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24 August 2014 at 08:11 #30030
Just to add as well that I thought this was an extremely moving and well constructed reflection the whole nature of regeneration. Regeneration stories always go on about the disorientation that the Doctor experiences, but this one really delved into the identity issues that it raises. I thought it was superb, and I’m really looking forward to more of Capaldi.
24 August 2014 at 08:09 #30029As @timeloop says: ‘Telephone number and advert, both being pointed out to us very deliberately. Clearly this is what they want us to theorize about.’ And I agree with @barnable that I’m so glad we’re going to learn about the woman in the shop. For me that was one of the last hanging threads from the previous series, and am very glad they’re not just going to sweep it up as a coincidence.
So, if this is what they want us to theorise about, let’s start with some bonkers theorising. If we suppose that ‘Missy’ at the end is indeed the woman in the shop, who is Missy? And where on earth is she? Surely it can’t really be Heaven (at least in a Biblical sense). But then she clearly has immense power in order to bring the android to this space and revive him. And to be able to watch the Doctor’s progress from afar. What do we know about her? Well, in this episode we learned that she is an egomaniac, needy game-player (from the conversation in the restaurant). And that in some sense she considers the Doctor to be her boyfriend. I’ll go back to an earlier bonkers theory, where Clara looked in the History of the Time War during Journey to the Centre of the Tardis, and spotted someone who she recognised (“So that’s who…”). Who on earth could Clara possibly recognise in that book: perhaps the woman in the shop. But then that would link Missy to the Time War.
So, maybe Missy is the Moment, the conscience of the most dangerous weapon in the world. The Bad Wolf. I think that might fit with all the above.
13 August 2014 at 13:13 #29720@brewski I think the concept of ‘Weimar Daleks’ is brilliant. I’d be up for Kantian Kaleds too.
11 August 2014 at 21:13 #29699@brewski By a strange coincidence, I had been watching The Daleks recently, for much the same reason, and was struck by the very same thought. Were the original Kaleds these beautiful philosophers and artists, as the Thals say they were?
But then I think of Genesis of the Daleks, and I suppose that maybe this was something the Thals were misremembering, or it had become a false myth. Because surely Genesis suggests that the original Kaleds were basically, well, Nazis. I know the Nazis had a philosophy, and were into aesthetics, but surely no-one would remember them, or the Kaleds, as a beautiful and artistic people.
On the other hand, maybe there’s a story to the Thal-Kaled war that happens before Genesis of the Daleks?
28 January 2014 at 09:23 #24801Oops: needed a quick crash course in posting a picture. Here goes again.
And:
28 January 2014 at 09:21 #24800Looks so good. I’m sure others have seen this already, but someone has put these two together. (Got this from io9.)
Along with this:
I’m so excited about the idea of a Pertwee/Cpaldi mash-up.
19 December 2013 at 07:49 #23109@arbutus I agree: the woman in the shop is one plot-point that I’d really like to see tied up. I have three pet theories here, in ascending order of preference: i) Sally Sparrow; ii) the time lady from the End of Time (who seems mysteriously able to project herself out of the Time Lock/Stasis); and iii) The Moment (as Rose/Bad Wolf). I do hope we get an answer to this in the Special.
28 November 2013 at 10:05 #21829A couple of thoughts on the connection between The Moment and the TARDIS, and on the links between The Moment, Rose and the Bad Wolf. They made we want to revisit the end of Parting of the Ways (sniff!).
Rose became the Bad Wolf when she looked into the heart of the TARDIS, so maybe The Moment is what is found there, i.e. the Moment/Bad Wolf is the Time Vortex. As @Shazzbot says, ‘Gallifreyan tech, eh?’
A few lines of dialogue from Parting of the Ways stood out to me:
The Doctor: ‘You’ve got the Time Vortex inside your heard. You’re going to burn.’
Rose (Bad Wolf): ‘I want you safe, my Doctor.’
And then a few lines later:
Rose (Bad Wolf): ‘Everything comes to dust. Everything dies. The Time War ends.’
