The Magician’s Apprentice

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  • #43359
    bendubz11 @bendubz11

    right well i’m about to have my first rewatch, I shall report back later

    #43360
    idiotsavon @idiotsavon

    Hi @lisa 🙂 Thanks for that. I remember the dalek antibodies vaporising people – but don’t remember the daleks managing it. (Mind you, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast most days.)

    @brewski    I took a couple of screenshots, but don’t think I’m registered with a photo-sharing website, so can’t show you. If I can register somewhere without giving out my phone number and shoe size, I’ll upload them. If I’m looking at the same thing as you are though, I think it’s a floor light. The more transparent Missy becomes, the more we see the floor light – it looks very muck like some shiny contraption on her ankle – except it’s still there after she disappears.

    @blenkinsopthebrave  Ha ha, I’ll do my best…

    #43361
    PaperMoon @papermoon

    It’s great reading the different ideas people have come up with. It’s part of the fun of watching the new season.

    I agree with those who think the Doctor has a plan, or a plan in progress, which is more his style. In The Doctor’s Meditation, we see him spending his time with Bors not partying, but digging wells and building a visitor’s centre  – or, rather, getting the villagers to do it (loved how Bors explains that they don’t know what a sunroof is). He’s already seen boy Davros and is supposed to be meditating. I think he may have made the decision to go back and save Davros then (yes, I also think he will save Davros), and may have already done so before meeting adult Davros. The Doctor then creates anomalies in the timeline by introducing rock music, sunglasses, tanks and the word ‘dude’ to the locals in order to draw attention to where he is amongst all the ‘noise’ of the other anomalies so that he can be found. As soon as he is found Missy is pretty quick to move on the vortex manipulator and kidnaps Clara, essentially. The Doctor may have suspected she would do this, because he doesn’t seem surprised to see them there and together.

    My bonkers offering. There’s the Doctor’s cryptic question to Clara ‘Which one of us is dying?’, maybe it is Missy. I wonder if the CD Missy has is indeed the same one the Doctor gave to Ohila.

    A couple more things, that may be nothing. But if anybody has been derisive of the Doctor’s compassion it’s the Mixmaster, she has always seen it as his greatest weakness. Also, I forget, Clara got the Doctor’s number from a lady in a shop – was it a bookshop?

    #43362
    idiotsavon @idiotsavon

    @brewski   Here’s Missy being zapped.

     

    Missy gets zapped

     

    And here she’s very nearly disappeared. There’s still a light where her ankle was.

    #43363
    Brewski @brewski

    @idiotsavon

    Thank you so much for tracking that down.

    Pity it’s such an un-bonkers thing, though.  😀

    For a second I thought I had something!

    #43365
    bendubz11 @bendubz11

    @brewski you might still have something. Both exterminations were the standard blue light + skeleton, immediately followed by a red flash. The colour the vortex manipulators made earlier when they jumped to the Doctor? A red flash. Not to mention the fact that both of them still have the ones on their arms and I wouldn’t put it past Missy to have added a telepathic use option on hers.

    @idiootsavon love your idea about the magician being the Doctor with Davros as his apprentice, adds more meaning to Davros getting the screwdriver: the magician’s wand.

    Re – the Confession Dial: that has been tampered with a lot I reckon. not only is there the gap, which I agree was purposefully pointed towards Clara, but if you look just to the right of the gap you see it isn’t perfect circles. One of the bits is out of position. any ideas as to what that could mean?

    #43372
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @idiotsavon   Welcome back!

    When both Missy and Clara were zapped they became translucent and their skeletons showed in silhouette, which has traditionally been the effect when Daleks shoot people.  In the old days the glow faded and their was a body, but I can’t recall whether that has been the case more recently.  I have a feeling that in Into the Dalek those killed were vaporised, but I may be misremembering.

    This suggests that Missy and Clara were indeed killed, but it would be unlike Missy not to have a trick or two up her sleeve, even though she was initially very much disconcerted and alarmed and so, presumably, unprepared, when she realised that they had arrived on Skaro. However, after she has made her offer to the Daleks, she says  ‘Or would you rather just kill me?’ and poses, much in the same manner as she did in ‘Death in Heaven’ just before the cyber-Brig shot her, and even though she hasn’t bothered to explain how she escaped on that occasion, we can assume that she probably used a vortex manipulator to depart the scene at the last minute.  Clara screamed as she was being zapped, but whether in fear or surprise at finding herself transported from the scene remains to be seen.  So we for the moment we can suppose them, like Schroedinger’s cat, both alive and dead until observed in the next episode.

    The Doctor’s distress at witnessing these events leads us to suppose that he, at least, thinks that he has witnessed their deaths, or that of Clara at least.  On the other hand, his words in the final scene could be seen as ambiguous.  He says ”I’m going to save my friend in the only way I can’. But who is the ‘friend’ he is referring to?  Clara? Missy?  or, harking back to the Prologue, is it the enemy who is a friend he hasn’t got to know yet – i.e. Davros himself?

    Watch this space.

     

    #43373
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    @idiotsavon

    All this talk of the colours attendant upon the Dalek death rays–can it be explained by reference to Goethe’s theory of colour, perhaps?

    (Well, no, not being entirely serious…but it does have the makings of a great bonkers theory!)

     

    #43374
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    @mudlark

    Yes, I was thinking the same thing back at #43162.  I am convinced the friend he is going to save is Davros. And I also think what he will exterminate is Davros’s memory of being abandoned. How this will affect the older Davros, I am less clear about, but I suspect it will have the effect of affirming the Doctor’s core belief in compassion (which he is berating himself for momentarily abandoning, and which Davros wants him to reject). Davros being forced to question his own opposition to compassion is probably unlikely, but who knows with Moffat.

    #43375
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    @purofilion
    @bluepipsqueak

    I believe the series has shown that having seen the wonders of the universe with the Doctor, Clara will not be happy with just teaching and staying where she is. In the shared dream she had with the Doctor in Last Christmas, the older version of her tells the Doctor that she taught I believe in all the countries of Europe. I believe the dream part is that she would ever be content with domestic life with Danny stuck in one place or that she would constrain herself to Europe. Look how the series is portraying her: She would prefer to ride her motorcycle rather than be picked up by helicopter by UNIT. Look at the sheer joy she has when she rides her motorcycle right into the Tardis.

