Twice Upon a Time
Home › Forums › Episodes › The Twelfth Doctor › Twice Upon a Time
This topic contains 169 replies, has 42 voices, and was last updated by 
-
AuthorPosts
-
31 December 2017 at 22:21 #62924
Merry New Year!
31 December 2017 at 23:45 #62925Now that I have seen the regeneration on Youtube I would just like to say:
Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum:
HABEMUS DOCTOREM!
Dominum Jodie theatrum Britannia mimae Whittaker,
Qui sibi nomen imposuit The Doctor!.1 January 2018 at 01:15 #62927@mudlark ** I refuse to accept his prohibition on pears, though, and ate one at breakfast this morning – without dribbling any of the juice down my chin.
Depends on the pears, doesn’t it? Boscs are my favorite, and not “mushy” unless you leet them get over-ripe, in which case, don’t eat ’em, as you have, by neglect, forfeited the right to their deliciousness.
@wolfweed Thanks for the music — and happy new year to all!
1 January 2018 at 03:30 #62928Just rewatched with Mrs Blenkinsop and again, not a dry eye in the house. But this time realized the connection with the truly brilliant 1945 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger “A Matter of Life and Death”, about an airman, who should have died, but strangely lives and “heaven” has to decide whether to correct the mistake by returning him to the point where he died or allowing him to live.
#90 (tie) – <em>A Matter of Life and Death</em> (1946), dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
I think I drew attention to this film when we talked about the Nethersphere, and Moffat has points of reference that he returns to, and I am certain that “A Matter of Life and Death” is one of those.
and for anyone who has never seen the film, please, please, watch it. It is one of the most magical and filmically perfect films ever made.
1 January 2018 at 10:30 #62932this time realized the connection with the truly brilliant 1945 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger “A Matter of Life and Death”
Yes, that struck me, too; and the stairway in the Testimony looked like an overt reference, even though – unlike the stair to Heaven in that film – it wasn’t a moving escalator.
My post yesterday evening was over-long, but even so it omitted many of the points in the notes I scribbled immediately after viewing. That was one; another was the symbolic significance of the dropped ring – equivalent to the discarding of Smith Doc’s bow tie – but that had already been noted by @bluesqueakpip .
At risk of annoying people, and being argued down, I also feel just a tiny bit vindicated by the recovery of the Doctor’s memory of Clara; my reasoning all along being that the memory was simply blocked (neural block), not erased, and remained latent. The Testimony could remove the block, but I don’t see how they could restore something which no longer existed, unless of course it had been cheating and had already harvested his memories mid-life. The mere reappearance of Clara wouldn’t have worked except perhaps to raise an itch, as had already been demonstrated.
Another minor detail which seemed significant was the fact that the point at which the original 1966 footage merged with the modern centred on human emotion and the First Doctor’s question to the cybermen ‘.. love, pride, hate, fear; have you no emotions, Sir? ‘ And when it comes to empathy or sympathy, it was the First Doctor, not the Twelfth, who noticed that the Captain was in shock after experiencing sudden, inexplicable translation to the Antarctic and his first exposure to the Tardis, and who went to his assistance.*
I agree with all those who have commented that the sexist attitudes of the First Doctor were exaggerated to a cartoonish degree, and this was one of the few jarring notes in the episode, even though played for laughs, but I can remember the treatment of the female companions throughout most of the BG era being a constant source of irritation to me. Lip service may have been paid to the intelligence of many of them, but they were not often given a chance to apply it, and even when they were given a proactive role it usually got them into trouble so that they were reduced to screaming a lot and having to be rescued.
*Brandy, even Aldebaran brandy from the Doctor’s hidden stash, might not now be recommended in cases of shock, but it seemed to be the standard remedy in fiction of the time and earlier.
1 January 2018 at 20:31 #62933Looks like people have spotted the TARDIS crashing…
1 January 2018 at 20:35 #62934I don’t think that I have ever come across the variety of pear you mention but I will look out for them, assuming that they are available in the UK. The ones in my fruit bowl (actually an old brass preserving pan) at the moment are Conference, but I like most pears, including the ones my parents used to refer to as ‘slaverchops’, which should be self explanatory. The hard-fleshed ones, in my opinion, are better poached, though – preferably in wine with spices.