The parallels to Day of the Doctor seem to run deep. The Time Vortex burns things (but it also brings life). The Doctor is saved (by the Bad Wolf!). And this — Parting of the Ways — is the moment (excuse me) when the time war ends. The Time Vortex is the great galaxy eater, where everything comes to dust, and, maybe, silence will fall?
27 November 2013 at 14:35 #21773With apologies if this point has been made before, but the (as it turns out, partial) painting title ‘Gallifrey falls’ brought home to me just how many ‘falls’ there are knocking around: Gallifrey falls, Summer falls, Silence will Fall, Fall of the Eleventh, maybe also the red waterfall (are the references to ‘Falls’ indications that we are in one of two time-streams?). Maybe it is a Sherlockian in-joke (Reichenbach)? It seems rather odd to have all these things tagged in similar ways, but I don’t see what the connection is, if any.
25 November 2013 at 11:37 #21509Let me make a guess: The Moment/Rose/Bad Wolf is the woman in the shop who gave Clara the Doctor’s phone number. It was when looking at the History of the Time War that Clara first saw Rose as The Interface, recognised her and remarked: ‘so that’s who…’ If that’s right, then The Moment/Bad Wolf is the key agency that wants Clara to save the Doctor (or possibly to save Gallifrey). Why does The Moment want that? I wonder if the conscience of a weapon of mass destruction — a galaxy eater — is wholly benign? Maybe it is, but maybe the Bad Wolf is playing a long game? Perhaps The Moment is what causes silence to fall, and needs the Doctor to be at the right place at the right time to enable that to happen.
I can’t shake off a feeling of parallels between The Moment and the Pandorica, or even the Tardis. It’s all about a madman with his boxes.
25 November 2013 at 08:28 #21484And by the way, I loved the touch with the male teacher at Coal Hill School, which seems perfect symmetry for a re-boot under Capaldi. I rather suspect we may be seeing him again.
25 November 2013 at 08:25 #21483@bluesqueakpip ‘They might still be stuck in the time stream’.
I agree with this. If I understood it correctly, Clara went into the Doctor’s time stream to save him from the Great Intelligence’s mischief. Which makes me wonder, was the Hurt Doctor’s ‘no more’ moment (so to speak) somehow contrived by the GI, and Clara was doing what she does, which is to correct the GI’s malign influence. The GI influenced the Doctor to give up, which is something he never does (I vaguely remember a River Song quote to that effect, but can’t recall the episode – still, it’s obviously a Moffatian notion that one of the things that makes the Doctor who he is is that he never gives up). So might that mean that somehow the GI is still around, and was behind some of what we saw in this episode?
23 November 2013 at 21:50 #21287So much to love in this. Clara truly is the girl who saved the Doctor. But I have to admit I’m a bit confused about where this leaves The End of Time!
23 August 2013 at 06:58 #16552@Shazzbot Oops! Sorry about that, and thanks for fixing it. I’ll stick to the comment box from now on.
@tardisblue and @janetteb Thanks. I hadn’t thought about Paris. That would be nice to add to the list!
23 August 2013 at 00:02 #16522I wanted to ask if anyone had a favourite story from a visit to a Doctor Who location.
Last weekend I went for walk that took in East Hagbourne (the village that was used for The Android Invasion with Tom Baker). It was just part of an ordinary walk in the country, but the prospect of getting to the special East Hagbourne made it so much more exciting. And it’s nice to report that, when I got there, the local pub was still ‘The Fleur de Lys’, and had some good pictures of Tom Baker with the villagers during the shoot. The key site — the war memorial — was of course the same as it was in the episode. And the Church, which you don’t see in the episode, was lovely. The village is beautiful.
Altogether, it was a great spot to visit, and added something fun to a walk. Since then I’ve learned that there is an excellent Doctor Who location website. Has anyone else enjoyed visting a location, and are there any that they would recommend?
