It’s also her future so does she see herself?
    • How does ClaraPrime send a ClaraSplitz in to make repairs?
    • • Is it like a regeneration?
    • • We are shown ClaraSplitz seemingly being born at the right time to coincide with helping the Doctor at a later date. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.
    • • That must mean there are a lot of old lady Clara’s throughout history
    • • We know from Dalek-Clara & Victorian-Clara that they don’t have access to ClaraPrime’s memories or any directions from her, just the act of being there and ClaraPrime’s nature/blueprint means they try to help the Doctor

    I’m sure there are many other questions I could think of! The bottom line is, this whole NotD episode has the potential to make a lot more problems for future episodes rather than the Moff making them less-burdened from the last 50 years.

    This makes me think (i.e. hope & pray) the story is not over yet and ClaraPrime has to be removed from this Timeline-realm otherwise the Doctor will just think, oh well, ClaraSplitz will be along soon to fix it

    I’d be really interested to hear all your thoughts on what is happening to ClaraPrime

    #10168
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @thommck

    All interesting thoughts.  See my posts just above (#10164 and #10166) re my thoughts on how and what changes. And esp re why I think (that dramatically) there has to be an “original” timeline, the blueprint.  But we don’t know which we’ve seen.

    re ClaraPrime – what happens to her – we don’t know yet. She fainted (in good old-fashioned companion style 🙂 ) just before JH made his speech – the Dr picks her up (as he did with Amy right at the start of this series in AotD (see poster)) and will presumably bring her out of his timestream. ClaraPrime only has a limited amount of time that she can survive, though with the Dr there that presumably helps her survival chance.

    The 50th could be about them trying to find the way out of his timestream, or it could start assuming they already have.

    There’s presumably also scope for odd bits of GI to be lurking in dark, forgotten corners…

    Re Hartnell and the Tardis – the Tardis’s influence on which one the Dr runs away with/she steals could be as simple as closing her doors (once he’s in).  If she hadn’t liked him she wouldn’t have left with him 🙂 And she could easily be colluding with Clara telepathically to make sure the Dr finds her

    #10169
    SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe

    @scaryb I think the adventures we’ve seen are the ones that have always been, from the discussion between @whohar and @mtgradwell mentioned at the top of the page. Ever since Gallifreyan Clara convinced him to pick the ‘right’ TARDIS, it’s been set if I understand right. Had he chosen differently all those years ago, so the experiences would have been different. Less fun for one thing 🙂

    Does put the kibosh on my ideas about the Silence war but I’m OK with that! Trenzalore couldn’t have happened without them and their prophecy after all. I think.

    #10170
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    @scaryb

    Not all information passes through the portals of the Quantum Club lounge I see. Ref an extremely long tussle, sorry – discussion on the G-blog a couple of weeks ago (JttCotT I think) which involved many definitions and disagreements about the uses of DEM and Chekhov’s Gun tropes in the episode (you can check it out, or if you’re wise, leave it your imagination – many good posts were lost that day!!). Chekhov’s duck was born from the wreckage

    Ah, I understand. I gave up on the G blog long ago for the simple reason that I decided that this is the home of civilised conversation.

    Anything I say here is in complete ignorance of…that other place.

    Which is a real shame, and @danmartinuk did so much to bring real Enthusiasts of Doctor Who together.

    #10171
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    meaning the GI & Clara-Splitz were always around.

    @thommck

    No. I honestly don’t see how they can be always around. We’ve already seen that they weren’t always around, because we’ve already seen two versions of the same events.

    We see Clara-mirror first in Asylum. We see Dalek survivors from Exillon. We KNOW there were no Dalek survivors from Exillon; that’s canon. But now that Clara’s here – there are.

    We see Clara-mirror next in The Snowmen (though frankly, I’m still pretty convinced JLC’s been doing most of the uncredited computer voice-overs in S7.1). We KNOW the Doctor has met the Great Intelligence before – but he doesn’t remember one of his most important adventures. We were also told how Sexy left her door open for the Doctor – but now he gets persuaded into the TARDIS by Clara. No wonder Sexy doesn’t like Clara; she’s subtly changed the relationship with her ‘thief’.

    So time is being changed from our continuity. The continuity of the last 50 years no longer applies.

    As to the other questions: I’d say Clara repairs the damage done by the GI to the Doctor’s timeline, and that the Doctor’s timeline was only supposed to reach to last Saturday. There are only Eleven Doctors (and John Hurt, Doctor Zero). The Eleventh Doctor was supposed to die at Trenzalore – it was the ‘Fall of the Eleventh’. And they didn’t just mean a falling TARDIS, or a regeneration. It was where the Doctor finally fell.

    Which makes the John Hurt Doctor a past Doctor.

    #10172
    PhaseShift @phaseshift
    Time Lord

    After last weeks Borg stuff, this week we have Hush ripoff allegations. I was going to post a (hopefully) humerous response, but I seem to be in Premod.

