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29 October 2014 at 02:33 #34260
Out of interest, the Audience Appreciation Index for this episode came in at a healthy 83 (good) and the overnights at 5.03 million.
Which suggests that while it’s a divisive episode for keen fans, the general audience rather liked it. đ
29 October 2014 at 00:31 #34257But how do you explain the scene where the three Doctors put their hands on the Button, ready to push âbecause there is no other wayâ?
Quite easily, because I don’t have a problem conceiving of a situation where I can decide to do something ‘wrong’ because I can’t think of anything ‘right’. I can, for example, tell someone else that what they’re about to do is ‘wrong’ and what I did was ‘wrong’ even though I still can’t think of any alternative.
The fact that I can’t think of an alternative doesn’t magically transform something into the ‘right’, ‘moral’ thing to do.
The Doctor: And it is done in the name of many lives we are failing to save.
Which quote really doesn’t sound as if The Doctor is exactly saying ‘yay, this is the right decision.’ Sounds more like he thinks he’s failed. They’ve failed. They know, when they press the button, that they should have saved those lives – but they can’t work out how to.
he stops and realises that itâs there
Actually, Clara stops him. If you watch Day of the Daleks you’ll realise that Clara is probably the only person who CAN stop him. Not the Moment, not the later incarnations of the Doctor. I did suggest in a blog post on this that the Moment’s entire intervention is based around Clara being available.
it completely backfires when he effectively joins the War Doctor in destroying Gallifrey ten minutes later, because âthere is no other way.â
If you believe that there is a situation where the Doctor has a choice between two ‘wrong’ options, why do you think he doesn’t realise that both options are ‘wrong’? There is NO inconsistency in his believing both that a) he has no choice but to destroy Gallifrey, because that’s the least worst option available and b) that option is, morally, utterly wrong.
It’s genocide. It’s murder. And if you want a real life equivalent, it’s the decision that you relive over and over in your head and can never find an alternative to – but which you know hurt people terribly. And yet, if you went back in time – you’d do the same thing again. Because the alternative is worse.
28 October 2014 at 23:23 #34253how could he have possibly known the Doctorâs history and felt justified at being angry towards him?
Exactly. Danny’s behaviour in In The Forest of The Night is perfectly consistent – IF he thinks the Doctor is dangerous. So dangerous that you can’t possibly leave Maebh with him, can’t let Clara collect Maebh (because she doesn’t know how dangerous the Doctor is), can’t keep the kids in the TARDIS a second longer than you have to, and certainly don’t want them to go on a trip with him…
… and yet, can’t tell Clara why he thinks that. Has to stop Clara making a definite break with the Doctor.
And the Doctor keeps insisting he’s not really a Maths teacher…
28 October 2014 at 22:58 #34251Because she is a junkie and she is afraid Danny will take her junk away.
I think that’s the biggest red herring we’ve been handed all series. Clara is, and always has been a liar – when she needs to be. But if she’s a TARDIS junkie, then she’s got the two of the best enablers in the galaxy as her Significant Others. Plus, what’s Danny going to do? HOW is he going to stop her? Tie her up? That tends to be frowned upon…
I think we got handed the ‘addiction’ red herring because it gives us an immediately plausible reason why Clara might be so very, very keen on making sure people who might realistically talk to her Blackpool family, including family-friends-from-London and boyfriends, don’t know that she’s a time traveller. To the extent of taking the Maitland kids along on a trip so they keep their little mouths shut, producing the Doctor as her ‘boyfriend’ (in case Mr Maitland has mentioned said boyfriend?), and telling Danny that she’s no longer travelling with the Doctor and hasn’t seen him for months…
But when it’s people who’ve never met and are never likely to meet her Dad, she couldn’t care less. In fact, she suddenly reverts to bluntly truthful.
Well, except when the blunt truth is ‘you’re probably going to die’. đ
27 October 2014 at 02:40 #34184No, he doesn’t ‘feel’ like a monster-by-choice, does he? I’m thinking the Teller from Time Heist. Something he wants more than anything in the world…
I would genuinely like Samuel Anderson to go into a second series.
27 October 2014 at 02:28 #34183@pedant and @blenkinsopthebrave
It’ll be interesting to see who’s bonkers theory is the correct one. From what the kids were saying in the background, the decision to take them across a couple of miles of instant forest was Danny’s. They say ‘where is he taking us?’
That’s not very responsible.
I realise this is Doctor Who, but the normal procedure would be for Danny to stay with the other kids in the museum. That’s his job; to keep the kids in a safe place. Clara, as the second teacher, would retrieve Maebh.
It’s a bit like the telling no one he’s called Rupert (and the CRB got name checked this week). It’s odd. He says the kids are the priority; he doesn’t act like it. He gets another chance to keep them safe later; but he takes them all out of the TARDIS to meet a tiger. Armed with a torch. Okay, he didn’t expect the tiger, but he did know Nelson’s column had just fallen down.
It would’ve been extremely easy to develop a script reason for the museum to seem unsafe. Falling tree? But instead they chose to have the kids taken out of safety, into relative danger. And the lines imply that it was Danny’s decision. Twice.
26 October 2014 at 23:56 #34172where Danny radiated goodness and wisdom.
Well, apart from the bits where he treated Clara like a private in his squad. A private, incidentally, who he doesn’t want to get promoted.
He did it every time. Every time she started acting like an ‘officer’, doing strategic thinking, trying to work out the situation – he cut her down, tried to drag her back to the very small ‘detail’ task of getting the kids back to Coal Hill School. He treated her like a bloody private.
He made a great speech about loving the small stuff, and I can understand entirely that he might be quite genuinely someone who’s seen a bit too much and wants to concentrate on the ‘little stuff’ of teaching and bringing up kids. But that doesn’t make it right for Clara. Last week we saw her effectively defeat an alien invasion by herself; this week he wants her to take six kids across London and leave the alien invasion to someone else.
