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26 October 2013 at 21:34 #19387
Another cold opening (sorry!), with a short story about little Walter, the boy who doesn’t want play with the other children. And snow that snarls.
Fifty years later. Indeed. We started off the wider story with a tale about an odd, unearthly child. That child’s grandfather grew into The Doctor; this child’s snowman will grow into The Great Intelligence.
The Rose and Crown – nice touch, the wallpaper has roses on it. Clara’s in her signature red here. The pub name references Rose; it also references the long running civil war known as ‘The War of the Roses’.
The Doctor’s costume looks, for the Smith Doctor, extremely worn and battered. Especially the hat. It’s as if he’s picked a set of clothes that represent the way he’s feeling; right now he’s not ‘cool’.
“It always starts with the same two words.” “Doctor Who?”
Yes, I think the echo of the pond and what’s inside it being stolen is deliberate. Dr Simeon appears to be somewhat of a misogynist, btw. The important point about Madame Vastra is that she’s a woman.
Over a thousand years of saving the universe – and the universe doesn’t care. This seems to be a through-line from The Wedding of River Song; the Doctor’s missing the point. The universe doesn’t care – but the people who live in the universe care very much. In fact, one person in the universe who cared so much she was willing to be scattered across time is currently yelling ‘let me out!’ from the coach. Another person who cares was just telling the Doctor ‘Sir, I am opposed to your current apathy.’
The Doctor’s trying not to care; the problem is that he cares too much. It hurts, and right now, he can’t cope with the pain.
My gosh, Jenna Coleman can do wide eyed surprise. And the Doctor’s still wiping himself from the database; he’s even wiping himself from people’s memories. But if you wipe yourself from people’s memories, who’s going to be left to care about him?
The scene with the Snowmen; we still haven’t established why Clara’s quite so extraordinary. Everyone says the same – ‘very intelligent’. And she is; she’s one of the very few companions who’s generally a tiny step ahead of the Doctor. Here, her memory of the Snowmen produces several of the things, and when she thinks of them melting, they speed melt. Later on, her amplified thoughts melt the whole invasion force. Still later on, she’s strong enough mentally to survive the Doctor’s time-stream.
The TARDIS in the clouds; it really is something out of a fairy-tale. And I love the way Moffat took the RTD idea that the Master and the Doctor could literally smell each other (from the End of Time) and carried it on, so that the Smith Doctor uses his sense of smell to identify people or races.
Hmm… Clara’s little bag is the same style as that used by Doctors. That said, it was the fashionable item of luggage in the late Victorian era; even Sherlock Holmes had his Gladstone.
Miss Montague wears blue and green; Clara-the-barmaid wears red. Time travel – red shift and blue shift.
I do love the one-word-only scene. Lovely writing exercise.
Madame Vastra: The Doctor is not kind…the Doctor doesn’t help people; not anyone, not ever. He stands above this world and doesn’t interfere in the affairs of its inhabitants. He is not your salvation, nor your protector.
Looking at that, it’s a lovely description of a Time Lord; given the recent discussion of ‘the Policeman’, I wonder if the Doctor, in his pain, has reverted to an older type. The type of man he was before he met Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.
The presumption seems to be that each Claricle has access to the subconscious knowledge of all the other Claricles – because as far as I can remember, Clara has never known the Ponds by name. She’s seen a picture of Amy (in the DVD extras), but she doesn’t know the name.
Okay, onward to Part 2, where the Doctor finally becomes actively involved.
26 October 2013 at 20:27 #19382As @craig says, the discussion that started off this entire site. Summarising the unanswered questions from our original conversation:
- Is Clara the Doctor’s daughter? Or his granddaughter?
- Is she a chameleon arched Time Lord (biological, rather than born on Gallifrey?
- Is she telepathic and/or empathic?
- Did the snow globe mirror the Doctor and/or the TARDIS rather than Simeon, when Simeon was memory wiped?
- Do the anachronisms (especially in the paper) mean anything?
- Is the 50th Anniversary going to be about the Doctor becoming ‘Doctor Who’? Or is it partly about his family?
Now, onwards to the rewatch. 🙂
26 October 2013 at 15:07 #19365Pretty good episode, this one. Victoria, while still screaming loudly at the slightest excuse, passes the Companion test. Namely, will this companion bash monsters with any weapons to hand?
