S33 (7) 14 – The Name of the Doctor

[Anonymous @]

@ardaraith – what the Doctor said was something about the ‘return protocol’ which has been mentioned before (that the Tardis will make a return trip to where it started).

Except – there was a lingering shot of the Tardis de-materialising in front of the Maitland house in modern-day London.  So, my worry is actually that the Pat Gang are going to give Angie and Artie a pretty big scare!

[Whisht @whisht]

methinks there’ll have to be a minisode or somesuch before the 50th.

Just can’t see how you’d have a 50th which will be seen by people who didn’t watch series 7.2 , start with the Doctor trapped inside his own timeline.

but then again, maybe they’ll have 10 starting in the 50th and as @ardaraith suggests, 11 will ‘pop out’ in 10’s timeline (along with The Hurt Doctor).

actually, that kinda works….

[PhileasF @phileasf]

The Name of the Doctor just finished airing in Australia about 20 minutes ago (at the time I started writing this post).

Whoah.

I was very moved by the awesomeness of it all.

Much as I love the Moff, and have done for years before he started running Doctor Who, I was pretty sure this episode wouldn’t be half as good as all our theories. But it was. Maybe even more than half.

Having been a fan since childhood, since Tom Baker was the Doctor, it was strange and beautiful to see the old series being brought into the new so prominently.

Despite coming to the show long after Hartnell’s departure, he has at times been my favourite. Perhaps because in real life I’m as vague-seeming and incoherently tongue-tied and prematurely aged as he was. (And we were born on the same day, decades apart.) Those first few seasons feel so fresh and imaginative, before the original series became stuck in its various formulae (sometimes very entertaining formulae). There’s no hero like that first Doctor, especially not now, when everyone on TV has to be so absurdly perfect. The production circumstances of 1960s TV, where a retake cost a lot of money (too much for Doctor Who’s budget), forced them to broadcast a lot of ‘bad takes’ by Hartnell’s Doctor, making him perhaps the most strangely authentic, human-like, larger-than-life hero in all the annals of literature, myth and legend. But the force of a great personality, a performance of real conviction, always shone through the apparent production failures of those early episodes, so you could believe the Doctor was simultaneously a genius and unable to verbalise a coherent sentence.

What I’m trying to say is, I was very happy to see the original Doctor, the definite article you might say, getting another day in the sun.

I was shocked and saddened when Jenny died — what! no Paternoster gang spinoff!? — and happy when she came back. Strax still has his old nurse’s touch. Nurse and governess, roles that weren’t all that different once upon a time, and he’s died and inexplicably come back to life at least once. If he was a pretty girl, we’d probably have spent months coming up with theories about why he isn’t dead. But theorising is over for now.

The dead TARDIS. So sad. It reminded me of that big Dalek statue in which the season started — it’s as though the season was bookended by the two great iconic images of the series made gigantic, the Dalek and the TARDIS.

I may have more thoughts later…

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

Was it his timestream or his memories? Shadow Doctor (it might stick!) did talk to him, whatever that could mean. It does seem that he may be running from that one’s actions before (and perhaps reason for) adopting the name of Doctor – all other incarnations were shown running about while he stood still. More terrible than ending the Time War?

[BadWulf @badwulf]

Just finished a second viewing, so some further thoughts/observations:

7) The Hurt Doctor is “The one that broke the promise” of the Doctor’s name, i.e. the one who didn’t take a role as healer/contributor to knowledge. This indicates that the promise had been made before the Hurt Doctor’s non-doctorly actions, and thus that the Hurt Doctor cannot be a Zeroth Doctor. I liked the idea of the Zeroth Doctor, so I hope my logic is flawed there.

8) Who put River’s grave at Trenzalore?

If it wasn’t River herself, how would River know it was a secret entrance? Is it because she is in the Library, and has access to events that happened after she died. Where in time is Trenzalore?

9) My wife’s question and main bugbear with the episode – Why did River open the TombTardis door? Isn’t that what caused the problem of the GI being able to enter the Doctor’s timeline? The Doctor appeared willing to sacrifice all his companions again (even though he had just come to Trenzalore to save them), so why would River override his decision?

[BadWulf @badwulf]

Additional:

10) Now that the Doctor has reconstituted ClaraPrime, will she retain the memories of all of the ScatteredClaras? Will she therefore be in the position of an uberfan who knows the series by heart?

11) Madam Vastra says that the Doctor’s timeline is being rewritten by the GI – does this mean that his death at Trenzalore can be rewritten?

