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8 February 2014 at 15:49 #25099
And why are they spraying water over the “bomb”?
That’s certainly a modern technique; they fire a high velocity water jet at the IED (it’s called a Pigstick). I think the idea is that the high velocity will blow the thing apart – and the water will b*gger up the electrics so that it doesn’t explode while being blown apart.
So it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a similar ‘soak it in water’ technique back in the fifties; equally aimed at stopping the circuitry from working properly.
7 February 2014 at 22:29 #25084@purofilion – it’s The Hanging Gale.
7 February 2014 at 22:09 #25081@schultze101 – the post-hypnotic command is: “you should kill us all on sight”.
This means the Silence, after the initial, ah, shock, have a very simple and easy solution. Namely, get in their space ships/time machines and get the heck out of Dodge.
That’s all they have to do. The humans aren’t looking for them; the humans don’t even know they exist. Nobody will chase them if they leave Earth, no one will seek them out. They only have a (major) problem if they continue trying to manipulate human history – and so are seen by a human who’s also seen the footage of the moon landing.
So, sorry, no. Not genocide.
@arbutus: nice catch on Clara not being programmed to kill the Silence she saw. Is that because the non-revolutionaries have a different ‘uniform’, do you think? Or is it something about Clara?
7 February 2014 at 19:48 #25079I’m not sure that parallel time streams are.
The parallel time streams are both specifically mentioned and carefully demonstrated in The Girl Who Waited.
😉6 February 2014 at 11:51 #25056I think a second time line was created as a solution to the paradox.
Um…. the universe was rebooted? There’s no paradox because it’s an entirely new universe (which happens to look very like the old one). Technically, I suppose that would be two time lines. In one, the universe ended on the eve of Amy’s wedding. In the other, the universe started on the eve of Amy’s wedding. Most people didn’t notice the little tiny blip as they ‘jumped’ from one universe to the reboot.
I could draw a diagram… 😈
My guess would be that in this rebooted universe, Amy travelled with the Doctor because (after Angels Take Manhattan) he went back to little Amelia and promised her that he was going to come back when she was an adult.
The Amy the Doctor met as an adult in the new universe was annoyed because he took so bloody long to come back – but was expecting to travel with him – and even knew some details of her future adventures. Which would mean, even without a crack, the ‘new universe’ Doctor would know he had to take her with him.
So the timeline of the new universe would match up with the timeline of the old.
In this new universe, Amy’s life (like that of River and Clara) is partly the result of a stable time loop. She made sure, when she left the Doctor, that she travelled with him; even with the crack having been closed by the time the Doctor returned.
I’d have to rewatch The Wedding of River Song to check on the regen energy, so any comment on that will have to wait. 🙂
5 February 2014 at 11:34 #25044@barnable – yes, Amy and Rory not getting stuck in the past would have meant that Clara was never a Companion. It’s a major change.
Basically, the reason the Doctor is in Victorian England in the first place is that he’s in mourning for Amy, Rory and possibly River.
If they hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have had an extended stay there; would never have met Victorian Clara; would never have got curious about Clara; would never have gone in search of Blackpool Clara; would never have taken her on board the TARDIS; would never have taken her to Trenzalore.
Therefore Clara would never have stepped into the time-stream; Dalek Clara would never have saved Amy, Rory and the Doctor, and the resulting paradoxes would destroy the universe. Probably. It certainly wouldn’t like it.
Which is why Rory can’t die. He has to die in New York, in his eighties. Not doing so will cause a really massive set of paradoxes.
River not dying would also cause massive paradoxes; the Doctor’s entire life with her is coloured by his knowing the date of her death.
But River not dying is also more thematic. The Doctor has to stop being the eternal child, afraid to be a grown up. The Man Who Forgets has to remember that he’s a Grandfather, a married man, probably a widower. The only way he can do that (that will be meaningful to the audience) is by going through that cycle again, in front of us.
So he meets a girl, marries her, loses her. He grows old, he becomes Grandfather to the children of Christmas, he dies.
Well, not quite. And not in that order. But this is a children’s story, and like a lot of children’s stories, it’s ‘about’ growing up. And like the very best children’s stories, it’s one that the adults will enjoy as well. 😀
I discuss this a bit in my Wibbly-wobbley blog post.