Yes. She bravely bashes the Cyberman with a thermos. I’m sure if there’d been a baseball bat on hand, she’d have given it a go. Though, given the Captain’s unreconstructed 1960’s attitudes, it might be a good thing there wasn’t a baseball bat available. 🙂
I love the nice little bit of ironic scriptwriting with Klieg and Kaftan. Kleig is daydreaming about being ‘Master’, and Kaftan is – at the same time – telling him what to do. I’ve got a bit of a problem with the Cybermats in this episode, because the tail wagging made them look, um, cute. I’ve now got visions of Cybermen taking their Cybermats for a walk in the park.
I agree with @craig that the Cybermen have got steadily more robotic over the years; which was why Neil Gaiman’s ‘Mr Clever’ was so much fun. The Doctor with his compassion removed; more terrifying and nasty than any robot. But they developed the ‘Cybermen are turning into robots’ theme in The Pandorica Opens, when you had the robotic part of a Cyberman capable of independent movement and decision-making. It didn’t need its human ‘donor’. (Incidentally, that moment when the helmet opened to reveal the decayed skull was seriously scary). So it’s a direction that the Cyber-race has taken – to become more and more cybernetic. Gaiman’s story, I think, is carrying the idea seen in The Next Doctor a bit further – the Cybermen now need a Controller with imagination.
Here, you can see that the Cybermen are still humanoids with an attached exoskeleton. The voice, especially, is very creepy.
I’ve never quite understood the ‘completely asexual Doctor’ argument. When you start off with a character being called ‘Grandfather’, it’s pretty plain that they’ve had a family. The Pertwee Doctor (and the Tennant Doctor) refer to a brother. I can easily believe that they’re considerably less sex-orientated than humans; as I’ve said before – if they were, the universe would be knee-deep in Time Lords! And here, the Troughton Doctor talks about his family. Later on, the Davison Doctor will strongly imply that he’s got/had two parents. The Master talks about his father; it’s a constant, running theme that Time Lords, like ourselves, have families and children.
25 October 2013 at 15:48 #19307Aaand simultaneously with the forum website, the Cineworld tickets for the O2 come online.
I’ve now booked a ticket at the O2 for the 23rd November.
25 October 2013 at 12:24 #19291@scaryb and others in London – are we all going for the O2?
25 October 2013 at 10:10 #19274@Shazzbot – I’d guess that the reason it’s gone to Cineworld is because of their experience in simulcasting live performances, so I’d say we can presume a 7:30pm start.
They’re not saying ‘sold out’, which may mean they’re looking into increasing the number of screens being used.
Would be quite funny if the 3D screening managed to sell out entire multiplexes. 😀
25 October 2013 at 09:23 #19270Hmmmmm… well, I now can’t book for the O2 or West India Quay, so quite possibly they have already sold out…
24 October 2013 at 23:57 #19259@wolfweed – they’re very, errr – purple.
Off to bed now. Hopefully I won’t wake up to discover that all the cinema tickets have sold out. 🙂
24 October 2013 at 23:11 #19255Yes, possibly they’re doing them one by one. Cineworld West India Quay is on sale; 19:30 is the screening time. The O2 is on the same website, but doesn’t seem to have tickets on sale at the moment.
24 October 2013 at 22:37 #19247BTW, do we think the cinema tickets are likely to be as difficult to get hold of as the Celebration tickets turned out to be? Just wondering, because they go on sale tomorrow at 9am.
24 October 2013 at 16:01 #19221there is at least one example on this site of someone posting an online poll as proof positive of something.
If it was me, I was drunk.
23 October 2013 at 18:46 #19152No conclusions, just some thoughts.
If the Hurt Doctor is indeed the Last and Zeroth; the Last Doctor who also causes the whole line of Doctors, then the Smith Doctor might refer to the events as being in the past even though they’re also in the future. Personally, however, I’d say that the Smith Doctor’s use of the past tense (He’s the one who broke the promise) suggest that the Hurt Doctor is most likely to be the Time War Doctor. As @htpbdet said, that doesn’t stop him also being Doctor Zero; the one who started off the whole ‘Doctor’ thing.