12) I forget – have we seen damage to the TARDIS’s glass window before?

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

@badwulf – She opened the doors to the tombe because she knows Clara Prime must jump into the time stream, and become the ‘girl who was born to save the Doctor’ so that Clara as River can come into existence. 🙂

I suspect that the damaged window indicates that the Doctor was meant to die at Trenzalore with the GI, i.e., never have left after opening his tomb. But the impossible girl changed that.

@phileasf – That is beautiful imagery — the larger than life TARDIS and Dalek, bookending the anniversary year.

[Anonymous @]

Just ventured into the G’s comments.  There is someone on about page 6 who wrote an extremely long comment bemoaning that the series isn’t doing anything s/he thought should be happening, with repeated references to ‘WHAT CHILDREN WANT/NEED’.   Bah.  Life is too short to listen to people like that.

@badwulf – “Now that the Doctor has reconstituted ClaraPrime, will she retain the memories of all of the ScatteredClaras? Will she therefore be in the position of an uberfan who knows the series by heart?”

Yes, this made me wonder about how the Smith/JLC series 8 will work out.  They’ve both been in his timestream – composed of future as well as past – so there has to be a plot point of it all being re-written or else we’d have an entire series of two people saying ‘I remember what we did tomorrow.’

I assume that’s what the 50th special with John Hurt is going to do;  the past can’t be re-written as it’s canon, but the future is going to have to be re-written.  This episode dealt with his death at Trenzalore, so one major future event has already been re-written.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot @lula @jimthefish

River – this could be the end for River post SitL (and what a beautiful end!) but there’s plenty of scope to bring her back (a pre SitL version) if the writers think there’s a good opportunity to, And she’s not necessarily limited to 10, 11. She could be, but not necessarily, there’s enough scope – incl the fact that we’ve not seen her find out the Dr’s name, still heavily teasered. (LOL’d at te suggestion upstream it’s when she and the Dr register the birth of their child).

It’s also heavily suggested that this time she does just fade away, but it’s also River who says she kept the line of communication to Clara open, so she can also cut it. That bit of dialogue was also to establish to the Dr that Clara was still alive (unlike the GI who we are told would die, although also split into massive no of copies (to wreak havoc in the Dr’s timeline).

<sniffs at thought of River’s 2-300 years in the Library waiting for the Dr to come back and visit. A Dr who couldn’t bear to come back to her. Her being saved to the Library was a compromise for the Dr, the best he could do for her in the circumstances, but felt like a failure. Aaaw 😥 >

And no, sorry, I don’t buy River as a Clara – she’s too independent, and different. Also – why would Vastra be able to call both River and Clara to the conference if that was the case?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@jimthefish @miapatrick @bluesqueakpip

Not been on the G Blog today. Probably been modded by now Ha! LOL’d at Miapatrick’s 4 glasses of wine comment. Ditto 🙂

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@craig – seconded re @chickenelly‘s avatar award.  And thank you for choosing the bigger option for avatars on this board,  so much more scope 🙂

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@ardaraith – If we work hard, we can make “ClaraPrime” the correct fandom term!

Regarding the idea of Clara as River: I like it from a ‘neatness’ perspective, but I’m torn, as I prefer the idea of having two interesting characters better than having only one interesting character with a tremendously convoluted backstory.

More thoughts:

We’ve had talk of the Hurt Doctor being the Valeyard, which is an idea with legs. But the GI mentions other names – the Oncoming Storm, the Beast. Wasn’t the Beast a gigantic demonic being in the Impossible Planet? Is the Doctor a different Beast?

Just came across an interesting comment at Slate where it’s noted that  the Doctor has never been shy of taking ownership of the Time War before – he’s chattered about it frequently – so why would the Hurt Doctor become repressed in his memory for doing something (albeit something terrible) he has already admitted to?

Is there something even darker in the Hurt Doctor’s history?

[Anonymous @]

@badwulf – “Where in time is Trenzalore?”

Hah!  I had a theory a while back that Trenzalore was not a place, but instead a time.  I was half-right, because it’s obviously a planet/place, but it’s also very importantly a time – the time of his death in the Tardis.  But the question you’re asking is probably ‘when did these events occur in relation to modern day?’ and the answer is … well, I guess that assumes we know how many regenerations the Doctor will ultimately have, and how long he lasts in each one.  Forgetting the limit of 12 (and assuming this is put to bed by the 50th) I would imagine it takes place in the far, far, far, far, far future.

