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26 February 2020 at 00:09 #69846
Oh, I think the clock has a meaning and I don’t think you’re grasping at straws. The camera focus on the clock wasn’t casual – the actor placed it quite deliberately for its very own close-up and that close-up was long enough to have made a real live actor a very happy bunny.
But I think its significance is as a symbol of time rather than there being anything significant about the clock.
25 February 2020 at 23:33 #69844I had a good look at a freeze-frame of the clock and I’d say it’s an ordinary carriage clock with Roman numerals.
The only odd thing about it is that the Roman numerals look a bit funny – at first I thought they were in the wrong places, but it’s just that the right hand stroke of the X is really thin and difficult to see.
25 February 2020 at 19:44 #69838@blenkinsopthebrave and @mudlark
Or maybe they were entities who simply assumed the appearance of the father and the senior policeman.
I noticed the different reactions when I rewatched as well. I think you’re probably right, Mudlark – the minders assumed the appearance of the two people that Brendan would trust most in all the world. His father, and the policeman who mentored him. Because before that final scene, neither of those people act as if they know who Brendan truly is – the policeman is completely shocked when Brendan wakes up, and the father is visibly wondering if he’s fostered Superman.
If they’re TimeLords, they were also chameleon arched without their memories and came to pick up Old Brendan. Which is, I suppose, possible, though as I said up above, it would be a terrible pun on the old ‘Gallifrey is in Ireland’ gag if that entire Irish village consists of chameleon arched Gallifreyan refugees.
@psymon
I suspect the cliff to beach problem was technical: they did or planned the cliff top shot with Brendan being shot in the chest and falling backwards, which looks really good. Then they realised when filming at the bottom that they couldn’t get both actors and the cliff in the shot unless Brendan had his head to the cliff.So they probably decided that either it enhanced the dream-like feel of the fall/coming back to life or that Brendan could have flipped over in flight, so to speak. Not terrible continuity, just a camera angle problem.
24 February 2020 at 17:50 #69817Oh, and an Irish Brendan is almost certainly named after St Brendan the Navigator, or sometimes St Brendan the Voyager. He sets off with a bunch of companions and has many exciting adventures, finally finding the Blessed Isle, or the Isle of St Brendan.
Remind you of anyone? Especially considering the long-running fan joke (repeated by RTD in Human Nature) that Gallifrey is clearly somewhere in Ireland…
24 February 2020 at 17:44 #69816Okay, so I had a chance to rewatch this episode – some thoughts on that.
Firstly, while I’m going to wait and see what next week’s like, I think I may have to apologise to CC for saying his ‘future-set’ episodes aren’t that good. Given the massive amount of information that had to be given to the audience, this was a very well paced first act.
@jimthefish – I agree that Graham has a definite flub in which he starts to say ‘I’m the Doc’ and then changes it to ‘I’m the most normal person’. Even if it’s a Billy flub, I’d still have to ask why he’d start to do that particular line. Running off-screen gag? Or he says it next episode?
Graham has now been mistaken for the Doctor three times. Skyfall. Fugitive of the Judoon. Can You Hear Me? In the first two, it’s blatant, in Can You Hear Me he gets the vision of the trapped godlet that one would think should have been sent to the Doctor…
And now, as you’ve spotted, he starts to tell someone he’s the Doctor.
Agreed that Chibbers didn’t do a great job of making us care about the last remaining human refugees – sorry, we’ve spent the budget on the Cybermen and the Brendan subplot so there are only six speaking parts plus one non-speaking. But what I did notice was that they all had traditional Doctor Who Sci-fi names. Very traditional – Ravioli, sorry Ravio, Meerkat, sorry Feekat, Ascot, no Bescot, Fuckitt, no Fuskle, oh let’s just do a random letters and vowels thing, sorry Yedlarmi and Ethan.
Uh, Ethan? How did Ethan creep in there? And people on T’Other Place have pointed out that Ethan is a very knowledgeable young man.
RyAN. BrendAN. EthAN. Could be some writery subconscious thing, but is there some kind of connection between Ryan, Brendan and Ethan? And plus, while the Last Remaining Humans seemed to include several disposable characters, a lot of effort was spent making us like Brendan. He had an entire subplot to himself, from babyhood to ‘death’.
The props department seem to love their details with Doctor Who, and one thing I noticed was that Abandoned Baby Brendan had the most lovely white baby quilt with flowers and stuff – and a definite ‘circular’ motif. Very Gallifreyan.