Another possibility: we’ve seen The History of the Time War; the TARDIS was very careful to make sure Clara saw it as well. It could be that The History of the Time War is significant in the same way the Melody Malone novel is significant in Angels Take Manhattan. The Doctor (whichever Doctor) has, unfortunately, read it. He read his own future before he realised that he’d taken another name. He’s now stuck with acting out the history of that future.
In terms of our Easter Egg trailer – the figure with the ammo belt is facing the Tennant Doctor. The BG Doctors are caught in various ‘action’ poses and don’t seem very aware of anything beyond their little time pockets. The AG Doctors are all facing towards the BG scenes (and Eight is hidden, and sideways, so that you can’t really see if he’s frozen in his own time pocket, or was reacting to the mysterious figure).
The Eccleston Doctor is facing all the earlier Doctors, as if he’s either holding them back or is horrified by what’s happened to them. The Tennant Doctor is very much in a ‘you want to get to the Smith Doctor, chum? Get past me first’ pose. And the Smith Doctor is the only one in the whole thing who we see moving.
23 October 2013 at 00:52 #19094@craig – it may just be a case of ‘fix one bug and cause two more’. I can edit stuff; not a major problem. Don’t worry – you’re doing a great job.
Regarding the target=”_blank” controversy, may I say that I find websites that open up links in another tab a bit annoying? Firstly, it usually takes me a while to figure out why their links don’t seem to work. Secondly, because I’m frequently doing a lot of very rapid searches through a large number of pages – I end up with twenty or thirty teeny tiny tabs.
If you’re curious, I’ve been on fourteen sites since midnight. 🙂
23 October 2013 at 00:10 #19089@scaryb – yes, I think Gallifrey. Like most planets in the Whoniverse, Gallifrey is very big on rocks. 🙂
The sky is orange, as well.
It could well be an in-joke; they want to have every Doctor in there, so they sneak in John Hurt’s face on the policeman and Peter Capaldi in the exploding star-scene at the end (about 0:55-57, left side from the audience perspective, same level as twitter hashtag). I’m not at all sure it is Peter Capaldi, btw, but the profile looks familiar.
@htpbdet‘s point is good, however. That policeman wasn’t on the original storyboard.
22 October 2013 at 21:44 #19085@scaryb – it depends on whether the Excel is doing a showing; if I remember correctly quite a few people got Saturday tickets.
If not, for people coming from the Excel, I would guess that it would be easiest to go to either the showing at the 02. Then the showing at West India Quay. Both of them could be reached for a 7.30 start time from the finish of the Celebration.
22 October 2013 at 16:12 #19057For those going to the big convention: there are three cinemas that are in easy reach from the Excel: West India Quay, the O2 and Stratford. There are also four cinemas showing it in the centre of London.
22 October 2013 at 16:06 #19055@craig – that wretched ‘span’ error is rearing its ugly little head again – whenever I move text around within a post. I’m dragging and dropping within the ‘visual’ screen.
#19054 is the latest.
22 October 2013 at 16:03 #19054@htpbdet – and mini-HTPBDETs – good to see you!
all incarnations, the Doctor has consistently not wanted to be thought of as any kind of policeman
Yes. Good point. He’s happy to impersonate a policeman; does it during both the Tennant and the Smith eras. But he doesn’t want to be thought of as a policeman. Indeed, there’s no finer way to insist very firmly that you are no longer a policeman than to nick a TARDIS and go careening around the universe. It’s kind of the Gallifreyan equivalent of nicking a police car and going blues and twos down the M1.
And it would just be like Moffat to have not only the Question in plain sight, but the Answer as well. Doctor Who? That’s the question on the credits. And there, in the AG credits, is the answer. Who travels inside a police box?
Good spot that the policeman isn’t on the original storyboard.
Now concentrate on getting well for your son’s wedding!
22 October 2013 at 15:34 #19051@jimthefish – well, it is 90 minutes long. 🙂
So – we now know that they are in possession of a freshly made Hartnell-era console and a freshly made T. Baker-era console. They seem to have saved the Eccleston/Tennant console. That’s at least four consoles that we know of.
Five if they saved Smith’s first console.
22 October 2013 at 12:34 #19038@timeloop – or, on this forum:
what happens in Gallifrey stays behind the Time Lock.