I also claim being half-right when I thought, after viewing the preview/next time clips and preview gallery photos on the Beeb’s site, that River was definitely corporeal (when everyone else thought she looked a little ghosty).  Of course, she was ghosty – but Matt still managed to grab her arm and kiss her.

And re that last – I love how this show can turn on a sixpence.  That goodbye kiss was hugely sentimental, but it was immediately followed by the line ‘Considering no-one else here can see you, I wonder how that looked.’ [cut to Pat Gang looking very confused]

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

@whisht – Here’s what you were looking for…

Can’t find a pic of Death’s 2nd kill, where he explains: ‘I just stick my hand in and….SSQUEEZZE!’

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

This is exhibit 2 in Whispermen influences… Oak & Quill.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot

the past can’t be re-written as it’s canon, but the future is going to have to be re-written

What we’ve seen in this episode is the past being completely rewritten! Twice!!

NOTHING needs to be canon any more beyond the basic fact the Hartnell stole the Type 40 (with Susan) and is followed by at least the incarnations we know and now the new one, who may be the first (zero), 8, 8.5 or a future Dr. Agree with people who are saying there was a very Eccleston vibe about Hurt, and possible Time War connection.

There is no way of knowing how long the Time War lasted – it’s a meaningless question in many ways. My understanding is that it woud involve anyone with time travel – the daleks and the time lords prinicpally – going back to different points in time and altering key events. You’d never know what was going. Chaos.

 

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

All Drs were there (‘8’ was hardest to spot though). Also a Yeti made a brief cameo! The battle which caused the Dr’s death is intriguing. Who were the participants? The Tomb TARDIS seems to contain the same window crack that was caused by landing on Trenzalore…

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Thanks @wolfweed @whisht for the Judge Death ref – very apt

And thanks also for the Fury from the Deep vid – I’d forgotten about Oak and Quill.  I’d also forgotten how terrified I was of foam! (really scary story that one!)

Whispermen unlikely to make a comeback sadly, as clearly an extension of the GI. Unless Simeon comes back. Presumably some of his fractured selves could still be lurking around the Dr’s timeline…?

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – In this ep, it was clear that the Doctor and River obviously have a continuous psychic connection of their own.  I’m liking the ‘closure’ element – getting that kiss and her preferred goodbye seems to her to be more than adquate compensation for her lengthy post-death Library existence – but I agree, it depends on what Moffat and future show-runners care to do as to whether River comes back.  Do they want (or need) to explicitly show us the name-telling moment, ‘the one time I could’?

But all my talk of closure makes me think of post-2005 Who companions – Rose got her 10.x to live with in an alternate universe, yet she’s coming back for the 50th.  Martha got her goodbye and dignified exit from the Tardis – but then she’s pictured with Mickey being a bad-ass married woman at a later date.  Donna got her memories wiped, but as 10 said (paraphrased) ‘you don’t think I’d leave my best friend without a defence mechanism?’ and her mind energy kills all the surrounding Master clones.

Amy and Rory had many episodes to settle down into closure, including a book written just for the Doctor, reassuring him that they lived their lives happily after leaving him (and there wasn’t before that any certainty that they’d end up in the same time/place together).

So … River?  As heart-rending as her particular fate was, and how she seemingly got her closure in this ep, never say never!  The template might be Sarah Jane, though, who got her closure with 10 and then never appeared in DW again.  (but then she got her own series … )

[Tennantmarsters2013 @tennantmarsters2013]

I loved every moment of it even though I’m a little lost with the Clara situation like I still think there is more to be uncovered about her. More specifically river song when asked by the doctor how was she keeping the link with Claraopens she said spoilers this leads me to believe that Clara isn’t just the leaf or the impossible girl that she is river song

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

On River, I think this may well be the last we’ll see of her. I think amongst all the references to old Doctors in the episode, the Doctors words to her to “sleep in his mind” were really well chosen.

If you watch this short clip of the second discussing his family, you’ll see why.

[Anonymous @]

@Shazzbot — right on the money. I don’t think we have to see the ‘telling of the name’ scene. After all, it’s clear that the Doc and River have enjoyed plenty of ‘one on one’ time that we haven’t seen (it is a kid’s show, after all). The name could have been divulged at any one of those times. During a bit of post-coitus pillow talk, perhaps?

oh and @wolfweed, good call on Oak and Quill. I was going to bring them up as one of the scariesst things Who has ever done a few weeks back…

[BadWulf @badwulf]

@wolfweed – I haven’t spotted 8 at all – where was he?