Even the juiciest pears cannot compare with a really ripe and juicy mango, though, and my father was of the opinion that the only way to eat the latter was first to strip off and get in the bath.
1 January 2018 at 22:29 #62935@blenkinsopthebrave the truly brilliant 1945 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger “A Matter of Life and Death”
I saw it here — way more than once! — under the American release title “Stairway to Heaven” — a beauty!
@mudlark . . . the recovery of the Doctor’s memory of Clara; my reasoning all along being that the memory was simply blocked (neural block), not erased, and remained latent.
We all get to be right on this one — Yes, the memories remained in his mind — but so firmly blocked that they might as well not have been, so for all intents and purposes he *did* forget (except for those little twitches at the odd prompt now and then). Who better to unblock them than Testimony? Talk about being kind! On the other hand, 12 is going to “die”, so Testimony will want his memories complete, so that’s in their interest, too.
So is that where the successive Doctor personalities go when they “die”? I’d guess not, since he’s not human but Gallifreyan, so he’s exempt — but wait, he doesn’t have his Confession Dial handy, so how’s he (or any other Doctor) going to get stored away in the TL Matrix? Maybe not til The Doctor dies for good, as whoever the 50th one is at the time?
@mudlark I can remember the treatment of the female companions throughout most of the BG era being a constant source of irritation to me. Lip service may have been paid to the intelligence of many of them, but they were not often given a chance to apply it, and even when they were given a proactive role it usually got them into trouble so that they were reduced to screaming a lot and having to be rescued.
YES; so much, yes! I remember getting really fed up with the screaming and being lectured at with much later Doctors than #1. It’s been a thread of the series forever, despite the more autonomous companions of AG DW, mirroring the gender-conservative dominant attitudes of their times. Moffat had to stress these easy assumptions in #1 because otherwise such “little details” tend to be overlooked or brushed off as unimportant. And I think he was also pointing out to the teeth-gnashing Mary Sues out there that progress on female characters (and social expectations) *has* been made, and that he himself has heard their criticism and learned from it.
As for pears, boscs are green-brown-to-gold, with elongated necks, more like apples than the gushy green pears (which, in fact, I don’t eat) but with a subtle flavor of their own. Mangos, though, are in a class by themselves . . .
1 January 2018 at 23:32 #62936For those who would like to see more about the Christmas armistice. I can really recommend this movie.
2 January 2018 at 02:20 #62937Absolutely right Mr Blenkinsop. Dad introduced me to that movie: A Matter of Life and Death
@mudlark and others: On the issue of over-egging the sexism I thought it was ironic and necessary.
Mum and I are watching re-runs of The Bill from 1983 to 91 and the continuous sexism is in your face for the 25 minutes episode. It’s deep in the minds of the writers and producers so when a sergeant is hitting his wife its considered by another well-respected sergeant who was in the show for 15 years as an “issue between husband and wife. He’ll sort it out. We can’t get involved” whilst others regarding a different woman, talk about female provocation and weakness. In 1990. For me, coming from a school where blokes still call women ‘girls’ (that’s the teachers calling the women teachers ‘girls’), where guys routinely call a girl ‘slut,’ ie:
“hey sl*t, what’s up?”
“yeah, good, Joshua” It’s an endearment, apparently.
where guys of my age talk about a woman’s physical attributes (whether teacher; a 12 year old arriving in high school (“I’d like to uncork that….” ) or a Year 12 female student); I think putting this issue front and centre is essential.
It’s a show that’s loved by everyone. But there are still comments saying, “the Doctor should be a man. If it’s not broke don’t fix it. But I’m gonna sell ALL my Doctor Who toys because I’m heartbroken that the Doctor is a girl.”
Right wingers on youtube coordinated efforts to elect Trump (never minding his hair line, way of speaking, his weight or tight suits) and diss Clinton because she was: “ugly and fat” with a deep voice and crooked legs. So I think sometimes being told about this is necessary and bringing out the soap box works -as one way of dealing with it. I heard a teacher last year say this:
“If women didn’t work we’d have zero unemployment. There’d be enough money for the family if just the husband worked and bringing up children in a traditional style which worked for thousands of years shouldn’t be thrown away by the femi-nazis.”
He was a contract teacher and we didn’t see him again but he’s still out there… Anyway my rant’s over!
