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11 October 2014 at 23:26 #33394
Did anyone notice the picture on Clara’s phone for ‘Doctor Calling’?
It’s a cartoon stick insect. 🙂
11 October 2014 at 23:15 #33393Your description of the Moon Dragon options as respectively good and bad is only valid from either the omniscient viewpoint, or the perspective of hindsight.
No, sorry. Your description of the Moon Dragon options is the one arguing from the omniscient viewpoint, because you’re taking a consequentialist view. That is, you are viewing the morality of the events from the point of view of their possible consequences. If something has potentially bad consequences, it’s a ‘bad choice’. This ethical approach presumes that you actually know what the consequences will be.
In this particular case you are arguing that killing an as yet unborn creature, which you have NO reason to believe is dangerous, and which may well be (from the Doctor’s reactions) sentient, is a good thing.
But it can only possibly be a good thing if you know the future. In itself, it isn’t and cannot be a good thing. The proposal was to kill a baby. An alien baby, a baby Moon Dragon, but still – a baby. If you consider the action in itself, without regard to consequences, the action is an evil action.
Additionally, from the consequentialist viewpoint, your assessment of the consequences happens to be utterly wrong, biased by fear, because you don’t know all the facts.
This week, the Doctor had precisely sixty-six seconds and, let’s face it, this incarnation isn’t exactly touchy-feely. Actually, he rubs his arm whenever people touch him (it’s a sign of how much he cares for Clara that she gets to be touchy-feely with him). 😉
But anyway, sixty-six seconds? We do see him being comforting – though it’s a distinctly ‘alien’ view of ‘comforting’. He tells Maisie she was right about the pony. He tells the Professor he can help save others. The Captain actually thanks him.
He, at least, didn’t think he was being bullied.
11 October 2014 at 22:18 #33379@badwulf –
Well, it looks as if the Doctor’s outlook has moved from idealistic in the previous episode to utilitarian in this one.
Different moral situations. Last week had a good choice (let the baby Moon Dragon live) versus a bad choice (kill the baby Moon Dragon because you fear it). This week has a choice between bad and worse.
The Doctor goes for ‘bad’ rather than ‘worse’ – if you notice, the ‘bullying’ of the dying people gives them the opportunity to be heroic. Lying to Maisie gets her to him, with at least a chance that she might survive. Or she might not.
But it’s an ongoing Moffat theme – dying is not the worst thing that can happen to you (everyone dies). If you remain true to your beliefs/standards, you’ve been killed, but not defeated.
The Professor tried, but couldn’t quite manage to keep giving useful information up to the moment of his death. The Captain not only managed to keep giving useful information, he died (despite his PTSD and nightmares) like a brave soldier.
11 October 2014 at 22:06 #33376Also, after last week’s episode, which passed the Bechdel test with flying colours, this one deliberately took the piss,
I laughed out loud at that one. The two women had, of course, already passed the Bechdel test as they’d previously been discussing Maisie’s horrible Grandmother.
11 October 2014 at 21:33 #33366@pedant – I was more ‘A mummy! On The Orient Express! IN SPACE!’
Don’t think the flapper outfit suited Jenna Coleman as much as the ‘medieval’ costume, but I do think that there’s one actress who really ought to be starring in films.
Another soldier. And was that salute rather similar to Danny’s, or what?
11 October 2014 at 12:30 #33352@phaseshift and @Purofilion
I think the wedding was more thematic. Firstly, it represented Amy’s adulthood. Secondly, it allowed Moffat to say ‘Amy and Rory had sex on the TARDIS’ without actually saying that.
I remain amused by A Good Man Goes to War’s detailed discussion of River’s conception – without once using the word ‘conception’. Tone, you know. 😉
I think the idea that Clara is pregnant is a complete red herring – for one thing, they’ve emphasised the ‘control freak’ this series. An unplanned baby? No way! Any baby will be timed to maximise educational advantages, the appropriate supplements ingested pre-conception – and would not be conceived or gestated on the TARDIS. She’d tell the Doctor to give her some maternity leave.
In fact, she’d order the Doctor to give her some maternity leave. 😉
10 October 2014 at 01:44 #33326There’s a huge push in at-risk African countries to educate the population.
There is indeed. Sierra Leone, if I’m remembering correctly, has an excellent national radio service. And I’m told there’s lots of posters up.
