[brotherjohn @replies]

Re-watched the Doctor’s Wife last night.

For what it’s worth, one of the things said by a Time Lord voice emanating from the distress signal cubes is:

“I don’t know where I am!”

So:

1) people trapped by the wi fi

2) Clara in the Doctor’s timestream, and

3) a Time Lord calling out in a distress signal.

Again, FWIW… my brain is hurting from all the bonkers theorizing.

[brotherjohn @replies]

Now, I need to make like a tree and leave… my brain is hurting again.  Time for sleep.

Tomorrow morning, I will probably drop this leaf nonsense and lie firmly in the “Hurt Doctor is Clara’s Father” camp… or something.

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar – Yeah, you’re right.  There are probably many more compelling reasons he’s going to be 8.5 instead of something earlier.  Not nice to play with people’s religion. 🙂

Plus, there’s always been this gap that addressing would bring some closure to for all fans.  There needs to be more connection between the old and the new.  And we never saw 8 regen to 9.  And the Time War is just sitting there in a big black box.  This could address all of that quite nicely.

But… the leaf!  the leaf! (channelling Woody Allen in Love and Death — “The wheat!  the wheat!”)

Don’t know that the leaf needs to be anything in particular… Moffatt could just make something up as a plot device.  It’s really the date, so tied to both 8–>9 and Clara (who we now know has played a kind of important role in the Doctor’s life… maybe even caused whatever happened with 8.5 to happen?).

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar –

Well, it’s really only the date of his regeneration if the writers make it so.  But it certainly fits.  The day after he meets Rose, he sees his face for the first time.  We must assume it was a VERY recent regen.  Only the writers can decide to make it definitively the day before, offscreen.  I think they did so — story going forward — by using that date as Clara’s mother’s death in this story arc.

He could easily have gone a day, or part of a day, not having seen his face No mirrors in the Tardis?  He’s not that superficial?  He’s had a helluva day (a little Time War, the Hurt Doctor spinning off of him)?

Sure, them making the date that of Clara’s mother’s death could be a red herring by Moffatt, or just an easter egg.

But the fact that there has now been the same talk about what this leaf represents time-wise bookending Clara’s travel’s with the Doctor to date — it represents the past, and infinite possible futures — that makes it too significant for me.

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar – Oh, I think all cracks can be relevant.  So the universe re-booted!  Happens all the time.  Rory remembers, and Amy, and the Doctor.  It happened, the cracks were real, and cracks (by definition) cross universes.

But that was really just a fleeting thought. I’m now hooked on the leaf’s significance.

Rather, I don’t know that the leaf itself is significant as an object.  But what it represents certainly is.

The past and the futures represented by this leaf  (now brought up in key plot moments twice) swing upon the very same date of The Doctor’s regeneration into Nine.  I don’t think that’s random, or Moffatt having us on.  I think it’s a surefire indicator that the regeneration between 8 and 9 will play a key role in the 50th.

I was beginning to drift into the Pre-Hartnell camp.  But this brings me back home.  Hurt is either 8.5 or the real 9.

[brotherjohn @replies]

But back to the leaf.

When Clara gives up the leaf in TRoA, right as she’s saying “days that should have been and never were…”, we see her mom’s grave, with the date of death being 5th March 2005.  As has been pointed out before, this was the date that Rose met Nine.

More importantly, this is likely the day that Nine regenerated from Eight. (he comments about his new face the day after they meet)

This leaf, which contains all of this past and infinite future relevance, to both the Doctor and Clara, which is given to the Grandfather God to satiate him, which is given (back?) to Clara to bring her back from what seems to be pending oblivion in the Doctor’s timeline… this leaf represents one moment, one day.

This leaf’s significance, the past and all infinite futures it represents, pivots on one day in all of time.

The day that Eight regenerates into Nine.

 

Discuss.

[brotherjohn @replies]

Re-watching the finale, and a couple of thoughts.

I don’t know where I am!