@missrori – I still think ‘The Timeless Child’, but there is a very ‘Doctor’ motif in that he’s a Garda, which the script spells out means ‘guard’ (a guardian?). He spends his human life wanting to protect people, which is very Doctorish and he tries to talk the thief down in a very Doctorish way.
Bonkers theories – one idea I had back when the Doctor had killed billions of kids was to wonder why the Time Lords hadn’t hidden their children using chameleon arches. Now we’ve been deliberately reminded of that tech via Ruth, I’m again wondering if the surviving Gallifreyans are hiding among humans.
23 February 2020 at 21:09 #69801Anyway, my bet is that Brendan IS the Timeless Child, and his ‘minders’ are responsible for wiping his memory at the end of every ‘life’.
23 February 2020 at 20:56 #69799Yeah, I thought Captain Jack as well. Captain Jack became immortal as a by-product of the Time Vortex, so if Brendan is a similar type of immortal there’s a fair chance that he’s the Timeless Child or something related to the Time Lords.
But that explains why Captain Jack had a scene in Fugitive from the Judoon.
20 February 2020 at 18:21 #69765Well, the Master being back is expected. Given the Castrovalva/Logopolis like nature of the Villa this week, I was expecting him to pop out of the woodwork.
I strongly suspect the Timeless Child is going to go into next series, though.
19 February 2020 at 13:09 #69754Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward haven’t gone missing – we simply haven’t got to them yet.
19 February 2020 at 10:02 #69750“Doctors”: is this show good? It seems as though every second Doctor Who cast member has been on it.
The BBC considers it as one of its ‘rep’ training-ground soap series for baby TV actors and writers – so its quality can be a bit variable, ranging from ‘superb’ to ‘we have to broadcast this, it’s Tuesday’. But that’s why almost everyone has been on it.
19 February 2020 at 09:55 #69749why, how, could a non-inhibited cyberman slit his own children’s throats? I think that was probably a lie.
Yes, I get the feeling that something about it was a lie. It’s possible he’s not got an inhibitor because he’s a fanatic about the joys of Cyberisation, but he was certainly lying about the baby – he may have seen the baby as a future Cyberman, but he still saw it as a baby. As you say, a Cyberman going coochy coo with a baby was a ‘yikes!’
There is a circumstance when a loving parent would slit his or her children’s throats, and that’s when what they’re facing is worse than death. They’d ‘joined the resistance’, so were fighting being Cyberised. Did Ashad kill them because he’s a fanatic? Or because he knew the alternative was bringing them in for Cyberisation?
@blenkinsopthebrave and @winston – Sadly, I have to point out that there’s a time jump when Doctor Polidori goes to sleep and that I strongly suspect that Graham took a leak during that ‘off-screen’ bit – though I agree he’s got really good bladder control. Reminds me of the scene during the Buffy Series 7 finale when they’re facing a massive battle and Xander tells everyone where the toilets are…
Blenkinsop, I did not find Heaven Sent hypnotically riveting. I did find it slow – it relied on Capaldi, I think, and if you didn’t like Capaldi’s Doctor the viewer was left with nothing much else to watch. I’d a thousand times rather re-watch the Tsuranga Conundrum than Heaven Sent, even though I know perfectly well most people would think Heaven Sent is artistically ‘better’.
Heaven Sent seems to be one of the very few episodes I didn’t comment on; probably I was working on the ‘if you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything’ line of thought at the time. However, I will say that comparing a talented writer (Chibnall) to a writer of genius (Moffat) is a bit unfair. It’s not that I like every single thing Steven Moffat has ever done, but I do think Moffat’s a genius, even when his latest experiment didn’t work for me.
Um. Yeah, maybe it’s the pacing of the scripts? Because I actually liked the pting and would be happy to see it crop up again. Likewise the male pregnancy. The ideas are there, but the problem seems to be plotting and pacing them.
18 February 2020 at 22:58 #69742I’m not sure that’s entirely fair – as I said a couple of weeks back, it’s really difficult to do an arc that may involve the Doctor’s past without going back into the Doctor’s past. I’d agree Chibnall didn’t have a ‘winner’ like the Weeping Angels when he tried a series of entirely new monsters – and it may well be that he’s got the kind of imagination that works best when it has something to ‘spark’ off. But his puppet master Dalek in Resolution was truly creepy, and I think this very cyborg-y version of the Cybermen might have legs. Possibly someone else’s legs, knowing Cybermen. 🙂
No, the question is more: given that the historicals are often very good indeed, possibly ‘classic’ material – what is it that’s lifting them up, but not the present day/future episodes? Is @blenkinsopthebrave right and it’s a simple matter of pace?