And not backing her up when they got an offer to take the kids to see the solar flare was inexcusable. Chance to see a bit of the universe, kiddies? Nope, let’s take you home to Mum – far more important.
Rory felt domestic without being small. Danny feels like he’s an embodiment of the miniaturisation theme. Or the thing last week where all the ‘murals’ had their backs turned. He’s small, and he’s deliberately ignoring stuff. And he wants to stop Clara flying.
Literally.
26 October 2014 at 22:12 #34168thus making it not an option ever worth choosing
Well, it obviously is an option sometimes worth choosing, because he’s chosen to do it. Shall we agree that sometimes he decides it’s not worth it and sometimes he decides that it is?
He can choose to do it without meeting himself. I realise that most people heartily loathe The-Movie-We-Do-Not-Mention, but he changed the past there to save lives. He also changes the past (to save lives) in The Big Bang. And in Waters of Mars. And in minor ways at places like Pompeii … as he says in The Day of The Doctor, he does it all the time.
But not always.
At this point, the Tenth Doctor says: âWhat we do today is not out of fear or hatred. It is done because there is no other wayâ. This suggests he doesnât think it is the wrong choice to make
Yes, he does think it’s the wrong choice to make. But the alternative choice is even more wrong. I don’t quite understand why you have a problem with this, since you were the person who wanted the Doctor to have a ‘no right choices’ dilemma. This is it. This is your story about the Doctor facing the impossible dilemma. There were no right choices – he thought. Just a slightly less wrong one.
2.7 billion children versus billions of billions dying over and over again. There is no right choice; just two wrong ones. Whichever one he chooses, he’ll be a murderer.
Until the Moment, and Clara, intervene.
In the real world, Steven Moffat decided (correctly, I think) that it’s far better for us all to understand that a hero is someone who always struggles to find that ‘third way’ – rather than accepting that life will sometimes hand you a choice between two bad options.
Yes, sometimes life does hand you a choice between bad and worse. But a hero is someone who never accepts that, never gives in to that, will continue searching for the third way even if they are continually having to make ‘bad vs worse’ choices with the limited time and materials at their disposal.
What makes most sense, I think, is to interpret the quote âBecause what I did that day was wrong. Just wrong,â as part of a persuasive technique on the Doctorâs part to convince Kate Stewart not to enact her plan.
Yeah… that’s a bit of an alternative reading. Well, actually, it’s a lot of an alternative reading – because it ignores the point that the very reason the Moment has sent the War Doctor to this precise problem is so that he can see someone else getting it wrong.
Incidentally, as I recall the End of Time, the Doctor gets his arse handed to him throughout much of the story and ends up crashing through the ceiling armed only with an elderly service revolver – before his Mum sighs deeply and nods in a significant manner towards the link her idiot son has to destroy. I agree that he can’t think of a better option at that point. I can’t either.
However, the fact that I can’t think of a better option than shooting the lunatic who’s about to burn down the orphanage doesn’t make it the right choice. It is still wrong. Just wrong.
26 October 2014 at 08:40 #34137I think the one big problem with it was its lack of tension. I’m still trying to work that one out; was it an editing or directing problem rather than a writing problem? Because the tension is there, in the script. The kids lost in the forest, the animals on the loose, the solar flare…
… but somehow, it doesn’t transfer to screen.
One thing that would probably have upped the tension a lot was not having it take place in broad daylight (which does seem to be a script problem). The ‘torch in the eyes’ defence against the tiger would’ve made a lot more sense in the dark or the twilight.
26 October 2014 at 00:18 #34126@spider and @badwulf – agreed. On a rewatch it was very definite that the glowy thingys had brought her back – possibly from where she’d run away to, but very possibly back from the dead.
Incidentally, was that Michael Sheen (the voice of House) doing an uncredited voice over as the voice of the trees? Which would be another little shout out to ‘bubble universe’.
26 October 2014 at 00:02 #34120One thing I just noticed on the rewatch
Clara: Danny Pink will never leave those kids as long as he is breathing.
Yet another reference to people dying…
25 October 2014 at 23:42 #34116Here, the magic trees made oxygen, which apparently protected the Earth from solar radiation.
In fairness to the writer, the magic trees had the ability to produce or withhold oxygen. The Doctor, in fact, said they were withholding oxygen, that was what made them fireproof – you can’t have fire without oxygen. I think Boyce had some vague idea that the magic trees basically reversed the gas exchange and exhaled a cloud of CO2 (presumably with enough oxygen for us on the ground to keep breathing).
The atmosphere is basically what protects us from solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections, so suddenly expanding it could plausibly act as an extra security blanket. Not in real science, of course, but plausibly enough for a story.
25 October 2014 at 21:53 #3410325 October 2014 at 21:52 #34102Yes, it seems to be a bit of a ‘Marmite’ episode. I really enjoyed it myself; it fits nicely into the theme of our myths and fairytales being based on truths we prefer not to remember.
Or prefer not to believe, because we want to be hard headed and cynical and not to remember that the world is full of magic.
25 October 2014 at 21:10 #34093Just to remind everyone that any comment on the ‘Coming Soon’ trailer at the end of the episode belongs in the Trailers Blog until Episode 11 is broadcast.
25 October 2014 at 01:13 #34072I’m kinda with @pedant – it’s not so much that we want the Master back as that a number of clues point in that direction. (Quite apart from the ‘Missy’ thing, the Master has a long-standing role as the Doctor’s very own psycho stalker – which is what Missy seems to be doing right now). I’m quite willing to discover that Missy is an original character, but the clues currently point towards a female incarnation of the Master. Clues will result in a bonkers theory: see our mission statement.