The line everyone said when they were uploaded into the wi fi in TBoSM was repeated by Clara at least twice in the Doctor’s timestream.  Has anyone thought about the possible significance of this?

Now:  the leaf.  The Doctor gives it to her.  It contains “everything you were or will be”.  When last we saw the leaf, she gave it to the Grandfather God in TRoA. It contained “an infinity, all the days that never came”.

Maybe he’s giving the leaf…     wait for it…                                       BACK to her?

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar –

Hurt Doc is in the Doc’s timestream – everywhere and everywhen the Doc has been / is going to be. Shouldn’t cracks be appearing all over if that was the case?

But haven’t they been?  In Amelia’s bedroom, throughout that arc, in the Tardis when it was salvaged, probably other times…

[brotherjohn @replies]

@Shazzbot – Yeah, go ahead and flip things again so my brain can hurt even MORE! 🙂 (it already feels like a pancake)

[brotherjohn @replies]

I don’t have access to my DVR right now, but if I’m not mistaken, isn’t the Whisper rhyme:

“The man who lies will lie no more,

When THIS MAN lies at Trenzalore.”?? (not “when he”)

Maybe I’m wrong.  Anyone??

If it’s “he”, it strongly implies it’s the same man in both lines.

If it’s “this man”, it strongly implies they’re different men.

If the latter, my interpretation is this:

The man who lies will lie no more = The Hurt Doctor (the “man who lies” as in sleeps) will be “awakened/released/set free” to cause whatever havoc he will cause.

When this man lies at Trenzalore = When the Doctor tells a lie at Trenzalore.

This would be a deviation from everyone thinking he needed to tell the truth/say his name to open the Tardis.  Perhaps what causes the problem is his lying, as he has arguably already done to Clara in his timestream (That IS The Doctor, he just can’t face it.).

Some of you have already posed the possibilities of his lying here, and throughout his life, about the true nature of who he is.

I don’t know; perhaps I’m wrong about the language.

But even if it’s as @phileasf quotes above (good theorizing BTW), I think Interpretation 3 is close to mine above.  I see now that some of his interpretations assume 2 different “men”…  but not Interp 3.  However, if Interp 3 is true and someone else lies to free the “laying (Hurt) Doctor”, that could just as easily be “The Doctor” (Smith).

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar –

Agreed – I think the Trenzalore prophecy has happened. Silence did fall – all the stars in the Universe went out. Pretty quiet after that I think.

Yes, while we agree the prophecy has happened, I view the meaning of silence here as the opposite. As more properly translated according to Dorian, “Silence MUST fall when the question is asked”.  To me, that means “no one says a peep!”

The Silence was tasked with defending “the silence” (making sure no one answers the question).  For, if anyone did, all hell would break loose.   And now, it will…

The Doctor’s birthname was the key to the Doctor’s lock keeping Hurt Doctor under wraps.

 

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar –

The van Gogh painting is open to interpretation – like most good art. My initial impression was as yours is, but now I am not so sure. I’ve not looked at it for a while. 1, 2 or 3 Tardii, colliding or exploding, I just hope there is a reasonable explanation. Although – untill we know –  it is grist to the bonkers theory mill.

Now we all probably wish Van Gogh was a Realist and not an Impressionist! 🙂

[brotherjohn @replies]

@craig –

When I saw the episode my first thought was that this had nothing to do with it, as it was not at the fall of the Eleventh, it was set after it. I think it may have been @bluesqueakpip(sorry if I’m wrong) that said “at the fall of the Eleventh” could be a location i.e. the now massive TARDIS, but I don’t think that’s correct as it is followed up by “when…” which seems to point to a time of a fall.

I  don’t think the prophecy, as written here, says either way whether “at the fall of the eleventh” means a place or a time. Depends on where you place the breaks.  “Eats, shoots, and leaves” vs “Eats shoots and leaves”…

On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh when no living creature...

… implies it’s a time.

