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but Smithy does do the oldun in a young body extraordinarily well. Could JLC do that?

I think, if she has been cast as the Doctor (next, future or alternate), they wouldn’t ask her to do that. Smithy’s probably done the definitive version of that for the next ten years or so. Asking someone else to do it really would be a ‘follow that!’.

Since we’ve seen Clara as a baby and small child then, if she is the next Doctor – I’d say the Moff’s taken the ‘the Doctor’s keep getting younger!’ complaint up to eleven and had/will have the Doctor regenerate as a baby (It will be impossible to get any younger than that!) Possibly with associated memory loss. 🙁

But it would mean the show is going in a new direction – a) the Doctor is a woman and b) for the first time ever, we’ve got a ‘young’ Doctor.

But she could be playing the Doctor’s daughter/granddaughter/g-grandaughter; they’ve already asked her to handle three subtly different versions of Clara, and you would need a pretty experienced actress for that. Generally you find that most actors can handle the one version of the role, but if they need to switch the same character between two versions – well, most films and dramas who’ve done that, the director often ends up casting the ONLY actor who could play it.

 

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@fulcanelli – after the five minute edit window, you need one of the moderators with deletion powers – @jimthefish, @craig or @phaseshift.

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Yes, please, can everyone remember the etiquette about spoilers?

Unless it’s:

on the official BBC site,

in the Radio Times (generally regarded as the ‘BBC magazine’),

or announced on the Ten O’Clock News (don’t laugh, non-UK folk, regenerations/new Doctors generally are headline news over here),

it is a spoiler. 

Like @scaryb, I’ve now managed to go cold turkey on the Spoiler thread, and hope to stay that way until the finale. 🙂

 

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@bobbingbird and @scaryb

JLC is too young

Year older than Matt Smith was, in fact. She’s 27. I had a look at her CV and while – at the moment – I’m running more along the lines of ‘she’s playing it like the Doctor because she’s his daughter’, her CV is such that she could quite reasonably be cast in the lead role.

Four years in a fairly meaty soap part, character to leading roles in mini-series. As an actress who went professional at 18, she actually has more acting years behind her than Matt Smith.

 

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“one that will change the course of Who forever!” – shouldn’t worry too much, we’ve already thought of several possibilities that might change the course of Who.

Clara is the next Doctor. Having the Doctor playable by a woman will certainly change the course of the show.
The reset button will be pressed and the Doctor will go back to the beginning – yup. Stuff continuity, we’re on an entirely new course!
Dark Doctor – the Doctor can be a villain as well as a hero. Course changing – though I do think if they go in this direction, it’s going to be nanogenes, for the kids.
Gallifrey comes back or Gallifrey’s children are saved, or he’s got descendants: all course changing from NuWho – no more ‘Lonely God’.
The Doctor started out life as a terrorist/criminal/someone like the Master. Certainly change our view; he’s now a man searching for redemption rather than a natural hero.

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TARDIS behaviour to date:

Bells of St John:

 connects Clara to the Doctor when she calls – via the outside phone.
Happily takes him to whenever Clara is – including in the prequel, when the Doctor didn’t even know that was when Clara was.
Equally happily makes short hops with the Doctor and Clara. No real displays of temperament.

Rings of Akhaten:

Takes the Doctor and Clara where the Doctor wants to go.
Happily makes short hops within the system.
Flatly refuses to let Clara back on board with the little Queen of Years. At this point Clara starts to feel that the TARDIS doesn’t really like her.

