[bunface @replies]

can’t imagine a showrunner’s ego will let that happen.

@whohar

On behalf of RTD…

Ouch!

😂

 

[bunface @replies]

Oh, I do keep wanting to say that I find the death of death thing intensely maddening. Not only because, as others have said, it’s nonsensical, but beyond that I find any cultural inability to accept death offensive and troubling. So it alarms me that RTD seems to be pushing the idea that we can all live forever, even if he means through imagination and art and memory.

Even then, everything’s a beach in the end, even memories. That was clear in the woman in a tent scene. I guess she ensured that memory/life persisted by giving the Doctor the Spoon of Memory, but I still have a problem with death being seen as a Bad Thing that needs reversing per se. Ideologically, it bothers me.

 

 

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@whohar

I suppose I’m still reading this as a series that discusses (if that’s not too generous a term!) the interplay of ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’, or ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ across every episode. Except that I think there wasn’t time to bring it together, to expand it enough, to realise a full villain, so we ended up with a botched oh that will do for now, quick get Sutekh out of the way because he’s just a bit of throwback nostalgia no more important than the myriad other references to Who and other TV/film/stories, including the ‘cultural appropriation’ of Egyptian mythology. Yes, the whole point being that all our lovely memories create the everlasting life that will defeat death…

And no doubt the Enemies of the Arts in the current cultural war.

You may be right that that’s as far as it goes. That basically the point has been made in this episode that these days fantasy and reality are more clearly the same thing (arguably always have been, but I don’t really want to get into a postmodern showdown) and that the ‘kids’ don’t worry about it but just accept that we are our memories and fantasies, and that if we cosplay (physically or mentally) as the Doctor(s) we are the Doctor(s).

But with the Flood coda there’s obviously some more to say on the idea that at the same moment as we’re all being ordinary we’re simultaneously living in our imaginations, our bubbles, and the unsatisfactory lack of resolution to do with Ruby here could be nicely realised in a Christmas special, where Christmas is all about ‘magic’ (especially in Disneyland) and the extraordinary and ordinary/domestic coming together. Far from undermining RTD, that would reinforce the whole series and this sort of challenge is right up Moffat’s street.

Let’s face it, it takes him to sort out and refine RTD’s chaos. He’s cleverer, and a fantasy/reality/AI/VR theme needs clever.

And it can still be heartwarming and Christmassy! Double win.

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The comments have been excellent, and I feel like there’s a collective attempt to come to terms with this episode! Which means it has some value?

I’m actually feeling so upset/angry I couldn’t speak yesterday. Thanks to everyone for eloquently expressing what I’m feeling! Even now I can’t really think. But a few people puzzled about the pointing at the sign leading to the naming leads me to think (with others) that:

Ruby’s REAL REAL VR FAERY mum or otherworld version of human mum (or Other? – not necessarily Mum? – ) cast a spell by pointing at the sign.

Ruby’s human Mum may have left her at the Church, but the pointing figure isn’t her, that’s an overlaid version. Humum may have been there at a different time altogether, or if the same night  she’s wearing a hoodie like all teens do…

So basically the 73 yards world coexists in the same video tape, and the humum and the faery ‘other mum’ appear at once. Which accounts for the same but different feelings of the Time Window scenes.

This all suggests:

Ruby will be back, probably to save the Doctor from witchy poo Flood at Christmas (which would be very Moffat, making her a mysterious girl after all). Maybe she’s both human and faery after all, which extends or reaffirms the theme of ordinary/extraordinary depending on what you see and what bubble you exist in.

Also, very interested in your thoughts @thane16 about concise writing and, basically, the way we read or are being asked to put stories together. Hopefully I can get my head together to discuss further!

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I think the spoon is a reference to the Fourth Doctor’s quote from The Creature from the Pit:

@juniperfish

Also to Robot of Sherwood?

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@juniperfish

Why could Ruby physically make it snow through the power of memory?

Why were her memories able to physically manifest a “Memory TARDIS” (with the help of the Time Window and then the Memory TARDIS’s own memories of herself)? It was a bit of a “death trap” as the Doctor said, sure, but it could actually fly?

I thought the Doctor said something about Memory being Life??

So the spark of life, the re-emergence of the life force that is memory (the compost?!) powered up the Tardis that was a seedbed of refs and memories, with Ruby’s memories acting as a super fertiliser?

And therefore a physical manifestation can be born?

Or something…

 

 

 

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Oh, btw, was it @blenkinsopthebrave who suggested Sutekh would be defeated by the Doctor taping over Ruby’s video with an episode of EastEnders?!