Happily, I was thrilled about Bill Potts and thought she did a terrific job and when other Christmas specials have been really fast the relatively slower pace of TUAT was appreciated by me and Dad! The music was subtle and I didn’t have trouble understanding most of everything. The arrival of Clara was good too -sorting out the idea of her being a memory he couldn’t access- a Clara shaped hole -like the dream you remember when you wake up but bits disappear when you pin them down.
I’m glad the Doctor had that final moment and could let it “go.” That was a really nice way to end everything. Mum still cried on her 3rd re-watch. Joyful crying but sad to miss Moffat; Gatiss (is he leaving too because the episode he wrote last season was the best, imho?) and Capaldi but thrilled to see Whitaker.
Cheers to everyone on the new year
From Thane.
2 January 2018 at 02:54 #62938Hi Thane and Puro,
since you are both watch The Bill I will head on over to The Malvodarium to offer an alternative perspective…
2 January 2018 at 07:46 #62941Away from the party for a few days…There are some very moving posts above, and am especially grateful to @ichabod and @cathannabel for sharing their stories.
I was fortunate enough to get to a cinema show last week, and thought Rachel Talalay’s direction was even more impressive on a big screen than on TV. The shots up and down the staircase in the Chamber of the Dead and the pull-out from the crater to a view high over the battlefield, were especially powerful. The cinema sound also added a lot for me.
A few final thoughts:
12th Doctor’s lack of social skills: At one point in Last Christmas he tells Clara to go off and make some coffee. She slapped him.
@hiker A last comment on Clara: Is she the the only character besides the Doctor to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?? I can’t think of another one.
The Astral Map in the First Doctor’s Tardis that the 12th Doctor uses to distract Bill from one of the 1st Doctor’s sexist remarks: Last seen, I think but might be wrong, in the Second Doctor story Seeds of Doom , by which time it was in a Space Museum.
So sorry to see PC, SM, Murray Gold and Rachel Talalay all depart together, but they provided a terrific and remarkably rich last episode.
2 January 2018 at 09:39 #62942@thane16 Thanks for those comments, particularly your observations on persistent sexist attitudes at your school; too true in too many places, and changing very slowly, so yes, it really *was* important for Moffat to strike those notes, IMO.
@countscarlioni You’re welcome of course. I’m grateful that we’ve come (however sadly) to a place in our cultures where we can talk about these kinds of losses, without resorting to evasions, distortions, and euphemisms if we so choose. Agree enthusiastic about Talalay — grand stuff, for grand themes, intimate moments for that. Beautiful job, IMO.
2 January 2018 at 13:38 #62943I need answers I’m going crazy not knowing if I’m crazy or not haha I recently seen a trailer thing for a doctor who movie no not the Christmas special I watched that and its not it the trailer said most of the old doctors are returning ect. The ninth tenth and eleventh I think and the master but all different ones from different time frames and jack harkness kisses/marries the ninth doctor and all of it was ment to impact on the new girl doctor or something I’m not sure I can’t find anything about it on the internet or enything I’m not sue if I’m going crazy or not please any information would be helpfull
2 January 2018 at 14:43 #62944On the issue of over-egging the sexism I thought it was ironic and necessary.
I agree with everything you and @ichabod say about the importance of the issue, and that it was useful, in the context of this episode to illustrate the differences in attitude between the original Doctor and the Twelfth – who seems to have learned a lot from Clara’s prompt cards, although the social insensitivity which he displayed, and which she was trying to counter, was across the board. The basis of my criticism was, not that it was done, but that it was done rather clumsily in what was otherwise an anything but clumsy and un-nuanced episode, and that it was played primarily for laughs.
The first Doctor seems to have been conceived as having the kind of attitude towards woman which a gentleman of his apparent age in the early 1960s might have been supposed to hold towards women – or at least ‘ladies’ as opposed to women of the working classes; simultaneously idealising and patronising them and having definite ideas about the limits of their fragile brains and bodies, but always courteous. This attitude was very much internalised and in the Doctor’s case was expressed, for example, in subtle traits such as his apparent deafness sometimes to Barbara’s suggestions and his manner of addressing Polly as ‘my child’. It seemed to me a bit out of character for him to say the kind of things he said here, especially when in the presence of Bill.