Cold War

Basically says ‘screw this, I’m outta here!’ – as Clara falls into the water, losing consciousness.
Plays a bit of a practical joke by relocating to the South Pole. Well, it was certainly the safest place on the planet…

Hide

Again, pretty non temperamental when the Doctor needs to go through time.
Rings the Cloister Bell – not because she’s in danger, but because The Eleventh Doctor is trapped in a pocket universe.
Locks Clara out of the TARDIS. Is so determined to keep Clara out of the TARDIS that she activates the Voice Interface outside her door.
Appears to Clara as Clara – which is the first time the Voice Interface has first appeared as anyone other than the current Doctor. Clara, the VI says, ‘esteems’ herself – which causes the response ‘you are a cow’. 🙂
ONLY opens the doors to Clara after Emma has reopened the portal, so the the TARDIS has a way back and potentially can rescue Eleven.

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.

Is looking at Clara in a funny way (Clara’s strong impression).
Ejects the Doctor from the ship (he needs to find the remote)
Keeps Clara within the ship (so what does she need to find?)
Given that she can create a maze (and does several times in the episode), doesn’t take Clara back to the ‘ghost’ Control Room immediately. Instead gives her a quick tour of the interior, including leading her to the junk room so she can see the cot and the mini-TARDIS, and the Library where the History of the Time War is helpfully positioned on a big lectern. Once Clara’s seen those things, she gets taken back to the ‘ghost’ Control Room.

 

The strong impression I’m getting here is that the TARDIS is writing the script. If she’d opened the doors in Rings of Akhaten, for example, Merry would have had a safe place to hide, Clara and the Doctor might have found out a bit more about the set-up, and the whole story would have gone an entirely different path.

Similarly, in Cold War, the TARDIS bails – not when they’re crashing onto rock, or when they’re sinking, both of which you’d think would be more likely to set off the HADS – but at the precise moment when the Doctor would have taken an injured Companion back into the safety of the TARDIS. Clara’s unconscious. The TARDIS exits rapidly before the Doctor can take her out of the story.

In Hide her utter determination to keep Clara out of the TARDIS when Eleven might be about to die suggests that something disastrous might happen. Clara’s allowed in – not after she yells at the TARDIS – but when Emma opens the portal. It’s possible to save Eleven; suddenly it’s safe to let Clara on board.

In Journey the TARDIS is both trying to protect Clara and seemingly ‘allowing’ her to see things that shouldn’t be seen. Or that the Doctor thinks shouldn’t be seen.

And despite all this, she’s terribly uncomfortable with Clara. Clara can feel it; the TARDIS doesn’t like her. And yet…

The TARDIS always takes the Doctor where he needs to go. Suppose where he needs to be is with Clara? Or, suppose the TARDIS has changed her priorities slightly. Suppose, right now, she’s taking Clara where she needs to go?

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We have yet to see River’s first encounter with the Doctor. We have seen the Doctor’s first encounter with her,Silence in the Library, but not hers with him.

@HTBPDET – I don’t think it matters. River’s entire life story depends on the Eleventh Doctor. She might meet earlier Doctors – and we know she met Ten – but her existence depends on Eleven deciding to take Amy and Rory for a honeymoon on the TARDIS.

So in a philosophical sense she doesn’t exist before the Time Lock or the Time War, because her existence is dependent upon them happening. I would say, therefore, that she cannot enter the Time Lock (barring its partial or complete breakdown).

I don’t think she’s the First Doctor’s wife, either, unless she married him again under a pseudonym. The Tenth once remarked that he was rubbish at weddings: “especially my own”. The implication is that he’s a widower when he marries River.

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Messianic dalek – “in-carn-ate”

 

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how exactly does the timelock interfere with River going there?

@timeloop (welcome! And a very appropriate handle) – my understanding is like @ardaraith‘s – it’s generally presumed that the timelock has frozen all access to Gallifrey at any point in its present or past. For example, in the End of Time Rassilon can only get a signal through the Timelock by placing it in the personal past of someone already known to be outside the Time Lock.

It’s therefore presumed that River can’t go visit. Nobody can visit Gallifrey in any era. It’s sealed throughout its timeline – and if you think about it too much, your head may explode, so I’d guess that the history of Gallifrey is frozen in such a way that the only people who can enter or leave from its past are the people who already did. No alterations are allowed – except for planting a mental signal. And it’s strongly implied that was only allowed because it always had been done, and in fact caused much of the life history of that particular character.

