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16 July 2015 at 19:40 #41246
Cabbagepatch
Ah, Benedict Cumberbatch. The only actor where the parodies of his name aren’t as funny as his actual name. Also the only actor to play Sherlock Holmes who has a name even more stupid than ‘Sherlock Holmes’. 🙂
16 July 2015 at 14:50 #41243Congratulations on trying for a Master’s degree. You’ll feel right at home here – several of our prominent contributors have postgraduate degrees and some are university lecturers. Personally, I’m an actor by trade, but I do have a Masters in Comparative Religion.
Religion can be studied from either an insider or an outsider perspective, and I’d say that’s also true of establishing religious belief. If you argue that events we have not seen have changed the Doctor’s religious beliefs, then both my acting training and my religious training would expect a corresponding change in behaviour.
For example, if someone who’s previously been an atheist has a religious conversion experience, they’re likely to change certain aspects of their behaviour. They will probably start praying. They may start attending a church/mosque/temple/synagogue. They may read religious writings. They may help out at the local food bank. They might also change the way they dress, the food they eat … lots of things.
Equally, if someone who’s previously been religious has a loss and/or change of faith, there will also be a change of behaviour. They might, for example, start talking about Flying Spaghetti Monsters, or demanding that people don’t pray for them, or using the word ‘theistic’. 😉
So you can argue that the Doctor’s had an off-screen change of belief, but, until there’s a corresponding on-screen change in his behaviour, you have no evidence for this argument. Meanwhile, you will be competing against people who can provide evidence that there has been no off-screen change of belief – because the Doctor’s behaviour hasn’t changed from the period when we know he was an atheist.
Could this change happen off-screen? It’s very unlikely to. Artistically, it’s too major a change to happen ‘off-screen.’ Even if it was introduced in a novel or comic, and the current producer thought it was a terrific idea, the Doctor’s non-religiosity is so well established that any such change would promptly be given an on-screen story to explain it to the mass audience.
For example, we’ve seen a change in the Doctor’s beliefs – his movement from being aggressively ‘science explains everything’ to respecting people with a strong faith. However, we saw that happen on screen, in Time of Angels. The Doctor moves from poking fun at Father Octavian’s beliefs to respecting him deeply. Thereafter, the Doctor can be friendly with priests with no further discussion. The change in belief has caused a corresponding change in behaviour.
16 July 2015 at 00:43 #41221Because your spell checker is coming up with different words than the ones you mean.
In the 1997 novel ‘The Murder Game’, the Second Doctor offers up a quick prayer (probably on the ‘no atheists in foxholes’ principle) to ‘the gods of his own people’. We do know that Gallifreyans have gods; however we also know that Time Lords encourage atheism.
All Time Lords (as far as we know) are Gallifreyans: not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords. 🙂 And the canonicity of the novels (which I distinctly remember discussing before) is in a quantum state of uncertainty. They are stories told about the Doctor, not events that ‘definitely’ happened.
Wasn’t the war doctor the 8th doctor ?
I’ve just told you who the Eighth Doctor was – Paul McGann. With video link. His image (as the Eighth Doctor) also appears in ‘The Next Doctor’, ‘The Eleventh Hour’ and ‘The Day of the Doctor’. You can also google ‘Eighth Doctor’ if you like.
The War Doctor is the regeneration between McGann and Eccleston
15 July 2015 at 23:58 #41219@xtremez – are you using a smartphone?
1. A belief in the devil (small d) doesn’t necessarily imply a belief in God, capital G. The Smith Doctor could simply mean that he now believes that the Beast was the being that is identified as Satan/The Devil in Christian belief. However, it doesn’t mean that he accepts any or all of the rest of Christian belief – just that he’s accepted that particular bit is based on reality.
3. Hurt is the ninth Doctor. Only he’s not, because Christopher Eccleston is the official Ninth Doctor. Paul McGann is the Eighth Doctor – I won’t direct you to the movie, because that would be cruel. However, the Eighth Doctor has many adventures available on audio, and his regeneration into John Hurt’s Doctor can be seen in this official webisode:
Technically, Peter Capaldi is the Thirteenth Doctor, but they’ve called John Hurt’s Doctor the War Doctor so that Capaldi can be the 12A th Doctor. That’s why I think they’ll either jump straight to Fourteen, or possibly have an official Thirteen as a one-story Doctor. Acting is nervy enough without a vague background feeling that you’re the ‘unlucky’ Doctor. 😉
John Hurt was, incidentally, the thirteenth actor to play the role of the Doctor on TV.
4. As far as I’m concerned, a ‘good’ Doctor has one, very important, requirement. They have to be willing to accept the part.
However good Benedict Cumberbatch is as an actor (and he is very, very good), I don’t think he’d ever accept the part (he’s hinted as much), and he certainly won’t accept a long running TV role while his schedule is so booked up.