    Everything I am seeing about how Clara is being portrayed is telling me she isn’t going to completely survive by the end of her time with the Doctor. She is wild horses that must live free or die.

    #43376
    lisa @lisa

    @mudlark @blenkinsopthebrave

    As long as the Doctor thinks you are a ‘redeemable’ life form then yes, friend.
    However if in his judgement there isn’t any possibility for redemption then
    you are at that point still not necessarily an enemy but too dangerous to
    other life forms to be left unattended to. I don’t think the Doctor likes
    the idea of having enemies. Even his enemies are frenemies.
    So yes, I would tend to agree that he may have been referring to Darvos as
    the friend in the end scene.

    @papermoon Fairy tales are so different for kids today! When I was
    a kid there wee no sunroofs in my fairy tales. 🙂

    #43377
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @blenkinsopthebrave  I had a feeling that someone had already suggested that idea, but could not at the time of writing remember who. My apologies.  As the typos might suggest, I was posting in a hurry.

    I should also have acknowledged @jimbomcmaster for the Schroedinger’s cat reference but, again, I had a temporary lapse of memory.

    #43378
    SeventhHeaven @seventhheaven

    Hello all. First time I’ve been on here in a loooong time after being a little underwhelmed by Capaldi’s first season.

    Now THIS is more like it. Wonderful episode, and a worthy successor to Genesis.

    For me, the Big Finish audio plays featuring Davros are one of the highlights of the entire Whoniverse and the interplay between Davros and the Doctor had a very similar vibe to the Colin Baker/Terry Molloy dynamic in those plays. Interestingly, in the audios, Davros himself considers the Doctor his only friend. I’d love to see that explored in part two with a Moffatt twist.

    #43379
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    @mudlark

    Good heavens, no need to apologise. I was thrilled that you were thinking along the same lines. And as my very many typos on these pages may suggest, an addled brain.

    #43380
    ichabod @ichabod

    @papermoon   There’s the Doctor’s cryptic question to Clara ‘Which one of us is dying?’, maybe it is Missy.

    I don’t think Missy is being referenced here; she hasn’t been greeted yet by CapDoc, and the conversation is still jus between Clara and CapDoc.  The question, “Which one of us is dying?” is asked by Clara, not the Doctor; and his response, that hug, is far from reassuring.  He’s not just hugging her; he’s swaying a little, swaying them both, from side to side, as you do when comforting someone — when you’re cradling someone who’s in trouble in your arms, but standing up.  I’m reading this as his answer: “You are, you poor darling and it makes me feel terrible, but I don’t want you to feel badly too, so ‘A hug is a great way to hide your face’,” and he does.

    And I don’t think this refers to what I think is a faked death in the scene with Davros at the end of TMA.  I think he knows a good deal about Clara’s exit from the story, and *that’s* what’s got him so upset (this is a huge pivot away from the flashy bravado of the arena scene up until this point — and which he then resumes in his greeting to Missy; so it really stands out for me).

    I wonder if the CD Missy has is indeed the same one the Doctor gave to Ohila.

    Or whether it’s been tampered with since Ohila took it.

     

    @mudlark  He says ”I’m going to save my friend in the only way I can’. But who is the ‘friend’ he is referring to? Clara? Missy? or, harking back to the Prologue, is it the enemy who is a friend he hasn’t got to know yet – i.e. Davros himself?

    Good reminder, thank you!  Could well be.  Looking back, the whole Missy/Clara/Tardis Extermination looks staged to me — by Davros, or Missy, or the Doctor himself — for purposes as yet unknown.  We have this thing where Clara rebukes the Doctor for plainly having known for some time that MixMaster didn’t die, and he apologizes; but his having known that and kept it a secret opens up time for a lot of devious planning to set up this new confrontation on Skaro, for whatever purpose(s).

    #43382
    ichabod @ichabod

    @brewski  “Davros remembers” what the Doctor did to him. He allowed him to live that awful life. Curse his compassion!

    Brilliant, brewski!  I love it!

    @phamlore  It might have been perfect to have some countdown occurring appearing to be for the Doctor’s demise but instead to wind up being Clara’s, perhaps her time being up so that she would have to disappear back into the timestream to be the Impossible Girl.

    That’s one resolution for Clara that hasn’t been mentioned — it would be a new way to do it, and to not actually kill her off . . . I never “got” the Impossible Girl concept (it just didn’t work for me — what does being “born to save the Doctor” even mean?  Who arranged that, born to what mother, what what what?) or the predictably virtuous Clara that embodied it (rather than the angry, impulsive Clara of S8).  But I could see absorption back into the Doctor’s time stream as a workable ending for Clara enitire.

    #43383
    ichabod @ichabod

    @purofilion  @bluesqueakpip  It is worrisome to me that Clara other than her teaching has no life outside of her travels with the Doctor.  What other life is she supposed to have that we’d see? 

    Exactly, IMO, the kind of “other life” that was completely omitted for Danny, which made him a nonviable character for so many viewers who have posted quite passionately about it all over the net.  Danny didn’t really come alive in a meaningful way until “Dark Water”, for me, and then it was all about being pulled through to the end if DiH.  I’ve suggested before that what was needed to make Danny real enough, during his normal life, to carry the weight of truly being Clara’s beloved alternative to life with CapDoc, was just a scene or two suggesting that he *did* have “other life” besides the classroom, and mooning over Clara.

    Some possibilities (for Danny), small scenes NOT with Clara or schoolkids in them:

    A therapist trying to help with his PTSD, where maybe Dannt hesitantly mentions this young woman he’s met.

    An old mate from the Army and Danny in a pub, played out in any one of a dozen ways — still “other life”.

    A (now grown) kid from his orphanage contacts Danny, or they run into each other by accident.

    Danny visits the orphanage, in whatever state its in, runs into someone from those days there.

    And so on.  The point is just to give the character a bit of an anchor point in the rest of their current experience, which then validates the idea that the character is “real” and has had an actual life before getting all tangled up with (Clara) and dominated by concerns about her.