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@HTBDET – Yes, River has a working Time Bracelet – she can go anywhere she needs to go.

I’m still interested in Clara’s ‘So that’s who…’ The name, I think, is on the corner of the tiny TARDIS – she puts it down, glances down, then picks up the magnifying glass. Then she presumably sees it again in The History of the Time War (the metalwork of the title is covered with Gallifreyan symbols, including one I seem to remember is the symbol of the Lord President. The Doctor, of course, is a former Lord President.

Remembering that Susan could speed-read, Clara also seems to be speed-reading; her eyes flicker over the page as if the actress was doing a quick scan. Turns the page, another quick scan – then sees something she recognises. If it’s an illustration, it’s far more likely to be an illustration of the TARDIS.

But she definitely delivers the line as if it confirms something she already knew about.

 

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Am I allowed to say ‘Yippee, an RTD/Julie Gardner-trained producer who’s come up via Who and SJA’?

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@Shazzbot – my situation as well. But when I was thinking about the theory, I did notice how much I tend to connect to other people’s children. Even when childless, you’re often passing on your skills, knowledge and passions to the next generation.

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@blenkinsopthebrave and @jimthefish

Apologies for the somewhat massive post…

Firstly I’d say that while the Doctor has had children, he currently doesn’t know he still has children (or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. ALL his children (that we know of) are ‘presumed dead’, even though the audience knows this presumption to be false in the case of Jenny.

Secondly, I’d say there are at least three routes for the Doctor to become a father/grandfather again: one is to bring back Jenny (and since the actress is Mrs David Tennant, they could probably sneak in some filming as she officially ‘brings the kids down to visit the set’). The second is to have River’s strange refusal to travel long-term with the Doctor at the end of Time of Angels be due to her pregnancy. The third is to give the Doctor a great-granddaughter via Susan.

Thirdly, I’d say that there’s another route (which may also include the above options). That’s to have – while the Doctor was planning to Time Lock Gallifrey – his Gallifreyan Companions Romana, Leela and Susan somehow plan to preserve the Time Lords as a race, if not a culture. Getting the next generation, the as-yet-unborn, out. So that while the Doctor may be the Last of the Time Lords, he’s not the last of his race.

And if I can think of all these possible routes, I’m sure Steven Moffat can think up something. I’m fairly sure he’s going in the direction of the Doctor being a father/grandfather/great-grandfather again – I can’t think he’d bring up a theme of ‘children’ without resolving it somehow.

Incidentally, Clara might be simultaneously a completely ordinary (if unusual) human girl and the Doctor’s Great-granddaughter. If Susan was Chameleon Arched during the Time War, then gave birth to Clara, Clara would be an entirely human child. But still the Doctor’s great-granddaughter.

Which might be still another way of connecting him back to the universe without having to bring back his race. The Time Lords are gone – but the Doctor has human descendants.

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@whohar – I’ve always wanted the Existentialist Dalek (Ex-is-tence is use-less!) or the Born Again Dalek (Ex-comm-un-i-cate!

 

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@ardaraith – thinking about the ‘children’ reference in that encyclopaedia (and I’m pretty sure one of the other indistinct words was ‘child’) – is that the key to the Doctor’s situation?

The ice in his heart, the ‘madman’, the increasingly ‘dark Doctor’ – are these all Moffat’s interpretation of what happens to someone when there’s no future beyond themselves? Not in some Darwinesque sense of ‘all must reproduce’, but the disconnect that might happen when there’s NO next generation to tie you to the universe.

No kids. There’ve been an awful lot of stories about having kids during Moffat’s reign. Amy and Rory have their child stolen, the adopted baby Tenza, the little Queen of Years who holds all her culture’s stories, the Ice Warrior’s daughter, the descendent of the Prof and Emma, Avery’s son Toby, the Widow’s children. Ganger Jimmy’s little boy makes him human. Craig and Sophie not only get together, they have baby Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All.