15 July 2015 at 23:12 #412171. Earlier incarnations of the Doctor were definitely an atheist. The Smith Doctor also appeared thoroughly pissed off at God for not existing. The Capaldi Doctor? Not sure; there was such a religious undercurrent in Series 8 that I was beginning to wonder if Steven Moffat had been on an Alpha Course 😈 However, I’d still say ‘agnostic tending heavily towards atheist’.
2. Possibly until they cart him off on a stretcher – however, if they’ve planned the exit point, it may well be either the series before Moffat retires as showrunner, or the series after. Moffat’s mentioned how having to start with an entirely new Doctor/Companion/Showrunner team was truly terrifying for all concerned, so I suspect he’ll try to give any new showrunner a going concern that they can then change to their liking.
3. There won’t be a 13th Doctor. They’ll suddenly remember that John Hurt was the Doctor (for a whole five minutes), and jump straight to 14th. 😈
4. He’s too busy. The only reason they can find time to make Sherlock is because a) Cumberbatch and Freeman genuinely like doing it and b) Hartswood make sure they get to spend time with their families by casting their families. 🙂
15 July 2015 at 14:07 #41213So, out there in the universe there is clearly a design engineer who wanted to create special effects for Doctor Who.
Unfortunately, they got a job making kitchen appliances.
(The video of it in action is probably NSW. Really)
14 July 2015 at 21:02 #41198There was an entirely respectable Neanderthal butler in Ghostlight, which was one of our forum discussions. He didn’t know what the heck was really going on, but that’s par for the course with Ghostlight.
Neither did the cast, or the audience. 😉
11 July 2015 at 15:50 #41118I sympathise. I’ve been in things where the other cast members are off to Prague and I’ve got Deptford Town Hall. 🙂
11 July 2015 at 15:22 #41115How are you doing with Greeks Bearing Debts? Or have they got you holding the fort while everyone else discovers they have a great idea for a vox pop story on some beautiful Greek island? 😉
11 July 2015 at 13:41 #41114@Purofilion and @xtremez
The impression I’ve got over the years is that the Doctor was brought up very firmly within a class system. And the ‘academic’ class that he aspired to (the most prestigious role for one of his class) largely made Professor Richard Dawkins look like a devout Anglican. 😈
‘Religion’ is something for the lower orders. The belief-system of the Time Lords appears to be utilitarianism, crossed with ‘everything has a scientific explanation’. Except their idea of utilitarianism includes the idea that one Time Lord is far more important than any number of people of other races.
But that’s largely my impression, rather than anything definitively stated. I’ve got a vague memory that one of the Gallifrey TV stories referred to gods as something the lower classes believed in, there’s a batshit crazy priestess of Pythia in The End of Time and there’s the distinctly less batshit crazy Sisterhood of Karn. The Doctor himself starts out with an ‘everything can be explained by science’ viewpoint, but by the Smith incarnation has seemingly learnt to appreciate that a deep religious faith doesn’t actually equate to ‘nutter who is about to burn you at the stake’. 😉
Canon -there isn’t any. This is a show about time travel. Within the not-canon, the TV is canon until any current producer decides otherwise, the Big Finish radio series is canon until any current producer decides otherwise (especially for the Eighth Doctor, whose adventures mostly take place on radio, and the books and comics are ‘stories told about the Doctor’. They may or may not be ‘true’, in whole or in part. 😀
11 July 2015 at 11:34 #41110Hey, @juniperfish! Hope all is well.
I’ve just referenced you in the Series 9 Official Spoilers blog, but didn’t do an ‘at’ in case you didn’t want to go there. I was riffing off your ‘Clara is the Doctor’s daughter/granddaughter theory’.
9 July 2015 at 21:36 #41085Not necessarily because you have a learning disability – they look at everyone’s marks as a whole, and if less than 5% have a distinction, the exam and coursework go off for moderation or something.
If the moderators decide the exam was tougher than usual, or the coursework marking was on the stringent side, you can easily end up with a distinction despite being slightly below 85.
Very well done you! OU distinctions aren’t easy to get. 😀
7 July 2015 at 15:18 #41043@kharis and @Purofilion
Since when did pilots only have to have one flying instructor? 😉
I’d agree there’s a bit of misdirection going on; if River says ‘The TARDIS taught me’, that’s a big fat dangerous ‘huh?’ because it’s extraordinary for the TARDIS to either pilot herself or tell someone else how to fly her.
Not to mention the real-life reaction, which would have been: the Internet Explodz. 😈
Whereas, if she tells the Doctor he taught her, she merely tells him something he’s (and we’ve) already guessed.
5 July 2015 at 13:10 #40959@purofilion and @lisa
There is indeed a minisode (First Night, Last Night), and it’s certainly when the Smith Doctor thinks it’s the last night ever.
However, he doesn’t have the ‘new haircut’. Possibly they couldn’t manage a wig on the minimal budget for a minisode. Or possibly Moffat did it on purpose – to give himself leeway in case he wants River’s real last night to be with a different incarnation.
