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13 January 2016 at 09:33 #50108
@puroandson Is feminism an ideology to you? For me it’s something different. If ideology, it becomes a separate unbonded issue (like a chemical compound) which can be argued away -I suppose. But that’s the way I look at it.
I was looking at it as rejecting the cultural habit of identifying assertive, even flamboyantly dominant women this way as a call-back to the 19th c European concept of “woman” as wild, scarily powerful but irrational creatures — as opposed, of course, to the high-minded, abstract thinkers of Great Thoughts and Doers of Great Deeds that the class of (upper class, educated) men were supposed to at least aspire to be. Not sure how that fits or doesn’t fit as ideology; probably depends on a lot of contextual factors.
But I was speaking of River in particular, as feeling overdone, to me, but not in a way that I would describe as being “a Force of Nature” (more like over-acting to get the character across, but that’s a matter of taste). Come to think of it, when the Doctor is letting his feelings drive him to stir up “tidal waves” of events through time and space, *he’s* the one acting like a Force of Nature (once again, DW turns gender assumptions on their head?). River’s the one who’s having a high old time while thieving for fun and profit.
12 January 2016 at 19:03 #50096@xaxiomatic Welcome; and yes, what impresses me most is how bold Steven Moffat is. I think it’s his risk-taking that his haters hate most. They see it as arrogance, which tells me so much more about them than it does about him, none of it good. River’s character wasn’t appealing to me from the start, as her “chemistry” with SmithDoc felt forced to me. Any sympathy I can achieve for the Clara-haters goes back to my inward cringe whenever River showed up, and feeble, silent cries of, “Oh no, here *she* is again!”
I generally dislike the whole “this woman is Force of Nature!” thing, partly on ideological grounds (“Force of Nature” is so often a mask used to blot out the individual behind the label — it sounds as if it magnifies the person, but it often reduces the woman in question to a non-human status); and partly on stylistic ones, since bombast and flamboyance in any form (except satire that works) tends to repel me.
So I couldn’t like River until “Husbands”, in which she explicitly rejects that label and claims her humanity by turning around and describing *the Doctor* as a force of nature — several of them, in fact — and emphasizing the difference between the two of them as unbridgeable. He immediately demolishes that distance, first with humor, and then with action; but then, he *is* sometimes a force of nature — tidal wave, S9? — whose human side as been explored for us in the show itself for decades now.
So the “chemistry” between these two characters is wonderfully affirmed in “Husbands”, and I find myself liking River enormously — just before we lose her, probably for good. I also love it that it’s to her that CapDoc brings the greatest, most human-scale lesson he’s learned in his first two seasons: to let things end when their end comes (but hey, maybe there’s a bit of that delicious “wiggle-room” to be wrested from fate first, if you’re brave and clever — will 24 years do?).
I sometimes say to Moffat-haters on other internet boards that I’m sorry they just don’t get him. I’m not being facetious or sly; I really *am* sorry for them. Moffat has his irritating writing tics, all right; but his daring as a story-teller is, IMO, wondrous to behold.
12 January 2016 at 18:24 #50095@puroandson Dear PuroSolo — thanks for bringing that to us; lovely story. It’s very good to hear from you in any case.
12 January 2016 at 02:06 #50086@brewski Yes, I recall reading stories of the public outcry over the killing off of the character. Not quite the same as with Superman. 😉
No, not quite the same . . . ! I think serialized fiction in the papers was a very big deal especially for working class people who didn’t buy books but followed Dickens’ serials with rabid attention; so losing popular fictional characters from the newspapers might have been more like canceling a huge hit on Tv when there were only a couple of channels to choose from . . . ?
11 January 2016 at 10:08 #50073Bloody Hell.
@bluesqueakpip Thanks for the news, terrible as it is, and for the song.
8 January 2016 at 17:39 #50048@brewski Oh gosh, no, of course not! I see what you mean, and was only saying that it looks to me as if ACD was quite serious about “killing” Holmes. He wrote letters expressing his annoyance at the success of what he regarded as light entertainment, and wanted badly to highlight his more serious work, so it was a he really was trying to get out from under that particular brand of success. I read a couple of biographies of the Great Man back in my teens, and I remember the stress placed on how astonished and dismayed he seems to have been by the public outcry over Reichenbach Falls. He even had some threats from the reading public over it, and so much nagging from his publishers (was it The Strand that ran the stories as serials?) that he gave in before long.
8 January 2016 at 05:48 #50042@superfreak Did anyone else just go ‘huh??!!’ at the end of this? Kind of like how I went ‘huh??! ‘ at the end of the Sherlock Christmas special.
That’d be me; I’m not the quick study I was in days of yore, and I need re-watches just to get really complicated stuff straight before I can chat about it. That review of SNM cited in my post above throws a bit more light on what they might have been doing with this episode — it’s the only really positive review of SNM I’ve seen, I think, so it’s worth a look. The Sherlock episode was puzzling until I began to get the drug overdose induced Victorian hallucination idea, and I admire the cleverness of it and the pro-feminist “plot” gimmick.
But I don’t feel any impulse to go back and look at it again, now that I can (probably) follow the story(ies) better. The “clever stunt” element puts me off, I think; and also my much-attenuated interest in Holmes and Watson, all that remains of my teen-aged absorption in the original stories along with a few later versions in film and novel form.
Oh, the monsters in SNM — I just took them as the McGuffin and didn’t question further. For me the interest was seeing the Doctor rushing around and getting not-very-far, really, as a figure caught and used in Rasmussen’s carefully devised story, “How I Cleverly Conquered the Universe, or Anyway I’m About To”. The novelty of it was interesting; a kind of stripped-down, inside-out “Before the Flood”, according to the (more or less crazy) villain? Haven’t re-watched in a while, but springtime desperation will probably bring that about.
8 January 2016 at 05:26 #50041@superfreak Thanks for your music — you have a clear, free-flowing voice that’s very appealing. I loved S9, too, plus the Xmas Special which wrapped it up with near-perfection — which is as close as we ever get.
@birdtomahawk You’re right, I forgot the “Kane” remark — my head was full of images of stairs, bannisters, and Cesar creeping up (or was it down?). So I was being the pedantic one! And I do get annoyed over the corruption of the *meaning* of the memory palace into the brain as an architectural lumber room stuffed with all the junk its owner has ever lived through . . . Moffat should know better, and he’s inventive enough, gods know, to come up with something better to describe what he *is* writing about.