    Not sure why that is – I just posted a review on this blog. They may have thought three links in one post was a bit “spammy” though. Ah well.

    As it took me a while to work out in the bath last night, here it is:

    What can I say, what can I do?
    To explain my reasoning to you.
    That Whispermen are not the Gents,
    From Wheedon’s Hush – no offence!

    The first reason’s obvious and, if I may,
    The reason I’m mangling verse on this day.
    The silent Gentlemen would run, if in time,
    To escape the effect of Whispermen rhymn.

    Joss is brilliant, but I’m sure he’d confess,
    He didn’t invent Victorian dress!
    The deathly pallor for fiends is cliché,
    Based on arsenous makeup used back in the day.

    The skeletal visage displayed by a Gent,
    Is not used here, with admirable intent.
    The Trickster is more of an obvious intention,
    For a story which deals with time intervention.

    I confess I lapse into occasional hilarity,
    On our rush to judge on vague similarity.
    For where would Joss be without being able to draw,
    On centuries of established Vampiric Lore?

    I really don’t want to spoil your fun
    But really –
    There is nothing new under the sun.

    #10173
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    My understanding of a “fixed point” is that it has to be fixed for the desirable future to happen. If it’s changed, a different future happens. 

    @scaryb – not what we were shown in The Wedding of River Song; what we were shown there was that, if a fixed point is changed, the resulting changes are so huge that Time itself starts to collapse. Change a fixed point and there is NO future.

    Whereas changing the Doctor’s past is indeed the It’s a Wonderful Life scenario. There’ll be a future – it’ll just be a terrible future.

    The Doctor’s an agent of change – he is not, in himself, a fixed point.

    #10174
    thommck @thommck

    @bluesqueakpip I can agree with you that there may be at least 2 versions of events, you give a good argument for that

    I disagree that Hurt has to be a past Doctor. In NotD 11 visits his tomb in Trenzalore, he doesn’t die there during NotD. He dies there in a future battle and we don’t know when that will be or what regeneration he will be on.

    If we agree time can be changed, then the future is now in flux. The Doctor has seen where he dies so can now change it. This is why it was so important that the a time-traveller never sees where/how they die. Of course, the Doctor breaks all the rules in this episode, which effectively means the Moff can re-write them again!

    #10175
    #10176
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    Perhaps I could follow up my last post with the thought that what we say say here should always be in complete ignorance of…that other place.

    It’s not a competition. It’s about our mutual love of the show.

    Time for bed.

    #10177
    SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe

    Sorry, wasn’t his tomb from his death by the GI’s actions? By visiting it, has he not changed the time and location of his own death?

    #10178
    Anonymous @

    @phaseshift — kickin’ rhymes from the PhaseShiftMC…

    The Gentlemen comparison has definitely been overstated. They’re largely dressed like Simeon and have teeth like the GI’s Snowmen. I think they were the original reference points, although they are obviously riffing on everything from Whedon to SJA…

    @scaryb and others — just to add to my ‘time has been rewritten’ post. Just wanted to Clara-fy (I’ll stop that one soon, don’t worry) that GI/Clara intervention doesn’t mean that the Doctor’s past achievements have in any way been lessened. It’s not that Clara has jumped in and nicked all his glories — just that  she might have given events in the background a bit of a nudge (to correct the GI’s previous nudges). They will still be his victories. They just might have now been arrived at in a different way than we have previously seen.

    #10179
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @bluesqueakpip @thommck

    There has to be at least 3 versions of events (as we are shown in the show – hence the choice of director using the same sets of clips, some with Clara, some with Simeon) –

    1 the “original” ie what Clara is aiming to reset to

    2 GI amended

    3 Clara’s reset

    Otherwise the show is undermined dramatically if all previous is down to actual DEM (ie Clara) and nothing to do with the Dr. So long as there is an original version to be overwritten there’s not a probem, even if that “original” no longer exists (has been overwritten)

    <goes back to stroking new pet meta ref re the 60s reconstructions>

     

    #10180
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @blenkinsopthebrave Sounds good; also fits with sofa discussions the other day. OTOH some phrases are too good to lose 🙂

    btw Just noticed I rechristened the Qantas club lounge – so it’s really Quantum, hmmm.

    Sweet dreams <waves to Kennedy theory>

     

    #10181
    ScaryB @scaryb

    Haha @phaseshift

    Very droll 🙂

    Just fix the typo at the end of the last line, in v 2 😉

    #10182
    Anonymous @

    @scaryb — you’ve just made a point that I forgot to. With Clara, Moffatt has actually created the ultimate DeM. And I’m sure meant to be a riposte to all the ‘fans’ who scream DeM at the most incorrect points.

    Kind of funny, no?

    #10183
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @phaseshift – any allegations that the Whispermen are a ripoff of the Gentlemen can only be made if the poster hasn’t watched Hush for years. The Gentlemen a) steal people’s voices b) float above the ground c) don’t talk at all, let alone in rhyming couplets (the creepy rhyme is sung by a little girl) c) physically rip people’s hearts out to collect them and d) are wearing the costume of a modern undertaker, not Victorian dress.