Sort of a Schroedinger’s Last Night. 😀
4 July 2015 at 19:58 #40949@phaseshift – I go for ‘inveterate bullshitter’. 😉 Or as the Tennant Doctor himself admitted:
No idea, I just made it up. Didn’t want to say “Magic Door”
2 July 2015 at 12:50 #40920I’m also Mr Spock. I can only presume it’s because I think the heroic habit of running straight towards the mysterious object is bloody silly. 😉
30 June 2015 at 21:35 #40891Me, I prefer Odysseus. 😉
What enabled the supposedly isolated TLs on Gallifrey to interact with Clara and the Doctor in ourspace? What do the TLs need the Doctor alive for anyway, if they can be forcefully active in our universe from where he put them?
::cough:: calculations on a blackboard ::cough::
My theory, anyways. The Capaldi Doctor still has to get to the 50th. As to why the Time Lords need him; they need him to tell them that it’s safe to come back. Yes, they can send energy through, messages through. But if they can see through, then what they can see is half the universe gathered about Trenzalore. With weapons. Not exactly reassuring…
I would say that if Gallifrey had never been ‘missing presumed destroyed’, the Doctor (from Eccleston to Capaldi) would never have given a flying fig about going home. It’s the after effects of thinking he’s killed them all, that he’s the last of his kind, that he is alone in the universe.
He wants to go home. It’s not enough to be told Gallifrey survived; he wants to go home and see that it survived. He wants to talk to other Gallifreyans (ones who aren’t bananas). He wants to argue about politics with people who know that the ‘Prydonian Chapter’ isn’t something in J.K. Rowling’s latest novel. He wants, most desperately wants, to be told he did the right thing by the people he did it to. To do all that, he has to go home. And until he does, the Time War isn’t really over, not for him.
Once he’s done all that, he’ll very probably set off on his travels again. Or maybe not, maybe the grown-up Doctor realises that if there’s still a mess, it’s his job to stay and help fix it. Maybe there’ll be a series of stories set on Gallifrey instead of Earth, with side trips to other worlds.
But that’s up to future producers. 😉
30 June 2015 at 20:05 #40884I’d agree with you about Widows, but I’d put in a good word for the earlier Rock Follies, as well.
30 June 2015 at 18:40 #40881On the one hand, I don’t think Who was her greatest achievement. Though, to be honest, it would be hard to point to Verity Lambert’s ‘greatest’ achievement, because she achieved so much.
But on the other hand – would she have really, really had the chance to achieve so much if people hadn’t known her as – not just the producer of Doctor Who – but the young, female producer who brought in the Daleks against Donald Wilson’s advice?
24 June 2015 at 23:47 #40812@jimthefish – well, to be honest, I can think of a couple of Gaelic speakers where I’d say that while running away rapidly. 😀
The latest research came out in March; there’s certainly a genetic link between the Welsh and the Irish, as well as between Lowland Scots and Northern Ireland. The North Walians and the South Walians, however, are genetically distinct. But I’m afraid the Scots are related more closely to the English. 😈
To be precise, Lowland Scots and Northern English are pretty intermingled. Both are quite distinct from that bunch in the South.
But what the research did seem to confirm is that there’s no such thing as a uniform ‘Celt’ population across the UK. The groups who tend to regard themselves as ‘Celt’ are definitely distinct from that bunch in Central/Southern England – but they’re also fairly distinct from each other.
24 June 2015 at 23:30 #40811@whisht – I particularly liked Jonathan Strange’s promises to [spoiler] which meant that, with the best motives in the world, he agreed to [spoiler].
[No idea what episode our US and Canadian contributors are up to, hence the spoiler tag]
Yeah, the writer seems to be emphasising the theme of ‘control’ as a kind of ownership/slavery. The Gentleman isn’t just the ‘collector of people’ that he is in the book, he’s much more blatantly controlling his toys. And Norrell, and the people surrounding Norrell, are all trying to manipulate and control people.
A promise, even a well meant one, is an attempt by the person who extracts the promise to control the one making the promise. Which is why they’re all turning out so badly. 😕
24 June 2015 at 12:06 #40801@purofilion
Sounds like the first meaning, then. That is, there’s no such thing as ‘Celts’, really, because it’s just a romantic way of saying ‘Welsh’.
24 June 2015 at 09:57 #40799@Purofilion
It is very hard to tell what he meant without knowing the context. He could easily mean that ‘Celt’ is generally used in a romantic way when people really mean ‘Welsh’. Or he could mean genetics, the Welsh do have a very high proportion of people descended from the most ancient Brits.
Probably because it’s bloody difficult to get over those sodding hills; which is why most of the very ancient Welsh towns are on the coast.
24 June 2015 at 01:10 #40796Ah, Galaxy Quest. That film nearly got me thrown out of the cinema, I was laughing so much.
Well, you can imagine. It mercilessly takes the p*ss out of actors, out of SF geeks and out of SF conventions. As an SF geek who has been known to attend conventions and is also a professional actor, I didn’t stand a chance. 😀
Well forget it! I’m not doing it! This episode was badly written!