Any Dr Who with the Master is a âre-runâ with cosmetic changes.
What, you mean like ‘Doctor meets monster, Doctor fights monster, Doctor wins against monster’? đ But there are things you could do with the Master that wouldn’t be a cosmetic re-run. We last saw him discovering that Rassilon was the real reason behind his insanity – and as a result, he ends up saving the Doctor’s life.
It’d be justifiable to change the ongoing characterisation from that moment – it’s almost as angsty a backstory as blowing up Gallifrey. Actually, for the Master, it’s probably more angsty than blowing up Gallifrey. đ
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. đŻ
23 October 2014 at 13:22 #34029Interested to know what makes you think that this was RTDâs moral view.
Pretty much the same thing that makes me think ‘dying isn’t a defeat’ is Moffat’s view: RTD’s had more than one character act in this way in more than one script, and he seems to approve it in other scripts where he was the showrunner. If he doesn’t personally believe it’s right, he does seem extremely sympathetic to characters who take it to its final conclusion – that you might have to be prepared to destroy your own planet.
There’s a very similar exploration in Children of Earth – people who are prepared to kill others (but not themselves or their own) for the greater good, versus people who are prepared to die themselves or kill their own – and he never has Jack escape from the ‘greatest good of the greatest number’. Um, and he also completely misses the essential point about martyrdom, but that’s another gripe. I rate Children of Earth as ‘really good up until the last episode’. That dratted problem he has with endings…
I agree that the Doctor isn’t and never has been a utilitarian.
23 October 2014 at 00:35 #34008In reply to your 1,399 word essay…
đbut really itâs the information the Captainâs vision of the Mummy can reveal to the other scientists (eg that the Mummy can teleport) that makes his last 66 seconds an example of the Bad rather than the Worse, as itâs that information that will save lives … A killing that does not contribute to the scientistsâ knowledge is Worse than one that does.
Here, I think you’re imposing your moral values on Steven Moffat’s moral values. Obviously, there’s a large dose of ‘whatever they are’, but in this case he writes a fairly consistent view. Being killed is not the Worst thing that can happen to you. You are, after all, going to die anyway – as River says, everybody knows that everybody dies. You can still beat the monster even as it kills you.
In the case of Prof. Moorhouse, the Doctor gives him an opportunity to die as a scientist. In the case of the Captain, he dies as a soldier – and like a good soldier, he knows how important it is to keep relaying vital strategic information up to the moment of his death.
Maisie’s non-death actually gives no information to the scientists; the Doctor wants her to try and feel her trauma so he can transfer it to trap the Mummy. He wants her to be able to use it, not be used by it. And, as I’ve said before, he takes a few seconds out to tell her that she was right; it wasn’t all in her mind.
So information isn’t the common denominator; the common denominator is not letting whatever-it-is defeat you. Even if it kills you…
The fact that the Doctor very rarely goes back to change his past should tell us that he doesnât have the option to do that,
Okay, this is devastating logic time. Logically, the fact that the Doctor very rarely goes back to change his past should tell us that he DOES have the option to do that. It is, however, normally the Worst option. As @scaryb pointed out, he did do it all by himself in The Movie That We Do Not Mention. This was probably due to regeneration trauma, a.k.a. a really bad script.
I have done a blog post on this very thing. While someone dying before their time is Bad, it pales in comparison with Churchill on a Mammoth.
If, on the other hand, someone dying before their time is taking place in a general atmosphere of the whole universe ceasing to exist, the Doctor will put on a fez, grab a mop, go back on his own timeline and hand Rory the Sonic. Of course, by that point he knows that he has gone back on his own time line, but he’s still going back to create the Moffat loop.
The Doctor never has to follow the rules. He simply decides when he’s going to. As you say – mostly, he does. But he chooses when to follow them and when to break them.
he is only able to change his past because, as a result of the Momentâs interference
You’re right in that one, very specific case. That’s probably because the events concerned are Time Locked. Note that the Tennant Doctor is shocked that the Hurt Doctor can be there; but while the Davison Doctor was a bit puzzled at meeting a future incarnation (in Time Crash), he wasn’t shocked. Later, the Tennant Doctor comments that they shouldn’t be able to go to Gallifrey at the moment of The Moment. So, given that the Doctor does change past events in many other cases, the Moment was needed for that particular problem.
Can he just decide to go on a visit to his past self? Dunno. I suspect the reason that it’s normally arranged by Time Lords is because of the potential paradoxes; it’s probably considered both dangerous and a bit embarrassing. I mean, would you really want to go back and have a chat with your younger self? Especially if those younger selves are already living in your head…
But being depressed about an act you committed is not the same as thinking you did the wrong thing.
But that’s what the Doctor says. In The Day of The The Doctor:
Tennant Doctor: Because what I did that day was wrong. Just wrong.
So he fairly obviously does think he did the wrong thing.
Did we believe he had committed a terrible, cruel, unforgivable act? I never got the impression any of us did.
::ahem::
Well, in another of my blogs …That means the hero of the show is someone whoâs done something only God could forgive; and he doesnât even believe in God
I agree that RTD didn’t think so. RTD’s moral view (caveat: whatever they are) seems to come across as utilitarian ‘greatest good of greatest number’. Destroying Gallifrey would be forgiveable if the alternative was destroying the universe. In fact, your view is probably very close to RTD’s view.
Steven Moffat’s view appears to be that the killing of a three year old kid who’s clutching his teddy bear (multiplied by 2.7 billion) is and always will be wrong. Just wrong.
that does not mean that he thought it was a mistake to do it.
Oh, he didn’t think it was a mistake. He just thought it was wrong.
out of the blue, another option which he never even conceived would or could be available suddenly is available
Out of The Moment, actually. She worked really hard to get him to see the alternative.