5 February 2014 at 09:40 #25040But the first time line is not completely pointless because it still happened and created the second time line.
It’s not pointless at all! The Smith Doctor said: “Gentlemen, I’ve had 400 years to think about this…”
If Gallifrey had never been destroyed, there wouldn’t have been anything to think about. He wouldn’t have gone through every possible solution in his head (each time coming to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have worked). If he hadn’t gone through every possible solution, he wouldn’t have been able to realise that – now Clara and the Moment have changed things – that 400 year calculation trick can be used to save Gallifrey.
More, those 400 years take him from a journey; away from ‘The Doctor’ to ‘Warrior of the Time War’, then moving from warrior to ‘hero’, finally back to ‘The Doctor’.
Who is the Doctor? It took him 400 years to answer that question, after the Time War lost him his sense of ‘who’ he was.
We may find that some parts of history are subtly different, but I doubt that there are major changes. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, Gallifrey was known to have been destroyed. As far as the Doctor remembers, he destroyed it.
The only difference is that in the Main time stream everyone later finds out that Gallifrey survived. The events before that discovery would proceed exactly as in the first time-stream. 😉
4 February 2014 at 22:16 #25015@everyone – I think, myself, that the fez is covered by the events in Christmas Carol. Kazran ‘remembers’ the events in his ‘past’ as they are changed by the Doctor.
Similarly, the Smith Doctor ‘remembers’ the fez as the Moment changes his past by opening a time portal.
4 February 2014 at 13:01 #24993@onecentsky – probable answer: when they can get the US rights sorted out. At least, that’s the usual reason for a US release being delayed: legal problems.
4 February 2014 at 00:58 #24981Why did he have NO recollection his interacting with the Moment at all? (And yet knew he’d used it.)
Um, probably because (in the two time streams theory) his interaction in Time Stream A probably consisted of:
Moment: Are you really going to do this?
The War Doctor: Yes.
Moment: B*gg*r.
😉Without Clara there, there’s no way the Doctor is going to change his mind. Three of him together won’t change his mind… and The Moment, who can see past, present and future, will know that.
So it would have been a terribly unexciting interaction (well, apart from Gallifrey blowing up, billions dying, bits of Daleks all over the place, that sort of stuff).
1 February 2014 at 22:23 #24938The Series 8 DVD now has 55 reviews, the Series 8 Blu-Ray is up to a mere 17
I must say I agree that Steven Moffat was eerily frightening as the Valeyard, though I’m surprised the reviewer thought the casting choice dubious. After all, Peter Davison had written and directed him as the main villain before – in his Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
😉1 February 2014 at 14:52 #24932So, Episode Two and things are hotting up nicely. Hobbs Lane has a history of strange happenings: figures that walk through walls, things that move by themselves.
The hominids are still being found – but why is the best preserved skull found inside the UXB? Is it a UXB? Evidence keeps coming along; this object is old. The radioactive decay suggests a 5 million year date, the metal gear has corroded into chemical traces and there’s no-one who remembers a bomb falling in WW1 or WW2.
The ‘horror’ element is well written – if this wasn’t a Quatermass, you might think we were in an M.R. James play. The social commentary continues: @jimthefish complained last week that he felt there was a rather condescending ‘middle-class’ voice being used. The ‘working class’ characters were being seen as basically comic. But note how that ‘assumption’ is being used this week – everyone who has eye-witness experience of the ghosts is working class. And their ‘betters’ (and quite possibly half the audience) don’t believe their eyewitness accounts – because of that underlying assumption that working class people are basically comic, unreliable, superstitious.
[Another little bit of social commentary: Dr Roney’s saying Miss Judd has asked for a few hours off ‘to get her hair done or something’. This bit of casual sexism is then subtly undercut on her return: she’d wanted the time off to do some non-job-related research on the ghost stories.]
The producer is making good use of his extra budget, both for the set of the strange object and the use of film inserts. One ‘effect’ you may not notice is the switch between a barely uncovered UXB and the full set of the strange object. Nowadays we’re so used to TV shows being able to portray time passing that we wouldn’t notice it – but in 1958 this was a pretty sophisticated intercut between two sets – one live and one pre-filmed.
