World Enough and Time

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Nice!

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@pedant

And we haven’t even considered spaghettification…

Yes, I did wonder why there was no mention of spaghettification.  How close to the event horizon does one need to be before that becomes a factor?

Maybe the ship was originally shorter and fatter 😕

[Nick @nick]

@mudlark @pedant

Need a real physicist to answer that (or a lot of time on the web). I suspect if your close enough to notice significant time dilation, then its probably safe enough to say your already paste.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@mudlark @nick

Could have made for some very cool visual effects.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@nick  . . .  you’re already paste.

Well, I certainly feel like paste this morning.  Gerk.  I’m feeling apprehensive for — Missy, of all people!  She’s quite grown on me . . . not something I expected.  I just think — bad people trying to be good so often make a hash of it, one way or the other.  And then pay a (the) price.

[Nick @nick]

@ichabod

I rather suspect Moff’s “blood bath” is going to be quite a literal description. That said, it’s standard form to leave the Master is a very dodgy situation, so there must be some hope that they both end up in that situation.

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Good spot from twitter on the reappearances of the number 12 throughout the series…

Good spot – Number 12

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave   I like your bonkers idea about time going back and the Doctor using this to save Bill. I know that it can’t happen but I have to say (tongue in cheek ) that I watch a show about a man who travels through time in a blue box, a Time Lord who doesn’t die but regenerates to an entirely different person, he has been known to travel with a robot dog and humans and damn it if time travels backwards in the Whoniverse than who am I to argue.

[Anonymous @]

@brewski  Not a single bit of this makes sense! Am I in the toilets below Level 0000?

<i>And we haven’t even considered spaghettification…</i>

Is that part of Pastafarianism?

The Theory of Rotini

Or… Carb Annuity errors?

@nick @pedant @mudlark @wolfweed thank you, that was very helpful.   🙂

<Wandering off looking at flowers because they’re easier>

Oh, wait a second: rasta….I get. Carb, I get, and rotini is also pasta so, good then!

 

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@thane15

Do you have Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos on Oz Netflix? It is a remake and update of Carl Sagan’s original. One of the episodes has a very clear explanation of relativity (although the standout episodes are the one about the forgotten women of astronomy and then the one where Clair Patterson set about trying establish the age of the Earth and … and uncovered a global environmental catastrophe).

[Anonymous @]

@pedant

I’ll check.

I have watched a lot of Neil’s stuff -awesome -even the bits I didn’t understand! Actually he’s one scientist  we love as his explanations are terrific!

P.

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@missrori Thanks for the detailed explanation of the canonicity of the expanded universe materials. That’s pretty much how I thought it would be, but the added details are very informative.

On your comment that the story has a theme of privilege, at least in the eyes of some- I’ve heard similar comments before, and I’m always a bit wary that an interpretation like that stems in part from the Doctor’s people identifying themselves as “Time Lords”, rather than “Time Masters” or “Time Mavens”, or something that doesn’t set off the “class” alarm so much. The Doctor obviously does give Missy a fair bit of slack, but I really don’t think you could make much of a case that it’s because of her position as a Time Lady, but instead it’s due to their long personal history. He does consult with Bill before testing Missy, so it’s not a unilateral decision (not so sure about Nardole though- the Doctor does seem willing to override his opinions and treat him more like a trusted servant than friend – the line about Missy being more intelligent that Nardole, while doubtless true, is also not very empathetically expressed). And you can see the Doctor’s level of regard for the hierarchy on Gallifrey from his last visit. The Doctor doesn’t appear comfortable with the “Time Lord” moniker- I sometimes think he should describe himself as “Gallifreyan” and distance himself more from what the TL name entails. While you can certainly make a case that the Doctor is in a relatively privileged position, and is prone to treating his own opinions above those of others, I really don’t see a strong theme of privilege in this episode.

[Nick @nick]

@thane15

As an objects gets closer to the black hole, its rotation speed actually increases whilst it looses angular momentum (which is why particles spiral towards the black hole). As they get closer together, they heat up through friction and get very hot, eventually producing x-rays.

the combination of these two effects cause large objects to stretch and elongate and eventually break down into smaller pieces. @pedants spaghetti.

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@thane15 et al – yes, by continuity, I didn’t mean the long-term show continuity, just what is traditionally called a continuity error- a production error in having things change inconsistently between shots- perhaps someone was meant to set the left clock in the second shot to 10:46:00 rather than 10:45:00 and that escaped notice in editing. I was much more focused on the right-side myself when watching, to see how much time had based in Bill’s timeline.

