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  • #5697
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    I really do wonder why the TARDIS keeps bailing

    I admit her ‘bugger this for a game of sailors, I’m off!’ was one of the funniest moments in Cold War. 🙂

    #5669
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @haveyoufedthefish and @phileasf – I’d go against the ‘its all a dream’ for the very reason that audiences usually resent it. When Moffat decided to do the ‘Amy is a ganger’ plotline, the clues were puzzling – but not subtle. Even the smallest child could see Madame Kovarian breaking into ‘reality’.

    So I’d add go for the idea – which I think has been suggested before – that, yes, what we’re watching might be an unreliable, Rashomon-style retelling, but it is a retelling of actual events. The Doctor is trying to work out how he got into this mess. He may be attempting a reprogramming, or we may be watching the upload/download of his memory.

    One of the most constant jokes in this series has been the Doctor missing something that’s right in front of him; haring off along a primrose path while the Ice Warrior is standing right behind him. So whatever is going on, it’s big and it’s obvious. So big, in fact, we can’t see it.

    I think Moffat did joke immediately after The Pandorica Opens that the next episode would be entirely in flashback; so it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole of S7 does turn out to be the biggest flashback in the history of television. It would fit with what we’ve noticed; events don’t seem to be in quite the right order. It would also fit the ‘right in front of us/behind us, but we can’t see it’ joke. We’re in the middle of the program – the Doctor has run ‘You Clever Boy’. Now the download (and we know from Rory, River and the Ganger-Doctor that a downloaded program can have the ‘soul’ of the original) needs to work out what went wrong.

    I do think Clara’s either the ‘storage device’ or the next Doctor. Why might she be the next Doctor? (Apart from all the ‘Doctor Who – the programme’ clues) Because one last ditch effort to erase a virus is to wipe the hard drive, reformat, destroy all the old programming and data – and then reinstall the stuff you know to be virus free.

     

     

    #5663
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @craig – thanks. 😀

    #5609
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @juniperfish – I think it’s a case of is David Warner playing an actual Time Lord? Or is he playing the person the Doctor should be, but manifestly isn’t?

    That is, is he symbolically filling the Doctor shaped gap that the Doctor has created? He’s taking care of the Doctor’s companion – which the Doctor himself isn’t doing. If it hadn’t been for the Professor, the world would probably have been blown up; Clara would have been scared and frozen with horror in a corridor somewhere and certainly not up to doing ‘think of your daughter’ speeches in the control room. Even if the world and the submarine had survived, Clara would undoubtedly have never wanted to travel with the Doctor again.

    What stopped that happening was the Professor taking the Doctor’s role. For this episode, he was Clara’s Grandfather. And the Doctor was an appallingly bad Grandfather. More the wolf, in fact.

    So I suspect we’re seeing parallels to the Doctor because it’s written in; the Doctor isn’t being the Doctor. Fortunately, there is a Doctor-figure on hand to save the day. To make Clara realise that the game she’s just got into is one of saving the world, messy and horrible as that might sometimes be.

    It may turn out that this Doctor-figure was indeed a past or future Doctor, turning up to help save himself. Or it may just be symbolic.

    According to the subtitles, when the Doctor is taunting Skaldak to face him, he says “look me in the eye.” As if he had the single eye of a dalek. And again, like last week when he used the Sonic as a shield, this week he uses the Sonic as a weapon  – a weapon that can blow up the submarine.

    But his Sonic isn’t a weapon. It’s a screwdriver.

    #5565
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Going on from ‘pass-word’ protected, I wonder if (if there is a password) it’s the Doctor’s name?

    Looking at your Egyptology references, @juniperfish, I note that the name is one of the parts of a person’s soul. As long as the name can be spoken, the person’s soul isn’t truly dead.

    Which kind of adds significance to River knowing the Doctor’s name; though I do think that when Moffat wrote Silence in the Library he did think River found out the Doctor’s name when they married – and the apology was because she was about to tell the Doctor his future, meaning he had no choice but to marry her. Moffat’s just changed his mind since (when the actress was available to become a semi-regular).

    But the significance now is that River does become Isis (don’t know if you’ve already mentioned this, but the Isis is a river, by the way).

