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17 May 2013 at 19:29 #9468
What I think I may do is close that tomorrow to keep the conversation on TNotD for about 5 days or so, then open it up again.
@craig – that sounds a good plan. A lot of our discussion on TNotD is likely to look forward to the 50th – and it’s going to get confusing if there are two places to post. Are we discussing the episode, or are we discussing the 50th? And if the post is 50/50, where does it go?
So yes, close the 50th Anniversary speculation thread for a week, and then see whether conversation moves over, or stays on TNotD. 🙂
17 May 2013 at 09:21 #9407My predictions for the finale:
Nothing much will happen until the last few minutes of the episode beyond everyone asking what the Doctor’s name is, and River Song assuring us it Should Never Be Told. No, Really. It Should Never Be Told. You Don’t Want To Know.
The audience will agree with her. They Don’t Want To Know. Really.
There will be much use of virtual reality, and people will apparently die all over the place. Then we’ll find that Nobody Died.
In the last five minutes we’ll discover that Clara ‘Oswin’ Oswald is a future incarnation of the Doctor. With a mighty cry of ‘NOOOOOO! Stephen Moffat can’t write strong women characters!’ the Eleventh Doctor will refuse to regenerate, reveal his name as Bluntwin Hootwhistle, and open the Time Lock on Gallifrey by speaking his name aloud.
After a few seconds where everyone stares in disbelief (and the audience go ‘Well, that’s a rotten name’), River will inform the cast that things have not only gone timey-wimey, they’ve also gone wibbley-wobbley and broken the glass portal between realities. All realities have now become as one.
Eleven (after his battle cry of: ‘I can out-act David Tennant any day!’) will scream ‘I DON’T WANT TO GO!’, and run off in the TARDIS, turning into Dark Eleven on the way. Jenna-Louise Coleman will say ‘WTF? I’ve got a contract for Series 8!’ River will grab her by the wrist and use her Time Agent’s time-bracelet to haul her off to Trafalgar Square and the 50th Anniversary Special. The last shot of Eleven will be his manic laughter as he giggles ‘And they thought Ten’s Farewell Tour was long? They’ll be lucky if they can get me to regenerate by Christmas!’
Strax, Madame Vastra and Jenny will have to walk home.
17 May 2013 at 08:25 #9404I’m starting to think that TNotD will have its work cut out if it wants to compete with what people have been posting on the blog threads – because these here are utterly fascinating
Ah, yes. Nearly time to let the leaf of infinite possibilities become all the might-have-beens and never-were’s. Nearly time to let it burn up – in a manner significantly similar to the energy of regeneration. 😀
17 May 2013 at 08:19 #9403@htpbdet – hope all goes well.
17 May 2013 at 02:32 #9391Well, given MY bonkers theory: we were all looking at the regeneration between Ten and Eleven, but has anyone checked out the three images of the three Claras that appear in the Doctor’s mind at the beginning? Because the change between them looks awfully like – regeneration energy.
Same colour, same flame like appearance. Not as blatantly powerful as the Ten to Eleven regeneration, but by then the Doctor is trying to convince Mr Clever that he can burn the cybermites out of his brain.
On a minor note, the design of the Doctor’s CyberController headpiece is a genuinely beautiful piece of art. It looks like a tiny dragon; or possibly a little snake.
16 May 2013 at 15:17 #9369@htpbdet – I don’t really mean a natural limit physically. The thought in my mind is that there was a natural limit mentally; there was a point – different for each Time Lord, but generally around no. eleven or twelve – where the different personalities cannot be contained and their version of dementia sets in.
It certainly wasn’t television continuity; that’s why I was wondering if it was something I’d read in The New Adventures.
The ‘madman in a box’. That’s something that’s been hiding in plain sight since The Big Bang; Eleven is convinced he’s gone nuts. His mirror in The Crimson Horror: Mrs Gillyflower, who is completely bats.