1 February 2014 at 12:10 #24922Just a warning, however. Starting at the beginning is good advice because it lets you find out the character dynamics that later series rely on. However, Season 1 was a bit wobbly – rather like Series 1 of the AG Who, they threw everything at it but the kitchen sink in the hope that something would work. 🙂
So if you start at the beginning, be patient. The best is yet to come. 😀
29 January 2014 at 23:43 #24871One of the Claricles became a child actor?
Using the name ‘Romana’ is a tad suspicious… 😉
29 January 2014 at 11:37 #24851Amazon are getting a bit ambitious, considering we’re barely three weeks into filming.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/ref=pe_row1_b1_t/?ASIN=B00I3JRCCO
Or possibly one of those huge warehouses contains a TARDIS?
28 January 2014 at 21:57 #24833@scouttheairedale
So sorry to hear about your brother Triton – I have fond memories of all three of you.
A big hug for you all.
28 January 2014 at 15:15 #24811It does hint that we might be going the ‘regeneration brings out whatever the Doctor needs, rather than what he wants’ route.
The Smith Doctor’s problem with repressed anger becomes the Capaldi Doctor’s ‘sod the repressed …’ 😀
28 January 2014 at 12:38 #24805Quick round up of the critic’s opinions on the new costume.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25926876
I still think it makes the Capaldi Doctor look like he’s going to be a ‘kick a Cyberman in the nuts’ sort of Doctor. 😀
27 January 2014 at 22:38 #24789but of course, the Doctor doesn’t fight
In the words of the great Seventh Doctor (another Scottish Doctor): “What do you expect us to do then? Talk to them sternly?”
27 January 2014 at 22:07 #24784Okay.
Well, there’s a Doctor who could head-butt a Dalek…
🙂
27 January 2014 at 10:29 #24749@scaryb – nice to see you around again. Hope the ‘missing in action’ is due to lots and lots of lovely paying work. 😀
27 January 2014 at 09:11 #24744@barnable
I don’t have any objections to the Mystery Lady being the Doctor’s mum, either. As you say – he has to have one.We also know that the Time Lords were bringing people back from the dead (like the Master) to fight in the Time War. So, no reason it couldn’t be his Mum.
As to her opposing Rassilon: I’ve always thought that the Doctor’s clearly rather rapid exit from Gallifrey (with granddaughter in tow) has more than a hint of ‘politics, dear boy’. That he does have his granddaughter in tow could easily suggest that the entire family are well known as dissidents. 🙂
26 January 2014 at 22:40 #24718Compare that to now where The Empty Hearse etc certainly seem to be reacting to what’s happening in the social media-sphere. The question is whether it weakens or strengthens it as drama.
I’d say ‘commentating on’ rather than ‘reacting to’. Commentating on current events is always valid in drama – David Hare practically makes a living out of it. John and Sherlock are living (and blogging) in the Internet age and are Internet celebrities.
I do wonder how much of the apparent freedom to experiment that’s visible in Sherlock is due to Hartswood not just being an independent production company, but a family production company. It’s all very modern in one way, but old-fashioned in another: the focus group seems to be family and friends arguing it out over the dinner table. (Metaphorically speaking).
The other thing might be that the BBC clearly didn’t recognise what it had – the original August broadcasts for Series One show that. So they might be more hands off than usual; they didn’t get it, they know they don’t get it – but look at the viewing figures! Is there an attitude of ‘Hartswood are coming up with the goods; leave them alone to do it’ ?
26 January 2014 at 21:42 #24711@jimthefish – no problem.
Catherine Tate’s Lauren Cooper would be the modern comedic equivalent, I think.
26 January 2014 at 21:35 #24709Nice blog post. I largely agree – except that I don’t think Pinter, Potter et al were writing in a vacuum at all. It’s just that they weren’t getting the feedback within two seconds of broadcast. 🙂
But they did get feedback. Boy, did they get feedback.
26 January 2014 at 20:43 #24701Police and soldiers don’t count as they’re essentially forelock-tugging do-what-they’re-told-by-their-betters types.
Which is why you’re missing all the social nuances. All the cracks in the rigid hierarchy, which will eventually blossom into the full scale earthquake of the early sixties.