Excuse me, I’m starting to snortle…
23 June 2015 at 00:12 #40775@whisht – yes. I always find it strange (not Jonathan Strange, just strange) how some people not only define ‘not my cup of tea’ as ‘an objective judgement of quality’, but will seemingly watch a ‘bad’ series week after week.
The only explanation I can think of is that they live in a household that doesn’t know what the pretty red button on the remote is for. Possibly they think it’s some kind of self-destruct. 😉
Charlotte Riley’s very good, isn’t she? But pretty well all the actors are very, very good – lots of BAFTA material in this series. Carvel’s doing a terrific ‘arc’ for his character, but he’s a lot more theatrical than Ms Riley. However, I’d say that suits Jonathan Strange, so possibly it was an artistic choice.
22 June 2015 at 22:57 #40771@janetteb – I have returned the compliment and recommended your post. 😉
I do agree that it takes some time to return to reality after each episode; I find myself re-watching almost immediately.
22 June 2015 at 15:18 #40766You should have 60 minutes of drama – basically they whizz into the action immediately after the 60 second recap. They are, however, bringing out the blu-ray here practically the second that the finale has broadcast.
I hope they haven’t cut anything; compressing a massive doorstep of a novel into a seven part series is hard enough as it is (to the extent that they were allowed to expand to 7 hours – instead of 6 – providing they did it on the same budget). Entire backstories get compressed into one line.
My assessment (at Episode 6) is ‘bloody brilliant’. Shame it seems to be getting a tiny audience over here.
21 June 2015 at 13:32 #40756I think your Firefly blog has been spammed.
Either that, or there’s a connection between Firefly and cheap trainers that I just don’t get. 😉
19 June 2015 at 00:27 #40711@mattsmith1983 – you’re into SF, do a podcast and have never watched Doctor Who?
Definitely a problem you need to solve.
Broadly, you have two options. One is to start with the grand original, first ever, 13th November 1963 Black & White episode. It’s called An Unearthly Child and is about two teachers worried about one of their pupils. They go to her home to investigate and discover that home is an old police box and her Grandfather is frankly weird. Oh, and he calls himself ‘Doctor’. Just ‘Doctor’. Doctor Who? 😉
After the exciting first episode the story wanders off for three episodes of slightly dull adventures-with-cavepeople (it was the only script that was ready). Then, in the next story, we meet the Daleks. The rest was, as they say, history. [And if you want a drama-doc about the history, it’s called An Adventure in Time and Space and is very good.]
The alternative is to skip two generations and start with the very first episode after the long hiatus: Rose. Russell T Davies knew that anyone under 17 might never have seen Doctor Who, so he basically reintroduces and re-explains the entire concept.
Warning: Doctor Who is strangely addictive. Some people never do get it. Others watch an episode or two and suddenly find themselves compelled to watch every episode since Rose. In extreme cases the compulsion can extend to watching every episode ever and obsessing over the possible re-discovery of The Celestial Toymaker. You have been warned. 😀
18 June 2015 at 20:57 #40708Congratulations! I hope all goes well in the future.
18 June 2015 at 12:47 #40700I agree that Rory would’ve had to go to Uni again to become a doctor – but I did always wonder what his career was in the 1930’s US. Did he remain a nurse (with forged date-appropriate qualifications), or did the need to go back to college mean that he applied for medical school and MD training?
14 June 2015 at 22:38 #40653FIFA is the gift that just keeps on giving. Probably by means of no-questions-asked donations to projects that don’t really exist. 😕 I do agree that the words ‘gravy’ and ‘train’ come to mind when thinking of the IOC, but one can only hope that some of the FIFA trails lead in their direction.
Of course Ceres isn’t a space dragon egg. Don’t be silly. It’s where the Clangers live. The bright spots are obviously the Soup Dragon gearing up for a spot of lunch. Meanwhile, ET was obviously on PAYG, because they only had about 85 seconds worth of contact before the money ran out. Further news once the ESA has had a whip-round…
Congratulations to The Canaries. 🙂
14 June 2015 at 21:00 #40652To celebrate the Philae lander waking up
14 June 2015 at 12:56 #40649Can’t believe a pub where no one talks about football. What are we, a bunch of geeks? 😈
Anyway, the Philae lander has briefly woken from its snooze.
Rumours of some bloke in an orange spacesuit giving it an almighty kick are completely unfounded. 😉
14 June 2015 at 09:13 #40646Brenda, eh? What a fan girl!
The excuse in both cases is probably Doctor Who’s sterling contribution to the UK’s balance of payments and overseas profile.
But it does carry a faint flavour of pointed hints during the weekly audience with the PM. 😉
14 June 2015 at 00:38 #40638A double-length episode would certainly explain why they confirmed a full series of thirteen, but do seem to be doing twelve.