And Kazran, in A Christmas Carol, is childless, alone, and emotionally frozen. Abigail, while childless, connects to her family and her sister’s children. Amy and Rory, we know, later recovered enough to adopt their son.

And the Doctor is childless (he thinks), searching for Companions, and has a sliver of ice in his heart. Going back and forth in the blink of an eye. Checking out Clara from before birth to the present day. Seeing everyone as ghosts, already dead – though maybe he’s the ghost, the ghost adrift in time, left behind to haunt the universe after his entire race died.

 

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Aw Jeez, I’m getting totally Alexandered over on the G blog. When will I ever learn?

@jimthefish – Bad plan. I remember when I once proved him wrong – y’know, with an actual reference – and he still wouldn’t accept it. He’s like Humpty Dumpty

When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.

 

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@PhineasF – you’ve just reminded me that – way back in the middle of Series 5 – I posited that we might well be watching a giant loop in time, where events repeat over and over again.

Because Rory, who really had only just met the Doctor, called him out on exactly what he did to his Companions (it’s in Vampires of Venice). So I wondered if he was able to do that because this was the second or third or even fourth time he’d been through all this – and he had a residual memory of it.

So now I’m wondering – are we looping? The Doctor keeps referring to himself as a ‘madman in a box/spaceship’. But – hiding in plain sight – a slang term for ‘madman’ is ‘loopy’. He’s gone loopy.

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Don’t even get me started on why is there an open gantry going through such dangerous space as the eye, rather than a sealed, shielded tunnel, or why it’s so easy to fall through the banisters.

Easy. Because the TARDIS is trying to stop them going through. When she wants the Doctor to go through the place has a nice shielded tunnel with an observation window. When he has to go in he finds the ‘Eye of Harmony Survival Suit’ in a locker by the door.

When she doesn’t want them to go through it has an open gantry, easy access to an infinite drop, and insane time zombies readily available.

😀

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Hmm… well, my BSc is Computer Science and a bit of sociology and my last lot of physics was first year uni – but I would say, given all these hints about mirror universes and reflections, and a split in the TARDIS leading to two Doctors and the TARDIS landing inside itself leading to two Rorys and Amys – that the TARDIS is in fact now its own universe. Possibly when Amy brought the Doctor back from the other side of the crack, she simply gave him a route back, via the TARDIS doors.

Step through the doors of the TARDIS and you really are going into the Land of Oz.

This would be in keeping with the universe of Doctor Who – we already know it’s a multiverse. The interior of the TARDIS is now one of the multiverses, though I doubt it was originally. The TARDIS was originally just very, very big – and is now infinite.

 

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@There were quite a few jokes in the RTD era that Ten’s lack of interest in girls was because he was gay. Moffat carried it on with Eleven – though he is on record as saying that you’d need to first explain to the Doctor what gay and straight meant, and that he’d probably be saying ‘yes, but look at the Cybermen ship! It’s attacking!’

If you’re a gay agenda conspiracy theorist (aka a Telegraph commentator), it must be disturbing to note that most of Who’s openly gay/pansexual characters were introduced by the very straight Steven Moffat. 🙂

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By the way, as a suggestion for the great and terrible secret: perhaps it’s not universe shattering at all. Perhaps it’s simply a terrible personal tragedy: the revelation that – when the Doctor’s real name is known – it will become obvious that he killed his own granddaughter.

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The Clara/hybrid TARDIS theory is interesting – but we do have a child of the TARDIS (River). And the TARDIS seems to think that the sun shines out of her little baby’s bottom. 🙂 So I’m doubtful; I can’t see why old Sexy would adore one ‘child’ and dislike another.