Okay, to do a rundown of the class system as seen by those in uniform.
Police: the two constables are, by their accent, lower-middle class or upper-working class. Their current job is to stop people being blown up; but they’re not being stupid about it. They let the old couple through on the sensible grounds that the bomb disposal people aren’t actually doing anything right now – this is probably the latest in a long line of UXB’s, and they know they’re only likely to go off when worked on.
They are aware that this job is attracting a lot of Very Important People who could potentially drop them in the smelly stuff. The actors don’t appear to regard these VIP’s as their ‘betters’. More as a collection of storm clouds that might p*ss down at any moment. 🙂
Army. In 1958 this will consist of National Service versus Regular. The sergeant and corporal will be Regulars. Realistically, the sergeant will be very aware who the ‘better’ is in this unit; that would be him. He’s the one with the more extensive experience – but what he hasn’t got is the technical expertise. As well as doing the detailed management of the unit, he also has to ‘steer’ Captain Potter if the sergeant thinks he’s about to make a mistake. Within the protocols of military hierarchy, which is always fun. All this is very neatly written, especially given that Nigel Kneale couldn’t do a military wartime service (failed the medical).
You can actually tell from the relationship of the two actors that the sergeant has a considerable amount of respect for Potter’s expertise – and also knows that Potter will listen to his advice.
Captain Potter. Oh, Jim! Did you not get the significance of the grammar school accent? Captain Potter is a symbol of changing times; an officer with a very obvious Lancashire accent. His accent wobbles between his native Northern (John Stratton was from Clitheroe, I think) and ‘more officer-like’. Grammar school boy, possibly even working class scholarship boy, with a commission in one of the technical regiments. His competence was more important than his class.
Colonel Breen. Now he’s the one who wants forelocks tugged in his direction. 😀
One other point.
albeit in a strictly subservient role
No. Really, really no. If Barbara Judd had been playing a strictly subservient role, she’d have been Mrs Roney. It’s very difficult to appreciate exactly how much women were brainwashed into seeing their ‘career’ as ‘wife and mother’ back then. Joan Bakewell has a story about her school -a grammar school – being told at assembly that she’d won a scholarship to Cambridge. They were, the head told the girls, all very pleased for Joan, but they must remember that being a good wife-and-mother was going to be far more important.
So for those girls to then go home and watch a woman doing an interesting and important scientific job – competently – was potentially mind blowing.
25 January 2014 at 22:49 #24672@purofilion – no, Charlie Drake sang ‘Hello My Darlings’.
This cover by Bernard seems appropriate for the Doctor’s most faithful (in real-life) companion:
25 January 2014 at 18:52 #24665@blenkinsopthebrave – yes, it’s difficult to avoid spoilers. However, it’s probably not a spoiler to say that Episode One contains enough clues to gladden the heart of the most ardent bonkers theorist. If you don’t know the story, feel free to theorise!
Yes, it’s made very clear to the audience who’s side we should be on. Quatermass is being made the victim of a ‘change of policy’. Again, this was a contemporary critique. Politicians such as Nye Bevan (in opposition at the time) had controversially reversed their position on ‘unilateral nuclear disarmament’. CND itself was set up in February 1958, partly as a response.
Yes, the selection of clueless thrill seekers outside the dig is quite funny. As is the disdain of the reporter, sent to do a vox pop on a highly technical subject. Thank goodness, she says, finally someone worth interviewing! 🙂
25 January 2014 at 17:26 #24662Okay, to add to @craig‘s comments:
Quatermass and the Pit was transmitted just under five years before Doctor Who’s An Unearthly Child. The two previous Quatermass serials were both hugely popular; because of this, Pit gained both a larger budget and an agreement that they could run for 35 minutes rather than the standard 30 minutes.The references to race riots are contemporary; the actual riots had been in Notting Hill in August/September 1958. But pressure had been building for some time; Nigel Kneale very much wanted to make that a theme in his script.
For our music buffs, this is the first science-fiction programme to include electronic music from the Radiophonic Workshop.
‘Live’ didn’t mean that everything was live. The larger budget meant that they could film some location work and special effects shots in advance, allowing the episode to ‘escape’ from the studio. They’d then play the film at the appropriate points in the live production – giving everyone some breathing space to change costume/gallop to the next set.