Regarding the women – judging by Helen Raynor’s experience I confidently expect them to be blamed for any special effects failures, costume failures, bad performances, the lighting design, the sound levels, Peter Capaldi’s Scottish accent and Murray Gold’s music.
11 June 2015 at 23:04 #40595And they really couldn’t go young again
One of my favourite lines in Day of the Doctor:
War Doctor: Am I having a mid-life crisis?!
They did have to change the casting direction, given that Tennant was younger than Eccleston, and Smith was younger than Tennant. It was heading inexorably towards a regeneration into a child actor. 😈
7 June 2015 at 20:38 #40556@ichabod – the Doctors’ plan was that Gallifrey would vanish and the majority of the Daleks (i.e. those not sent off as part of the emergency survival plan) would die in the crossfire.
This would then match the original timeline, where the destruction of Gallifrey also destroyed the Daleks surrounding the planet. Match in the sense of ‘the Daleks all died and Gallifrey was missing presumed blown into little bits’. 😉
The Doctors’ plan couldn’t change the fact that some Daleks survived (sent off as emergency survival plan, etc. etc.), but it could change Gallifrey’s status from ‘definitely destroyed’ to ‘mistakenly presumed destroyed’.
Since the surviving Daleks were able to rebuild lots of little Daleks, who then grew up into lots of big Daleks, the return of Gallifrey-and-the-Time-Lords would (again, presumably) restart the Time War. The Time Lords want to destroy the Daleks, the Daleks want to destroy the Time Lords – and the Time War had reached a point where neither side could surrender, because the other side wanted to wipe them out.
The suggestion is that either the Daleks or the Time Lords (or both) have to change in some way. Otherwise, they’ll just continue tearing the universe apart in their efforts to destroy the other. Right now, most of the peoples of the universe are just as terrified of the Time Lords as they are of the Daleks.
Myself, I think Into The Dalek was pointing the way forward for the series. Having written themselves into a bit of a hole, the only way forward for the writers and producers of the future is to modify our favourite tin pepperpots very slightly – by making their fixed evil a matter of engineering, not part of their basic nature.
7 June 2015 at 17:29 #40553Booo. 🙂
The Excel’s always a great venue for me, because it’s close enough to commute. So instead of worrying about travel/hotels etc, it’s simply ‘does it appear interesting, am I free on one of the days?’
Yes, the Q&A session with the writers looks rather good.
Regarding the finale on that weekend: aren’t they having a full series of thirteen episodes this year? So unless the Christmas Special is Episode 13, they’d have to start on the 22nd August to have the finale on the 14th November.
On the other hand, if the finale is a two-parter, we could be on the start of the finale. Thematically, that makes sense; it connects with the show’s original birthday by starting on the weekend of the 13th and then moves the story onwards.
Yes, if I’m the only one who can make it, I will see if I can do a blog.
5 June 2015 at 13:37 #40514Okay, so that’s me booked in for the Saturday (as a Cyberman – dunno how that happened).
Not as frantic as the 50th – though the TARDIS tickets seem to have all gone for all three days, so it’s obviously booking reasonably fast.
4 June 2015 at 15:12 #40508Presumably this is the ‘we’re-not-really-celebrating-the-tenth-anniversary-of-the-new-series-honest-guv’ event? 🙂
I hope the tickets don’t go as fast as the Fiftieth, because I’m unlikely to be able to try booking until tomorrow afternoon (booking opens tomorrow, btw).
4 June 2015 at 14:54 #40507But then there was that scene in the parallel universe where Rose and The Doctor were talking about Mickey’s dad running off and his grandma raising him and how rough it was ‘growing up on the estate’, it sounded like they lived in gang territory
Not as rough as US gang territory, but it’s not a big stretch to imagine the Powell Estate as pretty rough by UK standards. There certainly seems to be a lot of graffiti (even if most of it is obviously lovingly created by the art department).
Most people on the estate will be working people (Rose worked in a department store, Mickey was a car mechanic). Most kids will be in school, most kids will go on to a job or further education.
There will, however, be a minority taking and dealing drugs and it may well be that Rose and Mickey know people from school who went into a drugs gang or became addicted. That would have been an ever present ‘opportunity’ for them, as well.
There will, very probably, be about one murder per year. Again, it’s quite likely that Rose and Mickey will either know the victim, or know someone who knows them – or the place where it happened is somewhere they walk past most days.
So the ‘rough’ Rose talks about is that, growing up, she and Mickey would have been frequently faced with a series of harsh decisions and harsh events. Do you take drugs or not? Do you deal drugs or not? What do we wear to the funeral of our classmate, who got stabbed because he tried to stop a fight?
But it’s not Compton. 😉
4 June 2015 at 00:32 #40497@purofilion
Agreed. The Baby Moon Dragon creating a new moon (and the old moon disintegrating harmlessly) isn’t a deus ex machina.