    So what if Clara is – well, several possibilities. She may be the next incarnation of the Doctor. She may be the Doctor’s granddaughter or daughter, or descendent. She may be an ordinary human, or she may be a biological construct, designed to the Doctor’s specifications.

    Whatever. The point is, that she’s a container. She holds within her the Doctor’s memories. More than his memories, she holds himself, his ‘soul’, his memories, stories, hopes and dreams. It’s all there, hidden, and it cannot be accessed until the password is spoken.

    And what she represents is the Doctor’s last desperate throw of the dice; because at some point the body of the Eleventh is taken over – either by his dark self or by something like the GI. And the Doctor’s ‘soul’ within his body has been destroyed.

    And that’s why we’ve been watching story after story where it’s emphasised that the ‘real’ person might not be in the body they first started with. (There was another ‘doppleganger’ this week, when it was emphasised that Skaldak and his armour weren’t the same thing – but that the Doctor was so used to thinking of them AS the same thing, it never occurred to him that Skaldak could escape from his armour). The Doctor’s body doesn’t have to be the same thing as the Doctor. The Doctor’s ‘soul’ might be – like Rory the Roman – hanging out in another body entirely.

    Is that bonkers enough for everyone?

    #5499
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @whisht – sorry. My granny didn’t say ‘whisht’. She just played ‘whist’. 🙂

    #5489
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @Whist – the Doctor has used a gun, and as far as I could see, the Professor doesn’t even seem to have wounded the Ice Warrior. That would be entirely consistent – he shot to miss.

    He’s willing to use guns (and indeed, grenade launchers) against the Daleks. As he explained to Ace when he was busily encouraging the precursor of UNIT to go all Full Metal Jacket – “What do we do then, talk to them sternly?”

    #5487
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Just a thought: the fields of Trenzalore, where no one can speak falsely or fail to answer, and I’m damn certain that it’s phrased that way specifically to provide a ‘get out clause’. Last episode, we heard Clara say ‘You know when someone asks you what your favourite book is, and you instantly forget every book you ever read?’

    This episode, the Professor asks her what sorts of things she does and she promptly goes ‘err, err, stuff!’. Yet seconds before she had no problems talking about Karaoke and hen nights. Similarly, she can’t think where she’d most like to go – she makes the Doctor choose – but can easily tell little Merry about a childhood memory.

    Suppose she’s got the equivalent of a password-protected memory? She can choose to talk about her past; but as soon as someone asks her a direct question about her past she temporarily forgets that past. She can therefore answer, truthfully, ‘I don’t know’.

    She is not speaking falsely, she has not failed to answer. At that moment, she truly does not know.

     

    #5441
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    The actress is from Blackpool, but at moments sounded very ‘London’ – and then wandered back to her native Lancs. We now know that Clara is from Lancashire; she lives close enough to Blackpool beach for her Mum to give her a fish and chip supper before taking her home to bed.

    I also noticed that Matt Smith sounded unbelievably ‘London’ at points. Echoes of Ten, I’d imagine. So, yeah, evidence of fracturing; he was speaking with Ten’s accent. Be interesting to see if he tries Nine’s Mancunian soon, or the Seventh’s Aberdeen/Dunoon mix.

     

    #5435
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Anyway, thinking along this ‘Warner as a Doctor’ angle before I trot off to sleep – his in-story role seemed to be to protect Clara. And if the sonic was picked up when Clara was rescued out of the water, then he hung onto it for a fair amount of story time, only handing it back to the Eleventh when he genuinely needed it.

    But as well as shooting at the Ice Warrior, his most important role seemed to be finding a way to get Clara over the ‘hump’ that came when she saw real dead people for the first time. The Eleventh leaves her to it; the Professor sits down and talks to her. Almost as if he knows that it is deeply, deeply important that Clara doesn’t lose her nerve. She must continue to travel with the Doctor.

    Or perhaps he’s just a nice old guy and Clara reminds him of an (unmentioned) granddaughter.

     

    #5423
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @ardaraith hungry like the wolf.

    She doesn’t need to sing the Martian song to remind the Ice Warrior of his daughter – it’s pretty clear that the Ice Warrior connects Clara with his daughter from the moment she comes to negotiate. Like his daughter, this is her ‘first taste of action’. The implication is that he sang the songs to keep his daughter’s spirits up (as the Professor later tries to do for Clara).