Now, did you guys do a review of Hell Bent and of Husbands yet? If yes, where do I find them?
7 January 2016 at 18:37 #50035@birdtomahawk Oh, great — thanks! But, “Citizen Kane”? Not initially, for sure. Talalay says (in the “extra” for this episode) that she went to the German Expressionist film makers and their work, specifically “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” (those dramatic shadows, lots of stairs, moments of wordless menace!). You can absolutely see the results of referencing that visual vocabulary on the screen.
And I wish they’d stop talking about a “mind palace”. The term as I’ve seen it used is “Memory Palace”, referring specifically to an education technique common to Ancient and also medieval times (before the printing press and the common availability of books and literacy). “Human knowledge” worth learning was thought to be a sort of limited quantity, and the way an educated man could hold it in his head was by constructing in his mind a structure full of objects used as clues to this theorem, or that exposition or disputation. That’s what it was; and that’s why it died out (as a teaching tool) with the spread of libraries and literacy which took the place of a fully-stocked, educated memory.
But all in all, I love these guys’ enthusiasm and insight; thanks for posting their review here.
7 January 2016 at 17:37 #50033Came across this, this morning, on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/3zvef7/production_notes_steven_moffat_qa_for_doctor_who/?
If anyone here can resist reading the rest, after Moffat’s invitation not to proceed, my hat is off to that person! Though I feel quite comfortable ignoring what doesn’t suit my view of Heaven Sent . . .
Good lord, this guy’s *mind* — !
7 January 2016 at 17:24 #50032Have people seen this? I’m not sure I understand it, but it seems quite provocative:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/3zp3f8/doctor_who_magazines_sleep_no_more_review_from/
7 January 2016 at 17:17 #50031@brewski I would be more convinced that he intended no out if at the end Watson was there, desperately holding onto Holmes, losing his grip and witnessing his fall, and then finally recovering and identifying the body. THAT is the author saying “I mean it. He’s done!” 🙂
Well, yeah . . . hard to argue with that. Perhaps ACD’s intention was not to drag his hero down to dusty death before our (and Watson’s) eyes, but to send him out with a titanic struggle of Brain Giants of Good and Evil, something suitably grand glimpsed as a distant vision, fitting for the lofty and edifying ending of a story that his readers had elevated to a sort of mythology and to which its chronicler Watson was in the end essentially an outside observer.
7 January 2016 at 17:02 #50030@jimthefish What an excellent fish! I particularly appreciate the comments on the KKK/Suffragette scene, a weird little phantasmagoria if ever there was one . . . and, that which can never be insisted upon too often, the fact that not liking a particular tv show isn’t proof that the show is bad. It’s just a clear sign that the show in question wasn’t made by and for you, to your personal specifications. Nor does this prevent you from imagining your own version of the show inside your head, or even outside your head as fanfic.
6 January 2016 at 21:46 #50021@brewski “How can Sherlock solve crimes without his smart phone?” That pretty much says it all.
ARGH! We’re doomed. Seriously.
ACD killing of Holmes permanently. I never believed it for a minute!
Well, I recall seeing some correspondence from ADC to a friend rejoicing in having finally divested himself of that damned Holmes, and I do believe it. He really did seem to think that his reputation was, finally, going to be based firmly on his Historical England fiction, and said that in print too, more than once.
Here’s a funny little parallel for you: my dad’s family is supposed to be descended from the Conan Doyles (when Adrian was lost in New Guinea or wherever it was, my father said, “Here, look at this — you cousin’s been eaten by a crocodile”, or some such). I looked into it once on ancestry.com, and there’s a possibility, through bastardy via one of ACD’s brothers, which means probably nah, nonsense (except that Dad’s family was, so far as I could tell, weirdly uptight and priggish about background, having at least one other such “shameful secret” to hide; so who knows).
When I came across that comment of ACD’s about wanting people to forget Sherlock and admire the *serious* historical work, I had to laugh. I’ve thought that whatever rep I’ve established, assuming that it persists after I’ve kicked this particular bucket, would rest on a four-vol. series about a feminist post-apocalyctic future that I began in 1974; but apparently not. It’s the *vampire* book that people know, if they know anything about my stuff, and for me that was a bauble that I more or less tossed off as a diversion from a sticky place in vol. II.
Life; what a gas!
6 January 2016 at 21:29 #50020@janetteb @winston You’re welcome — it’s amazing to see how much forethought goes into just a fragment of the script — I’ve always thought of it in theatrical terms (since that’s the only kind of directing I have any first-hand experience of), which was focused on talking to the actors, “What if you try it this way” kind of thing — not this focus on so much detail! Of course, when Hollywood makes movies about making movies, the Director is always shown just doing the glamor stuff with the “talent”, not figuring out weird angles with the light guys and camera guys, so I’ve thought of them as kind of puffed up autocrats, not on this level at all.
I hadn’t realized that Talalay has done a lot of work on horror films; of course she’d go to the Germans for this story, although it’s not nearly as noticeable in color as it is in B&W. Still, those corridors — very special, that.
6 January 2016 at 06:35 #50012Here it is:
You read this and understand why when somebody asked Peter Capaldi if he’d like to direct an episode, he answered with an emphatic, “No!”, explaining that he’s seen enough of how extremely complicated and demanding the job is.
6 January 2016 at 06:32 #50011@missy Yay, missy! I thought it wasn’t going to be available in full until March, though — ? With the two Xmas specials, I mean — Last Xmas, and Husbands?
@dralygonix I would just LOVE to get to know folks around here, but where oh where to start.
Fret not, you have already started. Maybe go back and read the forum material on the eps of Season 9? That should give you the flavor of discussion here . . . I’m in the American Southwest, the state of New Mexico to be precise, although I was born and raised in New York City. Teacher, writer, mid-seventies and busy trying to wrap up this career before this life wraps up. I’ve watched a lot of Doctor Who, on and off, since it began, but really fell back into it with Capaldi’s version of the Doctor and his two seasons (so far) in those fine frock coats.
@blenkinsopthebrave There’s a twitter sort of site, I think, for Rachel Talalay where she talks about directing “Heaven Sent”, and the choices she had to make within the constraints they have to work with. If I can find the url again, I’ll send, for anybody who hasn’t come across it yet.
