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24 November 2013 at 17:54 #21388
Of course, that begs the question as to how the Doctor knows the High Council’s plans, when the War Council has no idea.
His Mum told him. 😉
If you think about it, @denvaldron, The Doctor is a former President of Gallifrey. The equivalent – a former Prime Minister – would retain their seat on the Privy Council for life, and so are generally on speaking terms (well, if they are on speaking terms) with the current Cabinet.
The General’s ‘oh f*@k, not him’ reaction strongly implies that The Doctor is an Important Person.
24 November 2013 at 17:30 #21381the Doctor’s Romance with Queen Elizabeth and the Zygon invasion in Elizabethan times… That’s two subplots I suppose, but we’ll call them one for purposes of economy.
It’s one subplot, and not for purposes of economy. The Doctor is romancing Queen Elizabeth because he thinks she’s a Zygon imposter. Unfortunately, it was the horse wot done it. Even more unfortunately, Moffat is riffing on the entire Martha subplot – the Tennant Doctor really doesn’t get what kind of effect he has on women, and Queen Elizabeth is now madly in love with him.
And part of their plot is to stick agents in three dimensional paintings so that at the appropriate point they can jump out centuries later and…. Do what exactly?
Invade a more sophisticated Earth with a tech base and a more comfortable living standard. This was explicitly stated by Queen Elizabeth. Ruling Elizabethan England, to a spacefaring race like the Zygons, would be the equivalent of having the biggest mud hut in the village. The Elizabethans were people who thought water mills were advanced technology.
Queen Elizabeth is smart enough, once she finds out that the Zygon plot involves a bit of time-travelling, to simply make sure the indestructible paintings are safely stored and leave instructions that the Doctor is to be called immediately when they become active. No coincidences are required – both the Tennant and the Smith Doctor are present because of the effects of the Zygon plot.
As to the Zygon plans: exactly what they did. Namely, get out of the paintings, hide, slowly take over important people. Getting access to the Black Archives was explicitly stated by one Zygon as being ‘like Christmas’. They hadn’t expected that. They were probably thinking in terms of slowly getting access to the Prime Minister, or someone high up in the MOD.
You have forgotten what is established for the Zygon back-story; their home planet has been destroyed in the Time War. Think ‘crash-landed on a primitive island’ rather than ‘planned invasion’. Which is probably why the Doctor is relatively sympathetic; certainly enough to suggest a treaty. These are desperate shipwrecked sailors rather than invading career pirates.
where the time portal opens up for both Tenant and Smith to be complete utter coincidence
How? The time portal is carefully chosen by The Moment – who knows enough about the Doctor to pick a form that will become deeply important to him. So she also knows enough about the Doctor to pick a point in his future which has important parallels with his present crisis.
But there seems very little effort at Epic Scope.
There was probably very little money for Epic Scope. We saw, I strongly suspect, all the Time War the Production Team could afford. Given the constant complaints about Moffat overspending, I’d lay good odds we saw more Time War than the Production Team could afford.
Same thing with the ‘Moment’. Okay, it’s an ultimate weapon…. But what does it do?
I neither know nor care beyond ‘it will make Gallifrey burn’. We’ve had nine years of being told the Doctor destroys Gallifrey. How? He presses a Big Red Button and the machine will do the rest. Dramatically, that’s all you need to know. How it does it has no dramatic impact whatsoever; what it will do, however, is kill 2.7 billion children.
They chose to concentrate on the impact on the Doctor of that decision. Not the decision to get rid of the lunatic High Council – he could live with that. Not the decision to kill all the Daleks. But the decision that the only way to end the war was to kill the repair technicians, the front-line soldiers, and especially the children. All the ordinary people doing their jobs; all the children who’d done nothing except be born at the wrong time. He stopped the war by sacrificing the innocents.
And he couldn’t live with it. It killed his sense of ‘Who’ he was; he ran away into being a big hero, then he just tried to forget who he’d been and what he’d done.
