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So, in the chorus of stamping feet and holding-our-breath-until-we-turn-blue while we wait for the 50th Anniversary Trailer, may I present Tom Hiddleston and the Cookie Monster on delayed gratification (it’s long words).

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave – brilliant video.

Now going to trot over to the sofa and share something suitable…

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@Shazzbot – yes, well, I didn’t want to say ‘and by the way – your dog thought you were a complete idiot.’ 😆

They can be very expressive; sometimes you can practically see them rolling their eyes at our sheer stupidity.

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@Shazzbot. Yup. If you want me to guess at the doggie psychology – Triton understands the word ‘lead’. Leads are important – you can’t have a proper walk without one. Obviously, therefore, ‘where is your lead?’ means ‘Triton, find your lead’. His lead isn’t in sight, but we are on a walk. So there must be a lead. It’s been hidden; all he has to do is find it.

Once he’s figured out that it’s basically a game of ‘find the lead’, it’s pretty simple (from a dog point of view) to find it again. Follow his own scent back to his own lead. 😉

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@craig – I liked that as well. Like @jimthefish, I could live without the big Seal of Rassilon, but otherwise that would be a really nice set of title credits.

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@jimthefish – available from Argos (other outlets are available), to freak out your friends and family everywhere.

 

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@jimthefish – A quick check of Wikipedia reveals that Terror of the Autons was broadcast less than three and a half years since Tomb of the Cybermen, so nope, race relations haven’t moved on.  In fact, they may have gone backwards:  Roy Stewart was probably thinking that, at least, he had lines when he played Toberman.

@phaseshift – I’d heard that there were complaints about the doll – since it appears to be the kind of thing that would give kids nightmares even without coming to life, I’m not quite sure why. The chair was a bit too obviously being manipulated by Harry Towb for me, but that was probably my ‘adult’ eye.

And I’d agree that many police forces in the Seventies seemed to be trying to make the Autons look good.

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@craig – yes, still using Chrome. Thanks for fixing it.

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@craig – my post #17505 – still going all wibbly-wobbly when copying and pasting from another post.

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Nice semantic detective work on ‘untempered schism’ v ‘infinite schism’.

@Shazzbot – thanks. But it fits in with a bonkers theory of mine, which is that Steven Moffat isn’t planning to bring the Time Lords back, but he is planning the end of the ‘Last of my kind’ trope.

The children of the Time Lords are already there, hidden in plain sight. It’s just that the Doctor hasn’t realised yet; can’t see it until he’s resolved the paradox.

Where else would you take a ill Time Lord/human hybrid – but to a hospital run by Time Lord/human hybrids?

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@Shazzbot – no, I think this is one of Steven Moffat’s constant themes – the kids seem to instinctively get these supposedly complicated plots. I suspect it’s because they don’t have the adult preconceptions; they don’t, for example, wonder where the first sonic screwdriver came from in The Pandorica Opens because they don’t have any idea that the paradox is impossible.

Similarly, mysterious pregnancy, mysterious child, mysterious woman – to a child this is obviously connected. The whole storyline is in fact gently trying to take kids through the emotional journey of a pregnancy that doesn’t go through that whole straighforward-to-kids idea of pregnancy = healthy baby = who grows up with Mummy and Daddy.

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And while I appear to be having an exciting chat with myself tonight – Sisters of the Infinite Schism, greatest hospital in the universe?

That name’s awfully close to being a synonym for ‘untempered schism’ Untempered means ‘not moderated or lessened by anything’. Infinite means ‘limitless or endless’.

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Finally managed to track down the Confidential for this episode:

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@craig – yeah, I agree that the tone never seems to hit quite the right note. It bounces from rip roaring farce to serious near-tragedy, and doesn’t quite get the turns right.

There are some great lines: “Well, I was on my way to this gay Gypsy Bar Mitzvah for the disabled when I thought ‘Gosh, the Third Reich’s a bit rubbish. I think I’ll kill the Fuhrer. Who’s with me?’ ” Or “It was a minaturisation ray.” ” How do you know that?” “Well, there was a ray, and then we were minaturised…”

But as the Doctor says, this ‘first date’ has a lot of mixed signals – and while almost nobody realised it at the time, it also had a load of plot points to plant.