I think the sensor was ‘narrowing down’ with the ‘animal coating/human DNA’ thing. It was reading something extremely damaged and went for a computerised ‘animal, vegetable or mineral’. So that leaves us with – last week we were told she’s normal by the psychic, this week we’re told her DNA is human. I think we can say that – at the moment – she’s a normal human with high intelligence and psychic abilities. Doesn’t mean she’ll stay that way.

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Clara’s South Lancashire origins 

I think it was ‘Lancashire, sass’, not ‘Lancashire, South’. Blackpool is North Lancs, not South Lancs.

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Oh, and she again doesn’t give an answer to a direct question: she never answers the Doctor’s “on a scale of one to 10” except indirectly.

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One thing I did seem to notice was that Clara is noticeably more scared when she’s not with the Doctor – but I didn’t read it as ‘scared because the Doctor isn’t here’, it was more ‘scared because I’ve just lost my script’. While she clearly doesn’t know how the TARDIS works or where anything is, she’s not scared of ol’ Sexy, even if she’s picked up that the TARDIS doesn’t like her.

Equally, her reaction when she discovers the monster is her isn’t to freak out, it’s to stare curiously at her future self.

And yes, she nudges him. “If you haven’t got a plan we’re dead!”

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@htpbdet – yes, I think the central exchange of this episode may well turn out to be:

Doctor: Secrets protect us. Secrets make us safe.

Clara: We’re not safe!

 

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@wolfweed – cot?

Which rather implies Clara can read Gallifreyan. She might not know she has that ability, but she can.

Was ‘The History of the Time War’ even in English? And the Encyclopaedia bottle was speaking ‘English’ as well.

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@htpbdet – and great to see you back and on form.

the salvage of a lifetime.

The Doctor, I think, means Clara. But yes, I believe he’s unknowingly talking about himself.

In the control room, when he says “Come on Clara, talk to me”, I think he does subconsciously know she’s a telepath.

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@haveyoufedthefish – it might be a continuity boo-boo caused by the difficulty of copying the lettering exactly using make-up 🙂 Or it might be a hint that the message on Clara’s hand was from the first time the Doctor threw the remote through the crack, and the lettering we saw was from the second time – when he took it through himself.

Two ghost control rooms, two brothers with the same surname – and hidden in plain sight; a third brother, a third (real) control room. Last week we had a ‘ghost’ and two ‘monsters’.

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@scaryb – I think the TARDIS can’t fly without a pre-programmed course or a pilot on board (is that canon?). So the Doctor has a pre-programmed ‘take Companion home’ program if he dies and the Companion survives, and he can program the HADS – but the TARDIS can’t fly herself without somebody on board.

Yes, Clara would have had difficulty pushing anything – she seemed to be upside down at one point. Rough ride. But it’s interesting that the TARDIS recognised her as someone allowed to pilot her, even if she doesn’t like her.

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@ardaraith Question is, are these episodes in order? Last week we see Clara trying to drive the TARDIS, and this week the Doctor is showing her how.

Which way round? He’s showing her how because he now knows that – in an emergency – she’ll damn well try, or she tried last week because she’d already had a few lessons?

River was mainly taught by the TARDIS herself, as I recall, since she is in a sense the TARDIS’s ‘daughter’.

 

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why would being horribly burnt turn you homicidal?

@haveyoufedthefish – I wondered that as well, but then I thought that maybe, in their ‘cooked brains’ (ie zombie) state, they thought they had to stop themselves from going into the Eye of Harmony? So if they killed themselves that would stop the time loop?

I wonder how many times they’d gone round the time loop? Clara seemed to know the monsters were zombies, and the Doctor had tried throwing the reset button through before… plus it would explain how she could find the right page in that book so quickly. 🙂

 

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what do you make of the numbers 0989

@juniperfish – A89//0989

Battlefield, the first serial of the final series of Classic Who. Shown in September 1989, shortly after the production team had become aware that there wasn’t going to be another series.