16 May 2013 at 13:43 #9352“the potential Doctor” – you mean like final season Buffy with potential slayers?
@scaryb Not in the slightest. I mean we see Twelve before Eleven regenerates. They would be the potential Doctor because ‘time can be changed’ (TM). If Eleven doesn’t ‘die’, they will never be ‘born’.
It’s the one thing we’ve never had at an Anniversary Special. We’ve had reunions of the past Doctors. What if this one includes past Doctors – and a future one?
*P.S. Is it a ship if the characters are married 😕
16 May 2013 at 12:13 #9335@scaryb – the only way the Doctor can die in fact is if we’re in a ‘time can be changed’ scenario – and frankly, Moffat’s already done ‘the Doctor dies’. I don’t think he’s going to be so careless a writer as to repeat that.
I’m going for ‘the name of The Doctor’ as a metaphorical title. Who can lay claim to ‘The Name of The Doctor’? The person in possession of ‘The Doctor’s’ body? The person in possession of his ‘soul’?
Or the person who may become ‘The Doctor’? The Potential Doctor. Who is ‘The Doctor’ – if, and only if, Eleven regenerates.
🙂
16 May 2013 at 12:08 #9333Evil b*gg*r that I am, I have worked out a way that River could end up with a happy ending (and the ending of Silence in the Library is clearly supposed to be a happy ending) while simultaneously wiping the Doctor’s memories. Namely, if the Sonic that’s used to download River’s personality is also used to take a copy of the Doctor.
I’ve mentioned this particular bonkers theory before. In mitigation, m’lud, I point out:
The sonic has already been planted as ‘something that can hold a personality for download’.
River, who in every other story is paranoid about spoilers, tells Ten exactly where and when he’s going to give her that Sonic.
We’ve already seen the same sonic screwdriver go round a time loop in the Pandorica Opens.
So if there is a memory wipe, and River’s in that episode – I’d suggest Future!Doctor gives her the sonic we saw in Silence itL, telling her that she has to swap it with the one Eleven will give her. And he tells her where and when, so she can swap it before he gives it to her, so that there’s enough time for it to download Eleven’s personality/memories.
The sonic he gives her (to swap) is the one she pick-pocketed from Eleven. She’s also told where to hide it in the TARDIS.
And if the swap goes according to plan, she’s to tell his past self where and when to give her the sonic. Which will, in fact, then download both River and Eleven.
A version of Eleven is already in the Library (and is that why ‘Clara’ shares much of her name with CAL?)
16 May 2013 at 11:37 #9327Could be metaphorically, if they could figure out how to explain it coherently to the smaller members of the audience. Or it could be ‘regenerate as a baby’.
In which case, I’d lay bets that Moffat has avoided the CBBC series ‘Young Doctor Who’ by already showing us the Doctor growing up 😀
Yes, I think erasing himself from the database is going to prove to be a very big mistake. In the Whoniverse a ‘soul’ is your memories and the stories about you. Because in the meta, that is precisely what the Doctor’s ‘soul’ is; the soul of Doctor Who is both the memories of the audience and the stories told about the Doctor.
So in erasing himself from the database he is, quite literally, losing part of his soul. Though given Moffat knows Buffy, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘space around the object’ – the Doctor who can be reconstructed by the gaps left in the data – also becomes very important.
Prequel should probably be discussed in ‘news’, just so that people who don’t want to see it know where to avoid. I’m not going anywhere near the ‘Spoilers’ forum. 🙂
16 May 2013 at 10:54 #9320@miapatrick – I think that’s definitely been the case for S7; Matt Smith has been playing it as though Eleven is having increasing difficulty holding himself together as a coherent personality. The original Time Lord limit was twelve lives; and there was some suggestion (New Adventures?) that this was because twelve formed a natural limit.
It would certainly explain why older Time Lords had a noticeable tendency to go completely nuts.
But if that’s the case, he really does have to ‘die’ this time. I’m currently leaning towards a scenario where his past, his memories are wiped – and while he does have some knowledge of what he was, they’re not his (or her) memories. They’re a story he’s (she’s) been told.