5 January 2016 at 17:31 #50007@craig Thanks! So glad we’re back on track again. We all share in the joy, I think. Happy New Year!
3 January 2016 at 02:50 #49969@birdtomahawk Oh, don’t apologize; it could have taken way too long to find your reviews otherwise, and we need them now, while S9 is still clear in our heads (well, as clear as these things get). As for the source of that observation, trust Steven Moffat to know pretty much what he’s doing. Thinking about his work from a writers’ p.o.v. just blows my teeny mind every time . . . I want to be like *that*, next lifetime (but will probably be a piano tuner or a French teacher instead; whose nose).
3 January 2016 at 02:44 #49968@birdtomahawk 11 to 12 is discussed in Deep Breath to be him revealing his true self to Clara.
Hmm; I think it’s more testing out what his true self *is*, in the course of which self-discovery he also reveals more than he normally would to a companion, because he’s busy flailing around trying to find his balance (and she’s 11’s Impossible Girl and 12’s north star/lodestone, so he has to trust her to reactions even when they’re unfavorable, ie Into the Dalek). One of the things about S8, which makes it both great and experimental *and* irritating and crazy-making, is how unmoored both of them are, how desperate to find something steady to hang onto in the chaos unleashed around both of them by this huge and unexpected regeneration from Matt to Peter.
So what is S9, then, in these terms? The two of them burning through what’s good about them together and then having to recognize and accept that they must go their separate ways to avoid burning up the whole damned universe?
3 January 2016 at 02:35 #49967@bluesqueakpip Sherlock Holmes is practically the prototype of the Detective-with-issues who treats women badly…
Not to mention Mycroft, fat or thin, who lives, apparently, in his club (to which, I imagine, women are not admitted *at all*, or are relegated to a corner of the “strangers room “). I found Mycroft’s comment about the “hidden enemy” being one that the (male) establishment *must* lose to a great deal more startling than Holmes’s personal epiphany. It surprised me, too, that Gatiss could put the virtuous enemy idea across so firmly and not have everybody rear back and say, “HUH? What did this brilliant, Victorian, super-establishment stuffed shirt just say about women, from whom he is clearly in full retreat and of whom he consequently can know very little firsthand?!”
As to Sherlock, my understanding of the character is that hewas *intended* to be not just more or less asexual, but a-anything that didn’t feed directly into his laser-beam concentration on observation + logic = deduction. Which I think may be one reason that ACD got fed up with the character and tried to kill him off permanently at the Falls. Sherlock is so thinly characterized (apart from his deductive genius) that there’s really not a lot to be done with him, from a writerly p.o.v., unless you start from the understanding that to portray him successfully in modern times you must be willing to branch him out into some degree of social and personal connection with others. A number of novelists have done this successfully (Laurie King’s series, “The 7% Solution”, etc.). But hard core SH fans seem to find this approach very threatening, and tend to disallow from the start (and permanently).
I wouldn’t say that classic Holmes treats women “badly”; I haven’t re-read the original stories in decades, but my impression is that he pretty much treats *everyone* badly (ordinary people are, more or less, boring pudding-brains to him) — mainly by ignoring them as soon and as much as possible. The oddity, given his time, place, and culture, is that he has no different reaction to women than he does to men, which in western culture gets read as repressed heterosexuality/homosexuality; trauma-induced and therefore pathological asexuality; or some kind of weird religious or sexual perversion like secret S/M/B, or other sorts of fetishism.
2 January 2016 at 21:31 #49962@birdtomahawk Thanks for your reviews! This one in particular I found very interesting — particularly the observation that most of the Doctor’s major reflections and equals (more or less) have been women in S9 — Ashildr, Clara, Missy. It hadn’t occurred to me to see it that way, but I think you’ve got hold of something important there.
2 January 2016 at 20:42 #49961Good lord, a *third* Holmes brother!? Oh, you run with it, boys, run!
Thanks for good stuff — I sort of surfed through the whole thing in a daze of confusion so it’s nice to have a bit of firm ground (maybe) to stand on. I do protest, though, the idea of a “fictionally misogynist” London, since you don’t have to scratch deeper than a millimeter to find the dismaying evidence that there’s nothing fake about the misogyny of the time not just in London but all over Europe as well. There’s a good, if ultimately a bit tedious book about how this is reflected in the art, philosophy, and literature of the time, “Idols of Perversity”, from a university press, author Somebody Dykstra I believe (I lent out my copy and it hasn’t come home).
I must say I’m impressed with how Steven Moffat’s pro-feminist awareness and interest continues to inform his work. Is it a recent development in him, do people think? Or maybe it was always latent but has been honed to an edge in part by the challenges (however unpleasantly put, sometimes) raised by angry feminists over masculinist sexism in DW? Because yanking the knee-jerk misogyny built into so much of our culture (IMO) to the foreground and energetically taking it on is still pretty unusual in popular TV, and always to be applauded in the attempt, in my book (I admit, I used to be a good deal more inclined to dismiss such efforts as “too little, too late, too self-serving”, as younger feminist women still do, because when the Revolution begins, nothing it achieves is ever good enough for the idealists).
2 January 2016 at 20:22 #49960Ah, sweet. Haven’t listened to Flaming Lips for a long time, and that sound sure has changed a lot since.
2 January 2016 at 19:08 #499592 January 2016 at 10:38 #49942@missy Yep; Moffat is an amazing talent with the gift of long perspectives — very useful, in writing stories about time travel, I should think.
1 January 2016 at 10:50 #49898@missy SM said “Husbands” was an old script of his, that he presumably re-tooled to cap off S9 with a view of the Doctor post-Clara and doing well, not to mention having learned about accepting the fact that things end, and you just have to accept it. New Doctor-ly maturity, to match a mature companion-for-the-xmas-season (+ 24 yrs on Darillium). Extremely gratifying, and you’re right.
1 January 2016 at 05:14 #49894Ah, new year is one and three quarter hours away here — no fireworks yet. But happy New Year anyway!
Ichi
31 December 2015 at 20:14 #49884@pedant I think season 9 was the most powerful since Matt Smith’s first (which will always hold a special place for me) and the acting quite outstanding.
Cheers! With on that.