But, as you say, it’s no good telling people to go to a health centre if the health centre hasn’t the facilities for this number of patients.
10 October 2014 at 01:08 #33324@pedant – yeah.
What would happen if Ebola hits these shores? Unless it does some science-fiction mutation to airborne, one heck of a lot less than is happening in Guinea and Sierra Leone. It’s not just the UK’s access to high quality healthcare; it’s its system for public health information and public health warnings, the education that means people have a working knowledge of why stuff like ‘don’t come into contact with any bodily fluids, if you do see a doctor for checks’ is important advice.
Those parents really should be ashamed. Hazel Grove is a very middle-class area, popular with commuters from Manchester. They should know better; I hope young Kofi and his mother are invited to visit a school with parents who haven’t succumbed to a whipped up hysteria.
9 October 2014 at 22:38 #33315However, I think it would be far more interesting – in a philosophy/ethics kind of way – if it came back as a malevolent monster that had to be killed: Begging the question whether saving it in the first place was the right thing to do.
You can get that on just about any current TV show. Consequential ethics (basically a subsection of Utilitarianism) is really ‘in’ at the moment; possibly because it allows you to kill whoever you like on a ‘least harm’ basis. Steven Moffat’s ongoing arc of ‘there is no such thing as a universally monstrous race – when you get down to the individual level’ and ‘killing innocents is always wrong’ is far more interesting.
In my opinion, of course. Which is rarely humble. 😈
But seriously – what do you want to teach the kids? That if you treat these blasted Space Dragons [Insert ‘alien’ of choice] decently they just turn around and stab you in the back?
Or would you rather the kids learnt that some Silurians are bigoted, nasty and untrustworthy – but others aren’t? And that while Sontarians may be militaristic, some individuals can be honourable and end up on your side? Or that while the Doctor may not be particularly fond of religion in general he can be good friends with the Mother Superious, and that the Order of the Silence would rather fight the Daleks or the Weeping Angels than the Doctor?
Why did Clara slap the Doctor in Into the Dalek? Because he did what The Doctor should never do; write off an entire race as irredeemably evil. That was not what they’d learnt. And it isn’t what the kids should learn, either.
Because that’s the road to Hell.
7 October 2014 at 22:57 #33245Each of these decisions mirror, on a smaller scale, the terrible decision the War Doctor was faced with. The link is overtly made in-text when we actually revisit the War Doctor in Listen.
Yeah, I think so too. If we see the Eccleston, Tennant and Smith Doctors as basically ‘broken’ by that decision, the Capaldi Doctor is the one who has to recover from it. Then he has to find a way of healing not just himself, but the broken universe; some way of bringing back the Time Lords without starting another Time War.
Another point: the Smith Doctor’s residence on Trenzalore mirrors Kahler-Jex’s repentant residence in Mercy. But as he said himself: “you don’t get to choose your punishment.”
The Moment’s punishment is still in operation: the Doctor still has to live.
7 October 2014 at 22:31 #33244we humans apparently are in some sense “hard wired” to avoid actively doing something where we have culpability
And a good thing too. Otherwise our trains would be permanently delayed due to fat men on the line. “Well, he was just standing there. It’s a lot easier than changing the points.”
😈7 October 2014 at 14:56 #33206@mudlark – I thought the minerals comment was there to show that the minerals had now been eaten by the baby Space Dragon. There should have been minerals; they didn’t find any.
7 October 2014 at 12:26 #33202@purofilion
Some people aren’t reading posts/arguments (as in fully absorbing the writing/ideas of someone else) or understandably forgetting what’s being said. Clara seems lack lustre & then someone mentions she’d be pregnant -bonkers theory. Fair do. And then someone else says “no,”
Who, me? 😉
It’s quite true that I haven’t really had the time this week to read through the 200 plus posts in the detail they deserve (and that I do normally give them). And I also did rather say ‘no, Clara’s not pregnant’ without spelling out the Bonkers Theory behind it in full detail. I kind of alluded to it by mentioning Orson.
So: full scale Bonkers Theory (TM) – Orson/Danny represents a trap for Clara. Orson may even be Danny – but he certainly isn’t Clara’s great-grandson. She isn’t pregnant. She just thinks she’s going to become pregnant.