And as I alluded to, it is Doctor Who, and the writers are free to depart from established science as they wish, particularly in regards to time phenomena, but I think it would be much cleaner, if they’ve set up a hard science general relativity scenario, to follow through on that and stay consistent within that framework. And I think that was the intention. Things are already tricky enough without having time running in reverse 🙂

On spaghettification, I’ve heard that calculations suggest it’s possible for large objects to escape spaghettification, even to the point of passing beyond the event horizon of a black hole, provided that the black hole is large enough (a supermassive black hole). On a ship that size, the forces would be very substantial though, since the two ends of the ship are feeling significantly different gravity from the black hole, as evidenced by the large time differential. The ship does seem to have it’s own internal artificial gravity (the ship is under strong reverse thrust and people aren’t being thrown to the ceiling), so that might also provide some protection, though won’t be able to stand up to a black hole at some point.

[nerys @nerys]

My husband tells me that the film, Insignificance, gives the clearest explanation (via Marilyn Monroe, no less) of Einstein’s theory of relativity that he’s ever heard. So I think I must put it on my watchlist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insignificance_(film)

[CountScarlioni @countscarlioni]

@nerys  Insignificance Terrific movie! As well as the explanation of relativity, it also carries a very powerful punch and moral message at the end. Here’s Marilyn (played brilliantly by Theresa Russell) explaining special relativity to Albert:  

@mudlark @thane15 @nick @ichabod   As I understand it (but my physics is now rusty), given the size of the time-dilation effects that are in play, the tidal forces acting on the ship and the inhabitants would have ripped the inhabitants apart provided the black hole does not contain too much mass. That is, the difference between the gravitational force acting on someone’s head compared to the force acting on their feet would have led to what’s been called above spagettification. But if the black hole contains enough mass, then someone could make it alive into the event horizon. See the stuff pasted in below for more information (courtesy the University of California, Riverside). The key sentence is perhaps this one: “So for black holes larger than about 1000 solar masses I could probably fall in alive, and for still larger ones I might not even notice the tidal forces until I’m through the horizon and doomed.” So if  the engines on the ship fail, or if they are turned off (by a very wicked Time Lord??), the ship could enter the event horizon, and then all bets are off, and to get out the Doctor will really have to do something extra-special that we’d all applaud.

The 1979 movie The Black Hole begins  with the U.S.S. Palamino chancing upon a spaceship so near to a black hole that it should have been ripped apart and destroyed long before. So the starting point for the movie is, how has the spaceship defied the laws of physics?

On time being reversed, as @tardigrade pointed out above and I believe this is right, the direction of the time flow does not change between the top and bottom of the ship. But it seems to me there’s ‘Doctor Who Physics’  and ‘Real Physics.’ So in Doctor Who Physics we get time dilation and no tidal forces (but perhaps the black hole the ship is trying to pull away from has a mass rather greater than 1,000 solar masses!), and, quite possibly, in Doctor Who Physics, we’re about to get time reversal in a very powerful gravitational field. But to this point, as I read it, the set-up in terms of general relativity has been o.k. in principle provided the black hole is massive enough. Its also Moffat and so surely all the really weird time-wimey stuff ain’t over!

Here’s some directly relevant stuff from a site I’ve found useful before (from the University of California, Riverside): http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/fall_in.html

Suppose that, possessing a proper spacecraft and a self-destructive urge, I decide to go black-hole jumping and head for an uncharged, nonrotating (“Schwarzschild”) black hole.  In this and other kinds of hole, I won’t, before I fall in, be able to see anything within the event horizon.  But there’s nothing locally special about the event horizon; when I get there it won’t seem like a particularly unusual place, except that I will see strange optical distortions of the sky around me from all the bending of light that goes on.  But as soon as I fall through, I’m doomed.  No bungee will help me, since bungees can’t keep Sunday from turning into Monday.  I have to hit the singularity eventually, and before I get there there will be enormous tidal forces—forces due to the curvature of spacetime—which will squash me and my spaceship in some directions and stretch them in another until I look like a piece of spaghetti.  At the singularity all of present physics is mute as to what will happen, but I won’t care.  I’ll be dead.

