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12 March 2016 at 23:48 #51321
@bluesqueakpip Now all we need is a trained commando who is also a veterinarian . . . ? But let’s keep it equal opportunity: somebody for the fangirl vipers of tumblr, too?
12 March 2016 at 07:50 #51308Somebody over on DWTVuk posted in a chat about changes from SmithDoc to CapDoc and what’s likely for Series 10 and, beyond that, 11 raised an issue that’s been nagging at me. Poster said that there’s only so much character-change that the Doctor can exhibit *because the series is open-ended* with no specific resolution driving it. The contention was that only protagonists in limited stories “with a beginning, middle, and end” can grow and change freely, because (I assume) that growth and change is part of the plot, which is a closed story leading intentionally from here to there. I thought of shows like Star Trek, which had to have a Bible for writers and actors to draw firm parameters around the potentialities of lead characters, making sure that they were always re-set to square one for the next episode, which would also not lead the protags into unfamiliar character territory (without making it explicable by demonic possession, hypnotism, or some other reversible “trick”) for the same reason. Other examples — did Tony Soprano change, from ep 1 to blackout? I don’t think so. Do the superheroes in comics and Action movies” grow and change? I don’t think they’re allowed to, on the same principle (although a daring leap toward darkness was made with Batman, which I recall as coinciding with the ditching of Robin).
Thinking about the Doctor specifically: his story is open ended, 50 + years’ worth now, and he seems to conform to this idea. Fans get upset when he changes “too much” and becomes (for them, anyway) “not The Doctor any more”, as some still say about CapDoc. So what’s essential to his character, that he can stray from but must always come back to? [If we’ve already explored this and I missed it, or I’ve forgotten, feel free to disregard.] What are his defining qualities (that must still be his defining qualities even if he regenerated as a *gasp!* woman, a frog, or a piece of popcorn)?
I’d start with intellectual brilliance, and the arrogance (and blind spots) that generally go with it; a huge memory so filled with stuff that he forgets things and has to delete some occasionally; disdain for violence; detachment, but also a tendency toward passionate attachment to specific people; persistent curiosity and restlessness; kindness; enormous stores of energy; quick, playful, and sometimes biting wit; generosity (giving the second chances that he doesn’t always get, himself); aristocracy (his natural air of authority, and the fact that he never carries money — like royalty — and his dislike of rules); limitless appreciation of beauty and of wonders; nostalgia for the lost and gone; and I see that this list is getting way too long, and it’s nowhere near exhaustive as it is.
It’s like listing the attributes of a real, authentically complex human person. Which is way more than I can say for Batman, or Wolverine, or Wonder Woman, but I’ve never had much exposure to them because they’re, well — boring? Flat and predictable, by comparison, or, to sum up, life’s too short (well, mine is — as to anyone else’s, it’s not for me to say).
So how much can an actor play against the core qualities — show them challenged, changing under the pressure of circumstances, show him growing out of them into something else — and still be seen as The Doctor? Is he multifold but basically static? “Doctor” is the title for something he aspires — but sometimes fails — to be. But we see the whole man, each time — being the Doctor, trying but failing, or acting in ways that seem un-Doctorly — so for us “The Doctor” is a role, and each actor is the man (so far) *playing* the man who’s trying to fill that role, so “the Doctor” acquires this illusion of depth made from each actor’s particular emphases layered onto the general outline of “the Doctor”. Being played by successive actors has made “the Doctor” more real, because those layers keep accruing?
It’s late; I’m just floofing around here, wine glass at hand. How is the Doctor as a character different from, say, George Smiley, a character presented as and taken as realistic in Le Carre’s spy fictions (I’m thinking Smiley as performed by Alec Guiness, if I have that right)? How is he less “real” or “realistic” (well, apart from the magic box and the very long life and the two hearts and superficial stuff like that)? All right, enough already . . .
12 March 2016 at 06:31 #51306@pedant @bluesqueakpip Hell, I’m definitely on board for a spot of neutering! But — so many promising prospects, so little time!
12 March 2016 at 06:26 #51305@pedant Not “a woman” but this specific woman, with all the wagon trains of baggage behind her, the grief, the rage, the unspoken pain, driving her to a moment when she misses that one little detail… And then she faced it like a boss. And then gets regenerated.
Bravo! Exactly. I find on various discussion sites that it’s the Clara-haters (and/or Moffat denigrators) who just can’t see any of this, their loss. Hatred = blindness: it distorts reality, and so is in the long term dangerous to the hater as well as to the hated.
@puroandson PuroSolo Hell Bent was drama and space opera buffa (comedy) as its best: genuine, poetic and bathetic.
Oh, nicely put — thanks!
9 March 2016 at 04:09 #51251@pedant @dalektor On Dalek “art”, has this point ever been addressed in DW? I mean the difficulties of actually perceiving alien art as art in our own terms. It took a long time for Westerners to perceive African art as art, didn’t it? Too easy to dismiss strange-looking objects as “ritual objects” or some such, maybe, rather than realizing that some strange looking objects might be toys, and some might be art for art’s sake. There’s a fair amount of SF literature dealing with “alien” art, music in particular, but in DW — ? Nothing comes to mind . . . I’m sure I’m missing obvious examples, though.