Quoting from my own blog (somebody has to), a deus ex machina requires:
1. A seemingly unsolvable problem WHICH HAS
2. A sudden and abrupt resolution BY
3. A previously unknown character, character ability, object or event.1. The disintegrating moon isn’t seemingly unsolvable. The second part of the episode is taking up with arguing over two suggested solutions. Solution one: assume the baby and remaining eggshell will be reasonably harmless and let nature take its course. Solution two: assume the alien monster and remaining moon rock will be an earth-destroying disaster, and nuke the thing.
2. The resolution isn’t sudden and abrupt. When some of the characters have spent half the episode arguing that the Baby Moon Dragon may be harmless, don’t be surprised when said BMD turns out to be harmless. Even the replacement moon has had its very own Chekhov’s Gun.
3a. It could be possible to argue that the Really New Moon is a previously unknown object – except that there’s the aforesaid Chekhov’s Gun.
CLARA: Because I’ve been in the future, and the moon is still there.
[snip]
DOCTOR: Maybe it’s a completely different moon.The writer warned us that the ‘Moon’ we see in the future may be a different moon to the one we see in the present. So Really New Moon isn’t ‘previously unknown’; it’s been foreshadowed.
3b. It’s also possible to argue that the ability to lay moons is a previously unknown ability of Baby Moon Dragons. However, since a) the old moon is destroyed, and b) Clara has seen a moon in the future, it’s apparent that something had to be able to replace the moon.
Since Aristotle’s dictum is that the solution to the plot should arise out of the plot itself, it becomes apparent that the classical method of resolving the ‘replacement moon problem’ would in fact be the Baby Moon Dragon. It’s the only creature in the story which has NO previously known abilities. In fact, the lack of knowledge about its abilities is a major plot point.
Again, if some of the characters have spent half the episode saying ‘we don’t know anything about this creature’, don’t be surprised if it turns out to have previously unknown abilities.
So. The solution has been discussed (at length), the resolution arises out of foreshadowed events and the unknown nature of Moon Dragons is pretty much the Inciting Incident.
The Baby Moon Dragon isn’t a D.E.M.
3 June 2015 at 02:33 #40488This is pretty conventional wisdom.
And that’s a lot of people’s problems with the episode right there, because the underlying premise of the episode?
Everything you think you know is wrong. In this case (as in several previous Series 8 episodes) conventional wisdom is wrong.
The big moon rocks are dealt with, incidentally. One short bit of dialogue, but they are dealt with.
LUNDVIK: It’s not going to just stop being there, because inside the moon, Miss, is a gigantic creature forcing its way out. And when it does, which is going to be pretty damn soon, there are going to be huge chunks of the moon heading right for us, like whatever killed the dinosaurs, only ten thousand times bigger.
CLARA: But the moon isn’t make of rock and stone, is it? It’s made of eggshell.
LUNDVIK: Oh, God. Okay, okay, fine. If, by some miracle, the shell isn’t too thick, or if it disperses, or if it goes into orbit, whatever, there’s still going to be a massive thing there, isn’t there, that just popped out. And what the hell do you imagine that is?
The moon isn’t made of big rocks. It’s made of a baby moon dragon, plus some eggshell. A magical baby moon dragon, because the moon’s mass is increasing instead of decreasing.
You can’t sell one kind of story, and then just switch and tell us its another kind of story.
I think this is what really annoys people. Kill the Moon has space shuttles and nuclear bombs and astronauts – and then there’s a magical baby moon dragon, WTF?
The ‘innocent life’ is mentioned in the teaser (though anyone who’d seen the preview clips probably thought that was Courtney). The fact that something’s wrong with gravity is mentioned in the first bit on the space shuttle. Something really weird is happening when we see cobwebs in a vacuum. And we know that something’s gone seriously wrong with reality when Courtney starts floating. Did anyone think that that made the slightest sense? Even with the Doctor’s technobabble?
The reveal that it’s a baby moon dragon then comes about halfway through the episode – and as soon as we find the Moon is really an egg, we know this episode is in the ‘fantasy’ genre. The Moon isn’t an egg and there are no such things as Baby Moon Dragons. Even if there were, chicks don’t increase the weight of an egg; chicks weigh less than their egg.
But, as I stated in an earlier post, that everyone is wrong, wrong, wrong about what they know has been consistent through the episode. And there have been clues that reality isn’t playing by its normal rules.
[I reserve the right to be completely wrong about Baby Moon Dragons if Europa suddenly bursts open and a dragon flies out – but I’m fairly sure the Moon isn’t an egg.]
It’s a weird thing. People are often quite happy to be told that the fantasy story has a pseudo SF explanation, but they go ballistic when the SF episode has a fantasy explanation. Personally, I’m happy to believe that the writer’s constant harping on people getting stuff wrong was a hint to the audience that they were about to be wrong-footed. This story isn’t in the genre you thought it was (and these are not the droids you are looking for). I also think the writer left that reveal a bit too late – but these things are difficult to judge.
All we need to do is simply infer a whole bunch of things we’re not shown or told -again, sorry but no.