22 October 2013 at 12:19 #19036@nick – your faith in the accuracy of newspaper quotes is quite touching. 😉
Okay: the rule of thumb. Anything published on the official BBC Doctor Who site, in DWM, or published/broadcast on BBC news is not a spoiler – because anything published there is a carefully considered release of information; the assumption is that the Production Team wanted it out there. Radio Times used to be on the not-a-spoiler list as well, because it was owned by the BBC; since it transferred ownership I’m beginning to wonder.
Since @wolfweed published the interview in Spoilers – and Wolfweed is our regular news poster, who regularly has to decide whether something goes in ‘News’ or ‘Spoilers’ – I’d guess that they thought it might be spoilery.
Nobody is saying that you quoted the spoiler – what we’re trying to say is that you innocently mentioned the subject of the spoiler. This forum is filled with a collection of insane theorists with razor-sharp intelligence; merely mentioning the topic is a big clue.
22 October 2013 at 11:50 #19032@nick – anything about Spoilers may only be discussed in the Spoilers thread. That includes mentioning the topic that you are (not) discussing in the Spoilers thread.
It’s okay to start off saying ‘I’d like to look more closely at XXXX’, because that doesn’t tell the non-Spoiler crowd that you want to look more closely at XXXX because you know there’s a real possibility it’s important.
Or a real possibility it’s not important; Moffat does do bare-faced lies. 😈
22 October 2013 at 11:21 #19027@wolfweed – I love that they’ve painted the gates an old, worn TARDIS blue. 🙂
22 October 2013 at 11:11 #19024@wolfweed – it’s okay, I’m with you.
Post application of the blue boringers, I will merely point out that morphing John Hurt onto the face of the actor playing the policeman would position him as … Doctor Zero.
21 October 2013 at 20:49 #18976@scaryb – did you reference me in it? Because I had a notification that you’d referenced me, and then the post wasn’t there. Unfortunately I don’t have posts e-mailed to me, so I wouldn’t have a copy. 🙁
21 October 2013 at 20:44 #18971Okay, let’s try and bring some ideas together.
The trailer is in ‘bullet time’ – everything except the Smith Doctor is frozen in one moment, with the camera the only thing moving. Once the Smith Doctor moves, everything else can move – though we only see the Sonic Screwdrivers start to fall.
We’ve seen this before, in the TARDIS. The TARDIS freezes the engine explosion to protect people; as here, the parts of the engine are suspended in space.
The frozen moments in the ‘bullet time’ are subtly wrong. Or not so subtly; everything is mixed up together. Again, we’ve seen this in The Wedding of River Song, where all of Earth’s history ends up happening at the same time. So the Seventh Doctor seems to be fighting the Weeping Angels, the Third Doctor is in the Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS, fighting a Master who might be either Delgado or Ainley. The First Doctor is in Totters Lane, with the Daleks – who didn’t arrive until after he’d left; it was the Seventh Doctor who fought Daleks at Totters Lane. The Shard is near the Golden Gate Bridge. The reflection in the crystal ball looks like Sara Jane morphed with Susan Foreman, and the policeman looks like John Hurt’s features might have been morphed with his face. He also appears to be on guard – which the original policeman wasn’t; he was patrolling and shone his torch on the closed gate.
Um, what else? Well, the Companions are Sara Jane Smith, K9, Rose, Amy (just about visible) and Clara. Possibly Susan.
There are two non-Companion humans in the entire trailer – one is the mysterious policeman who’s got a vague look of John Hurt. The other is a soldier getting killed by the Dalek. <span style=”font-size: 13px;”>The Doctor’s been continually described as a Soldier, or an ex-Soldier, since the reboot. </span>
So, the Doctor, the Companions, the Monsters – the Soldier (who dies), the Policeman (who’s guarding the entrance to 1963).
21 October 2013 at 20:17 #18967Anyway, to carry on the ‘policeman’ theme:
Amelia Pond: Are you a policeman?
The Doctor: Why? Did you call a policeman?From The Eleventh Hour.
21 October 2013 at 17:21 #18937@pedant – It’s a quote. From Rory, in The God Complex.
21 October 2013 at 17:01 #18932Regarding the ‘John Hurt’ is the policeman thingy: the following thoughts occur. Firstly, is that what The Doctor changed his name from? He was originally called The Policeman? Or he originally was a police officer?