@jimthefish – forgot to mention – if you think any actor is going to ruin a perfectly nice part by doing a historically authentic high pitched grating voice that will irritate the audience no end, you can think again. ‘Historically authentic?’ Lewis Rainer no doubt said, ‘I’m in this historically authentic cellar with a *%)$&”! Cyberman!’
😀
18 February 2020 at 18:01 #69734Well, ghosts in the Whoniverse are often the sign of a time distortion. So maybe the ‘conflict’ with the Big Finish audio (haven’t heard it) is a subtle signal that the time distortion caused by sending the Cyberium back (followed by the Lone Cyberman) is more dangerous than we think?
The Big Finish set with Mary Shelley then becomes a ‘should have happened’ time loop. This might explain why the Doctor (who remembers being the Eighth) is so worried about killing Percy Shelley that she is willing to risk billions of future deaths. She already knows time has been badly altered.
And why she wanted to limit the fam to one hour. With Shakespeare and Christie he was perfectly willing to stay overnight/for tea.
[Edit: Come to think of it, could that be the reason the TARDIS is parked so far away that they all get soaked? It’s trying to avoid itself?]
18 February 2020 at 17:53 #69733I’m going to say no, just because it’d be too like Death in Heaven. Instead I’m going to suggest that the Doctor will make some terrible mistake because she’s trying to stop one of the fam being Cyberised.
18 February 2020 at 17:51 #69732Yes, I only knew it because I was in a play about the mad foursome a couple of decades back.
It can be referenced in The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of His Life, which is on Google Books.
17 February 2020 at 22:08 #69714Yes, I was thinking Castrovalva and Logopolis. So much so, in fact, that I kept expecting the Master to pop up out of the woodwork. So, another callback to BG era Who, but not an obvious one. The genetic theme is cyberised – could this be the connection with the Scorpion-aliens? They were scavengers, and this variety of Cyberman scavenges human parts.
And what is the reason for that very odd subplot with the genuine ghosts? There’s a skeleton (literally) in the closet (well, the chest) and ghosts in the woodwork. Something meta about the Time Lords, maybe? Skeletons and ghosts and patched up creatures made of bits of something else?
I wonder why it is that the Chibnall historicals seem to be so much the best episodes of his era? It’s like everyone (actors, writers, production team) have the ‘touch’ with historicals. – which then proceeds to promptly desert them when they have to do something else.
This may be a little unfair, because there’ve been some very good episodes this series. But I keep getting this feeling that we do a historical with real historical characters and everything noticeably goes up a notch.
17 February 2020 at 21:17 #69708I didn’t much like (this is actually possibly the number one complaint on t’other place which is delightfully positive so far) the implication of cowardice in Byron.
A sign that the writer’s done her research. He certainly wasn’t a coward, as such, but he had what you might call fits of nerves when he acted like one. Contemporaries call him ‘timid’ at times, and there’s a remembered conversation when Byron calls himself ‘cowardly’. It seems to have been an over-active imagination – or what moderns would call catastrophising – and he was worried whether it would happen to him in Greece.
Which is the sign of a genuinely brave man, I think. He went and fought in a war that wasn’t his when he knew just how frightened he’d be.
15 February 2020 at 14:11 #69679Clearly this is going to be one of those days. A Caitlin Gosling has joined and her first post consists entirely of one link. In the Peter Capaldi as Twelfth Doctor forum.
15 February 2020 at 12:12 #69676We seem to have a spammer. Name of Johnson, though I don’t know if they have a blond mop-top.
10 February 2020 at 23:32 #69638Oh, yeah, and I forgot the obvious theme: everything we think we know is a lie.
Spyfall – the man we think is an agent on our side (O) is actually the Master.
Orphan 55 – the holiday resort planet is just a dome, the ‘alien’ planet is our own Earth.
Fugitive of the Judoon – the human tour guide is really The Doctor.
Praxeus – the helpful scientist is an alien conducting deadly experiments
Can You Hear Me – the trapped ‘victim’ is an evil immortal.In each case we see – but we don’t understand. There’s something else (or someone else) hiding behind what we’re seeing.
10 February 2020 at 22:19 #69637It’s about memory. Not fanwankery – memory. I’d have to check the individual episodes to see if I can spot the set, but the two themes running through that I’ve spotted so far are genetics and the Doctors’ pasts. I don’t think it’s really possible to do an arc about whether the Doctor and the Master’s pasts are based on a lie (everything we know is a lie) without considerable name-checking and confirmation of what they and we the audience actually do know.
