@puroandson   So glad you’re back with us!

ichi

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@pedant  Mulling it over.  It’s good to know a bit about this monster-illness, so thanks everyone who’s brought some experience to the table.  “Life is shit.  Scottish philsophy.”  — Peter Capaldi, at ComiCon.

@bobbyfat  I’m with @blenkinsopthebrave here — more, please!  Sounds wonderful, something like a theatrical experience I read about in Finland, I think, a couple of years ago.

@soundworld  At first I was stunned and maybe disappointed that her death came about through something so seemingly random, but, it really works. Just another day with the Doctor – but it could happen on any day.

Exactly; this is what she’s basically agreed to by traveling in the Tardis; it could happen to the Doctor that way too (except then th…[Read more]

@jphamlore  Thanks for the quotes, but do Cybermen *have* souls?  I thought that was all gone, part of the horror of the process of encyberment.

And I don’t buy the eternal damnation thing — not in the Doctor’s universe.  Although you could see being turned into a cyberman as pretty damnation-ish, provided they have souls (though Danny ce…[Read more]

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@gamegirlavatar  I feel the same way about this episode; I’m glad you liked it too!

@bendubs11  there were no snakes in this episode, or at least not that I saw.

Ashildr’s snaky tattoos?

@jphamlore  “I promised it a soul and only I can break that contract. When you took it from him, you changed the terms. You cut me out of the deal.”  These are not the tropes of a standard execution, no, it’s much worse. These are the trop…[Read more]

Something from another discussion that gives another good reason for Clara’s mistake:

She took a bit too much to heart Missy’s lesson in the series premiere: that the reason the Doctor is always able to find a way out of impossible situations is because he never really believes it’s impossible. So Clara has started to try and live that, but she…[Read more]

@phamlore  It is explicitly said the quantum shade seeks souls. And we know something of what Moffat thinks of souls in the Doctor Who universe from the episode he wrote The Bells of Saint John, an episode that features the character Clara Oswald. In particular, souls can be captured and imprisoned.

True; nobody said the Quantum Shade *eats*…[Read more]

@lisa  I don’t think she died because she had some suicidal death wish. It was to my mind cause she just realized all along that she’d get caught eventually running with the Doctor

Maybe it’s not gone so far as becoming a death *wish*, but remember that phone call in Under the Lake — “Die on the one after me!  You do not leave me!” roughly…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  I think that while Sarah Dollard probably didn’t intend the reading, a script suggesting that a female companion is more fragile (more breakable) than a male Doctor and therefore should not have tried to be Doctor-like has Unfortunate Implications written all over it.

I disagree; I don’t think the implication was that she *s…[Read more]

Puro/Melissa, I am so, so sorry.  Like everyone above, I will deeply miss you and your kind, funny, and knowledgable comments.  You’ve been a strong presence here, and a force for bringing out the best in everyone at this table.

ichi

@jphamore The Doctor is going to give everyone what they ask for, like he always does when he truly wants to punish someone.

Hmm.  Could be; and this Doctor in full fury over Clara’s death could well become The Devil, or perhaps Death — the death of the old, blossoming of the new . . . the new being S10.

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@lisa  How did Ashildr/Me know to say to the Doctor in ‘The Woman Who Lived’ that Clara would die on him and also! blow away like a puff of smoke?

She meant that *any* human that she or the Doctor became fond of would, sooner or later, just die their little mayfly-death, blowing away like smoke and eventually forgotten in their long, long lives…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  if Sarah Dollard has seriously written a script that says ‘Don’t try to be the Doctor, girls, you’ll only get yourself hurt. Your job is to be the companion,’ then she ought to be ashamed.

Dollard has nothing to be ashamed of.  The message you see here would be, IMO, better stated this way: “Don’t try to be a powerful, quasi-imm…[Read more]

@serahni  Post 47463 — I’ve read that Dollard say there *was* a short scene between Clara’s collapse on the stones and the Doctor closing the outer door in which he demanded that Ashildr leave Rigsy his memory so that upon return to normal London, Rigsy can have Clara’s body looked after and her family and the school be informed about her death.…[Read more]