Underlying this, of course, were the largely unspoken assumptions which were pervasive in society at the time the programme was first conceived and that, despite the fact that the first producer was a woman – and a very forceful and influential one – crept into it. Some companions had more agency than others, of course, and it is no coincidence that my preferred companions of the BG era were Romana, who was a Time Lord and portrayed as equal, if not superior to the Doctor, and Leela, who may have been an ignorant ‘savage’, but was depicted as intelligent, a quick learner, and very resourceful, if sometimes a bit too aggressive for the Doctor’s liking.
What is different between the 1960’s and now is, I think, that among people who hold such attitudes, the sexist bias tends now to be much more in the open and aggressively expressed, amplified no doubt by social media, because it is a back-lash response to the increasingly more active, widespread and outspoken feminist movements of the past four or five decades.
As for the kind of attitudes you describe in your school, among your contemporaries some of it, at least, is a kind of unthinking and uncouth bragging that, with any luck, a good many them at least may outgrow – and when it comes to objectifying the opposite sex girls can sometimes be just as crude. As for the elders well, I’m afraid there appear to be some who are doing their best to reinforce the perception, once widespread over here, that there were an exceptionally large number of thoroughly unreconstructed males in Oz*
* No doubt an unwarranted slander.
2 January 2018 at 17:37 #62945@count scarlioni
A last comment on Clara: Is she the the only character besides the Doctor to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?? I can’t think of another one.
Sadly, my Doctor Who knowledge is puddle-deep. No idea if anyone ever did it before, or even who said it first.
🙁
Hiker
2 January 2018 at 17:56 #62947
As with Twice Upon a Time, two different Doctors got to witness the same event. Here's the Bakerized version, from issue 1393 (dated 25 August 1978). pic.twitter.com/uvQu2IXXfF
— Paul Scoones (@paul_scoones) January 2, 2018
2 January 2018 at 18:46 #62949Splendid, awesome and all that! Liking that Pertwee version!
Hiker
2 January 2018 at 19:47 #62950@mudlark . . . Leela, who may have been an ignorant ‘savage’, but was depicted as intelligent, a quick learner, and very resourceful, if sometimes a bit too aggressive for the Doctor’s liking.
Yes! Leela was the one I recall as definitely stepping past the usual boundaries, as an assertive, comattive warrior woman whom no one would dare to call “my child”, except perhaps her mother. Romana was a TL herself, so that was an exceptional case.
The highlighting of how things have changed in that background hum of normalized and accepted sexism of the sixties required adding an explicit dimension to D1’s character that nobody remembers having been there originally. It wasn’t; wasn’t explicit, I mean, but was implicit in the ubiquitous scream/rescue trope for the women. For a witty exposure of just how pervasive that sexist hum was, I recommend an essay called “The Grand Coolie Damn” that first appeared in “Sisterhood is Powerful”, a collection of feminist essay published in the ’60s I believe. It’s about the ways in which even the anti-war, anti-Establishment movement of the time was just as blind to its own sexism as the Establishment it opposed.
Moffat punched it up pretty hard and made it jokey to appease those who might be offended. I think the heavy load of showing both how the Doctor and his times have changed, and how Moffat himself has changed, accounts for the heavy-handedness in this aspect of “Twice”.
What is different between the 1960’s and now is, I think, that among people who hold such attitudes, the sexist bias tends now to be much more in the open and aggressively expressed, amplified no doubt by social media, because it is a back-lash response to the increasingly more active, widespread and outspoken feminist movements of the past four or five decades.
Yup; being bombarded with an explicitly sexist backlash now makes it even more difficult for people who weren’t there to recognize the implicit sexism of “then”, since they weren’t there to experience it. D1’s 60s attitudes had to be underlined to make that connection with the rabid machismo of now. The emphasis was also needed to provide a good firm springboard for 13’s “Oh, brilliant!” to leap from, into triumphant life.
2 January 2018 at 21:38 #62951
3 January 2018 at 01:20 #62953Ok so this question is more suited for this topic than my last question haha ok why did the doctor regenerate into a girl iv watched the Christmas special and I can’t figure it out I know it’s probably obvious and probably already been answered
3 January 2018 at 01:28 #629543 January 2018 at 07:27 #62955well, that is an unusual handle? jack harkness? Ah, from Capt Jack, I presume?