What happened as a result of Clara meeting Orson? She’s only just met Danny at this point – in fact, they’re having an utterly disastrous date. But by meeting Orson she becomes convinced that there will be children and therefore, she and Danny will have a relationship.
And that promptly positions the Doctor as ‘Space Dad’. Danny’s now more important; life outside the TARDIS just became more important. Parents are the people you leave behind in order to live your life in your own home, with your own family. The future family she now thinks she’s seen.
Ticking away, in the back of her mind, all through the episodes since ‘Listen’ is the ‘knowledge’ that she’s going to have at least one child. With Danny. And from Clara’s point of view, you can’t/don’t take kids on the TARDIS – Courtney just reminded her of that. The comment about grandchildren on future Earth just reminded Clara of that. So she’s going to leave.
And that will leave Clara unprotected.
Clara isn’t pregnant. 😉
7 October 2014 at 00:57 #331886 October 2014 at 23:38 #33178@everyone – where is this ‘pregnant’ thing coming from?
Clara’s reaction to the comment about grandchildren is very simply explained without her being pregnant. She’s already met Orson Pink – who may or may not be her great-grandson.
So she has every reason to think that she will have children or grandchildren on the Earth of 2049.
6 October 2014 at 23:03 #33168Welcome back! (waves)
I’d also be surprised if we see much more of Courtney this series beyond maybe a scene or two. There was a subtle ‘get out clause’ in one of Clara’s lines – “one of my Year 10’s.”In other words, Courtney’s in her last year of school before going off to either Sixth Form or a local college.
The other, more technical, point is that they were clearly struggling to combine her important role in the story with the hours an under-16 year old is allowed to work. Hence the ‘video link to the TARDIS’ scenes; TARDIS scenes can easily be recorded outside the main filming block if the child actor has used up their allowed hours for that block and ‘video links’ are much quicker than interactive scenes.
6 October 2014 at 13:21 #33138@purofilion
Well, Brecht would want you to do that! The illusion must never be fully maintained.
One of my several profound disagreements with Brecht’s theory (as opposed to my opinion of his plays, which are excellent) derives from the following:
If I’m sitting in a seat, in a theatre, with actors in front of me – I’ve already noticed that I’m watching a representation of reality. Similarly, if I’m trying to read symbols on a hunk of dead tree, I’ve probably figured out already that this isn’t ‘real’. 😉
He was reacting against the hyper-naturalism of the previous era, of course, which was in turn reacting against …
5 October 2014 at 12:07 #33039but that’s not the same as stretching the laws of physics beyond breaking point.
And this is pretty well what I’m saying. You’re missing off the ‘as they are currently understood’ bit.
I was very keen on planetary science as a schoolchild. Most of what I was taught? Completely wrong.
My A Level Physics teacher could remember being taught by someone who’d learnt about the aether at university.
The universe of Doctor Who? It has time travel. And faster than light travel. And teleportation (which has already been used to bring people back from the dead). All of which are completely friggin’ impossible …
… as far as we currently know.
5 October 2014 at 09:07 #33028for some reason it abandoned any pretence of scientific knowledge, and replaced it with “fantastical scientism”
I think there’s probably a reason behind that – namely that there’s a current tendency to pronounce definitively on things we don’t really know. We announce something is ‘scientifically impossible’ and forget to add the kicker.
According to our present knowledge.
If reality presents something that doesn’t agree with our theories, our theories are wrong.
Anyway, I had a trawl through the internet for ‘giant unicellular organism’ and found this. I think it’s eukaryotic, but it shows that single-celled organisms can look completely different to our ideas of them.
5 October 2014 at 08:39 #33025I’m not entirely sure how intentional the pro-life angle was on the part of the production team.
I think it’s pretty clear that they noticed it – they made sure all three characters making the decision were played by female actors.
But I think it was simply a side effect of the central problem; if the Moon’s an egg, you’ve got to make the decision before the egg hatches. Because the whole problem is that you don’t know what will happen when the egg hatches.
It’s not really an abortion argument because there are very few people who would genuinely argue for the right to abort a full term, healthy foetus – in real life you’re talking ’emergency caesarian’ and a dash to save both mother and child.
5 October 2014 at 00:51 #32992All of the science was garbage. All of it.
Yup. In no particular order: Robin Hood exists, there’s a dragon in the Moon, dinosaurs were much bigger than we think they were, Daleks can become aware of their own evil, there appears to be life after death and bankers can repent of their misdeeds.