9 March 2016 at 04:02 #512499 March 2016 at 03:56 #51248@janetteb Oh yes please — I definitely want more CapDoc! I can’t imagine what directions he’ll be looking in for his work after this show . . . who’s knowledgeable enough here to supply some info on where recent Doctors have gone for their post DW careers? I know a little, not much . . . Eccleston’s in a very quirky and provocative series resuming on US TV this spring, “The Leftovers”, but that’s all I know. Haven’t kept track of Tennant, as I don’t find him a interesting or attractive actor — taste, that’s all. Smith — superhero stuff? What about BG Docs? I gather Tom Baker had trouble getting work after his extended stint as the Doctor (which I loved, although I remember feeling that it was getting a bit stale later on in his day).
But why expect any sort of patterns to this — chance and timing are such potent and unpredictable factors in the lives of performers, aren’t they, partly because it takes so many elements and people to come together just right for any project to come to fruition . . .
8 March 2016 at 17:56 #51225@riko30 Does anyone else feel like Clara’s “ending” allows for the impossible girl storyline to begin? I understand that it creates a boot strap paradox (so uncharacteristic for new who) but it makes sense to me.
Neat idea — makes my head spin a bit. But these loops always do, so I tend to side-step them if I can.
moffat dosn’t know how to spell subtle
Oh, I think he does “subtle” very well, considering that he’s supposed to be keeping things plain enough for young kids to make sense of them as well as grown-ups. Of course, with actors like these, it’s hard to know where the subtler shades of meaning are there in the script, or are picked up and highlighted by the work of actors who very well know how to spell subtle. A lot of our discussions here (and elsewhere) hinge on subtleties of interpretation, so *somebody* foregrounded those moments for us to notice and comment on.
8 March 2016 at 17:49 #51224@bluesqueakpip She does something a bit reckless in almost every episode of Series 9 (she does something a bit reckless in the first part of Face the Raven) – this time it bites her back. Why? Because they need to kill her off in this episode.
I disagree on the inevitability issue. *At some point*, an impulsive and not fully thought through action of hers was going to bite back in a way that couldn’t be “fixed”: that event, in some lethally threatening form, was shown to be inevitable (we had her floating in space with a deadly creature inside her suit early on, to help prepare us). We were also made to focus on that inevitability because the Doctor was so focused on it: “what if something happens to you?” “She might meet someone she couldn’t bear to lose — ” That look, that somber gaze that she she didn’t seem to notice after she said, “I’m not going anywhere, old man!”
That was the set up right the way through, and it worked beautifully for me — brilliantly ironic, in fact. His warnings about his own fears for her only encouraged her impetuousness, her assumptions of being able to carry on challenging the fate he was warning her about — the inevitable broken ankle — so that she kept pushing the limits of his ability to rescue her. Talk about a closed loop, not in time but in causation (that hybrid nature of them together, again)! It *was* going to happen, and FtR is the story of how it did, indeed, finally happen, because dramtically, that promise had to pay off where we could see it. S9 was about consequences; closure was the whole point, and doing it in a way that harkened back to Danny’s death was quietly splendid, IMO, and fully satisfying.
I do agree, though, that further focused comment on the crux of the matter in the story itself would have been better for people who came away *not* that satisfied. I lean, myself, toward the degree of ambiguity that provokes conversations like this one. And I find the agility of their solution to the Clara Problem (“ordinary” death on Death’s casually inhuman terms, or grandiose and up-beat and classically “comedy”, as in “the happy escape after all”? Both!) just brilliant. It makes me sad; but I have to smile, too. I’ll take it.
But, like Clara, like the Doctor himself — not flawless.
8 March 2016 at 17:14 #51223@puroandson Puro Solo — Sure; there are points where these finer points work well with different interpretations. That’s one of the qualities that makes DW so good for viewers who like to mull things over and look at them from different angles. More openness to interpretation is one way to give a story a chance to resonance forward in time. I think I just give the flawed nature of physical existence (and its interaction with and obstacles to our impulses and desires, no matter how kindly meant) more weight here than the flawed nature of Clara in this instance. And who here has never come up against, of all things, a misperception or ignorance of a legal matter?! We started S9 with the Doctor breaking the laws of the terms of death, defiantly and (as we’ve seen subsequently) both successfully and with a “tidal wave” of unintended consequences, so it’s ultimately him and his ability and willingness to blow restrictive laws out of his way that she makes her assumption on — not, IMO, unreasonably.
There’s no denying, though, that there’s another Doctor-y element to her action: he likes to show off for her, and tell her stories of his exploits, and that’s what she’s headed for in the Rigsy stratagem. Why not? He’s told her she’s like him many times and in many ways before, and it’s true: like. But not identical. Showing off for Ashildr too, I think, and for Rigsy, and anybody else who’s watching — so maybe the charge of “vainglory” sticks. She insists that she’s “special”, his perfect team-mate and match (that hybrid status again, as a positive rather than a negative state). Those things are true, but within limits she doesn’t care to recognize — parity, not equality, and that’s the gap she falls into. She can’t regenerate if it goes wrong. He can; he can even regenerate *her*, in a highly conditional state. Her assumption (or presumption) isn’t that far wrong. But the cost of doing so is far higher than she could have foreseen, with her impulsive and confident nature . . . and must be paid by both of them, each in their own way.
8 March 2016 at 09:00 #51216@puroandson she never checked behind her when she entered a room. Never triple checked ahead -her behaviour wasn’t so much reckless as risky
But she did have a good plan. Her risky behavior had led him to be more and more protective and worried, and as much as she protested that she never asked for his protection, she still accepted it and came to depend on it without even thinking about it any more: “We always fix it!” She came up with a clever strategemn and it would have worked — IF she had gone that one further step, and told the Doctor or Ashildr first what she meant to do. But she’d learned that from him, too: don’t tell anyone your plan (so they can’t interfere).