Nice little comment from either the Confidential or a later interview. Karen Gillan remarked that Team TARDIS were supposed to exit the crashed TARDIS not realising where they’d landed. It turned out to be a bit difficult – they got on set to discover that the art department had dressed the set in Nazi flags. Giant Nazi flags. Lots of giant Nazi flags. 🙂

 

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@janetteb – this may be stupid of me, but I’d always thought that the BBC made the BBC trailers, not the production team. In which case, part of the problem may be that the number of recent leaks means Moffat is extremely unwilling to let them see the 50th Anniversary episode too early, for fear of spoilers.

 

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@craig – bit of a problem with the blog comments on Crazy Captions 27 – it mysteriously reverted on posting to ‘the one I made earlier’.

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It was Fifty Years Ago Today…

… that the cast met, put on their costumes, and did Doctor Who’s First Official Photo Shoot. I’m sure they didn’t imagine that – fifty years later – actors male and female would still be dutifully putting on their costumes for the latest Doctor Who photo shoot. Or that still other actors would be playing them…

According to the BBC’s Twitter feed, the first scene filmed was fifty years ago yesterday. It was of the TARDIS exterior.

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@phaseshift – thanks for the heads-up. I’d vaguely noticed Orphan Black as something I wanted to watch, but forgotten it was starting tonight. It’s now set to record on my HDR.

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@craig – okay. I’ll keep an eye out for mysteriously appearing ‘span’.

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@jimthefish – I’ve always wondered why there aren’t any Daleks with regional accents. 🙂

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@jimthefish – you know things are bad when we’re reduced to staring at the cloud shapes in the official poster. Is that Omega in the background? A one eyed alien? Or Homer Simpson?

I think @blenkinsopthebrave‘s suggestion has much to recommend it. 😀

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@wolfweed

EGGS – STIR – ME – CAKE!

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@craig

Joining the chorus of ‘Never used the Favourite function in my life, Doctor.’

 

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@shazzbot and @craig – laptop and chrome. I very rarely post from mobile devices.

[another deliberate edit, this one from Visual]

I’m not entirely sure what they’re thinking: possibly ‘everyone who wants to watch it has already downloaded it from the Internet?’ 😈

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@Shazzbot – providing, of course, all of us have a subscription package that includes the Watch channel.

🙂

[Editing this in text mode to see if weirdness results – though I have to say that weirdness doesn’t always result whatever I do.]

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@craig – post #17388. I wasn’t copying and pasting anything – it just added the weird formatting during an edit, when I was editing in Visual mode.

As far as I recall, I didn’t even touch that particular section.

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@janetteb – given the emphasis on ‘The Name of The Doctor’, and the idea that there’s nothing particularly special about Clara as Clara Oswald – I would make a guess, given the number of times Clara mirrors the Doctor in the poster, that the hint we’re being given here is that the Doctor was originally ‘John Smith from Gallifrey’. Or possibly ‘Lord John Smith from Gallifrey.’ 😉 He was once a baby in a cradle – but even as a baby, he was reaching for the stars.

Just as The Impossible Girl is ‘Clara Oswald from Blackpool’. And just as ‘Doctor Who’ was originally another TV show from the BBC, suitable for the entire family on Saturday evenings. When they started out, they were only special to their family/audience – but they both had dreams from their babyhood.

The High Gallifreyan may be the Doctor’s name; parents often put names on a cot. If so, that suggests that anything that has the Doctor’s original name is now safely stored in the TARDIS. Which also suggests that – for some reason – the TARDIS felt that Clara needed to have the Doctor’s original name stored in her hidden memories. The TARDIS can create labyrinths to take the passengers anywhere they want; she led Clara to the cradle, the Doctor’s original name, and the Encyclopedia entry on ‘children’.

 

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@thommck – Ice Warriors are supposed to look reptillian. The original design was based vaguely around crocodiles.

Sorry for the misreading: I’m having one of my bad reading days.

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@phaseshift – yes, it could be. You’re right – there’s something about the mouth and the nasal structure that are very reminiscent of each other. But like @thommck, I’m glad they went for the CGI version in the end; it was distinctly creepy.