On the fields of Trenzalore at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature…

…implies a place.

On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature…

… with breaks on either side, implies it could be either.  It’s a standalone statement, one of three descriptors of the time and place.

On the fields of Trenzalore…  is pretty literal.

…at the fall of the Eleventh…  Could be a more narrowing down a location on the fields of Trenzalore, or specifying a time.  I think the “fall” of the Doctor’s Tardis IS the location where the actual fall (in the tardis) took place, and not a red herring.  I think the red herring was the initial prophecy, with everyone thought it would mean his death.  I don’t think they’re going to follow red herring with red herring.

…when no living creature… is clearly a time.

Being as this is a prophecy, I think it’s satisfied by the situation we saw.  It sounds awfully poetic to be literal.  I think the doctor was was the one who couldn’t fail to answer, and he would have spoken to save his friends, but River did so first.

In short, I think the prophecy has happened.

The Silence said “silence MUST fall when the question is asked”.  As Dorium interpreted it, the Silence did NOT want the Doctor to ever show up at Trenzalore.  They wanted him him to be silent.  They wanted no one to ever be able to answer the question.

Answering the question opened the tomb, which led to three people jumping into the (future, dead) Doctor’s timestream, which led to exposure of the Hurt Doctor.

The Hurt Doctor is now exposed, and at least possibly can escape.  This is why the name was so important.

The 50th will be the fight to prevent him from doing so and/or causing whatever havoc he is supposed to cause.

[brotherjohn @replies]

@whohar –

Maybe the van Gogh painting isn’t two Tardii colliding, maybe it’s one Tardis splitting into two.

I was just looking at the painting last night because people were saying there were 3 Tardis’s in it.  I don’t think there are 3 or even 2.  I think it’s simply 1 exploding.  A panel from the side is breaking off to the right, and the lower part of the door with the sign is breaking off to the left.

[brotherjohn @replies]

@Shazzbot –

Also – it’s bothering me that just before stepping into the Doctor’s timestream in TNotD, Clara says ‘well whaddaya know, I’m Souffle Girl after all.’ She hasn’t been fragmented yet – how does she know she calls herself that in AotD?

I think (correct me if I’m wrong) the doctor explicitly CALLS her “souffle girl” to her face.  It may be when he confronts her on the cliff edge outside the TARDIS control room, in JttCotT, but she has “remembered” events from theat deleted day when she says it.

Also, as several have expressed concern about…

Fragmented Clara changed something in the past so the Doctor now barely recalls the GI. And that appears to be a not-good thing.

I don’t think he’s so in the dark about who the GI is when he reads the card.  To me, he kind of slyly says something like “rings a bell”.  I think he knows.  If he had sorta kinda remembered it, he would have looked puzzled and tried to place the name, for at lest a second or two.  But he just glances at it, says “rings a bell”, and moves on.  I think that’s when he realizes “Oh, so that’s who you are!” but just doesn’t make a big deal about it.  He certainly doesn’t look puzzled; he looks more dismissive.  Besides, I think this was the “origin” of the GI, and he was realizing where he was in the timeline of the GI; and that’s also why GI didn’t know him yet.  What good does it do to say to the GI: “Oh, I know you!  I’m going to meet again you in your future! “?  (“You look so YOUNG!” 🙂 )

 

[brotherjohn @replies]

@lula –

Continuity error?  Timey-wimey?   I’m not nit-picking, but Susan coining the acronym is canon, so…

Well, if we start looking for continuity errors like that, we’d probably find thousands.  Admittedly, that’s kind of a big scene.  But it IS a 50-year-old show, with a LOT of canon.

But I’ll play:  maybe she coined the term before leaving Gallifrey, and it “caught on”?

[brotherjohn @replies]

@ardaraith –

Oh!! What IF, when they finally step outside that timestream, everything has changed!  What if the Time War didn’t end due to the brutality of Hurt Doctor? What if The Doctor ends it, with healing?  