Celestial Toymaker is Hartnell, Eternals are Davison and Guardians are Baker T. Zellin referencing them is a way of confirming that the Doctor’s memories of the Hartnell, Davison and Baker T. eras do correspond to an external reality, because Zellin also knows about the beings he/she’s encountered. Giving them a namecheck is a way of reminding/reassuring the audience that the Hartnell, Baker T. and Davison Doctors are real within the Whoniverse, that the Whittaker Doctor has memories which are real memories of events within the Whoniverse.
Captain Jack has just assured us (by turning up) that the Eccleston and Tennant eras were real. Possibly the Master’s Wicked Witch of the West joke was a way of reminding us that Missy and Capaldi happened.
Once we’ve confirmed what is actually known, we can proceed with the ‘everything she knows is a lie’ plot. The question being whether the lie is hiding behind the external reality that we know? Did what we thought we saw have a different meaning? Or is the lie that the reality she remembers is not the whole of her life? That the Time Lords are not who she always thought they were?
5 February 2020 at 21:41 #69583It’s possible. Missy certainly made a similar joke (‘I’m in two minds about it. Fortunately, one of them is unconscious.’)
5 February 2020 at 21:39 #69582The Long Game, Turn Left, Oxygen. The Beast Below, The Christmas Invasion. The Zygon Inversion – probably some more.
In the series before the Gap, off the top of my head, The Sunmakers, The Happiness Patrol, The Green Death – and the Daleks themselves in many, many of their stories.
3 February 2020 at 19:15 #69561My own mind still defaults “brothers” or “school mates”, whereas if either of them had been a woman, I would probably have gone straight to “former partner”, based on Jake’s reaction to the news story.
As someone who looks most unlike her brother, I can assure you that it works the other way round as well. That is, if you have two people of the opposite sex who are obviously close and don’t look alike, then ‘partner’ is the default assumption.
So I’d say that we were picking up ‘brothers’ not because of underlying bias, but because of an underlying ‘they look alike, so family’ assumption. The writer/production team were playing with our assumptions, because it would’ve been easy to give Jake a line identifying Adam in the bar scene. But I think they were playing with the actors looking enough like each other the audience could assume ‘family’ and not realise what type of family until the reveal.
@spider – I liked the last minute save, because when the fam insisted the Doctor could save Jake Whittaker’s expressions went from ‘yikes, NO. I can’t’ to ‘but I can try’ to ‘oh, help this is really tricky’ to ‘phew!’ And then finally ‘wow, wasn’t I clever.’ The materialisation trick has been used before, but it was nice to see that it’s not as easy as the Capaldi Doctor made out. 🙂
3 February 2020 at 15:53 #69552Even the police officer being married to the astronaut gave me an eye roll
I don’t see why. For someone to rush to Hong Kong from the UK on the off chance that Adam was alive (and the texts weren’t some kind of sick joke) Jake would have to be either Adam’s adoring brother or his husband. My first assumption was ‘brother’, because the two actors looked enough alike to be playing brothers. ‘Husband’ was a better decision, I think, because it segued nicely into the subplot where Jake’s obvious problems came from marrying a very much more successful person than he was.
3 February 2020 at 15:36 #69551Yes, I definitely got the impression that the split into different investigating teams has been happening a lot more than we’ve seen on-screen. We’ve seen it a couple of times this series, but they keep referring to off-screen adventures, so it’s not too big a leap.
If all three actors are leaving at the end of the series (Doctors seem to stay for three series plus specials, companions two series) then they are now beginning to be in a situation where they can do stuff without the Doctor. Or, working more independently as they are, one of them could end up getting killed. Doctor Who killed, anyway, like Bill or Clara.
Plastic is very much something small kids can do something about – learning not to just throw it away, for a start.I think the Vlogger (Gabriella?) was written as self-absorbed and shallow, but then that was contradicted by her later actions, where she tries to find out what killed her friend and tries to help the others save the world. It might be that there wasn’t enough room in the script for that to properly develop. So the actress (Joana Borja) seems to have decided to play it as if the ‘saving the world’ was the real Gabriella and the self-absorbed, shallow Gabriella was something she’d learnt to be through making a living as a vlogger. Coming on a second honeymoon and simply ignoring the fact that she’d not be welcome is the sort of thing a vlogger would do. 🙂
Trying to eat outside at Southend can also be a dangerous occupation. Sod all this fishing, the seagulls seem to say, the humans have put fish on plates for us!
@psymon the emotion (a lot of emotion) was in the scene where she sees the body of her partner. I agree that she didn’t then proceed to burst into tears throughout the rest of the episode, but Doctor Who has always taken the attitude that people will often move on very quickly from a partner’s death when aliens are trying to destroy the planet. I suppose you could also see the unwanted attachment to Jake and Adam as Gabriella not wanting to travel alone for a bit, because that will hurt too much. (Come to think of it, that may be why Adam and Jake don’t tell her to get lost).