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@Shazzbot and @phaseshift – I also think it’s ‘hide’ because everyone is hiding something – and it does also play into the idea of the photography ‘hide’. That’s suggested by the photograph of the Doctor, developing slowly as the Professor talks about himself.

In hide photography you use the ‘hide’ to get closer to the subject than would normally be possible if the photographer were visible. Similarly, in Hide we get a much more detailed picture of the Doctor than he’d normally ever reveal.

Emma Grayling’s an empath; so she says Clara’s an ordinary human girl. But at least two things in this episode are not ordinary about Clara. One, the cold spot – the well between the two universes – starts to smoke when Clara runs through it. Two, the TARDIS doesn’t like her.

Both of those could be because – until she gets to Trenzalore – she’s a paradox in the making. The events that lead to her conception hasn’t happened yet. From the empathic point of view she’s an ordinary human girl, from the time point of view she’s anything but ordinary.

I would, however, note that if Emma Grayling was telling the truth – she’s then the only main character in the episode to tell the truth throughout. The Doctor, the Professor and Clara are all revealed to be lying. 😉

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@craig – thanks. It’s not happening in every post, and it’s not necessarily the quote. Very weird.

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@phaseshift and @jimthefish

Yes, as soon as Phaseshift said that, I also thought ‘spot on’. McCoy, especially – but Davison would’ve played it very calm, very polite and like a very sharp dagger that he’s going to twist.

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@craig – an example of the formatting going strange is in post #17342. It’s done it in the quote this time.

 

 

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Given that he has it on the Tardis maybe Susan was an infant when he fled with her.

@janetteb – I thought that as well, but it seems to have been thoroughly exploded by seeing Susan going into the TARDIS as the Doctor first steals it (Name of The Doctor). She looks the same age as she is in An Unearthly Child.

I suspect that CGI’ing William Hartnell to be carrying a baby was, unfortunately, impossible. 🙁

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@whisht – and he’s shrunk 6 cm (two and a half inches) as he’s aged? Possibly, given that the Tennant Doctor appeared to age into Dobby from Harry Potter. 😀

John Hurt is a very close height match to Paul McGann. 🙂

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@craig

Will do.

 

 

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@craig – I keep getting weird text formatting. WordPress seems to be inserting a span formatting for font size 13, and the command is showing in the post itself.

Not sure how I’m creating this – I notice that another user edited due to formatting problems, so it might not be just me.

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@Shazzbot – I remember Jo in her last series with the Doctor. Judging by the way she is in this story (dragging the post vaguely on-topic), she must have been a bit like Rory – someone who matures and develops through her relationship with the Doctor.

I’ve read in various printed interviews that the ‘ditzy blonde’ thing was partly Katy Manning herself – because contact lenses weren’t comfortable or cheap in 1971, she had to take her glasses off to shoot scenes. And Katy Manning is really, really short sighted; so Jo became very much the sort of character who will knock things over or run into stuff.

I’m not sure if Katy Manning isn’t the reason behind the long-standing tradition of the Doctor grabbing the Companion’s hand and pulling her along; neatly spoofed in The Snowmen when the Smith Doctor complains: “No, I do the hand grabbing, that’s my job, that’s always me!” She was so short-sighted that apparently she was in real danger of running into a tree if Jon Pertwee didn’t lead her by the hand.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by  Bluesqueakpip.

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@phaseshift – yes, he’s really on the edge here. This episode is – not the beginning of the ‘children’ theme, but certainly where we see that the threat to his friends’ baby sends him absolutely incandescent. The Doctor can cope with companions in danger, but not with a threat to their child.

And yet he caused the danger; it’s a continuation of the theme started in RTD’s era. Being the Doctor’s Companion will put you and your family in danger. Jackie and Mickey get drawn in, Martha’s family kidnapped, Wilf becomes a companion himself. Then Amy and Rory lose their child.

And it’s his fault. River calls him out here – his friends are in danger because he himself has become dangerous. The man so terrifying that armies flee, so powerful that even the Daleks will turn to him when they’re truly frightened.

Yes, the comments about not being a good man, and that’s why he needs so many rules have extra resonance post The Name of The Doctor. And that cot’s turned up again; I was watching the repeat of Journey ttCotT tonight. Was it just there because they’d kept it in the prop store? Or does it really have some significance that we haven’t yet discovered.