Am I spotting a pattern here? 😉
5 October 2014 at 00:44 #32989I disagree
Which means we have a fundamental disagreement about the basis of our respective moralities. 😉
Organisations such as NICE are not making the decision made in Kill The Moon. They’re not even making the same type of decision (at least I hope they’re not, because if they’re wandering around NHS hospitals shooting people on the grounds that they might possibly go out and commit a crime, we’re in trouble).
The decision in Kill The Moon is whether to take a baby about to undergo a natural birth and kill it. Because, according to your assessment, there is a one in four chance that the birth may be deadly to an unspecified number of people (up to and including the entire Earth). That’s a 75% chance that there won’t be an un-survivable problem.
The decision NICE generally has to make is that they can treat anyone but they can’t treat everyone. It’s a ‘no right decision’ moral problem; they would treat everyone if they could, but they can’t. So they have to make decisions about how to allocate scarce resources. I think they’d usually treat something with a 75% survival rate. 😉
But our little Moon Dragon doesn’t even need any resources, scarce or not.
It’s also not really a variation of the Trolley Problem because, again, the Trolley Problem is a choice between two wrong decisions: it’s a ‘no right decision’ moral problem of the type some post World War II ethicists got obsessed with.
The Trolley Problem is basically that somebody MUST die. You have to choose how many. There is no third option. You are not, for example, allowed to shout at the single person wandering about on track B, nor are you allowed to enquire why you’re supposed to take moral responsibility for the actions of the murderous idiot who tied five people up on a bleedin’ railway track. 😉
Our little Moon Dragon isn’t the Trolley Problem. Or if it is a variation of the Trolley Problem, it’s one where diverting the trolley will definitely cause the one person on Track B to die, but if you don’t do anything there’s a 75% chance that the trolley will stop before it reaches the five people on Track A.
If the Trolley Problem was formatted in that way, most people would refuse to divert the trolley. The reason they didn’t in tonight’s script was that THEY were the people on the track.
Faced with the possibility of dying, they chose to commit murder. Fortunately, Clara stopped them.
😀
4 October 2014 at 23:14 #32976@miapatrick – I think what the episode may have been trying to hint at is that ‘the moral decision’ and ‘what everyone wants to do’ are not necessarily the same thing.
In Buffy the point where Buffy says she wouldn’t make the same decision is, if I remember correctly, the point where she’s suffering from severe depression.
The Doctor knew he could trust Clara, because Clara’s already made a similar decision – in The Day of The Doctor, when she persuaded him to change his mind.
No wonder she shouted at the smug git; how dare he tell the woman who saved him from the biggest mistake of his life that it’s time to take the trainer wheels off. 😉
4 October 2014 at 22:49 #32973Rationally, and based on the available evidence
Which is why rationality is a terrible way to make life or death moral decisions. Moffat’s been extremely consistent on this one: ‘rational’ is the greatest good of the greatest number. But in Moffat’s world view (and mine) deciding that the death of one innocent is worth it, compared to the risk of an entire world dying, is wrong.
It’s always wrong. It’s wrong when the Doctor does it, it’s wrong when Kate Stewart is prepared to do it, and it’s wrong when it’s a baby dragon and the entire world wants to do it.
Because that’s the road to death. Not the road to life.
4 October 2014 at 21:52 #32966@badwulf – don’t worry, it left me cold as well. Again, horses for courses – I quite like spiders.
I agree that the performances were excellent; the script is probably best read as ‘allegorical fantasy’ rather than SF.
3 October 2014 at 22:03 #32909Apple has updated its operating system. The first iteration, iOS 8.0, was the Update From Hell. That may well be the problem; everything crashes (or so I’m told – I have everything set to ‘ask me first before updating’, and my answer was ‘not until you’ve got the bugs out’.)
If your iOS is 8.0, they’ve rushed out a newer version with lots of fixes. That’s iOS 8.02 – if, and only if, you have iOS 8.0 I’d strongly suggest you update to 8.02
1 October 2014 at 00:06 #32803Someone mentioned Tempest
The Wikipedia page is here.