I think the ‘talks too much’ is Time Lord arrogance (which all the Doctors have) expressing itself in a Whittaker Doctor way. She lectures people.
Remember the budget. They can afford South Africa – they can’t afford India.
2 February 2020 at 21:59 #69544It’s an episode I’d be happy to rewatch. It was very fast paced, certainly, but I don’t remember having any major problems following the plot.
I haven’t yet seen Doomwatch (I have the DVD), but there were definite echoes of Quatermass, what with the infected astronaut and the design of the Praxeus. And it was considerably more subtle than Orphan 55 – though at the moment I think the arc progression in this one is through the characters. Something about Yaz…
2 February 2020 at 20:46 #69540Or it could be that Chibnall decided to riff off what Moffat originally saw as a joke.
2 February 2020 at 20:42 #69538Didn’t the virus come out of the Indian Ocean?
I liked it. Chibnall and Whittaker both seem to be hitting their stride; there was a confident feel about this one. This was a very worthy modern ‘Green Death’, with a modern pollution problem, gruesomely exploding victims and a writer who seemed to have at least attempted to look up the science stuff. Also, everything kind of connected – the river was now an unauthorised dump, the birds were spreading the virus via plastic and the astronaut had been kidnapped as a research subject.
Though I do think that Yaz, at least, definitely has a big arrow pointing at her head saying ‘leaving at the end of this series’.
30 January 2020 at 15:18 #69491Anything that’s been mentioned that my brain either never noticed or flagged as weird and then forgot.
I think Graham being mistaken for the Doctor needs to be watched for. It’s happened twice now in this series.
30 January 2020 at 15:00 #69490Um. The transmat first makes its appearance in the Troughton era – the Daleks have it, I think, in one of the ‘missing’ stories, which is why I’m not very sure. Then lots of people start having transmats; when we turn up on Gallifrey for the Five Doctors, the Time Lords use a transmat to send the Master into the Death Zone. During the T. Baker period, the Time Lords mention that they’ve had Transmat tech for ages and think it a bit passe.
So I suppose the answer is that it’s a perfectly allowable retcon to say that a fully working TARDIS has transmat facilities, but the current Doctor’s TARDIS transmat is not working.
That said, I am getting the feel that the Martin Doctor is either between Troughton and Pertwee or pre Hartnell. Either way, the Martin Doctor has a fully working TARDIS. Possibly because it was repaired, then un-repaired when they exiled the Pertwee Doctor.
I’m using names for all the Doctor incarnations because I have this funny feeling that Chibbers is looking at Moffat’s wrecking of the numbering and saying ‘okay, hold my beer.’ 🙂
28 January 2020 at 20:34 #69464It is canon that the Master likes the Scissor Sisters – which might be why I always listen to this one and think of the Master and the Doctor returning to Gallifrey. But it fits particularly well with the current arc.
28 January 2020 at 20:19 #69463@jimthefish and @mudlark
I think my main problem with an alt-universe Doctor, whether the Martin Doctor or the Whittaker Doctor, is that it strikes me as full-on blue boringers. Everything you know is a lie – because we’re in an alternative to the real Whoniverse, and CapaldiDoc’s aborted regeneration produced a Buffy-like double regeneration. Two Doctors, no waiting. 🙂
Where’s the angst in that? If the Master blows up Gallifrey (lampshaded that this was again this week), I’d like it to be a bit more exciting than ‘oh, it’s not the real one, fooled you ::manic giggle::’ I’d like a previously unknown Doctor to be more a terrible secret (like the War Doctor) than ‘oh, I have a twin, how cool’. And I would like an alternate universe where we can actually tell the dratted difference between the ‘real’ Whoniverse and the ‘alternate’.
It’s not that it isn’t possible, it’s just that it sounds far less exciting than the history of Gallifrey being a total lie (which fits with the ‘historical’ memory of Rassilon versus the real bloke when he turns up) and the Doctor discovering that part of her past has been wiped. Not repressed because she hates that bit of herself – wiped. Just like she’s done to Donna, tried to do to Clara and did to Ada and Noor.
And, in a bit of meta, casting a black female actor as a Doctor who’s been wiped from history is kind of … resonant.
Anyway, Mudlark, would between Troughton and Pertwee be a possible slot for a ‘wiped’ Doctor? Jamie and Zoe were mind-wiped, after all.