We need to see more of the War Doctor, we need to see or at least hear about the awful things he did in the war, how he finally came to the end.
No, you don’t (and they probably couldn’t afford it anyway). You had all you needed to know in the Zygon story – the one you think was shenanigans because you spent too much time thinking you wanted more Time War and not enough time paying attention to the story you were being told.
You saw everything you needed to know in Kate Stewart’s decision to let off a nuclear bomb in the middle of London. On Gallifrey, Arcadia had fallen. The Time Lord High Council had gone nuts. The Military High Command were fighting an invasion of Daleks that was halfway there to conquering the planet.
In London, the Black Archive had fallen. The Zygons had access to weapons powerful enough to successfully conquer the planet. Kate Stewart sees that – if she destroys London – she’ll destroy all the invaders with it.
The Doctor sees that – if he destroys Gallifrey – he’ll destroy all the Daleks with it.
So Kate sets off the countdown. So The Doctor steals The Moment.
So Kate states the brutal arithmetic. Seven million dead rather than seven billion. So The Doctor states his brutal arithmetic. One planet and people versus an entire universe.
And then – in both plots – an outsider sees that there is another option. The button, in both cases, doesn’t get pressed. The two plots are mirror images of each other.
That was why The Moment took the War Doctor to that precise point. He can only make the decision he’s already made. It needs an outsider to see that there’s another option. She told him she was taking him to meet his future selves; but she was really taking him to meet Clara.
Clara. The girl who was born to save The Doctor. 😉
24 November 2013 at 11:09 #21344@absorbaloff – you first need to watch the mini-episode The Night of The Doctor.
24 November 2013 at 05:07 #21333@countscarlioni – the most recent BBC publicity photo places John Hurt’s Doctor between McGann and Eccleston.
23 November 2013 at 15:52 #21253@fatmaninabox – If you haven’t already, go to Citizens Advice, or whatever free legal advice is available in your area. If you have any record of the dates of your appeals, take them with you. I’m guessing that, as you’re currently unemployed, you’re not in benefit with any Union – but if you are, ask them for help as well.
As well as your MP, try your Local Councillor – if young, they’ll be keen to make their mark. Especially if they want your MP’s job…
If you make any further appeals get proof of posting. That’s free.
Finally, complain. If you’ve already sent a formal letter of complaint to your Jobseekers Office, they should have asked if you want the complaint forwarded to the Director General. After that, you go to the Independent Examiner…. the full process is here.
Always keep copies, always keep a record of posting. It’s truly amazing how many complaints and appeals get lost – and it’s equally amazing how much better the service gets if they know you have legal advice.
21 November 2013 at 23:35 #21119I agree that they earned that scene where William Hartnell sees Matt Smith. It’s a true mark of what he achieved; that the character he created is now being played by someone who wasn’t even born when the series first went out. It’s also the pay-off for what he gave up. It’s because they had to find a way to ‘retire’ William Hartnell, coming up with regeneration, that Doctor Who is celebrating 50.
I loved the little shout-outs. Especially since, if you’re not a fan, you won’t notice them – they fitted so seamlessly into the emotional moment. I think there were a fair few cameos in Verity’s leaving party – I’m pretty sure I spotted Jean Marsh.
And yes, the cyberman having a quick fag was great. ‘Some people have got a world to invade.’
21 November 2013 at 20:52 #21097@whisht – it’s understood in all the creative industries that what you do for a living and ‘what you do for an actual rent-paying living’ may not be the same. 😉
21 November 2013 at 17:58 #21074A slightly sad but also funny tale:
I popped into my local Waitrose to buy a Radio Times (they’re Waitrose. They stock the Radio Times). It looks as if they were popular this week – The Radio Times section was nearly sold out.
The one at the front was Colin Baker. So I leafed through, looking for Sylvester McCoy. Colin Baker. More Colin Baker. William Hartnell with the distribution label on the front. More Colin Baker. Tom Baker – with the distribution label on the front.