I just don’t see hubris or vanity or some subconscious desire to die (though she herself suggests that). I see, in fact, that Clara’s humanity is underlined by the fact that she dies *because of a mistake* made on the assumption that the Doctor’s cleverness and protection will always prevail. She dies a human sort of death, like Danny’s mistake of stepping into a busy street while talking on his phone instead of checking the traffic.
It’s out of that rut of our common humanity — the accidental, senseless death by happenstance that so often strikes people down — that the retrieval from Trap Street lifts her. The price is that she becomes no longer human — a person with no heartbeat — until her return for her *last* heartbeat before death. She’ll have a form of non-human life as long as she can sustain it, but in the end she’ll return to being just a human being again, moving inexorably from her penultimate heartbeat to her final heartbeat and her human death.
She falls to what catches us all — the collision of our plans with all the stubborn details of plain old physical reality, most particularly the details that we don’t know in advance. It’s the way of the world, the laws of chance, and the undoing of human will, not, IMO, a failing of hers. So to me her death *is* the story of women, and of men — the stroke that kills you while you’re planning your anniversary, the black ice lying invisible on the road ahead of you, the bomb that some fanatic sets off in a shopping mall you just stopped in for some coffee . . . But she’s Clara; she has the Doctor in her corner, and though he can’t save her this time he can win her a reprieve, at great cost to both of them.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it — though I’d be the last to argue that my word, or anyone’s is final. Unless — the Doctor is, ultimately, the one at fault? He indulged her craving for danger, but he also protected her and rescued her, like any over-protective parent whose loving care lulls a venturesome child into a false sense of security. There is no security. And she is “more breakable”. I agree on that point: a human is not a TL; a TL is not a human. Parity is not equality. *He* thinks it’s his fault, so he makes amends as best he can . . . Sad and terrible, but for me, a richly satisfying and inevitable end to their story.
7 March 2016 at 01:06 #51205@kbranagh Oh, I agree — inspiration works both ways. The writers do things like the monologues because Capaldi’s delivery is mesmerizing, and Capaldi takes bits of what the writers provide and runs with them because he can — like turning “I don’t think I’m a hugging person now” into a whole visual vocabulary of communication with Clara by touch. I gather that Matt Smith wasn’t a dyed -in-the-wool Doctor fan from way back the way Capaldi has been all his life: this suggests that ideas and leads coming from Capaldi (in framing up the series and shaping particular stories) have probably been welcomed by Moffat, another long-time fan, the way they might not have been from Smith (also because Capaldi has the authority of a long-established career in TV that Smith didn’t bring to DW).
I think we’ve been watching a pretty special synthesis of aims and values with Capaldi and Moffat, which is due to end with S10. How Capaldi will work with Chibnall at the helm, gods only know — for starters, it depends on lots of other factors, and it may not even happen. Complicated times coming up for the Doctor . . .
6 March 2016 at 08:48 #51199And that’s just the major stresses I can imagine from outside, looking in.
But on the other hand — every downside has an upside, and what a delight it must be for a lifelong fan of DW to get this chance to bring his inner Doctor to light for everyone to enjoy. And not just onscreen, either, given how warmly and generously this actor is in contact with admirers and Doctor-lovers. Capaldi sure comes across as an all-around class act as well as an excellent Doctor.
6 March 2016 at 03:24 #51198@puroandson @bluesqueakpip Hi, yep, I’m back — with one wibbly wobbly eye, vision distorted by the gas bubble that’s slowly being absorbed, and I am *very* happy to be this far along with no backsliding or further trouble, so far. Whew. Hug back; I feel like hugging *everybody*.
Yes, the first female doc is going to be pretty intense for everybody (and we know from the outset that lots of fans will be angry over this or that aspect of every single episode the poor creature is in. It can’t help but be a football for gender politics, at least among certain die-hard wings of fandom, but we must hope that all that will die down after a bit so we can let the Doctor be the Doctor. And don’t forget the possibility of the role as a career-ruiner if you *are* successful, which I think some have claimed was Tom Baker’s lot (though there were other factors as well of course). In any event, it will be a circus, and that alone would be daunting to any actor, I would think.
@winston sounds good to me. Has anybody got the S9 boxed set yet, or is that still to be shipped? Do all the boxed sets of 9 have the cut scenes, or only the Blu Ray thing, which I don’t think will work on my imac or my rather ancient DVD player . . .
6 March 2016 at 02:36 #51197@kbranagh Well, he’s sure been impressive in my books; I’d like a couple more years of his Doctor, assuming he enjoys working with Chibnall and the next companion, and his character as written still gives him plenty to that’s interesting and challenging to do. Good example of “Be careful what you wish for” — every fulfilled wish has its down side. This one comes with the total insecurity typical of any acting job, plus a fandom with a toxic segment that never shuts up, and the downer (eventually) of no longer being the Doctor (and what do you do THEN)? You have to feel for the guy — cripes, what a profession! It takes sensitivity and intelligence to interpret the world to itself in a compelling way, but at the same time you need a rhino-thick skin for the slings and arrows, and nerves of azbantium to steer your course through the chaos. I’m glad I’m just a writer.
5 March 2016 at 06:53 #51192@missy After having seen a couple of epis of Elementary, with a female as Joan Watson *rolls eyes* I find it an awful idea.
I look in on Elementary from time to time, and the more I divorce it *completely* from any vestige of identity with our venerable Sherlock/Watson duo, the more I enjoy it. I immediately forget that Watson is supposed to be Watson, and that this needle-nosed piano wire of a guy is supposed to be Sherlock H., and it’s an occasionally quite interesting show. This last one, about Manhattan real estate and wild architecture, was riveting — probably because I grew up in Manhattan, and this subject matter was a salient factor of life there and still is, so . . . um.