Secondly, is that why the TARDIS sticks resolutely to the Police Box appearance, even to the extent of keeping it as his tomb? It’s a police officer (one whose job is to keep the peace) inside the box?
Thirdly – or is this Moffat’s little joke about Inspector Spacetime?
(Okay, I’ll get me coat for ‘Thirdly’)
🙂
21 October 2013 at 12:58 #18892@d12345 – you’ve done very well by providing good theories – so don’t blow it by insulting people.
If you take a look at the Website Comments, you’ll see a very long conversation about the redesign of this site, and the impact of various styles on dyslexics. I’m one of them.
If you miss out capital letters, punctuation and spaces after full stops, you are depriving me of a very large number of ‘clues’ that I need to read you. And I can’t even put my text reader on, because it uses those ‘clues’ as well. I don’t want to sit here slowly reading and re-reading your posts out loud so I can understand what you said; if they’re over a certain length I just won’t bother. This isn’t grammar nazi-dom; it’s just a fact of life.
Punctuation is there to make reading easier; if English is not your first language then see this site as a chance to practice your Standard English on an interesting topic.
21 October 2013 at 12:29 #18885@craignixon – I think the Hartnell was the real Hartnell – but the colourisation and upgrading to HD from black and white and 405 lines was a bit tricky. They probably had a similar problem with Troughton, which is why he’s only seen in siloh … sillou… outline.
Sean Pertwee’s an actor, yes. He has a distinct look of his dad – with modern make-up you could probably adjust things to make him look like the Third Doctor. But the shot in the crystal ball is very definitely Jon Pertwee.
I’d guess that if they could manage to get a ‘clean’ picture of the actor in the pose they needed, they CGI’d that in. If they couldn’t, or the quality just didn’t work, they used a body double. The body doubles are the Doctors we only see from behind – except for Ammo Belt Doctor; that one I’d say they don’t want to show who it is.
20 October 2013 at 21:39 #18862@scaryb – I’m now wondering if Sara Jane’s reflection has been morphed with Susan’s. Because you’re right, it does have very much a look of Susan – but with hints of Sara Jane.
20 October 2013 at 14:57 #18836@Shazzbot and @phaseshift – yes, I thought it was obviously the young Elisabeth Sladen – from the Pertwee era, I thought, as she’s looking at the Pertwee Doctor sword fighting the Master.
Yes, she could well be there as the BG Companion who also became part of the AG Whoniverse – she links old and new, and is likely to be the one BG Companion that the youngsters know well.
What’s making me wonder is that Sarah Jane, as I said, morphs into Clara – she’s looking at the crystal ball, we pull into the scene, we pull out of the scene – and it’s Clara. Clara, who is named after Elisabeth Clara Sladen. And Clara’s reflection is – Sarah Jane Smith.
I still think ‘the woman in the shop’ was Sarah Jane Smith, still alive in the Whoniverse. That would mean, presumably, that there is some way that Sarah Jane is still part of the current story – and that’s the other reason she’s in the trailer.
@scaryb – I’m inclining to a 3D viewing if possible, as well. Definitely going to record the episode of course, but I agree with @janetteb that the possibilities of 3D are looking interesting.
20 October 2013 at 13:41 #18820@scaryb ‘The Moment’ is the term used in End of Time pt 2 to refer to whatever The Doctor uses to end the Time War. BTW, are you still be in London on the Saturday night, or will you be back up in Scotland?
@htpbdet‘s idea is looking more and more likely; given that Rassillon in The End of Time was able to send a message back in time that effectively created The Master, it’s possible that this story is about the origin of ‘The Doctor’. Which, in a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey way, was due to an event that happened long afterwards.
The ‘bullet time’ frozen items suggest Journey to The Centre otTARDIS. The exploding engine that the TARDIS froze in time to protect her passengers.
20 October 2013 at 09:23 #18802The complete voice-over:
I’ve been running all my lives. Through time and space. Every second of every minute of every day for over nine hundred years. I’ve fought for peace in a universe at war. Now the time has come to face the choices I have made in the name of The Doctor. Our future depends on one single moment in one impossible day. The day I’ve been running from all my life. The Day of The Doctor.
