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@lisa  he gave it to Missy suggests to me that it might be something to control Missy if the Doctor were to die and leave her alone by herself to create havoc in the Universe.  I think Missy might want to know how so she can stop it.

What an original idea!  That would be neat —

@carrieanne  “On the other hand, What does it mean to be alive? . . . does anyone ever really live or does perspective just change?”  Apparently The Matrix has had a strong effect on my mind because honestly I had no idea I was repeating nearly exactly what Morpheus says, hmm Morpheus like in Sleep No More. Will there be a payoff to this thinking in the show, hell who knows?

I’ve always felt that SF and fantasy lives by call and response.  It’s long, rich, highly varied conversation over time, so questions raised in one place are often replied to (rarely *answered*, as at their deepest levels these aren’t questions that have answers except for materialist fundamentalists at one end of the spectrum or fundamentalist religious at the other).  So, pay off?  Maybe — but what could that be?

TMA it’s like he has seen her die already from his reaction. Clara point blanks asks which one of us is dying. So many questions in my mind.

It felt more to me that he knew she was going to “die on him” from other things he’d seen on his own travels forward, but if he’d known the details, he surely *never* would have gone anywhere near Trap Street with her, assurances of not from Ashildr.

 

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@mersey  You’re very welcome!   How could I have resisted?  He speaks so well for himself.

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@carrieanne    references to memory wipes throughout the last 3 season’s at least.

I’ve been wondering about selective memory wipes, and someone (Ohila maybe) memory wiping the Doctor’s memory of Clara’s death, as a kindness and a relief to him (or for some more dastardly reason).  That would leave him clear for S10.  On the other hand, then S10 would have us all wondering, when will he remember?  Which would be a great disservice to the next companion(s), so forget I said that . . .

. . . the themes of death, dreams, ghosts and consciousness. Reality v.s. Dream . . . What does it mean to be dead, if the soul and consciousness can be sent elsewhere does anyone ever really die or does perspective just change?

Hmm.  On the other hand, What does it mean to be alive? . . . does anyone ever really live or does perspective just change?

Ha, that’s for bringing up The Matrix!

Also this:

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

—–  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

“What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.”

If life is a dream, then TV programming is a dream within a dream, and the Doctor is a dream within a dream within a dream . . . (infinite (?) regression trails off into the distance) . . .

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A bit about Moffat from Moffat; how can so many people hate this guy?  I just don’t get it.

http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/11/26/moffat-talks-about-his-eventual-retirement-from-doctor-who

 

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@juniperfish  the connection between the soul and the body, and the nature of the soul under Moffat are not clearly explicated (nor will it be, I am sure – why be definitive when you can play with such a deep mystery) 

Good reminder that this is also *play* — without which undertone, I think it could congeal into a turgid mess.  As for “soul” as human speech translation of TL concepts, yes; they can’t let the Doctor get *too* alien, or we could lose touch with him entirely — and he needs his mayfies . . .

@pedant  But she did not pick up the lesson. When the Gods give you a warning like that, you can be pretty sure that Nemesis has taken wing nearby and failure to take heed will have inevitable consequences.

Oh, yes; and that *is* hubris, isn’t it.  On the other hand — would his Clara ever accept being just a puppy?  No.

@carrieanne  when the Doctor decided to save Ashildr he said something like if anyone has a problem with it …to hell with them and now he’s, although the episode is called “Heaven Sent” one could argue he’s actually in a sort of hell.

Yup.  That’s why I think his original defiance in Girl was in fact specifically aimed at the TLs, and we’re about to see their full response.

@juniperfish  Although the text has been hitting us over the head with Clara becoming Doctor-ish as a bit of a problem, I don’t think the fault, if there is fault, for her death (if it is her death) lies with her.

I think the fault isn’t a blameworthy one, because there’s no one (or everyone) fully to blame for it: the fault lies in the limitations of her human physiology re memory/wisdom acquisition, and breakability.

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@jphamlore   I am going to guess no, that the Doctor will perceive them to be irredeemable due to Clara’s fate but will stay his hand at the last moment in honor of her memory.

That sounds right to me, and sets up his departure again from Gallifrey; I’m thinking he even grudgingly manages to do them a great favor — broker a peace for the Time War, perhaps — but then says that’s it, that’s all he can take of them (assuming they’re behind Ashildr’s trap), and he takes off again, on his own — toward S10.  I wouldn’t be averse to his last line in Hell Bent being: “Now I’m ready.”  Inevitably, a melancholy undertone, but emotional deck cleared for a new companion next season.

