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@purofilion   It is exactly 8pm here. The three of us are all sitting peacefully on various internet-connected devices. Two of us are drinking wine and listening to some funky southern Italian folk-music. One of us is pondering the puzzle of a woman split into a million versions of herself, and what happened to her. (I don’t know what the boys are thinking about.  🙂  )

She was, impossible, after all, so not being born would help right there!   This is pretty funny, and unarguably true.

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@purofilion   Tasha Lem “died many times before she gave up information”    I’d forgotten about this, and at the time, it puzzled me. How did she die many times? It seems to imply something that I am just missing.

Oh, @janetteb, good point! Clara’s mother died quite young. Was she, in fact… twenty-seven??? And no one every seems to talk about her death, so it could have been some inexplicable, don’t-want-to-think-about-it thing like an Auton attack.

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@serahni    Love this! All the Claricles rejoin and become, not Clara, but Missy. Very cool. In fact, a powerful challenger to @bivium6’s “Gods of Ragnarok” theory. I think that if that one isn’t true, Moffat should just bring the Gods of Ragnarok back anyway. I think they’d make great opponents for Twelve.  🙂

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@serahni  Well. If my theory were true, then that “vision” that we had of the baby and the young girl would presumably be a manifestation of the Claricle’s memories. Here’s a question. Who is telling the story? “I was born to save the Doctor,” and so on. Is it a Claricle? All of the Claricles, in a collective narrative?

I certainly agree that if the Claricles were having children, the time lines would be a complete mess. And that suggests that either the Claricles all die, or after their encounter with the Doctor they cease to exist. As you say about the childlessness, I don’t think there’s any proof of any of this. But I think I am more convinced by the idea that the Claricles were literally created, as @purofilion suggests, Doctor-ready beings, rather than being born (of whom?) and growing up and influencing reality all over the place.

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@bivium6  Good point, @midnyt. I would also say that Eleven regenerated alone, but he latched immediately onto Amy, to the point where he apparently offered to take a little girl with him in the TARDIS. He knows how much the Doctor always needs a companion.

Bivium, I think the Doctor’s exact words were, “It might be Clara, it might not. It’s a lottery.”

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Interesting conversation regarding the Claricles. We know what caused them, but not what they technically are. I’m not convinced that “I’m born, I live, I die,” necessarily means that that physically happened. Could the Claricles have come into existence complete with memories? The Dalek Claricle created a whole artificial reality for herself, that’s a pretty strong psychic phenomenon. To me it suggests something a little more than human. Someone suggested that all the Claricles were being somehow directed by the real Clara, neat idea. I’m not convinced any of them were born in a normal way. And the two that we saw properly died saving the Doctor. It’s plausible that they might all have to die to save him.

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Just came across this tonight and had to share. I’m not sure it’s quite a Twelfth Doctor theme, even though bagpipes are involved… perhaps more Ten. But Ten isn’t Scottish, although Tennant is. Don’t know, but it’s cool.

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@craig    Oh my goodness. Good luck with it. That looks frankly terrifying to me, but I live in a part of the world where rock climbing is big, so I know that it isn’t as foolhardy as it looks!

Apparently there are people called “rooftoppers” who do a similar thing in an urban setting. I was just sent this link last night. Absolutely mad.

http://ontheroofs.com/hong-kong-2/

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@bivium6    Oh, and if we’re taking bets, I betting on about once per season for the the Paternoster Gang. Unless they make an appearance outside of their place and time, as in NotD. I think (hope?) we will not be seeing too much of any one time/place. As I remember, that was one of the biggest complaints of the first couple of AG seasons, that they spent too much time on Earth.

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@bivium6    Okay, you win. Missy is clearly one of the Gods of R-r-r-ragnar-r-ok (clearly brought back into the story because there is finally a Doctor with the accent to pr-r-ronounce it pr-r-roperly!).    🙂

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@barnable    No, no, it was a pun. An embarrassingly old one. My mother’s family is Ukrainian, and here in western Canada, there is an old joke (as many Ukrainians live in northern Alberta). What is the definition of a paradox? Two ducks flying over Edmonton. You have to imagine the phrase “pair of ducks” spoken in a Ukrainian accent– I always hear my grandfather’s! Sorry, sorry, I knew it was a bad joke, that’s why I blushed.     😳    again!

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@miapatrick

Glad you got through it as well. It is nice to have friends who understand us, isn’t it? Maybe the BBC needs to be asked nicely not to broadcast important episodes on a weekend in summer when people are required to travel, camp, visit family, etc.

It’s as though Vastra is talking about ‘the’ doctor, the continuity. The man in the bedshirt ranting in an ally is the current personality, but not the ‘he’ Vastra is talking about.  I really like this idea.

I have been inclined right along to connect Missy and her heaven with SitL. It has the same very bright, unreal quality as the digital heaven in that story, and I’m inclined to believe that Humpty was not physically brought there. (Although, being a cyborg, it’s possible that he was!)