‘Hmmm,’ I thought, as I left two guys in their thirties in the midst of a serious discussion about whether to buy the Tom Baker (with distribution label). ‘Waitrose often stick a few RT’s in their newspaper stand.’
So I checked there. Two William Hartnells, one Christopher Eccleston – and six or seven Colin Bakers.
I came home with William Hartnell. Happy 50th. 🙂
21 November 2013 at 10:22 #21060@a-dub – discussion is on the preview clips blog.
Basically, any previews, clips or minisodes have a blog to discuss them in. Don’t discuss them outside there, because some people don’t want to know anything until Saturday, 7:50pm.
Anything you think is an actual spoiler (rather than an officially released clip/minisode etc.) should go in the actual Spoiler forum.
20 November 2013 at 21:28 #21038Apparently I’m The Master…
19 November 2013 at 12:16 #20943Completely spoiler-free, so I’m posting the iPlayer link here: David Tennant’s spoof intro to The Day of The Doctor.
19 November 2013 at 11:53 #20942Another 50th Anniversary story from the Graun.
18 November 2013 at 11:11 #20885Hi, @engagedrwho.
Hmmm… are you having all the forum messages sent to your e-mail account?
I can help with any notifications:
Go to your profile (your username at the top right – it should say ‘Howdy, engagedrwho’.
Click on Edit My Profile.
You should be in the Profile tab. Click on Settings.
DO NOT press ‘Delete Account’ as accounts are not being re-opened until after the 23rd. Wait for @craig to sort things out. Instead, press ‘Notifications’.Once in ‘Notifications’ set all the ‘activity’ buttons to ‘no’. You can also set any PM’s to ‘no’ as well, and just check them on the Web.
18 November 2013 at 08:49 #20880BBC news has an audio-visual slideshow ‘Doctor Who – 50 Years of Memories’.
17 November 2013 at 22:20 #20875@scaryb – they announced it on the 2nd October – so ‘hijacking’ is quite possibly exactly what they planned.
17 November 2013 at 21:18 #20869@Shazzbot – I find synchronised drinking is rarely a problem… provided we do it earlier rather than later. 😉
16 November 2013 at 16:41 #20808The Night of the Doctor will be on the BBC’s red button channel tonight from 7:30pm to 9:55pm, then again from 10:30 to 11:45pm.
Times for the rest of the week are available here.
15 November 2013 at 14:50 #20759@wolfweed – well, you did say it was brought to us by the same team who did the live Peter Capaldi announcement.
15 November 2013 at 00:55 #20737The best way to avoid a hangover is not to drink.
… according to the NHS website. I mean, seriously, someone actually sat down and wrote that? Some actual person actually thought it was a good idea to tell people that if you don’t drink, you don’t normally get a hangover?
Anyway, @shazzbot, the tripe is no problem, but hominy is a right bugger to get over here.
14 November 2013 at 13:05 #20684@craig or @Shazzbot, @jimthefish, @phaseshift
I’ve opened up a blog for the new minisode – you might want to move the links from the news forum.
The new blog is here.
While we’re waiting for Craig to set up the minisode warning, it might be a good plan to put some spoiler space in. 😉
14 November 2013 at 10:28 #20671@scaryb – I may revert to the old one post-50th. This one’s my party frock. 🙂
14 November 2013 at 00:51 #2066714 November 2013 at 00:14 #20665@pedant – the link’s been published before – I think in @jimthefish‘s Science and Doctor Who Blog.
By the way, while your current search for a new avatar is very entertaining, I think your original ‘fish’ always looked appropriately annoyed at looking fish-like. 🙂
14 November 2013 at 00:08 #20664@arkleseizure – it was, wasn’t it? Very elegiac. And such a collection of actors, all giving it their best shot.
Direction was superb as well. A fitting end to a fine era.