Love your bonkerizing; you are cooking on all burners at a great rate!  I’m still wondering how the heck the TLs can got back in-universe to stir up the coming fire-storm; but hey, while the Doctor in fact can’t *really* do whatever the Hell he wants to, Moffat sorta can — within limits, of course: no blood and guts.

@mudlark  I wonder, in fact, whether the whole set-up in Heaven Sent will be designed to torment him with reminders of episodes in his life, successful and unsuccessful, and that in turn it might be linked to what is contained in the confession dial? The Doctor hands the dial to Mayor Me, but was she supposed to keep it, or to hand it over to who or whatever wanted her to deliver the Doctor himself?

Great minds, and all that; some have theorized that the Veil is a disguised Silent, and their function is — to take your confession, right?  If so, the Doctor may find his way out of the castle of despair by revealing what’s in the confession dial (which Ashildr only took in order to pass it on — she says, “They have other ways of procuring it”  when he balked at handing it over in Raven.  And yes on the “illusion” theme, now that you point it out: quite strong.  Someone will use the memories in his own mind to break him down, and illusion is better than than having him actually travel back in his own timeline; illusion can be manipulated to stress the negative.

Ripples and tidal waves, illusion and manipulation — and everybody lies, especially TV!  Can’t wait for Saturday night.

 

 

 

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@puroandson  Re Game of Thrones, yes, there’s another season coming up, at least — apparently there’s a trailer on TV already.  I give it a glance sometimes, but  it’s not appointment TV for me — too ugly.  I was hoping for a lot more fantasy and less brutality, because otherwise I’d rather read (or watch programs about) real history.  Or watch “Bones” etc., even though it’s pretty formulaic, no great highs or lows to speak of.

It’s Thanksgiving Day here — no big turkey dinner for me; the weather is too bad for much traveling (gray skies, rain promised, hard winds), so it’s just phone calls to relatives.  Do you have a similar holiday in Australia, round about  now?

Hugs to your mom —

ichi

 

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@pedant   It isn’t about recklessness per se (when it happens that is just a symptom) but about hubris. She badly – and in a somewhat self-aggrandising way – came to believe her own PR.

I don’t think that’s all of it.  She also came to believe the Doctor’s own boastful PR: “I can do anything, but I’m not *supposed* to”, from “Girl”; and she’s seen him do remarkable things on their many adventures.  So she goes into this sure that she can handle protecting her own “companions” (Flatline) as the Doctor protects her (not so great, as it turns out), but also convinced that the Doctor is her fail-safe, and can undo any error she makes.  If it’s hubris, it’s his as much as hers.

@jphamlore  What if the Doctor erases the Time Lords from history so they become only the stuff of myth and legend.

Well, maybe — especially if he *is* the hybrid himself; although erasing one side of a conflict isn’t really a truce; that would be genocide again.  It would also be directly counter to Clara’s last instruction to him; so I’m thinking maye not — more likely a truce, IMO.

@lisa  The scene in the trailer where the Doctor digs the hole is curious. Is it to bury someone/thing or to dig something out?

Ah, look at his face, his stance — the urgency!  There’s no rush when you’re burying a dead person.  I have a theory.  It’s not nice, but here it is: he’s outside the castle, sees what looks like a grave, but without a headstone, walks over to look.  Hears a voice, a familiar voice:  “Doctor, help me!  Help me!”  Grabs shove, starts flinging dirt like a bulldozer . . . and finds nothing.  Stumbles away, wrecked.  Hears faint voice, repeating, “Help me . . . help me . . . ”  Runs.

@jphamlore  Clara was Missy’s plot to break the Doctor’s desire to have another longterm human companion. Clara was to the Doctor an earworm of a companion, designed to obsess him, and thus to break him when she died.

Thanks for the reminder — I keep losing track of Clara as having been planted, somehow, with the Doctor as part of a nefarious plot.

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@arbutus   I think that Rigsy’s concern came from the fact that the Doctor had never, ever called him by name before, and to do so now would indicate that something was very wrong. He preferred the dismissive nicknames to actual concern on the Doctor’s part

Right, thanks!

@jphamlore  With “contract” we have an explicit analog to making contracts with the Devil on pain of forfeiture of one’s soul, “soul” also being mentioned. Clara even agreed to this deal, although she did not read the fine print.