Inferring a whole bunch of things we’re not shown or told is ‘subtext’. In this case, we can infer that there may be a subtext that’s the result of events in previous episodes. The actors would certainly be expected to refer to previous episodes in creating their characterisation and the director of this episode (or the Head Writer) is entitled to ask them to try and play a subtext based on something from a previous episode.
Members of the audience, equally, are entitled to infer that Character X is behaving in that way in Episode Y because of that scene back in Episode C.
To me, the Doctor’s actions are dictated not by his personality or motivations, but simply because the plot requires him to act in such and such a way.
Well, acting is merely my job, so I’ll simply have to disagree with you on that one. Personally, I’d find it difficult to explain to Stephen Moffat why the Doctor abandoning Clara is out of character when his reply is likely to be ‘but the Doctor abandoned her in Deep Breath?’ Another tough sell would be explaining why a man prepared to make the decision to destroy his own planet would be out of character in dumping a tricky decision over her planet onto a companion. Moffat’s reply would probably be something like ‘but the Doctor knows she made the right decision in Day of the Doctor when he didn’t?’
It is always a problem when a well-loved character does something reprehensible, and it’s always very tempting to say that the reprehensible action is ‘out of character’. Unfortunately, in the case of the Doctor, I don’t think it is.
we can’t distinguish the life form in the moon from a fetus or a cancer
We are shown pictures. It’s a fetus. The question over whether it should be born or not is a simple, moral question. Do you destroy an alien child because it may be dangerous? There’s nothing ‘magical thinking’ about it; it’s a theme that Moffat’s been playing with since he took over. Alien children are sometimes (generally quite unintentionally) dangerous to humans; they are also children.
And it is always wrong (in Moffat’s Whoniverse) to deliberately kill a child. Morally wrong. You may have all the reasons in the world why it’s necessary, but it’s always morally wrong. If you want to see much, much more on that topic, there’s a blog…
Clara and Courtney went for the ‘moral’ decision, Lundvik for the ‘necessary’ decision. The story said that the ‘moral’ decision was also the ‘right’ decision by having the dragon fly off – after kindly replacing the rather-important moon it’d seriously buggered up.
If the Moon Dragon had instead destroyed half Earth, even by accident, the story would have said that the ‘necessary’ decision was the ‘right’ decision.
It’s an episode that exhibits contempt for its principal cast, and contempt for its supporting cast, for its allegory, its premises and ultimately for the audience.
I honestly think that’s a bit over the top. Purely from an acting point of view, the fact that I could find a through-line relatively easily for both the Doctor and Clara doesn’t suggest that the writer wasn’t thinking about their characterisations. Additionally, Henry and Duke (functional characters both) are distinguishable from each other and both have some nice lines. There’s stuff to play with.
Lundvik has a consistent characterisation, right up to the denouement of discovering she’s been wrong all along. And her reaction at that discovery is consistent with her early ambitions.
It’s not an episode I like, personally. However, misjudging the point for the reveal that this is a genre-flip story isn’t showing contempt for actors, audience, or anything else. With the best will in the world, sometimes the place the rules say is the right point for a reversal just – isn’t.
I am entitled to dislike it, I am entitled to say I dislike it,
But by the same token, everyone else is entitled to say why they disagree with your reasons for disliking it. I, for example, also have a right to hold my opinions, and I also have the right to articulate them.
It’s a big world, which means we all get to live in it. Whether we agree with each other or not.
2 June 2015 at 12:55 #40482@ichabod and @jimthefish
I’d agree that there’s nothing out of character about the Doctor leaving. Ichabod can find a throughline as a professional writer; I can find one as a professional actor. Frankly, Peter Capaldi is a much better actor than I am – so if I can find a through-line, he certainly can.
Looking at it from an actor’s point of view, and given the note that the regeneration crisis lasts all Series 8, I’d hark back to Hartnell (very unreliable in his first series) and Baker 2. Both are bloody rude, both erratic, both quite unreliable. Both would have left a companion to cope on their own.
Then, going from previous events in Series 8, I’d note that Clara manages perfectly well when the Doctor previously had to seemingly desert her or when she has to work alone, and in fact has rescued the Doctor more than once. Obviously, in my Time Lord mind, she just lacks self-confidence; the knowledge that she can tackle these major decisions by herself will do her the world of good.
What the Doctor is missing, he’s missing because he’s an alien (again, I’d look at the more ‘alien’ regenerations – Hartnell, Baker I, Baker II). He clearly has problems reading human emotions (think Aspergers…), he probably does subconsciously expect his companions to be telepathic (he is) and so (I’d decide) he’s missed why Clara was deeply upset and sobbing in Deep Breath.
He thinks she was sobbing because she was scared (she was) and that she was able to use that to fool the Half Faced Man (she did). He’s missed that the main reason she was in floods is because she thought the Doctor had abandoned her. Having missed that, that’s why he gives her a test by telling her he’s abandoned her.