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@pufferfish   I hadn’t connected the characters who have been “hung up on various Romans” (hee hee); I guess as @rob says, the Doctor is one of them now.

@barnable    Where are those paradoxes?   There were no ducks in the duck pond. 😳

@serahni  She could have found a cloud to sulk on for a while to recover from the loss of a beloved friend but she didn’t.   Nice.

@janetteb   “A short, fat canon”  I’m trying to find a way to make a DW-fandom joke here, and can’t quite get it. Strax is canon; would he do?

I agree btw with the idea that Missy is someone new!

@rob   Welcome back to civilization (?)  This: “Heaven is modernly thought of as a place for the good souls to go, not sure harvesting bodywork is deemed that way” really made me laugh. Obviously Missy’s heaven doesn’t work the same way as other heavens!

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@phaseshift  Love the Conan Doyle/Vastra idea. One then wonders if Jules Verne might not have encountered her somewhere as well. And I wasn’t aware of D-notices, but it makes complete sense that (again like Roswell) the government would have suppressed a story like this.

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@barnable @serahni

Yes, that was basically what I was suggesting with the Roswell comparison, that you would end up with something that most dismiss as urban myth. And good point Serahni, I hadn’t though of the eye guy in that connection. But now that I think of it, Moffat was probably establishing just that idea with the line about the dinosaur not looking real. I should say that, personally, the dinosaur didn’t bother me, in either non existence or extra extra large size. I viewed it as a cool opening and a useful metaphor.

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@serahni  @purofilion (Get well soon, both of you!) Very eloquently stated. What I think is being forgotten is that the Doctor doesn’t just change his face, he changes his entire persona as well. We’ve talked before about what that might mean, and wondered what has to remain unchanged for the Doctor to really be the Doctor. The broom metaphor might be applied not just to body parts, but other things as well. And yes, puro, I agree that every companion who has suffered through a regeneration had to be very patient indeed!

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@purofilion    Okay, I’ve been thinking about this some more. The thing is, we say “Victorian London” but that covers a lot of time. Giant cyber robot over Victorian London (The Next Doctor) happened in 1851, fairly problematic but the cracks apparently took care of that? But Vastra and Company live in Conan Doyle’s era, so that puts them forty years on. Things have changed amazingly in forty years: there are telephones, early cars and airplanes, moving pictures. HG Wells is writing his sci-fi novels. A giant dinosaur appears in the Thames, the authorities have no explanation, so people provide their own. Some kind of new weapon or technology, that gets out of control so the government won’t talk about it. Deniability. A bit like, say, if aliens came to the western United States and the government covered it up. It isn’t in the history books!

Yes, your brother would be a perfect example of why they cast the way they do. And people (often men) have the nerve to get cranky about what they call “fan-girls” crushing on Tennant or Smith. Ha. Lis Sladen was of course gorgeous. But she was a grownup. She acted like one and certainly dressed like one (I used to love her wardrobe!). If I went in the TARDIS, I would have the best time with the wardrobe room, or whatever it’s called where the companions acquire their historic costumes!

Okay, I am really going to bed now, this is ridiculous. But it has been very hot all day, and finally bearable now at 11:30 at night. Not our usual thing, I do assure you. But off to (hopefully) sleep now, and try to put away bonkers theorizing and psychoanalysis of Doctors and Companions until tomorrow!   🙂

 

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@purofilion    I know what you mean. I remember not liking modern Clara nearly as much as Victorian Clara. I think that part of it for me was the inner sigh… Yes, it’s another companion under the age of 25, above average in the looks department and wearing miniskirts and tights. Oh Donna, Donna, wherefore art thou, Donna?

But accepting that Clara/Jenna’s age isn’t her fault, there were problems with the writing of the character that have been discussed before. I think that in these last few post-NotD episodes, we are seeing the attempts to give her the depth of character that she was lacking as The Impossible Girl. I’ll be interested to see if that continues.

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@silverman   I completely agree with this. From a dramatic point of view, I liked what the dinosaur brought to the Doctor’s post-regen recovery. But I wish they could have come up with a way of presenting it such that it didn’t leave such an obvious gaping hole in the history books. It’s more clever to have sci-fi events that tie in with real ones in some way (as per your Agatha Christie example). And like you, I prefer it when facts can be gotten right rather than wrong.

@barnable   I think that Silverman’s point was that he is assuming that the Earth of Doctor Who is our Earth, and the future is our future. So it wouldn’t just be future characters in the show that would remember the dinosaur, we would remember it. It’s certainly possible to do a time travel show differently, but it’s an individual thing which style you prefer. Of course, BG Who used to be pretty good about ensuring that our history books weren’t contradicted in any obvious ways!