Initial thoughts: I’ve concentrated a lot on Clara for Series 7B, so I’d note that her image comes at the episode title ‘The Name of The Doctor.’ This could simply be that she’s the current Companion, so her image comes at the moment the trailer moves from ‘past’ to ‘present’. However, secondly, this is the Impossible Day, and she’s the Impossible Girl – so there’s some hint of a connection between Day and Girl.
Oh, and Sarah Jane Smith suddenly turns into Clara. Has anyone spotted any other Companions besides Sarah-Jane, K9 and Clara?
Other thoughts: past, present and future are all referenced.
19 October 2013 at 23:53 #18798Predicted for next Saturday or the Saturday after.
@wolfweed – or whenever they manage to coax Steven Moffat off the island in the underground lake. 😉
19 October 2013 at 22:06 #18787@aaand Part Two! Reusing Arthur Darvil’s old age make-up. It’s a very sad and scary scene – and River’s quite frightened, you can see it in the way Alex Kingston is playing it. Frightened for the Doctor and also, I think, generally a bit ‘and now I don’t know what’s going on’. She’s out of focus a lot in the exposition scene following, as if they decided that her reactions gave away a bit too much.
Following River’s thought patterns here; that’s why she can realise Rory’s right – that he can create a paradox. If she knows her parents lived out their lives in Manhattan, from 1938 onwards, then – from her point of view – he’s got to be right. She already knows he didn’t die here, so his death here must be part of the paradox.
Angels, angels everywhere. Winter Quay, judging by the shot of the water in the background, is on the Harbor. Quite why Angel Liberty doesn’t prefer to nip over to Jersey City for a quick snack is unknown.
No way down but a way out. And I do so love Rory’s self-depreciating humour. He’s going to die; twice, in the same building, on the same night. As he says, “Who else could do that?”
Umm… that single tear really makes me think ‘tear stick’. It’s not that Arthur and Karen aren’t doing some nice stuff, it’s just that the single tear is too ‘clean’.
That jump is very, very stylised, but I expect it had to be – otherwise you really would get hysterical five year olds. I think the music really adds to the scene; it somehow adds to the feeling of inevitability.
I note that River only grabs the Doctor’s hand when the paradox is starting. Wants to make sure she’s with him wherever they end up?
And back on Checkov’s Angel. It seems to be raining; everyone’s hair is visibly wet – did they have to say ‘oh, sod it’ and do multiple takes in the rain? Possibly travelling through a resetting paradox causes condensation or something.
Nice touch – I hadn’t really noticed, but you see Arthur Darvill clock the ‘Rory Arthur Williams’ gravestone as he’s going up to the TARDIS.
The Doctor and River – the Doctor calls Amy ‘Amelia’, and River calls her ‘Mother’. The moment’s too serious for nicknames. The paradox involved in rescuing Rory would rip New York apart – his grave is here. Rory’s place and time of death is fixed; note that the gravestone, however, has no date, just an age. And they don’t really know their ages any more; that was made clear in Power of Three. The gravestone, deliberately, doesn’t give the Doctor any information he can use – it doesn’t allow him to risk a paradox – to rescue Amy and Rory and simply return them to New York before their deaths. Similarly, both Amy and Rory carefully make sure that their future is fixed. The Doctor is told he didn’t rescue them – and they both know from events at the beginning of the story that the act of telling him something didn’t happen means he can’t then go back and make it happen.
So there’s the Doctor, as he said in The God Complex, standing over their grave. He couldn’t stop taking them on adventures; they couldn’t stop travelling with him – and it was, truly, the inevitable end. They all knew it.
And then River refuses to travel with him. And while she says it very brightly and cheerfully, immediately afterwards she looks like it was the hardest thing she’s ever had to say. Like she’s close to bursting into tears. And then she changes the subject.
“This is the story of Amelia Pond. And this is how it ends.”
19 October 2013 at 20:07 #18776We seem to have discussed this one quite a bit – so I’m going to not exactly live-blog my rewatch (because frankly, we’re about five minutes on by the time I’ve typed one sentence, and I’d miss half the episode), but certainly pause the DVR and record thoughts as I’m watching. This will be in two parts, I think, because Atlantis will happen before I finish.
Part One:
Rob David does a really good job as Sam Garner (presumably a cross between Sam Spade and James Garner?), essentially starring in his own little pre-credits movie. AG Who has had a lot of these pre-credits mini-movies in the Moffat era; it deals with the perennial Who problem. Namely, we could be anywhere and anywhen, and we’d appreciate some help in knowing where the heck we are this week.