    So I dislike the implication that Clara has a “little life” -that “simple teaching” isn’t sufficient unless you have a relationship with a male. In fact as someone who once worked in impoverished areas (at least 26 yrs ago, now) it peeves me to tears that this would be considered second best, somehow or insufficient

    But even here, puro, why couldn’t we see Clara excitedly telling a kid from her class that the kid has been accepted into an advanced class in science or something, or getting a commendation or award or proposed promotion because of her excellent work at the school, or Clara sitting with her grandmother in a tea shop and talking over an offer to do some teacher training for work at Coal Hill — it doesn’t have to be “other life” somewhere else, only other *meaningful dimensions* to her normal earth life; like why it’s so rewarding (and rewarded) that she’s sticking with it even in the (painful) absence of Danny.

    @idiotsavon  Yes, it’s challenging to keep up, now that we have the new series.  Nice Goethe shoehorn, by the way; do keep ’em coming!

     

     

    #43384
    Mudlark @mudlark

    @ichabod   I agree that when the Doctor hugs Clara it seems to be about more than the feelings of guilt and shame which she detects in him.  There were too many hints last season that he knew what was in store for her and that her time might be short.  Maybe this is what he foresaw, but I doubt it.

    I am also with you in feeling that Danny never really came alive for me as a character, nor did his relationship with Clara convince prior to his death.  Maybe it was partly a lack of ‘chemistry’ between the actors, but I suspect that it was more to do with the constraints placed upon the writers.  As it was, the ARSE brigade were up in arms about the time devoted to Clara and her life beyond the Tardis, and any time spent developing it more fully would only have provoked them further.

    At least in AG Who the background of the companions is fleshed out to some degree.  In the days of BG Who, the companions arrived with a more or less sketchy back story, spent however long it was travelling non-stop with the Doctor, then departed to pursue other interests or, as in the case of Sarah Jane, to a life haunted by feelings of abandonment.

    #43389
    Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip

    @ichabod

    Exactly. It’s almost like Danny – and Clara – have been artificially inserted into the timestream.

    Though we have seen Clara be concerned over a pupil (Courtney), feeding her charges when she was nannying and generally getting very involved in her work. But you don’t get the little glimpses that you did with Amy and Rory. Amy’s various jobs, Rory on his Stag Night, both of them having a barbecue with mates, the pair of them out shopping: all the times when they were doing ordinary stuff and the Doctor turns up.

    Likewise, moving out to Sherlock, we see Watson with his psychiatrist, Sherlock’s parents, discover Mycroft cannot stand Les Miserables, hear more and more of Mrs Hudson’s increasingly dubious past, etcetera.

    Moffat can do this: with ease. So why didn’t he with Danny? Why doesn’t he with Clara?

    It’s easy to guess why he hasn’t given Clara a life outside work, family and the Doctor: realistically, teachers in inner city schools don’t have a life outside work – at least during term time 😉

    Unrealistically, she has been (self?)inserted into the time-stream; she’s the Impossible Girl. She is, I would suggest, not anchored into normal life except insofar as she’s self-anchored. She inserted herself into her parents’ lives; she interacts with her father and his family. She inserted herself into her various jobs; she interacts with the adults and children at work. She pretty much inserted herself into Danny’s life.

    That’s probably why she’s so impossibly, oddly competent in whatever situation she finds herself. Leader of punishment platoon against Cybermen? Check. Member of Victorian Paternoster Gang? Fine. Valued UNIT officer? Okay. English teacher? Yup. Maid Marian substitute who can hold her own against the Sheriff of Nottingham, The Prince of Thieves AND the Last of the Time Lords? No problem.

    But for how long can the paradox be maintained? I’d agree that the Doctor looked stricken when Clara asked him ‘Which one of us is dying?’ If you insert a living being into a time-stream, someone who should never have existed, how long will they live?

    Possibly, like all those Claricles, precisely as long as they’re needed.

    #43390
    Anonymous @

    Welcome back @idiotsavon.

    Does exterminating people make them disappear? Don’t they just light up a bit and then fall down?

    That’s what I always remember happening, like Captain Jack.  I didn’t think of that before, but now the Daleks using ‘maximum extermination’ makes sense. It makes the bodies disappear and maybe it could do the same to the Tardis.  It’s much better than thinking they just didn’t want to be called wimps. 🙂

    Someone mentioned a reason for the Doctor introducing tanks, dude, and guitar solos to medieval England, sorry I can’t find who said it.  It created big disturbances in history so Missy and Clara could find him.

    Maybe the Doctor didn’t intend to be found, but it’s still a good explanation for how they did find him.  Just like Missy used airplanes to get found by unit.  So it wasn’t Moffat wanting to be OTT like some people say, but instead of just rule of cool, it was important to the plot.

    #43391
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod

    I didn’t quite see what you or Pip meant here, but I understand better now.  You’re effectively suggesting that we don’t see more of Clara’s normal life?  An extension beyond this: coffee with a girlfriend (like Martha chatting with people despite the utterly manic life of a med student in a busy London hospital), chatting more on the telephone with her family, talking with someone after school or having a Friday drink at pub after work (something full time teachers tend to do here, at any rate)

    Here:

    getting a commendation or award or proposed promotion because of her excellent work at the school, or Clara sitting with her grandmother in a tea shop and talking over an offer to do some teacher training for work at Coal …” ****

    The latter part is what you’re arriving at and I honestly say I didn’t notice. And that’s interesting (not my lack of observation: that’s typical!)  -that her life was full with Danny and as the Impossible Girl ultimately.

    But the first part in bold pisses me off a bit. (****this is just my personal itch I keep scratching -I’m not having a go at you!! – I wouldn’t!).  I’m speaking for most state school teachers (and I’ve worked at uni too and at private schools for a hellish 18 month period too many years ago to count) who are pretty offended by the idea of commendations and awards for teaching. Other professionals don’t really achieve awards or commendations for doing a job (but yes, that landscape is changing gradually too!).