@purofilion   Yes, Torchwood! I wonder if the Paternoster Trio’s London is set before or after the establishment of Torchwood? Because you would think they’d have been all over a giant dinosaur in the Thames, wouldn’t you? And I like your assessment of Clara’s feelings here, it fits well with what we have seen. (By the way, Puro, this is you taking a breather, is it?  😉  )

I also agree with @midnyt, though, that there was an element of defensiveness in the “pretty boys” remark. But what she was pointing out, quite fairly, was that there is more to her than that. I also feel that, while she certainly knew that the Doctor has been older, she wouldn’t have realized that a new incarnation might begin older. (And in fact, we know from Night of the Doctor that the War Doctor didn’t begin older.) And as I have said before, I still think that meeting this elderly Doctor, then saying goodbye and leaving with her own version, isn’t the same thing as knowing that your own version is gone for good.

@bivium6    “We know”    This made me laugh.

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@deluxescarf @purofilion

I believe that what we are given in the first moments of that rescue scene is our first look at Twelve in all his glory. It’s not unusual in a post-regeneration story for there to be a defining moment when the Doctor has clearly recovered and is back in the game. Ten and Eleven both had these, Ten when he emerged from his TARDIS, fully recovered and battle-ready, and Eleven after he had finally figured out what he wanted to eat, and suddenly became serious with Amelia: “That must be a hell of scary crack in your wall.” (A parallel has suddenly occurred to me with my teenage son, who can be completely dysfunctional until he has found the right snack!)

The Doctor definitely left Clara there on purpose. He suddenly decided in the middle of opening that door that it would be better to leave her there as a trap for the cyborgs. But oh, the cold look in his eyes. And then, her absolutely heroic leap of faith that the Doctor will “have her back”. “Hello, hello, rubbish robots from the dawn of time!” The new Doctor in hero mode. (By the way, it occurred to me that the Doctor’s willingness to wear a mask made of human skin is pretty alien!)

I was interested to read puro’s thoughts about trust and belief. I was thinking something similar. Clara’s whole experience with the Doctor up to now is completely different from that of any other companion (that I can think of). He came looking for her. He begged her to come with him. She must have felt more in control of that relationship than any companion ever, even Rose. And now, suddenly, she is dealing with exactly what every other companion has had to accept: that he is unpredictable, that he is won’t always tell her exactly what he is doing or thinking, that he will have his own agenda. She has to trust him now. I don’t think her relationship with Eleven was based on trust. Obviously, she did trust him, but she never really had to make that leap of faith that most companions have had to make regarding the Doctor. Possibly, as Vastra suggests and the Doctor himself later admits, because he was playing the “boyfriend” role from the very first, and Clara never really got to see the alien.

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Regarding Missy as River, I would say (leaving aside my view that, dramatically, River’s goodbye in NotD was really goodbye) that River would never call the Doctor “my boyfriend”. He was her husband.

I’m also in agreement with those who feel that Missy as Master is just too easy. Certainly we are supposed to think that, but I would be disappointed to have her identity so obviously telegraphed if it were true!

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@whisht     Nice pick! My Twelfth Doctor Track (of the moment, at least) emerges from my expectation of a bit more of a tough line from this new Doctor. And of course, because he’s now Scottish.  🙂

Don’t worry, @purofilion, this thread will never die! Here’s a song about music.

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@bivium6    I’m not convinced that the “my boyfriend” bit is something to be taken literally. I’m also pretty sure that Moffat is not trying to make this easy for us!

@purofilion    Yes, Deva Loka was from the serial “Kinda”. They were telepathic. There was an evil snake being, called the Mara, that possessed Tegan. So maybe Missy is the Mara?  🙂

@silverman    Not over-exam a sci-fi show? Where do you think you are? That’s all we do here!  😉 Regarding the arc-issue, I wouldn’t mind a less heavy arc, because I will admit that I prefer the stories to be able to stand alone to a pretty large degree. But if there were none at all, whatever would we do between episodes?

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@geoffers    the really stubborn, reckless, hateful, spiteful (anti-life) people  I really like this phrase. I would guess that the Doctor, from pretty early on in his evolution, would have viewed this kind of person as the worst that the universe has on offer. Like the Daleks.

I don’t know about the Master, but most of the Doctor’s attempts at rehabilitation came post Time War, and that was probably more about him being the only other Time Lord left than anything else. Certainly he took plenty of apparently serious shots at destroying him in BG stories. This is part of my reason for mistrusting the “Missy-as-Master” theory: she says that he can be very mean, “but not to me, because he loves me so much.” Certainly, the Doctor was not always so keen to forgive the Master as the Tenth was.

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@whisht    Missy is the SS Madame de Pompadour.   Score! This is brilliant.

@wolfweed    It started with a phone call. It ended with a phone call…   That is rather lovely.

I read your links regarding “the kiss” with interesting, particularly some of the embedded tweets. This one gave me a good laugh (not that it reflects my view of the episode, but I love the humorous way it dismisses the issue): If Vastra’s and Jenny’s kiss offended you more than the writing and plot of the new ‪#DoctorWho you need to sort out your priorities.