For ordinary black holes of a few solar masses, there are actually large tidal forces well outside the event horizon, so I probably wouldn’t even make it into the hole alive and unstretched.  For a black hole of 8 solar masses, for instance, the value of r at which tides become fatal is about 400 km, and the Schwarzschild radius is just 24 km.  But tidal stresses are proportional to M/r cubed.  Therefore the fatal r goes as the cube root of the mass, whereas the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole is proportional to the mass.  So for black holes larger than about 1000 solar masses I could probably fall in alive, and for still larger ones I might not even notice the tidal forces until I’m through the horizon and doomed.

[Anonymous @]

@countscarlioni

I posted a response (a thank you) on the Spoiler page -so, if you don’t wish to be spoiled DON’T GO THERE!

(sos for yelling).

@nerys also! Altho I think you’ve been tweedling on the spoilers pages so you’re pretty safe 🙂

@countscarlioni if that’s your “rusty” physics then, goodness, you’re doing very well indeed!

Puro

[Anonymous @]

oh and Marilyn (thank you @nerys I found it) was awesome (never mind the actual knickers and buttocks scene!) and really helped.

See, this is always my problem. I can listen, repeat, write it out but never really get it -I never REALLY understand the diff between the specific theory of Relativity versus the general theory?

This did move me towards explaining it in my own words (to myself: and @pedant me speaking to my self usually means one thing!) which proves I understand it better. Better than Thane I should add.

P.

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@thane15

I never REALLY understand the diff between the specific theory of Relativity versus the general theory

As a mnemonic, remember G for General and also for Gravity. It’s the general theory that incorporates gravity.

[Anonymous @]

@tardigrade

thank you! I will. Typically, some months ago (as Thane was studying physics) I too ‘tooled’ around the internet learning what I could. 3 months later I find  myself trying to explain certain concepts. Remember when you learn to do a 3 point turn or a 5 point turn and in your head you keep bashing into trolleys, cars, the sidewalk?

That’s what’s happening to me when I try and explain something like GToR (incl, or not incl gravity)! 🙂

Oh boy…..

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

[Brewski @brewski]

@thane15  Yes, see… you just had to noodle on it.

[nerys @nerys]

@countscarlioni Thank you for that video! I think I will have to play it in slow-motion. My poor little mind still doesn’t quite get it. But I’m glad it helped my husband, and I do think it looks like an amazing movie.

@thane15 Puro, I’m with you once again. It’s like I almost get it … then realize I don’t. Shades of algebra coming back to haunt me.

[ichabod @ichabod]

@nerys  It’s like I almost get it … then realize I don’t.

Exactly!  Right to the edge — but not onto the carousel.  It goes too fast, and so many animals and colors!

 

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Well, I’ve only just watched this. But that was a much, much, much better ‘kill the Companion’ episode than Face The Raven. Yeah, hubris. Hubris is when you take squishy humans around the most dangerous bits of the universe promising to try and protect them – when the last four you took on your travels are respectively memory wiped, dead, dead, and not-alive.

I suspect tomorrow’s finale will complete the theme of ‘there are worse things than dying’. I wonder exactly how tempted Moffat was to call it ‘Kill Bill’?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@tardigrade and @countscarlioni

I’ve got a vague recollection that there was a paper presented a couple of years back which considered the possibility of thermodynamic time reversal in black holes. In the popular press it got translated into ‘time going into reverse’, which might well have caught the eye of one S. Moffat.

What would happen in the Whoniverse if a ship nearly crashes into a black hole while travelling faster than light? Wasn’t that discussed in Prof. Cox’s 50th anniversary lecture on time travel?

[nerys @nerys]

@ichabod Big pictures, little words. That’s what I need.

[RorySmith @rorysmith]

After a rewatch I had to laugh at the similarities between the ship and Spaceball One in the opening credits.

🤣

[CountScarlioni @countscarlioni]

@bluesqueakpip  What would happen in the Whoniverse if a ship nearly crashes into a black hole while travelling faster than light? Wasn’t that discussed in Prof. Cox’s 50th anniversary lecture on time travel? I believe the speed of light is still taken as an absolute limit so that in the real universe no ship can travel faster than light (there have of course been various speculations on ways to beat the limit and who knows in a Whoinverse if we grant the premise, take a spaceship travelling faster than light…). I’m several time zones away from the UK so I’ve not seen Prof. Cox’s 50th Anniversary Lecture, but I’ll root around on the internet to try to find it. I do recall reading newspaper reports at the time about his point that time travel going forward in time is easy. First year physics undergrads get this in the form of the twin paradox when they tackle special relativity. But going back in time is the killer. That as I understand it would need a wormhole. This might be preaching to the choir, but very serious physicists worry about this stuff. Here’s the start of a 1988 paper in a leading journal along these lines: “It is argued that, if the laws of physics permit an advanced civilization to create and maintain a wormhole in space for interstellar travel, then that wormhole can be converted into a time machine with which causality might be violatable.”