I think I could easily get on board with a female Doctor if she were *alien* enough — that’s why I think in terms of Tilda Swinton, who already looks like an alien to me. But then what — if you play a female Doctor as an alien whose sexuality is irrelevant (rather as CapDoc is played as functionally, if not innately, asexual right now), then would you really have a *female* Doctor, or just an asexual Doctor with female secondary sex characteristics? On the other hand, if you play her as some set of variants on human female sexuality, then you find yourself stuck with making definitive statements about Gallifreyan sexuality and/or human female sexuality that are bound to be objectionable to a whole spectrum of people on all kinds of grounds. And it all becomes about *that* instead of about the Doctor’s adventures, which I think many fans hate to even think about. *I* hate to think about it, actually — it makes my head hurt, it’s so damned complicated because human sexuality and gender is such a fraught and nasty battlefield right now.
Frankly, I prefer the Doctor male — but I could be persuaded otherwise, by writing and acting that was brilliant enough.
5 March 2016 at 06:33 #51191@winston Yes, Eccleston was a breath of fresh air, and I was also disappointed by his early exit.
5 March 2016 at 06:31 #51190@nerys @winston Now I’ve got to go look again . . . gosh, what a dreadful chore . . . Whatever happens next, we’ll always have S8 and S9, by gum, and to me that’s a joy and a wonder, come what may. It feels like a victory for intelligence and perspicacity, that these things exist, warts and all, and the nitpickers and grinders can go chew on their own chops for all the good it does them. We have landmark work, IMO. It just warms the cockles of my thumpy old heart.
5 March 2016 at 01:58 #51189@winston While I have enjoyed the maturity of the CapDoc series , I also loved the playfulness of the 11th ,the flirtiness of 10 and the shell shocked 9th. So I am ready for whatever happens in the future and I know I will like it.
Well put, thanks (though the flirtiness of 10 drove me away). We’ve now had one hell of a mature story, wrenching and shocking and featuring a darker vision of the Doctor that was “real” enough to be ungraspable as such by many fans (“whaddaya mean, dark, *that* wasn’t dark compared to xxx episode, and nobody died dead dead dead!”). It was spiky and contentious and rather chaotic and clumsy at times, and desperately moving when it needed to be, and I loved it.
But a change in tone and focus after a year to ponder and discuss would feel right, and would honor the “DW always changes because that’s its nature” spine of the show. Maybe a broad-canvas space opera style arc, as opposed to the intimate closeness of S8 and S9? Maybe a marvelous quest story, or a cat and mouse arc with Rassilon the Enraged, something along those lines. I can’t say that I know I’ll like it, because that remains to be seen. I’ll watch just for Capaldi, if nothing else, while we’ve still got him.
In any case, sooner or later down the line will come another series that’s perfect for *me*, and that’s fine. Why begrudge anyone their delight in something that turns me off? That’s what baffles me about the whiners and haters, but hey, their problem, not mine. It’s just the lesson the Doctor himself just learned (yet again), bringing itself to bear: things end, because they have to. Not to worry, since things also begin — what’s that great line from “Closing Time”? “Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end.”
4 March 2016 at 06:01 #51175Oooh, the wet squelching — thanks for that — ? I am cracking up here, over the “old magic”. Yah, let’s think about it according to preference . . . (hoo hoo hoo!! My preference varies entertainingly).
3 March 2016 at 07:55 #51173@tardigrade Oh, yes, okay; thanks! Only he goes on to say something about how you have to “touch between the fronds” or something, which doesn’t sound much like kissing an Elizabeth shaped Zygon to me . . . ? More like, um, remembering how to, ah, persuasively touch an actual frondy Zygon thing like the “command center” Zygon thing he’s actually manipulating in the scene . . .
It’s okay; I’ve been confused before and lived to tell the tale . . .
3 March 2016 at 07:01 #51170Damn. Forgot to tick the box . . .
3 March 2016 at 07:01 #51169I guess an interspecies relationship with a 900 year age difference had the potential to come off as somewhat creepy.
That potential is always there, IMO. I mean, how did you feel about that throwaway line in Zygon Inversion, where the Doctor says, “I snogged a zygon once — ” WHAT? It sure gave *me* paws, as it were! I don’t think anybody’s gotten away with that kind of thing since the Greeks had Zeus snogging *everything*, what with him being an ageless God and all, and there’s this golden rain thing . . . Ah . . . hmm. And the Doctor isn’t even a god, strictly speaking.
2 March 2016 at 00:39 #51144@winston Oh, absolutely — Danny’s death, however heroic, left her in bad, bad shape, and in a way, of course it IS the Doctor’s fault (at least as much as it is hers). If he’d stepped aside and let her make the choice for Danny sooner, she’d have probably lived a reasonably happy life with Danny, so all this sturm und drang has been brought down upon her by — his protection, of course, which he has to increase to deflect the inevitable crash. Something is owed there; and, as she’s “the puppy” in terms of comparative longevity (Missy wasn’t wrong about that, only not entirely right), he really does have a “duty of care” as long as Clara is with him.
Their story is also a kind of rebuttal of the whole sub-genre of romance fiction in which the feisty, pretty, talented young woman becomes the apple of the immortal vampire’s eye — or the angel’s eye, or the demon’s eye, or the werewolf’s eye, etc. ad nauseum. If the magical thingummy really does love you truly, madly, deeply, but he’s gonna live almost forever and your family only makes it to 100 in good century, there’s no way that true, mad, deep love is going to work (this is assuming that the thingummy can’t turn you into an immortal thingummy too, like, say Ashildr, and even that has its own problems).