@timecahoot lack of Ohila’s sympathy towards Doctor after he came out of confession dial seriously bothered me. It seems to me that Ohila came to Gallifrey just because she knew that when Doctor returns to Gallifrey it will lead to serious political changes and not because of care she feels for the Doctor. I mean, he got more sympathy and understanding from Ashildr and War General
Yes, Ohila’s peculiarly bitter anger struck me as odd. It would have been even more noticeable without the Lord President Hambone’s gallumphing about. Ohila’s reaction had the flavor, to me, of the disappointment of someone (the enemy inside the friend you don’t even like?) who has wheedled you into position to play a part in some scheme of theirs, and then gets gobsmacked by the fact that you’ve gone and done something entirely else instead. Higgins is very good: I wonder if that was a “motivation” she came up with for her character that never needs to be explained because, well, there’s nothing she can do to mend it (whatever her plan was) once CapDoc has irrevocably queered the pitch by being the person he is.
When Doctor got out of confession dial, he was half insane, sad and angry, and the first thing he did when he came back on Gallifrey was going to barn to grieve
I don’t think so. I think he’s *done* his grieving inside the Confession Dial, full force — Moffat refers to it this way, and I believe it: “Everyone gets trapped in the Castle of Grief sometime.” So no, I don’t think he went to the barn to grieve. I think he went to the barn to lie in his old bed up in the hayloft and *think*, concentrating on how to take revenge in a way that will also rescue Clara. He’ll show the bastards — by reversing the collateral damage of Trap Street and saving her, a person clearly of no importance whatever to his enemies, but supremely important to him.
This is what he’s doing when he goes back into the barn the first two times they come to meet him: thinking through his plan (does it include the use of the neural block, or is that an improvisation on the spot?).
Oh, and thanks, upthread, for the link to the Heaven Sent script! It settled my question about how many years in the Dial he remembers. The direction on page 48 (page #’s are lower righthand corner), upper middle, “FLASHBACK — the word Bird” and following — this is where he remembers realizing what has to be done to escape, because this is where he remembers all of it: getting this far, to this realization and *memory*, each time. Follow up on page 50, where he’s telling Tardis-Clara he doesn’t want to go further (start hammering the wall down) because the prospect is just too horrible, and he says outright, “But I can remember, Clara. I can remember it all, every time!” I take this to mean, he can remember the whole journey from the transporter room to this revelation at the wall (that he’s already come that far, over and over, for 7,000 yrs, and knows he’ll forget and start blank again at the beginning next time around, and all the times to come, up to that point of revelation).
So when he finally steps out of the Dial in Hell Bent, he’s in the latest edition of his body built off the record of his first arrival in the transporter room. But *mentally* he has had his latest revelation of remembering at the wall before attacking it again. So he brings out with him the memory of all 4 and a half billion years of his repeating ordeal, plus this final iteration that ends with the escape he has won for himself by putting in that time, labor, pain, and sheer ferocious will.
Hell. At that point, anybody else would be *way* crazier than he is! Especially since he was sent to the Dial not as his normal Doctor self but as *this* guy (to Ashildr): “The Doctor isn’t here! You’re stuck with me!”
30 December 2015 at 05:59 #49855@lisa River seemed more authentic (?) somehow compared to Clara for me. Its like some folks are on a quest
for wonderfulness (Clara) and others are born with that (River). I think- maybe?Yes, maybe; though there’s also the age difference. Clara is very young when we first meet her, still looking for further boundaries of herself. Having found those boundaries (the Raven, the long way round, no more Doctor), she steps into possession of them as she leaves. River is a mature woman from the get-go (as I recall), so even if she wasn’t always so Auntie-Mame as a kid, she’s had time and adventures (mostly on her own, I think?) to turn into her full-powered self the way people sometimes do in maturity and middle age (yes, even “wild” people). And yet, under all that is this self-deprecating view of herself as not nearly grand enough for the Doctor to love and care about. Very human, that.
And interesting. Thinking back to the discussion of how he “takes on” the role of the Doctor, that tells me that in himself, he’s nothing so grand; he’s the fool, the mad improviser, the man who keeps losing people he loves while he keeps going on, for all his big brains and his freedom in time and space (limited, after all, in all kinds of ways), and his track record of trailing a great deal of destruction in his wake. All that’s his public truth, the mantle he puts on (the burgundy coat, the colorful scarf, the plaid trousers), his dress uniform when he’s boasting to the universe and everybody in it about how dangerous he is, how brilliant, how feared.
But the man wearing the mantle is perfectly capable of loving a bold adventurer so like himself, so much not a mountain range or a sunset. People see the mantle, the mountain range, the sunset, as he wants them to, but there’s a cost. River seems to have mistaken him for the grandeur that he plays (and also, sometimes, actually owns and inhabits); and she’s suffered for seeing him as too tall, and herself not measuring up.
Well, it’s okay. He’s got 24 yrs to make it up to her. Hello, sweetie; hearts to heart.
30 December 2015 at 02:31 #49847@pedant [of River] You don’t get to have the beautiful balcony scene without the Doctor seeing that, for all her wild ways, she is a good person who loves him unconditionally, with no expectation of reward. She is wild, but true. And then he says “Hello sweetie” and she realises that the sunset is loves her back . . . there was huge bravado. there had to be, we now know, because she did not feel she was loved back.
Beautifully put; thanks. For me, that puts Clara/Doctor in a somewhat different light. He was frantic over Clara — enough to risk the coherence of the universe. Maybe because he knew that she didn’t love him back, not in the same deep-seated and constant way? Clara tried to betray him in Dark Water; did he ever betray her (ignoring, rightly, a couple of instances where he appeared to abandon her to danger, in Deep Breath and in KtM, but in fact he did nothing of the sort)?
Maybe it works with River (when it works) because she’s not just human — she’s at least part TL, and her love for the Doctor is a version of Missy’s description of TL “friendship”? I’m seeing Clara/Doctor and River/Doctor as complementary relationships . . . ?
30 December 2015 at 00:09 #49837@arbutus I don’t think that the Doctor’s statement about sensing other Time Lords can be taken as fact any longer.