13 November 2013 at 11:31 #20643@whohar – frankly, I think we might get strange looks in the pub anyway… especially when we haul out the flipchart and the coloured markers. 😀
11 November 2013 at 22:28 #20548@jimthefish – I hasten to add that the claim to the highest levels of insanity was made to me by a Sherlockian…
11 November 2013 at 21:46 #20544@osakahatter – I think the real problem with that interpretation is that it goes against the way Jenna Coleman reads the line. What she seems to be saying (to me) is that the souffle itself isn’t the spirit of the souffle. There’s no such thing as an ‘ur-souffle’. There’s only the recipe, and it’s the recipe which makes all the souffles.
I agree that no Claricle will be exactly the same; I’m just not sure if Clara’s mum’s trying to explain that there’s no ‘unreal’ Clara. They’re all equally real, just as a souffle made to a recipe is a real souffle.
I suspect all the Clara’s inability to cook a souffle that lives is a little meta-comment on the way all the Claricles are destined to die early.
Minor comment: Clara’s mum was obviously a good cook. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the Doctor describes Susan as a good cook.
11 November 2013 at 19:40 #20541@wolfweed – I’m sorry, but that’s terrible partyware. The speech bubble should at least contain ‘Run!’. Then there’s the Cybermen and Daleks, who look like refugees from ‘Dalek Babies’ and CyberRugRats.
The Christmas tree ornaments look much better.
::pause::
I can’t believe I just commented on the authenticity of a paper napkin…
11 November 2013 at 10:50 #20525@Shazzbot I believe the Sherlock fandom lays claim to the highest levels of drooling insanity. Emphasis on the drooling (over Messers Cumberbatch and Freeman).
So I think we’re just a ‘craziness of Who enthusiasts’. 🙂
10 November 2013 at 22:02 #20503@arkleseizure (glad to know you’re going green and furry again after the 23rd)
I wonder if it means ‘Clara isn’t the Clara. ‘Clara’ is a recipe.’
That is, Clara-from-Blackpool isn’t the original template. And the original template was created, like a recipe.
10 November 2013 at 17:41 #20497@pedant – yes, I confused the Doctor’s line with
The Doctor: The Pandorica! That’s a fairy tale.
River: Ah, Doctor. Aren’t we all.
From Flesh and Stone. Honestly, sometimes those two say such similar things, you’d think they were married. 😀
10 November 2013 at 17:24 #20496@phaseshift – I just realised that – two weeks from today – we’re all going to be nursing terrible hangovers. 🙂
10 November 2013 at 15:20 #20482@craig – I think you’re right. Things are going to get more and more hectic over the next fortnight; you don’t want the extra hassle of trying to moderate bunches of trolls looking for active sites to hijack.
If anyone deleted can’t come back, does that mean that – instead of Shazzbot’s shotgun – we should use this?
(It’s been uploaded to the media folder, btw)
10 November 2013 at 13:43 #20470Let’s start that whole ‘snogging-the-companion’ debate again
@Shazzbot – that seems to be the (male) reporter quoting an off-the-cuff joke by Matt Smith, not anything Ms Coleman said to him.
9 November 2013 at 22:26 #20455Most of the London cinemas now seem to be sold out for 7:30, btw.
9 November 2013 at 20:56 #20441Part Two
Doctor Who, tomb raider. Instead of Doctor, Amy, River trying to get into the Pandorica, here we’ve got Doctor, Clara, River trying to get into the TARDIS via some catacombs.
So, how come I met your dead wife?
The dialogue is just on fire in this episode. 🙂
River has been left like ‘a book on a shelf’. Which ties in with the ‘we’re all just stories in the end’ comment she made during Pandorica. The other point that occurs to me is that when an avid reader puts a book back on a shelf, they’re planning to read it again at some point in the future.
Madame Vastra makes an excellent point: who is feeding all this information to the GI?