@geoffers    I liked your thought that Clara saved the Doctor in TotD, with her plea to the Time Lords, but that she couldn’t save her Doctor. Very bittersweet.

@scaryb   @geoffers    Regarding the aging of our loved ones, it’s the same thing with children. My son is 15 and very suddenly a young man. At times the boy is still there, but the little boy is really gone. I can imagine how Clara might, at times, see bits of “her Doctor” in the new version, and that might both comfort her and make her miss him all the more.

@thommck  Excellent point about the Doctor’s watch, I had forgotten about the wristwatch, and that would explain why he still had it on him. And by the way, I will be calling Half Faced Man “Humpty” from now on.  🙂

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The site that never sleeps!   🙂   I love watching how this site makes its way across the time zones. If I log on before bed, there are all kinds of great conversations going on with our Pacific area members, and when I wake up in the morning, the UK members have been busy speculating for hours!

@serahni    I really enjoyed your assessment of the Doctor’s moral character, excellently stated. And this:

Whilst Clara might not have been central to his goodbye when he was regenerating, she was front and foremost in his mind when he thought he was dying.

It’s a point I hadn’t thought of, but then, until reading it here, I never realized that some people felt that Clara was shortchanged when Eleven regenerated. It all seemed very lovely to me at the time, but it is a point that his final goodbye was to a dream of Amy, rather than to his current companion. But by this time, he knew he was coming back. And he knew he had made that call.

@idiotsavon      The friendly, smiley one. “I wear a fez now” and “Geronimo” and “Who’s for Twister” and “Do we tend to say yowza”. I absolutely loved all that. It was fun.   Bless you, it was. I really enjoyed Matt Smith. When he regenerated, I was sad. But we were already into his era when I picked up the new show, and I realize that I haven’t had this long to get over a regeneration since the break between Six and Seven way back in the day. So I guess I have had all these months to “move on” in my mind.

I’m pretty sure that Clara said, “you’re young again”, in the more northern version of her accent. (British members can tell us if they don’t agree with that, though!) However, I think your point still stands. She was begging him not to change, even as it happened. So yes, her adjustment was always going to be difficult.

@purofilion   I loved your discussion of the “yin yang” of the Doctor’s view of humanity. It reminded me of an audio play where the Eighth Doctor suggested his continual amazement that with all of the human race’s great achievements (and some of his ideas of great achievements were rather amusing), we are at the same time capable of quite startling foolishness.

 

 

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@scaryb    Yes, that is the question regarding Torchwood. I wondered about that as well. Obviously, Torchwood exists in the Whoniverse. But I imagine that Moffat and Co. would be wary of too much specific referencing of a show that not all Who-watchers have seen. We all know Captain Jack, so if he shows up in an episode with some of his Torchwood friends, that’s not really a problem. Ditto Sarah Jane and Luke. Sarah Jane had appeared in AG Who previously, so viewers could be expected to know her. I suppose a one-off reference to a Torchwood character isn’t really a problem, but personally I don’t think that they should make too much of a character from a spin-off show that many haven’t seen (including, presumably, the children in the audience!). But we shall see.

Regarding the kiss. Does anyone remember if there was much fuss about the Jack Harkness/Ninth Doctor kiss? I remember thinking that was rather cool, but I saw all but the first few of the Ninth Doctor episodes well after the fact, and so wasn’t really aware of public opinion. Given that that was undeniably a kiss (and couldn’t be explained away as an kind of first aid!) I suppose it must have been an issue for some people as well?

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@bluesqueakpip     Interestingly, mouth-to-mouth is pretty much what it was, allowing for the fact that one might well apply that aid to one’s wife in a, shall we say, stylistically different manner than one would to a stranger on the street?  🙂

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@fivefaces   Whoever she is, the idea that Missy might have put the Doctor into that situation to find out whether he is capable of killing is rather neat.

@bluesqueakpip    Interesting point about the two previous owners of the Twelfth Doctor’s face. I agree that “saving people” must somehow be the connection, especially given that Gallifrey has been saved but not yet restored.

@craig   I didn’t know there were two versions. The iTunes version that I saw was definitely a kiss. It was only my interpretation that saw it as less of a kiss, and more of what Nine did to save Rose (which interestingly enough didn’t seem to bother anyone, although I could be misremembering that as it was a long time ago and I was less internet-connected back then!).

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@tardis-pilot    I think you will find it is your tone that people object to, not so much your opinion. On this forum, people deal with each other respectfully. Coming on and announcing that you found the forum by searching the internet for crap? That you signed up merely to tell us that it was crap? Not “here is what I thought about it” but “it’s crap.” Your nasty remarks to @juniperfish, who didn’t even address you?

By the way, the double regeneration didn’t create the meta crisis Doctor. It allowed the Tenth Doctor to partially regenerate, saving his life without changing his face. The excess energy was channeled into the hand, which later created the half human Doctor clone. Like it or not, this is not a matter of opinion, it is fact, taken directly from the show itself and mentioned specifically in Time of the Doctor.