Agreed — I suspect that that’s one of those remarks (like McGann and “half-human”) that the writers have been trying to wriggle out from under ever since, mainly by just forgetting all about it. Now that Gallifrey is unfrozen, some TLs besides the Doctor and Missy might turn up since they can time travel too, so technically the Doctor *isn’t* the last of the TLs (was he ever, with the Master rattling about the place?). Having the Doctor always be able to sense them could make things very difficult plot-wise, as the Missy-kiss-assault in DiH demonstrates. Some kind of retcon is called for here, surely? All they need is for him to admit that he was wrong about the issue. He didn’t ever say that *all* TLs can sense the existence of the others, so if it’s just him claiming something that turns out to be a mistaken belief about his own capacities, that’s easy enough to set straight.
@puroandson Hey, PuroSolo — of course it’s better. Yes, she talked too fast for me, too, and irritated the socks off me sometimes, but I liked her a lot by the end. She won me over. River, now, River drove me bats from the get-go, probably for the same basic reason that I dislike Captain Jack: there’s a certain style of flamboyant self-confidence that just gets my back up (partly because it always feels *fake* to me — an act, a defense — unless the person in question is, say, an opera singer, because people able to live *that* life carrying around that kind of talent just amaze me the hell out of me). I’ve seen Kingston in other things where she doesn’t project that “larger than life and *bad* (but really good-heartedd)” thing, and liked her much better.
Somehow, in “Husbands”, working with Capaldi somehow took off the irritating edge. Of course; sometimes he really is the Doctor. He makes things better . . .
29 December 2015 at 05:44 #49803@jphamlore I think the Doctor through much of the episode was hoping River Song would recognize him but did not want to do something completely obvious that would announce his presence such as pulling out the sonic screwdriver.
I thought it turned into a bit of a game for him — how far would things have to go for her to catch on? Some fans are irked that River doesn’t twig sooner (that she’s being written as “stupid”), but I think they’re forgetting that it’s not just the new face (and its apparent age) that throws her off the scent, but also the new, gravelly voice with its Glasgow accent would throw her off. It’s surprising how much we use the familiarity of timbre, accent, and general speech idiosyncracies to identify people. And of course she doesn’t know that SmithDoc got a new clutch of regenerations from the TLs.
@janetteb This poor planet of ours is bit of a mess right now. We need the Doctor.. because there is a distinct lack of altruism being displayed by our governments as well as a even more distinct lack of “duty of care”.
Thanks for your concern! I expect that very little practical assistance will be given to those bearing the brunt of the current destructive weather pattern as it’s playing out in the US. “Duty of care” barely exists as a concept here, which is why we have so many rules and regulations that try to compel people to behave as if this is a civilized place, which it no longer seems to be. The rich will get themselves to high ground, the poor will suffer in crappy FEMA trailers until they drown or otherwise die, and the politicians won’t give a damn, as usual. Well, not til they have to actually move Washington DC inland and upland because the miserable place is built on a swamp. We’ve just seen on tv news areal views of the City of York in the UK with its streets flooded — alarming.
The eastern half of my state, New Mexico, is pretty much immobilized by winter storms and ice, and the northern mountains are also getting hammered. My city lies in the valley of the Rio Grande, sheltered on the east by a long fault-block mountain called Sandia. The Rio Grande doesn’t flood these days because of all the dams built upstream, and there’s a system of storm drains and open arroyos that so far has been able to handle pretty tough conditions. The city does try to get our sizable population of homeless people indoors during winter weather, and so far no deaths have been reported here, although Texas if heavily flooded, with some 28 deaths and counting.
29 December 2015 at 05:10 #49800@bluesqueakpip Here, all the total sh*ts are deservedly dead and the bloke who gets the diamond is someone who did the brave and decent thing of checking for survivors.
Okay, got that; just to put my own comment in context, locally, some of us USians are a bit raw on such subjects, per this (yet another instance of what should be a massive cause of public *shame*, but I fear most Murcans won’t even notice — anyway, no offense intended):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jon-stewart-sept-11-responders_567ab1e5e4b06fa6887f7bd8
@jphamore I am sorry if I created an argument.
Don’t be sorry; you didn’t. I think I did, but I’ve no intention of taking it any further.
@puroandson Son of Puro — I’m lousy at charades too, but years ago when we were new to New Mexico we used to play a game in the car when the kids (2) were sightseeing with us, each of us challenging the others to come up with a pun and a story that made it work — well, sort of. N.M. has great geology, strata like made lying all over the place, and somebody came up with the Great Nonconformity, which ended up in a story about some interfaith shenanigans in a very cold Buddhist monastery, ending in “Let me know, says the Abbot, when nun come for mitty . . . ” Fortunately, with four of us in the car there was no space for doing it in charade-form. Oh, wild times in the old Dodge Dart, I am telling you . . . !
eliminative materialism? Is that what you were referring to? Because there’s some ideas out there which say that ‘love’ ‘need’ ‘desire’ and other feelings aren’t properly defined and are down to biological imperatives which we simply haven’t understood yet and there are philosophers who believe in this concept.
No, that’s a new thing to me. I meant “materialism” as opposed to maybe “spiritualism”, that is the idea (sorry, all, if I’m over simplifying here, but I am becoming simpler and simpler as time goes on) that if you can’t *measure* it, it’s to all intents and purposes not “real”, so there is no spiritual (or, if you prefer, supernatural) aspect to the universe because despite all sorts of religious etc. claims no measurements acceptable to science have verified such an aspect. I suppose e. materialism as you describe it is a related idea: reducing all behaviors to basic biological drives because changes in your biological body (hormone levels etc.) can be measured and tracked scientifically, but the emotions behind a conversation about love between two lovers can’t be grasped directly. I’m very much a measurement person when it comes to the things that measurement can measure: moving a physical body around in a physical world full of sharp edges, blunt bulk, distances to fall if you don’t look where you’re going, etc.
The things I experience in my mind, which (so far) are only scientifically measurable to a very limited extent, I regard differently, and take as indicators of other dimensions of being and meaning where measurability in our terms does not (so far) apply in any meaningful way. I have no interest in trying to convince people who dismiss this point of view to take it seriously, though. Anyone with an interest can easily find out tons about it via their own research, same as with other stuff — as you say, Google, plus the good old library.
The man the Doctor gives the diamond to is, IMO, not obeying some elaborately rationalized biological drive, but doing what he says he’s doing: looking for survivors to help, for the usual reasons that social animals like us sometimes help each other. I don’t think, though, that finer measurement of the observable phenomena accompanying love and desire will change our understanding of those concepts appreciably any time soon. Someday, who knows?