Oh!!! Oh!!! best idea for the 50th yet!  We get to SEE the Time War!

Whether all played out within “the Doctor’s timeline”, whatever that is, or after they leave because something has gone horribly wrong.  BUT… it’s not all good yet.  The Doctor has to set things straight, and we get to see him win it… “the Doctor way” this time.

The Time War would seem to be something they’d want more than 1.5 hrs to depict, but it sure would be a good setting for the 50th!  Then again, they could also use the 50th as a jumping off point for it.

[brotherjohn @replies]

Or a completely bonkers theory, which we can call (for reasons about to be clear), “THE Bonkers Theory”.

The Doctor is crazy, and JH is only in his head.  He hasn’t ever really dealt with the horrible things he did in the Time War, and has compartmentalized the evil inside him into JH.

The 50th will take place completely inside the timeline world we saw at the end… inside the Doctor’s “head”, if you will.  It will be a struggle to decide if the Doctor’s evil side will win out and “escape” (and control him forever).

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud will guest star.

(The last part was totally a joke.  The first part?  Only half-joking.)

[brotherjohn @replies]

@Shazzbot – He’s a comic; very dark, ultra-liberal.  Facilitator bit is on his CD “Shut Up You F*%#&ing Baby!” Don’t think he would mind you using it 🙂

He also plays Tobias on Arrested Development, in addition to numerous movie roles.

[brotherjohn @replies]

I’ll take this further (although again, I still tend to lay in the 8.5 camp):

The first Doctor, the Hurt Doctor, the one who made the promise…  broke the promise.  The TIME LORDS imposed a penalty.  They locked up Hurt Doctor for crimes against the Universe — maybe for all eternity — and “The Doctor” (Hartnell) ESCAPED.  Maybe his regenerations had been “confiscated” by the Time Lords, but he somehow regenerated into another, separate persona, and reclaimed the “Doctor” title.

And he’s been running ever since.

I’m beginning to convince myself.

[brotherjohn @replies]

@timeloop – River faded b/c the Doctor didn’t use Carbonite Online Backup?

@Shazzbot – Do you listen to David Cross?  (he has this bit… “I’m the ‘facilitator’!  I ‘facilitate’!”)

[brotherjohn @replies]

A thought that has just occurred to me.

First, I tend to lay pretty firmly in the camp that says JH will be between 8 & 9, and have done something worse than we have even been told in the Time War (worse than genocide, I guess?).

However…

Most people who also subscribe to this theory have dismissed the possibility of him being pre-Hartnell because he “broke the promise”, so therefore the promise must have been made, so therefore he can’t be pre-Hartnell.

But that is incorrect.

We know that *insert Gallifreyan name here* chose the name “The Doctor” pre-Hartnell, yes.  But JH could be One, the original Doctor who chose the name.  He could have “broken the promise” during his first generation.  This is equally as possible as him breaking the promise in any other generation after.  And whatever “he” did to “himself” (TimeLock, banishment, etc) after breaking the promise could have been done by any of Doctors 1 through 11 — or 2 through 12 here (unless you only ascribe numbers to “Doctors”, in which case numbers do not equal generations because the first one was made to give up the name).

I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here.  But I think this shoots the whole “He can’t be pre-Hartnell b/c he broke the promise, and the promise had to be made” argument out of the water.

[brotherjohn @replies]

@Shazzbot – I don’t know, I tend to lean towards that they just didn’t want to repeatedly splice her into old sequences as with Hartnell.  I think that scene alone made the point.  The rest was all kind of dream-like anyway; it wasn’t a complete re-telling of all her incarnations.  It was just showing her present at key moments.

And with the leaf thing and all, who’s to say her simple presence in the timeline couldn’t have altered events such that the Doctor would have been saved in every instance, even if she didn’t actively do something every time? “When a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world it can cause a hurricane in another part of the world.”

[brotherjohn @replies]

@ardaraith – Kudos to you!  You beat me to the punch about River being an echo of Clara!  I’m with you all the way!