    There are occasional ‘almost-comps’ now, where teachers receive a popularised award organised by students and supported by individual principals or, more appropriately, commendation after serving actively for 35 years in the Torres Strait, for example, and retiring after choosing not to apply for transfers to city schools after the allotted 4 year period (it was once two years in country and the definition of what ‘country’ is, has altered).

    Teaching in Inala, Parkridge and Kingston in Brisbane are as difficult as working ‘ upstate’ where the points per year for working in impoverished areas are just a little lower than the Torres Strait and in certain parts of Northern QLD bordering South Australia or the NT.

    But that’s a bug bear of mine although I recognise now that more ‘awards’ are being given (gradually it’s infecting other professions -part of that horrible word incentivisation!). A promotion to Head of Department require months in acting Head of Teaching roles with aspirations to ultimately manage -most HODs are budget managers and paper filers though they still teach 1 or 2 senior classes.

    Indeed, though, could Clara be seeking promotion to Head of English, say? Possibly. We’d no way of knowing from the tiny bits of her life we see although calling the children Gifted and Talented, as she valiantly tried, could be her way of an ‘in’ -finding a budgetary consideration to start a G&T class from Year 7 and moving it along to early senior: let’s assume she was doing this (although to the Doctor she explained “it made them feel good”) – -which is daft if you actually have particular qualifications in that area; in that you’d know the statement to the Doctor wouldn’t actually work in helping the children in any material way -eg, Ruby’s comment- – it would take every hour of every weekend to ensure it worked on paper. Help and ‘stamps’ from Heads of Curriculum and Teaching and Learning (I think it’d be similar in the UK?) would be required before budgets be allocated.

    You’re both right, though, in that Clara isn’t doing a lot beyond this role. Is there ample suggestion for why she isn’t engaging with life in a way that is more ‘normal’ or expected.

    So, both Dan and Clara were teachers -not heads, nor in charge of a specialised area. If she’d been there for only two years, becoming acquainted with individual policies, particular students, the annoying Heads of Curric. etc would be more than enough to keep her flapping like a headless chicken, I think, for a considerable time.

    But I remember, very clearly, saying this about 1 year ago: when Clara came home from work, you could see her entry areas: shoes, brollies, coats, bookshelves etc. She’d come in and stand at the window looking out at the bright moon whilst her apartment was vaguely dark (and it would be). So, she’d be returning later at night -working back, marking, returning from an adventure with the Doctor. This particular memory is not just from the Moon adventure but from others. I had the distinct impression then, that Clara’s life wasn’t embedded sufficiently in a more normal, adult way. I can’t express it – I lack that easy adaptability to express these discrete feelings that you all have, but I’m queasy about Clara -as if the story beyond her original role isn’t finished.

    Unless this really was one companion who was satisfied and busy enough with the Doctor, with Danny and with work at Coal Hill -those 3 things alone would be generally enough. But you have girlfriends, no?

    And so where are they? I think you’re right, ichi and Pip that there’s more to this: Moffat can write these additions in a way that implies a life of layers and customs which just isn’t there for Clara.

    So it’s a very good point.

    @bluesqueakpip:

    Exactly. It’s almost like Danny – and Clara – have been artificially inserted into the timestream. 

    Such an artificial insertion  beyond the Imposs Girl arc could then suggest a closure for the Dan/Orson ‘link’ or it might beg the question that the Imposs Girl was not the only engagement Clara had. The Doctor thought it was -or did he? He was always reading books on quantum theories -when Clara visited him on the road, driving straight into the Tardis as @jphamlore says.

    Anyway, I’m punished for being disagreeable because now my Sony DVDplayer is screwed up and has chewed up S2 of Newsroom . Ye Gawds!!

    #43392
    Anonymous @

    @ichabod so let’s assume that this itch I had last year was right: Clara’s darkened room, her listlessness at times (unless I imagined she was listless without the Doctor) and her teaching as the only part of her life beyond the Doctor -seen very carefully in the anniversary ep (what if that distracted us from something else about why she was there? Why she chose teaching,  in fact?). Did it carry on from nannying, from being a carer of the Doctor for all those centuries in different times and on different planets? But like a butterfly emerging and leaving her ‘home’ forever, has Clara transformed again?

    Is this Clara a claricle too? I know I suggested this last year along with loads of others but it seemed this  segment was definitely over after The Name of the Doctor.

    He rescued her. Also, we assume all those chalkboard notations signify calculations for Gallifrey’s cup-a-soup.

    Combine, in Listen, the Doctor’s conjecture and answer phases about ‘hiding in plain sight’ and putting aside his dream about the foot, is he thinking Clara is hiding something she doesn’t know? Or something is hiding in Clara? Did something organise Dan’s death  -but not Missy? Did this something need Clara to be on her own, without distractions? Without distractions, she focuses on the Doctor and this is necessary for the Doctor’s enemy or friend?

    I remember saying the dial was counting down to something yesterday. Is this connected as well?

    Of course, maybe Clara and Missy are the Flesh or both helpful zygons stored in the ‘confused’ room below the Tower where workers memories are wiped each day. Clara thinks she’s Clara but she’s a Zygon. Not so sure if you can zygonate a Missy!

    Anyway, these questions are useless if I’m not attempting to answer them and I can’t! I can ask with the best of you but I just can’t unravel the riddle of Clara.

    Kindest, puro.

    #43393
    Anonymous @

    @barnable

    I think your reason for why the Doctor used his “OTT” behaviour (and of course Moffat must be blamed for this!) is absolutely clever: to be noticed (as Clara said: “we’re looking for a party”) and to be found FAST. 🙂

    Interesting that in Rose’s story with Tennant as Tennant is having  a ‘dialogue’ with what appears to be the devil, he says, “there’s one thing I’m certain of, and that’s Rose”. I believe the Doctor chooses his companions very carefully (or they choose him!) and so the faith he extends to Rose, is extended to Clara. After all, he is indebted to both, each in their way, and with his needs: with Tennant at Bad Wolf and with Smithy, as the Imposs Girl in response to the GI’s fatal tricks.