I don’t recall Clara being presented with Ashildr’s contract to read, though; was she?  I thought the deal itself was explained by Ashildr, without addressing the issue of the implications of the tattoo transfer beyond the obvious illustration of that we saw with the first Raven death.  Unless you mean that Clara agreed to take Rigsy’s tattoo — but that was her idea and Rigse had to be persuaded, and there was no actual contract, just her plan.

I don’t think Ashildr’s contract is with the Devil; it’s with someone who wants the Doctor delivered captured and delivered, and I’m a lot more inclined to read that as the TLs, with some more pragmatic, plottish ends in mind.  The show has never acknowledged the God/Heaven/Hell/Devil concept before, so far as I know, so just don’t think there’s enough substance to support this explanation.  I’m also wondering why Clara, of all people, would be allowed to languish in any sort of Hell after her Raven death, if the existence of a Devil implies the existence of a God.  Surely her course would have been diverted by a benevolent deity onto an upward course, if we’re going by the idea that sould get sent where they belong straightaway, rather than being tucked away somewhere until Judgment Day determines their ultimate fate.

I’m strictly an outsider on Christianity, mind you, so bear with me if I’m way of the mark here and making myself ridiculous.

 

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@mudlark  I do not believe that becausea show aimed at a family audience tacklesthe implications of the death of a principal character in the way that Face the Raven did, it was wholly inappropriate for children. Far better this approach, in my view, than the affectless killing in some action movies.

Agreed; in some families, maybe watching a show like Raven might offer an opening to talk a bit about the deaths of friends or family members with younger members, and gauge how much help they might need with handling that.

The action movie nonsense is disturbing because it’s obviously not disturbing at all to most viewers, and war-type computer games certainly don’t help with that problem.  Doctor Who itself, though, sometimes strays into that empty death (unmourned and soon forgotten, if even noticed in the first place) territory — like the first soldier to die in Into the Dalek, perhaps.  But in a series built around adventure, there are bound to be some red shirts, aren’t there, whose deaths help to keep an atmosphere of danger to the protagonists present and potent.  Writers have to be ready to kill their darlings (which just happened on DW!) but also to kill their poor spear-carriers for effect, when the story demands it (or just for the heck of it, if you’re in that mood, or you a bunch of Nazis to fight).

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@puroandson  Until I watched Buffy and Doctor who I didn’t know what good TV really was. I watched Burn Notice and Merlin and cop dramas all the while thinking this was as good as it could be. I couldn’t sit still. I thought I was ill with some problem? But I just wasn’t interested enough. Now I am.

Okay, pal, that’s it — your TV watching is ruined for life!  Just joking; but really, it’s hard to put up with all the perfectly adequate run-of-the-mill shows once your attention has *really* been snagged by the challenges of Doctor Who (well, I’ve found that to be true, anyway).  I don’t see anybody doing deep and imaginative plot and character analysis of “Law and Order” in its billions of forms, or “Bones” or anything else, much, in the US (do you get any of these where you are?).  There’s nothing much to think about, by and large, except sometimes a social issue that’s been brought up.  Even discussion of “Game of Thrones” is mostly on the level of is this major character really dead, and who were his real parents?  Yawn.

Of course, there may be in-depth discussions of these shows on the internet that I’m just not aware of — mostly because I’m not interested to look for them for very long . . .

@pedant   “If Doctor Who is not giving 7-year-olds nightmares it is not doing its job”.

Ha!  I noticed that the people who were fans as kids and who are now working on the show all at some point use the phrase “hiding behind the sofa”, so scary stuff was always there — just not so much of the dark and broody stuff that the Doctor’s been carrying around with him lately.  I enjoy the dark and broody stuff, but I hope we keep having enough “Caretaker” and “Robots of Sherwood” episodes to keep a good balance between that and the fun-stuff.

@nerys   Golly, yes — Outer Limits and Twilight Zone were very scary sometimes, without any blood and gore (not allowed) and minimal violence.  It was just the *weirdness* factor got me — but fascinated me, too.  For easy watching, there was Gunsmoke etc; again, no blood, and they couldn’t (as I recall — this was in the US) show someone actually hitting another person and killing them, it was always implied — shadows on the wall kind of thing.

 

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@puroandson  The tone, colour, music and the whole thing which causes the feel of something evil lurking behind the door that might cause parents and religious coalitions in America (mum goes on about that all the time!) to say ‘no more’.