Youâre probably thinking âwhat about Claraâs part in all this?
Actually, I have a fair idea what Clara’s point is in all this, because it’s spelled out in The Day of the Daleks (note similarity in titles, but I won’t go into details in case you haven’t seen it) and helpfully given an annotation in Time of The Doctor.
Tennant Doctor: You’re not actually suggesting that we change our own personal history?
Smith Doctor: We change history all the time.He has to choose a Bad option, turning the Boneless back to 2D,
No. HE didn’t choose the Bad option. The Boneless chose the bad option. They are the moral actors in this; had they chosen a good option the Doctor would have helped them. They chose to be monsters. They are the ones who made a moral choice – to kill and to keep killing – from that point on, the only good choice available to a moral actor is stopping them killing more people.
The choice, which the Doctor spells out, is that if you choose to become a monster, the Doctor will choose to become the man who stops the monsters.
in order to save people who maybe donât even deserve it,
I hate to point this out, but last time I looked being a graffiti artist – or even a nasty minded bully – was not something that deserved the death penalty. None of those people deserved to die; it’s just that some who survived were less deserving than those who died.
If the Doctor got to choose who survived, he’d probably have chosen a different set – but maybe it’s a good thing for his remaining sanity that he can’t play God like that. đ
22 October 2014 at 20:58 #33994I’m planning to reply to you in the Flatline forum. I am planning to reply, but I should probably point something out. I’m dyslexic.
Which means that any post which is three pages long has to be put to one side until I have an hour or two of spare time. It really will take me that long to write a reply.
22 October 2014 at 20:29 #33992In the Doctor Who Extra, Moff clearly points out that Clara is addicted
Yeah, he does. However, he’s always said that he will lie to protect a plot twist. So – yeah, it could be that the plot is one of addiction. Or it could be that ‘addiction’ is the red herring.
@drben – I think he could manage a slow crawl. đ
22 October 2014 at 19:52 #33990So I found it a little jarring that it apparently turned out not to be that much of an issue
I keep saying this a lot, obviously because it is jarring and it does bug people – but it wasn’t the fault of the scriptwriters or production team. It was the fault of Matt Smith’s knee. đ
Originally, the escape from the timestream in Name of The Doctor was supposed to be a dramatic and obvious leap for freedom. However, the dramatic and obvious leap for freedom would be with the Doctor carrying Clara. And involved, y’know, leaping.
Which is impossible to do when your lead actor limps in on crutches. Really crutches. Really limping. Really unable to do anything involving leaping about without falling to the ground, accompanied by agonised screams.
So they had to hurriedly rework it to a slight turn.
Admittedly, it doesn’t work. But it was the best they could do. đ
20 October 2014 at 13:12 #33899There have been a lot of strange things about Clara
And now I’m thinking back to Night Terrors, where we establish that it’s possible for the parents of an adopted child (in that case, a Tenza child) to not remember that their child is adopted.
it seems really, really weird he didnât go back to confirm the actual pregnancy
A ‘perception filter’ might have been in place. It might be only in this regeneration that the Doctor realises he didn’t check – and guesses why. Which would be why he thought Clara might have been in a Children’s Home…
19 October 2014 at 22:14 #33867The Doctor didn’t cause Ross’s death. Ross accidentally caused his own death, by trying to damage the Dalek and setting off the ‘anti-bodies’. The decision is to not use his death (thus killing others) or use his death (thus saving others).
Likewise, if you want to look at the best outcome in Mummy, see the death of the Captain – who gets his self-respect back in those last 66 seconds.
I appreciate that you’re saying that a fixed point isn’t the only ‘impossible choice’ for the Doctor, and generally he does choose to regard his own past time line as a ‘fixed point’. Except when he doesn’t. See The Day of The Doctor for details.
Basically, never tell the Doctor that he has to follow the rules. Okay? That’s a paraphrase from The Time of the Doctor. đ
In answer to your question about whether the Doctor is a consequentialist – go watch Flatline, because in fact, it discusses a lot of the things we’ve been talking about. You can also watch The Day of The Doctor, because the ethics of bad vs worse gets acted out there, as well.
Did the Doctor act according to consequentialist ethics/greatest good of greatest number when he destroyed Gallifrey? Yes.
Did he think it was the right/good/ethical thing to do? No. It nearly destroyed him.
But surely sometimes (and this is sort of my whole point) the universe wouldnât let him off so lightly.
Go watch Flatline. And consider the following points.
You cannot answer the question of asking ‘Do the ends justify the means’ without asking ‘Which ends? Which means?’
If you constantly save the universe at the cost of continually deciding between a ‘lesser bad’ and a ‘greater good’ – are you a good man?
19 October 2014 at 21:34 #33864That said, I seem to remember theories from Series 7b that Clara may have been adopted.
‘Twas me. It’s based around the point that the standard ‘birth to childhood’ montage includes The Joyful Hospital Scene, with an Exhausted But Happy Mum Cradling Baby with Proud Dad. Whereas, Baby Clara is seen at home, with Mum looking on lovingly through the door as Dad picks her up and cradles her. It’s a bit non-standard – and the way the two actors are positioned almost implies that Mum is delighted that Dad’s bonding with the several weeks old baby.
Now it could just be that the writer felt they’d throw up if they had to do yet another The Joyful Hospital Scene, and decided to vary it a bit by doing Baby Clara At Home. đ But the fact that we first see Clara as a baby at home (and never see Mum with Bump) would also fit an adoption.
As, indeed, would the Doctor’s odd conviction that Clara could have easily been in a Children’s Home in Bristol and just doesn’t remember it…
19 October 2014 at 12:01 #33818@pedant – you may have staked marmite, but
I made no marmite stakes. I was still smarting from the loss of my ‘Clara is the Doctor’ theory – which now turns out to be unexpectedly correct. Okay, I didn’t see that one returning. đ
Mirroring. Clara’s his mirror image. And Missy is very probably the Master’s new regeneration.