That is pretty much what happened in the end. So someone got something right!👍

Also, happy that Ruby is gone. Her departure moved me not a jot. I never got a sense of her so it was like ‘go on, get out of the TARDIS!’

But…

Would like to ask… Is it me/some of us? Are there any Americans here to shed light on whether things are playing better for the intended new audience(s) in the US? Is my disappointment to do with my age and culture? Not saying this was good, but am I missing the things that other audiences now look for? Younger audiences, used to other references?

This whole series (bar three eps) reminds me of The Greatest Showman, which I expected things from that just weren’t there. Other people loved that film, and the surface theme of diversity and self-affirmation, plus a tune or two, was enough to make it a huge hit.

Am I looking for a Shakespearean levels of characterisation in the Doctor still, where all anyone else wants is a pretty face (that again here), a honey-hug, and a slick song and dance routine?

 

 

 

[bunface @replies]

Well done everyone for being 2000 million times more imaginative than RTD (at least in his current iteration – did he just get old and sentimental, or what?)

Things that most hurt:

Death plus death = life. Is that like two wrongs making a right?! Uh-uh.

Gatwa still so half-powered. I know it can’t stay the same forever but compared with the immediate impact and then ongoing huge development performance-wise – reaching Shakespearean levels – of Eccleston through to Capaldi, he’s still so absent and limited. Yes, a lot of it IS the writing, but his one big speech to Sutekh here was empty. We’ve all been going on about him crying, but rewatching The Giggle I was instantly struck (for example) by Tennant’s* tears, so wracked and wrought.

He was superb in Rogue (not written by RTD, noted). Maybe he needs to join the cast of Bridgerton, or we need much more humour, playfulness and wit, and more juicy antagonists for him to bounce off

Didn’t cry one bit, despite the ending’s best efforts. Seriously, all that ordinary is only a pov is great but as with Dot and Bubble I felt bludgeoned. It was sub-Spielberg for syrup and cliche. All the women standing together. It feels like an idea from Lockdown, when the nurses were ‘angels’. Come on.

Is it Disney?? I need someone to blame, and the evil corporation is always my preferred choice. But I fear.

Let’s hope we are right and it’s all AI/a magic trick real or imagined, still to be explored in a stronger season 2.

Meanwhile, the best bit was the Flood ending. Which was tacked on, desperately hoping to make people return after this fiasco. So here she is white-coated, a Snow Queen for the Christmas episode (more derivation?). Just hoping it doesn’t get even more panto. If the Doctor’s wearing thigh boots and whiskers and carrying an orange knapsack, don’t be surprised!

Oh well, happily back to iPlayer and Hartnell. Thank God I have all of classic to get through. It should take me to Christmas and I can ride through the next new EP on a wave of nostalgia. Which is what this season has largely done.

Pleeaassse now can we have genuine newness and something to make us feel alive?

*I seem to have mentioned DT a lot. He isn’t my fave, actually, but I think is part of a golden age, after all.

 

 

 

 

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@thane16  @ps1l0v3y0u

Et al

So… Daleks. Someone said that ages ago.

 

 

 

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@thane16

Will a recorder do? You mean, play an A?

Intrigued. But slightly worried that you’re actually the Trickster and that if I do this I’ll somehow end up stuck in a time window being followed (at a 73 yard distance) by rats with several pairs of red eyes…

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@spacedmunkee @ @ps1l0v3y0u

The rest of the Pantheon??? I doubt if all is at it seems. Sutekh may be a front for someone else. The whole thing may be virtual with, on the one hand, the multiplicity of baddies representing significant people in the Doctor’s past. How else is Susan Triad everywhere?

If so I doubt if this will be resolved in one 45 minute episode.

There’s definitely a next level villain, because Sutekh is a puppet and many else is AI trickery.

The Triad Programme may even be an evil entity in itself?

And no way is everything resolvable in one episode. Plus why be so throwaway with such a great, rich stock of bad?

As I’ve said, I bet on the Toymaker – waaaay too good (character and actor) not to milk, and the Giggle is supposedly the ‘start’ according to RTD. With a side of Maestro, because yeah, yeah, yeah. As lots of people have demonstrated – music.

No doubt too a third on this occasion, to make a triad… My money is still on Mrs Flood, who for me has always been deeply suss. And she’s Anita Dobson.

 

 

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@thane16
You just made me buy a book! Don’t need much encouragement there, but the description sounds very much up my street. Actually yesterday on my walk I stopped to look and found that it led me into listening to the  many levels and textures of sounds that were going on: several different birds (song and movements), water in a stream, various leaves in the breeze, distant traffic in various directions, many varieties of fly and bee, the immediate silence and the vibration of my own eardrums! The hum, exactly.