20 May 2013 at 13:37 #10001I would add that the point about Clara’s dad really bugs me. After all the attention that Pete & Jackie Tyler, Martha’s family, Wilf and Brian have had in the show, Clara’s dad just gets a quick serial-flashbacks love story (with the Doctor poking around in his past in a rather sinister way), and then in Bells of St John he’s dismissed in a throwaway line about how he’s angry with the government, and made to sound like a bit of a nuisance. Then the Doctor whisks this widower’s (I presume) only daughter off on dangerous, indeed life-threatening, adventures without a second thought. Maybe I have sometimes found the treatment of family relationships in the new series a bit cloying — I don’t remember it ever really bothering the Doctor in the old series much — but I can’t watch Father’s Day without crying. I have to admit, I feel very sad for Clara’s dad.
20 May 2013 at 13:18 #9999
I’m guessing that the question of ‘who is Clara?’ has now, to all intents and purposes, been wrapped up: she chose to step into the Doctor’s space-time journey and so has been fragmented all through his past lives, with time re-written in the process. By now the Doctor must have met her dozens of times, always hovering on the edge of his adventures like a guardian angel. (Shouldn’t he start recognising her at some point, or is that all just timey-wimey?) Nevertheless, there are some Clara back-story things that still puzzle/bother me. Maybe some of these don’t matter any more, or have been cleared up and I’ve missed the answers, but I’d really like to know.Who originally gave her the Doctor’s phone number?
Why did she keep the DELSA envelope in 101 Places to See, and why didn’t she record her age in that book when she was 16 and 23?
Are we going to see Clara’s dad again? She doesn’t seem to care about him very much; nor does the Doctor. But he’s been left all alone now, with his wife dead and his child fragmented through space & time. That’s totally at odds with the (new series) Doctor’s normal attitude towards his companions’ parents. And if Clara was born to save the Doctor, does that say anything about who her parents were?
Who did Clara recognise in The History of the Time War, and how did she seem to know him/her without fully knowing his/her identity (‘so that’s who…’)? And what was the tiny thing where she saw the Doctor’s name?
How did the Doctor get Clara’s leaf back?
19 May 2013 at 08:03 #9718Wonderful: it amazes me how Moffat is able to draw on and enrich the history of the show; it is such a perfect set-up for the 5oth.
I like the point from @badwulf that maybe the Hurt Doctor is an aged version of McCann. It has been said here that the Doctor has already been up-front about his role in ending the Time War by effectively destroying, as he thought, two entire species. So what is the ‘secret’ to Hurt’s role in the Time War? Maybe Hurt Doctor started the Time War, then regenerated and Doctor Nine had to clean up the mess.
Maybe Hurt Doctor is the Peter Cushing Doctor (and so not really the Doctor)? 😉
One thing that puzzles me: I caught glimpses of all the Doctors, apart from the Fifth. All there was was a brief mention of Androzani, but no actual sign of Davison. I probably just need to watch it again. Looking forward to it!
12 May 2013 at 18:49 #8760An episode with so many fascinating parts. I thought that Smith was superb. Seeing him be the evil Cyber-Planner provided super contrast to his suddenly more innocent and less-dark actual Doctor; he captures the young-old, brilliant innocent dynamic so well. Almost Davison-esque in places. Lots and lots to think about.
1) I loved the idea that the Doctor’s plan to erase himself from history leaves a gap, which one could use to reconstruct at least the idea of who the Doctor was/must have been. It reminded me of the beginning of John le Carre’s,The Honourable Schoolboy, when Smiley uses the activities of the mole to learn about the enquiries that the Soviets wanted to suppress, and so deduces what their weakness are. Someone else could work back through time, find the holes, and build a picture of the Doctor. I really like @lula ‘s idea that maybe someone is making up the story of the Doctor, out of the gaps he has left by trying to erase himself from history? Is it a friend (Clara?) or an enemy (the GI?).
2) So Angie has a phone that the TARDIS made for her. I’m guessing she therefore has the TARDIS phone number – maybe, in a timey-wimey way, she’s the person who gave it to Clara. And she also gave Clara RYCBAR, ensuring that the Doctor knew he person he as talking to in Bells was indeed Clara. Perhaps Angie will turn out to be a major plot mover.