Does this connect somehow to ‘reverse engineering’? Is Missy trying to reverse engineer a Doctor?
19 October 2014 at 09:20 #33812I suspect there may also be elements of â letâs take Colinâs turn as #6 and show how it could have been done.
If that was the strapline Moffat was giving to his writers, it becomes obvious why everyone was saying ‘you need Peter Capaldi’.
I don’t really like the ‘Clara as alcoholic’ thingy because it does have an aura of female transgressiveness about it. But if it’s part of the Doctor’s arc, that would make sense. He starts by saying “She cares so I don’t have to.” Clara is his carer. He doesn’t want to care; if there’s one thing he learnt in his previous incarnation, it’s that caring will end up hurting him badly.
But then he starts to recover from his regeneration trauma – and Clara becomes ill. Addiction is an illness. So he has to become her ‘carer’. Especially since part of the reason that Clara’s picking up all his bad qualities is that these are the only ones currently ‘on show’.
Like a grandchild, she admires him and tries to copy him.
[:: waves at @Purofilion and hopes the stay in hospital wasn’t too boring ::]
19 October 2014 at 08:26 #33809@scaryb – thank you.
Ah, yes. I do sometimes paraphrase. đł
I didn’t want to say Who nerd supreme because – to be honest – I thought that sounded like I was about to set out my fiendishly complex plan for taking over the entire universe. You know, the one with the over dramatic speech about ‘now, Doctor, I have you in my power!’
Besides, @phaseshift is so much better at the manic laughter.
19 October 2014 at 01:20 #33779@pedant – I agree it could go either way. Danny could be the caring boyfriend who’s acting all suspicious because his girlfriend is addicted to something dangerous.
Or he could be the controlling boyfriend who’s making Clara feel like her mentor and friend is … err, a mad alien in a magic box who keeps dragging her into appalling danger? Okay, that sentence didn’t go so well. đ
But the way it looks right now is: Danny meets girlfriend. Danny discovers girlfriend has a secret love for free solo climbing. Danny reacts badly to this. Girlfriend then continues lying about going climbing because she knows boyfriend will react badly…
The question is whether the admittedly dangerous activity is something that’s very bad for Clara, or something that’s just part of the way she is. Is Clara lying because he’s trying to stop an activity she’s addicted to – or is she lying because she instinctively knows he shouldn’t be trying to stop her doing something she loves?
Or, going into bonkers theory-dom, is she lying because she can’t stop travelling with the Doctor? Because Missy programmed her/picked her too carefully…
The Doctor’s comment on lying, incidentally, was ‘a great survival skill – and a bad habit’. He appears un-bothered about Clara lying to Danny, much more concerned that she’s started lying to him (when she had no need to and even when it’s obvious he knows who’s calling). Interesting.
18 October 2014 at 23:34 #33765@Purofilion and @juniperfish – I’ve just been nominated as nerd of the week on the Graun (in the nicest possible way) for spotting that 2M65 (on the train) might be a reference to the second episode of Story M in BG Who.
Story: The Romans. Episode title: All Roads Lead To Rome. đ
18 October 2014 at 22:35 #33751So has Missy planted Clara on the TARDIS
Somebody has certainly planted Clara on the TARDIS. She was too bloody perfect in Series 7; always exactly what the Doctor needed.
Incidentally, did you notice that the ‘Clara. My Clara’ is an echo of the Smith Doctor in his own time-stream? So – Valeyard?
I still quite like the ‘female Master = Mistress’ bonkers theory, though. In support, I’d point out that one of the very last things we saw the Master doing was saving the Doctor’s life. So s/he could well have planted Clara in a horribly complex and more than slightly insane plan to save the Doctor and get him a new set of regenerations. After all, he knows the idiot is never going to ask for them himself.
18 October 2014 at 22:10 #33742There’s a load of stuff in this episode that we’ve been discussing. The ethics of ‘no good choices’ and ‘yeah, but we saved the world’.
Clara’s lies do indeed make Danny sound like a controlling and potentially abusive boyfriend. Is that an accident? She’s lying, after all. Or are her lies coming up with something that she’s noticed?
Welcome back to my bonkers theory that Clara is the Doctor! How I’ve missed you! đ Okay, it turns out that ‘Clara is the Doctor’ in a somewhat more metaphorical sort of way, but still…
I agree that there seems to be a common link of ‘on the phone’.
A lot of people do seem to be missing the significance of the ‘Sonic Screwdriver Moment’, which is pretty clearly the ‘becoming the Doctor’ moment. After nine episodes, this incarnation of the Doctor has finally grown back into his role of ‘The Doctor’. It IS a role, but one that he’s recognising he has to play.
It. Is. Defended! (Tennant Doctor)
Hello, I’m the Doctor. Basically, run. (Smith Doctor)
This plane is protected. I. Am. The Doctor! (Capaldi Doctor)So Clara passes the baton; from Smith to Capaldi. He takes the Sonic, and he defeats the monsters.
18 October 2014 at 19:11 #33714@JimboMcMaster- good points, all. Obviously, I disagree. đ
Firstly, because I think it would make good drama.I think a television show should try to explore as many facets of its premise as possible.
But the aspect of its premise that applies to Doctor Who has already been explored on-screen – in The Fires of Pompeii and The Waters of Mars (note that the titles makes it obvious that they’re exploring the same thing). The ‘impossible decision’ between bad and worse is the show’s premise of ‘fixed points’. You can’t change certain historical moments.
Those are both from the Russell T Davies era, and RTD’s opinion appears to veer strongly towards ‘all you can do is drag one or two people from the wreckage. However, you should drag one or two people from the wreckage.’