    So as soon as she starts singing at the end, she connects him with his young daughter, going into battle for the first time. Trying to be brave.

    Incidentally, the Professor’s joke about ‘I think he wants to speak to the organ grinder, not the monkey’, kind of connects to the ‘humans are apes’ comments often made by the Doctor.

     

    #5413
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    I think the thing that’s selling the idea of the Professor as the Doctor (either the First or a Future Doctor) – to me – is that he doesn’t talk about a granddaughter, or do a ‘you remind me of my granddaughter’ to Clara. He just behaves like her grandfather. It is never mentioned, yet utterly apparent in all their interactions.

    Clara underwater – she falls underwater, she sees the sonic in front of her. Then she regains consciousness, someone’s apparently pulled her out, put a uniform jacket on her so she’s warm. The Doctor and the Captain are arguing, but the jacket suggests we have several missing minutes. During the missing minutes, the Professor has arrived.

    During the first introduction of the Ice Warrior, the Professor is placed towards the back, in a position where he’s out of focus. I mean, seriously, they’ve put David Warner in a position where he’s out of focus? For almost the entire scene? The only reaction shot we see is when the Doctor is reeling off the titles, and the reaction could be ‘these are odd names’ or ‘ah, that’s who this guy is’.

    Then when the First Lieutenant is trying to persuade the Captain this is some evil Capitalist plot, it’s the Professor who bluntly says ‘it’s a big green man from Mars’. ‘They’re telling the truth’.

    So, yes, there is something going on with the Professor, I think.

    #5381
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Now, question is: does Clara genuinely ‘forget’ when she’s asked to reveal something of herself, or is this something she does deliberately?

    Last week she used the ‘forget’ excuse, this week she’s using the ‘time-traveller’ excuse, but the effect both times is that she refuses to reveal anything about herself. She won’t tell the Doctor where she’d like to go – she makes him choose. And she won’t tell the Professor what she likes doing, either.

    ‘Professor’ has been used by River Song, the Master and Ace to the Doctor.

    #5353
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Very much Classic Who in feel, wasn’t it?

    #5317
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    By the way, @craig, if you should ever feel inclined to adopt a website motto, I’m particularly fond of Rory’s comment from The God Complex.

    No, it’s amazing you’ve come up with a theory even more insane than what’s actually happening.

    Something like “We come up with theories even more insane than what’s actually happening.”

    😀

    #5313
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @thommck – that’s why I’m thinking ‘Time Lord interference’. We know (Waters of Mars) that Time Lords can change the time line of the ‘little people’. So a Time Lord would know enough to select a perfectly unimportant bloke from Bolton-le-Sands (not in the script, it’s where the actor’s from) who gets killed in an accident and then not have him killed.

    Pete Tyler’s death couldn’t be altered; but they ret-conned that later – he wasn’t ‘a perfectly unimportant bloke’. As we see in the alternate time-line, he was someone who would have had a major effect on the world – had he lived.

    So my guess is that they’ve used the same model and colour of car to hint that this was indeed a pivotal event. Either time has just been changed so that Dad can be Clara’s Dad – or something was trying to kill Dad before he could be Clara’s Dad.

    Or, as per my bonkers theory that Clara is adopted, he got dragged out of the path of the car because Clara really ought to have a Dad, and he was a good choice. It allowed Clara to be inserted into the time-line in a way that didn’t affect or change anyone else’s life; except in a good way.

    #5309
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    the powers decided to remove some days leading to riots by some parts of the population who believed that they had lost actual days from their life.

    Not Who-related – though it’d make a nice plot point for an episode – but while I know that myth, I was told that the population were really rioting on the perfectly sensible grounds that they still had to pay rent for those eleven lost days. I’d be a bit annoyed as well, if I had to pay a week and a half’s rent for nothing.

    The government shifted the date of the tax year to get their eleven days back, but did they move the quarter days so that the people paid three months rent for three actual months? Nope.

    #5259
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    I think the man standing next to Clara in the grave scene will turn out to be somebody. It would have been as easy to have her standing there by herself yet they chose to put him there

    Hi, @thedoctordude It’s her (older) dad, I think.