[Had he picked up that Clara thinking she’s been abandoned is deeply upsetting to her, he’d probably have arranged something where she’s ‘accidentally’ left on her own to make the major decision, and then told her afterwards he did it deliberately, because she doesn’t really need him any more.]
I’m not surprised that she was so bloody furious with him. Nor am I surprised that the Doctor was surprised.
None of the other characters are any problem; the astronauts have a fairly obvious through line and Lundvik’s deep cynicism can be explained by a background of having lost the career she loved – because of Earth’s fear of aliens. After so many invasions, of course people on Earth are going to be scared stiff of any alien, even a baby one. Another side effect of the Doctor wiping himself out of the record; there is no record that not all aliens are scary monsters trying to kill everyone on the planet… why would anyone support a space program when the universe consists entirely of psychotic pepper pots and potato headed super soldiers? Best to hunker down and kill anyone who comes this way.
Clara’s behaviour is consistent throughout. She needs to know that people have her back; it harks back to her mother reassuring her by telling her that, however lost she is, her mother will always find her. Equally, she needs to know that the Doctor will always find her if he can. Her mother died; she’s able to cope when the Doctor can’t have her back because he’s trapped himself (and needs her to have his back). But that seems to be the image of love that’s in her mind.
Neither she or Courtney are scared of the baby Moon Dragon – they both know the friendly alien Doctor.
As Ichabod says, this doesn’t have to satisfy anyone else. It’s simply that this isn’t one of those scripts where I’d be going ‘the reason for the character’s behaviour is that they’re paying me a lot of money to find a reason…’ 🙂
1 June 2015 at 23:14 #40465One of the fun things about the Kill the Moon script (an episode, by the way, that by and large left me cold) is the sheer number of times everyone either gets things wrong or just plain doesn’t know what’s going on:
Clara [about Courtney]: you told her that she wasn’t special.
This is the Courtney who later becomes US President.
Courtney: This isn’t the moon. Where are we?
On a Space Shuttle.
Doctor: Oh? Well, you’re just going to have to shoot us, then.
The astronauts don’t have any guns.
Courtney: COURTNEY: Wow. Wow! One small thing for a thing. One enormous thing for a thingy thing.
Okaayyy… though to be fair, Courtney is later mentioned studying Geography, not History.
COURTNEY: Kills ninety nine percent of all known germs.
It’s an unknown germ … and Courtney didn’t even know it was a germ.
CLARA: It’s obvious, isn’t it? The moon doesn’t break up.
Oh yes, it does.
LUNDVIK: Doctor, if the moon breaks up, it’ll kill us all in about forty five minutes.
DOCTOR: I agree. Unless something else is going on.Something else is going on.
LUNDVIK: There’s no water on the moon.
Well, it’s always possible that one might be the writer…
CLARA: Where’s the Tardis?
DOCTOR: She’s in the shuttle, isn’t she? She’ll turn up.
CLARA: Last time you said that, she turned up on the wrong side of the planet.’nuff said.
Clara: The secretary hates me. She thinks I gave her a packet of TENA Lady for Secret Santa.
Even the School Secretary is wrong. 😉
31 May 2015 at 22:53 #40437By the way, folks, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is really upping its game. Episode Three is excellent.
Off to watch it again. 🙂
31 May 2015 at 08:43 #40432Encyclopedia of SF has it as Peter Scott Graham. Other sources also have it as Peter S. Graham, and add that he said it (or possibly printed it in his fanzine) shortly before he left organised fandom.
Since the saying dates (I’m told) from the late 50’s or possibly 1960, one thing it isn’t talking about is Star Trek. 😉
31 May 2015 at 00:36 #40427Possibility one: Orson isn’t Danny’s descendent. He’s descended from another branch of the Pink family.
Possibility two: your theory – he’s descended from Danny, but through a previous child, and the ‘time travelling great grandparent’ is another of the Doctor’s companions.
Possibility three: Orson has something to do with ‘I never know where the faces come from.’ [Deep Breath]. His plotline importance isn’t that he’s a Pink, it’s that he has exactly the same face as a distant relative. Having the same face as someone else happens remarkably frequently within the Whoniverse. 😀
But, for what might be the first time in-series, somebody has noticed. The Doctor noticed about his own face, and Clara noticed about Danny/Orson. Orson’s face, in fact, was a plot point.
‘I never know where the faces come from.’ Throwaway line to explain Peter Capaldi’s previous roles in Doctor Who/Torchwood, or a plot line that’s running through his tenure?
30 May 2015 at 19:57 #40421Like @jimthefish, I find a little space opera goes a long way. Blakes 7 I loved, Red Dwarf I could either take or leave. I made a valiant attempt to watch Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: NG, largely because I’d seen most of the original Star Trek. But Enterprise was a bit – well, pants, to be honest. And Next Generation was Incredibly Serious And Meaningful.
There is a place for the serious and meaningful, but it’s not when you’re battling the rubber spider. 😉
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