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Missy????? I really don’t know what I think. When she is talking about the Doctor, I can believe that she is somehow a personification of the TARDIS. But right at the end the tone changes, and she definitely feels like a baddy at that point. Then, I can buy her as the Master. But would the Master have said that the Doctor is never cruel to him/her? That seems out of character. He loves me, maybe, but never cruel? And if this is a baddy, I’m not sure how that fits with being the woman in the shop.

@serahni   What could a clock that size be hiding if a small pocketwatch can contain one Time Lord?   Oh, I like this. I am now imagining the Doctor opening the clock and every Time Lord on Gallifrey somehow reappearing!

@confusedpolarity   If he keeps this up, he’ll be the most “The Doctor” anyone has been in my eyes since Doctor Tom himself. Yes, I’m feeling exactly the same way.

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But of course, the highlight is the new Doctor, and he is amazing. We knew that Capaldi was a fan, and it is obvious here that he really gets the Doctor and who he is. I saw so many little moments that reminded me of earlier Doctors, but in subtle ways: hints of Tom Baker and Troughton in the restaurant scene, Smith and Eccleston when he was rescuing Clara from the cyborgs. The scene with Half-Face Man when he talked about preferring the view from below felt very Tennant-like. I suspect we will see more of these moments in episodes to come. And I felt as if we were really seeing Capaldi-Doctor break out in the moment he left Vastra’s house through the window: “ME!”

The alley scene with the Doctor’s exploration of his new persona was beautiful. Attack eyebrows. Scottish. Full of lines but I didn’t do the frowning. Nice writing here and flawlessly executed. And the restaurant scene, starting calmly enough with a bit of humour and some relationship development, and then suddenly takes an ominous turn. I think I really understood that we were in new territory at the moment when the Doctor calmly and deliberately abandoned Clara to the cyborgs. There was no, “I promise I’ll be back for you” as we would have had from Eleven. This was cold.

I thought that Half Face Man was very well played. I loved how he sounded and looked increasingly human throughout. He was a great foil for Capaldi. I loved the momentary lost look on the Doctor’s reflection as he said, “You probably can’t even remember where you got that face from.” And: “Your friend is intelligent. He’ll know better than to follow me.” With the Doctor, hanging on from beneath, such a quintessential moment. And for what it’s worth, I think he jumped.

The ninja fight in the restaurant lost me a bit, but fortunately was really only included in snippets to ramp up the tension and contrast with the Doctor’s quiet tete a tete with Half Face Man. You know, call me stupid, but the Vastra-Jenny kiss didn’t even register as a kiss with me, until I started reading other people’s view of it. People are touchy, aren’t they?

I loved the Glasgow scene, so well played by everyone. I realize that Eleven’s phone call served another purpose, allowing Twelve to remind Clara that he didn’t have to listen in on the call, he made the call, saying, essentially, I am he and he is me.

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Vastra really did get awfully sniffy with Clara, but we can perhaps put it down to being protective of the Doctor. I did like her explanation of the Eleventh Doctor’s tendency to flirt with everyone. Some of us used to grumble a bit about that, and it was nice to see it addressed with a believable explanation. At least, it was believable to me based on my own thoughts about the post-Time War Doctor’s character development. I suspect the Doctor has now moved on from a desire for acceptance!

I enjoyed the look at the domestic life of the Paternoster trio. I know some people don’t care for Strax, but I’m sure the kids must love him. Enviable spleen, well done! And I couldn’t help laughing when the newspaper smacked Clara, it was predictable but well executed. And I must say, it was nice to see Clara in a bustle again! She looks great as a Victorian.

By the way, @janetteb, I think you have absolutely nailed the Vastra/Jenny relationship, well done. And I really like @bluesqueakpip’s notion that “home” for the Doctor is Victorian London, with Vastra and Co. as his family.

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Isn’t it lovely to have something new to talk about?   ☺))  Just finished my first rewatch, so much to like here. I’m going to split up my post because it is insanely long!

I really enjoyed the whole opening scene, beginning with sepia toned London as a background to Vastra’s green face. “It just laid an egg!” “Your grasp of biology troubles me.” The Doctor’s intensity, confusion intermixed with sudden bursts of energy, the cloister bell chiming as he falls to the ground, Vastra’s “Here we go again”.

I still like the new theme. It is definitely more restrained the the previous AG themes, but I don’t mind that. I agree with whoever it was (maybe @whisht?) who said that the final deep chiming note could have been more aggressive, it does kind of disappear. But other than that I was pretty pleased with the whole thing. I love the bell chimes to go along with the clock theme, very appropriate and they add an element of urgency.

I do understand those in various places who have complained about the lack of action in this story, or said “boring”. I didn’t find it boring, but it is a contemplative episode. As others have said, it had a lot to accomplish. I expect that some fans would have preferred to skip the new-doctor-character-building stuff and just get into an adventure. I really liked the fact it chose instead to focus on the characters and this fairly momentous issue of regeneration and what it means.