    I agree re: Clara’s mother. While they obviously couldn’t (eight years later) get exactly the same car that knocked Pete Tyler down, it’s the same type and colour of car. Which suggests her Dad was supposed to die in ‘freak leaf accident’ (the song is ‘Ghost Town’) – and her mother stopped that happening.

    Which yells ‘Time Lord interference’ to me. Possibly she may be chameleon arched, or possibly the Doctor will later bring Ellie Ravenwood to the right place and time to save her future husband.

    #5247
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @tiddler – which one at the end? Is it on the TARDIS when he takes the test flight, or does it first appear when he comes back two years later?

    #5225
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    she got the hots for a Timelord personality black hole called Andred. Bizarre.

    I believe Louise Jameson is on record as saying both she and the actor playing Andred found it equally bizarre, and were searching through the scripts for any hint that they might be falling that deeply in love.

    There weren’t any. So they resorted to lingering glances and longing looks in a desperate attempt to make it less of an ‘oh, by the way, Leela’s leaving and we need some kind of excuse, so…’

    #5201
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Clara’s Mum did tell her that if she (Clara) went to the moon, she’d still find her.

    However, if this is all the product of the Library, it’d suggest the Doctor’s body has been physically destroyed and he’s currently only existing in CAL’s virtual reality. Which would in turn suggest that the bonkers theory that he’s remembering all this is the right one.

    #5193
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @juniperfish

    I suspect that – even if characters speculate on-screen – all the viewer will know is that our Doctor has started a new cycle. That is, the original mystery of the character will be restored; after 50 years of learning everything about him except his name, we discover that this was only one life of many. Who is he really? We won’t know. All we know is what we’ve seen on screen.

    Though personally, I’d reckon the Master’s a better fit for the destroyer aspect of Shiva – he’s certainly the one we’ve seen dancing; the Doctor famously can’t.

    #5185
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Re: shared servers – we use Hostgator for our ‘trial’ site. That is, the one where we rebuild the databases and stress the system. For our ‘public’ site we use ICDhost.

    We’ve also had a huge number of ‘visitors’ in the past few weeks who seem to have been trying to find their way in past our defences; what I’ve currently done is block the IP addresses of the worst offenders (who seem to be Russian porn sites) using an .htaccess file.

    If it’s any help, I can e-mail you a list of those addresses.

    #5165
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @juniperfish – we can join hands and fins in our not being exactly a fan of Graves, then. 🙂 What I would say is that if Moffat’s including Easter, British pre-Christian mythology (Stonehenge?), and Egyptian, the signal is that he’s playing mix and match with the myths.

    Which, within the show’s mythology, is entirely reasonable. Within the show, these myths may have come from the story now playing out in front of us. Or, they may have come from the previous cycle. The Doctor is repeating a cycle he’s (she’s?) done many times before. Like Clara, he can only remember his own life. Like Clara, he appears to have been born normally, had a perfectly normal childhood, graduated from the Academy.

    Anyone spot that one of the photos of Clara was her celebrating at her degree ceremony? Incidentally, she appears to be a BA of the University of London, which explains why she’s now living there. But it’s strongly reminiscent of the Doctor being well known as a graduate of the Academy, with tutors and friends who knew him there.

    In-story, that may be one of the purposes of Clara – to emphasise that a person who repeats through time may re-start as a baby. And have memories of a perfectly normal life.

    #5159
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    It makes sense that Van Gogh popped the date they had to go to in the picture. I will say that they seem to have selected the 21st of January on the grounds that it’s a deeply unexciting date. The only thing I can find out about it is that it’s when Lenin died. 🙂

    #5143
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Haven’t a clue, mainly because I can’t actually read the numbers.  🙂  Or the words.

    The only readable number is XXI – twenty one. That was the series when Peter Davison regenerated into Colin Baker.

    #5131
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Anyone posted this 50th Anniversary fan video yet? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrSaTHsHNsc

    I thought it pretty good. 🙂

    #5129
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @thommck – not a stretch, but I think ‘Summer falls’ is a reference to the Doctor’s ‘Lord of Time’ title.