@juniperfish – Re their “frosty exchange” someone mentioned above as evidence they’re not the same, River doesn’t necessarily put 2 and 2 together right away.  She doesn’t necessarily have to remember anything except realizing near the very end what happened; although I like the idea that she’s sort of a “superboosted” echo via the TARDIS conception.

@Shazzbot – Why would river try to prevent her own existence?  Well, in the very same case, why would the Doctor try to prevent his own destruction, and the destruction of the entire universe, by telling her not to do it?  Because he’s the Doctor!  He refuses to kill, or cause to die.  He always puts saving a life first.  He tells his companions not to kill themselves all the time, damn the consequences!

@scaryb – Vastra didn’t call River to the conference call, she called river’s (CAL) echo.  Besides being a way to bring River back to say goodbye, this also his has the neat side effect of allowing Clara and River to coexist and interact without any (additional) timey-wimey complications.  And I don’t think River’s too independent to be an echo of Clara.  Victorian and Dalek Claras were pretty darned independent; and they weren’t Time Lords!

@badwulf – If River is an echo of Clara, she is still a separate character who has been born, lived a full life (and what a life!), and died.  These aren’t “echos” like the computer echos stored in a database (which, ironically, she does end up as).  these are full-fledged, separate beings.  Them telling ClaraPrime they’ll just be “echos” is just them urging her not to do it because she’ll die, and they haven’t even been born yet.

[brotherjohn @replies]

Okay, first time post, and you read it here first:

Clara is not River.  River is Clara.

A lot of theories have posited that Clara was going to somehow end up being River — through CAL, or the TARDIS, or something.  But I don’t think anyone has ever posited this:  Clara came first.

River was born as one of the “millions of echoes” of Clara.

But we know River’s generations, and she was never Clara, right?  She would have had to look like Clara at least once, right?

She did.  When she was born.  When she was an infant (and yes, I’ve even compared photos of Baby Melody with tonight’s images of Baby Clara; they look pretty similar.  I mean… they’re BABIES).

River — Time Lord-River, TARDIS-River, Rory and Amy’s River — is but one of the scattered echos of Clara sent across the Doctor’s timeline to save him.  And save him she does, and more than once, in big ways.  And she dies in the end saving him.

So she doesn’t say “RYCBAR” when she dies in the Library.  She’s got a lot deeper history with the Doctor than the usual Clara by then, and who’s to say every incarnation of Clara remembers that in the end?  Who’s to say every incarnation has to have the name Clara, or Oswin, or Oswald?  For that matter, who’s to say the words — or this entire plotline — were even dreamt of by the show back then?

Yep, River is Clara.  One of the many Claras.  Thus the Doctor’s attraction to her.  Thus the undeniable physical attraction and flirting between them (which the Doctor finds uncomfortable, but slips into anyway; see “She Said, He Said”).  And it makes it not so weird after all.  Not that he’ll develop a thing with Clara after he saves her in the 50th.  She isn’t ACTUALLY River; River is just an offshoot of her.  But it does explain the connection.

This is the last of the “spoilers” River alludes to when she fades, besides letting the Dr. know Clara’s still alive.  As someone (Lulu, I think?)  guessed above, there was more to that spoiler than just revealing that Clara lived.  It was that there was a deeper connection between Clara and River…  because they are versions of the same person.

And (again, Lulu asked) why did Moffatt choose to place one of Clara’s incarnations in the Library?  Not because she’s going to save River, too.  But because she was already THERE… AS River.  They depicted her as “Oswin” (toolbelt and all) only because they’re showing us one of the many Clara’s saving the Doctor.  But they don’t want to give it completely away.  Anyway, Dalek Oswin certainly wouldn’t pop into the Library to save the doctor.

And Clara?  21st Century Clara.  THIS Clara?  She IS just an ordinary girl.  One who did an extraordinary thing.

Yep, you read it here first.  River is Clara.

River was always Clara.  Not the other way around.

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