Fantastic. 

Yes, you’re right, we all know music, where knowing isn’t only intellectual.

You make me want to rewatch everything now just to listen. I think the music in DW is brilliant, even when MG gets a bit carried away! I expect it’ll play a huge role as usual in provoking floods of tears tomorrow!

Watching the Hartnells, it’s been fun and fascinating to witness the development and growing importance of incidental music and sound generally, including the loosening up of everyone’s voice acting. It matches the rapid emergence of the Doctor’s character, the mythos, the expansion of the whoniverse etc. The use of a jaunty modern sixties jazz intro (more like something in The Avengers) in a Dalek series was just the kind of quirky needed!

Why Who is so great is because, as I think you suggest, it moves in mysterious ways, and is essentially musical in the way it tunes us in on so many levels we can never quite grasp it all.

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@fanoftombaker

Absolutely love your last paragraph.

I know nothing about music theory but I draw, whilst listening to classical radio all day; you make perfect sense.

Fantastic backatcha (in 9s voice?!)

 

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Did you really think it that scary?  

@mudlark

Ooohh, no, not really! It’s just that my brain doesn’t work that way so I’m agog!

But thanks for the context. Knowing you are/were an archaeologist (?) makes your approach clear for me. And less ‘scary’ 🙃

I love that you see it from such a different angle, that you read with a different method to me. I have a master’s in film studies, with a particular fascination with audiences/reception/ identification and  also star studies. Which explains some of my angles, no doubt!

I’m also autistic and find social interactions challenging, and struggle to understand where people are coming from. So being able to contextualise your approach is super helpful! 🙂

One thing I do know is the porridge feeling. This forum is helping me too.

 

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Music, left end right eyes, suns and moons…

Mrs Flood theories (not mine, but..)

If Ruby is the Sun, then why not

Moon River, wider than a mile…

👹

 

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@thane16 @scaryb

Psychic manifestation, I’d say absolutely. In the trailer for this ep STriad was all “they’re using my face”,  which must be a line in part 2 seeing as it wasn’t in The Legend.

All part of the AI theme: face hacking, deepfakery, identity theft.

Which leads me into more Doctor musing!

Interested in the orange connection unearthed by @mudlark‘s (frankly scarily) forensic examination of the Ruby Road scenes, and wonder how this connects the Doctor to ‘Sutekh’* and it’s identity-thieving ways?

This orange duffle-coated Doctor who blunders into faery rings, even though the Doctor is hypersensitive to such things?

The Doctor who weeps, like the TARDIS who groans?

I’m just not buying the bi regeneration thing as a permanent, somehow… But thinking rather that the Doctor we’ve been seeing isn’t always the original/real. Which opens up the bad Doctor possibility again.

Puppet/AI Doctor! Gone viral. That’s a scary thing.

Funnily enough, I’m currently working my way through the Classics in order as they appear on iPlayer, and have just hit the ep in The Chase where the Daleks make a robot Hartnell! Which is just as scary. Funny how it all comes round…

*Sutekh is the AI programme, right? Like people are saying, a virus?

Oh, and on Ruby being the eye of Horus… And therefore the Sun (good stuff on the name connection!) and therefore the Doctor’s Right Eye (him being Horus, Sutekh’s adversary)… He’s gonna lose her in the fight? Lose the Sun as well as the Moon.

RTD has warned it’s going to be heartbreaking…

Who else can’t wait?! 👹

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@ps1l0v3y0u

Remember, when 15 first appeared the other guy got the trousers…

Gatwa told Graham Norton that was Tennant getting to costume first! Leg insecurity/envy.

I don’t think 15 is a coward per se, just a bit half-cooked as it were, not quite the full enchilada. Hardly surprising.

Referring rather to the noble act by Nine of refusing to blow up the Daleks as it would take out Earth too, and him calling himself a coward in response to the inevitable taunts. I could see 15 take a similar decision, not least because I don’t think things are gonna be fully resolved after  a short season and the current villains will be back.

Sunakh as Stooky Bill… Will he end up giggling in a corner till his head drops off?

 

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I first typed Sunakh instead of Sutekh. How’s that for a Freudian slip :-O

@mudlark

Haha. Only unless you agree with my puppet theory you’re surely attributing a power where there is none!

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@ps1l0v3y0u

Exactly, that’s my point – it looks just like the standard Whomonster, so something we’re all used to and will believe in, even against our better judgement, against our own eyes. But maybe this time, we shouldn’t.