thermodynamic time reversal in black holes I think this idea springs from a recent paper which tried to interpret black holes as “holographic screens.” There are, in this interpretation, two sorts of holographic screens. Future holographic screens are ones whose area is always increasing. Past holographic screens are ones whose area is always decreasing. Future holographic screens pull matter together (say a black hole). Past holographic screens are regions where matter spreads out (from say the Big Bang). Here is the key point: “Because the area of future and past holographic screens increases in different directions, the direction of time is different for the two types of screens. In past screens, time moves forward. Expanding universes, such as ours, involve past holographic screens, and so we naturally perceive thermodynamic time as running forward. In contrast, time runs backward in future holographic screens. In a sense, this interpretation has the odd result that thermodynamic time runs backward inside black holes and collapsing universes.” This is from: https://phys.org/news/2015-09-law-implies-thermodynamic-black-holes.html#jCp  But thermodynamic time is not the same as clock time (the time seen by an observer on her watch) inside the black hole. I’m not sure how much they differ, but will try to find out. Anyway, this does raise possibilities in a Whoniverse!

 

[CountScarlioni @countscarlioni]

@thane15   I got the spoiler warning in time. Thanks.

@wolfweed  In theory, if two Missy’s touch, it could cause Paradoxical Time Distortion (or Blinovitch Limitation Effect). A quick read of the Tardis Data Core on the Blinovitch Limitation Effect has examples where touching has not been necessary to produce the effect; proximity has been enough sometimes. No examples though of one Time Lord regenerating into the very same Time Lord standing next to them and whether or not that kicks off the BLE. Maybe we’ll get one!

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip

Really? Because I recall you liking Face the Raven -a lot.

I will disagree. Face the Raven was  a very good episode.

Normally I’d write “and this is why” but hell, few people do that now so I’ll simply go along and say “I think not”.

Yes, Puro’s vaguely pissed (as per spoilers thread…)

I have to go do something else. Have a coffee, weed the garden, watch GLOW (which is awesome I should add and again not giving any reasons).  😈

Puro.

[Cath Annabel @cathannabel]

Re all the science stuff. I managed to work in a Physics & Astronomy department for ten years without absorbing even the slightest understanding of what they were all on about.  I did once grasp the idea of dark matter for about 5 minutes but then it slipped through my fingers again (like long division and the offside rule).

[Nick @nick]

@cathannabel

🙂

Dark matter. Some stuff, whose affect can be seen and measured but cannot itself be detected. Oh and there’s more of it (by mass) than all the rest of matter in the Universe we do know about. You couldn’t make it up really, could you ?

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@thane15

No, if you go back to the Face The Raven forum you’ll find I was sufficiently negative about the episode that @whisht jokingly asked if I was trolling and @blenkinsopthebrave asked if I were in the stages of grief. 🙂

@nick said a bit ago that he didn’t think Face the Raven could carry the weight of a companion’s death (if I’ve got that paraphrase wrong, Nick, apologies). Which is pretty much what I feel about it; it would have been a good Who episode, but the idea wasn’t originally conceived as Clara’s ‘death’ episode – and it showed. Sarah Dollard had to jump through hoops to explain why there could be no last-minute Doctorial intervention. It never, for me, had the feel of a death that has to happen – or one where you could understand why it happened in this episode, rather than in another episode.

Now here, Bill is mortally wounded because she’s ended up in a scenario where the Doctor’s using her as a ‘test Companion’ for Missy. And Bill herself has said it’s a stupid idea. She’s mortally wounded because Missy just isn’t as good as the Doctor at persuading terrified people not to kill someone. She’s mortally wounded because, when the Doctor does realise how wrong things are going, there simply isn’t enough time left to persuade Jorj not to shoot.

And Jorj has a perfectly good on-screen motivation to shoot her – the Mondasian proto-cybermen only come for humans. No live humans, no terrifying proto-cybermen.

Then when she’s cyber-converted at the last minute, that isn’t an accident, or a misunderstanding, or a lack of communication. It’s because the Master sees that the Doctor is coming down, and wants his Companion to suffer – before the Doctor can reach the deck and intervene. It’s entirely compatible with the Simm Master’s previous behaviour of torturing the Doctor through his Companions.