Well, the short answer is any time lords can regenerate into different genders.
And that’s also the long answer. In my opinion it should have happened before and according to the evidence a female regeneration was planned in the 1960s or early 1970s.
So, there you go!
Cheers and happy new year.
Thane16
3 January 2018 at 07:39 #62956Alright! That’s awesome. I mean your response, Ms Mudlark. I don’t think Mum saw it that way (or she might have?) and actually I didn’t either and what was really good in your response was the bit in bold:
the basis of my criticism was, not that it was done, but that it was done rather clumsily in what was otherwise an anything but clumsy and un-nuanced episode, and that it was played primarily for laughs.
I get that now: the fact that sexism isn’t for a laugh? It’s not funny for those who still live in it: who call people, on the net, feminazis or even more derogatory names.
That is definitely something to think about. I was talking with Dad and a female friend who were saying that in the past whistling at women was acceptable and women admired it and saw it as complimentary. When I said “OK, but about those who didn’t get ‘the whistle’ or worse got jeered at, what about them?”
No-body answered that. I’m glad that stuff is outlawed in Brisbane anyway. You can’t whistle at women if, say, you’re a tradesperson working on a building. However there are advertisements during the cricket which feature men walking past, shirtless, and women laughing and applauding. It’s all very confusing!
3 January 2018 at 20:11 #62958FWIW, I’m not at all convinced that the sexism was over-egged. I just think it seems that way because, outside the troll-o-sphere, is has become as entirely alien to us as driving without a seat belt, smoking at the work desk or casually referring to the late shop, run by those nice brown people, as the “Paki shop”.
Despite being brought to life by “the posh wog and the pushy Jewish bird” (to quote AAISAT), it reflected the manners and mores of its time, and only gradually pushed at the boundaries. It wasn’t really until Jo Grant and then, obviously, Sarah Jane Smith, that this started to get a truly firm kicking.
(This, Thane, is why you should not have turned your nose up at Life on Mars/ Ashes to Ashes. It was about exactly this sort of thing)
3 January 2018 at 20:53 #62959I may have been a bit harsh in my judgement, because it is difficult to convey to people who didn’t experience it how things were in the 1950s and 60s, and it was perhaps asking too much of a Christmas special to convey the difference between then and now with the subtlety it really requires. What is today in the open, challenged and fought over was then, in the 1950s and early 60s, largely unacknowledged and accepted, and a few minutes in a 60 minute Doctor Who episode which is for the most part concerned with other themes does not really allow enough time to illustrate the difference.
Born in 1942 and growing up in the 1950s I was, I suppose, vaguely aware of the prevailing attitudes, but I was largely cocooned against them, because I was fortunate enough to be born into a family where it was taken for granted that my education as a girl and my options for the future were at least as important for me as for my brothers. I suspect, in fact, that my parents may have regarded these as more important for me, because they were aware of the obstacles I might face. Certainly they, and my father in particular, did all they could to support and encourage me in my ambitions, once I had decided on what I wanted to do. They also ensured that I went to a girls’ secondary school with high academic standards, where the teachers did all they could to foster in us a sense of our own worth and potential. It was only when I got to university – around the time that Doctor Who was conceived -that I was fully confronted with overt sexist attitudes, and by then I was old enough and well enough armoured to defend myself.
Those school friends with whom I kept in touch went on to forge successful careers of their choosing but, looking back, I realise that there were many in my year, even in a school such as we attended, who were influenced and hampered by prevailing attitudes. I am at fault for not realising at the time how much that mattered.
3 January 2018 at 21:33 #62960Not alien to me because -see my post above – I lived through it, even if in a privileged position; and I don’t think the subject was ‘over-egged’ exactly, just treated clumsily by people viewing the issue from a largely contemporary perspective.
As for Jo Grant, she may have represented a slight advance in thinking, but she nevertheless irritated me considerably; and though Sarah Jane was a further step in the right direction, I still wasn’t wildly impressed. Which opinion would probably lead trolls to brand me as a ‘feminazi’ or worse, though I have never been particularly aggressive; just standing fast by my principles when challenged 🙂
3 January 2018 at 22:01 #62961but she nevertheless irritated me considerably; and though Sarah Jane was a further step in the right direction, I still wasn’t wildly impressed.