Its production code was actually 7N, but I’d take A89 as ‘first story of the 1989 season’. Dunno if it’s a meta-reference to the scrap ship coming in to scrap the TARDIS (no TARDIS, no show) or if it’s a reference to Battlefield’s Arthurian vibe and The-Doctor-As-Merlin.

It was also the last Who story to feature Nicholas Courtney.

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@wolfweed – off topic, but what image are you using at the end of your paragraphs? (I’m guessing a smiley) It’s not showing up on my screen.

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@wolfweed – Yes, it’s clear that he’s finally managed to move the TARDIS translation circuit from ‘U’ rating to ‘PG’.

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Alas, I didn’t like it. Much good material for theorising, good acting work by the two leads, crappy acting work by the three guests and WHO is that poor woman doing the voice overs for the computers? Because if it isn’t Jenna-Louise Coleman, there’s some poor voice-over artist who’s not getting credited.

Plot good – I suspect its job was to remind small audience members that time can be rewritten. TARDIS interior good. Interesting that the encyclopaedia bottle was referring to ‘children’ and ‘child’ and that we saw the cot again.

As a whole, however, it left me cold. 🙁

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As I’ve just pointed out on t’other place, the brothers didn’t just remember, time had in fact been changed. The photo changed to include all three brothers.

Yes, @phaseshift, I thought Clara recognised the name as well. She started to say: ‘So that’s who he is.’ So either his name is known in Earth’s mythology or she somehow knows it already.

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He basically said that the Doctor had used the Chameleon Arch to make himself part human, as a means of fooling the Master. Though why he should want to, I don’t know.

Apart from Paul McGann’s lovely performance I tend to try and blot the Movie from memory; I’m happy McGann’s a canonical Doctor, but I’d prefer to think of the rest of it as ‘The Doctor was regeneration loopy/lying through his teeth”.

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Hmmm… and, fourth wall theory. The Doctor’s memory is gone. His past has been changed. The Daleks no longer remember him. He deleted all records of his own existence. If the TARDIS has forgotten as well, he’s stuffed; there’s no way he can get his memory back. Not only will he not remember his assistants, they won’t remember him.

Except there is one record in existence. In all the universes, there’s one obscure little place where ‘The Doctor’ isn’t real; he’s the hero of a family TV show. And where his fans were so obsessed that they refused to forget him … and they’ve got a record of all the important events in his life since November 23rd, 1963.

It would be quite funny if all the ‘clues’ that have been cropping up this series supposedly got put in because Steven Moffat got given a mysterious list of dates and references. And we’re not the only people to be trying to work out the meaning of the show. 😀

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@whisht – don’t you mean a wild goose?

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Did you call that already?

@scaryb – I did, but on t’other place.

I’m increasingly going back to an idea I first thought of a while back: that we are watching the longest flashback in TV history – and all the Kennedy references and dates are the Doctor’s message to himself from his own subconscious.

Music is the password.

Go back to November 22nd, 1963.

Did the ‘Ghast’ strike in 1974, or 1970? Dougray Scott is 47 – in 1970 he’d have been born 1923, just old enough to become an officer in 1941 – or even join up in 1939 if he’d lied about his age. Many did. But has the Doctor’s memory changed the date to eleven years after 1963? So that they started this ghost hunt exactly eleven years after the date he needs to go back to?

In the Doctor’s universe, was November 22nd 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated? Yes, because we saw a photo of the Ninth in the crowd. Was that when Susan was followed home by two of her schoolteachers? Possibly, because you don’t have school on Saturday. However, nobody is mentioning the assassination. They wouldn’t – because it happened at 6pm British time. At  that point the Doctor has just hit the dematerialise lever on the TARDIS.

One is forced to ask what on earth would happen if Kennedy’s assassination had happened earlier in the day – say at Fort Worth, Texas instead of Dallas, Tex. Because even in Britain the Kennedy assassination was major, shocking news; two teachers would undoubtedly be talking about that, not one of their mildly problematic pupils. If news of the Kennedy assassination had broken a few hours earlier, the Doctor might never have met Ian and Barbara.