To me, Bill’s ‘death’ is clearly caused by a sequence of events which trace back to the Time Lord’s educating their children to believe that they are the lords of the universe, and other races are (considerably) less important. The Doctor doesn’t consciously believe that – but in the crunch, he places Missy’s redemption higher than Bill’s safety. The Master definitely believes that – Bill is a toy to be used to hurt the Doctor.

I never got that clear through line with Face the Raven. Clara died because the script said so. It was exactly the same sort of problem that the Doctor solves every week; and in fact, she’d escaped an equally ‘certain’ death the previous week. The episode just couldn’t carry the weight of the death of a major character.

Apologies if you thought I was just being negative; for me, those two episodes should be shown to young scriptwriters to demonstrate the difference between planning a character death and just being told ‘your script is the one where this character dies. Work it in somehow.’

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Reminder: The big question we’re being taunted with this series:

Will Missy turn guid?

Mebbes aye, mebbes naw…

[MissRori @missrori]

@bluesqueakpip That’s a pretty thoughtful comparison and I think you’re on to something.  It really frustrated me that there wasn’t a more fleshed-out explanation as to why the Doctor was helpless in “Face the Raven” (why he couldn’t stop the shade, or revive Clara given he’d shared regeneration energy with Davros and figured out how to save Me…albeit with “side effects”!).  The story did work emotionally for me, but it did seem contrived.

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip

OK. Somehow I mucked up there.

A character dies because they die. It’s awful and it’s a gut punch. That is death. That’s how it works. Even in 45 minutes.

Thing is, it’s a shattering moment in time and I believe it was gracefully predicted, suggested in-text and accurately demonstrated what a significant death, and corresponding hubris, can do. Characters become grossly slow at understanding exactly what to do next; they cannot shrive, they’re fractured at the prospect of making simple decisions and any maturity they possess withers at the complexity of emotions.

But it’s a television show -not real life so it’s hardly an insoluble problem.

Kindest, Puro and Thane (typing for Mum).

 

 

[MissRori @missrori]

@thane15  Oh, I understand what you mean.  That’s what I meant when I said “Face the Raven” worked for me emotionally; in terms of working emotionally and thematically as the climax of Clara’s story/character arc, it did its job well, even if the details as to how the shade worked weren’t as clear as they might have been.  And the season did a good job of foreshadowing it for that matter.

[Nick @nick]

@bluesqueakpip

I lack the ability to sum things up into a neat phrase like that, but that is exactly what I was grasping at.

carry the weight

As an aside, I’ve have been trying to put my finger on what exactly is about Moff’s era, or rather series 6 to 7 especially, that I seem to dislike (because I think we’ve had a fantastic set of Doctors, Companions and stories over the last 7 years).

I think this phrase sums things up my biggest overall gripe rather nicely for me.  Watching those series, my expectations for the finale were raised so high, that the series finale episodes themselves just werent able to deliver the punch that I was expecting.

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

Having just rewatched the second half of s9, I think I have to concur with @bluesqueakpip. Clara’s ‘death’ didn’t really work (and it was for something that I sometimes accuse CC of — of being so enamoured of the ‘big moment’ at the end of the episode, regardless of narrative logic or character development, so it just goes to show that SM isn’t immune either.) FtR hits a bum note because Clara’s death never convinces, never feels inevitable. We constantly have the feeling that we’re being manipulated.

And this is really the reason why Hell Bent ultimately doesn’t work. Despite having one of the best set-up in Who history with Heaven Sent, the finale doesn’t really deliver. There’s so much here that should leave the viewer feeling shell-shocked — the return of Gallifrey, the Doctor facing down Rassilon, the Doctor pretty much breaking all of his codes to save his companion (and ultimately repeating the same behaviour that led to him leaving Gallifrey in the first place). But none of it really, truly convinces, possibly because we’re still feeling that we’re being deliberately prodded in certain directions. And I’m not sure it can be explained away by the complexity of emotions of characters under pressure. That argument could apply to just about any piece of drama. It doesn’t work because the drama is slightly wanting, that it demands emotional pay-offs into which it hasn’t put the necessary groundwork.

And it’s a shame because Heaven Sent really is a beautiful script in many ways. There’s lots of great lines and it should by rights be one of the major episodes of AG Who.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@missrori @thane15 @jimthefish

Bizarre.

