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@lordlord

If there were no Orson, the Doctor wouldn’t find Orson, Clara wouldn’t have the toy soldier given to her, the Doctor would never have had the dream, so Clara would never have found Rupert Pink.

Okay.

That (and the lack of the side trip to Orson) means the Doctor would never have had the toy soldier given to him, would’ve stayed in the barn crying all night, would never have heard the speech about fear.

Would that mean he wouldn’t be ‘the Doctor’? Possibly.

Clara, otoh, would’ve never met Orson, so would never have been encouraged to go back to Danny, so would never have been on the phone to him, so Danny wouldn’t have died. Which means Danny wouldn’t have been cyberised, so wouldn’t have been in a position to save the world.

It’s all beginning to sound a bit like a ‘universe nips out for popcorn’ moment. 😉

Orson, I think, is a dangling thread. I’ve carefully avoided finding out if Jenna Coleman is really leaving, so please don’t tell me. If she is, I expect Orson will be resolved in the Christmas Special. If she isn’t, it’s something that’ll get resolved in Series 8.

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@arbutus

as to Clara not recognizing her

It’s another shout out to a well known attribute of the Delgado and Ainley Masters (and in a way, the Jacobi Master). They were experts at disguising themselves unrecognisably.

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@lisa

we all know what beliefs Xmas is about

Moffat knows what Christmas is about – he also knows what Easter is about, and he knows the difference between them.

For example, he had Series 6 plot of the Doctor being ‘killed’ and coming back from the dead set around Easter 2011. He had the just finished Series 8 theme of soldiers doing their duty unto and past death end on the eve of the UK’s Remembrance Sunday.

If he has people coming back from the dead at Christmas, it’ll be to do with St. Nick. Or rather, Santa Claus. Santa Claus is based on St. Nicholas of Myra, and one of the legends about him is that he managed to bring back from the dead three small boys who’d not only been killed by an 4th Century version of Sweeney Todd, but had been jointed and were in the process of being pickled.

And they complain about Doctor Who being too scary for kids. 🙂

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@chrissk

Missy building an army – to give to the Doctor? OK there is the irony card. But until that reveal there was no previous clues or build up to that point.

::Ahem:: May I present to you my post #34072 from the discussion on Flatline?

In which I remark:

Anyway, what could be more scary than an insane Master trying to torture the Doctor?
An insane Master trying to be helpful, in the Master’s own, inimitable way. ‘Cause they love each other really. 😯

The fact that the clues were from Missy’s previous appearance as the Simm Master doesn’t invalidate the fact that there were clues…

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Oh, and @apopheniac, if you want the expert on Delgado episodes, ask @phaseshift. But we did do a Terror of the Autons rewatch a year ago – that’s the story that introduces the Master.

http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/terror-of-the-autons-part-1/

http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/terror-of-the-autons-part-2/

http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/terror-of-the-autons-part-3/

http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/terror-of-the-autons-part-4/

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@apopheniac – yeah, sorry about the obvious frustration. I’m afraid you got the brunt – hence the p.s. I really didn’t mean it to sound like I was cross at you.

I don’t mind people not knowing when they haven’t watched the BG series or Delgado; it’s when they claim in one post that we should have a Master like Delgado then, in another post, wonder why the guards weren’t doing anything ….

Perhaps fortunately, I couldn’t find the smilie for ‘steam coming out of my ears’. 😉

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@apopheniac – as I said on the Graun, the Master historically has hypnotic powers.

I said it just once on the Graun. I flatly refuse to repeat it several hundred times for idiots who claim that Moffat is ruining the memory of Delgado but who don’t know one of the Delgado Master’s most basic abilities. 🙄

P.S. Addendum: I don’t mean you. I’m talking about some folks over at the Graun.

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@jimthefish – I’ve been participating. It’s depressing. 🙁

@beancounter – a sense of duty overriding Cyber Conversion is as much a part of the mythology of the show as ‘Cybermen have a severe allergy to gold’. 😉

Most recently, the Cyberised Yvonne Hartmann in Doomsday ‘did her duty for Queen and Country’ by holding off other Cybermen while the Tennant Doctor and Rose tried to seal the breach between worlds.