    Lord of Summer, Lord of Winter. Robert Graves first suggested it as a folkloric archetype (though me, I’d call it a fairytale rather than a genuine archetype) – the Oak King and the Holly King. They are two aspects of the same deity (listening, @juniperfish ?), one representing the light, the other the dark. They fight perpetually – shades of the Doctor and the Master.

    The reason I tend to doubt Graves’ interpretation is that Holly in folklore is generally seen as the light within the dark. It keeps away evil spirits, for example.

    But if that archetype is being used, Summer falls, Winter wins – but then Winter will give way to Summer; Summer is always reborn.

    Though admittedly, at the moment, it feels as if Summer is never going to bloody win 🙂

     

    #5123
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    just a drip of them every now and again

    Well, we’ll certainly have drips in Cold War!

    #5111
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @htpbdet – I keep saying they need to bring his wife in. Seriously, she can obviously keep him to the bloody budget 😀

    But yes, I think they are granting their flagship a ridiculously low budget.

    #5107
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Anyway, moving back to 50th Anniversary speculation – or possibly end of 7.2 speculation:

    Would anyone else find it funny if they referenced the notorious slight difficulty Romana had in saying her own full name by having the Doctor mispronounce his own name? I always vaguely imagined that Time Lord’s real names were some high-falutin’ High Gallifreyan things that everybody promptly changed to a nickname, or at least shortened.

    Probably just my sense of humour, but it might be funny if at a very tense moment it’s

    Doctor: My name is written in fire in the stars. It echoes across the aeons. My name is [insertnamehere] oh, damn, no, not quite, uh, [insertnamehere]

    River: Shall we go for best two out of three, dear?

     

    #5097
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @htpbdet

    I always read the budget thing as the producers trying to force the Beeb into giving them a realistic budget – and failing.

    And while, yes, you could blame Steven Moffat alone, he did have two other Executive Producers on-board at the time. And it was their job to ensure that writers and directors stayed within budget. That’s a producers’ job, not the Head Writer’s (even if the Head Writer does have an Executive Producer credit).

    The job of a Head Writer and director is to ask for as much as they possibly can – the job of the producer is to say ‘no, we can’t afford it.’

    #5027
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @Shazzbot

    Peter Jackson is on record as being a Who fan, but the connections between him and Steven Moffat go back to the film Tintin, which Peter Jackson was producing. Moffat was scriptwriter – but had to leave after his first draft because he was offered the Head Writer job on Doctor Who.

    Both Spielberg and Jackson were apparently very much  ‘yes, we can see you have to leave, don’t worry about the contract, Head Writer for Doctor Who is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’.

    Fast forward to Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and one Martin Freeman. Who got cast as Smaug and Bilbo Baggins, respectively in Jackson’s film ‘The Hobbit’. Peter Jackson scheduled a filming break for The Hobbit especially to enable Martin Freeman to keep his Sherlock obligations. That suggests he and Moffat got to know each other well enough during Tintin that they can pick up the phone to each other and talk about possible schedules.

    Sylvester McCoy is in The Hobbit, playing Radagast the Brown. The part has been massively expanded for him – he was also the second choice for ‘Bilbo’ in Lord of the Rings. So he’s worked with Peter Jackson, and Jackson obviously admires his acting skills.

    #5013
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    If they’re in it, it’s likeliest that they’ve already done their filming and have now been sent off on an exciting world tour to explain to everyone that they’re not in it, honest guv, these bloody producers, think they know everything…

    New Zealand occurred to me because – if you’re desperately trying to keep certain of the filming details a secret – there wouldn’t be as many reporters and fans chasing around. And there are connections between Moffat and Jackson, and indeed, Sylvester McCoy and Jackson.

    And it turns out Peter Jackson said back in 2012 that he’d love to direct an episode of Who. 🙂

    #4997
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    I think this is a massive smokescreen (these 3 doctors being in Aus right now).

    We certainly can’t tell anything from it – filming is taking place over April. They could have already filmed their spots. For that matter, a voice over or spot similar to Oswin’s first appearance could have been recorded in New Zealand – The Hobbit filming meant that there’s facilities set up for recording material that is being directed from London.

