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20 May 2013 at 13:27 #10000
@davemorris316 – I thought that they were back at Trenzalore, looking at the battlefield. I suppose it would make just as much sense for it to be a ruined Gallifrey!
On a different-ish topic, I just realised that in the prequel to The Bells of St John, the Clara Oswald who gives the Doctor the idea for “a quiet place for a think” is really a ClaraFragment rather than ClaraPrime as I had thought before. This means we had seen at least 3 ClaraFragments before we met ClaraPrime.
19 May 2013 at 13:57 #980619 May 2013 at 13:34 #9795@ardaraith – If we work hard, we can make “ClaraPrime” the correct fandom term!
Regarding the idea of Clara as River: I like it from a ‘neatness’ perspective, but I’m torn, as I prefer the idea of having two interesting characters better than having only one interesting character with a tremendously convoluted backstory.
More thoughts:
We’ve had talk of the Hurt Doctor being the Valeyard, which is an idea with legs. But the GI mentions other names – the Oncoming Storm, the Beast. Wasn’t the Beast a gigantic demonic being in the Impossible Planet? Is the Doctor a different Beast?
Just came across an interesting comment at Slate where it’s noted that the Doctor has never been shy of taking ownership of the Time War before – he’s chattered about it frequently – so why would the Hurt Doctor become repressed in his memory for doing something (albeit something terrible) he has already admitted to?
Is there something even darker in the Hurt Doctor’s history?
19 May 2013 at 13:11 #9787Additional:
10) Now that the Doctor has reconstituted ClaraPrime, will she retain the memories of all of the ScatteredClaras? Will she therefore be in the position of an uberfan who knows the series by heart?
11) Madam Vastra says that the Doctor’s timeline is being rewritten by the GI – does this mean that his death at Trenzalore can be rewritten?
12) I forget – have we seen damage to the TARDIS’s glass window before?
19 May 2013 at 13:04 #9785Just finished a second viewing, so some further thoughts/observations:
7) The Hurt Doctor is “The one that broke the promise” of the Doctor’s name, i.e. the one who didn’t take a role as healer/contributor to knowledge. This indicates that the promise had been made before the Hurt Doctor’s non-doctorly actions, and thus that the Hurt Doctor cannot be a Zeroth Doctor. I liked the idea of the Zeroth Doctor, so I hope my logic is flawed there.
8) Who put River’s grave at Trenzalore?
If it wasn’t River herself, how would River know it was a secret entrance? Is it because she is in the Library, and has access to events that happened after she died. Where in time is Trenzalore?
9) My wife’s question and main bugbear with the episode – Why did River open the TombTardis door? Isn’t that what caused the problem of the GI being able to enter the Doctor’s timeline? The Doctor appeared willing to sacrifice all his companions again (even though he had just come to Trenzalore to save them), so why would River override his decision?
19 May 2013 at 11:48 #9750@thebadfairyprincess – I just misread your post as “Is the Time War between McGann and Ecclestone”, i.e. is the Time War a conflict with McGann Doctor on one side, and Ecclestone Doctor on the other?
An intriguing possibility, if we have different incarnations on differenst sides in the war…
19 May 2013 at 11:44 #9746Further thoughts before I watch it again.
1) Is there any definitive evidence to show that the Hurt Doctor existed within the Doctor’s timeline before the GI entered it? (I don’t mean hints and intimations such as in the God Complex, which could have been about the Valeyard). This leaves the potential for the Hurt Doctor to be an artefact of the GI’s meddling. (Disclaimer – I don’t believe that this is what the Moff intends to do, but I’m just putting it out there as a strawman)
2) Why was the Doctor being damaged/weakened by the paradox when we first see his timeline grave, but as soon as the GI and ClaraPrime plunge into the timeline, he’s sprightly enough the snog virtual River and then monologue for a bit before jumping into his own timeline?
3) Does the fact that ClaraPrime now remembers the events of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS invalidate all of the criticism of that episode having a reset button? – because my understanding of fan hatred of reset buttons in general is that they remove consequences, and in this particular case, we can see that JttCotT has crucial consequences, i.e. it gives ClaraPrime the idea to scatter herself.
4) Does CrispyClara from JttCotT count as one of the scattered Claras?
5) If Sexy, as she claimed, stole the Doctor, how come it is now ScatteredClara who points the Doctor to Sexy? Does this imply that there is an even stronger link between the TARDIS and ScatteredClara?