Links to Doctor Who? Well, it’s about a magician with a daughter, one servant who’s a spirit of the air (Ariel) and another who’s a monster (of the week?). The magician is really a wrongfully-deposed Duke (i.e. he’s an exiled lord). The daughter is wooed by young Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples.
The Tempest itself has been deliberately created in order to wreck the ship that carries Prospero’s enemies. He starts the play wanting revenge, badly. He ends it forgiving all who wronged him. They all sail off into the sunset, sorry, Naples.
It’s fairly easy to match Doctor = Prospero, Clara = Miranda and Ariel = TARDIS, especially with the ‘Space Dad’ comment by Danny. Question I’d ask is whether Danny is playing Caliban (who tried to rape Miranda before the play opens) or Ferdinand (a nice young man who marries her). There’s a Sebastian – he’s a bit of a git.
There’s a film version with Helen Mirren playing Prospera – so it could also be a bit of a leg-pull about Mirren’s preference for a female Doctor.
30 September 2014 at 23:41 #3280130 September 2014 at 15:56 #32775Instead we will have a long slow drawn out winding-down of everything, until there is pretty much nothing left happening except proton decay, until the eventual heat-death of everything.
Well, that’s physicists for you. If you want anything practical doing about the heat-death of everything, you’ll need to ask an engineer. 😉
30 September 2014 at 15:33 #32773Following on from the above, Into The Dalek also has a feel of a trap specifically aimed at the Doctor. A ‘good’ Dalek. How could he resist?
In Deep Breath, we’re in a place and time where there are known friends of the Doctor.
30 September 2014 at 15:14 #32772Re: the Skovox Blitzer – I don’t think there was to be a real sense of jepor… jeapor.. danger. As a few others have said: it wasn’t the focus of the story. It was simply the reason for the Doctor to come into Clara’s everyday life.
Given that Missy delegated PC Plod to a subordinate, I do wonder who the Skovox was really supposed to collect. I haven’t got much time right now to rewatch this one, but it might be interesting to pay attention to the Skovox’s targeting skills. Who did it miss, who did it miss because they dodged, and who did it appear to miss-on-purpose?
The Doctor, Danny, or Clara?
29 September 2014 at 15:46 #32688Why was the Doctor so keen to keep Clara out of this adventure?
Good spot. Last time he was this keen, it was the Ganger adventure. He was keen to keep Amy and Rory out of it because Amy-in-the-TARDIS was (unknowingly) a ganger.
29 September 2014 at 14:51 #32683Anyway, moving away from Danny for a moment:
Things we know about Clara:
- She’s a liar. She lies to Danny, she lies to the Doctor.
- She’s the ‘guilty’ person that the Teller locks onto, twice.
- The TARDIS dislikes her.
- Missy’s ‘heaven’ rescues dead people. Clara’s idolised mother is dead.
I wonder if the obvious inconsistencies for Danny are a case of ‘Ooh, look! Kittens!’ 😉
29 September 2014 at 13:54 #32682Of the AG Doctor’s regular companions we have: Rose – exiled into an alternate universe. Where, okay, she ended up pretty happy. But still – exile.
Martha – had her family captured and tortured by the Master.
Donna – memory wiped.
At this point the Doctor (unsurprisingly) gave up on regular companions for a while, but found it really wasn’t safe for him.
Then we had Amy and Rory: he tried to leave them; Amy got kidnapped, her child was kidnapped and they were eventually exiled in the past.
So it’s entirely understandable if the Doctor is trying very hard to persuade Clara to leave him. And yet, he needs her. He needs her to care, because right now, he doesn’t want to.
And that scares him.
[Danny’s being set up as if he’s the ‘Rory’ – the One Sane Man in Team TARDIS, the one who points out that what they’re doing IS dangerous. ]
29 September 2014 at 13:21 #32679@janetteb – wasn’t it you who pointed out that ‘Orson’ can be split into ‘Or son’?
29 September 2014 at 12:33 #32676@pedant – oh, it probably is because the writers (Moffat or Roberts) thought ‘sergeant’ is a cooler rank than ‘corporal’. 🙂
But – the rank is wrong. The salute is wrong. The time in service is wrong considering that he probably signed up before 2008. Or rather, it implies he resigned early or was invalided out.
What’s pricking my ‘bonkers theorist antenna’ is that they’ve got pretty well all of it wrong and yet they must have a couple of army advisers on tap for the UNIT episodes.