You may also notice that a lot of scenes are written so that one character either enters slightly later than everyone else or is unseen while other people seemingly talk to him/her – this was to allow the actor time to get from the set of their last scene to the set of their next scene. It feels a bit odd, and a bit ‘slow’ to our eyes; a number of scenes start with the camera on very minor characters busily having a conversation. But it was a technical necessity. You can see another example when the strange object is uncovered at the dig; a seemingly unnecessary scene between Roney and a museum technician is actually there to allow the TV technicians time to clear the mud away from the prop…
Miss Judd is both an example of progress – a female scientist – and an example of attitudes at the time. Roney is Dr Roney, Quatermass is Professor Quatermass – and Barbara Judd is ‘Miss’ Judd; she probably only has a BSc. Normal – scientific women were still expected to be grateful to be allowed to be the assistant of a famous male scientist. Pass the test tube, dear. But let’s give three hearty cheers for the fact that she’s there! And some even louder cheers for her being good at her job…
Roney needs to introduce Quatermass: Andre Morell was taking over the title role from John Robinson – busy with other work. Bow ties, you may note, are cool. 🙂
The other big theme in the script: the use of the then brand new science of space technology as part of a nuclear deterrent instead of for peaceful research. It was a tightrope we’re still walking today. [I often wonder how much our lack of any moonbases is due to military considerations. ] In-story, however, Quatermass (the peaceful scientist) is being edged out by Colonel Bream (the believer in mutually assured destruction).
By the end of episode one we’re set up nicely. Dr Matthew Roney is keen to excavate these anomalous remains – but his work is interrupted by an apparent UXB. Except this is a very odd UXB – firstly it’s like no bomb that the Germans ever dropped, and secondly it’s underneath the several-million-year-old skulls.
Professor Quatermass, meanwhile, is losing control of the British Rocket Group. It’s going to be ceded to military control.
In the background, there’s an ongoing theme of nuclear tension, racial tension and terrorist activity. War, it appears, is gaining the upper hand.
One week till Episode Two… 🙂
25 January 2014 at 14:15 #24643@craig – glad you’re over the cold. There was definitely one doing the rounds that wanted to grow up to be a really nasty ‘flu. 🙁
Thanks for setting it up – I’ll embed the Youtube version of Episode 1 when you’ve done that.
24 January 2014 at 23:52 #24614@phaseshift – There’s now been several requests for Quatermass and the Pit. So – blog or Episode by episode forum?
If forums, someone will have to agree to set them up, as I only have blog privileges. 🙂
Hope @craig is recovering from that horrible cold.
24 January 2014 at 23:48 #24613@blenkinsopthebrave and @phaseshift
I’ve checked online and Quatermass and the Pit is available in its entirety. So a rewatch would definitely be possible.
24 January 2014 at 22:35 #24612@brewski, @barnable and @arbutus – with regard to The Woman In The Shop, my personal theory is that it was Sarah Jane Smith. Who ‘recognised’ Clara because she’d also seen the photos of Clara and the Smith Doctor in various situations in the past. So she gave this younger Clara the TARDIS phone number, making sure that she did meet up with the Doctor.
The Woman In The Shop being The Moment is superbly bonkers, so I’d suggest the following: the Moment doesn’t have to create any kind of physical body. As the scene with the Oswalds showed, it’s pretty easy for Time Lord technology to transmit a hologram to someone’s visual/audio cortex. Since the Moment could only be seen and heard by the Hurt Doctor, it’s a reasonable guess that she was doing just that.
It’s quite possible that Clara was the only person who ever ‘saw’ The Woman In The Shop – and never realised that she wasn’t talking to a real person. The Moment was projecting her image (and telling her the phone number) straight into Clara’s brain.
24 January 2014 at 13:52 #24593No, I’m not a screen writer, though I have written scripts. Shortlisted, but not greenlit.