28 January 2020 at 14:55 #69447@psymon – Yes, that’s a spoiler. That particular article is being discussed in the Spoilers forum
@craig or @phaseshift or @jimthefish – can you do some post removal please? Ta
28 January 2020 at 14:48 #69446Blenkinsop:
Yes, it’s in The Sun as well (bleurrgh … good thing lunch is curried lentils to hide the taste). Looks like a press release, probably handed out when the production office became aware that half the Twitterverse is haring off down an ‘alternate universe’ rabbit hole.
28 January 2020 at 14:43 #69445Blenkinsop:
Will now go and check the Mirror. The things we do for Doctor Who, eh?But as I’ve been arguing over in the spoiler-free forums, there isn’t any evidence for an alternate universe. Generally speaking, if it were an alternate Doctor, I’d expect there to have been stuff planted by now.
28 January 2020 at 11:44 #69438Okay, I can’t find the interview (the post Skyfall panel at the Paley Centre), so this is basically gossip taken from reports of it, but –
-Jodie Whittaker has not only said she’s planning to stay for at least a third series, but also hinted that strands of this current arc might continue into that third series.
What she said was:
“So these things that maybe feel as if they were in an episode of season 11 and then forgotten about, weren’t. And I think you don’t necessarily always rush to get the answer.
“So it’s not to say that you won’t discover something,” she added. “You’re not going to be denied. But the beauty of this show is that it goes on and on and on. And so maybe some things, a few, are answered and maybe some things aren’t and I think that’s why you’ve got to keep watching.”
General comment about the nature of Doctor Who and showrunners leaving stuff for later showrunners? Or did she sign on for series 3 because she knows it’s dealing with the fallout from this current arc?
28 January 2020 at 11:31 #69437No, it wouldn’t, but Jodie Whittaker would need a very good reason indeed to effectively announce that she’s unavailable for work throughout most of 2020 and probably into 2021. That’s why it’s so difficult to keep a change of Doctor secret. Actors have mortgages (and small children to feed) and most UK actors (even the current Doctor) don’t get paid enough to take a year off work.
It’s quite different from John Barrowman (and Paul McGann and many other Who actors) fibbing that they haven’t been asked back and it’s just that they’re renovating their house/taking a holiday during the couple of weeks where they’re really filming. There, we’re talking about fibbing over a few weeks that they’re being paid for, not an entire year where they’re not.
I had also heard a similar statement in another interview, but wasn’t sure whether it was in the spoiler territory – so I’ll post it in the spoiler forum.
28 January 2020 at 10:56 #69435The Wizard of Oz film is a classic example of ‘she woke up and it had all been a dream’ – but I do think I’d like a bit more evidence that we’re in a dream/alternate reality. Where is it in the other episodes? Orphan 55, possibly, but that’s more ‘we can still change the future’.
Especially since the theme in Tesla and Fugitive is memory, not alternative realities. Tesla is less remembered than Edison, but the episode writer implies our collective memory is prioritising the wrong man. ‘Ruth’ can’t remember being the Doctor in Fugitive.
In Spyfall Part I and Orphan 55 we don’t know what we’re seeing. So in Spyfall, we see O – but it’s the Master behind the curtain. Perception filters. In Orphan 55 we’re on Earth – but first perception filters and then preconceptions prevent us understanding that until the reveal. In Tesla we see Edison, but the real ‘great man’ is Tesla (and we also don’t see the eugenics stuff hiding behind Tesla’s curtain). In Fugitive, we see Ruth – but the Doctor is hiding behind the curtain of the chameleon arch.
They used Gloucester Cathedral a lot in Fugitive – that might simply be because it’s a great location. But it kind of fits with ‘the truth shall set you free’ – Lee sends her to the Cathedral to find the truth about herself, and it may also turn out to be the place where the Whittaker Doctor finds the truth about herself.
So I don’t think the Oz reference is a reference to the gang now being into Oz. It’s a reference to the reality behind the curtain.
28 January 2020 at 00:22 #69428so is your theory that the Doctor has mind-wiped herself (or allowed herself to be mind-wiped
It may have been voluntary – something an earlier Doctor felt was necessary. Or, given that the Master seemed to be horrified by what he’d discovered (and we’re talking the Master, here), so horrified and angry that he destroyed Gallifrey – it may have been something involuntary. Something in keeping with the ‘Imperial Gallifrey’ that the Martin Doctor seems to be fleeing from.
I agree that this arc could end with the Martin Doctor being mind-wiped/choosing to be mind-wiped. But I think she’s pre-Hartnell. If you look at the costume, the specs, the style of TARDIS, the jokes Moffat made about the Doctor not remembering whether he was male or female when he was small, Missy’s comment that she’d known the Doctor since she was a little girl – they’d all fit in with a pre-Hartnell female Doctor.