As if ‘The Doctor’ was a character on television. 🙂
16 May 2013 at 10:38 #9317@scaryb – I think they’d sleep; otherwise it’d be like having ten backseat drivers.
“I wouldn’t have done it that way – I’d have offered him a jelly baby.”
“Do you really need that sonic screwdriver so much?”
“For heavens sake, Doctor, reverse the polarity!”
“I’m going to cry…”
[Further suggestions for ‘backseat Doctoring’ gratefully accepted] 😀
15 May 2013 at 16:34 #9216@Shazzbot They’re generally not keen on it; but Ten’s semi-hysterical sheer funk was completely new. At the time I presumed it was because he, unlike the others, had been told long, long in advance. The others generally had regenerations along the lines of ‘crap, just fallen off Jodrell Bank/been fatally poisoned/got shot’. 🙂
15 May 2013 at 16:29 #9214At the time I thought it was indulgence of David Tennant the actor, bordering on the criminal.
Definitely not that: on the now sadly departed Confidential, it was clear that that moment was scripted and directed. In fact, the performance shown wasn’t the saddest; they decided his best shot at the line would be too upsetting.
So it’ll be interesting to find out whether RTD alone scripted that. At that point he was consulting with Steven Moffat over the direction Moffat wanted to go in. Was that final line scripted from a note?
I’d love to know how far in advance Tennant was booked for the 50th. 🙂
15 May 2013 at 14:22 #9196@thommck – never mind. As @jimthefish says, it’s a good excuse for another rewatch…
15 May 2013 at 12:37 #9183Looks a teeny tiny bit like Omega. Or is that just me?
15 May 2013 at 10:05 #9175Why couldn’t The Doctor defeat his cyberisation process using love? Can’t he love enough?
@confuseus – because he has a sliver of ice in his heart, remember? 🙂
And also because he has a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of his universe; the Doctor’s world-view is very much the Twenty-first century world-view; we live in an uncaring, mechanistic universe and it’s not going to save itself. 🙂
The Doctor can’t defeat the Cyber-controller with love. The Doctor’s reached the point in his arc where he can’t save himself; his love for other people is so carefully walled in that Clara knows he’d rather die than express it – and he hates himself. Like the little boy in the Snow Queen, he’s now reached the point where it’s other people who need to save the Doctor.
It’s not the Doctor who saves everyone at the end; Porridge brings in the Imperial starship and blows up the planet. Everyone’s noticed that Clara doesn’t save the Doctor – but the Doctor doesn’t save the Doctor, either. He gets saved by his mirror image; the mirror image who reluctantly accepts his responsibilities and then flies off – alone.
15 May 2013 at 08:29 #9166@whohar and @janetteb – The ending of Closing Time makes perfect sense if you go into the meta: in the Whoniverse, love is the most powerful emotion there is. Love trumps fear. Love trumps hate. It can beat Cyber conversion, it can call across the universes, and it can survive death – all canon.
And that’s how the Whoniverse works; because the Whoniverse runs on love. Love fought for it back in the Classic Series, when the BBC tried to cancel it. Love remembered it when it was cancelled. Love wrote books, and made videos, and produced radio plays. Love brought the audience back in massive numbers when it returned. Love made RTD take the job when he thought it was doomed and made David Tennant accept the role of the Doctor. It made Steven Moffat give up a career as a Hollywood screenwriter; it makes Neil Gaiman take a scriptwriting role for (comparatively) peanuts, and it’s the reason many others:the crew, the actors and the writing team, are in this particular job.
Love is why the Whoniverse lives. Love, in the Whoniverse, is more powerful than the rational, calculating actions of the Cybermen – the accountants and executives who totted up the budget spent and compared it with audience figures gained and decided that Doctor Who had to be converted into some machine produced soulless monstrosity. And so, in a tiny reflection of that – Craig’s love for his son wins out over Cyber Conversion. He stays human.
It is love that keeps him from becoming a mass produced machine.