And a re-affirmation of the central truth the show honors: that love it or hate it, everything changes.
2 March 2016 at 00:01 #51140@kbranagh the doctor is so over protecttive with her this year! I don’t remember Smith acted like this with Amy.
No. I think this is new, and it’s kind of the point of the relationship as it develops: the basic problem of extreme disparity between a devoted pair (on whatever level[s] you choose to see that devotion). He has found “someone he can’t bear to lose”, having pretty much reshaped his 12-self with her as his fixed point during S8 (not to mention the Impossible Girl kerfuffle, which was, thankfully, left behind in S8 so that Clara could become a more real, rounded, human character, warts and all). And yet, because she’s a mere human, he knows from the get-go that he *must* lose her. So love morphs into an obsessive fixation on doing the impossible: somehow preventing that necessary end, while at the same time inviting her company on the adventures she craves that bring exactly the kinds of dangers that can end her already short life.
Sometimes I think that Moffat and Capaldi decided to take the amorous attachment of Smith and push it to its logical conclusion: if you push it far enough, love becomes obsession, and obsession is destructive because that’s what it does — it turns the object of your obsession into an object, not a person. It’s a weird form of idolatry, and perverts honest person-to-person love into something — well — perverse. And that’s where they meant to go with it, as a kind of answer to the Harlequin Romance (Mills and Boone) strain of fandom, perhaps.
So yes, his effort is not only wrong-headed (she, the *person* keeps saying she doesn’t want to be protected, but obsession doesn’t listen); it’s also doomed. Which reality he defies right at the outset, in TGWD. The doomful note is sounded early and loudly, and boy is it fulfulled! And yet, without the blood and horror of classic tragedy, since it all actually resolves like a comedy. Lovely.
16 February 2016 at 06:27 #50999Thnx all, goodnight for now . . .
ichi
16 February 2016 at 01:02 #50988I’m out of action for a bit, friends — eye surgery Friday morning, recovery
involves no reading for a couple of weeks. I shall return to you as mad as
a (blind) hatter, in due course.
Ichi
9 February 2016 at 07:20 #50934@kharis Not that bit, but a rendering of “Breaking the Wall” that lays out the basic architecture of that part:
Might help in identifying?
7 February 2016 at 09:00 #50876@missy Well, she did lie to him, a teensy bit: . . . “Danny and I are fine!” “He says it’s perfectly all right, me traveling with you!” Etc. But she thinks of him as The Person she would never, ever lie to, because she wishes that were true, and excuses her lies to him as “white” ones that don’t count. As people tend to do . . . it’s part of the realism of her character.
Her biggest lie, of course, being the entire diner scene, including “I could be her.” That’s a proper masterpiece of a lie, curlicues and everything. She just can’t resist — because she does wish, at some level, that his love for her was so strong that it could even overcome the neural blocker. Only . . . she’s learned to be a more sensible, caring person: so she doesn’t push it, but goes away satisfied that at least she doesn’t have to think of him desperate with worry about her safety, and hugging the cactus of his loss of her, in the future.
6 February 2016 at 23:18 #50862@winston Yes; I know that moment and that place, too, from visits to a dementia facility. So much of the feeling involved is determination to *not* make it any worse for the person who can’t recall who you are.
@missy One wonders whether clara wishes that she’d been the one to forget after all – just for a moment.
Even as he collapses, she says, “I never wanted this!” which to me means, “I refused to lose my memories, but I didn’t want you to lose yours!” So she really hoped it wouldn’t do anything to either of them. Instead, she gets that piercing scene in the diner — but while she prolongs that a little (“she could be me — ?”) to get the full impact, not to skip or slight what he’s lost and what she’s giving up, then she enters her own Tardis with dry eyes, a spring in her step, and an bright, brisk eagerness to get on with her new life as a wanderer of time and space in her own right.
She’s done her apprenticeship, and is more than ready to move on. I can imagine her, out on her own when Ashildr has stopped off someplace: Clara looks back on her time with the Doctor with a somewhat detached fondness — it was a while ago, so much has happened since, so many new people, etc. — wondering where he is and what he’s up to, and what kind of companionship he’s found for himself now. In fact, her state of mind as I imagine it would be not all that different from his, when thoughts of that same past surface in his own consciousness, and he wonders what Clara was like and how it felt to travel with her, and where she is now . . . Not equals, but standing apart from each other on a uniquely rich and convoluted plane of that most difficult of states to maintain — parity.
It’s the most deliciously melancholic perfection. And a positively brilliant solution: there’s only room in the Tardis for one Doctor; but if you add another Tardis . . . ?
@puroandson Hell Bent or Heaven Sent they are master-classes in both writing and acting for everyone.
Agreed! Astonishing stuff.
5 February 2016 at 19:58 #50851@missy Thanks for the info on the boxed set, I’ll check over at Amazon. And yes, Moffat does a Q and A (and’or sometimes an interview) for Doctor Who Magazine. There’s a guy at reddit who reproduces them there, a month or more later.
5 February 2016 at 03:17 #50841Can anybody clarify the boxed set situation for me, S9? Whatever Blu-Ray is, I don’t have it. I run DVDs on my iMac, which is 5+ yrs old. There is supposedly (announced some time ago) a boxed set of S9 that includes “Last Christmas”. all of S9 with commentary and features etc., and possibly “Husbands of River Song” as well.
Is this true?
How can I distinguish this version of S9 from ones that don’t include all of that?