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@scaryb and @pedant

Though I should probably apologise to you two, because you proved to be a lot closer to the truth about Danny than I was…

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@McPhisto96

I think Missy heard that.

She did.

Frankly, when the Doctor said that I heard Rory’s ‘As soon as I see the Doctor getting pally with someone, I feel as if I should inform their next of kin’. Add it to Missy’s glance and I was going ‘Noooo! They’re going to kill Osgood!’

Kate was another shock. Thankfully, there was the Brig.

Orson’s very much a loose end, isn’t he? And did you notice that the slip of paper in the mortuary had ‘Known As Danny Pink’ on it?

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@scaryb

I still think you’re making the mistake of seeing Danny thro Clara’s lies.

No, I think it’s that I just don’t like him. I understood where he was coming from emotionally in those Cybermen scenes tonight – but to me, there was an awful lot of ‘revenge’ (towards both Clara and the Doctor) going on. As @danmartinuk said – passive-aggressive.

Good writing. Danny is a heroic, brave, but definitely not saintly guy. Go back to Deep Breath; what do both the Doctor and Clara recognise about each other?

That they’re needy game players. So if Danny’s been, throughout, a mirror for the Doctor – what will he be?

But if we’ve seen the last of him – where indeed has Orson come from? Him and his ‘family heirloom’?

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@scaryb

Hope everyone who called poor Danny a manipulative bully feels suitably contrite now!!

No, I still think he was a manipulative bully with a bit of a nasty streak. 😀 Think about it; he really made Clara and the Doctor suffer, didn’t he? Especially the Doctor, for the terrible crime of being someone Clara loved more. Talk about twisting the knife…

However, he was also heroic. And he would rather have died than kill that child; and he proved it with his life.

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@abxy

Is Missy truly dead?

I think the answer to that one is an unequivocal ‘No’. She’d have been legging it for the horizon if she hadn’t had a ‘get out clause’ available. 😈

However, if they keep to the old Ainley tradition of killing the Master off and then just brushing it off on the next appearance, they don’t have to worry about the Doctor chasing after Missy. He thinks she’s dead, so he won’t be looking for her.

I really, really hope that they get Michelle Gomez back; she’s fantastic. 😀

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It was fantastic.

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@phaseshift

He said in an interview I once posted that the Doctor could never be an older actor again. One season of the show would kill him. Peter Capaldi still lives.

But one season with RTD might well have killed him – though I genuinely don’t mean that in a nasty way. RTD thinks script first. Actors perform the script as written. If RTD thinks it’s going to be really funny to tie the Doctor in a chair and get him dragged down stairs, he’ll do it. It’ll only occur to him months later that maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do to an actor who’d recently needed a back operation

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@whisht

So, while I’m still sober

Still sober? What went wrong? 😉

Yes, a crack shot with a golden arrow would be a handy bloke to have around. As would the expert hacker (to hack into the Nethersphere). Even Rusty might turn out to be a useful mutated blob in a crisis.

Nothing wrong with ‘the gang’s all here’. I always enjoy the quick recap through previous episodes, in which we discover that they’re all connected. It makes me feel as if all our bonkers theories were justified (if, usually, wrong). 😀

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@lisa
Let’s take this bit by bit.

they have in common a kind of righteousness that refuses to recognize anything that’s different

They recognise ‘anything that’s different’. They just don’t agree with it. Just as you don’t have to agree with them. Nor is this state of affairs immutable; experience has taught me that what changes most people’s minds is experience. There’s a reason intolerant societies, ideologies and people (and religions!) prefer to push their scapegoats out of sight and out of the mainstream.

I find that religious people can be very arrogant in their believing

Okay. Coming at it from the other side, I find that atheistic and strongly secular people can be very arrogant in their believing. So what are we left with? Probably that people can be very arrogant in their beliefs.