I actually find Clara’s difficulties perfectly believable, much more than Rose’s were in the same situation. I suspect that Rose’s easy acceptance of Ten was perhaps more as a new man than as the same one she had known. He had quite a different personality, less prickly and more attractive, and she probably just accepted that and moved on. She didn’t seem to ever really deal with the notion of mourning the previous Doctor, even though she had developed such a close bond with him. As humans, part of our understanding of people is based on what they look like, their eyes, their smile, their voice. If all of these things suddenly changed in someone close to me, it would feel as if that person were gone.

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@cathannabel   Wow. I would never, ever have remembered that line from Dickens. Take that to those who feel that the dinosaur was contrived!

@juniperfish   I thought of the library as well, possibly because of the parallel “life after death” themes. (Hope you are recovered from your trip to the ER!)

@purofilion    I didn’t need to hear from Eleven, but I certainly enjoyed it. I know that some didn’t, but I felt a tear, and thought it was quite nicely done. I completely agree that it was probably helpful for younger viewers.

There were so many great little moments of character-building in this that I can’t remember most of them at this point. I’m planning a re-watch tomorrow and then I’ll probably be back on here with another load of thoughts. Altogether pleased with life just at the moment!

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Okay, the mother-in-law is off to the botanical garden, so I have a little time to read and enjoy all your comments! Here are some back. I have been jotting down thoughts as I read yours, so I may end up repeating things that others have said, but oh well.

@miapatrick    quibble: if thought eleven though he wouldn’t regenerate. I know the doctor lies, but….   When Eleven made the phone call to Clara, he had already begun to regenerate. So he knew what was coming by then.

Did people really sign up to this forum entirely to come on and tell us how much this sucked? I really do wish that people could remember that loads of others don’t agree with them, and avoid stating their negative views (or indeed any views) in such a hard and fast manner. @smeglennon, I’m glad you know what will happen so you don’t have to waste your time watching (and commenting)! Sorry you don’t like the new Doctor, but lots of us do, so your “it’s not going to work” viewpoint is only valid for you.

I seem to be in the minority here, but I love the new theme. It is certainly more restrained than the Tennant ones we’ve been watching (although I also liked Eleven’s quite a lot), but it works for me. The chiming bells made it nicely suspenseful, and I like the greater subtlety. I also like the new TARDIS (despite the insufficient number of round things!).

@devilishrobby   I loved how they addressed the age issue… especially with the Doctor essentially laying claim to responsibility for presenting himself as “fancy-able” in his quest for acceptance. I have to say here that I personally find Peter Capaldi extremely sexy, but then I’m an old girl myself. (Can I add here that I don’t see why my fandom, and that of others my age, is any less important than that of the younger generation? I watch as many episodes as they do!) I think that the mysterious Time Lord has come up before in regard to the woman in the shop, and it seems perfectly possible. I’m just glad that Moffat hasn’t let that mystery drop, as has sometimes happened in the RTD era. Moffat does seem good at keeping track of all his loose ends.

@timeloop   I also didn’t feel entirely comfortable with Vastra’s scolding of Clara. But it did give Clara a chance to stand up to her (and maybe sort herself out at the same time), and I think we were supposed to be applauding that right along with Jenny. And maybe that was exactly what Vastra was trying to accomplish for Clara? Because she did a very quick about-face. I’m saving most of my commentary for after a rewatch, but I really agreed with pretty much everything you said.

@serahni    Yes, I agree about the simpler plot here. I think this same thing has been said before about The Eleventh Hour, which had the same job to do, taking a certain amount of focus away from the threat part of the story.

@bluesqueakpip makes a very good case for Missy as the Master. I’m personally hoping that she isn’t the Master as I would rather have a more interesting explanation, and I’m also not too keen on all these Time Lords continually escaping back into our universe without explanation, but I fully accept that I may not get my wish in this!

@confusedpolarity   The Doctor himself admits that he has tricked people into destroying themselves in the past. So I think it’s entirely believable that he might urge the cyborg to destroy itself. And he has certainly destroyed monsters when necessary. I suspect that anyone who claims “the Doctor wouldn’t have done that” is strictly an AG fan. I love your “evil future Clara” theory!

@wolfweed   Really? They would stop watching if the Master became a woman? That seems extreme to me for a character that has only rarely appeared in AG Who. I don’t really want a female master, but it won’t stop me watching!

@whisht     No, the last we saw of the Master he was getting sucked back into the Time Lock with Rassilon and Co. So I would definitely want to know how he got out (maybe that is how he ended up regenerating?).

@whisht  @thommck I tried holding my breath along with Clara and couldn’t remotely keep up with her. She must have lungs the size of a tank!

@janetteb   I like the idea of the woman in the shop as an aged Claricle! I agree that I don’t think that it was Missy, she seems malevolent to me and I’m not sure she would have intervened in such a helpful way. Your son makes a good point about the impaled cyborg as well.