I agree, lion of puro: the tone of everything darkened right from S8, because I remember fussing around trying to lighten the tone on my TV screen right at “Deep Breath”.   I wouldn’t worry about the religious Right in America, though — they’re too busy with domestic politics at the moment, and I don’t think they even bothered to give a squeak about much gorier TV entertainment that kids might be watching.  *They* don’t watch what I watch (afraid of contamination or upsetting God), so they don’t have a clue to what’s going on unless some self-appointed “pastor” catches a glimpse of something that’s too much for him and starts raising hell about it among his followers.

I’m a lot more worried about censorship in of DW the UK, frankly, because there seems to already be an anti-Who inclination among conservative politicians to whom the BBC needs to apply for funding for its programs.

I don’t mind it. And that could be the problem. Should I be minding it or is my mind dis-associated now after all I have seen? Mum would say definitely I am.

I’m glad you don’t mind.  We don’t want you to miss out on growing up to be a horror/fantasy/sf writer or film maker because somebody interrupted your TV watching in your teens!  Besides, I remember some of those old horror films, and your reaction seems just fine to me.

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@miapatrick  I think that when Doctor Who is very scary its not because it’s violent or graphic or anything that would get age restrictions put on it, it’s when it’s creepy

I’m happy to hear that.  With little kids, creepiness (like the hand mines) is something a family can discuss easily, while the scariness of the characters’ actions and dangerous consequences might be less obvious to young children at all, and so not need much discussion.  I was an easily scared kid, but more by sounds than by images.  I still am, in fact.  I’ve walked out of a couple of movies because of terrible things happening that weren’t shown, but the sounds were stomach-turning for me.  Even now, I’m careful about that or I might get bad dreams.

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@abutus  whether she might be changed somehow, as Danny was. She could never come back and be Clara again, so the Doctor’s loss would still stand.

That would be fine — unlikely, though, which has its good and bad sides . . .

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@bendubz11  Damn it, my head is spinning OFF, and it’s your fault.

@lisa  Let’s hear it for the brilliant baby!  Only Rigsy and her mom might have a thing or two to say about that . . .

@pedant  That Moffat is such a fucking hack! Stealing from Buffy again!

You know of a better place to steal from?!

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@frobisher  Now we’re talking! Trouser analysis!

Oh, that theory is rather pants.  (Did I use it correctly?)

@arbutus  The character of the Doctor was beautifully defined throughout the episode… The scene where he saw Rigsy’s daughter and seemingly fell in love: “Did you make this human?… She’s brilliant.” Rigsy’s instant understanding that the Doctor calling him by name could only be bad: “Don’t use my name

Yes, thoroughly gorgeous throughout; I thought “she’s brilliant” was him seeing a bit about her through his (very occasional) telepathic abilities, and was lovely.  The “use my name” bit went by very fast, and I didn’t get what Rigsy’s problem was with being called Rigsy by the Doctor.  Help?  And Rigsy’s “Wait, WHAT?!!!” when he heard the Doctor say Rigsy was going to die was wonderfully done — loved that moment!

@frobisher  Now we’re talking! Trouser analysis!

That theory is pants.  (Did I use it correctly?)

@arbutus  The character of the Doctor was beautifully defined throughout the episode… The scene where he saw Rigsy’s daughter and seemingly fell in love: “Did you make this human?… She’s brilliant.” Rigsy’s instant understanding that the Doctor calling him by name could only be bad: “Don’t use my name

Yes, thoroughly gorgeous throughout; I thought “she’s brilliant” was him seeing a bit about her through his (very occasional) telepathic abilities, and was lovely.  The “use my name” bit went by very fast, and I didn’t get what Rigsy’s problem was with being called Rigsy by the Doctor.  Help?  And Rigsy’s “Wait, WHAT?!!!” when he heard the Doctor say Rigsy was going to die was wonderfully done — loved that moment!

I also agree that Clara’s working theory was a good one, not stupid at all (Moffat stresses this in a comment piece on the episode), and only “reckless” in that she made up her mind too fast, without asking enough questions — but hey, there was this fairly rapid countdown going on, there were good reasons for urgency; and haste, as we all know, makes waste . . . in the gangland meaning of the word.

Also, we’ve had all these references to Clara in pods, so it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t put in one again, given that there was a handy stasis pod right there!

Well, it’s an out if they want to revisit this later to bring her back — because they cut the missing scene, of the Doctor carrying her body back inside and putting her on the bed in the bedroom, and staying with her a moment, and instructing Rigsy to make the necessary arrangements.  We see him just coming out of the room and closing the door.  Then the Doctor gets teleported; and I don’t think Rigsy would think to use the pod — he’s not a tech, he’s an artist — and Ashildr knows that death by Raven is permanent, so she wouldn’t bother even if she knows how to use it.