Yes, expecting the OTT, as in big Toymaker puppethouse everything falls apart showtrick. And didn’t RTD advise watching the Nine finales in prep – but maybe the Doctor being ‘a coward’ might be more relevant there?

[bunface @replies]

So does Susan T, with her puppet like mask

Not to mention the Theresa May Dancing Queen impression. Now there was a puppet pm if ever there was one!

 

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@juniperfish

Not the first thing to disappear this series… I blame the Pantheon!

(Which would be really spooky!)

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The jukebox from The End of the World (second NuWho episode where the Doctor takes Rose to Platform One to see the end of Earth):

Same! Good work @juniperfish. The end of the world (which world??!) is nigh! Again…

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@miapatrick

Oh yes, me too, I love the dialogue with the audience and the fans especially. I think there’s been a lot of it and now (see my puppet post) I believe it’s actually crucial to the whole ending!

We’ll see! I think now I’m gonna stop overthinking and just wait for Saturday, like in the old days! 🙃

[bunface @replies]

Appreciating everyone’s the ideas on music, btw, and realising how much of the music I miss, being a visual person.

I’m intrigued by the way the jukebox has had plenty of mentions, though, but doesn’t perform? Or did I miss it?

In fact, the whole, very blank TARDIS interior now feels like it might be a construct of sorts? With a Maestro touch maybe?

Come with me and you be in a world of pure imagination 

Oh, and I would say those awful Beatles were definitely puppets too!

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Curve Ball:

so many interesting ideas about Egyptian mythology everyone’s running with, complex alt world theories, refs to previous episodes. Again, it’s as though someone fed a lot of Dr Who into a computer and AI tech went into overloading overdrive!

BUT

Did anyone else get a bit of a jolt when Sutekh finally appeared, and was it just me that guffawed slightly? Now I know we all accept the slight naffness of the monsters/costumes with great affection, so I instantly told myself it’s all in the tradition, even after all the high tech wizardry of the time window, but what if Sutekh is a puppet?

And the TARDIS there is an illusion?

And the hooded woman is a puppet, one with no face to see? She points like a puppet. So does Susan T, with her puppet like mask. And Mrs Flood makes a strange, puppet-like face after delivering her lines.

RTD said in DWM that there would be puppets, and also that this all starts with The Giggle.

Basically, the Toymaker got his hands on some high end tech now, but can’t let go of the simple stuff, because people blind to that is a great joke.

Has 73 yards anything to do with magicianship?

 

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@thane16

think RTD may have suggested that 14’s run has effectively ended -as Tom’s Doctor is a curator, so David’s Doctor is pottering in Donna’s garden…However like Moffat and the Doctor, I’m sure RTD fibs too. He could indeed return but it would be well hidden from audiences until a proper reveal.

Oh well, I had fun imagining it. And who’s also to say Tennant can let go? Right now he’s probably on zoom going ‘there’s still a week to reshoot! I’ve got this great idea about me being absorbed into Ncuti, like a reverse polarity regenerational timey wimey thing…’

(Hi David…)

 

Now, did Gatwa’s Doctor ask Rose “how is your UNCLE!?” Is he Uncle/Doctor or was there a different gent in the house? Or did I miss something ?

Yeah, I think he meant the old guy! Missed that, so it’s covered. 😣

Thanks for the setting straight! (*Lying*)

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A dead Tardis is really such a heartbreaking sight, like lost hope. Although in this episode, I wasn’t really sure whether the Tardis was really dead, it felt like a dog lying on their master’s grave waiting for him to return.

Aww, @vickymallard, that’s both lovely and awful! But so true…

A ghostly TARDIS is right, though, for what’s coming…

[bunface @replies]

Maybe the Doctor has a circular rather than a linear relationship to time, and at some point a future incarnation of his regenerates into the Hartnell Doctor and the cycle goes round again.

@juniperfish

Well, I think if RTD hasn’t thought of that, he jolly well should.

Only it’s a bit like a sourdough starter, where it’s essentially the same but with all the accrued time it can’t help producing a slightly different-tasting loaf.

I love David Bradley as One, that would be great. Fun to think of new actors playing old Doctors!

Tennant will still be 10/14/20(?) though… He’s got a pact in blood with RTD.

[bunface @replies]

Surely, The Doctor is The Trickster? 

👍

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@juniperfish

Agree with blenkinsop, a cracking post! 💫Totally won over by your good/bad divergence theory. Everything has been doubled, tripled multiplied… It has to be.