Ah. I said earlier that there are callbacks to Pandorica; for example, the flaming torch that gets dropped on the floor. Now we’ve got another one. In Pandorica, everyone believes that only the Doctor can fly the TARDIS. Now the GI believes that only the Doctor knows his original name.
But in both cases, there’s River. River can fly the TARDIS, River knows his name. So is The Name of The Doctor the ‘Pandorica Opens’ to The Day of The Doctor’s ‘Big Bang’ style reboot?
Okay, now I’m wondering: when the Doctor told River his name, did he say it? Or did he show her where it’s written? Because he’s pretty specific on the “I didn’t do it, I didn’t say my name.” And given that his friends are dropping dead around him – and the Tennant Doctor’s ‘there’s only one time I could’ – there still seems a hint that the Doctor saying his own name aloud is pretty high on the ‘serious’ scale.
The tracks of his tears – bit of a pun on the spelling of tears. The Doctor has torn space and time apart in his travels.
Or has he repaired the wounds of the universe, like a surgeon who has to cut people open to operate? Whichever it is, the scar tissue needs to be kept safe until it heals.
Going back to the idea that – somehow – the Gallifreyans might be behind the GI (the Doctor calls him Mr G Intelligence – Mr Gallifreyan Intelligence?), his deep, deep hatred of the Doctor does seem rather a bit over the top. But if he’s somehow representing Gallifrey’s collective intelligence, that hatred makes a lot more sense.
I can rewrite your every living moment. I can turn every one of your victories into defeats. Poison every friendship. Deliver pain to your every breath.
Again, if you think of this from the viewpoint of Gallifrey, the desire to take such a huge revenge does make rather more sense. The Doctor committed genocide – and now someone wants to make him suffer.
And then he goes into the timeline and rewrites it. There is NO canon in Doctor Who 😀
There is, however, a lot of screaming. And then we see that – whatever the Doctor may have done – he did a lot of good. Without the Doctor, the stars would go out. And a lot of good people would have died – or never even had the chance to become good people.
And Clara carefully explains an ontological paradox. River, meanwhile, plays devil’s advocate. She carefully explains to Clara what will happen – if Clara’s going to do this, she’s not going to be pushed into it.
That goes back to the theory that maybe Clara is some creation of River’s; if River made her as a ‘weapon’ to save the Doctor, River is also making sure that – unlike her – the ‘weapon’ has an entirely free choice. No being stuffed into a spacesuit on automatic pilot.
Mood whiplash again as the Doctor passionately and movingly kisses River: “Since nobody else in this room can see you, God knows how that looked.”
And we land inside the timestream. No GI; all the Doctors – and Clara somehow surviving it, though she’s struggling to remember, after a thousand lifetimes, who this Clara is. Until she’s sent her leaf, which reconnects her to Clara-from-Blackpool.
And then, as the Doctor hugs her and calls her ‘My Clara’, we see Mr Hurt. The Doctor spots him first, standing looking out over a graveyard. The other Doctors are running; this man is standing, staring.
Who is he? Clara saw all eleven faces, all eleven Doctors. This man is ‘me’, but not ‘The Doctor’. Clara saved all the Doctors – but she couldn’t save this one. Couldn’t even know he exists. Couldn’t reach him (which rather strongly implies this not-the-Doctor is locked away behind a time-lock).
The time stream is collapsing and we’ve seen in the trailer that the Hurt not-Doctor can now get out. Is that because the time-stream is collapsing?
And yes, the Smith Doctor’s claim that this isn’t ‘The Doctor’ is immediately negated by the production team’s claim that ‘yes, he bloody well is’. 😀
But is he the Dark Doctor?
9 November 2013 at 19:22 #20421As we’re all happily discussing the trailer, I’m not sure how much attention this final rewatch is going to get. Truthfully, we’ve already managed over a thousand posts on this episode.