[ScaryB @scaryb]

The Dr’s death – when they are discussing Trenzalore, I thought Smith says something about it being a long time in his future. But yes the question arises whether that (final) battle was GI-influenced, therefore something that was retconned by one of the Claras.

2 possibilities about previous canon –

1 – Was everything we have seen in the last 50 years the way it “originally” happened? or

2 – Was at least some of what we saw under GI influence? Or did we watch the Clara-influenced “retconned” version?

Is the GI still lurking in some dark places in the Dr’s timestream?

To paraphrase the intro to the much missed soap satire Soap –

Confused? You will be!!

I love the idea that Hurt’s Dr will turn out to have done things that “our” Dr is deeply ashamed of (to the point of trying to erase him from his memory) but that he has done them from the very best of intentions. “In the name of peace and sanity…” does sound like a reference to the Time War

 

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@badwulf Is there something even darker in the Hurt Doctor’s history?

That’s my thinking – that it is what made him run in the first place.

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

@badwulf – Just before 2 (Troughton) runs past , where the palm trees(?) are. Hint – Use the pause button!

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb – “What we’ve seen in this episode is the past being completely rewritten! Twice!!”

Yeah, well, here’s where I’m going to stick my neck out and say, I don’t think Clara was shown to have actually done anything to change any previous episodes’ outcome.  She was there, in the background, trying to get the Doctor’s attention (but never shown as succeeding in doing that, much less actually ‘saving’ him).

I know it’s heavily implied that her influence was good, but they just didn’t show that in that montage.  The only time she succeeded in actually making direct contact with the Doctor in that montage was in Snowmen.  Well, of course, and directing him to Sexy (which was probably just how Sexy wanted it).

So, it’s heavily implied that she cleaned up malignant possibilities from the GI’s own time/space splinter, but it was not shown.  And for that reason I say, the past can’t be re-written (in the sense of stories aired over the last 50 years cannot be changed retrospectively into being wins when they were originally defeats).

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot

Stop trying to eliminate River, LOL <stamps foot 😉 >

Yes, this could be her character’s ending but there’s plenty of scope to bring her back,  if the writers feel the need!

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@bluesqueakpip

Writing meta-refs

So does Moffat see himself as Clara – rewriting the show’s back story as and when required…?

🙂

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@scaryb @Shazzbot Yes, time was rewritten twice but, really, it was mucked up then reset to how it was and should be. She’s a walking BFB, hidden in plain sight 🙂

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@Shazzbot

And for that reason I say, the past can’t be re-written (in the sense of stories aired over the last 50 years cannot be changed retrospectively into being wins when they were originally defeats).

Agreed, but we don’t know if what we’ve seen in the series up till now is what actually happened or it’s the version that Clara “cleaned up” (with the implication that it might now not have happened exactly the way it did originally – ie any little inconsistencies in the canon backstory can now be explained as being the post Clara versions)

Agree no detail about HOW Clara managed the retconning, but then there isn’t any detail about what the GI actually did either (presumably for time and technical reasons). We are left to imagine it, but we see the effects – stars going out, Strax reverting to Sontaran nature, Jenny dying – the Wonderful Life moment. We’ve heard the jeering deep voice in the background since Eleventh Hour, heard how Kovarian etc thought the Dr was the evil monster. BUT is the Dr’s dark reputation down to the GI alone, or is it also down to the Hurt Dr?

Random thought – Was the dark Dr originally intended to be Eccleston but he wouldn’t play?

[Anonymous @]

@Shazzbot — I’m afraid I’m with @scaryb on this one. Time has been rewritten twice. Every one of the Doctor’s adventures has now been sabotaged by the GI and then repaired by Clara. I think the suggestion is that this is largely going on in the background with the Doctor oblivious to it happening — but not always. I think that means that we can’t assume that the stories now take place exactly as we’ve seen them before. There could be subtle — or massive — differences.

It’s a stroke of genius when you think about it. Moffatt has now essentially neutered all the continuity bores once and for all…

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

NOTHING needs to be canon any more

@scaryb – indeed. We’ve just seen canon blown apart. It didn’t happen that way in the Original Show? There weren’t any Dalek Survivors of Exxilon? Well, there are now. The GI and/or Clara rewrote it.

This is Moffat’s gift to the future producers; canon is now whatever they want it to be.