    So getting back to Clara and Missy as puppeteer: she organised their meeting which ensured the Doctor stayed alive (in all 12 iterations) and saved Gallifrey, along with The Moment. Clara begged the TLs to help the Doctor and they answered her and imbued him with a whole clockwork of new regens.

    What else is Clara to do? Is it a primarily final declaration (the hug) -the fact Clara has never been a Prime  (as it were) and that here, she’s to die as always, saving the Doctor.

    On that note, she has. Just last week. But is there a plan later for her death which is unexpected, not related to the Daleks and are the Doctor’s calculations picking up some variation in her existence which he believes is coming to a final end?  Would he sacrifice himself? Hence the Confession Dial.

    I like how you and others mentioned the dial as a chameleon arched creation. I liked how it could be a multi-purpose object.

    @bluesqueakpip:  I said it all in about 2999 words and you said it in less than 10! …If she’s a claricle, then her time is up at some point! And this is what the Doctor fears? Can he now prevent this? Would it mean a pre-emptive regen?

    Anyway, I’ve been wittering for hours now. Time to step away and wait.

    #43394
    ichabod @ichabod

    @bluesqueakpip  If you insert a living being into a time-stream, someone who should never have existed, how long will they live?  Possibly, like all those Claricles, precisely as long as they’re needed.

    Whoo, that is *cold*.  But yes, I can see it.  It could work, and be quite horrible — if Clara has never *been* anything other than a pawn in a game played by others.  “Clara, my Clara, you never were real, you were never meant to have a truly human life, and that made you all the more precious to me . . . And now our time is over . . . ”  Ow, ow, ow.  It’s that damned leaf.  It just rankles, somehow.

    @barnable  Someone mentioned a reason for the Doctor introducing tanks, dude, and guitar solos to medieval England, sorry I can’t find who said it. It created big disturbances in history so Missy and Clara could find him.

    I thought he looked pretty surprised to see the two of them up on the wall there, looking in.  But then he immediately swung into action as if there was no need to stop and think or ask questions, just starting with a flourish the closing down of his interlude in Bors’ village.  So he might have been prepared for their appearance.  I find the whole arena thing perfectly in character for him, as his “all of me” self, not the more tightly focused CapDoc of S8, so it could go either way.

    @purofilion  Sorry, had no idea about the “rewards” system you describe — God, what a mess we all keep making of our efforts to get kids educated!  Part of the Problem of Clara, for me, is that she doesn’t seem to *have* any ambition.  It’s as if she’s just marking time at Coal Hill, but without any other context than — marking time, alone and unconnected to anyone but Danny, and that only as a counter-magnet to life with CapDoc.

    Anyway, these questions are useless if I’m not attempting to answer them and I can’t! I can ask with the best of you but I just can’t unravel the riddle of Clara.

    No one can, but isn’t it delicious to try?  And questions aren’t useless; I think they do fine, keep us all strung out til we start getting some answers Sat. night!

     

    #43395
    ichabod @ichabod

    @purofilion  If she’s a claricle, then her time is up at some point! And this is what the Doctor fears? Can he now prevent this? Would it mean a pre-emptive regen?

    Maybe something like that — but with a different outcome (CapDoc remains CapDoc despite it?).  I remember that they’ve been saying something happens that will make us “think again about the whole idea of regeneration”, in some way.  Can he give her one of *his* new regenerations (all of which she got for him, from the TLs) in some way, only — instead of dying, she regenerates, just this once, into a version of herself that is cut off from him in some definitive way, but at least not dead?

    Only — now?  Right at the beginning?  Or, only to be resolved later on in S9?  My head is spinning.  At this rate I will be a proper pudding (entirely, not just brain) by Sat. night.  Surely this level of engagement should be reserved for  Great Aht.  Ha.  No time for it.  I just want to know *what happens next*!!!

    #43405
    wolfweed @wolfweed

    A brief pop in to let youse all ken…

    music isolated – Listen to the splendid music from TMA…

    Sadly it looks like Capaldi won’t be appearing on tonight’s Graham Norton any more (boo-hoo!). But – there will be an

    unscheduled repeat – an omnibus of the 1st 2 episodes (TMA & TWF) which airs in the UK on Sunday…

    Sorry. I have no time for speculation or review. Remember that Clara’s vortex manipulator is slaved to Missy’s, though…

    Can’t wait for tomorrow night!

    #43406
    Missy @missy

    @wolfweed

    Thanks for the music isolated video. Marvellous. I’m assuming that Murray Gold wrote this?

    #43407
    Brewski @brewski

    @ichabod

    Aw shucks, thanks.  🙂  But I can only enjoy it until tomorrow when I turn out to be wrong again.  Lol

    @blenkinsopthebrave

    But Moffat’s Doctor DOES say to the Weeping Angels that you never ever put him in a trap “if you value your continued existence. ”

    Of course he may have been bluffing…

    #43408
    lisa @lisa

    I was painting yesterday and while mixing paint colors I was also mixing in
    some Doctor. It occurred to me that Missy wears purple. There is a lot of
    careful color assignment in the series especially blue and red (and pink is a
    little bit of red). So purple is the color when mixing blue and red. Maybe
    its another clue. BTW, I watched Amy’s choice the other day and when she is
    pregnant she is wearing red and blue. I thought that was odd. since that was
    River she was pregnant with.
    About being a claricle, I’m thinking that Clara went into the time stream
    in the Name of the Doctor but it was 1 of the claricles that come back out.
    Which of course means this is not ‘original’ Clara we are watching now. That
    might account for the personality differences.

    #43409
    lisa @lisa

    Also, the time in Dark Water when Clara says “Clara Oswald never existed”! That clearly
    felt to me like she wasn’t the original version.

    #43410
    PaperMoon @papermoon

    @lisa to be honest, I thought Moffat intended as a joke and that’s how I took it. 🙂

    @ichabod darn, I thought it was the Doctor who said it. Never mind, I still think there’s the possibility that there are two disks, or, as you say, Missy has tampered with it. I wonder how Ohila managed to get it to Missy? Maybe that’s just irrelevant, we just need to know it did get to her.