So, on with the rewatch:
In common with Steven Moffat’s stories this series, this starts with a cold opening that’s in a different time-zone to the current Doctor. Which makes me wonder if that’s the theme; everything, everywhen is now affecting/being affected by the Doctor. His entire life has been leading up to The Day of The Doctor. And The Day of The Doctor has affected his entire life.A reminder that Gallifrey was full of perfectly ordinary people doing ordinary jobs; we start in a TARDIS repair shop. Some nutter is nicking a faulty TARDIS.
And into Clara’s voice over – the Clara who’s scattered throughout time and space, always trying to save the Doctor. We’ve seen Hartnell, now we have C. Baker, T. Baker, McCoy, Pertwee, McGann, Troughton, Davison, and finally Smith.
I still think Clara’s mystery isn’t quite over. The prequel has the Doctor describing her as ‘too perfect’, and here she says ‘I was born to save the Doctor’.
The Doctor has ‘Clara’, the GI has ‘Clarence’. Clarence is a trap, fed with information that will bring the Doctor to Trenzalore. Clara is self-designed to keep the Doctor alive – but for what? And is she self-designed?
The Doctor has a secret he will take to the grave. And it is discovered. Moffat’s signature trick; a seemingly obvious statement that is in fact a bit of word-play. It’s not the secret, it’s the grave that’s been discovered.
And a nice bit of comedy with Strax and his weekend off. He spends it fighting in the capital of the pub fight – Glasgow.
And the Whispermen and their cheery couplets. Followed by some nice lighting and camerawork to imply the dream-like nature of the Conference Call.
Clara acting as Nanny, making a souffle. Or trying to.
The souffle is the recipe.
Which again, hints that Clara is a ‘recipe’. Is Clara-from-Blackpool the original recipe? Or are all the Clara’s made from a ‘recipe’ we haven’t seen yet?
It also emphases Clara’s Mum’s habit of saying things that will be helpful to the grown-up Clara; the one who has to step into the Doctor’s time-line.
River and Clara meeting: River greets Madame Vastra by name, but doesn’t say a word about Clara. She doesn’t start off by giving her the Frosty Glare of Death – rather she appears to be waiting for Clara to speak.
Given River’s time travelling nature, I’d suggest she knows perfectly well who Clara is – but needs to know when Clara is. The surprise comes when Clara is introduced as the Doctor’s current Companion. Her face freezes when Clara says that she didn’t know ‘Professor Song’ was a woman. Oh, and River’s still looking for ‘when’ clues; ‘The Doctor might have mentioned me’ is also encouraging Clara to say ‘we’ve met’. I think an earlier River met a later Clara – the River we’re meeting, after all, is the one to whom all this is history.
And a Steven Moffat mood whiplash special – after the tense drama of Jenny being murdered, Strax and Vastra captured, and the GI delivering a threat to the Doctor, Clara wakes up to discover the Doctor playing blind man’s bluff. Which is a trick; the kids used it to slip out to the cinema. The subtext is practically waving a little flag. 🙂
I think the music playing as the Doctor is told he has to go to his grave is a variation on ‘This is Gallifrey’. Lovely addition to the emotion of this scene and lovely acting from Matt Smith, playing a Doctor who is quite desperately trying not to burst into tears.
The Doctor’s weakness and his strength – his Companions. This is something I really hope they’re going to deal with at the Fiftieth, because it’s becoming clearer and clearer that if you’re friends with the Doctor, you might as well paint a big, fat target on your back. In Series 7 we had Amy and Rory being kidnapped by the Daleks, and now Vastra, Jenny and Strax being kidnapped by the GI. That’s five Companions in one series. I’m not even counting Clara (who can manage two dead Companions all by herself).
Okay, question. Does the TARDIS fight the destination because the Doctor’s crossing his own time-line? Or does she fight it because she’s not going to willingly take him to his death? That crack in the TARDIS window…
May I just say that I’ve always wanted to see the TARDIS enter atmosphere with a heat-shield? Nice to see that someone else had the same thing on their wishlist. 😀
Hmmm… I wonder if Trenzalore is the aftermath of the massive battle we’ve seen clips of in the trailer?