3) Porridge was an emperor tired of the burdens of office, so he ran away from them. That could be an echo of the Doctor’s own running away from Gallifrey. Was he running away not out of boredom, or because of some dark secret, but from responsibilities he didn’t want and couldn’t face. After all, isn’t that the end of The Five Doctors?
4) Apart from the images of his previous regenerations, the doctor explicitly says he has regenerated ten times, and he again echoes previous incarnations, with ‘fantastic’ (9) and ‘allons-y’ (10), just like ‘brave heart Clara’ last week. I wonder if the next time trailer when he says he is crossing his own timeline suggests that the place he can never go is his own past life (or lives). Are the fanged, but otherwise faceless, creatures horrific representations of earlier incarnations of the Doctor himself?
5) This episode was all so Jekyll and Hyde, and we’ve had so much doubling up of Doctors and dark Doctors – as, of course, frequently noted here by eg. @juniperfish, that the idea of mirrors and parallel timelines looks so much more convincing now.
2 May 2013 at 14:52 #7602@jamesunderscore I think that’s brilliant. Is there a connection between Clara and Reinette?
2 May 2013 at 14:23 #7601If it’s right that Clara is some kind of manifestation of a computer programme or data, then in this episode we had Clara, who thinks she is just an ordinary girl, but really is an artificial intelligence; and Tricky, who thought he was an artificial intelligence, but was really just an ordinary boy.
1 May 2013 at 20:00 #7464@htpbdet Thanks for the helpful list of clues: when did the Doctor say he was breaking in the TARDIS?
30 April 2013 at 20:21 #7304@timeloop. You may well be spot on that the TARDIS re-directed Clara’s call to an ordinary help-center to the TARDIS. It certainly makes sense; goodness knows if it’s right!
My point is that the crucial event in this part of the series is the simple fact that Clara phoned the Doctor, and that’s how they got together. The title of the first episode, after all, directs our attention to that moment. If Clara doesn’t call, the Doctor is stuck sitting in the thirteenth century, morosely staring at a painting, more or less without a hope of finding her in space/time. My bet is that, when we know who made that phone call happen, we’ll know who or what Clara is, and how she matters to the Doctor. It might have been a friend; it might have been an enemy; it might have been a more neutral agency, such as the TARDIS herself or an agent of the Silence. We just don’t know, but that is how this all got started.It is so important that I’m supposing we may get some clues to it through the series; if we don’t, we don’t have much of a chance. And, as far as I can tell, we have had nothing at all about it in the previous three episodes. Incidentally, nor has the DELSA point from The Bells of Saint John been picked up. I am still intrigued by that envelope, and there were wonderful theories about it on the forum for that episode (which, I have to admit, I have only just read, and felt very small when I realised how hard you work on this!).
Anyway, all I am really suggesting is that Clara’s ‘so that’s who…’ moment in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS could be a clue to this puzzle. It might not be, and if it’s not, then all my speculations turn to dust. But If it is, what can we learn from it? Well, the key point is that whoever gave her the number was somehow also connected to the Time War, because that’s the book where Clara seems to learn the real identity of someone she had previously seen as nothing more than a woman in a shop.
As has been said here, it could be River. No reason why not: @htpbdet points out that River might have been involved in the Time War, so she might be in the book. I accept that that is a possibility, and since in Moffat’s Who most roads lead to River, it’s very sensible to think that the woman in the shop is her.
I am hoping that River is not the answer, so I want to entertain an alternative theory. Mine is based on the idea that we know one person who (i) was a Time Lady (it has to be a woman in the shop); (ii) was involved in the Time War, so might be in the history book, (iii) can somehow get out from, or at least project herself out of, the Time Lock, because she appears to Wilf in The End of Time, so might be able to appear, but is only be able to shape events by manipulating others, and (iv) is what one might call, rather ungentlemanly, a hitherto not-fully-used plot-point. More speculatively, (v) she might be related to the Doctor (his mother?) in which case the excellent idea that connections across bubble universes matter, and are places where blood calls to blood (thanks to @juniperfish) comes into play.
30 April 2013 at 12:49 #7259@htpbdet: I forgot all about the TARDIS. That’s a lovely point! And yes, River’s timeline is so mixed up that it’s entirely possible that she somehow knows about Clara from the future/past.