    @barnable it was me who suggested that. 🙂

    As to the general discussion about Danny and Clara, I’ve also wondered if there is more to the story than meets the eye. I found Danny interesting because we had Danny, Rupert and Orson. Why introduce them, what was their purpose in the story? There are the links with the Doctor – Rupert a scared child, Danny the Soldier and Orson the time-traveler that might suggest aspects of the Doctor and the link between them and the Doctor is Clara and the toy soldier. I think it was @ichabod, my apologies if not, who pointed out another link between the Doctor and Danny – we have the Doctor (possibly) saving boy Davros just as Danny saved the Afghani boy.

    @purofilion I like your suggestion that this Clara is a Claricle (I was never really convinced that the time-stream story was finished but for my own reasons). So, does this then mean that the Great Intelligence is also somewhere in the Doctor’s time-stream and not destroyed as Madam Vastra assumed?

     

    #43411
    lisa @lisa

    @papermoon Yes! agreed its SM’s joke. But jokes generally correspond
    to observations on facts.

    #43412
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    The Doctor is the magician, Clara I speculate is his familiar.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar_spirit

    She is a ghost in the machine who hacked the multiverse. At least this spirit is friendly.

    Davros could be the magician’s apprentice. In another life, he could have been something akin to the Doctor only creating a police force of Daleks that would have enforced order and peace and not destruction and war. That is why I think the Doctor will find a way for someone else (himself) to assume Boy Davros’ future role, to save the time-space continuum, but will allow Boy Davros to have his own life. Boy Davros could be raised by either Clara and Danny in the Nethersphere or by Amy and Rory.

    From time to time even in the classic series Dr. Who had hints of the multiverse. Well there was the entire storyline of Inferno. Also the Fourth Doctor in Pyramids of Mars was able to take Sarah to an alternate future where Sutekh the Destroyer had broken free and devastated the universe again including Earth. The more years Dr. Who accumulates, the more likely it seems to me the Doctor will become an explorer not just of time and space but times and spaces, the multiverse. And he will meet creatures who live in this multiverse.

    #43414
    Mersey @mersey

    As an afterfought I must say I’m not sure about this turnaround with Davros. I know that time is a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff but I don’t like when they mess with the past so crudely (?).

    I’ve never been much of a Master fan, but I must say, Michelle Gomez as Missy has my full support. Can she become even more exciting chracter than the Doctor is?

    @purofilion Thank you for your kind words. I’m not exactly new here. The whole last season I had read your comments before I wached the episode, but as the headline states your theories are really more insane and sometimes even more interesting than what’s actually happening, so after all I felt a litte bit disappointed with what’s actually happening. And I have watched Doctor Who for years.

    #43417
    blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave

    Well, with only a day to go, I confess to getting a trifle nervous about how SM will follow up TMA. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether we are being set up for a massive change to everthing we know about the Doctor/Davros/Daleks.

    I realise that I have nailed my colours to the mast in predicting that the Doctor will save his new friend, Davros, but what are the implications of that, I wonder?(assuming I am right in my predictions, which I never am).

    I have enormous respect for Moffat as a writer, but I do think he has made mistakes in the past; and with reference to the Daleks, the worst must have been trying to kill off the classic Daleks and replace them with the United Colours of Benetton Daleks back in season 5. But he has progressively back-tracked on that, to the point where they no longer appear.

    So, I do hope he doesn’t do something similar with the Doctor/Davros relationship.

    But then, I wouldn’t be so nervous if I wasn’t so tremendously excited about tomorrow’s episode!

    #43418
    Anonymous @

    @blenkinsopthebrave

    Oh I so agree with you: one gets nervous when watching something written by someone we love and are familiar with. The writer’s like one of the family. Same when I pick up a book by a favourite author and I wonder: “will it be as good as the last one?” I assuage any nerves by checking reviews (with one eye closed) and then am determined to make up own mind.

    I think it will be great (giggles nervously!)

    For us (sigh) it’s tomorrow… night.

    @mersey (love the new avatar: very ‘universey’ and abstract’). Yes, I agree with you, theories can be devastated when the simple answer appears, takes 1 minute to be waved away, and then all those amazingly crafted ideas fly out the window.Still, we keep doing it. It’s human nature, I suppose. I hope you’re enjoying this new series and will stick around  🙂

    @papermoon -good theory, then! And it makes sense that the Doctor, having an outrageous party, will want to be found by the two people he needs the most.

    @jphamlore: I agree. It would be wonderful: I think disappearing into the “in between spaces of universes was relatively simple” according to Tennant’s Doctor during 06 -of course that’s the season in which his beloved Rose ends up there -and it’s well foregrounded. The TLs could fly between ‘spaces’ when they controlled time.

    “The more years Dr. Who accumulates, the more likely it seems to me the Doctor will become an explorer not just of time and space but times and spaces, the multiverse. And he will meet creatures who live in this multiverse

    #43419
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    @blenkinsopthebrave Fear not, I am certain what has already been observed in the time line must take place. But what Dr Who has shown is that these observed events are roles. Just as it was observed that the Doctor appeared to be killed by River Song in a space suit, so must that act be played out. But that does not necessarily mean the Doctor is dead. Thus my speculation that when Davros comments to the Doctor that he approved of the Doctor’s new face, that is a foreshadowing that the Doctor could in an act of stupendous sacrifice use a huge part of the Capaldi Doctor’s lifespan, perhaps before he is about to regenerate, to take the place of Boy Davros and play the role of Davros throughout history up to the events of this arc.

    Think about how many times Davros has apparently been killed. He was supposedly shot by the original Daleks back in Genesis of the Daleks before he was able to push the destruct button. He was attacked by the virus that was produced to kill the Daleks. It is as if Davros suspiciously has the power to regenerate.

    The number of murders Davros commits is also far less than the number his Daleks do. Actually for most of Davros’ appearances his Daleks are in rebellion against him. Davros disappeared at the start of the Time War. Some deaths Davros did commit were for example the people on whom he tested the reality bomb in Journey’s End. But perhaps we have been shown the Capaldi Doctor can be a bit callous towards those he believes are fated to die.

    It would be quite a parallel to what the Doctor appeared to be doing for Clara in Death in Heaven when he offered to execute Missy instead of Clara having Missy’s blood on her hands. Could the Doctor be prepared to take the blood off the hands of the future of the Boy Davros?