I know in Christianity one thing Jesus was very hot on was the dangers of religious ‘righteousness’. It’s a problem Christians have been specifically and frequently warned about – because arrogance is a very common human fault (it’s certainly one of mine!). If people are convinced they’re right, that conviction can easily slide into arrogance.

But it’s not something specific to religion; it’s specific to people.

I have always regarded religion as just another ‘people control’ methodology

I don’t know how much sociology you know. My understanding is that there is a difference between ‘enculturation’ and ‘socialisation’ (the processes by which we learn the norms and values of our birth culture) and ‘people control’. Certainly ‘thought control’ or ‘mind control’, though a very popular fictional trope, is considered fictional by most sociologists.

The rule of thumb for ‘people control’ is – do people leave? Historically speaking, the record of religons on stopping people abandoning their religion for something else (or for a different version) shows that they’re a bit crap in the people control department. If religions were that good at people control, we’d all still be worshipping the Roman Emperor. 😉

I don’t like the idea personally of being told what I ‘should’ believe

You don’t think that stating religions are ‘nonsense’ isn’t a way of telling me what I ‘should’ believe? Because, personally, I don’t like it either. One of the reasons I don’t like it is because it’s a way of shutting down discussion; it implies that the other side holds beliefs that are so ridiculous, no reasonable person would hold them.

But if you look at the real world, you will find that intelligent and reasonable people have been both religious and non religious. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the last few series is that they have made that quite plain. Religious or non-religious, they can be found on the good side or the ‘evil’ side. They might be stupid, or they might be highly intelligent. They might change sides without abandoning their underlying faith – because whatever their disagreements with the Doctor, they know that the Daleks are worse.

I hope that it will spark some ideas and investigation in young people about the subject of what belief/religion is

I hope so too. Though I think we may well disagree about the conclusions they might come to. 😉

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@jimbomcmaster

Sorry for the delay; you raise some rather complex ideas which can’t be tackled with the speed of ‘maybe minaturisation is a key theme!’ 😉

Okay, let’s do some of this formally. You have proposed the following.

1. I have a choice between two wrong acts.
2. I must make a choice between those acts.
3. The best choice will be that act which is least wrong.

So far, so good (sorry!). I think we can both agree on those propositions.

However, you then continue:

1. The least wrong choice is the right choice.
2. A right choice is also a morally right choice
3. Therefore the best (least wrong) choice of any set of options will be the morally right choice.

Now at this point, Socrates would start rubbing his hands together about your second premise, and would ask you ‘But, Jimbo, can we prove that a right choice is always a morally right choice?’ Meanwhile the Athenians will be muttering ‘Well, if the least wrong choice is the morally right choice, does anyone have some hemlock to hand?’

But that’s the crux of the disagreement between us. You believe that, in a choice between two morally wrong options, having to select the least wrong option will transform it into a ‘morally right choice’. I don’t agree. I go with ‘It’s always wrong,’ even if you sometimes have to do it.

I think he would consider doing the Bad as, very occasionally, the ‘right’ choice.

As was pointed out in Flatline, the Doctor frequently has to make these ‘no Third Way’ choices on a small scale. However, he doesn’t consider the Bad choice as a morally good choice. That’s why one of the questions this series is ‘Am I a good man?’. And, indeed, he twice separates Clara’s goodness from her excellent performance as ‘Doctor Clara’.

I think the (very) occasional acknowledgment of this makes the show a deeper, more well-rounded thing.

‘The Doctor’ is not the person who kills children (or Space Whales, for that matter). That seems to be the bottom line according to Steven Moffat. If he does that, he isn’t ‘The Doctor’. And since he did do that, then what then needs to be shown is a long, hard journey back. One of grief, reparation-through-deeds, of trying to forget who he was and what he did – until finally, he can be ‘The Doctor’ again.

What you don’t do is what Clara tried to do in Flatline; argue that because ‘we saved the world’ we can ignore the fact that ‘no good choices’ ended up with people dead. That is not deeper, or well-rounded. It’s simplistic, in fact.

If you kill me, it doesn’t matter that by doing so you saved the world. You didn’t save my world.