If something isn’t a fixed point, then the Doctor can never have an ‘impossible decision’ because he can change stuff. In fact, if something is a fixed point he can go back and change stuff – and that leads me to the Steven Moffat Era.
I think it would make good drama because seeing a character taking an action that is consistent with one important aspect of their character, but that also goes against many other aspects of their character, can make for powerful drama.
It can also make for very easy, unearned drama. Unless you are very, very careful, the drama is imposed on the character – and this is especially a danger in continuing dramas like Doctor Who.
The action you are proposing will change the character.
Fires of Pompeii is really about Donna; her realisation of the human cost of these fixed points (read ‘any ginormous disaster’) and her realisation of the limited scale of what she can accomplish. Having to choose between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’, she chooses ‘bad’ and then manages to turn ‘bad’ into ‘less bad’ by saving Caecelius and his family. Donna’s a companion – her character is allowed, nay encouraged to progress. And then that progression gets horribly taken away, but let’s not go there. đ[Who frowned him that face? Is this Doctor wearing the face of the man he saved? Or the man he couldn’t, because he refused to act?]
Waters of Mars – now, David Tennant is on record as saying that they couldn’t have done ‘Waters of Mars’ until just before regeneration – because it’s a character changing moment. The Tennant Doctor refuses to make the impossible choice, and leave Adelaide to die. Instead, she has to make that impossible choice for him.
Now then – it’s a great, character driven moment, but it does rather depend on another little bit of characterisation. Namely, the Doctor’s gone more than a bit bonkers, ‘Time Lord Victorious’ and so forth, and decides to change time instead of circumventing it.
And this is another problem with ‘the impossible decision’ in Doctor Who. There aren’t actually that many of them. Even in Waters of Mars, all the Doctor had to do was take Adelaide and her two surviving crew to another place and time – so that the historical record was unchanged. This gets pointed out in The Wedding of River Song and in Hide – a ‘fixed point’ seems to be fixed because of its effects. You can change it – providing what everyone thinks happened doesn’t change. Hila can be rescued in Hide, providing the Doctor is careful to not take her back to her own time. (Presumably a pioneer time traveller wouldn’t be too distraught at being permanently stuck in the past).
In the Steven Moffat era we get to see how very few impossible decisions there really are when you’re The ‘I’ve got a time machine and I’m quite prepared to use it’ Doctor. đ The major ‘impossible decision’ moment was the one that happened off screen in the Interregnum. The destruction of Gallifrey. And he can change it – once he realises that he CAN change it.
I think the lesson kids would learn, if this was handled well, would be that you canât judge a person or what they do simply on the direct results of their actions â the indirect results should be considered too: maybe they were intentional.
Okay. Judging from that, you’re ethically a consequentialist. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a handy Wikipedia entry.
I’m very much not a consequentialist, nor do I think it’s a terrific ethical system to teach children, so we’re definitely not going to agree on that one.Which is in itself a kind of heroism â perhaps thatâs why I like the idea.
I can only quote Clara and the Doctor on this:
Clara: We’ve got enough warriors. Any old idiot can be a hero.
The Doctor: Then what do I do?
Clara: What you’ve always done. Be a doctor.17 October 2014 at 02:54 #33660Re his second date accusations of lying â yeah, that was a bit off.
Yeah. What’s even more off about it is that somebody in the school (probably the School Secretary and the Head) would know his original name. The criminal record checks that any teacher has to have (and keep updated) ask for all the names you’ve ever used.
It’s like there’s some kind of competition to get everything about Danny just slightly wrong. đ
17 October 2014 at 00:14 #33646wastes time on a story arc of a conflict that feels forced and beneath the character
It does, doesn’t it?
Sorry, I’m still suspicious of Danny. He’s just … wrong. I can’t think of anything, in fact, about his background that’s right. [Go on, tell me anything about his background that actually fits.]
And he’s not having a good effect on Clara. He’s oh, so very understanding, and reasonable, and controlling. If this is supposed to be a good relationship, it’s certainly bringing out her worst qualities. Why is he so suspicious all the time? He was suspicious of Clara on their second date! He accused her of lying! On their second date!
For someone who clearly doesn’t like the Doctor, he also seems bloody keen that Clara stay in touch with him, even when she’s had a furious row and would have been quite willing to say ‘that’s IT!’
Then there’s this weird need to investigate the new caretaker. The caretaker who no other teacher in the school was worried about.
We’ve been given excellent reasons why the Doctor might not want to trust him (ex-soldier, jealousy of Clara’s boyfriend), but are they there to hide in plain sight that the Doctor doesn’t trust Danny? Specifically, Danny. Adrian would’ve been fine (obviously, the bow tie helped).
With Rory, the Doctor practically dragged him onto the TARDIS. With Mickey, the Doctor wasn’t exactly keen, but he permitted ‘Rickey The Idiot’ to travel with Rose for several voyages. With Danny, he not only won’t allow him on the TARDIS, he throws him off it. And he sends Col. Pink to fetch Clara in a sealed spacesuit.
I can’t help thinking that Adrian would’ve been falling over his feet on the Orient Express by now. Danny is stuck at home on the sofa. Undercutting Clara’s big decisions, insisting she not lie to him, – but really, how much do we know about him?
Bit of a ladykiller. Not. So, who’s the lady he’s not here to kill? đ
15 October 2014 at 23:29 #33606@doctorbaker Frank Skinner got a free pass on the ‘celebrity casting’ moans on the grounds that he’s well known to be a keen fan who’s been begging for any role whatsoever. For ages.
I think the feeling was that he’d earned that one, on the grounds of long and patient pleading. Personally, I was just pleased that – when he finally got his part – it was a good role for him and he did well with it.