Incidentally, it’s Ruby who walks back into the room immediately after Kate’s line “A chrysalis doesn’t know it’s a butterfly. A phoenix is just a bird until it burns” and the butterfly mention ties in with our previous discussions about the importance of the butterfly effect this season.

Yes, as someone else said, it also raises Ruby’s supernaturalness, our previous changeling/faery theory. The prehistoric butterfly Ruby is the true creature?

I still think the Phoenix ref. might relate to the Doctor, though, with a bearing on the so far controversial writing of his new iteration, whether we see that as a positive move away from hero/god/saviour status towards a more modest cog in a community of diverse human and non-human collaborators – which is what we got here, with the Doctor having the final but (as others point out above) fatal say in how things turn out – or towards a reinvention that combines the vulnerable and emotionally expressive Gatwa with what has gone before.

There’s been a lot of stress on the Doctor being the same person, deep down, and even here he tells Ruby he changes but is still the same. So I’m still thinking that we are going to see some kind of evolution, the completion of the regeneration that never was, as it were…

Now I don’t read up on stuff because I have to keep a clear head, so I’ve no idea whether anything’s been said on the matter, but is it possible that 14 is waiting in the wings, all oncoming storm and still got it energy? Maybe it’s me being bothered that he’s sitting around all untidy only for Disney to put him to work in a spin off, but I’d be quite happy to see him come back in part two, in order to literally join forces with his other half and in the process create a whole other Doctor who can do it all – the heroics and the crying – with equal confidence.

I also see it because the room in this ep – and the hallmark of the show since always? – is about diversity, and for Gatwa to absorb Old White Guy Tennant would complete the embodiment of that project, meaning the Doctor was male/female, black/white, young/old and if he loses his sight (literally or metaphorically, as has been mentioned) able-bodied/disabled. Not to mention alien/honorary or literally human. If the show is to be truly inclusive, it has to include the old white guy figure who has been put out to pasture. He can’t be forgotten about as we move into the new woke era. Real love means absorbing and acknowledging/using our history, even if it now feels outdated.

So then I wonder, if that happened, would Gatwa’s costume finally settle? Maybe a nice fluorescent orange unisex boiler suit?! Yes!!!

OR…

could The Twist be that actually Gatwa is leaving, to be replaced by a mixed race actor??? 😱

Oh gosh, who would that be?

 

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So struck by how like a bunch of Whovians discussing all the potential plot twists and turns in a chatroom this ep is! Hehe.

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@thane16

Just rewatching… What about Kate testing DNA and saying ‘Just because Susan Triad is nice, doesn’t mean she can’t change. A chrysalis doesn’t know it’s a butterfly. A phoenix is just a bird until it burns.’

Is that a hint… As you said, baaaad Doctor?

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@thane16

I agree that the demonstration of civility and warmth is a definite part of the RTD project – and I’d say both Tennant and Eccleston showed some of the same, in ways that were more of their time just as Gatwa’s style belongs to Gen Z sensibilities. But I also think RTD obviously hasn’t lost his fascination with the moral dilemmas raised by the Doctor’s function and nature, and the question about his godlike abilities and inclinations, despite the humanlike person ability of every one of his iterations.

On the one hand, in this ep there’s all that civility and fun and smoochy ‘confidence’ and on the other hand there’s punching the wall and wide-eyed not knowing what to do. What I see is the projection of (mock) confidence through learned ‘human’ social graces as a way of disguising true feelings. Surely Dot and Bubble was discussing this, as was Rogue? Lots of people performing social interactions and relationships but actually barely covering the fact that something more complicated is going on?

Capaldi (and Smith) and maybe Moffat, full stop, stripped that away, which I found great fun and very real. Which has nothing to do with not being a good person, a kind and caring person (the main thrust of Capaldi, despite the lack of ‘manners’), but maybe raises those questions you ask about what makes us human, and kind/caring – is it words, actions, both?

Essentially I think it’s a question that’s central to Gatwa’s iteration, because so much precious time has been spent on it throughout the series. Partly to annoy the anti-wokists, as you suggest, partly to baffle and irritate the neurodiverse, but mainly to show a Doctor trying on a new costume, newly open to discovery. Clothes making the man, I think manners and fun and gentleness may remain, but not as a disguise, not as a costume, which (to me) is how they feel to have been up til now.

There’s still the darkness and guilt, as was made explicit here… With all the intros taking place in a very corporate environment (Unit), like a VIP had arrived to meet and greet the workers, I can’t help thinking ‘the fastest sharks have the smoothest skin’.