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@scaryb – the last time we saw the Timelord matrix, it was the consciousness that was uploaded.

The thing that has made me wonder about miniaturisation is that the Master used to be a bit of an expert at the old tissue compression thing. If they don’t want to go for ‘Danny is dead’, they could have used miniaturisation at the scene of the accident, followed by a clone corpse. We’ve seen both this series.

Though if Missy’s keeping people alive to be nice, then who is she and what has she done with the Master? Nope, there’d be a nefarious reason for Danny not to be dead. 😉

Regarding religion: Moffat has been so extremely respectful this series that I’ve been seriously wondering whether the bugger’s gone on an Alpha Course. 😈

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@macphisto96

It’s possible that Missy can put a consciousness into a dug up body

I’d say that’s a cert. She does clearly want some ‘fresh’ bodies to be made into Cybermen, but I don’t think Seb would be so keen to hand the ‘burners’ the delete key if they couldn’t use those people’s consciousness.

If you think about it, how many ‘delete’ recruits are they going to get from people who know they’re going to be peacefully decomposing? So there’s a mismatch: the people more likely to want their consciousness cyberised are the ones facing the prospect of spending an ‘interesting’ couple of hours at 1000 degrees C.

But they won’t be the ones whose bodies can be used.

@lisa

It’s probably best to be aware that this is a forum of widely ranging views. The Rose and Crown is the place for polite and reasonable discussion about religion.

Personally, I’d say that while it’s fine to put forward the suggestion that religion has ’caused most of the troubles we see in our world’ (fine, that is, if you want me to explain at length why I believe that view to be mistaken), describing religion as ‘nonsense’ and suggesting that ‘a little more
‘defiling’’ is ‘ok’ is likely to result in my becoming … devastatingly logical.

There may even be sarcasm. 😉

Incidentally, the Vicar and I were chatting about Dark Water on Sunday. We both thought it was a brilliant episode. 😈

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@apopheniac – I think that’s a good spot. Yes, Missy sacrificed herself for the Doctor – and the people who get special little chats from her are the people who sacrificed themselves for the Doctor.

That would certainly explain why Danny got Seb. He may be closely connected to the Doctor, but he didn’t sacrifice himself, so doesn’t rate that ‘special little chat’.

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@brewski

Why the non-electronics?

Because they both think the electronics are being tapped?

I’d also enquire why Clara thinks she can’t say what she needs to say when Danny’s here. If we presume that Missy arranged Danny’s accident, then we should remember that the Master has form on tapping/sending messages through mobile phone networks. If she realised that Clara was about to tell Danny something vital, then the timing of the accident may have been … less than coincidental.

He was killed before Clara could tell him that something was going on.

Bonkers theory: Clara’s constant lying to Danny isn’t natural to her and that’s why it’s on her post its. She won’t be able to say what she needs to say when Danny’s here, because she’s figured out that – every time they’re face-to-face – she starts lying.

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@lisa – no, Frodo’s really terrible with trolls. They bash him up something rotten. 😉

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Anyone seen Gandalf?

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@drben – they’ve had an unmarried couple with baby before in Closing Time. I don’t recall a fuss. So long as they imply that Clara and Danny are committed to each other, there isn’t a real problem.

The main problem Moffat has is that he can’t mention ‘sex’, ‘sleeping together’ or even ‘conception’. ‘Wedding night’ is, however, allowable. 😀

The ‘close personal relationship’ mentioned in the Headmaster’s voice-over does strongly imply (to adults) that Danny and Clara are sleeping together. It’s not that it’s not possible for Clara to be three months pregnant, family show or not, it’s just that I don’t really think it fits.

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@drben

I’m also agin it. There was such a big thing made about the effect of time travel on unborn children. You could argue that it was just conception that was a problem (without using the word ‘conception’, of course). Three months? Three months since we met, three months since we slept together, three months on the TARDIS, three months (as you say) to live. Lots of possibilities besides ‘three months pregnant’.