This missing scene is now making me not just annoyed (that they cut it), but really worried, because they might have cut it to leave themselves just such a retrofit — a potentially horrible idea, to my mind, undercutting and making basically ridiculous not just Clara’s “final” death but the Doctor’s devastation because of it.  Damn.

And having been through the bitter loss, she can now tell the Doctor, as Danny told her, that he must live on. She tells him, “Be a Doctor”, and in doing so, saves him one last time.

Love the rest of this comment, @arbutus — I didn’t see the through connection from Flatline and his line about her being a good Doctor was very troubling to him.  And “Be a Doctor” here is all the more affecting because she’s *trying* to save him one last time — but if he melts down after this, he might have to get to being the Doctor again the long way round . . . through the fire and brimstone of revenge, first.  Hmm.  That would give him something to feel guilty about later, taking the place of having destroyed Gallifrey to end the Time War.  And it would also make his speech about carrying pain in Zygon Inversion *refreshed* in a way — losing Clara for good and wreaking some havoc because of it, before recovering into doctor-mode and remorse for his vengeance, would add a properly heavy load of guilt of just the kind he was talking about to Kate and Bonnie.

But have they dared to do that, or is it a step too far into darkness for their “youth audience” remit?

{Me: I have a tendency to create coherence for myself even where it’s lacking.} So do I! I suspect that many of us who tend to enjoy the show more or less uncritically are the same. That’s why glitches in the plotting or narrative logic bother me less than inconsistencies in character.

The show, by its underlying complexity, invites the kind of theorizing we revel in here; and I think being invited into the creative process this way (even if only at the level of making theoretical connections) does tend to compromise us as critics.  Brilliant ploy by Moffat!  Well, no; but it’s what happens when the banquet laid before us is so rich.

@juniperfish  The Tarot card journey can, as well as being the Fool’s journey through the inner and outer universe, be seen as the cycle of the Doctor’s regenerations? He’s cycling back through his journey as he approaches his home-world?

I like this, must chew on it some more.  Capaldi did say, of the “specific trouser things” that they happen for a reason . . .

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@akhaten  For want of a nail, a shoe was lost . . . well, why not?

@starla Remember how there was talk (please forgive me if this is a spoiler!!) a while ago about the importance of what pants the Doctor is wearing… 

Oh, your theory is pants!

Quote P.C – “There are some specific trouser things that happen for specific reasons”…

Well, in *that* case . . . welcome, the PC fashion show!  I want to kiss it to death!

@mersey She was running from her past just like the Doctor. The last think that was left to her was the Doctor and her unshaken faith in him. But Doctor couldn’t help her and that faith eventually brought her death. For a moment I even thought that it was the Doctor who ruined her life but it was Missy.

Yes, it was Missy IMO too, when you come right down to it: back to Missy’s comment to her in TWF about the Doctor winning because he goes into a fight assuming he can handle anything > Clara getting too reckless for her own good > doing something that the Doctor *can’t* “handle” this time > her death, accepted as one of those consequences the Moffat-haters whine about (actions on the show have no consequences that matter).

@lewis97  Love the pics and the trouser parade — thank you!  What a nice (and weird) way to reprise memories of S9 so far.

 

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@arbutus   I’m pretty sure the old show wasn’t this “packed”. I think it’s designed nowadays for multiple viewings and bonkers theorizing.

Me too, since once technology made it possible to grab an episode (for a price, of course) the morning after it first airs and keep it stored on your computer and re-watch at will, the whole game changed (for those with the brains to see it and the wit to start *writing* for repeat viewing.  This could be magnificent — writing on lighter level (no Big Blood, heavy on the action) with denser meanings embroidered behind that, which is what we saw in an episode like The Girl Who Died — but it can also lead to trouble.

There are, I’ve read, already complaints racking up about Raven — too dark, too scary, too lethal for the younger set’s peace of mind.  Steven Moffat has already given out rather dismissive warnings about Heaven Sent, which, judging by what that episode promises to deliver, are fully warranted.  Would Peter Capaldi, age ten, say, have wanted to see his Doctor crushed physically and mentally in a nightmare castle — even with an escape (more likely a cliff-hanger) at the end?

Then there’s Clara, and dying with a soundless scream.  Kids worry about death — deaths of parents, deaths of pets, deaths of strangers noted in passing on the TV news.  I think forewarnings need to be stronger about episodes like these.  Otherwise, I worry that the DW creatives will be called to account not just for “going to far” but for over-riding their content-restriction rules and stepping outside of the “family viewing” or “youth audiences” category entirely.