But by the time you’ve read several hundred scripts, plays and commercial storyboards, trying to figure out your character’s through-line, you do get very good at script structure. 🙂
[In answer to your polite query: no, I’m not well-known. Yes, you quite possibly have seen me. No, I’ve never been on Doctor Who. :-D]
22 January 2014 at 09:32 #24540it can be as simple as being an ancestor of Amy.
They did make a little joke about it in The Pandorica Opens: Invasion of the Hot Italians was Amy’s favourite subject at school. Plus, she loves Rory dressing up in Roman armour. 🙂
21 January 2014 at 22:13 #24530@arbutus – I’m an actor by trade, so plot details, characterisation, actors and roughly which script that line came from do tend to stick in my memory, yes.
But the real secret is that I also have some training in Internet research skills. 😀
21 January 2014 at 21:40 #24526starting with the Fifth Doctor, I think.
Fourth. Or rather, third to fourth. Something along the lines of his brain cells being shaken up and he’d be a little erratic for a while.
I suspect the scriptwriter had just met Tom Baker. 🙂
20 January 2014 at 15:41 #24489@demafromua – of course Steven Moffat is the main writer for ‘moving the series on’. He’s the Head Writer. That’s his job.
The Before Gap series lasted twenty seven years, through ten producers and about fifteen script editors. I’m kinda hoping the After Gap series will reach that before Who has to be ‘rested’ again.
My personal betting is on a Moffat exit after Series Eight or Nine, btw. He has already said that Series Seven took him over the halfway mark – which suggests a four or five series run as Head Writer. That the greenlight has already been given for Series Nine suggests either that Moffat might be staying until the end of Nine – or alternatively, that the BBC has agreed the new Head Writer.
20 January 2014 at 12:44 #24480you really lack the Occam’s Razor principle – the simplest explanation is sometimes the most accurate.
William of Ockham, bless him, had many good things to say. However, telling people on this forum that they’re not using the simplest explanation is a bit like announcing that there’s a lot of sand in the desert, or that the sea is a bit wet. 😈
See our mission statement …
20 January 2014 at 11:14 #24476we collectively need to test each theory (to destruction) via debate.
A valid point. But since this isn’t a university tutorial, you are allowed to say ‘good theory, I agree’. 😀
20 January 2014 at 10:44 #24472Unfortunately I think this will be her last season.
That sounds like your cold talking. 🙂
Moffat’s previous set of companions stayed for two-and-a-half series. I think it’s going to depend on whether Jenna Coleman works well with Peter Capaldi; if she does, I’d guess she’ll also stay for the two-and-a-half. That would take her to the end of Series 9. If Capaldi’s hoping for three series, that would mean a new companion could then be brought in (probably by the new producer) to be the ‘crossover’ companion for Capaldi’s regeneration.
19 January 2014 at 13:51 #24441@nick – the Doctor wouldn’t necessarily know if he had a child by River. That child would be in danger from a) the Kovarian faction and b) the Great Intelligence. River would, I think, be very keen to keep the child safe by keeping its existence a secret – even from the Doctor.
As to the Moment creating Clara being super-complicated; you did read the sign on the door as you came in, didn’t you? 😀
19 January 2014 at 13:22 #24439Could you not use the Brain of Morbius “faces” to argue that this is the Doctor’s second set of regeneration cycles and that he’s on his third life ?
You could – which might be the real reason for the cot. The cot shows that Moffat’s not playing an infinite recursion game; the Doctor was once a baby. He was a ‘lonely little boy’ (Girl in the Fireplace, another Moffat script). ‘The Doctor’ is something this baby, this boy, this man became, a promise he made and kept.
The Day of The Doctor is about the day he broke that promise (and how he found the way back, to keep it after all). The Time of The Doctor is the story of how he kept it till his death – though in the end he didn’t die.
In terms of ‘story’, for children, it’s a story about someone who made and kept a promise – then broke it, then picked himself up and made it again and tried to keep it again. And by doing that, he became one of the greatest heroes in the universe.
But he wasn’t born ‘special’, he became special. Whatever his name was, who he is is ‘The Doctor’.
19 January 2014 at 12:44 #24438@nick and @Purofilion – The General describes the Moment as ‘having developed a conscience’.
So its motivation is pretty simple: it’s a weapon of mass destruction that doesn’t want to be used. It’s quite willing to manipulate time in order to not kill 2.74 billion children.