6) Who is more influential on the Doctor, ScatteredClara or BadWolfRose? From this episode, it idicates that ScatteredClara is.
Now I shall watch the episode again!
18 May 2013 at 22:11 #9642If he’s not “The Doctor”, then why was he identified as the Doctor on screen?
18 May 2013 at 21:39 #9630Were there any clips of 8? Could Hurt Doctor be an aged 8, who no longer looks like Paul McGann?
4 May 2013 at 22:55 #7817“On another note, I guess the Doctor was trying to get to Victorian London to see whether the TARDIS would permit it. If Clara now is the same Clara as Victorian Clara then presumably Old Sexy would avoid a paradox. The fact she took them to Yorkshire not London must surely suggest the Claras are the same person?”
Surely the Doctor “needed to be” in Yorkshire to defeat the Crimson Horror – and that is all the justification Sexy needs to take him there? Paradox avoidance is not required as a motive.
(it’s too late in the evening for me to be working HTML tags out!)
4 May 2013 at 22:51 #7816@juniperfish The three exploding TARDISes is still my favourite explanation for the whole Matt Smith era, and I really hope that Steven Moffat has had a long term plan to tie up the loose threads left hanging after the end of Seasons 5 and 6.
4 May 2013 at 22:42 #7813@scaryb On the Graun blog, Drewv has noted that the toy being played with by the kids at the end was the Transformer Galvatron, who, if memory serves, was a rebuilt Megatron intended to act as an agent for the planet-sized entity Unicron, rather like the Silver Surfer acts as a herald for Galactus in the Marvel universe (I may have not got my facts quite straight, as I am neither a comic book fan, nor have I ever seen the Transformers cartoon movie – I just absorbed this info via osmosis during my childhood!)
If this was an intentional reference, maybe Clara/Oswin has a similar function for Grandfather/the GI, and the resurrection business is simply a new model being produced from the original template, who died in Victorian times after the ice-nanny failed.
4 May 2013 at 22:21 #7803@phaseshift It’s good to see classic-era Tegan again! My first memory of Doctor Who is being spooked by the Melkur in Keeper of Traken at age 5, but my first real following of the story came with Logopolis and Castrovalva – so Tegan being “outspoken” on the TARDIS seemed like the default setting for the series.
Recently I’ve observed that fandom doesn’t seem to fond of the character, or the crowded TARDIS of that era – but to me it will always be the way the TARDIS “originally” looked!
That stewardess uniform is very … purple, though! It makes her look like she’s from some weird variant of Starfleet!
4 May 2013 at 22:08 #7799@scaryb I see your point, although I see no reason to not believe that dalekisation doesn’t mess with your memory.
I’m not sure what the most parsimonious explanation is, though – dalek induced amnesia or multiple spooky resurrections.
I will be gravely disappointed if any of the following turn out to be true:
1) Clara is a regeneration of River
2) Clara has anything to do with Rose and the parallel universe (including hand-Doctor)
3) The “Power of Love” has scattered her throughout time
My preference is that there is some link with Susan, although the touchy-feeliness would then have some Skywalkeresque awkwardness about it.
Also, did RoA take place in past. present or future. If it’s the past, could Grandfather have been a precursor to the GI? If it’s the future, could Grandfather have been a future form of the GI? Either way, could the multiple CLaras then be an effect of the “infinite possibilities” that she communicated via leaf to Grandfather?
4 May 2013 at 21:51 #7793@scaryb Heh – if there was consensus, I suppose it would be no fun!
Something else has been bugging me – everyone has been talking about 3 Claras, but I can only see the need for 2. This is because, although we have seen 3 different eras, we have only seen 2 fates (death and dalekisation). Is there any reason to suppose that Dalek Oswin is not the ultimate fate of the current travelling companion? After all, she did take on the nickname Oswin in tBoSJ (or at least liked it!)
Were there any egg references in today’s episode?
4 May 2013 at 21:35 #7788Hi – Short-term lurker here (since JttCotT), found via the Graun.
Loved the episode, even if it was a variation on Moonraker (which itself was a variation on The Spy Who Loved Me).
Am presuming that, with all this talk of a “dark Doctor”, the current fandom consensus is that “the Fall of the Eleventh” means “fall” like Lucifer/Anakin Skywalker, not fall as in Nelson at Trafalgar. Is this correct?
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