So it’s a bit of a shock, post credits, to discover that we’re in modern New York. And they finally got ‘Englishman in New York’ into Who. Well, really, they had to do that.
Aaahnd they’re carrying on with the ‘teenage son’ gags for the Doctor and the Ponds. Poor Doctor; having his parents-in-law kissing in public is so embarrassing.
And the sudden River reveal really is sudden. Okay, that’s why we’re in Thirties New York. But how did Rory get there? Oh, Angels – and Rory’s the only one of Team TARDIS who hasn’t met them before.
Space couple! Those two can even bicker with each other when one of them’s in a book. And a nicely arrogant moment for the Doctor as he demonstrates why the TARDIS is going to have problems landing in 1938. Meanwhile, it’s established that River’s vortex manipulator can probably let her visit Amy and Rory any time she wants.
Ooh, and there’s Chekhov’s Angel! In the graveyard at 0:11. And Rory’s gravestone. Written in stone.
“Early Chin Dynasty?” Is there no end to Moffat’s chin jokes? And you can tell that River knows what’s going to happen – she doesn’t even try and stop Rory being put in the cellar. But she is scared when the Angel grabs her wrist – she knows what happens to her parents, but not her own future.
Yeah, she knows what’s going to happen to her parents. And how much it’s going to hurt her husband. That’s why she pretends her wrist isn’t broken; so the Doctor doesn’t have that pain until it happens – because he’s still got some hope that the future can be changed. It’s the whiplash mood changes that are characteristic of Moffat’s writing; from the ‘three friends spending time together’ in the modern New York scene to the grief and anger we have here.
And on a lighter note, Karen Gillan is really struggling with those glasses.
“Never let him see the damage.” He’s seen too much, hasn’t he? It hurts him too much, to know the damage he’s doing to his wife and his friends.
And Grayle gets his well deserved come-uppance.
So, Winter Quay, The Snowmen, there’s a sliver of ice in his heart. Definitely a pattern in these references – the Doctor is about to enter his Winter. Winter is before Spring? Again, it’s that hint that this is a giant and ever repeating circle – Winter is (possibly) about to change to Spring.
19 October 2013 at 18:40 #18774@Shazzbot – I’m pretty convinced that she already has been… 😆
19 October 2013 at 18:38 #18773@Shazzbot – yes, it’s amazing the number of actors who’ve been cast on the grounds of ‘Charles can do that!’. The Captain isn’t Canadian; though looking at George Roubicek’s date of birth he may well have been a pre-WW2 refugee.
Knowing the then-BBC tendency to file actors under generic ‘foreign’, somebody probably thought his ability to do a good Austrian and German accent meant he could do any non-British accent. 🙂
I do like the current opening music; but I agree that the original electronic score deserves its ‘Classic’ status. It’s just that you have to think about how it would sound to the current crop of Very Short Viewers; the ones who’ve heard electronic music since they were in Mummy’s womb and are used to an entire bank of synthesisers. In days when you can knock out some decent sound effects on your iPad, I think Murray Gold was right that really impressive for the little ones has now gone full circle – back to an orchestra.
It’s definitely riffing on the doomed ‘curse of the mummy’s tomb’ sort of thing, isn’t it? Complete with sinister Egyptians, a black servant, and a woman named after a dress. Though, to be fair, I believe ‘Kaftan’ is a surname. 😉
Those modern cybermats from Nightmare in Silver are really beautiful. One of the things about this rewatch is that you can see how Gaiman both riffed off and developed his Cybermen from ‘Tomb’.
19 October 2013 at 17:28 #18770Is Vastra’s seance/meeting the only time River’s been “out”?
@scaryb, @miapatrick Judging from the dialogue in that seance/meeting, it’s not. Vastra, Strax and Jenny all act as if they know River very well. River, likewise, acts as if she knows the rules of a psychic connection – only Clara should see/hear her in the waking world. Additionally, the Paternoster Gang are all living in the same time zone – they’d normally have no need for a ‘Conference Call’.
@Shazzbot – like ScaryB, I’d be willing to bet that River’s in either the 50th or Matt Smith’s Regeneration. She was, after all, one of the themes of Series 7 Part B – ‘the music room is the heart of the house’.