15 May 2013 at 08:07 #9165Yes, someone on the G blog once compared me to a koala. Think it might have been @jimthefish.
For those of you who don’t know the Family Guy scene, there’s a clip:
14 May 2013 at 22:39 #9120Why am I now knee deep in fish? 🙂
14 May 2013 at 16:00 #9068@lula – I’m trying not to do too many ‘Who’ related searches right now (Spoilers, sweetie!), so I can’t be exact, but yes, both RTD and Steven Moffat have discussed Buffy in interviews. They’re clearly familiar with it.
14 May 2013 at 15:09 #9064Indeed. Many Buffy fans on here – and in fact, NuWho was influenced by Buffy.
14 May 2013 at 13:01 #9039Oh, and if Clara is Doctor Who – the programme – we’re going to get infinite versions of Clara (as well as several versions of The Doctor) as we move into the Interregnum/Time War II.
14 May 2013 at 12:40 #9037BSP’s got massive list of coincidental dates, parallels etc from every episode in series 7.2
Yup. If the theory survives the finale, I can feel a very long blog post coming on… 😀
14 May 2013 at 12:36 #9035Besides I personally hated that extended ‘farewell tour’
@jimthefish – One of the reasons I’d like there to be a ‘Dark Eleven’ is that it’d retcon that whole bloody ‘Farewell Tour’. I can get Ten’s discovery that he can face imminent death bravely but can’t cope with knowing he’s dying in advance. But, like you, I was going “will you just f***ing regenerate!” by the time we were halfway through the ‘tour’.
But if Ten knows his next regeneration is going to destroy everything he is, then the Farewell Tour makes much more sense. It becomes an “I want you to remember me the way I was” thing.
14 May 2013 at 11:44 #9026where there was a simulated broadcast of the Dr lost somewhere he didn’t recognise and appealing for help
Round about the same time there was also that very odd post credit shot of a skeleton hand clutching a sonic screwdriver.
Must. Do. Some. Work.
14 May 2013 at 11:17 #9023Thought Mr Clever was a bit of a naff name
It’s another story (coffee break!) -‘Mr Clever’ is in the Mr Men series by Roger Hargreaves.
Mr Clever is, obviously, very clever, but a bit smug and thinks he’s better than everyone else because of his great intelligence. However, he can’t cook, tell jokes, or see into the future. Sorry about the spoilers if you haven’t yet read the giant work of literature that is ‘Mr Men’ 🙂
14 May 2013 at 10:13 #9019@scaryb – he could go into a coma and we could have his body taken over, with him only surviving in a tiny little mind-fortress. Or he could die. We could have all these possibilities, infinite possibilities.
If the 50th Anniversary is going to be meta for the Interregnum, then there’s the novelisations (the New Adventures), there’s the Big Finish Audio, there were The Stranger videos and ‘Downtime’ (and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart has already walked in from ‘Downtime’). The 50th would have to represent the infinite realities of that period.
And I have to go and do some work, dammit! 😀
14 May 2013 at 09:56 #9014if you include a surprise regeneration in the mix and/or a Doppleganger of some kind.
@jimthefish – that would be my feeling too. If you show ‘The Doctor’ visibly fighting ‘The Dark Doctor’, the kids in the audience will still take it as the ‘real’ Doctor, their hero, is the one fighting the Big Bad. I think that was the reason for the internal mind scenes – so that the kids could be shown The Doctor, the real Doctor, was fighting Mr Clever for control of his body.
14 May 2013 at 09:39 #9010So – was that the takeover by alien forces that we’ve just seen?
@scaryb – Yup. I didn’t realise that last night, but my brain processed it overnight and came up with a ‘you do realise…’ this morning.
Nightmare in Silver is the representation of the TV movie. And, the Time War decision; the Doctor is taken over by an alien force (the TV movie was part British, part American – so the Doctor is half ‘The Doctor’ and half ‘Mr Clever’) 🙂
[Um, apologies to the Americans on the board. We love the Former Colonies dearly; but in an ‘annoying younger sibling’ sort of way. :twisted:]
The Doctor gets free of the alien invasion, but Porridge is his mirror; he has to become ‘the poor sod who had to press the button.’ And pressing the button didn’t even end the endless war; one cyber mite escaped, just as we found one Dalek escaped in Dalek.