Is this completest of DVD sets only available in Blu-Ray format?
5 February 2016 at 02:01 #50839Hi, people — a new, post-I’m-outta-here announcement, interview with Moffat:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/445j6w/production_notes_steven_moffat_qa_for_doctor_who/?
I love hearing what the DW people have to say *for themselves* about the show, especially because most of them are so amazingly articulate . . . !
4 February 2016 at 23:10 #50835@bluesqueakpip About Capaldi consulting with that very exclusive club, specifically Tennant — good points; and thanks. And I like your longer view on Chibnall/Whithouse. There are the viewers-at-large, a (probably) small percentage of them hardcore fans, of whom and even smaller percentage are aware of and fully invested in genius-level work that provides so much to think and talk about.
And it’s not hard to guess who BBC admin is most likely to be committed to pleasing.
4 February 2016 at 22:51 #50834@kharis Her mom taught her that you don’t leave, you always go back for the people you care for. So, maybe?
Hey, it’s Doctor Who; of course, “maybe”.
@pedant “Tomorrow is promised to no-one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past”
Oh, yeah. What are we, without our memories? Blank slates, with the childish impulses of the ego-bound infant as our fuel and our GPS. What would Clara be, if the Doctor *had* wiped not all her memories, but, as he planned, her memories of himself and their travels together?
My speculation: a restless, angry, confused young woman, her self-confidence crippled by doubts she can’t even see the causes of, her courage wasted on disappointing tangles of extreme actions that she hopes might somehow reveal her whole self instead of this stunted remainder. Sleep without dreams, relationships without satisfaction (there’s always something more out there, but where, and what is it?), goals without connection (“Why do I keep staring at the stars?”), nagging impatience for something unimaginable to happen, because isn’t it supposed to? Sort of? So she can be special, because she always wanted to be special, she’s sure she could be.
And, because he can’t stop himself from doing it, the Doctor drops by from time to time, maybe just as she’s about to finally turn her back on the shades of non-memory and make some kind of real life for herself; and something dimly sparks for her — and then he’s gone again (whoever the hell he was, she can’t seem to even recall that guy’s face now, or his voice, or — ). She’s cast back into the spiral of despond.
You could write that story, but you’d have to keep it short and at the bottom of the drawer, because who’d even want to read it?
4 February 2016 at 19:21 #50826@kharis (of Clara) It must be a horrible temptation to stay in his life and watch over him like a guardian angel.
I hadn’t thought of their parting from this angle; maybe because she, I think, had already made the decisive cut when she said goodbye in Raven. For me, what she’s wanted most in S9 isn’t to be with the Doctor, but to be her own Doctor and do that traveling she always fancied; she’s more dependent on him in S9, after Danny’s death, but she’s not the one who’s obsessed; he is. He’s the one who would shadow her forever, out of a compulsive need to keep her safe, once they’ve gone their separate ways (that’s why he *has* to lose the emotional component of his memories of her — to become a free agent again).
On the other hand, look at the immediate transformation in Clara once she’s said goodbye in the diner and she goes back into her Tardis to join Ashildr. Yes, there was a backward glance — but then, wham, she’s all sparkling anticipation, eagerness to be off, pleasure in her own cleverness in spotting “the long way round”.
I think she will think of him later, of course, pick up rumors of his adventures here and there, wonder what he’s been up to. She might even look in on him in some way at some points. But I don’t think she’d have any of that high-pressure “duty of care” that he felt with regard to her (and no longer feels).
4 February 2016 at 18:36 #50824@janetteb Definitely won’t be watching the Steve Jobs film. I am rather tired of the hero worship of people simply because they succeed in making lots of money.
I have a similar aversion; will wait to see it on TV sometime, maybe. I’d rather see Kung Fu Panda 3, and in fact am going to do so this weekend — good animated films (“The Book of Life”, “Up”) are great palette cleansers, I find, maybe just for the step-back (is it, really?) to a whole different perceptual filter, the wide-open and delight-prone one of a much younger, less darkened self, maybe.
4 February 2016 at 18:24 #50823@bluesqueakpip they handed Who over to a writer (Moffat) that they knew was brilliant. And then they discovered that the ‘brilliant’ writer was in fact a f*ck*ng genius.
Nail; head. Whatever Moffat was before, DW brought his amazing capacities to the fore, and gave him the scope he needed to bring those capacities fully on-line for a show that he’d loved as a fan (there was a good article somewhere by someone who carps a lot about what Moffat’s done, explaining the realization that every long-time fan has their own cherished ideas of what they would do with DW if *they* were show-runner, and of course in every case it’s different — so whoever actually has the job of doing that is going to be snarl-bait for all the ones who can’t — particularly, I would add, when he, Moffat in this case, has done such a smashing job of realizing his own complex and bravura goals for the Doctor, with S10 still to come).
A “safe pair of hands” is probably the best way to move the show back into the realms of reliably good, fun stuff that doesn’t *require* the guiding hand of genius. My concern is that after Moffat, Capaldi might well feel that he’d rather move on than work with (talented) non-geniuses on the same show. And that might be just right, in terms of his own career. Gulp.
4 February 2016 at 17:51 #50822@puroandson He can and does travel alone, but we’ve seen (“Listen” particularly) and has been repeatedly told by Clara, recently, that it’s not good for him to do so on any extended basis; and maybe he’s known this for quite a while himself — Doctor 11: “I want a mate.” River Song: “Well, you’re not matin’ with me, Sunshine!” You’d think a Time Lord would be fine with zooming around on his/her own for as long as they like — but apparently if they ever did that, they don’t any more, because even when Gallifrey wasn’t “frozen”, how often did the Doctor encounter another TL?