    #43420
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    @purofilion The Doctor appears to have been shown reading books on quantum mechanics. These days in the popularization of quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics is linked to the many worlds theory and the multiverse. (I’m not saying that is what the science necessarily says, after all, I know very little about quantum mechanics. I am just saying that’s what popularizations of quantum mechanics are telling the public.)

    Although I must admit to being partial towards another path, incorporating elements from the movie Interstellar, especially the at least remotely possible science fiction elements explained by Caltech’s Kip Thorne. Imagine a future civilization that has extended itself into an extra space dimension, the extra space dimension that helps determine gravity (extra space referred to as the bulk). This civilization also is able to create structures along the dimension of time such as the Tesseract they constructed for Cooper inside the black hole Gargantua’s singularity. This civilization is the science fiction equivalent of Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, a civilization that has transcended space and time to where it can reach back and influence events to ensure its own creation.

    #43421
    Anonymous @

    @jphamlore

    I’ve never seen Interstellar. But I’m sure you’re right

    #43422
    jphamlore @jphamlore

    @purofilion You have to see the movie Interstellar some time. 🙂 Once one gets past the early scenes with all the corn fields, the movie becomes this generation’s version of the movie 2001.

    Besides, the special effects and quite a bit of the science were made in the UK. I am sure the BBC has the connections to achieve similar effects for television at a reasonable price tag.

    #43423
    PhaseShift @phaseshift
    Time Lord

    Oh well, my plan for a couple of rewatches (and a long weekend) came to naught in the end. I’ve just managed a second watch to prepare myself for later (by reading all these posts). A few thoughts:

    There is an awful lot of mirroring going on in this episode, continuing the themes of last year. I’d suspect that Clara is both the apprentice and the familiar of the titles and that the distinction is down to one of whom the words are paired against. How the relationship between Clara, Doctor and Missy works.

    By which I mean that Apprentice is a nurturing description. A Master of his trade will take on an apprentice to give them his knowledge and experience (his perspective) to grow into another Master. It continues the Clara is becoming more like the Doctor storyline. The Apprentice would also take on the smaller tasks unworthy of the Master craftsman.

    Looked at this way, UNIT calling on Clara makes sense. She’s the apprentice working out if the Magician is needed. She’s in a position of trust. She’s also showing signs of her ‘growth’ towards the Doctor. I can’t help but feel that Kate focusing on the people in the plane would have been a Clara in series 7b. Here she’s moved past that to the fuel and the potential ramifications of disaster. As they said in Flatline last year (and surely every triage Doctor would agree) “sometimes it just comes down to numbers”.

    A familiar, though, is something to be used. The frog, the cat.. A puppy. It serves its Master or Mistress as a slave. There is nothing nurturing about the experience. No expectation of advancement.

    The titles are a pretty good summary of how the Doctor and Master see others full stop, I think.

    I think I mentioned a while ago I thought series 8 had an arc about how this Doctor was struggling with the notion of compassion in his question of ” am I a good man?”. The team up of Missy and the Cybermen being a dream team for that. Davros and the Daleks seem a natural continuation of that with a different emphasis.

    Right -off to read your posts.

    #43424
    Anonymous @

    @jphamlore

    Any film that costs above 40 million I tend to avoid: which I why I don’t see films. The last film I liked cost $7000 to film and produce.

    So, I do worry: I know that Scarlett Johansson in an interview with the execrable Jonathan Rhys Meyers said that “paying 10 bucks for a ticket is great escapism” but it needs to be more nowadays. Mind you, I like Woody’s films and his are no longer cheap.

    I’ll give it a go 🙂

    @phaseshift

    It concerned me a little that Kate’s shock about the fuel in the planes was a little dim witted? Why would someone so concerned with the safety of earth, be surprised and think “gosh, why didn’t I think of that?”

    Similarly the other UNIT members fearful of Missy’s 3D tactics ‘out of the screen,’ should have been less surprised. The surprise was left to us: it was quite frightening enough. I think we would need to trust UNIT -that (mostly) they would keep clear heads.

    But I enjoyed it overall: any disparagements about Over the Top Behaviours during the opening are put down to the unique genre, that is Who, as well as logically, the Doctor creating a scene to encourage Missy and Clara to find him. Also, he hardly ever stays put. I recall Smithy in the Van Gogh episode sitting thru a painting and complaining about time “standing still.” If he can’t find distractions, he goes a little potty!

    #43426
    PaperMoon @papermoon

    Ok, one last bonkers theory before tonight’s episode. We have a medieval arena and Colony Sarf comes in and throws down the sonic screwdriver – I thought of it as a kind of throwing down the gauntlet, a challenge to the Doctor. But, what if the Doctor saved boy Davros and now adult Davros, who is dying, wants to return the favour and help the Doctor. Which, perhaps, makes Missy the baddie. Yes, I know it’s more likely that it is Missy who is helping the Doctor, but I’ve been watching the show since the 70’s and can’t help but trust the Mixmaster as far as I can throw her, it’s instinct by now, lol.

    #43428
    PhaseShift @phaseshift
    Time Lord

    @juniperfish

    The Maldovarium is a Star Wars tribute, from beginning to end, as has been pointed out before, so perhaps this is the Who version of “Did Solo or Greedo shoot first?”

    Good call. It’s funny that SMs touchstone 50th century time period does really have that vibe of Star Wars (the Demons Run set in A Good Man Goes to War being another one – it screamed Empire architecture). I suppose there is that link of sci-fi fantasy fairytale. Boy meets wizard, gets magic sword and embarks on quest to free a princess from the fortress of the dark wizard.

    As to the Greedo question, George Lucas definitely agrees that time can be rewritten. 🙂

    @bluesqueakpip

    I was really slow last weekend. Took me ages to get the pun with Colony Sarff (Sarff, welsh for serpent in plural form). A colony of snakes to deliver the Doctor to a nest of vipers. Loved the tone setting scene for SM.

    @missy

    No Doctor Who Prom this year I’m afraid. The Proms are obliged to mix up the schedule so I think next year or year after is more likely.