Moffat obviously doesn’t think women are just baby making machines because he made one of his nastiest ever villains the person who treated Amy as – a baby making machine. I also can’t help thinking that it would be a bit tricky for a guy who’s spent much of his working life working for his wife and mother-in-law to hold that opinion and survive. 😈

The Doctor scans Clara before saying she’s a mass of chemicals. Since the TARDIS was demonstrably able to detect a pregnancy in the person controlling a non-pregnant ganger, I think he’d have noticed if Clara was pregnant. I also think that Clara’s sheer despair strikes a slightly odd note if she’s pregnant by Danny. Panic-stricken, yes, easily. Grief-stricken at the thought that he’s not going to see his child. But suicidal without-him-I-don’t-care-if-I-live-or-not? It’s not impossible, but it’d be an odd reaction.

The other thing that strikes me is that – if Clara’s suicidal despair is natural – that means Moffat’s repeated Amy’s ‘I can’t live without Rory’. Which makes me wonder if it’s part of Missy’s attack on the Doctor. The Doctor scans her when she says she loves Danny, he says ‘yes, you’re certainly the mess of chemicals,’ then says that they’ll ‘Go to Hell.’

Why to Hell? What does he know? Why is he so certain that, wherever Danny is, it’ll be a Hell? Was it something he just found out in that scan?

@miapatrick, I can’t see that the phone call is from a future Clara. She’s too bewildered by the silence; she’s waiting for him to speak again. Yet, if this was Clara from the future, she’d know that this would be the last call. It would be in the accident report that he was talking on the phone.

The time jump is from the phone call to her standing in the road with the cars going round her; her clothes change to show that time has passed, and there’s now a roadside memorial to Danny.

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@geoffers

he would shack up with that dinosaur before he’d get all intimate with his oldest, dearest enemy…

Yes, but would he have a choice? 😈

However, since this is a family show, I think That Kiss will be the furthest we go in that direction… 😉

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Hmmm… Orson is Danny. The Doctor saves him – but at the cost of having to move him to another time; he’s not just officially dead in the 21st Century, he’s officially cremated.

That’s why they had Samuel Anderson age up.

Clara may or may not be with him; if she is, she’s the ‘family’ he is so anxious to get back to. But he gives her Dan the Soldier Man because he knows he has to; she told him he did. If she isn’t with him (either because she’s dead or he betrayed her) , that’s why he looks at her with such sadness.

The shocked silence when she tells him she loves him and the previous insistence that she think before making any commitment could still imply that the relationship with Clara was set up. Just that Danny’s decent enough to not want Clara to think he’s the one-and-only.

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@pedant

Or, of course, it could be dealing with Susan that The Doctor and the Master fell out over, causing the Doctor to leg it ;).

In my more bonkers moments, this is my favourite exit scenario for the Doctor. He had to leg it with Susan because the Gallifreyan courts had just awarded custody of the poor orphaned child to his insane ex-partner…

I don’t get people saying ‘Why couldn’t Missy be the Rani?’ As I said a while back, my mind just boggles at the idea of the Rani ever describing the Doctor as her boyfriend. Whereas the Master always did have an air of ‘the ex-boyfriend who turned out to be a psychotic stalker.’

🙂

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Since we know that Missy’s previous incarnation liked the Scissor Sisters, I present the song she may have been listening to at regeneration. 🙂

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@lisa

Remember when the Doctor says you are a mess of chemicals to Clara on the Tardis

I’m obviously really cynical – it made me think that Clara’s overpowering love for Danny is chemically induced.

If Clara’s pregnant, surely the Doctor would’ve already stopped her travelling with him? They’ve now established that TARDIS travel gives babies Time-Heads.

Different types of love. A mess of chemicals, kill myself to be with you. Self-sacrificing, I want you to live your life. Obsessive, my heart is maintained by the Doctor. Unconditional, your betrayal will make no difference to my feelings for you.

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@fatmaninabox and @brewski

However, there’s no escaping the fact that there have been an awful lot of references to fire. Is it possible that The Doctor saved the wrong family?