Well, there was the Master. Quod est thingie (demonstrandum?): has he/she ever traveled with a companion (except maybe with the Doctor for a bit, out of necessity), that we know of? MissMaster hasn’t even had minions, but has operated, at least as far as I can recall, as a long gunslinger going around making plenty of trouble all on his/her own. AND she, at any rate, is at least half crazy, which I can’t help thinking could be as much from traveling alone as from looking into the Bad-Tempered Schism.
And the Doctor has always been a not-all-that-good-at-it TL (as well as a rebel TL, who screwed up his studies in school), and showing off doesn’t work when you’re alone so . . . he, of all people, needs somebody to talk to besides himself. He may be cautious or even very reluctant about it in S10, but he’s basically in a trap as regards companionship. Needs it; enjoys it, sometimes too much — is vulnerable through it. Oy.
Like the best, most life-like characters, his failings are implicit in his beginnings (the — eventual — Master wasn’t such a great choice of pals, was he? We’ve all seen the pattern — the restless, marginal, often talented and/or brilliant kid, never to join the “popular” crowd, drifts into the company of another kid like him/her and they become best buddies, getting into trouble together).
4 February 2016 at 08:12 #50815@pedant the exquisite torture on her face, as she realises he has no idea who she is . . . @missy part of her really wanted him to remember her.
Yes; even though him remembering would have undone the work of the blocker, so she turns that stricken face away. Imagine how tough it must be, to give him up utterly, to keep the memories but lose the life jaunting around together raising hell — ! And it’s hard to lose all that devotion from him, too, even if you both knew it was too dangerous to sustain. So liberation for both of them; so necessary, but so painful.
Hmmm, yes; Happily ever after, “it’s a lie we tell ourselves, because the truth is so hard.” Well, who’d know that better than he does, even if the worst of it is muted for him in the case of Clara.
2 February 2016 at 08:10 #50770@missy Indeed, no problem asking about anything DW around here, the show being about time travel and all . . . ! Personally, I found the idea that CapDoc knew who the waitress was all along very attractive, since it added a layer of hidden motivation and deception to the scene (as did the suggestion from some fans that Clara *knew* he knew but played along to make their final parting easier on him).
But, like Puro, between the scripted lines for that scene (specifically the bit that wasn’t included in the episode as shown), Moffat’s rather rueful admission in an interview that he’s often working at a lot simpler level than the fans think he is, plus a conviction that for the loss of his obsession to *matter* enough, it had to be a real loss rather than a pretense, I had to come down on the side of “It’s just what it looks like and just what CapDoc says it is: he remembers that Clara was there, but he doesn’t remember *her*.”
Here’s the link to the script, if you’re interested in having a look at it (the “Heaven Sent” script is available as well):
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/isite-static/doctorwho/scripts/DW9-EP-12-Hell-Bent.pdf
1 February 2016 at 04:01 #50743@pedant Right, I had completely spaced this scene, so I cede the field to you in this respect: the makers of this show did try to wrap it up. If it worked for you, good! For me, it was and remains so deeply unsatisfying that it was downright annoying. I can stomach the idea of all the weird anomalies on the island being hallucinations or metaphors of some kind, or a deliberately constructed environment, but just to say “it was all real” answers pretty much nothing, as far as I can see: no how, no why, no who (well, lots of them including — Ancient Egyptians? Too many but none that stick), and, I realize now, no when (well, finally outside of time but mostly inside it in a random seeming way). I’ve always said I’m not much good with time travel stories of any complexity, and one of the ways I learned this is by trying to make sense of the time line(s) in “Lost”.
Here’s one summary, if anybody’s interested, of the major bafflements on offer in this series, for those interested enough to take a general look-back at the show:
There are other sites that try to do this job too (because there *was* so much confusion about it after it was over), but in general (as on this one) most of the mysteries are *not* explained. IMO, the overall “explanation” that “everything was real but now we’re all dead or will be some time and this is our mystical reunion party” ducks all the questions that were also ducked in the course of the show. I think part of my problem with it was that I can tolerate a ton of ambiguity and open-endedness if there’s a plot-line that holds it together entertainingly enough, and if the characters are interesting enough *in themselves*, not just because weird things suddenly start happening *to* them just because.
Lost didn’t do this for me — I was drawn in by the promise of a couple of grown-ups among the passengers (notably Locke and Rose), but the story turned out to be mostly about Jack, one of the dullest lead characters I’ve ever come across, so . . .
I hope for better things from “The Leftovers”, which I believe is another child of Lindelof’s imagination (he was one of the creators of “Lost” too, as a number of commentators noted, with apprehension, when “The Leftovers” opened on TV) — so I’m not sanguine about its prospects. Which means that I’m trying to watch it the way you, pedant, describe watching “Lost”: staying in the puzzling present (which is quite beautifully done) and not worrying about the future conclusion.
31 January 2016 at 22:37 #50722@pedant Nope, it’s still not gettin’ in, and for more reason for that than twitter. There was no twitter at the time — as I recall — and the problem of goldfish attention spans being so common hadn’t reached its currently alarming level. If 99% of those let down by “Lost” think the characters were all dead throughout indicates pretty clearly that no, the ending you describe was not clearly apparent to anyone paying proper attention. And wanting action (in “Lost”) that didn’t (literally) run in circles much of the time and still not get anywhere* does not equate, IMO, to an obsessive demand for detailed analysis of Gallifreyan society (rather than the character-based story-arc moving forward to its resolution that we got) either.