I did at one point think Clara might be a future Doctor (until Peter Capaldi blew that one out of the water). There really is something ‘Time Lord’ about her; to use Tasha Lem’s words, Clara has absolutely no problem flying the Doctor.
So if she’s not a future Doctor/descendent of the Doctor, is she a creation of the Moment/the Time Lords? Born, as she says, to save the Doctor. In the Day of the Doctor, the thing she saves him from is blowing up Gallifrey. Since that ties neatly in with the Moment’s motivation (I don’t want to blow up Gallifrey), one wonders if the Moment might have actually manipulated time to create Clara.
19 January 2014 at 09:29 #24431Incidentally, I think the ‘new regeneration cycle at the 50th Anniversary Year’ was planned from when Moffat took over as producer. Steven Moffat’s referenced the additional faces in Brain of Morbius a few times; it’s clearly something he argued about as a young fan.
So I suspect that – if Christopher Eccleston had agreed to take part and had been the Time War Doctor – we’d have discovered that the First Doctor was the First Doctor. But not the first body our favourite Time Lord had inhabited.
But they had the ‘spare Doctor’ available to slot into the Time War ‘gap if either Eccleston or Tennant wasn’t able/willing to take part. In the event, that was what happened.
19 January 2014 at 09:13 #24429@purofilion – one of the children says that Clara has told stories that she was born behind the clock face of Big Ben.
Accounting, says Clara, for my acute sense of time.
It could simply be that she’s vaguely remembering that she’s a creation of the time-stream. Or, it could be that she’s somehow connected with the Time Lords and/or Time Lord technology. The Moment appears to be made of clockwork.
The clock-tower: the crack (whether it has Time Lords or the Moment behind it) is in the base of the clock-tower. The Doctor gets his new cycle on the clock-tower itself. Moffat’s been using clock-symbolism for Time-Lords a lot; I was suggesting that the new regeneration would be the movement onto a new cycle of the dial before the 50th. And lo, he has the regeneration happen as the clock strikes twelve. 😀
[Just to point out that our particular brand of insanity does sometimes coincide with the insane genius that is Steven Moffat. 😉 ]
Twelve midnight is also 00:00, which fits with the Eleventh Hour and my idea that the memory loss might last longer than just the first episode. The new regeneration cycle (which can’t be that easy to do when you’re trying to direct it through a crack into another universe) was a reset. I hope that watch fob the Smith Doctor wore was a memory back-up…
18 January 2014 at 21:57 #24407@arbutus – the Capaldi Doctor has Clara, though. Which is partly why I keep wondering if the memory problem is going to be more than ‘post-regeneration trauma’.
Moffat’s spent eight episodes and two Specials setting up Clara as the one Companion who knows every incarnation of the Doctor – and indeed, knows his wife, and his friends, and even – though she’s forgotten it – where to find his name.
We also saw her having at least an introductory lesson on how to fly the TARDIS. 😀
18 January 2014 at 21:52 #24405@arbutus – I’d agree that the Papal Mainframe would probably have a strong suspicion. Given that Gallifrey vanishing had the same effect in the main time stream as Gallifrey being destroyed, they’d certainly want confirmation. Had Gallifrey survived after all?
Enter the Doctor. 😉
18 January 2014 at 19:54 #24399@barnable – no problem. I never thought you intended to offend. Given that the Papal Mainframe plays a fairly major role in Time of The Doctor, discussions and theories are quite likely to stray into the area of religion. 😉
18 January 2014 at 18:03 #24395Just to throw something into the ring: could Clara be a creation of the Moment?
Clara, it’s strongly hinted, is an example of a stable time loop. She herself caused the leaf to blow into her Dad’s face so that her Dad met her Mum. But isn’t that exactly the sort of time-manipulation the Moment does? She doesn’t want the Doctor to burn Gallifey; she can’t stop him by herself – so creates a person who can ‘save the Doctor’.
Incidentally, we all seem to be reverting to treating the Time Lords as one monolithic group, despite considerable evidence in Day of The Doctor that there are at least two major factions (possibly three, if the ‘non Time Lords’ start getting seriously annoyed with their ‘betters’) – who definitely have entirely different ideas on how to handle the Time War.
Why can’t they have entirely different ideas on how to handle the Doctor? 😉
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