14 October 2014 at 15:55 #33555@mtgradwell – sorry, that probably came out as a bit stronger than I intended. What I meant to say was that you’ve certainly convinced me that the science is rubbish.
I just think there’s probably a reason that the science and history have all had a theme of ‘what you think you know is wrong; it’s what the legends say that’s real’.
14 October 2014 at 15:32 #33552@wordmuse and @mtgradwell
If I could do it in a few seconds, surely someone involved in the production could have done something similar.
Exactly. They could have found out in fifteen seconds. And we know that they do find these things out; Moffat’s on record as muttering bitterly that he checked tape machines were around at the date of The Empty Child – but hadn’t noticed that the type used were only around in Germany.
Similarly, they didn’t want the War Rooms exactly right, because they didn’t want the kids thinking this was real history. The Lancaster, I would reckon, is the ‘Georgian Billiard Table problem’. That is, they know the prop they’re using isn’t historically accurate, but the real thing (a genuine Georgian Billiard Table) is worth millions and nobody’s going to let an actor anywhere near it.
“The Moon is a giant egg with a Moon Dragon inside” is such an astonishing ‘HUH?’ that I would honestly prefer it if you stopped banging on about the lack of science knowledge involved until the end of Series 8 – when we might find out if this is some theme running through the series. And if they were ignoring the science (just as they ignored the history in Robots of Sherwood) for a very specific and deliberate reason.
14 October 2014 at 12:31 #33545@mtgradwell – I think you should just give up on this one, mate.
I am, for example, completely certain that there were no Daleks in World War Two. Rose hanging off a barrage balloon is just about possible, but Daleks in the War Rooms – and Spitfires able to cope with vacuum? Nope.
Similarly, Reg in The Doctor, Widow, Wardrobe is flying a model of Lancaster bomber which hadn’t yet been built.
If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Just tell yourself that in between rescuing the three women and dropping Courtney off at Double Geography, the TARDIS crew took in breakfast at Milliways. đ
14 October 2014 at 12:20 #33544So Curse, with its play on Vampire myths and faith, what would your selection be?
By the time we get to Fenric, possibly the whole of Series 8? đ
13 October 2014 at 21:25 #33521@sweethappylife
Welcome!I would love to find a game or something I could play on my iPhone. Any suggestions?
Doctor Who Legacy. But be warned – it’s horribly addictive.
Just like Doctor Who itself, really. đ
13 October 2014 at 18:37 #33515Like the scripts were written before they knew he was leaving
Naah. It’s often this way in a new Doctor’s first series. The voice the writers will be ‘hearing’ in their heads as they write the Doctor will be the voice of Matt Smith’s Doctor. It won’t be Peter Capaldi’s voice yet – when they wrote the scripts, they hadn’t seen his Doctor.
I agree entirely; there are so many lines where you can hear Matt Smith saying them. Capaldi’s doing wonders with changing the delivery, but you can still hear it. Don’t worry; they’ll have his voice in Series 9. đ
13 October 2014 at 18:25 #33514I think, therefore, the Mummy is still acting as a soldier, rather than as a doctor.
A soldier would take out the leaders first; they wouldn’t go for the 100 year old biddy and the cook, and the professor with panic attacks or the guy with a lung replacement, or the officer who’s already shown himself as less than competent. A predator would take the weakest first, because they only want one or two animals for lunch. A soldier wants to take out all the opposing forces. Or force them to surrender. A soldier would target the strong and leave the weak and incompetent.
Two alternatives: one, the mummy was a medic and was deliberately ‘triaging’ the people less likely to live anyway. That would be a ‘no right choices’ option – his programming is forcing him to kill, he’s trying to cause least damage.
Two: the mummy was a regular squaddie, and was deliberately subverting his training. Didn’t the Doctor make a comment along the lines of the mummy also fighting his programming? In that case he was picking off the weakest of the group in order to give the ‘leaders’ a chance to defeat him. He was fighting to lose.
13 October 2014 at 15:35 #33501I wanted the show itself (ie the writers/producers) to accept that sometimes in the Doctorâs adventures he would have to commit these terrible acts for the greater good….only be able to choose from bad choices, eg kill one person, or let five die.
Why?
Who benefits?
Who benefits from teaching kids a moral viewpoint that says ‘yeah, sorry about the wedding, and the people who weren’t involved, and the ten year old, just like you. Oh, and the kid just like your little brother, who was clutching their teddy the way he does. But we got the person who would have murdered thousands, so it was all okay. You can go to sleep at night knowing it was for the greater good.’
[Okay, I’m being nasty. But really – who benefits from teaching kids crap like this?]
The ‘greater good’ can be used to justify almost any action. It has been used to justify the murder of millions. It isn’t the same as ‘there are no good choices’, because it’s almost always used to justify a bad choice on the grounds that something good may result from it in the future. It’s often justified as ‘realistic’, ignoring the point that ethics is generally all about stopping us doing realistic things (like punching my annoying neighbour).
It’s a quite different choice from ‘all I can do is drag one person/family from the wreckage.’ Or ‘I can’t stop someone being murdered.’ Which was what the Doctor had to do this week, and in Into The Dalek – admit that he couldn’t stop someone being killed, but he could use their death.
The Doctor does indeed do the ‘greater good’, but generally the show will portray this as a mistake. Donna agreed that stopping Vesuvius would be worse, but insisted that he could still save someone.
Someone who had the face that the current Doctor is using…
13 October 2014 at 14:39 #33497Incidentally, has everyone noticed that the soldiers we’ve seen are ALL soldiers whose wars haven’t ended? Journey Blue, Skivotz Blister and now the Mummy.
Except for Danny. Seemingly.