And if your character is an ex-soldier, wouldn’t you ask them?
28 September 2014 at 21:03 #32645@whisht – Did you mean NOT old enough to make sergeant?
From the information you linked to:
Sergeant
Sergeant is a senior role of responsibility, promotion to which typically takes place after 12 years depending on abilityThere really is something odd about Danny. I was originally okay about the ‘maths teacher’ bit, because the hints dropped suggest Royal Engineers or REME – and it’s not uncommon for them to do an Open University degree in Engineering. That would certainly qualify him for ‘maths teacher’.
But when you look at him: first he’s apparently got a different name from when he was a kid, then he’s got an Identical Grandchild, then he’s a sergeant when he shouldn’t be a sergeant, then the Doctor insists he’s a PE teacher – following which, he does a flying somersault that probably needed a stuntman who’s an ex-Olympic gymnast.
Then he was living in a Children’s Home but has a family, then he’s new at school but everyone knows his background in detail (except Clara).
Dunno. Clones? Is Orson Rupert’s clone? Or son? Is Danny a clone of Rupert?
Answers on a postcard…
28 September 2014 at 09:22 #32608@gothamcelt – my mind is also running along the lines of ‘Danny isn’t what he seems’.
I don’t think he is Jenny (the Doctor’s daughter), but that spectacular somersault reminded me more than a little of Jenny’s equally spectacular display of gymnastic ability.
Time Heist also reminded us about clones. Then there’s Journey’s brother. Are we talking about clones, here? Scattered through time?
@juniperfish – rapid promotion is more likely in an age of army expansion: the British Army is currently contracting. Five years and a sergeant sounds more like the US Army, where pay scale = rank, than the British Army, where job = rank (and it’s possible for a long service private to earn more than a junior corporal). Danny having reached corporal would be considerably more believable.
It could simply be the difference between our universe and the Whoniverse. 😉 However, if you can find an example of a modern British Army solider (i.e. not WW1 or WW2) who made sergeant in five years flat, I’d be grateful.
28 September 2014 at 08:57 #32606@pedant – the Time Lords are the ‘officer’ class on Gallifrey. They tell everyone else what to do.
If they’re basing it on the British Aristocracy (which the Time Lords generally have been), the ‘political’ and ‘military’ officers both come from an aristocratic background. The hint in Listen was that if the Doctor wasn’t bright enough to be a Time Lord, the only other option for him was ‘army’. As I said in the discussion, that suggests both aristocracy and a prep school. The bright boys ran the Empire/went into politics, the dim boys went into the army (regiments varying according to degree of dimness), and sometimes the ones who just weren’t good at school ended up doing both.
Until the Time War, The Doctor wasn’t a military officer. However, it’s been made incredibly clear during the Moffat era – more so than in even the RTD era which had the whole veteran with PTSD thing – that the Doctor is now an ex-soldier. Recognised by every military person he comes into contact with as an ex-soldier.
Given that he is recognised as an ex-soldier, do you seriously think a former President of Gallifrey was ever asked to be a squaddie?
27 September 2014 at 23:34 #32592Couple of other points about Danny Pink.
We were reminded, very carefully, that Col. Orson Pink looks very like Danny.
It could be just writers getting military stuff wrong, but a sergeant after five years? Really? Corporal would be good going. So that’s a bit … unusual. Plus the salute was bloody awful. 😉
27 September 2014 at 22:46 #32587Lovely shot of Clara in the glass-acting-as-mirror, btw. Mirrors, again.
27 September 2014 at 22:36 #32584The Doctor’s an officer. Really. Definitely. Danny is absolutely spot-on. He is so ‘officer class’. The reason he erupted is that yet another person has twigged him as ‘ex-soldier’. Worse, ‘ex-officer’.
Even worse, a bloody aristocrat. 😉
27 September 2014 at 00:22 #32534Ooh, me like! 😉
So looking at your ‘faith’ idea:
Deep Breath – the ‘faith’ is resulting in evil – the droids are killing people so they can get to the Promised Land. It is, however, possible at the end of the story that the Half Faced Man has ‘repented’ and killed himself rather than continue killing others. There’s also a subplot of Clara losing her faith in the Doctor, but getting it back (or realising she’s never really lost it) during the interrogation scene.