I found “Husbands” arc-y in a satisfying way, once I realized that the Doctor has gone back in time after Clara’s time with him, and brings with him a new acceptance of the necessity for endings (instead of avoiding or fighting them the way he was inclined to do before Hell Bent). That was highlighted with a light and thoughtful touch that I liked very much, and that gave added depth to HB, for me. And don’t miss Moffat yet; he’s got another season to go, at least!
Puro Solo — being able to watch as another person loses their memory having drunk from the poppies of Lethe -turned into a delicious iced water-back! Er did this and perhaps in this manner, ichi, he is Clara -watching the Doctor lose his memory as her picture falls to the ground.
Ah, that’s lovely; yeah. That image (of an image shrugged off by the Tardis as it takes off for a different life) haunts me as nothing else in Hell Bent does. Memory, loss of, is in my thoughts quite a bit these days, of course, so maybe that’s why.
When Er awakes, he’s on the pyre and this to me is a reminder of the wasteland of Darillium which at the time is an inferno from the ship’s crash. Later, it’s transformed into something beautiful: almost heavenly, and a near- ‘eternity’ awaits River and her Doctor.
But the Doctor has had his own pyre, hasn’t he, in the transporter room of the Castle, burning up over and over. Does something beautiful come of it? Escape; revenge, Oddyseus-style cleverness, but Eurydice can’t wake fully to life; acceptance, and departure. It’ll do.
Ichi
29 December 2015 at 02:01 #49789@puroandson Could we agree it’s a thought process or spiritual nourishment view and not an hypothesis following the Platonic mode of thought?
Sure, no problem here. ‘Tis not the season to be arguing.
28 December 2015 at 23:11 #49774@pedant much more interesting: the a courageous everyman who was rewarded for trying to find survivors in a dangerous crash site.
Well, no; that’s a magic man with no need for money taking steps to get a treasure home to its current owners with the reward going to somebody who may or may not be interested in the restaurant business on Darillium, assuming that somebody doesn’t end up jailed for stealing the diamond in the first place (“What, some guy in a flying police box touched down long enough to *give* this to you?”). Sweet, works in the story, but not intrinsically interesting, IMO.
As for the other part of my post, above, not a term I was looking for, although the one I chose was not as precise as it should have been. To those doing research at Stanford, the University of Virginia, and several other reputable places (just in the States) that I can’t look up without losing my text here, it’s at least an hypothesis, with evidence gathered over the past 40 yrs or so under ongoing investigation. So far as I’m aware, the Materialist position (am I wrong in that interpretation of your response?) isn’t a theory, either; to those not wedded to it, it’s a point of view.
28 December 2015 at 19:48 #49769@jphamlore The Doctor went back in time and arranged for the construction of the Singing Towers of Darillium himself.
What a delightful thought! Making good use of his Heaven Sent experience in breaking down the unwanted rock around and between the towers, only with tools this time . . . tuning them, now, that would take real genius!
ideas on how to transition the Doctor to a more balanced emotional relationship with his companions. Unfortunately I have a sinking feeling
Ah, well, maybe — but my feelings refuse to sink. Juggling Sherlock (hmm, interesting visuals there — ah, never mind) was predicted to have been a drag on S9 as well, but I haven’t seen signs of any such influence. As for using someone already developed, certainly if resources have been pared down (? Any news on that, re $?) productions will be affected, but from Moffat’s comments on striking out in new directions with S10, re-using older, more developed characters isn’t in the works, at least not nearly as much as we’ve seen in S9. I’ve got my doubts about doubling Capaldi’s role, since his schedule is already pretty damn heavy, and they won’t want to burn him out (if that’s even possible for a true fanboy like him, late fifties or not!).
Besides, I’m still stuffed from the 2-yr banquet the Moffat/Capaldi/Coleman/Gold feast that was laid on for us in these last two series. For once, my afflictive impatience has quieted down to a hectic background mumble.
Of course, it’s not even 2016 yet . . .
As to the Myth of Er — some reincarnation theory includes that idea — that between lives a soul chooses the (proposed) path of their next one, and a “resting life” is one option, though one seldom chosen by younger souls.
28 December 2015 at 07:51 #49753@jphamlore Clara did return to Gallifrey in an instant of time and then had herself put back in her body for her death at Trap Street, so the Time Lords were none the wiser.
Ah — okay, yes, if she pops out of time at a point shortly after her escape with CapDoc, the TLs wouldn’t know that she’d been gallivanting about time and space with Ashildr in between, unless they did exactly what CapDoc feared and tracked her by means of her memories of *him*, which weren’t wiped. If that’s a real thing, then they’re probably already on her trail — all the while being on the lookout for splits and cracks in the S/T continuum because she hasn’t *yet* occupied her proper fixed point in time, that is, her death in Trap Street. They’d be in a hell of a hurry to find her, I think, so a pursuit is pretty much certain; hence, “Run like Hell!” he advises her.
I worry about the guitar, too, propped where it is at take-off; but I can well believe that he would put it aside without a second glance, as he no doubt puts aside the dark coat to put on the burgundy one. He’s putting aside that whole story, casually, because why not, with all the emotional punch bled out of it for him? I think he’ll need some time before he returns to those remnants of sad things past and gone. Her theme dies away for good when he enters the Tardis for a reason: she, that is the Clara-shaped absence, is not in his thoughts now.
Those days aren’t even a memory at that point — they’re just a story, and he’s already told it in the diner. Maybe later, with time and distance, he’ll go back to making that story into a song. Meanwhile, he does remember what he learned from Clara about accepting unwelcome inevitabilities — his mention of endings in “Husbands” tells us so. Could be the young punk rocker in the older man is gone forever, matured out by bitter experience.
I kinda hope not, though . . . and I hope that in S10 we occasionally get just an echo of Clara’s music at moments harking back to his life with her, or moments when he steps into a street or a room or a field that Clara and Ashildr and their Tardis had occupied recently in their own hidden travels.