🙂

 

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@phaseshift – I didn’t see this on first broadcast, either. Since I must have been about seven I’d probably reached still-Fascist Spain in my highly-educational world tour of dodgy dictatorships (courtesy H.M. Govt).

I have a very clear memory of watching The Deadly Assassin five and a half years later, and having to ask who The Master was – and the faintly shocked reaction of everyone else. How could I not know who the Master was? Roger Delgado must’ve really made an impact.

Because I have no memory of Delgado, I find that I’m considerably more tolerant of Anthony Ainley than many people my age. I liked his ‘yes, I’m evil – and I don’t care who knows it’ approach. Equally, I like John Simm’s ‘sanity is for wimps’ take on the Master, even knowing that Simm, personally, would rather have toned things down a bit. You can see them as a progression, with the Master getting more and more bonkers as he gets older.

But you can understand, on watching Delgado, why a lot of people who saw him on first broadcast just don’t want any other interpretation. Nowadays, when it’s more acceptable to put genre performances up for a BAFTA, he’d probably at least have been amongst the nominees. It’s just a really brilliant performance; restrained, very precise, completely magnetic and believably powerful. Oh, and completely psychopathic. 🙂

It’s interesting how many different ways they find to play the companion. Liz was definitely felt to have not worked – not because of the actress, but because she was also a scientist. Worse, she was a polymath scientist; the last time they’d had a scientist-companion, they’d made her expert in one area only (maths/physics) and made her someone with very little real life experience. Liz could discuss stuff with the Doctor as an equal – but the audience doesn’t need an equal. They need someone who can justify the Doctor explaining things. In English, since the audience doesn’t really speak techno-babble.

They have, subsequently, had companions who are just as smart as the Doctor – they’ve either stuck to the ‘very little real-life experience’ (Romana) or ‘no knowledge of science’ (Donna) or ‘the Doctor’s pupil’ (Ace and possibly Clara). River, the only character since Romana who knows more than the Doctor, has never been a regular companion.

Yeah, that Time Lord jailer seems to have no feelings at all for the humans that the Master’s going to murder along the way. And the bomb is ‘amusing’. Early signs from Robert Holmes, I think, that his take on the Time Lords wasn’t going to be ‘noble guardians of space and time’.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by  Bluesqueakpip.

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@Shazzbot – and you a topic dalek. I’ve replied to you in the 50th forum.

@everyone, can we keep discussion of the meaning of the poster (rather than announcements about new images/posters, which is news) in the 50th Anniversary Special forum?

 

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@Shazzbot – This poster is becoming a Whovian Rorschach Test. What clown figure?

I don’t see any clown figure and I don’t see any hidden aliens, either. I do see a bulgy bit in the galactic clouds that could be an alien, or could be a bit of Gallifreyan writing, but is more likely just a cloud…

The poster implies that the AG Doctors (and the Hurt Doctor) are the crux of the plot; yup. Let’s be realistic about this: none of the BG Doctors really look like ‘their’ Doctor anymore. If they’re in it, it’ll almost certainly be voice-overs and CGI or – like in The Name of The Doctor – body doubles seen only from behind and re-use of their classic clips.

But there’s an entirely reasonable explanation for the lack of BG Doctors on that poster and that’s that – quite simply – it’s something they’re hoping to keep quiet until broadcast. I find the spoof video Davison and McCoy are creating frankly suspicious; having a literal protest outside the old TV Centre does sound a bit like the person writing the script was riffing on ‘doth protest too much’. 😉

If the crux of the 50th Anniversary story is ‘Doctor Who?’ – the possibility that a regeneration might be written out of the succession, be unworthy of The Name of The Doctor – then it will mainly affect the regenerations who come after – or, to keep the possiblity that John Hurt is playing The Thirteenth Doctor, the ones who come immediately before.

It’s certainly a reasonable subject to explore at the Fiftieth Anniversary; what characteristics must ‘The Doctor’ have? Is it possible for a producer to take the character in a direction that means they’re no longer ‘The Doctor’?  (::cough:: JNT and The Sixth Doctor ::cough::)

The BG Doctors before the McGann Doctor (is he ‘DG’? During Gap?) won’t really have any existential angst about keeping the promise. They managed it (the Sixth being distinctly wobbly, but it was the Spectrox, guv, honest). The AG Doctors will have angst. They’re the ones who have to keep it in the face of having broken it – or who have to keep it in the knowledge that they’ll break it, big time.