A mind-wipe followed by a forced regeneration as a baby/toddler (with a new regeneration cycle), then never quite recovering from the trauma of those wiped memories. That could work in to such a lot (especially if it was the Doctor and the Master). The Doctor’s difficulty in passing exams, even though he seems considerably smarter than most other Time Lords. The desire to stay away from Gallifrey, which has so many different explanations it sounds almost like the Doctor doesn’t really understand why he/she never wants to stay. The Master’s obsession with the Doctor, which again has no real in-show explanation beyond ‘stalker boyfriend’.
To me, that would be far more fun than ‘alternate universe Doctor’. 😀
27 January 2020 at 17:56 #69417I think Fugitive of the Judoon, while not explaining the mind-wipe as such, may explain why the producers needed to include a mind-wipe somewhere.
27 January 2020 at 14:57 #69410Maybe on early pre-Hartnell Gallifrey it was assumed to be impossible?
That’s what I’d go for. The Martin Doctor and Gat are from Gallifrey’s past. Which past isn’t what the Doctor thinks, maybe. Or maybe it’s her own and the Master’s past?
The thing about the alternate timeline – where are the clues? The only clue I could possibly think of would be the ‘time can be changed’ aspect of Orphan 55. Otherwise, there isn’t a single hint that we might be in an alternate universe, or in the middle of a dream/constructed reality. We’re getting loads of ‘look at the past’ hints, but no ‘alternate reality’ hints.
@rob and @jimthefish
Captain Jack’s assumption that Graham is the Doctor – funnily enough, I remember jokingly suggesting that Graham was a chameleon arched Susan, back before Series 11. I know, Jim, that you don’t like this re-use of themes from RTD, but Donna and the Doctor being continually mistaken for brother and sister did turn out to be an echo from their future relationship. That’s now twice this series: if Graham is mistaken for the Doctor a third time, it may be important.
My guess is that the reason Chibbers is reusing the Ten era as ‘the Doctor’s past’ is simply that it’s the AG Who era he knows better. He did write for Moffat, and he’s cast a lot of those actors, but he was busy with Broadchurch for a lot of the Moffat era. As Dan Martin pointed out over at T’Other Place (the recap’s up, @miapatrick) he’s written for Captain Jack, bu I don’t think he ever wrote for River Song?
Also, my reading of him as a writer is that he’s primarily interested in how characters react to situations. Moffat took a minor in philosophy and finds time paradoxes genuinely interesting to write. Chibnall, I think, would be far more interested in how the Doctor (after a series where she tries to start with a blank slate) would react to discovering that at one point she really did re-start with a blank slate. That she doesn’t remember her entire past.
26 January 2020 at 23:45 #69393Okay, that was exciting.
@jimthefish – remember last week that I said Doctor Who had no compunction about using stuff from the New Adventures? And this week, guess what? A reprise of Human Nature.
@miapatrick I’m with @devilishrobby – I’m really not convinced this is an alternate timeline Doctor. Now admittedly, as far as we know the Doctor stole the TARDIS when he looked like William Hartnell and the first appearance of the Police Box outer appearance was in that 1963 London scrapyard. But the hints so far seem to be that the Doctor has (like Ruth) a past she can’t remember.
[I mean, I can think of at least two ways the Jo Martin Doctor might have the same TARDIS as the Whittaker Doctor, even with the Hartnell Doctor stealing the TARDIS for what he thought was the first time (guided by Clara), so I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem for the writing team.]
The running theme, signposted in the last speech, is of the Doctor’s past. Old enemies – the Master, the Time Lords, Cybermen, the Judoon. Old friends – the Master, Captain Jack Harkness. Old episodes – Trial of a Time Lord, Human Nature. Riffs from previous episodes have been appearing throughout these last five. The the sat-nav that tries to kill you, the underground sign revealing it’s Earth, the companion who’s protecting the chameleon arched Doctor being madly in love with him/her – though at least this time, the love was requited. 🙂 And the Martin Doctor echoes the War Doctor (another ‘hidden’ Doctor).
Dr Fish, I think the reason Captain Jack felt slightly fanwankery is because what was needed in this episode was any major character from the Doctor’s past to turn up with a warning. Could’ve been Jack or River – anyone who could reasonably teleport/scoop the fam.
But when you get past the fangasmy potential, it was kind of a mess.