@phaseshift   Absolutely agree with the elegance of the doctor’s broom metaphor. It was actually very moving to me, as it seemed clear that he was also referring to himself.

@purofilion   It occurred to me, reading your post about needing the call from Eleven to reassure you, that Sarah Jane Smith would have recognized this new Doctor with no trouble. I certainly did!

@jimthefish    As with my comments above about the “would the Doctor kill” question, I’m pretty sure that comments about the Doctor’s new Scottish accent are coming from AG fans who wouldn’t recognize Sylvester McCoy if he walked into their house for breakfast. And yet, Christopher Eccleston????? So not sure why a changing accent would bother anyone, really.

@thommck     I think that the difference between Clara accepting the earlier versions of the Doctor and this latest one is the absence of her Doctor, the Eleventh. Those other versions of him, were in her mind, other versions of him, this is now the new and only him. Her Doctor is gone. Also, a lovely point that Matt’s cameo was meant for the younger fans, for whom regeneration is not “here we go again” but truly an end. Nice. I’m glad it worked for your boy.

@bluesqueakpip   He wasn’t ‘my’ Doctor. But I think he grabbed a place in my heart.  Absolutely agree

Welcome, @giulia42! I loved your thought that the new Doctor is one who has once again fully accepted all the aspects of himself. As a fan of the old days, I am happy to see those aspects back in play.

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I hope everyone has seen it by now, despite inconvenient real life getting in the way of things. I got up very early this morning and watched all of it before anyone else got up! I had my tea, and watched it on the laptop with my cat Cima, who seemed quite happy to watch the new Doctor with me. It was lovely, and I was very happy, because I really, really liked it. I’m looking forward to more of the new Doctor, and looking forward to watching that again, which I will do ASAP. I won’t have time to read all your comments until later, but I wanted to hop on here with a few first impressions.

I thought that was possibly the best examination of regeneration that we have ever seen; I loved how they explored it from both Clara and the Doctor’s point of view. I thought Capaldi was amazing (no surprise there) and felt there was an almost “BG” feel to his interpretation. I have never really warmed up to Clara before, but I loved her here. I liked that the “cliffhanger” at the end was really more of a teaser, and didn’t especially impact the story at all. I hope that this means a return to a more subtle style of story arc. Matt Smith’s brief appearance was a nice touch; I felt the emotion of it without real sadness, which tells me that I am already more than on board with Doctor Number Twelve.

I will have loads more to say after another viewing, and I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s thoughts. Let the speculation begin!

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Happy Who Day, everyone! I will shortly be going on DW media blackout until tomorrow morning when the TARDIS will land at my house. Whenever and wherever you are watching, enjoy! See you in the new era.  🙂

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@pufferfish     This should really be a crazy caption. Something like, “New mouth, new rules! Clara, can you whip up a fig soufflé?”

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Well played, @fatmaninabox! (And by the way, that modern New Wave music will never last!)

My “tomorrow track” requires the TARDIS to take us back to the 1920’s, when some of the greatest music ever was being made. There we can listen to jazz cornettist Bix Beiderbecke’s “Take Your Tomorrow”.

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@timeloop    As a Who fan in a non-Who household, my celebration is largely an inner one. I am a bit in awe of @janetteb and all the others who plan Doctor Who menus and other festivities. However, I too have rewatched the last few Matt episodes recently, and have spent more time on this forum than I have all summer! Here in Canada, my viewing method of choice is an iTunes subscription, which will download to my account at midnight on Saturday. So I will avoid any DW-related internet on Saturday, as the UK is eight hours ahead of me here on the west coast and most of you will have reached nirvana that much earlier than I will.  🙂  I will spend today and tomorrow plotting how to sneak in a first viewing early Sunday morning without offending my visiting mother-in-law. I will then be all smiles (I’m sure) for the rest of the day and jumping onto the forum Monday morning to celebrate (if I can’t sneak on sooner!).

I hope that none of us are disappointed, and all of us are delighted!

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@craig sums this up well:  There’s a lot wrong with this finale, but there’s also a lot that’s really great.  I felt that the beginning and ending were the weakest parts, with a fair bit of pretty good stuff in between. For me, one of the chief problems is that the great bits don’t really hang together, to create a cohesive great whole. Way too much crammed in, too many sharp turns between goofy and intense, and some plot points really don’t make a lot of sense.

On the plus side, every moment of Wilf is awesome. I liked John Simm’s Master better than in his previous outing, as there was more intensity and less goofiness this time, and the one-on-one scenes with the Doctor were quite good. In general, the intimate moments work really well in here. And it was fun to see Donna again. Notably, this episode gave the me the one moment where I really warmed up to Sylvia Noble:

Donna: “Are you shouting at thin air?”     Sylvia: “Yes… Possibly… Yes.”