He didn’t interfere in Children of Earth and left humanity to handle their own problems. Firstly, humanity failed and as a result, a close friend was forced to murder his own grandchild. Secondly, a good man (and his family) died.

He did interfere in Fires of Pompeii and while Pompeii died, Earth was saved. Secondly, a good man (and his family) lived; because Donna forced him to go back.

I don’t think he saved the wrong family; I think he’s trying to tell himself that he has to care. He has to stop letting his Companions do the caring for him. It’s destroying them.

He has to stop asking whether he’s a good man and just be one. 😉

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@beancounter

He’s a Time Lord, why not just go back in time and kill Doctor Who’s parents

Doctor Who?

Anyway, the answer is that The Time Lady Formerly Known As The Master doesn’t want to kill the Doctor. He always would have been rather disappointed if he’d actually succeeded in killing the Doctor (he said as much in Survival). She wants to play complex games with the Doctor – especially ones that involve the Doctor being tied up, or strapped down, or gagged … 😯

Not my idea. A few of the producers have said that, including Russell T Davies. 😉

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@blenkinsopthebrave

We have some lovely parks in desolate London (she says rather plaintively).

The park they picked most looked like Regent’s Park, and there are indeed some seriously crappy council housing estates nearby. Or it might have been meant for Victoria Park, which borders Hackney and Tower Hamlets.

One thing I do like about Clara’s flat is that they’ve finally given someone a flat they could actually afford (okay, her Mum probably left her some money to afford the deposit). So tiny she has to squeeze past the TARDIS whenever it lands inside, clearly ex-council, in a tower block.

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@Margaret-Blaine

I’ve seen complaints elsewhere from people who have recently been bereaved who found it upsetting to think of the dead being still linked to their bodies and suffering when being cremated etc.

It’s very much a child’s question (and, indeed, an adult fear) and it’s considerably better to discuss it than to hide it ‘for the sake of the children’. It’s obviously provoking strong reactions; the Radio Times reporter (Patrick Mulkern) who did the advance blurb was fuming. ‘Crass’ and ‘poor taste’ were his words.

In an audience of seven million plus, you WILL hit a proportion of just bereaved people. I switched off Father’s Day about five minutes in; my Dad had recently died following an accident. But I wouldn’t ever say that they shouldn’t have done that story.

Likewise – the idea of life after death is in our culture, and in most other world cultures. It seems to be part of being human. And kids will wonder if, if death is not final, whether we know what’s happening to the bodies we left behind.

But if we flatly refuse to talk about it, because it’s ‘crass’ and ‘poor taste’, they won’t ask. Kids pick up very quickly what adults don’t want to talk about. They’ll just worry, quietly, by themselves.

Better to discuss it in the form of a story. It’s easier to talk about stories.

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@glenisterm

why did she need all 7 keys?

The stage play/Big Finish Audio Adventure: Seven Keys to Doomsday.

Yes, Steven Moffat’s One Of Us. 😉

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@lewis97 and @craig or any mod

Can you move post #34483 to the spoilers/trailer section, please?

Lewis – information derived from advance trailers should be posted/discussed in the trailers blog until that part has been broadcast. Some people don’t like knowing anything about an episode in advance, not even the trailer.

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@juniperfish

Superlative acting by Capaldi as ever – “Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” being my favourite line.

If the Doctor is not Clara’s Dad or Grandad, he’s certainly acting like a parent.

Whatever she does, he’ll still love her. She can lie to him, steal from him, betray him – and it will not make him love her one jot the less.

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@fatmaninabox –

given the theme of the episode,

I actually did wonder if Granny Oswald was really there at all…

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@timeloop

Kudos to the people who solved the Mistress/Master puzzle. *Hands out cookies*

Well, my ‘Danny is an abusive boyfriend/a fiendish plan to trap Clara’ theory looks like it’s up the creek, so it’s running 50/50 at the moment. 🙂 Mind you, I had a ‘Clara is the Doctor’ theory for Series 7b which turned out to be metaphorically true in S8, so you never know…

But talking about Danny – we meet him in a Children’s Home, but the voice-over eulogy refers, again, to his family. So – who’s Orson? Are we going to find out in the finale that he already has a child?