[bunface @replies]

Appreciating the suggestions that the Doctor is about to come into his ‘true’ character, having been just that bit toooo human? All the polite introductions at UNIT, the hugs and how are yous… For a while I was jeez, get on with it! But now I’m hoping that and the over-vocalised hysteria and questioning is all part of the Doctor that might get burned away by the encounter with Sutekh.

Didn’t know Sutekh. Baker was my Doctor but my memory from then isn’t perfect! However, had a quick Wiki and got into reading about the Egyptian god Set/Sutekh (god of chaos, deserts, foreigners) and his eighty year fight with (good) brother/nephew Horus…

Aside from the nice detail about Set possibly having a child called Maga (very RTD), there’s this:

Another important episode concerns mutilations that the combatants inflict upon each other: Horus injures or steals Set’s testicles and Set damages or tears out one, or occasionally both, of Horus’s eyes. Sometimes the eye is torn into pieces. Set’s mutilation signifies a loss of virility and strength. The removal of Horus’s eye is even more important, for this stolen eye of Horus represents a wide variety of concepts in Egyptian religion. One of Horus’s major roles is as a sky deity, and for this reason his right eye was said to be the sun and his left eye the moon. The theft or destruction of the eye of Horus is therefore equated with the darkening of the moon in the course of its cycle of phases, or during eclipses. Horus may take back his lost Eye, or other deities, including Isis, Thoth, and Hathor, may retrieve or heal it for him.

So if the Doctor ‘lost the moon’, that makes him a Horus figure, and suggests he is from the same place as Sutekh, and a God to boot.

Oh, and also that the Doctor might lose an eye! Temporarily… Which makes sense of all that comments on his good looks. Gatwa will rock an eye patch, for sure!

Just sayin’!

That aside, kinda enjoyed the ep, once past the intros. Thought the time window scene would have been better with less shouting/people and more atmosphere, but hey.

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@cathannabel

So rather than the Doctor turning the tears on, for whatever purpose (cf @bunface), could they be an involuntary response to something he knows but doesn’t know he knows (presumably relating to the Toymaker and his machinations)? 

Oh yes, I like that. Makes me want to review all the crying to see whether he looks like he doesn’t know why he’s crying!

It makes perfect sense, though, that he could be aware of, but not fully comprehending, what’s going on precisely. A bit of the old making up a plan but not knowing what it is until it’s already happening kinda thing! That’s one of the qualities I love in this programme: the rollercoaster feeling that no one (programme makers or characters) is quite in control of it all, but having faith that we’ll get there in the end!

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I am forever a fan of Alan Cumming’s version of Cabaret.

@juniperfish

Have only ever seen the film, would love to see a stage version, and yes, Cumming and also Redmayne… and anyone really!

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is the Games’ Master feeding on the Doctor’s tears?

@juniperfish

Oh blimey not sure but I’m now thinking that the Doctor may be turning them on.

Really convinced he’s performing. What about that line about 600 years being a good long time for the shapeshifters to ‘suffer’ once he’d exacted revenge? Shades of the mercilessness we saw with Tennant?

I don’t think that what we’re seeing is what we’re going to get. Maybe that’s the twist at the end of this series. Ooh.

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@juniperfish

Is the Doctor unaware of the Games Master? Or has he caught on, and he’s already playing (but can’t let on to Ruby, in case she’s been placed with him as part of it)?

Love your ‘knows what the Doctor likes’ line – exactly! The refs and reiterations are coming thick and fast, like AI has watched Doctor Who and is writing a new story, with all the ingredients.

One thing that makes me wonder whether you’re right, despite how genuine the tears seem, is that when he was setting up the trap, the Doctor set it for a max of six, ostensibly because it couldn’t carry more, but with Rogue jumping in, six was the number that ended up there.

Did the Doctor suspect Rogue was one of the party, even if he’s a different species perhaps?

Watching over, Rogue’s expressions and actions are way more obviously devious, so did the Doctor suss him? It doesn’t look that way from the Doctor’s reactions, unless he’s aware of the game and is always playing along, knowing he’s being watched – by the Susan Twist character(s) as you say. (Still think she’s a spy rather than the main villain though).

This episode ramped up the masquerade* theme brilliantly, so I’m persuaded you’re on to something about Ruby being left out of it by the Doctor because he suspects her too.

* Noticed second time that Varma’s bird form entered the room to announce the wedding saying ‘wilkommen, bienvenue’ like the Emcee in Cabaret. A film all about masquerade and queerness in the face of a very dark threat.

 

 

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Loved this! Fluffy and romping, my arse! Why does anything that looks like romance gets called silly?!