I do love the Whispermen couplets, so to repeat:
This man must fall, as all men must/
The fate of all is always dust.
The man who lies will lie no more/
When this man lies at Trenzalore.Clearly Matt’s TARDIS – we get a lovely shot of exactly the same crack in the window at 00:20. The frontage (police box) has become separated from the ‘basic TARDIS mode’ that we saw at the beginning of the episode; Strax, Vastra and Jenny are all in a kind of vestibule between the Police Box frontage and the real TARDIS door.
I see you have repaired your pet.
Nice way to re-establish the GI’s character in one line.
Welcome to the resting place of the cruel tyrant, the slaughterer of the ten billion, and the vessel of the final darkness.
Hmmm… it’s just occurred to me that this is very much the way that the Gallifreyans might see The Doctor. “Fear me. I’ve killed them all.”
Part Two to follow.
9 November 2013 at 17:22 #20400The prequel to the episode
9 November 2013 at 15:32 #20392That’s nice.
I don’t mean to be rude, but are you quite certain you posted that on the right Doctor Who site?9 November 2013 at 13:11 #20373@timeloop – I think @scaryb is referring to advice I once gave. Don’t fall too in love with your own theories; I’ve seen too many fans hit the roof because the author didn’t write their story, the one they’d written in their own heads.
Because authors and scriptwriters aren’t going to write the story we want. They’re going to write the story they want.
So when the show starts, you have to firmly tell yourself that your theories are wonderful – but they’re all wrong. Then watch the story Steven Moffat wants to tell.
Of course, if it turns out that you got some of it right, you are then allowed to (metaphorically) bounce around the Internet yelling ‘I told you so!’
9 November 2013 at 12:52 #20371You think the Doctor would dream of his mates living in Upper Leadworth? With Rory finally becoming a Doctor? Amy pregnant? The Doctor dreaming of happy domesticity?
Naah, Amy’s Choice is a mix of Rory and the Doctor’s dreams. Because the Doctor’s older and mentally stronger, his ideas of a fun time (an exciting adventure) seeps into both dreamworlds. But Amy-the-domestic-goddess and Rory-the-Doctor in home-village-gone-upmarket point to Rory having some input into the nature of the dream.
Amy was probably in deep sleep when the pollen hit, so doesn’t get her own dream; appropriate, because she has to choose between the two dream worlds of ‘her boys’.
[Oh, and now we know the Doctor’s real relationship to her, Rory and the Doctor were indeed ‘her boys’. Husband and son (in-law). ]
9 November 2013 at 12:37 #20369the Doctor’s image
@Shazzbot – I think that was Rory’s image. Just as Amy later ‘remembers’ Rory as this gorgeous hunk (Wedding of RS), Rory ‘dreams’ of Amy as a domestic goddess.
Mind you, even in his dreams, he still acknowledges that Amy’s going to kill the Doctor for landing on the flower-beds. 🙂
9 November 2013 at 11:35 #20361@shazzbot – you’ve never met a couple like that, then?
They’re not common, I admit, but you do get them. They’re the actor/writer/artist whose partner works 9 to 5. Everyone always wonders how the hell they ended up together – and then you finally realise that the creative values the stability. They want somewhere they can always come back to. And the ‘stable’ partner values the excitement. Without their partner, they’d never do anything beyond the 9 to 5.
There will also often be some comment along the lines of ‘they’re not like that at home’ when people ask how one can put up with the other. See Power of Three for Amy ‘not being like that at home’. 🙂
9 November 2013 at 00:58 #20324@Shazzbot – yes, Rory’s always very consistent. When the monster of the week attacks someone, Rory’s generally the person checking whether or not they’re dead.