28 December 2015 at 07:16 #49751@puroandson Puro Solo, the little reference to Clara’s tune when River begs the Doctor to find a loophole and he says “sometimes things end”,
Okay, that answers my major question: this is CapDoc *post-Clara*, having traveled back in time to a Christmas season between Angels Take Manhattan and Silence in the Library. This is the echo we need of the closing of the Clara/CapDoc arc — the long lesson of learning to connect + learning to let go because “sometimes things end.” How beautiful . . .
@janetteb I just love Moffat’s skill at turning the light and funny to tragic.
He understands how they’re two sides of the same coin, I think, and has a fine touch in modulating between them. You’re right, it’s a distinct skill, and not that common, either.
everything I have read suggests that Capaldi is loving being the Doctor and happy to continue for years. Not sure everyone loves River Song either.
Capaldi says, most recently that I’ve seen, that he’d like to do other things, so I imagine that if Moffat left and somebody unacceptable took over in his place, Capaldi might well go rather than stay with a job that became a conflict-ridden chore. His agent is doubtless on the lookout for a promising next step. But I don’t think Capaldi is *looking* for an exit at this point. He jokes about how it’s just his Scottish gloom that keeps him mindful that all good things must end. Maybe S9 has had something to do with that, too . . . ?
As for River Song, I never liked her — her brassiness felt forced and unnatural to me. But here, she was just right.
@arbutus People who see CapDoc as only grim and cranky are missing the sense of humour that is always bubbling away just underneath the grumpy exterior.
Even in Heaven Sent — “I’ve run out of corridor — there’s a life summed up — ”
@mersey There’s something really special between the Doctor and River or even maybe between Capaldi and Kingston. I didn’t see that between him and Clara/Coleman.
per @blenkinsopthebrave I think it’s maturity of both the characters and their relationship, vs. an older mentor as teacher and protector of a much younger apprentice/companion — something solid with mutual regard, vs. something temporary in the sense of fatally lopsided.
@pedant 24 years. Just enough time to raise a perky young control freak, fabricate a history and plonk her in Missy’s path.
More, please? Who would do that, and why? Someone with mischief in mind, but it’s a hell of a long shot, with no guarantee that Missy would in turn pass this young woman on to the Doctor — ?
@tardigrade The Doctor is without a regular companion at this point and might welcome a companion who is more an equal, and less someone to whom he feels a “duty of care” at this stage
Gawd, I should think so — and he’d know that River isn’t going to get killed during that time, which might be a pleasant relief for a change.
@jphamlore I expect the next companion for the Capaldi Doctor to be one with whom he is more emotionally distant, distant enough to where he’s not going to go crazy if he loses her.
*When* he loses her, as he must (unless he does die first, which is pretty unlikely). I’d like to see him follow through on returning to the scenes of some of his “mistakes” and trying to deal better with them, or make amends for bad outcomes (not as easy as it might seem, I think). He could pick up temporary passengers on his travels, people (and creatures) with their own motives for moving on, before settling on a new steady companion. That would be one way to dial the emotional temperature in the Tardis down a bit, and also get him used to playing his part in that lesson Clara taught him, about letting go when it’s time to do that.
27 December 2015 at 20:53 #49743@puroandson The “24 years” line wasn’t delivered in a “whey-hey, we have 24 years bab-eee, let’s go rock my …”
It was as it should be. The Doctor is a star system, a sunset, a monolith (You know, if you really check out those words there’s a little bit of the naughty in them). But as Missy said “we humans.”Puro Solo — Well, most of us, a good deal of the time . . . but if the Doctor didn’t *like* having us around, along with our over-active and madly imaginative libidos, why does he keep picking us up? Missy hates humans because she’s *jealous* (and she has an over-sensitive nose). Maybe we’re the best *audience* available in the universe, to an inveterate show-off? Tell you what — Dr. Tardis clearly thinks we’re “good” for him in some significant way, or she wouldn’t let any of us on board, would she.
I too occasionally dream of the Doctor. Or, to be more precise, of sitting in on production meetings (?) which Peter C. is also attending (slacks, t-shirts). He’s there on business; I’m just kibbitzing. We have a sort of relaxed acquaintanceship there. It’s weird, but also completely in character (mine). Apart from my own work in story-telling, I’m a pretty pragmatic person. You’d think I could cut loose a bit more in my dream life, at least! (Well, I used to — there was that one about the Samurai and the raccoon-fish at the Villa Adriana reflecting pool . . . Looney Tunes — wish I had more of that lately!)
Maybe I’m the one as needs the halluci
Ichi (also loves the suit)
26 December 2015 at 09:57 #49691@puroandson Puro Solo, how about “exhilaratingly exorbitant”? Wonderful, anyway. I’ve watched Heaven Sent/Hell Bent enough times now to come away without that weird sick-gut feeling I got the first few times — I kept thinking, during HS, “God, this is just *horrible*! How can they *do* this?” And I wasn’t talking about the writing or the acting or the music . . . Crazy, I’m telling you. Started when I realized that the bloody, crusted hands during those crawling-up-the-tower-stairs-to-the-transporter-room scenes were about bashing the diamond wall, not an effect of the scorch-attack hands of the Veil — because the Veil’s hands never touched the Doctor’s hands, only his face.
So I got to watch HS paying most attention to the music. Wow. Just — well. There’s some kind of spectacularly beautiful structure in the score that I don’t follow or understand, but it makes itself known.
I do have some questions though; in HS, I’m still not sure exactly *what* the Doctor remembers of the whole ordeal and at what points in the repeating story and after it. In my head there’s an irreconcilable conflict between “He comes to it fresh each time, and has to discover and interpret each clue each time” and the fact that somehow the spade ends up in the upstairs corridor. *When* did he first put it there? I mean, when did he have *time* to, if he only remembers the full situation (?) each time he’s followed all the clues and reached the diamond wall? I can’t get my head through this particular tangle.
And in HB, doesn’t the 50% chance that the blocker will block *his* memory rather than hers mean that there’s a 50% chance that she’ll still have memories of him in her mind that the TLs can use to find her — and getting rid of those memories, *hers*, for her own safety, was the whole point of the blocker? Yes, “One of us has to go”, but the effect of *her* forgetting is to increase her security re a pursuit by the TLs intent on returning her to face the Raven. The effect of *him* forgetting *her* only cancels the possibility of him being unable to resist searching for her to keep trying to help her evade the TLs (so they could find her by tracking him). Maybe that’s okay with him, as the best set of alternatives they’ve got? Once she says she never wanted him over-protecting her . . . (a questionable assertion in itself, see KtM).