The Doctor didn’t save Clara because Clara told him not to, which is what made it so devastating – that she faced the raven like a Boss. But it was also obvious that Clara’s story wasn’t done because it was obvious that Moffat would end it it on “Run you clever boy” (c/w “Raggedy man; goodbye”). And yet the Doctor persisted – going through torment, facing down the high council, chasing to the end of time –  until “The future is promised to no-one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past” followed by the exquisite heartbreak as Clara realises that the Doctor really didn’t know who she was, delivered pitch perfect by Jenna Coleman.

And then a little wiggle room….

Hell Bent was nearly bloody perfect. A masterclass in the craft of storytelling. I’ve rewatched it even more than Big Bang.

The reason I am so genuinely excited about tonight is that Moffat has changed it up, and given us a companion without such well-established signposts. I really have no clue where it might be going (except maybe this: the last time The Master had multiple Masters it didn’t end too well for him. No idea if that is as issue, though. Hoping the Doctor doesn’t become Dobby again).

And I strongly suspect this is the middle of a three parter.

[Nick @nick]

@pedant @Thane15

Pedant, I don’t see anything bizarre about it. You both have seen something that, to a greater or lesser extent (each in our own ways), @bluesqueakpip @jimthefish and myself haven’t. You think the three episodes were, combined and individually, a masterpiece, whereas we see something with greater flaws, that didn’t quite convince in a way that we expected it to.

We can’t expect you to see what we did or vice versa. When discussing it, its not really a question about changing someone’s opinion (it’s not something which is fact based, its about interpretation of an idea and how well its conveyed). What I love to read is your explanations and observations and for your passion in stating your opinions, even though I know I’ll never fully appreciate it.

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Rigsy was willing to die for Clara to spare a hair band. Nice of her to return the favour.

Clara was already a ‘ghost’ when she was introduced, somewhat lessening the impact of her mortality.

Hell Bent is f-ing great, BTW.

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@pedant–

which is what made it so devastating

But that’s just it. I personally didn’t find it devastating, not in the way that WEAT effortlessly achieved. And I really, really should have. All the elements are in place that it should reduce any fan to a Heather-esque puddle on the floor but for some reason it just didn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, and I’m not saying it’s a bad episode. In fact it almost touches greatness but I don’t think it quite achieves storytelling masterclass status because there’s just something ever so slightly off about it.

The reason for that is, I think, that it elides just a couple of crucial moments. The first is Clara’s death which should have been much more of a kick in the teeth than it was (and Bill’s was, regardless of what happens tonight). I think it might have helped to have had seen Clara acting in a dangerously reckless way before we got to Face the Raven. We got suggestions of it but I think there should have been an explicit one, perhaps one where she came dangerously close to screwing it all up but failing to learn from her mistakes.

The other slight issue I think is that the return to Gallifrey and the Doctor essentially as Liam Neeson in Taken was just a little too rushed. Just a few more scenes of development would have done it. You could, for example, have taken Ohila out of it altogether and it wouldn’t have suffered. She was essentially there for a bit of fan service. But I realise that these might just be quibbles. For me, on reflection, Hell Bent just falls ever so slightly short of its ambitions because Face the Raven didn’t quite successfully lay enough groundwork for it to pay off.

But I agree that we’re probably midway though a three-parter that is looking much more promising. WEAT certainly set things up with more impact than FtR. Depending on how things go tonight, will depend on just how successful the Xmas spesh will be, I guess.

[tommo @tommo]

@thane15  – hello mate. better late than never, right?

[tommo @tommo]

this episode was one of the best horror shorts i’ve ever seen. what atmosphere!

[nerys @nerys]

@bluesqueakpip For me, “Face the Raven” worked precisely because of the reasons you say it didn’t work for you. Clara had escaped “certain death” so many times (and, of course, earlier on she didn’t … or versions of her didn’t) that it felt like she and the Doctor were always going to find a clever way out. Then – Boom! – she is undone by her own certitude, her conviction that she could save Rigsy by taking on his chronolock, which the Doctor would then be able to “fix” (as he had so many times before). Clara became complacent in her assumptions, and it was her undoing.

[Missy @missy]

@nerys;

Precisely.

Silly question coming up.  Why was this episode called  World Enough and Time? It has never made sense to me.

Missy

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@missy

It’s from ‘To His Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.

…
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song;

[Missy @missy]

@bluesqueakpip:

How beautiful. Now I can see the relevance.  Thank you so much for that, I shall look this poet up.

Missy

[Author]

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