Outraged anti-gays and traditionalists (whatever that means) aside, I would think there are an awful lot of Whovians who are simultaneously charmed and hurt by the pretty savage satire on cosplay and wannabeism that was finally sent down a triangular garbage shute!

And yet… Beyond the queering of the Doctor, what a funny, playful and heady queering of the audience, suckering us into Bridgerton/Austen land, where Ruby was the natural focus for romance, but of course we knew it would be the Doctor (deliciously done, fantastic performance from both). And as soon as we see Rogue… here we go, loving/hating the Byronic gayness of it, the frisson. Sooo naughty… Let’s all dress up like the Doctor, we can play at being gay this time! Such a thrill! It makes the feathers positively bristle! And we even, apparently, get the guy, and yet know it’s going to go deliciously wrong because this is the Doctor.

The invitation is there to inhabit all the over-familiar stereotypes, from period romances to the Kylie-lovers. (100% brilliant impression by Gatwa in that bit, btw!)

What’s even more complex though is the fact that yes, the Doctor cries. That he’s going to get his hearts broken (again), but that he also adds that ring to the others, to all the other losses/abandonments? With that simple, oh-so-romantic gesture the whole thing plunges into the kind of dark emotional ambivalence we’ve seen before, where the Doctor is never just innocent.

It all suggests a tragic continuity with what we’ve seen, especially from RTD, as the newly heart-on-his-sleeve Doctor, the gay guy just having fun with his BFF, dancing and singing and teasing and ‘doing what he does’ once again appears so much bigger on the inside, his vulnerability about to get twisted again by some dreadful Boss.

I come away anticipating heartbreak and confusion in the finale(s), but so much more excited now about where it can all go. Can’t wait!

Other things:

Yes, games, games, games continue to abound.

Rogue from X-Men drains the life out of folk too.

Indira Varma is always great value.

I did think the kiss was awkwardly placed, but it had to happen plot-wise so…

 

 

 

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@dr-pepper-bean

Really? Why is it a white saviour then? Where does your definition come from? Any definition I see refers to white colonialism etc etc.

Isn’t it the point on this episode that yes the Doctor tries to save the group, but without judging them, and that can’t happen because he doesn’t fit the saviour mould as saviours can only be white?

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@juniperfish

Yessssss – and therefore only “real” in the “mavity” universe, and so when the Doctor has to restore the timeline, and undo what he unleashed with the salt line at the edge of the universe, Ruby will have to vanish, like the changeling she is – back into faerieland…

Hmmm, liking it. Which suggests that nothing will be resolved until Millie G is leaving… Well, was already thinking there isn’t time to wrap up the mavity issue in only a few more episodes!

Perhaps some part of him already knows this, and that’s why he cries in every episode – his body is trying to warn him about the loss to come

Gorgeous.

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@fozzyb
@miapatrick

Yes, you’re right, and the race issue bound up with the Doctor as saviour is also made explicit in this episode because he actually offers to save them all/save the world, but as he’s not a white saviour he isn’t eligible.

All we can say is hooray that the dwindling group that only puts their faith in white saviours is doomed!

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@fozzyb

I get you, I’m still finding this series uneven, but maybe our expectations are always sky high anyway? No series has been 100% brilliant, has it?

See above for a quote I posted from RTD, though, about wanting to move away from the Doctor as a superhero (which is what the Tennant years explored and the Smith ones continued). It feels like he’s more interested now/this time in exploring the Doctor as part of a bigger whole, in a continuation of the Chibnall/Whittaker emphasis on team/community. The world has moved on.

I suppose for those of us fascinated by the Doctor as an entity, or those of us desperately hoping there’s someone out there who’s going to magically save the world (for real), it’s a hard adjustment.

I guess the answer is to look for some other kind of way of saving the world, and (for me) to look beyond the one character to the bigger picture.

Important stuff!

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@scaryb

(Interesting that a number of comments in t’other place (tho there’s a lot of positive reaction too) say that they don’t have a problem with Ncuti being black but they don’t like the scripts/don’t think he’s playing it right/doesn’t feel like the Doctor for them etc etc – micro-aggressions in action).

I only read this forum as it’s relatively quiet and very well adjusted and I can’t cope with too much noise, so I don’t know exactly how people elsewhere are expressing themselves, but I have a niggle myself about Gatwa, which certainly isn’t to do with him but I think is somehow to do with his performance. Plus maybe the direction, writing of his character, and even his costuming?