Besides, if she and the Doctor do turn out to have a Time Baby, Alex Kingston really ought to be there at the discovery. 🙂
19 October 2013 at 02:39 #18740customers, rather than shareholders, are being asked to pick up the tab for investment
@pedant – that’s rather a given, isn’t it, in an era where the shareholders are allowed to insist that the management focus on maximising their return to shareholders.
‘Shareholder value’ – a principle that has destroyed many fine companies.
19 October 2013 at 02:28 #18739@Shazzbot – I don’t know any of those pubs from personal experience. For ease of access from the Excel Centre, The Dean Swift – you can take the DLR to Tower Hill, walk over the bridge to Butler’s Wharf. I’ve a vague feeling I’ve heard people mention it favourably, but it is only a vague feeling.
Victoria from the Excel Centre would be a nightmare; right across town. There’s a similar problem with Vauxhall.
Anyone else any comments?
19 October 2013 at 02:11 #18737In the spirit of Crazy Captions …
Fifty Bonkers Reasons There’s No Trailer is open for your suggestions.
19 October 2013 at 00:00 #18728@pedant and @jimthefish – very interesting though. See you in the pub.
18 October 2013 at 12:04 #18686@toinfinityandbepond – no, the Smith Doctor had a red setting in Cold War, when he was threatening to blow up the submarine and kill everyone on board.
I noticed the Tennant TARDIS – are they ever going to get rid of that set, or were they using the Doctor Who Exhibition one? But not that the Sonic was in an ammo belt style holder.
18 October 2013 at 11:54 #18685@whohar – I was a teeny tiny British expat in Bilbao when I first saw Lost in Space. In Spanish. Which I only spoke to the level of ‘Una fresa, por favor.’ 🙂
18 October 2013 at 11:49 #18684@miapatrick – or changes his mind.
I’m still kind of hoping for my bonkers theory that the Smith Doctor’s hints in Name of The Doctor about retiring are hints that he’s hoping that a copied virtual version of himself can be uploaded to the Library. While we know he is going to regenerate again (or do we? – duh duh DAAHHH!), he himself doesn’t appear to be planning another regeneration.
@timeloop – I think Moffat’s a bit nervous about actually showing them alone together in the TARDIS because he knows perfectly well what they get up to when they’re alone (err… and not either dealing with hearts-rending grief or just about to go out for a night on the town). The latest minisode had the TARDIS bits in voice over -and you can certainly guess why from the dialogue. 😈
I agree that that particular minisode works very well as a coda to the story of River and the Doctor; it remains to be seen whether it was a slight piece of misdirection.
18 October 2013 at 01:22 #18663Could he be a younger version of the Hartnell Doctor?
@steve-thorp – apart from being older than Hartnell was when he played the Doctor, yes. They’re roughly the same height, same eye colour and don’t look too dissimilar.
That said, given the well known ability of the Time Lords to regenerate, I suspect the rule is that unless the new actor is made up to look like the old actor, a different actor = a different regeneration. Even if the regeneration isn’t specifically mentioned.
I agree with @htpbdet that the Hurt Doctor can be both Doctor Zero and the Doctor who stopped and/or started the Time War. We know the Time Lords brought the Master back. They seem to have brought Rassilon back. What’s to say that they couldn’t bring a particular incarnation of the Doctor back alongside the current one; the incarnation, say, before he got all those funny ideas and nicked a TARDIS?
The only times to date we’ve had more than one Doctor, it’s been the Time Lords wot done it.
18 October 2013 at 01:08 #18662@timeloop – you’re not disappointing me: I’ve seen the minisode. And the future Smith Doctor we see is certainly intending to take River to the Singing Towers. Though he does say ‘spoilers’ when asked by his younger self if this is the last time he’ll see River. 🙂
However, I’d point out that it ain’t over until the Towers sing. They’re not at the Singing Towers in Last Night; they’re on Caldoron Beta. And this is the Doctor and the TARDIS we’re talking about; the fact that the Doctor definitely intends to take River to the Singing Towers doesn’t mean he’s actually going to get there. After all, he meant to take Clara to Vegas and ended up in a Russian submarine. 😀
He’s especially unlikely to get/have got to the Singing Towers if the TARDIS knows he has/had a different haircut when he takes/took River there…
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