I agree, though, about the 2% of world population in “The Leftovers”. It would hardly make a dent, seems to me, particularly on a planet once again awash in tides of desperate refugees. I think that small figure was an attempt to avoid having to deal with huge disruption in the economic system from more significant depopulation (leading to a breakdown a la Mad Max) in order to concentrate instead on the disruption of people’s psyches and world view caused by having seen other human beings just vanish before their eyes. But it’s bothersome all the same. I have more hope for “The Leftovers”, though, because they’ve had the sense to limit the series to 3 seasons in which to tell their story.
“Carnevale”, yes; I liked the atmosphere of grunge mixed with marvels and darkly tangled passions in that show, plus good, sinister performances.
*I kept longing for the “missing” character to trudge out of the undergrowth grumbling, “Jeez, can’t a person step away for a little private time without everybody else going batshit crazy around here?” Guess it’s a good thing I’m not a show runner . . .
31 January 2016 at 21:40 #50721@winston I am screaming at my own lack of proof reading.
Argh, no, no more screaming! I’d rather have my name spelled wrong! Seriously, I’m half deaf from all the screaming in that ep, and have ear-strain (or have invented the idea of ear-strain) because of having to try so hard to make out what anyone was actually saying under all that screaming.
@pedant Well, yeah, the pell-mell yikes-what-now rush of it was fun. I just had a hard time trying to grab hold of what was going on in the meantime. I do like the idea of humans as ruthless vampires on the life-energy of anything we can get our claws into, because — well, that’s what we *are*. Just look at the state of the place right now . . .
31 January 2016 at 19:35 #50712Hmm. Thanks for the comment. No wonder people were confused; little of this, little of that, little of some other thing . . . a whimper rather than a bang, messy and unsatisfying. What comes to mind now is the acres of filler, with everyone racing around the forest yelling the names of whomever they (or some of them) had misplaced lately. This became a joke in my house, and usually when it happened in a given episode, we’d groan and change channels, knowing that — after much panicky flailing through the bushes — eventually the strays would be found knowing nothing more than than they’d known when they’d left. Mind you, I’d gone to just popping in for a look rather than following all those clues (that just led to more clues) by the third season. There they’d be, running around yelling “Jack! Jack!” or whatever, so I’d turn it off and go read a book.
Once it ended (with a party in — Heaven?) I stumbled on the online discussions and found almost everybody else apparently just as baffled and let down as I was. “Lost” is still occasionally referenced as a cultural marker for an intriguing start melting away into nothing much (e.g., ‘What is going on in “The Leftovers”? Loving it, but I’ll be really annoyed if it just turns into another “Lost”‘).
What was that show about the farm-kid with the immortality powers wandering around in a version of the Depression-era middle America with a weird and tatty carnival run by a crazy German (Austrian?) who might mebbe have been the Devil? That was a much more interesting show, but short-lived. Now that I think of it, maybe it was canceled because it had a “Lost” vibe that turned people off. It seems in retrospect to have been another step in the direction of doing a show like “Lost” but doing it better.
31 January 2016 at 18:39 #50711@puroandson Puro Ah; that would be American-style, especially in the Bible belt . . .
31 January 2016 at 10:28 #50706@puroandson Mulled wine, please — a good, relaxing send off to a very late (around here anyway) bedtime. Thanks for the explanation. Calling this “pastoral care” has a baffling charm to it, I must say!
31 January 2016 at 07:19 #50697@puroandson OH yeah . . . let’s keep him, just as long as he wants to be, er, kept? Um.
And yes, I remember the take-out dinner now! Thank goodness. But — did he *eat* any? Onscreen? Well, maybe none of them did, cuz lines, after all. Talking with your mouth full, not recommended . . . People gotta eat, even TLs, right? Even thin TLs who are also rebel TLs? But I think I have been unrealistic in my pursuit of realism.
And I never knock soup if I can help it; the splatter factor . . . I have recently had the great pleasure of seeing my sometimes quite finicky sister fall hard for Vietnamese pho. I’m carefully not telling her that there’s usually a cube of sugar dissolved in it, contributing to the wonderful flavor of the broth.
31 January 2016 at 07:07 #50696@puroandson I think you did grand, myself. IMO, a bit of righteous friction has its place, even in these generally peaceable precincts. There’s a certain breed of fannish stubbornness about all sorts of things (bees in bonnets, rigid expectations or demands that were disappointed, etc.) that doesn’t flourish here, so visitors of that stripe either buzz off pretty quick or quiet down and pay attention for a while, to see whether they can, or want to, try to adapt rather than just leave. Seems to work out pretty well.
In the US at least, I think men shy away from teaching because conditions are awful (overcrowded classrooms, textbooks written to the standards of Texas, of all things, religiously and politically looney parents constantly inflicting their infantile idiocy on teachers and kids alike — talk about your unintended consequences — that one’s down to some of the localizing “reforms” of the sixties and seventies around here — and contempt from morons with no sense — no, stop; I’m starting to huff and puff, and this tsunami of anti-educational crap can’t have happened *only* in the US, either). And pay is awful too, because said morons think teachers have easy, lazy jobs and should be punished for it, kind of like, oh, you know, artists and such.
But, here’s my question — what’s up with “pastoral care” teachers? Can you elaborate a bit? I’ve never encountered that term before, certainly not about secondary schooling. Is it something like “school psychologist” only with a religious flavor?
31 January 2016 at 06:31 #50693@puroandson (I’ve missed your incisive prose so waving ‘halloo’ at you) and otters…
Ha! Otters are not here! You’re stuck with US!
Thanks for halloo, though. And waves.
Ichi
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