Okay, the ending. In a nutshell, I wish that the whole “fear of dying” subplot could be expunged right out of DW, the Doctor fixing up Captain Jack just felt strange, and Martha in a shootout with a Sontaran? The only time during that whole epilogue that I truly felt moved was when the Doctor said his final farewell to the Noble family. Did I say that Wilf was awesome? But on the whole, Eleven dropping his bow tie to the ground and going out with a smile felt far sadder for me than what went on here… interesting really, in light of the common view that RTD handled emotions better than SM.

One final thought occurs. As I have said on here many a time, I’m easily entertained, and not terribly critical most of the time. I really enjoy the AG show. But it is true of modern television in general, that it’s always trying to make me cry! It’s rather nice, sometimes, to just be entertained, and I’m starting to feel really hopeful that there will be more of that in the near future.  🙂

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@whisht    Re: El Grillo, I guess it depends on how you define “singing” in that particular case.   😈  But your cricket track was definitely edgier than mine!

@thekrynoidman   My love for the Kinks has probably become apparent to everyone on here by now.  🙂  I enjoyed that live version of “Celluloid Heroes”. Extended instrumentals are one of the joys of live performances!

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While I believe this to be the best of the Tennant specials, beautifully written, acted, and produced, this is only the second time I’ve watched it. I actually find it just so horrific, so difficult to watch on an emotional level. But it is a crucial piece in the Tenth Doctor’s evolution.

The setting is beautifully realized and the tension is ramped up perfectly, as one by one, people are taken over by the body-snatching alien life form. And along with this tension is the tension we feel from the Doctor, as he realizes where and when he is, and is prevented from leaving when he could still bring himself to do so. When he is finally free to go, it is heartbreaking to watch him slowly walk away, leaving these people he so admires to their doom, the sounds of their destruction in his ears. Really, really heartbreaking. And we watch him slowly go mad.

When he bursts back in to help them, we feel that familiar triumph– the Doctor is here, he will save them! But that typically Tenth Doctor energy he brings doesn’t ring quite right in this; it feels not triumphant but desperate. Because what he’s doing is wrong. And the whole final scene with Adelaide is brilliantly done, right up to the look on his face as he realizes that she has stolen back her destiny, that he is not after all victorious over time.

I didn’t mind the robot, because in addition to being clearly referential, it also fulfills a purpose in fetching the TARDIS. However, the magical disappearing Ood feels artificial, and accomplishes nothing, since the Doctor is still in rebellion when he enters the TARDIS. We are left with the cloister bell ringing ominously in our ears as the episode ends.

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@miapatrick     Yes, I empathize. My mother-in-law will be visiting next weekend, and I’m already desperately trying to figure out a way that I can sneak in a watch before Tuesday– it’s just inconceivable that I would have to wait that looonnnngggggg! (This doesn’t seem like a very grownup response to a TV show, does it? But in our defense, we have waited a long time.) I’m thinking that if I get up early enough on Sunday morning, I can sneak in a watch on my laptop, but then there’s the fear that because it’s longer than an average episode, I will get interrupted part way through. Not sure if that would be worse than waiting. Maybe if I get up when it’s still dark?

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@fatmaninabox

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@purofilion     Great Scala performance, I love to see a good choir take on rock and make it in their own image. And like you and @whisht, I quite like Abba. Never owned anything of theirs, but they were so omnipresent in my youth that I can sing loads of their songs.

And I’m sure we could have something a little earthy from Hilliard, especially if they turned their attention to something like this. No F-bombs, but not exactly G-rated subject matter! Or this, a little less direct but spicy nonetheless! (The poster provides a translation below.)

 

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@phaseshift   That is quite a story. Poor workmanship has become more and more of an issue in all kinds of construction, as materials become more expensive and everyone (taxpayers, homeowners) want things “for cheap”. The Canadian building contractor Mike Holmes made his fortune on home improvement TV by exposing bad workmanship and promising to “make it right”. His outrage at bad work used to be pretty fun to watch, as he had a very working-class personal style (and I’m sure the language to go with it when he wasn’t on TV), and would just start ripping things out of walls to expose faulty work, saying “Just look at this! This is an embarrassment!” And so on.

@purofilion    Your story about the chem lab shower reminds me of my son’s experience at the beginning of high school, when his new science teacher explained all the safety rules, and informed them that in the event of any chemical spillage on any part of a student, said student would be required to strip off and shower immediately. The shower was in one corner of the classroom, and had no curtain or enclosure of any kind! He was horrified, and I couldn’t really think of any advice other than the obvious: “Don’t spill anything.”

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@yumeshi    Welcome! I hope we’re not crazy here.  🙂  Jump onto some forums and share your ideas, theories, and stories. Favourite doctor, favourite villain, favourite companion? Hopes for the new series? Where do you stand on Colin Baker, romance in the TARDIS, and the return of the Time Lords? (Or choose your own controversy!)

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After reading @wolfweed‘s comment on “Planet of the Dead”, regarding the crazy guy sitting next to you on the bus, I was reminded of this song. Does anyone else remember Weird Al Yankovic’s first hit?

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