    #10184
    WhoHar @whohar

    @bluesqueakpip

    I’d presume that the TARDIS scene was included here to show us that the battles between the GI and Clara changed continuity. It no longer exists; even the continuity of S6 has been changed. We have now seen on-screen continuity be changed.

    I’m not convinced that the continuity has been changed in any significant way. In tDW, Sexy said she chose him. How did she do this, exactly – flash him a bit of console or flutter her time rotor perhaps? Doesn’t really work. She could have made some encouraging noises when he went past but really? Have you heard her – she sounds like an asthmatic water buffalo that’s just sat on a thistle. It’s more likely to put him off.

    My guess is that Sexy had many suitors in the past – how they find her is not important – but she rejected them all. How? Maybe she doesn’t let them in, or maybe she won’t fire up or let them pilot her. Then, Clara nudges  Doc 1 towards her. She thinks “I’ll have a bit of this”, let’s him in, fires up and away they go.

    I still think Moffat will use this plotline as a way to address anomalies in the show’s history, rather than retcon the whole show to date. And I’ve said that on here and on the G blog now, so it must be right.

    #10185
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    He dies there in a future battle and we don’t know when that will be or what regeneration he will be on.

    @thommck: it’s kind of a ‘wait until the 50th’ discussion – but I’d point out that Trenzalore has been very specifically described in previous episodes as

    The Fall of the Eleventh

    And the TARDIS monument still has the crack in the window that it just got from crashing onto Trenzalore.

    So I’m gonna say that – to go along with my ‘Clara is the Doctor’ bonkers theory – Eleven is the last of the Classic Doctors. That’s the real reason Clara is the Impossible Girl; she’s the Doctor who is never supposed to happen; the regeneration that will never be born.

    We’re in the Eleventh Hour. And time can be changed. 🙂

    #10186
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @jimthefish @Phasehift re riffing on Whispermen

    They’re largely dressed like Simeon and have teeth like the GI’s Snowmen. (JimtheFish)

    That’s because they are Simeon, or the GI anyway. I doubt they have any independent life at all, they are controlled by/are the GI. (Scene when Simeon tears his face off, dissolves and is instantly remoulded in the adjacent Whisperman (it’s like walking about with your own spare parts in tow, LOL. They’d  make a fortune in the music halls).

    There’s very little that’s new re stories, never mind sci fi ones, so everything is influenced by what has come before. That’s part of the fun of it. The interesting thing for me is what changes are made eg Whispermen are in some ways the opposite of the Gentlemen. The Gentlemen steal voices, Whispermen arguably put voices in your head – they cause trouble by spreading runours and information in whispers. (Well, and that Judge Death thing they do of reaching in and squeezing your heart to death. Eeek!)

    And yes, both riffed on all the old Dracula and Hammer stories, Victorian “penny dreadful” comics etc etc

    In coming up with the Angels, Silence, Vashta Nerada Moffat has also shown a remarkable imagination for completely original “monsters”

    What about eg the Pandorica though – which looks like what we saw is GI influenced. Did we see the finished version of that story ie the Clara-amended one?  That’s what I mean when I say that we don’t necessarily know which version we as the viewer saw. (It (probably!) doesn’t matter, but it’s interesting when you follow the strands through. And incredibly confusing, LOL)

    #10187
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @jimthefish

    @scaryb — you’ve just made a point that I forgot to. With Clara, Moffatt has actually created the ultimate DeM. And I’m sure meant to be a riposte to all the ‘fans’ who scream DeM at the most incorrect points.

    Kind of funny, no?

    Oh, most definitely :mrgreen:

    And we have a literal Ghost in the Machine as well 😈

     

    Ha! No wonder they’ve given us 6 months to think about it – we’ll need it! Every scene you look at unpacks to being MUCH bigger on the inside

    #10188
    wolfweed @wolfweed

    Clara whispers: ‘Don’t revel in killing that chef with chloroform!’

    chloro

    #10189
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @satsumajoe

    Sorry, wasn’t his tomb from his death by the GI’s actions? By visiting it, has he not changed the time and location of his own death?

    His death (and tomb) at Trenzalore happened in Eleven’s future (when he may be Eleven or a future incarnation) but he visits the site (in tNotD) after it’s happened. Agree with @bluesqueakpip that it’s being heavily suggested that the Dr who died at Trenzalore (before tNotD) is Eleven.

    His death may or may not have been influenced by the GI. In which case it may or may not be changed by Clara. We won’t know till we see what they see when they come out of his timestream and back to “reality” on Trenzalore.

    Could have a great 50th show mucking about in his timestream revisiting past glories/defeats/glories ( 🙂 )

Viewing 50 posts - 501 through 550 (of 1,042 total)

The topic ‘S33 (7) 14 – The Name of the Doctor’ is closed to new replies.