Oswald. Clara’s name is Oswald. Is it really? Was she placed in time by the Doctor himself, was her family selected because their surname is Oswald? Or is she ‘Clara Oswin’, but the Doctor’s memory is telling him that the important, vital name is Oswald?

It has to be Oswald who kills Kennedy. Oswald who did kill Kennedy. Not some time-travelling assassin a few hours earlier. Oswald. Remember me.  Because he must remember that name.

 

 

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And yet so much seems to point that way that I feel it will be used somehow,

@PhineasF – I do keep joking that we may be in the middle of the longest flashback in television history 🙂

If the Doctor is replaying his memories, that would explain the slightly dreamlike nature of some of these stories. He’s concentrating on trying to make sense of this. Possibly he too has become a mad theorist, looking for hidden clues to an  explanation. 😀

 

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Alec Palmer says that this (ie 25th) is their 4th day so they’d have started on 21st

No, 22nd. They start on Day One, not Day Zero, so 22nd, 23rd, 24th and Day Four is 25th.

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it seems to clang away whenever alternative universes collide.

@juniperfish – Yes. But here it starts clanging when the door between alternatives shuts.

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@juniperfish – yes, I think we do. Because I’ve just done a quick trawl through the other times, and they’re times when either the universe or the TARDIS itself is in danger. But it can’t just be ‘the Doctor is in danger’ because the ruddy Bell would never stop clanging. 🙂

So what on earth could be so dire about the Doctor being trapped in a pocket universe that the Cloister Bell starts muttering darkly about ‘the destruction – of reality – ITSELF!!!’

What has just occurred to me (I’m doing a rewatch) is that if Clara is either a) the Doctor’s as-yet-un-conceived daughter or b) a future Doctor – then reality’s in trouble. If he dies in that pocket universe, he can’t regenerate. Clara becomes someone who can’t exist – a paradox. And the last time the TARDIS had someone who couldn’t exist inside her (River, who at that point had two parents who’d just died before they had a chance to conceive her), she blew up and destroyed pretty well the entire universe. 

So the Doctor dying somewhere he can’t regenerate and before he can create Clara (by whatever means) would rate a Cloister Bell.

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Can anyone explain to me why the Cloister Bell starts to ring?

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@lula – no problem – but pretty well all we officially know about the finale episode is its title and the accompanying poster. If you are just speculating that Monster X might be involved, then obviously you aren’t dropping any spoilers. If Blogtor Who suggests they are involved, that’s a spoiler.

However, once something is announced on the BBC site or the BBC America site (or in the Radio Times), it’s news.

Now, everyone completely confused? Good. 🙂

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Could I pop my ‘unofficial moderator’ hat on and remind everyone that both Spoilers and rumours of Spoilers belong in the Spoiler thread. No hints in other threads, please.

And please, make sure messages in the spoiler thread contain enough ‘this is a spoiler’ to hide them from those reading the ‘recent posts’ scroll.

I will now return you to the bonkers theorising 🙂

 

[Bluesqueakpip @replies]

Ooh, just doing a rewatch of Hide and noticed that the music room has a very centrally placed harp.

In The Five Doctors, the Fifth Doctor plays the Harp (naturally, it’s the Harp of Rassilon) which is a key to the Secret Room (probably of Rassilon).

So this adventure contains a musical instrument which was once a key to a secret. Hmmm…

I more and more like the idea that we’re seeing the longest flashback in television history, with the Doctor frantically trying to remember how to get out of the mess he’s in. 🙂

[Bluesqueakpip @replies]

although if we expect it, does it count as a surprise?

Definitely a difference between ‘some fans are suspicious’ and ‘pre-announced on the Ten O’Clock News’. 😀

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