Mulling stuff over . . . addictive.
26 December 2015 at 07:56 #49686@jphamlore Losing Moffat both as showrunner and lead writer would be a tremendous loss for the show. In some sense I think he is speaking to us as fans, telling us to enjoy the moments we have left with him.
Good point — and whether he’s telling us that or not, it certainly is my intention to do just that! Though another 24 years might be a tad too long . . .
@tardigrade Love your quotes! Off to sleep now; happily surprised is happy indeed.
26 December 2015 at 07:49 #49685@oswino when the doctor and me where talking she suggested that clara and the doctor may have a kid?.He shuts this down
Whoah, what?! That must have flown right by me . . . I’m sure there’s fanfic on the subject, but you’d have to google it, I think.
@puroandson the music perhaps last year whilst sweet and gimmicky has been replaced with a gorgeous sonorous tone, rapid changes in pulse and most interestingly, changes, quite exorbitant, to time signature -we have 5/4, 6/8, 9/4 etc… The use of percussion has been elevated,
Gods, yes! A whole different order of musical experience, IMO, though I can’t pinpoint the changes so thanks for doing that here.
26 December 2015 at 07:38 #49683Loved it, guys; really. Perfect tone, lively pace, beautiful playing — and another quiet ring of the mortality bell at the end, exactly the balance of acceptance of hard reality and joy (in the beauties and comforts of some sweetly extended playtime beforehand) that we saw CapDoc lose in S8-S9, to (almost) disastrous effect. Funny; now I think of Ohila shouting, “Come out and face me, *boy*!” in Hell Bent, and how like a hyper-emotional adolescent he was with the “girl” in the case (though Clara herself had been pushed well beyond girlhood by then, into being a mature young woman demanding just treatment, and he did get there too, with her strenuous help).
Compare with how the Doctor and River behave in the relative peace and security of the restaurant at the Towers: two adults, both with perceptions and expectations tempered by hard experience, but closing warmly together around the time that they still do have together. And it’s funny, too!
This was so much more than I expected . . . it doesn’t *follow* Heaven Sent/Hell Bent, episodes that happen at the end of time, not back in the middle where River was still alive (Moffat’s comments place Husbands not long after Angels Take Manhattan, if I recall correctly). Yet Husbands links up with the S9 closing through this theme of confronting mortality and endings, struggling against the inexorable until you learn to content yourself with winning what gains you can within those limits. It is, as CapDoc observes, the deal.
Well, it figures. Where else should a story about a Time Lord lead us but to some accommodation, however temporary and conditional, to mortality and endings?
23 December 2015 at 06:49 #49596@puroandson
Edible ball non-bearings, then? Tasty, I hope!
23 December 2015 at 06:46 #49595@puroandson @pedant I think it’s my inability to pronounce ‘Orgoreyn’ correctly.
How did the author intend it to be pronounced?I think it’s “OR-go-rain”. She had a linguist friend generate a language for that book, I think (or maybe it was for another one later on . . .). I can ask about the pronunciation, if you like, via e-mail.
@jphamlore Why couldn’t he find a loophole for Clara
He thought he *had* — he clearly expected her heart to start up again once he’d moved them far enough away from Gallifrey into the bit of the future that was left. When that move failed, he clearly panicked for a moment; which, considering that the crazy ordeal he’d undergone in the Dial had already overwhelmed him sufficiently for him to grab a gun and shoot someone, not to mention shooting the High Council into space in space shuttles at a time when there was hardly anyplace left to go, isn’t surprising. He was also expecting organized pursuit from Gallifrey (“All we have to do now is shake off the Time Lords — “). I think he was pretty rattled and running on the fumes of some massively depleted adrenaline (or whatever the TLs have for emergency energy).
He didn’t seem to realize that if the tampered-with blocker wiped *his* memory instead of hers, she would still be in danger from TLs chasing her based on her (retained) memories of *him* (the reason he gives for the using the memory wipe in the first place). Although maybe “This is right; I accept it” was a recognition that he was the one, instead, who needed to forget in order to keep her a bit safer by not compulsively tracing and following her, thereby leading the TLs right to her . . .
23 December 2015 at 01:37 #49589@nerys Sure — I’m thinking of the noodling part, just “fooling around”, rather than doing exercises, lessons, or playing a particular piece. But that can also be a form of rest, too. As long as it’s not competitive with anything else, including one’s own last or best effort. Free-wheeling body, free-wheeling mind, slaves of nothing, for a while.
22 December 2015 at 21:45 #49582Funny; not the needle part, just the little prick . . . Um. (shut mouth) (oh, open it again, go on — )
Happy holidays, everyone!
ichi
20 December 2015 at 04:03 #49540@pedant we know, from the text, that at the very least a regeneration crisis messed with his memory (see Deep Breath). It has never been stated how persistent this messing is, or can be (for perfectly sound story telling reasons related to Chekov’s Ducks).
You’re right; the post-regeneration period is a good spot for establishing some forgetfulness, for those perfectly sound story telling reasons. Besides, after all these years, the writers need some leeway about what *they* remember from all that fictional history.
20 December 2015 at 03:40 #49539@pedant (One of the reasons I don’t especially like “cis”, while having some sympathy with the case for it, it is exactly the sort of alienating neologism that po-mo fosters)
It alienates me because I can never $%^&*() remember what it’s supposed to mean; “cis” doesn’t connect with any meaningful linguistic root for me. Which is not to say that the people I know who use it (mostly SF fans in the Sexual Alphabet communities) have that problem with it.
as Missy pointed out, our notions of love and gender and the whole general mish-mash looks positively primitive to people whose brains are the size of a planet.
Well, it might, but no more than anything else that we keep in our little pea-brains. There’s lots of SF out there dealing with far-future developments in gender and relationship matters, and most of it seems to take a continued evolution in the direction of what is today either liberal, progressive values (more legitimate choices) or crazed and evil nonsense (too many legitimate choices that “shouldn’t” be legitimized), depending on your POV. But that’s an assumption only.
That’s why all SciFi shippers should be taken out and shot as a service to the gene pool.
Oh, godsakes, no shooting! We’ve got more than enough shooting as it is, here in the US, and our gene pool just seems to get meaner and stupider.
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