The ‘faith’ may also be faith in something real: the Promised Land might be a real place. The Doctor (in the Whoniverse) is a real person. The original Promised Land is certainly somewhere you can point to on a map.
Into the Dalek: I’d say the ‘faith’ is in the possibility of knowing good and evil; and that a Dalek could choose good. The Doctor loses faith halfway through – and Clara slaps him. In the end, Rusty (like the Half Faced Man) carries on killing – but has at least learnt to target ‘evil’ rather than ‘good’. Again, these moral choices are shown to have a very physical explanation – but once the physical is taken care of, Rusty can and does make a choice.
Robot of Sherwood – Clara believes in the myth and the Doctor doesn’t. Unless things change drastically by the end of the series, the Doctor is wrong. Furthermore, the real person that the myth is based on is smart enough to realise that the myth might be more inspiring for people to remember and retell than the ‘truth’. “Stories make us fly.”
Listen: the Doctor believes in the stories/dreams of the monster under the bed. This particular faith is, again, based on something real – for most people it’s just a dream; for him, the monster was real. But not necessarily a monster. And his theories about it may be completely wrong. Or not. Was the thing on the bed in the Children’s Home an alien, or was it another kid wearing a Halloween mask? 😉
Time Heist: as @idiotsavon says, the participants had to believe that they’d made the right choice when they couldn’t know why they’d made it. They also had to trust this ‘Architect’ chappie even when he appeared to be letting them die. Again, their faith turned out to be in something real – the Architect was trustworthy and the reward was genuine.
Hmmm… so far, then, the ‘faith’ theme seems to be arguing that the things we believe in may very well be based on truth. Bit like the Big Bang and little Amelia believing firmly in stars – when there aren’t any stars. But the audience know she’s right.
26 September 2014 at 13:40 #32520@thommck – given that I teach kids quite a lot, I’ll join with @fatmaninabox by saying it’s a normal phase in growing up.
Teenagers do this ‘it’s childish/a bit geeky to like Doctor Who’ thing. Doctor Who was something they loved when they were little kids, they’re trying very hard to establish that they’re not quite a kid any more, so they don’t like it as much (or at all). Not really bothered, not that keen, etc.
Though strangely, they can quite often discuss last week’s episode in detail. They’re just watching it because their family watch it. It’s Dad who likes it. Or something. 😉
25 September 2014 at 14:28 #32510@janetteb – there’s the famous Second Doctor sequence in Tomb of the Cybermen, a reference to a brother by the Third Doctor, but yeah – it’s the AG Doctors who have consistently described themselves as having been a Dad.
This is the second trip round the dial; I don’t think we’re going to discover the Doctor’s first family. The shot of Susan in Name of the Doctor may be all we get.
But we may well discover his second family.
25 September 2014 at 09:28 #32500@pedant – being a pedant myself, I have to point out that having a definite and genuine granddaughter does not necessarily involve a wife and child on Gallifrey.
Not when you have a time machine and a Moffat Loop to hand. 😉
24 September 2014 at 18:06 #32491I am not sure that Susan is a character who is established firmly enough in the mind of the casual (or brand new) viewer to be able to be accepted as Susan if played by a different actress.
Clearly, what we need is John Hurt in drag. 😉
24 September 2014 at 16:37 #32487@wcasey5 – I’d say that River’s ability to regenerate shows the opposite; regeneration isn’t confined to Time Lords. What does it is exposure to the Time Vortex.
In which case, Susan can probably regenerate. While she may not be an official Time Lord, she travelled through the Time Vortex quite extensively. If she’s the Doctor’s biological granddaughter, she also has the right genes. Put the two together and – regeneration.
Which is so natural to little Melody, she can manage it as a child.
24 September 2014 at 15:35 #32484shot down with devastating logic
Was that me? Devastating logic is kind of my thing. 😉
If so, I can’t remember it either. 😀
24 September 2014 at 15:17 #32482@serahni – not bonkers at all, since it’s now been very carefully established that the TARDIS can return to Gallifrey, if it’s to an earlier point in the Doctor’s timeline.
Incidentally, about Clara – we all seem to be ignoring an important piece of data. The TARDIS doesn’t like her. Still doesn’t like her, in fact. She bit Clara when Clara had to use the telepathic circuits.
Is this due to the timeywimeyness of all the Claricals, or does the time machine know something we and the Doctor don’t?
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