Incidentally, for a story based around a tragic accident and death – I have never laughed so much in my life. Really excellent; the blackest of black comedy.

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Yes!

And kudos to Steven Moffat for telling a flat lie that was also the exact truth. 😈

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@TheCrackInTheWall

Series 5, 6 and 7 follow the path of the classic comedy – in that they each start with a situation of discord and end with a situation of healing and wholeness.

Series 5 and 6 both have a traditional Shakespearean comedy ending; the warring couple (Amy and Rory in Series 5, their daughter River and the Doctor in Series 6) end up getting married. Series 7 ends with a (re) birth.

Metaphor for the Smith Doctor: the Doctor is convinced his life is a tragedy. Actually, he’s playing the starring role in a comedy.

😉

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@beancounter

You don’t need to be a theologian to understand what’s being implied

It implies a) that the Doctor is as old as God and b) that he’s been Born Again.

Try again. We’ve had Hot Button 1: ‘I don’t like any of the characters’ with Hot Button 2: ‘the show is sexist’, now we’re onto Hot Button 3: ‘religion’.

I think ‘gay agenda’ should be the next up on the list. Or maybe you could try politics? Would you like to try politics? 🙂

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@drben

No, it’s not. We’re talking about giving a twelve year old medication because she hears voices. Maebh isn’t an adult hearing voices – she’s twelve. Kids hear voices, have imaginary friends, do all sorts of things that would signal mental illness in an adult.

Genuine schizophrenia would be an unbelievably rare mental illness for a twelve year old.

In addition, there’s a very clear stressor in her little life. Her sister’s gone missing. And the reaction to this obvious cause of the problem? Give her medication… which is really going to help her deal with the next big stress-event that comes along.

The way the script is written, it’s very obvious that what Maebh needs is for someone to sit down and listen to what she’s saying. And then explain to her that it’s not her fault, as many times as needed. And then give her something practical to do about her missing sister. Instead, she gets told to shut up and take the tablets.

And if we really are doing that to all our unhappy children, instead of talking to them about why they’re unhappy – maybe we need to stop? And listen.

[Bluesqueakpip @replies]

@beancounter

she really seems to have no regard for the Doctor beyond getting a free ride through time.

Yeah, all that getting herself split into hundreds of Claricles and telling him to save himself while she stays with the kids is so selfish.

saying anything negative about the show is considered an act of war,

Indeed it is. We have the Three Billy Goats Gruff on standby, Gandalf the Grey is just behind the rock and a crack team of church bell-ringers have phoned to say that they’re on their way. 🙂

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@phileasf and @besd1

The fact that it did get through tells me that it wasn’t in anyway accidental.

It wasn’t accidental. I had a bit of a comment on that on another forum:

Medication versus listening. Everyone wants to give Maebh her medication rather than deal with those embarrassing habits and listen to the strange voices. Except for the Doctor, who has obviously added ‘child psychiatry’ to his ‘Doctor of everything’ qualifications. He can listen; he can see – and he can tell the difference between a ‘nervous tic’ and gestures that mean something. So he asks Maebh where the forest came from.

Once she tells him where she thinks the forest came from, he’s very practical throughout. He listens, he reassures her that she couldn’t have made the forest by herself, and later on he gives her the opportunity to do something herself.

It’s a bit like Bradley being told by Clara to say ‘please’, and later managing to say please. That method means he controls his own behaviour – rather than thinking it’s the meds doing it.

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@pedant, @purofilion

His priority at this point was to reassure the parents that their kids were OK.

This is what I mean about good writing.

Did Danny ask Clara to phone the school? It didn’t sound like he had – but we don’t know. So if his priority was to reassure the parents etc, why didn’t he phone? Is he the only teacher in the whole of London who goes on a school trip without a mobile phone?