    And all three actors have gaps between conventions – though Sylvester McCoy’s gaps would mean he’d need to travel from Australia to Canada via Cardiff. He’s the one who looks least likely to be doing any future filming; he’s heavily booked with convention appearances.

    [Actually, it’d be really interesting to know when these three flew out to New Zealand. What with Martin Freeman having to juggle his Hobbit filming to fit in with Sherlock, Peter Jackson might know Steven Moffat quite well by now. It’d be hilarious if the 50th Anniversary Special has a ‘Second Unit Director’ credit for Peter Jackson.]

     

    #4985
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @jimthefish – it has occurred to me that if Ten does have advance knowledge, that would not only retcon his terror of regenerating, it would also retcon that definitely-a-bit-over-the-top ‘farewell tour’. It not only becomes the Doctor’s last chance to make sure his friends are okay, but it’s also his last chance to effectively say ‘this is how I want you to remember me’.

    Though given that dopplegangers are a bit of a theme, it wouldn’t surprise me if David Tennant ends up playing Ten when he was companionless and also 10.5 with Rose.

    #4931
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @jimthefish

    Ooh, that’s a wee bit of genius yourself.

    Because if he is, that would retrospectively explain why the Tenth Doctor was so terrified of his coming regeneration.

    #4917
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Yes, indeedy. At least one of them is.

     

    The eleven Doctors?

    #4913
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Anyway, spoiler space for the feed, blah, blah, even more blah.

    The Trafalgar Square pictures also show Clara standing in an open door. I’d point out that, yes, we have had the Eleventh Doctor hanging out of the TARDIS before, namely when it was crashing in The Eleventh Hour. So is the TARDIS taking off? Or crashing?

    Given that they probably didn’t want to accidentally squash their actors, even if the crane was taking the TARDIS up they could be crashing – just reverse the recording.

    But yeah – if the TARDIS is taking off, it’s running like hell from someone who appears to be the Eleventh Doctor. Either it’s under somebody else’s control (not Clara’s, she’s at the door) or all our theories about Matt Smith playing the villain for the 50th are right. He’s the dark doppleganger, or Omega in the shape of the Eleventh, or the GI embodied. 🙂

    Whatever this is – they filmed it in Trafalgar Square in the middle of a working day. They’re not exactly trying to keep it secret. This is a teaser scene – and quite possibly isn’t what it looks like.

    #4909
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Rather than the Doctor playing different incarnations in each episode, how about if the Doctor is splitting apart as we watch? They hinted at that in the ganger story; the ganger had problems bringing all the different selves together. Perhaps ‘the madman in a box’ is becoming increasingly unable to ‘hold himself together’.

    As you say, @juniperfish, that would explain both the acting inconsistencies, and @htpbdet‘s feeling that Smith is sometimes ‘acting’ rather than ‘being’ the part. It’s the Doctor who is acting the part of the Doctor, presenting a persona, a mask.

    The Isis/Osiris mythology is a good bet, given that Egyptian mythology is being referenced by the incredible number of pyramids popping up. Christian mythology (using the ‘sacred narrative’ sense of the word) is almost certainly being referenced as well. Broadcast dates have been altered to hit Easter – that’s a hint.

    Rebirth and redemption – the Doctor probably isn’t actively looking for rebirth, but he’s certainly looking for redemption and forgiveness. He’s said so.

     

    #4849
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @juniperfish, if there is one writer in the universe who can manage to work out how to get a “his penis is still missing!” joke into a programme largely aimed at children, that writer is Steven Moffat. 😀

    #4831
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    And the twitter site is suspecting it’s been blindsided and that other filming is going on elsewhere, with Tennant and Billie

    That would be quite funny, really.

    “We’ve got to do some filming. In public. In the middle of London.  How the heck are we going to hide it from the fans”

    “Well, I don’t know! What do you expect me to do? Hang the TARDIS off a crane in Trafalgar Square, so everyone goes and takes photos of that?”

    “Hmmm…..”

    #4793
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Um, folks – I’m probably one of the very few Guardian readers who can say this, but:

    Margaret Thatcher to me was both the national figure and  ‘a nice grown up who always remembered to ask me how I was doing at school’. 

    I’m avoiding the Guardian at the moment because I know exactly what the reaction will be over there, and I’d truly appreciate it if we could stay off the subject here.