 

 

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@Shazzbot – okay. You didn’t happen to find yourself naked in the street outside the Royal Albert Hall, by any chance?

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@Shazzbot – I presumed the other dog lead was being held in the dog’s mouth while he stared at you accusingly. 🙂

Did you know Cumbria has three of the wettest places in Britain? Only the Scottish Highlands can beat it for rain; Seathwaite, Cumbria is officially the wettest place in England.

I remember some visitors complaining that it rained every time they went to the Lake District. At which point everyone looked at each other, wondering who’d be the first to explain that that’s why it’s a Lake District. 😀

 

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Found whilst cleaning out the old sofa:

• 1 dalek shaped chocolate
• A dog lead
• A red and white striped t-shirt
• Assorted loose change, including a Victorian shilling, a 10 Ruble note and a British half pence
• A Cardinal’s hat
• One bottle of red wine, half drunk
• A Soviet sailor’s cap
• A double-bass
• A number of cake crumbs
• An empty bottle marked ‘bat milk’.

Anyone missing these items should apply to the moderators.

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@phaseshift and @scaryb (and @craig) – ooh, Day of the Daleks. A quick check shows that it is available online at the moment. Also available from Amazon at £6.50 and the BBC shop at £8.99.

I’ll need to watch it again, but my memory is that it’s what I’d call a ‘time loop’ – basically, in order to create the main time stream, you have to go round the loop. It’s the knowledge you gain in the loop that allows you to create the main time stream and avoid the alternate future.

Hmm… my bonkers ‘the Doctor is in a giant loop’ theory (which I’ve held since Vampires in Venice) is a little goer, isn’t it? 🙂

 

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@thommck – my reply got very Day of the Doctor specific, so I’ve replied to you in that thread.

 

 

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@thommck – (replying to your post in the news thread)

I can’t see anything, but I’m sure there are people out there going through this pixel by pixel.

Given that we were seeing an awful lot of ‘mirroring’ in the last part of S7, with all those ‘mirror Doctors’ and posters where Clara ‘mirrors’ the Doctor, I’d say that Ten’s floppy fringe is because we’re now seeing the true mirror image. The Doctor, mirroring himself. The Tennant Doctor is in his brown suit, and they’ve lit/photoshopped the poster to make it look the same shade as the Smith Doctor’s purple coat. Similarly, they’re both in a blue shirt. And they both have floppy fringes, swept to their right sides.

Likewise, the positioning of the Hurt Doctor suggests that – past or future – he is ‘inside’ both the Tennant and the Smith Doctors. He’s either their shared past, or he’s a future that terrifies them both.

Though I’d say that the destroyed Daleks and the Gallifreyan symbols strongly suggest the Time War. 😀

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@blenkinsopthebrave

To quote good old Wikipedia:

It is usually understood as having two aspects: firstly, that a time traveller cannot “redo” an act that he has previously committed, and secondly, that a dangerous energy discharge will result if two temporal versions of the same person come into contact.

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave – the rule for spoilers: anything officially released by the BBC isn’t a spoiler. The production team has been known to differ on that, but I doubt that the above picture reveals anything they don’t want revealed.

I don’t think Moffat has played ‘fast and loose’ with the Blinovitch limitation effect; I think he’s dumped it – but hasn’t directly mentioned that he’s done so.

The sonic screwdriver shows carefully highlighted signs of the Effect in The Big Bang. Yet in the very next episode, written by the same writer, Old Kazran and Young Kazran embrace. It’s as if the Effect somehow isn’t there in this new, rebooted universe.

I was interested to see ‘Bad Wolf’ as well. Bad Wolf itself, or ‘Bad Wolf’ as a message that is /going to be/has therefore already been sent through time? We’ve seen lots of examples of ‘Rose’ being connected with Clara (for one thing, she was barmaid at the Rose and Crown). Clara herself is such a message. She stepped into the timestream because she always had; she was born to do that.

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