    Ben Foster has been touring with the music though with the Symphony spectacular, and that’s a good thing if you find it difficult to get to London (and I’ve never been able to get tickets to any Prom I’ve wanted to attend).

    The 2015 tour of UK and Oz has completed and it looks likely the next tour will increase the number of countries.

    #43429
    PhaseShift @phaseshift
    Time Lord

    @denvaldron @fatmaninabox

    Skarro got blowed up in Remembrance of the Daleks. Not shimmy shammied, not catapulted into another dimension. It actually got blowed up, by Davros himself, falling into the Doctor’s trap with a stellar manipulator. Very kablam. It got better?

    Ah? You mean you haven’t come across the ‘official’* explanation for this? You, and other fans of bonkers theories have missed out. See if you can follow the logic of this one:

    – The Daleks learned about the destruction of Skaro when they invaded in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
    – Foreknowledge let them develop a cunning plan to outwit the Manipulative Seventh Doctor.
    – They go back to Skaro and unearth Davros.
    – They cart him off to another planet which they terrorform to look like Skaro, and bury him in a replica ruined Dalek city they’ve built.
    – They create an entire false war with the Movellans (who they created) to kill some time while they wait for the Doctor to arrive. You know, because that’s what the Doctor does.
    – When he does they launch a staged excavation to retrieve Davros to convince both him and the Doctor that they are on Skaro. Davros needs to believe to “sell” this scenario to The Doctor.
    – The Doctor, who has never got to Skaro intentionally, thinks he now has the location down pat, and years later launches the hand of Omega at the wrong star destroying the faux Skaro. The real Skaro survives.

    Now, you may chortle and consider this a fetid pile of Dingo’s Kidneys, but that didn’t stop John Peel (no, not that one) from using this in his Eighth Doctor novel War of the Daleks (subtitled Well that about wraps it up for common sense). There are so many ways to call this ridiculous that, guess what? People did.

    * Official as in published under a BBC Books banner and written by an author lauded by the Nation Estate. It was kicked mercilessly on release and lies largely forgotten.

    #43431
    Missy @missy

    @phaseshift

    Thanks for that. I was beginning to think I was invisible. *big smile*

    I did see that there was a concert of sorts at Wimbledon, and I did manage to go to the one here in Perth WA

    It was well done, but not the same. Ben foster conducted, the Tardis was there, Daleks, Cybermen, the ood etc.

    Cheers,

    Missy

    #43434
    janetteB @janetteb

    Have been rather busy for the past three days and so this thread had grown in posts faster than I can read. Has been nice to have something so enjoyable to read between all the madness. So many great discussion and ideas put forward. I really look forward to seeing the resolution of the CD of Rassilion mystery, about which I have nothing to add to all that has been already written. I simply have no ideas on it.

    I was particularly interested in the discussion about Clara. Maybe Missy knew that she was destined to save the Doctor and thus was following her about, waiting the opportunity to connect her to the Doctor. Not sure how that works. Danny especially seemed to lack a life beyond the little we saw of him but  I am certain that was deliberate on the part of S.M. Danny was meant to be an enigma. Clara I think is believable. She works, as a teacher and travels in the Tardis. That is a pretty full life. As to ambition, surely that is to travel and have adventures. When the Doctor first meets her in Bells of St Johns she says she wants to travel. Dalek Clara says that she enlisted on the Alaska because she wanted to see the universe. Clara’s ambition is to travel. That I find completely believable because that has always been one of my primary ambitions. Teaching for her may well be just the means to the end. I once contemplated doing teaching for that reason.

    Have not had time to re watch but hope to do some before watching the next episode. Yay for Sunday!!

    Cheers

    Janette

     

    #43436
    ScaryB @scaryb

    Thanks @wolfweed for the link to the music track, great stuff. And great news about the repeat double episode broadcast for UK tomorrow. Might just watch that. Just because it’s there, haha.

    @janetteb Likewise re being busy. Agree with your reading of Clara, but again, the character works for me.  I think we’ve left the Impossible Girl behind with the Name of the Doctor. SmithDoc pulled the real one out of his timetrack. She may not even remember that much about her time there. PTSD etc.  By TMA she’s down the road a bit from Danny’s death, not forgotten him (in the dream in Last Christmas she never married but she made a success of teaching and travelling) but she’s still teaching and combining that with  being a consultant for UNIT, and presumably still having adventures with the Doctor. That seems pretty independent and a full life to me.

    You can see her confidence with Missy – she’s trying to control the situation, though seriously outclassed (probably doesn’t realise by quite how much).  Gomez is brilliant, lots of little twitchy nuances. But then she too is clearly rattled when she sees they are on Skaro.  Daleks scare even psychopathic Timelords.  So is her little performance about giving them the Tardis know-how just a front to buy some time, or…?  Surely the Daleks already know about Tardises, why would they want to destroy it rather than use it? Is it to impress/scare the Doctor?

    How much of this has been planned by Davros? Or are the Daleks controlling him now? The one thing that makes me wonder how much the Doctor has some pre-knowledge of what’s happening is his 1 word to Missy – “Gravity”. He wants to make sure she knows they aren’t in artificial gravity ie they’ve landed on a planet.

    Oooooh! So many questions! Can’t wait for tonight. Advance word suggests it’s going to be well worth waiting for!! See you on the other side folks!

    😀

     

    PS Re all my comments about Clara – given my track record on theories, all of that is likely to be mince 😉

    #43437
    ScaryB @scaryb

    @papermoon

    Davros wants to return the favour and save the Doctor from the Daleks… interesting! I like it!

    @phaseshift – Thanks for being our DW encyclopedia as ever. And thanks to you and @bluesqueakpip re Sarff = snakes (and for the nest of vipers pun).

    (And yes you’re right – I’m catching up with the posts backwards.. time travelling 😉 )

    #43438
    lisa @lisa

    I was re-watching last night too! I noticed a little thing about colors again.
    It seems SM does a lot with the colors on some of the characters clothes and
    in Magician Clara – who usually wears a lot of red – is now wearing purple tights
    similar to Missy’s purple coat. Just saying..

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