    #4725
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Also though I love your idea for Clara being not Oswalds biological daughter, ghost town (and the car) suggest he was rescued from a leafy death in 1981, but Clara was born in 1989, so theres no way Ellie was pregnant before they met.

    Ah. I hadn’t twigged the date of ‘Ghost Town’. Yes, that’s an eight year gap. Though, even allowing for dating and engagement, an eight year gap before the birth of their one-and-only child is quite a gap. Which may suggest that the ‘adoption’ part of my theory is the right one.

    It’s just that generally, when you do these montages, directors/scriptwriters go for ‘Dad gazing at proud mum who’s just given birth’ and instead we got ‘Dad cradling baby in lounge while Mum sneaks a look’. Bit non-standard.

    #4719
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @juniperfish – yes, Oswin means ‘God’s friend’ and Oswald means ‘Divine ruler’. Both names are from 7th Century Northern English kings. So Clara is the friend of a god – and a god’s queen. Given that ‘Clara’ may be a tribute to Elizabeth Sladen, its meaning possibly isn’t so important – but it means ‘clear, bright, famous’. 

    So she’s a god’s queen – the connection in this episode is clearly to the little Queen of Years, the repository of her culture’s ‘soul’. The one who ends the story singing live, ‘wake up – and let the cloak of life cling to your bones’.

    Which reminds me; did we ever have that weird clip of a skeleton clutching a sonic screwdriver explained? Because when I was discovering the connection to Pathfinders in Space, the few reviews mention a skeleton, or a body found on the moon. Which turns out to be thousands of years old.

    #4715
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Being a webmaster is weird though.

    Tell me about it. I’ve spent the last few days fighting off spambots without even a sonic screwdriver. Then trying to work out why the spambots were driving the SQL usage up to truly insane levels.

    Does the sonic work against spambots? Because I might be about to nick it. 🙂

    #4677
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    I wouldn’t say Clara’s childhood is ‘fake’ in the sense that it didn’t happen – I think that’s why we saw the Doctor going back and visiting her childhood, to establish that she really, really had one. She has grown up on Earth, late 20th to early 21st century.

    But I think it may be ‘fake’ in the sense that there is something the Doctor didn’t pick up, which changes it completely. Either she’s the Oswald’s adopted daughter, or alternatively, Ellie Ravenswood was already pregnant when she rescued Mr Oswald. And that last might explain the rather odd pause at the graveside before he puts his arm around Clara; he’s her stepfather who’s lost his beloved wife, and she’s his wife’s daughter who’s lost her beloved mother. And possibly he also knows – something – about Clara.

    #4675
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    Oh, just a thought – more connected with Bells of St John, really. Or rather the prequel.

    Clara’s mother has warned her ‘don’t talk to strange men.’ Now this is a perfectly normal (nowadays) thing for a mother to say to a small daughter. But it’s repeated consistently throughout a very short prequel; by Clara to the Doctor, by the Doctor saying he’s so strange he’s extraordinary, and then by Clara’s mum at the end.

    So – normal motherly warning to small girl? Of the ‘don’t go off with any strangers’ type?

    Or – don’t talk to strange men. Because certain strange men are looking for you.

    #4669
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    I wonder if the Doctor’s inability to hand over the sonic in this week’s episode is a bit of a comment on how indispensable it’s  become. Likewise its incredibly blatant overuse in the rest of the episode.  And I wonder if part of the reset is going to be that we lose the Sonic.

    Or at least calm it down a bit – given the popularity of the toy version, I would suggest that it has become ‘Harry Potter’s wand’ for the Doctor. But it would be nice if he could only use it for its original door opening function.

    And to put up shelves, of course.

    What’s the difference between a laser screwdriver and a sonic screwdriver?

    With a laser screwdriver, the shelves are so scared, they put themselves up.

    (I’ll get me coat)

    #4653
    Bluesqueakpip @replies

    @Shazzbot – ‘David Tennant’ is the Equity name of David John McDonald; for reasons largely to do with making sure the right payment goes to the right actor, professional actors have to have a unique stage name.

    Unless David Tennant also changed his legal name to his stage name, Georgia Moffet is now Mrs McDonald.

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