Multiple possible realities: might be. That was what happened in the Time War, wasn’t it? That’s already canon. People could die, and be brought back, and die again – a thousand times. And those lines were written at a point where RTD was already consulting with the incoming Showrunner about where he wanted to go with his tenure…
So the Doctor will die. We are, possibly, going to see the opening shots of Time War II in the finale – and the Doctor dies in this reality, which can be changed. But if there is a meta- plot underpinning the main plot, the Doctor will die and Clara is the person (she’s Doctor Who – the programme) who is tasked with bringing him back.
RTD’s Doctor Who was the last-ditch attempt to save ‘The Doctor’; that was the reason for its creation.
In the first season Christopher Eccleston was credited as ‘Doctor Who’. It was David Tennant who insisted that he was playing ‘The Doctor’.
13 May 2013 at 22:43 #8963*
Oh, and if you could go really meta: the 50th Anniversary has to have David Tennant (possibly as well as Christopher Ecclestone, but that’d depend on the actor) – because it was David Tennant’s successful navigation of the regeneration into the Tenth Doctor that signalled Doctor Who’s real revival.
13 May 2013 at 22:38 #8961@scaryb – before I trot off to bed: I still think there’s a meta-ref, and it’s been going on through this entire part of S7. Possibly earlier, but modern Clara’s intro was when it was foregrounded.
And I think @phaseshift is right: we’re seeing the Doctor’s journey. Which may, just possibly, also turn out to be the Companion’s journey.
If we are seeing a meta-ref, then the Doctor is going to die. He’s got to die; because the Classic Series died. Journey ttCotT showed the Doctor on the scrapheap, under the wreck of his TARDIS – but the meta-ref in that episode was to Battlefield, the first story of the final Classic series. He was on the scrapheap, but he wasn’t yet dead; we saw a possible future where everybody did die – but it didn’t happen. They (we) managed to avoid it.
But there’s still the Interregnum; still the period where everyone is convinced Doctor Who is dead and lives only in memory. The period where, at one point, Doctor Who gets taken over by alien forces (I apologise to all Americans on the board – you’re not really alien forces, but metaphorically speaking, the US TV movie was an alien takeover of the Doctor). But essentially, the Doctor then stays ‘dead’ until the reboot; the reboot which decided to set itself at the end of a Time War.
He stays dead, in fact, until the end of the Time War, and the appearance of Rose on our screens. When Doctor Who is reborn 🙂
13 May 2013 at 16:01 #8926@htpbdet – I thought the kids were fine little actors, but not brilliantly directed. When they knew what they were doing, as you say, they delivered faultlessly; but I got the feeling the young actress playing Angie wasn’t given much help in varying the tones of the ‘an interstellar journey through time, whatever’ attitude.
But that might be just me. I very much enjoyed the story; when the closing credits rolled I found myself saying ‘That was fun!’ out loud. :blush:
Anyway; regarding the bonkers theory that we’re watching the construction of a memory fortress, the Doctor retelling himself his own story so he can keep part of himself alive – wouldn’t it be fun if we see this new, unexplained control room up to nearly the end of the finale? And then Clara walks into the control room – and we see the steampunk control room never really changed? This new one is the one in the Doctor’s head. 😀
13 May 2013 at 12:28 #8891@bobbingbird and @janetteb – generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed 7b considerably more than 7a – barring the one bobble with Journey ttCotT, which was technically excellent but, for me fell flat emotionally.
I think there is an arc behind these seemingly standalone, single episode stories – but probably not the kind of arc you can pick up on beforehand. I hope Moffat’s going for an ‘epiphany’ experience for the audience; a sudden striking revelation that will make the oddly disjointed nature of 7b (and 7a) suddenly make complete sense.