But is that not just your – avowed – privilege speaking? As small a step as it was, the girls on the council estate where I grew up – few of whom would end up at the Girl’s Grammar – were given a role model in Sarah Jane and how sometimes it’s right to talk back to people.
For, as pal of mine notes, representation matters:
When your daughter spontaneously begins shouting "Help! I'm falling out of the TARDIS!" #DoctorWho #RepresentationMatters pic.twitter.com/CwbRTYueTD
— Iain Clark (@iainjclark) January 3, 2018
3 January 2018 at 22:52 #62962As small a step as it was, the girls on the council estate where I grew up – few of whom would end up at the Girl’s Grammar – were given a role model in Sarah Jane and how sometimes it’s right to talk back to people.
Agreed; I just wish that it could have been a larger step, for all concerned.
My mother and one of her younger sisters won scholarships to a local grammar school in the 1920s, and my grandmother made their school uniforms and earned the money to pay for their text books and other school necessities by working from home as a dressmaker, because my grandfather’s wage, which he gave my grandmother in full, was barely enough to pay the rent and keep food on the table. They – my mother and aunt – had a pretty tough time of it, between one world and the other, and they had to leave school and start work at 16, because there was no way that the family could have afforded to support them through higher education. But it was my grandmother who had the vision on their behalf, even if it was a fairly limited vision by our standards, and we of the next generation reaped the benefit.
So I honour them, and am well aware that it is owing to them I started life a rung above the majority on the ladder of life, and with a broadly feminist outlook. I also realise now that I wasn’t sufficiently aware of the social pressures and constraints on the majority of the girls of my generation and those following; I suppose that I assumed, in my privileged ignorance, that they were aware of the options and had made their choice. Here I have simply stated my reaction to Doctor Who at that time, whilst acknowledging that for others it was a more progressive influence.
3 January 2018 at 23:43 #62963@mudlark What is today in the open, challenged and fought over was then, in the 1950s and early 60s, largely unacknowledged and accepted,
Exactly; I think they tried get sense of the way the cultural background was not only steeped in racist and sexist beliefs and behaviors but had been so over generations by having D1 share a joke about the weakness of women with the Captain. They did what they could in the time given, but I wish the touch had been a bit lighter.
I wasn’t sufficiently aware of the social pressures and constraints on the majority of the girls of my generation and those following; I suppose that I assumed, in my privileged ignorance, that they were aware of the options and had made their choice.
1939 here, growing up in the forties and fifties; no kidding. This is part of the criticism leveled at White feminists in the US by POC, speaking of privilege, because privilege makes us stupid. It really does, like that unutterable moron in the House (a Republican, of course) who commented that the “extra” thousand or so dollars that a working family might keep this year under the new Tax Scam was great because they could use it to buy a new car. Clearly, unlike most of us the moron has a personal shopper on staff.
@pedant Great picture!
4 January 2018 at 00:14 #62964And with that pic, you win Wednesday!
I don’t think we fully understand yet what this regeneration means to girls.
Mind, blown.
Hiker
4 January 2018 at 00:32 #62965They did what they could in the time given, but I wish the touch had been a bit lighter.
But my point is that the touch was light (and the “smacked bottom” straight out of canon – a thing which sparked a million slash fictions, apparently). The other stuff – whether casually assuming no Polly meant no cleaning, or the key to the “women are glass” exchange being that the Captain and Doctor 1 are so confident of their world view that they had absolutely no response but “Good Lord!” are really quite gentle. It’s just Moffat not wasting words again.
12 got there slowly, over many years, and knows the road he travelled. Bill was born there. Even had the captain been a fan of Wells and Verne, he would have had absolutely no concept of social revolution that was to come. In his world, women do not have the vote. And as far as we know, D1’s first exposure to Earth was in the East End of London, about as hardcore as it gets in a country where, until shockingly recently, spousal violence would be logged by the cops as a “domestic dispute”….and ignored.
It didn’t seem funny, to me. It seemed absurd. I think that is an important distinction.
And that’s before you start to consider class relations….