I keep trying to put my finger on it, but essentially it comes down to my feeling that he’s too human and not alien enough, which is how I felt about Whittaker too. There’s too much in there of the now, maybe, whereas I suppose I’m looking for more timelessness?

There was a piece in The Guardian lately rating all the doctors, and the comment about Capaldi was that he was great but it felt sometimes that he was a great actor having the time of his life playing the Doctor. I loved Capaldi, but I understand what they meant, and I kind of feel a bit like that about Gatwa (yet). I see greatness, but then something in his delivery jumps me out of belief in him as the character. He has such a watchable charisma, I like him enormously, but maybe he gets too big for the moment sometimes.

It could be a case of my not identifying too, but I would insist that has to do with his easy, open, weepy humanity, not his physical body. Being autistic, my favourite Doctors have been Smith and Capaldi, both of whom were recognisably alien when it came to relating! So partly I’m struggling with how ‘normal’ Gatwa’s Doctor seems to be written.

I say ‘seems’ in the hope that there’s a lot of illusioning going on and he’s going to get a bit weirder!

 

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@juniperfish

I love the Yeats connection, and you know I’m into the whole faery context, but whether the Doctor’s tears are significant beyond a new kind of iteration, not sure. Of course nothing anyone explains can be taken as the be all and end all, but Wikipedia has this:

I was thinking about what a terrible world it is now, and how many stresses of mental health there are in young people. I wanted a hero who wasn’t closed, who wasn’t all stiff upper lip. And [who] wasn’t swaggering or butch, either. When children are feeling scared of the future, and when they’re on TikTok laughing hilariously with their friends, the life of a young person, I think, is bigger and madder and wilder and richer than it was when I was young, where we just sat there and went to school.

Davies wanted a “more emotional Doctor” who’s open about their feelings and “carries those emotions on the surface more visibly instead of hiding them away.” He described this iteration as “a hero for a young audience”; contrasting the Doctor to traditional superheroes who “punch through walls”, but instead he’s the “cheeky kid at the back of the classroom”.    (…)

Davies wanted this Doctor to have an “energetic” and “youthful” relationship with Ruby Sunday, his new companion; a pairing that’s more Gen Z-inspired.

RTD certainly seems keen to address and engage Gen Z in this ep, as well as tripping up the Xers and Boomers.

I’d like to think you’re right about there being more to it though!

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I wonder if this is another episode filmed whilst Ncuti was filming Sex Education as most of the Doc appearances to camera rather than physical.

Honestly, there’s just no commitment any more!

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Any piece of art that makes you think is good, so hat tip to RTD.

And as you point out, he makes you feel it here, like a punch in the tum, which is ever more effective.

And the funny thing is that people will be complaining about this ep on their socials, completely oblivious…

But yeah, do people feel stuff anymore? Unless, like Lindy, they feel it as a personal threat to their ability to control everything in their tiny world of one?

And I think you’re right, Chibnall did just shout the obvious, ticking off all the naughties one by one, whereas RTD is all about diversity per se, not single issues, so the whole project is rich and complex and knotty and more deliciously messy*. Maybe I didn’t like the single-minded focus of this ep, highlighting particular issues, but agreed it was still better and less boring by far than Chibnall!

*Tho not as messy as Moffat. Oh God I miss Moffat!

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Why create the spiky slug monsters?

@whohar I guess for cover, as a diversion? Otherwise people would be bubbling down asap and the idea would be to maintain control.

And it was only at that point that I realised all of Lindy’s friends and socials were white. And then it all made sense. Brilliant.

I don’t know if that says something about me though…

It probably says something about the whole Who audience, which is what the reboot is now addressing overall, that bubble we (and a lot of others) are living in. Feels good to have our bubble burst, right?!

And it’s a warning about where AI and smedia is taking society, with a slap to the no doubt awful abuse Gatwa is receiving? (Don’t use smedia myself but imagine).

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Just watched it again live and have to add that the look Lindsay gives the Doctor at the end felt meaningful.

Reminded me of Mrs Flood’s knowing/dark looks, the kind Missy would give. That kind of thing…

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Late to say but having talked about Ruby being a changeling I thought again about the butterfly stepping episode – oh-so-throwaway as it seemed – where in that alternative life she looked much more like a fairy than anything.

It would be good to see a getaway from the young woman companions, I agree, so maybe the fact Ruby Sunday (I mean, the name!) is so very reminiscent of Rose/Amy/Clara is because she’s full on alien, even in the world of Who. That is, she isn’t just alien, she’s a supernatural/fairy tale/Disney character.

Which makes me wonder, is she even real to the Doctor, only he doesn’t know it yet?

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