The theme in the other episodes is people feeling forced to do something because a loved one has told them to/being held captive. In Robot of Sherwood, Robin is trying to be a hero to live up to Marian’s love for him. In Time Heist, the Teller is forced to do horrible things because his family is being held hostage. In Kill The Moon Lundvist feels she has to kill a baby Moon Dragon because the entire world is in danger.
Okay, so which is Danny? Is he a soldier stuck in a war that isn’t over? Or is he doing something he doesn’t like because of his loved ones?
Or is he both?
13 October 2014 at 13:29 #33493It being an egg would contradict EVERYTHING we know about physics, chemistry, biology, and just about any other science you can think of.
Harking back to my blog on The Eleventh Hour, (other blogs are available) we are not in our local universe and our local laws on physics, chemistry, biology and just about any science you can think of do not apply.
We’re in the land of Leadworth (Doctor Who tale), where the computers run on myth. And the myths may well be true and the ‘experts’ (including the Doctor) may well be wrong.
At least, as far as I can figure out, that’s the ‘arc’ of Series 8. The most unscientific, unhistorical and seemingly preposterous myths may be based on fact.
I can’t believe I’m spending so much bloody time defending an episode I hated…
13 October 2014 at 12:57 #33490iâm not so sure. i think he stopped travelling the universe, in that case, simply because of the threat of the time war breaking out again.
Yes. Exactly. That’s why, for the Doctor, it’s not an addiction. One of the definitions of ‘addiction’ as opposed to ‘something the person finds fun’ is that an addiction will interfere with someone’s ordinary life responsibilities.
it wasnât a completely altruistic thing
Nope. But then, choosing to give up drinking because you’ve realised it’s taking a toll on your spouse and kids isn’t entirely altruistic. Giving up gambling because the only money available is the mortgage money isn’t entirely altruistic. In both cases, however, it’s the inability to do that which is the sign of addiction.
I’m with @jimthefish – I wonder if Clara’s story is going to end like Susan’s. That is, the Doctor will leave her. Because he loves her, and she needs to have a normal life – and ‘a normal life’ is the one thing he can’t give her.
12 October 2014 at 20:36 #33455Why couldnât it have just taken place on the actual Orient Express?
Actual Orient Express a) requires a location shoot b) costs a fortune c) is a bugger to film on. Resulting in d) yet another Moffat Era Who Producer being discovered in a darkened room at the BBC muttering brokenly about “… the budget… the budget…”
Orient Express IN SPACE a) can be shot in-studio b) can be built by the scenery dept. c) is IN SPACE so can be cheated to wide enough to film easily. Resulting in d) happy Moffat Era Who Producer being discovered in the Production Office saying ‘Special Effect of the Mummy coming through the Doctor’s eyesockets? Yeah, we can afford that.’
Won’t somebody please think of the producers? đ
12 October 2014 at 16:16 #33440Superb display of ARSE.
From the opinions of Dr. Who fans, around the net,
Which aren’t worth a thing unless you switch off in droves. The story of Danny and Clara is scripted, filmed, decided. IF both actors are booked for Series 9, they may possibly tell the writers to upgrade the characterisation a bit, just as they did for Clara this series. But since you don’t like Clara anyway, I doubt it would help.
Last week I had the depressing feeling that maybe Capaldi was going to be so not ‘my’ Doctor that I might have to stop watching for a while. However, this week I realised last week was just an episode I didn’t like. Yay.
But if I’d decided that I’d hated the current direction so much that I would drop out and come back at the next regeneration, I certainly wouldn’t go online and complain bitterly that Peter Capaldi/the current producers/the scriptwriters/ the production team/ the tin dog are ruining the show. Capaldi certainly isn’t – he’s very good at what he’s doing and he’s definitely ‘The Doctor’. I just find his Doctor extremely disconcerting.
Likewise, Jenna Coleman is doing some really good acting. I’m sorry you dislike her character, but I suspect she is providing the producers with exactly the performance they want – and they ain’t gonna change that because a small section of the audience don’t like it. Not when the viewing figures are staying stable, they’re not.
Incidentally, welcome to a forum where there is a fairly substantial proportion of long time Whovians (including @phaseshift). Personally, I’ll meet your Tom Baker and raise you a Jon Pertwee. đ
12 October 2014 at 13:12 #33431given the dialogue in todayâs episode, between clara and the doctor, itâs clear that he has never tried to stop doing what heâs doing (she has the âaddiction,â as sheâs the one trying to quit).
The dialogue was definitely about Clara. The Doctor can stop – he proved that with his 1000 year, to the death stay on Trenzalore. He’s a ‘professional gambler’ – but he’s not addicted. As long as someone needs him to stop, he can stop. And he’s quite prepared to remain stopped for the rest of his life
and then the cybermen, the weeping angels, the sontarans, the atraxi, the master⌠and the blorgons! etc. etc.
No, once the Time Lords are back, someone else can take care of them. The Doctor’s neverending war is the Time War, and it will only end when either the Daleks or the Time Lords surrender and let the other side win.
And I’d say it has to be the Daleks – because, by surrendering, they’ll prove that they’ve changed. That was the whole point of Into The Dalek, after all, that Daleks can change.
Since the Daleks are based originally on the Nazis, I’d say the Daleks need their ‘Stunde Null’, their zero hour of surrender, their moment of knowing that the past is shameful and that they can only start again, from the beginning, and try this time to get it right.
12 October 2014 at 00:02 #33401@juniperfish – I agree that this is another ‘mirror’ episode. This is what I said on another site:
When is the war over? When one side admits defeat.
There is a war. An eternal war. And in that war, there is an eternal soldier. He wanders the universe, unable to ever stop fighting the enemy. And until that war is over, he cannot ever go home and he cannot even die.
He will never stop being a soldier – until his enemy tells him that the war is over.
The Doctor can’t win – unless the Daleks surrender.
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