Who decided to take the kids on a walk back to Spitalfields? We don’t know. (though one of the kids refers to ‘he’, suggesting that they think it was Danny). If the distances are a bit vague, South Ken to Spitalfields would take about two hours and a half. Taking a bunch of urban twelve-year olds on a two and a half hour cross country walk – no wonder the Doctor’s nickname for him is ‘PE’. 😉

In loco parentis, his job was to keep the kids at the Natural History Museum until their parents could reach them/alternative arrangements could be made. That was his loco parentis job. He has seven kids with him who are safe and in a known location; one lost.

As I’ve said before – procedure is that one teacher remains with the group, the other will retrieve the lost child. If you all set off in search of little Maebh, there’s a very real possibility one of the others will end up getting lost as well – in this case, lost somewhere in a seven mile path between South Kensington and Spitalfields, in a forest. With wolves. And a tiger.

But we don’t know whose less-than-bright idea that was. We aren’t told. We aren’t told whether Clara was supposed to phone the school, either, or whether she took a few minutes out to phone the Doctor because the school wouldn’t be open yet – then got sidetracked because the Doctor had retrieved one of her pupils.

The split’s about 50/50 because it’s written that way. We’re looking in a mirror; what are we seeing? The monster who’s not, who’s really trying to save the world/kids? Or the two dimensional image who’s decided to be a monster?

[Incidentally, Danny’s reaction to Maebh being with the Doctor does rather strongly suggest that he sees the Doctor as the cannibalistic wizard in the gingerbread cottage.] 🙂

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I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this, but I swear the voice-over for the Voice of the Trees is Michael Sheen, the voice of House.

@phaseshift – ‘We are the Life that Prevails’, fitting in with Dalek Rusty’s Road-to-Damascus moment of ‘Life … prevails.’

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@besd1

I don’t get the noise about him being controlling/possessive/ a potential abuser.

Judging by the recommends on the ‘for’ and ‘against’ Guardian BTL comments, it runs about 50/50. I’d go with @danmartinuk and say that Danny is very passive-aggressive.

he made it clear he didn’t have an issue with her being in the Tardis?

He had a row with her about phoning the Doctor. I’d say this row is very carefully written, because you don’t know whether he’s shouting because she’s lying about phoning the Doctor – or whether she’s lying because she knows there will be a row.

Now, if he genuinely believes the Doctor is dangerous – and for some reason can’t explain this/get it across to Clara – then the row is understandable. Clara’s lying becomes evidence (to Danny) of the bad influence that the Doctor is having on her. Likewise, if Danny believes the Doctor is dangerous because the Doctor is basically in the position of being Clara’s ‘drug dealer’, then his suspicion, slightly obsessive checking up on her behaviour, and attempts to stop her seeing the Doctor are all signs of a nice guy who’s really worried (and doesn’t quite know what to do).

If, on the other hand, he dislikes Clara being friends with another guy and travelling to exciting places, then Clara’s lying becomes understandable; but Danny becomes rather controlling and over-possessive.

Wasn’t it him who told Clara to think carefully before deciding to stop travelling?

Yeah. Unfortunately, that’s classic ’emotionally abusive’ behaviour. The abusive partner is the only one who’s allowed to make decisions. Clara certainly can’t be allowed to make a decision for herself that would genuinely remove one of her ‘faults’ – until she’s reached the point where she lets Danny decide for her.

Likewise, his constant niggles about her lying could be classic. Having discovered one of her faults (she tends to lie her way out of difficult situations), he makes it seem the worst crime possible in their relationship. So Clara would be constantly feeling wrong-footed, insecure and as if she’s the one with the problem. After all, she’s the one who’s lying…

…but Danny’s the one who’s created the difficult situation, by telling her to think carefully before she stops travelling in the TARDIS.

And the suspicion, obsessive checking up on her behaviour, and attempts to stop her seeing the Doctor – all signs of an emotionally abusive boyfriend. As indeed are not supporting her decisions in front of a class of pupils, and suggesting that he’s the person who really understands ‘what’s important’.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets please!
😉

[Bluesqueakpip @replies]

@wolfweed!

Missed you.

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