Dunno about ‘Clara Prime’ (not my idea, btw – don’t know who suggested that) – but I think we should now start calling the Production Team ‘Clara’ for short. 😈

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

The dropping of the flambeaux in the Tomb TARDIS seems to have some future significance.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@jimthefish

It’s a stroke of genius when you think about it. Moffatt has now essentially neutered all the continuity bores once and for all…

@bluesqueakpip

This is Moffat’s gift to the future producers; canon is now whatever they want it to be

Exactly. It was what I was thinking about when I originally suggested about a memories (as in the previous 50 years) upload but this is much cooler solution than the Dr being an insane dalek dreaming of being a timelord. Oops. Really excited about the audacity of this.

LOL – it might have neutred all the cb arguments, but I bet it doesn’t shut them up

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@wolfweed

The dropping of the flambeaux in the Tomb TARDIS seems to have some future significanc

That was very spotlit, wasn’t it? I was expecting a big fire to follow – really not very H&E conscious was it?!

There were other intriguing dangly bits – Clara mentions more than once to the Dr that they have done things before. Just before stepping into the timestream she says “I’ve always done it”

And there’s the jump from the Dr and Clara being in the Tardis (thro River’s secret entrance) to the Dr confronting Simeon outside, at the front doors. Clara doesn’t seem to be with him, she’s later seen beside the Paternoster Gang.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Interesting that Clara has presumably not cleaned up the Dr’s deaths that led to his regenerations.  Some things still have to happen; deaths are not always when you lose, sometimes they are the right thing to do, the thing you have to embrace in order to win.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@jimthefish – re the continuity bores – ha ha, don’t expect them to go quietly 😈

[SatsumaJoe @satsumajoe]

@scaryb Random thought – Was the dark Dr originally intended to be Eccleston but he wouldn’t play?

That’s very good. Could Tennant have done that?

About Gallifreyan Clara… she could have been the Corsair. Maybe Jim the Fish too. Maybe?

[Drwho @drwho]

When River says she knows the name of the doctor.. she does, everybody does, it is the doctor, people keep saying its something else but thats the name he chose,but what i dont get is why is rivers grave in trenzalore, I think its there because she is part time lord and trenzalore is the tomb of the time lords, and again was that the river that died at the libary, who knows, it will probebly explain more in the 50th, i heard the 50th is going to be massive and rose and tennant are comeing back so its going to be something big

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@satsumajoe No, I don’t think Tennant’s Dr is dark enough in the same way.

Gallifreyan Clara as the Corsair – Love it!!

 

[Drwho @drwho]

 I wonder what the synopsis of the 50th is, something about hurt being s doctor or something big because daleks and cybermen are coming back, along with tennant, rose, amy, rory, donna noble, martha and even the weeping angles

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@drwho River’s grave at Trenzalore is a fake; the Dr knows she can’t be buried there, because he knows how she “died”, in SitL. How it got there is a bigger question of course, though it could be put down to Clara’s influence, and general timeywimeyness – the “now” of this episode being overloaded with paradoxes, anything could happen. Re Clara’s comment about going into the Dr’s timestream – “I’ve always done it”

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@phaseshift

Thanks for posting that beautiful Troughton speech (sleep in my head) and the connection of 11 saying to River “a time to live and a time to sleep”

😥

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb —

Interesting that Clara has presumably not cleaned up the Dr’s deaths that led to his regenerations.  Some things still have to happen; deaths are not always when you lose, sometimes they are the right thing to do, the thing you have to embrace in order to win.

Very true. Of course, while the regenerations might be fixed, how they happen might not be. There’s nothing to say that Hartnell didn’t regenerate at the end of The Tenth Planet now, is there? It could have happened sooner than that or later. Or do we treat regenerations and when and how they happen as ‘fixed points’ in time…

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

Oh, @jimthefish– I think it was you who was concerned how Clara pointing the Doctor towards the right tardis diminishing what was said in TDW about them running away together- I’m pretty sure that when Clara told the Doctor he was about to make a terrible mistake, and should take this one instead, it’s because the GI had somehow interfered with his choice of tardis, and he was always supposed to take the one with the ‘knackered’ navigation system, because its sexy who always took him ‘where he needed to go’ rather than where he programed. And Clara was just undoing the GI altering it.

[Anonymous @]

@mipatrick — good point. I’m buying that…

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Dr Who was just slated by a few ‘Fans’ on Points of View. The usual Gruniad Troll arguments rose their ugly heads. The drama dept. reply mentions ‘Jenna Coleman’ (like her announcement @ the BAFTAs).

Hilariously cringeworthy!

Find it here in about 5 minutes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b020svzy

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@scaryb– in my defence, they were very big glasses 😉 !

[Anonymous @]

@wolfweed — thanks for the link but I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring myself to watch it…

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