4 January 2018 at 04:02 #629685 January 2018 at 19:23 #629726 January 2018 at 21:56 #62978Many thanks for the pics, particularly of the production artwork. One of the secondary delights of Doctor Who, for me, is the design work down to the smallest particulars. Quite often I devote one viewing of an episode just to that aspect, so that I can pause the recording at frequent intervals just to examine and savour the details
6 January 2018 at 22:10 #62979When I watched the episode it crossed my mind that Rusty must have been extremely fortunate to survive what seems to have been more that a billion years, given that most of his kind tended to end up as sentient mulch in the sewers. The artwork for his life support system reinforces the impression I had that there were faint echoes of Davros’s life support system in The Witches Familiar – without the snakes, of course.
8 January 2018 at 22:09 #62997Moffat’s tenure began & ended with the Doctor dressed as a ‘raggedy man’…
14 January 2018 at 00:57 #63015Rippable deleted scenes…
19 January 2018 at 18:28 #6302123 January 2018 at 18:24 #63031The deleted (Tenth Planet recreated) scenes from Twice Upon a Time are on the the Doctor Who Extra documentary on the new dvd/blu ray release…
29 January 2018 at 23:30 #63088It seems to me that at the end of this episode the TARDIS through The Doctor out to protect her. To me this seems to be the worst the TARDIS has ever been after a regeneration and the TARDIS just wanted to protect her. This seems like their relationship, also there is a bit of a clue to this. We can see that the TARDIS doors flew inward to open but gravity would work against this because of the side the TARDIS is leaning on and the strong winds flying outward would have shut the doors. This reminds me of the 11th Doctor having to rush back to the TARDIS and save her in The Eleventh Hour, so the TARDIS would save The Doctor if the changing progress could have done harm to her.
30 January 2018 at 11:35 #63089Yes, I’d agree with that. Looking at the scene, the TARDIS is definitely throwing the Doctor out – and the next thing we see of the TARDIS from the Doctor’s perspective is an apparent explosion and the control room full of flames.
So my guess would be that the TARDIS knew the Doctor wouldn’t survive the explosion that was about to happen, so did an emergency pilot ejection. 🙂
4 February 2018 at 17:29 #63094Okay, thinking back on what people (here and elsewhere) were hoping/expecting to see in this one — I was glad this story didn’t turn out to be the First and Twelfth Doctor’s sides of “The Day of the Doctor”, but why wasn’t Susan Foreman brought back for a cameo? Apparently Peter Capaldi hoped his Doctor would meet her, and they did find a way for Twelve to encounter the Mondasian Cybermen, so…especially given how the Testimony works, why not give him and One that happiness?
Or, in five years, will Twelve get to meet Susan in the 60th anniversary show?…
4 February 2018 at 17:32 #63095I do have a question about this episode I was hoping someone could answer. Right near the end they show Clara and the doctor recognises her, but if I recall correctly her last episode before that (I forgot the name) doesn’t she erase the doctors memory of her. If so I’m very confused.
4 February 2018 at 20:41 #63096It seems the Testimony has some way of either releasing the Doctor’s blocked memory, or replacing the lost memories.
8 February 2018 at 19:17 #63111@tardis123 @bluesqueakpip It’s either one or the other, which the Testimony specifically gives as a “present” to the Doctor. 🙂
14 February 2018 at 22:08 #63155Did anyone else think it was strange that One didn’t seem to act like he had met any of his future selves before? This was so baffling to me it kept me from fully enjoying the episode…
15 February 2018 at 03:12 #63156@thewatcher Actually, I had not thought of that, but I understand your point, given “The Five Doctors” in particular.
On the other hand, it did not explicitly rule out the possibility that he had met his future incarnations (I think) just that he had not met the 12th.
But, nonetheless, I take your point. It may be an an example of what Mrs Blenkinsop says to me when I raise a question like this: “You’re not supposed to think about that.”
15 February 2018 at 12:23 #63160@blenkinsopthebrave @thewatcher
It has been established that Doctors lose memories of future Doctors (ref: Day of the Doctor) and that even future doctors can bury the memory of entire regenerations (ref: War Doctor). This is canon.
They have Clara’s memories of him, including when, how and why he lost his memories of her. With 5bn years of technological advancement it is fairly unsurprising that Testimony can recreate the “negatives” of a persons memory, and work out a away to reverse the polarity(tm) of the neural blocker.
15 February 2018 at 14:54 #63165@pedant Okay, thanks. I can relax now. I was afraid the answer would be “because Time Lords” but so it goes…
🙂
-
AuthorPosts
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