You can understand what Amy sees in him – he’s her complement. Throughout her time with the Doctor, Amy’s always abrasive, short-fused and wants wild adventures. Until she loses her baby, when she starts slowly drawing back (Town Called Mercy, where Amy suggests they go home). Rory’s caring, he’s calm and he’s a natural grown-up. But he is willing to go on adventures (Power of Three) and he’s also got a sharp eye for what’s really happening. We see that right at the start, in the Eleventh Hour.
So you’ve got the sort of couple you find surprisingly often in creative industries (at least, I’d guess that’s where Moffat observed this); the ‘kite’ – who’s all for flying wherever the creative winds take them and their ‘anchor’ – who keeps them safely connected to the ground.
8 November 2013 at 23:56 #20308Ah, you want me to explain or justify my opinions!
@sirkelseachelsea – yes. If you cast your eye on other posts on this forum, you’ll find that it’s expected that people justify their opinions and/or bonkers theories. When people don’t, it’s usually because we’re in the middle of the conversation and readers already know what scene(s) their opinion is based on.
It feels to me as if your reading of Rory is very close to Rory’s opinion of himself, so props to Arthur Darvill for conveying it so well.
I thought his most believable ‘tough guy’ moment in A Good Man Goes To War wasn’t the facing down Cybermen moment – it was the point near the end when the Doctor’s friends were drawing into a circle to protect Baby Melody. Rory draws not just his Roman sword, but also a gun.
Rory’s central personality throughout is very consistent: he’s a nurse. His job is saving lives. When he starts to travel with the Doctor, he finds himself in a position where ‘saving lives’ sometimes means fighting. He starts off doing this badly (Vampires in Venice and broom-fu); circumstances mean that he gets upgraded with MadRomanArmySkillz – but he’s never a ‘tough guy’; he’s always doing the fighting because it’s the only way to get his wife back/protect his child/save someone’s life.
Sexual chemistry is tricky, since it’s so subjective. By the time we got to Angels Take Manhattan, I was perfectly happy that Rory and Amy are the most important people in each other’s lives. The amount of time they spend lip-locked is a bit of a clue. 🙂
8 November 2013 at 19:23 #20282@miapatrick – 89% ! Whooo hoooo! Well done you!
(What she’s very modestly not saying is that above 85% is ‘shows potential for publication’.)
😀
8 November 2013 at 17:33 #20276@jimthefish and @wolfweed – I like the 7B outfit as well. Basically a change of jacket, sometimes he adds a waistcoat.
It’s a wedding coat – absolutely typical of the Doctor that he wouldn’t realise that. Instead, he thinks it’s a cool coat that’ll really go with his jeans. 🙂
8 November 2013 at 17:04 #20270@thommck – that YouTube clip has been taken down, but the official sneak peek for Day of The Doctor is now up at the BBC site.
8 November 2013 at 12:32 #20229@scaryb – it was in Entertainment Weekly, but that particular quote was noted on Blogtor Who
Incidentally, I’ve just noticed that Clara incorporates some of the letters in Cesario/Viola. Probably one of those total coincidences. But then, that would be applying the Blue Boringers. 🙂
8 November 2013 at 12:17 #20227she didn’t play (or wasn’t asked to play) the scene as if she was aware that Clara was related to her.
@Shazzbot – I looked for the relevant Moffat quote on The Doctor/River/Clara – and here it is.
the show will make “some mileage” out of the love-triangle between the three but “not in the ways you’ll think”.
I agree that River doesn’t play the scene as if she knows Clara is related to her; however it has been carefully established that River is just as good an actress as Alex Kingston. 😉 There’s also the matter of the psychic link, which links River, Clara and the Doctor.
In the conference call scene, River’s obviously offended or in pain when Clara doesn’t know who she is. We’ll have to wait and see whether she was simply offended that the Doctor doesn’t even mention her, or couldn’t hide her pain that her own daughter had absolutely no idea who ‘River Song’ was – not even whether she was a man or a woman.
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