And it is oddly disjointed; they’ve basically taken a tour through the Doctor’s ‘greatest hits’. Great Intelligence, Virgin Sacrifices, Ice warriors, Scientific Advisor, Victorian horror story and the Cybermen. Throughout, the Doctor has made constant references to his previous selves. 7a made a quick ‘short story’ style tour through the highlights of his relationship with Rory and Amy.
So I’d go for the ‘memory’ and ‘story’ bonkers theories; the whole of S7 has been disjointed because we’re watching a story; a story told by the Doctor. A Doctor whose body has been taken over and who no longer has undisputed access to his own memories. We’ve been watching the construction of a Mind Palace. Or rather, the construction of a Mind Fortress. He is telling himself his own story; not to find a way out – he’s helpless. But because all he can do is keep part of himself alive and rely on his friends to do the rescuing. He’s picked the stories which are the most central to ‘The Doctor’, and sometimes he’s having to fill in the gaps – or leave gaps.
We’ve been watching him remember the most important parts of his life; and that most important part started in a junkyard in Totters Lane. And we haven’t seen the bits he wants to forget – like the Time War.
Doctor: Anything that is remembered – can be brought back.
River: We’re all stories in the end.
13 May 2013 at 09:57 #8878And, for the dear love of Mike … DON’T do conversation on the Tube in London
In fact, don’t even make eye contact. Or look at any part of them. Or … um, well, the ceiling’s okay.
You are allowed to converse with members of your immediate family and friends, but for the love of Mike, don’t be too LOUD. Otherwise the entire carriage will Not Stare In Your Direction. 😀
13 May 2013 at 00:57 #8853Faust does not loose his battle and dies peacefully.
@timeloop According to Goethe. Now, Marlowe, he told me Doctor Faustus got dragged down to hell.
(Off to bed now) 🙂
13 May 2013 at 00:54 #8851the Guardian was infamous for published spelling errors
@timeloop – a tradition proudly upheld only last week, when some subeditor published Dan Martin’s blog on ‘The Crimson Horror’ as ‘Journey to the Centre of the Tardis’. 🙂
13 May 2013 at 00:35 #8844@timeloop – Desdemona wasn’t unfaithful after all. That bastard Iago was lying.
13 May 2013 at 00:02 #8834And in other news, who was doing the subtitles for the BAFTA’s? They are the most incredibly surreal subtitles; they can’t even manage to get the spelling of BAFTA right 😕
12 May 2013 at 23:59 #8833@Shazzbot – in other news
Hamlet dies
Beatrice and Benedick get together
Odysseus finally makes it home
😀
12 May 2013 at 21:51 #8800@wolfweed – go for it, Mr Moffat!
Slightly different, but I was one of the ‘test audience’ for the Olympics Opening Ceremony rehearsal. We were all asked to keep any spoilers secret; by and large, it did go out unspoiled.
The trolls probably won’t have one of the pre-released DVD’s and will very likely be inventing any ‘spoilers’ – just to wind people up. That’s why they’re trolls.
12 May 2013 at 21:36 #8796@Shazzbot – BBC America isn’t the BBC. It’s BBC Worldwide – and they’ll do co-productions or buy stuff in from ITV.
12 May 2013 at 20:14 #8779Weird, because their website is firmly saying ‘Monday 20th’.
Oh, yes, if they’d sent it me I’d be watching it right now. Of course I would. As you say, anyone would.
But it must be so frustrating to the production team – to have your surprise wrecked by some idiot in a warehouse. 🙁
12 May 2013 at 20:08 #8777If it starts leaking badly the journalists he has carfully nurtured, and who have signed confidentiality clauses are going to be the only ones who can’t comment on it.
My experience when it happened with Harry Potter was that – while the spoiler community was buzzing – most of the reporters simply reported the news part of it. That is, they reported on the book being sold, but kept silent on what was in it. I think they realised that most of the audience don’t want to find out major plot points on the Ten O’Clock news.