30 April 2013 at 12:38 #7256Thanks to Juniperfish et al. for the welcome! I do agree that, if the woman in the shop comes to have a significant role, there’s a very strong chance that she will turn out to be River, especially since Moffat loves River. Although I’m not clear (a) if or how River would be connected to the Time War, and (b) how River would know who Clara was. Still, maybe it is River. And Clara is, or is somehow related to Susan; and Jenny is indeed Jenny as HTPBDET suggests. The plot thread would then turn out to be all of the women in the Doctor’s life — his wife, daughter and grand-daughter — combining to save him. Throw in his mother (perhaps) from the End of Time, and you’ve practically got a royal flush. I think that would be a lovely storyline.
But I still think it would be more fun if Clara were to turn out to be not evil herself, but part of some evil mastermind’s evil plan to kill the Doctor. Doing a Turlough, if you like.
Also, I must admit that when I saw The History of the Time War, I did think of the history of Castrovalva: the book is old, but it tells the history up to the present day!
30 April 2013 at 10:29 #7244
Hello to all. I’ve been reading the Guardian blog for a couple of years, and have greatly enjoyed the posts from many of you there, but only just found this place (thanks to PhaseShift’s shameless marketing – nice work!). It feels like a less intimidating environment than the Grauniad, so I thought I’d give it a go. This is my first post, and apologies in advance for any lapses in etiquette, or if I repeat things that have already been said elsewhere, or if it’s all a bit wordy. Anyway, here we go.Like others here, I found the dialogue between Clara and the Doctor about his name so intriguing that I just can’t help thinking about it. How clever that Clara is cut off not once but twice when she appears on the point of revealing something, and both times by the Doctor (supposing that the creature who startles her in the Library is indeed the future burnt Doctor). It gives us a double helping of unfinished sentences to figure out, and reinforces the sense of a connection between the two scenes.
Of course, the smart money is on the theory that when Clara looks at The History of the Time War (‘so that’s who…’) she reads the Doctor’s name in the book. But I am puzzled how that links to her later line that she saw his name ‘in one corner of that tiny…’. Perhaps, as I think was suggested by PhileasF, she spots his name in the corner of a tiny(?) illustration in the book, maybe it is a picture of the tiny(?) cot in the book.
I don’t have any smart money, so may I suggest instead that this is a bit of Moffatian misdirection. My theory is that the revelation given by the Time War book (‘so that’s who…’) and the ‘tiny’ thing with the Doctor’s name on it are two completely separate things. Maybe the ‘tiny’ thing is the cot, or maybe it’s the miniature TARDIS, or maybe it’s something Clara spots when she is looking through the magnifying glass. Anyway, if that’s right – and I recognise that it’s a big ‘if’ — the really big question this leaves us with is who Clara is referring to when she says ‘so that’s who…’. How would that sentence have ended?
I think that this might link back to something that has been bugging me ever since The Bells of Saint John. Maybe when she looked at the Time War book, Clara was going to say, ‘so that’s who gave me the Doctor’s phone number.’ To me this remains one of the most mysterious things about the whole Doctor-Clara relationship: that someone gives her the Doctor’s phone number. That single act kick-starts everything. Now, there are two things about it that puzzle me. (i) Who has the Doctor’s number? And (ii), even more puzzling, how do they know to give it to Clara? It’s entirely plausible that there’s some old companion knocking around who has the Doctor’s phone number. Presumably, though, they know it’s special, and they wouldn’t give it out to everyone; but they do choose to give it to Clara. Why? Do they recognise her? Is it/she a trap? Maybe this has all been arranged by someone who wants to bring Clara and the Doctor together for more sinister purposes? Maybe it’s someone from the Time War (hence, Clara sees her picture in the book and has the moment of revelation), who knows the Doctor’s number, and who is planning to use Clara to escape from the Time Lock: the mysterious Time Lady from The End of Time, perhaps.
Again, sorry if that’s all a bit long. I’ll try to make future posts a bit more condensed, but it felt like there was a lot to say!
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