I’d disagree. I think this is a very clever episode indeed. It’s about the Doctor, not remembering her past. Being chased by something from her past that she can’t remember. The two Doctors are mirrors for each other – there’s a scene where even their dialogue is mirrored. But that mirror, the Martin Doctor, is a Doctor that not only doesn’t remember her past:
Everything she thinks she knows – is a lie.
23 January 2020 at 14:26 #69351Chibs seems to be going out of his way to retcon Moff’s vision of Gallifrey out of existence, so I wouldn’t put anything past him at the moment.
Possibly. The way Moffatt left Gallifrey, I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised to return and find it was in the middle of a full scale civil war, so ‘smoking wreck, again‘ isn’t too disappointing.
Or possibly Chibbers is simply re-mirroring the Doctor and the Master. The Doctor destroyed Gallifrey, leaving us in the slightly embarrassing situation of our hero having done more evil than our villain, so the Master has now destroyed Gallifrey as well. Mind, poor old Gallifrey must be getting a bit sick of it. 😈
@mudlark
I might have a go at a diagram this weekend. 😀22 January 2020 at 14:40 #69330The number of ‘shocked and horrified’ shots Mandip Gill’s been getting, something is definitely on the cards for Yaz. Some kind of breakdown, maybe?
22 January 2020 at 14:15 #69329I’d point out that the AG series has had no scruples in using any good ideas from the New Adventure series. ‘The Other’ is the thing that came into my mind when The Timeless Child was first mentioned.
The Looms as depicted have been thoroughly dumped, I think by the discovery that the Time Lords have billions of kids on the planet. If they’re using Looms now, then the ‘product’ is coming out as babies and are being promptly adopted.
Doesn’t mean they can’t re-use the Loom idea and set it in the past.
22 January 2020 at 14:00 #69328I don’t think that would worry the Master. I don’t think even the discovery that the Time Lords nicked time travel from the Daleks would worry him that much. As Missy said, killing Daleks is kind of Time Lord golf, so having cunningly stolen time travel from them would just be another point in the endless (or timeless) game.
On the other hand, discovering that the mighty Time Lords are some kind of escaped genetic experiment, originally created by another species as super-warriors – that they are, in effect, Daleks – that would truly disturb him. It would attack him at his sense of superiority, which would work with Missy’s developing empathy. It would place him at the same level as the people he’s been killing. Especially if it turned out after all these years that the reason for the human-Doctor connection is that the Time Lords are a human genetic experiment. Who may well have stolen time travel as a means of making their escape. 😀
The Master wearing Nazi uniform is accompanied by a big script spotlight, loudly announcing that even the Doctor didn’t expect that. Which is weird, really, because this is the Master. He has no problem with mass murder and the villain turning up as a Nazi isn’t normally a big problem in melodrama. So why the spotlight?
Another weird connection is between Rosa Parks and eugenics. A school named after a eugenicist was renamed Rosa Parks Middle School. Again, like Tesla, this is deep background that can be found on the internet rather than in the episode – but Rosa connected racism and time travel. As did Spyfall. Tesla is connecting technological advance and theft.
@mudlark
It doesn’t really matter how long the Time Lords have been around, because once time travel is discovered they can be created in our future and then go back in time to Early Gallifrey.[And now I read on and discover that @miapatrick has made the point before me. Oops!]
21 January 2020 at 12:13 #69296Basically, the problem is that you keep going into ‘you are talking in platitude/sacred belief’ and I’m going ‘uh, no, I’m talking about something that’s been happening in the US and UK in the past three years.’ Which is why I’m suggesting moving this to the pub.
The academic term is ‘epistocracy’.
Glad to hear that it hasn’t reached Australia yet. 😀
20 January 2020 at 12:49 #69255No-one is claiming they are more important, more significant or better able to argue.
Okay, if you wish to continue this argument, you need to move it to the pub. Because we’re moving outside this particular episode, and I can’t attempt to refute your belief that I’m talking in ‘platitudes’ without moving outside this episode.
19 January 2020 at 23:27 #69249Yeah, I’m not sure I buy that personally.
In a moral sense, I don’t think I do. I seem to recall mentioning in the Skyfall episode discussion that Ada’s mindwipe was played in a distinctly disturbing way, very reminiscent of Donna’s. It’s just that I would argue there’s a possible distinction between the effect on the futures between the two episodes. Especially if you argue that Tesla always was kidnapped by aliens in the Whoniverse (the episode all happens in his ‘present’), but Noor and Ada weren’t supposed to be taken out of their time streams.
the Doctor shouldn’t get to choose
Agree. Was she being ‘The Doctor’ when she did that? Or a Time Lord?
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