12 May 2013 at 19:38 #8770Are you sure she doesn’t mean ‘dispatched on Friday midnight’? Because they do sometimes send it out the postal day before official release, so that it arrives on release day. They did that with the Harry Potter books; I remember getting the book on the morning it was out.
They had a not dissimilar problem with one of the HP novels; because it had to be sent out to the bookstores in advance, one idiot bookstore decided to open the crates and put the books on sale. I ended up avoiding all social media for those few days, as well 🙁
12 May 2013 at 18:26 #8759Likewise. Wow, what a cock-up by the U.S. distributors. The production team must be furious, especially if there are any big reveals in the last episode.
@jimthefish – I was also extremely surprised and then I looked at the release date on Amazon UK – which is the Monday after broadcast.
12 May 2013 at 13:26 #8716The cybermen were too unbelievable, why did that first one move so quickly and the others didn’t have that speed upgrade?
@confuseus, I’d imagine that’s like asking why every aircraft doesn’t have the speed of a fighter jet. There’s an energy/weaponry cost to speed – very likely, that was a specialised ‘snatch’ cyberman, designed to do exactly what it did. Move with impossible speed to snatch a kid that the other humans will be trying to protect.
There may have been a line that got cut. But if they’d spent the episode trying to do lots of ‘bullet time’ scenes, they’d probably still be filming.
12 May 2013 at 12:45 #8707@craig – looking at the wikipedia page you referenced, I’d be inclined to think it’s a 2001 reference. Being, as it is, the last line spoken to Frank Poole by his parents – shortly before he gets set adrift in space by a mad computer intelligence. 😈
If people want to watch the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzCGZnpXkE
12 May 2013 at 09:27 #8688Oh, and another lovely little chess analogy that just occurred to me:
What happens to a pawn when it gets to the eight rank (end of the chessboard)?
It gets promoted. It becomes a Queen. It is possible, in chess, for one side to have two or more Queens on the board – if one starts out as a pawn.
12 May 2013 at 09:10 #8685@everyone – no, I’m thinking about the tight skirt reference right at the end; which didn’t come across as ‘fatherly’ to me at all. 😀
We have actually been talking about these theories already, but the two time-bombs planted in this episode are:
1. The Doctor is definitely not immune to being taken over. He can fight back, but it’s possible for someone else to take over his body.
2. Any mechanical ‘infection’ can be burned out – destroyed – by regeneration energies. BUT, the Doctor has to choose to regenerate, since it won’t be rated as ‘dying’. Time Lords don’t regenerate for the equivalent of a cold; River screamed at the Doctor for wasting his energies on her broken wrist.
This leads me back to the bonkers theory that he’s being either dalekised – OR, the GI is in cahoots with the Daleks. The Daleks want a Time Lord. They now don’t know who ‘The Doctor’ is – but did they forget the Time Lords? If they didn’t, they’ll still want the Doctor. But as ‘that Time Lord who knows how to open the Time Lock’. The GI will want to finish what it started in the Troughton era, and take over the Doctor’s body. Not just any old body, a regenerating, practically immortal body.
The Doctor will get infected and will be too reluctant to regenerate; he’ll misjudge the timing of the suicide button (we saw in this episode that he CAN push the suicide button) and will be taken over. This means that – basically – for the first time ever, the fight will be to force the Doctor to regenerate.
And Clara. I still think she could be (all together now!) the Twelfth. And she could also be a trap, programmed to mirror the Doctor. We just saw the Doctor nearly get taken over; so a very young, very human incarnation of the Doctor could certainly be reprogrammed. Probably it happened during her second upload in the Bells of St John; the GI recognised that she was someone the Doctor was interested in and programmed her as a trap. He’s also a chess-player – he was willing to sacrifice his Queen (Miss Kizlet) to win the game.
But the advantage of being a trap is that it keeps you alive until the damn thing is sprung. It’s a game of chess; the future Doctor will be willing to sacrifice Eleven if – well, we don’t know. Perhaps if it means he can save the children? His people’s children?
That’d be worth dying for.
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