If they do that outrageously enough, could they be kicked off BBC’s roster?  Would it be worth BBC’s while to fire some people (after their contracts run, maybe even before) in order to reinstate a blander, lighter version of the show in place of the darkness and depth of what we’re getting now?  I’m not sure that Steven Moffat takes this problem seriously enough.  He should — he’s said that he wrote the Xmas special we’ll be seeing in December a while ago, because he wasn’t sure he was still going to be writing for Doctor Who when the normal time came to write it.  That sounds as if some pressures were applied, some threats made, to the degree that he either considered stepping down or worried that he’d be *pushed* down.

Capaldi’s run so far isn’t just fascinating and challenging; it feels perilous in real-world terms.  I worry.  Needlessly, I hope.  And if S10 diverges into safer, more traditional territory for a bit, I won’t be upset.  A little bored, maybe, but not angry; looking back longingly at the time when only the second companion in DW’s history got smoked, literally, and the Doctor (as I hear it) was captured and tortured for a whole, extra long episode.

Which I am, of course, dying of anticipation to see . . . but I haven’t been ten years old in a very long time.

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@puroandson   I will have to watch each episode more than once. 🙂

Well, you don’t *have* to (all those assignments etc.); but what I like best about CapDoc’s series is that I always see new stuff, details that I missed (hear them, too, in the dialog and music) the first time around.  I don’t remember it being so packed with good bits before New Who, but maybe I just didn’t notice.  Or maybe I was just lazy — ?

Hugs to your mom,

ichi

 

 

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@puroandson   So glad you’re back with us!

ichi

 

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Maybe he’s the hybrid that the TLs created.  And maybe he didn’t turn out as required — not “warrior” enough — so they let him run away with one of their TARDISs — ?  But now, enraged over Clara’s death, he might be just what they ordered in the first place.

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b-the-brave  Great questions!  It’ll be interesting if it turns out that CapDoc need not have gone looking for Gallifrey at all, since the TLs (IMO) were working to get him back there.  They have somehow used Missy to broker a deal with Ashildr to get him delivered to them.  That has a nasty smell of cold, arrogant, TL manipulation, to me, although it could always be danger and desperation driving them to make use of him.  In either case, since they’re generally more like Missy than the Doctor IMO, whatever happened to Clara would be of no interest to them whatever, if they even noticed.  I do not see their initial conversation going very well, regardless.

I’m thinking that maybe they need him — to go back in time and show up at the saving of Gallifrey, eyebrows first.  I can’t see that going down very well either.

Maybe the upcoming ordeal in Castle CapDoc is a rough, ready, and brutal form of — debriefing?

As for the confession dial, I wonder if — I think it was phamlore who raised this (trying not to tag) — it is a disguised object, Tardis style, and perhaps in its undisguised (or appearance when re-cast for the purposes of the Castle) form, it’s that book he’s holding in his hand in one of the latest set of pics for “Heaven Sent”.

The book looks like a small diary.  Its open pages are blank.

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

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

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

Exactly; this is what she’s basically agreed to by traveling in the Tardis; it could happen to the Doctor that way too (except then the fans would dismantle somebody in retaliation; talk about revenge!).

A sacrifice must be made in order to gain something of great value”. Then we need to see that she has gained something of great value.

She has — although she can’t keep it (well, none of us can, not for very long); and most of it others will keep for her.  So what has she gained by this?  For one thing an end to the fear that the Doctor will die before her and leave her alone; for another, the fear that she will fail him or disappoint him in some terrible way (it’s happened before — Dark Water), too terrible for him to forgive.  She’s gained a beautifully quiet, private declaration of deep mutual love in a room full of people; and, in extremis, she’s gained a few moments of perfect clarity (the kind that Ben Franklin said you get the night before you’re to be hanged) and uses it to assert her authority over him one last time, commanding him to take the high path rather than the low, dark one so that he can continue to be, in future, the “good man” he is and also so that she can be kept alive in his mind as the voice of conscience (I think that’s the whopper in the pack).  Rigsy will tell her story to  his “brilliant” daughter (wasn’t that a lovely touch?), giving that child an ideal of courage and compassion to look up to.  She’s learned the utmost extent of her own courage, the real stuff, not the swashbuckling flamboyance of a mere adventurer.

And that’s just for starters.  Not a bad bargain, IMO.

@frobisher  When Me says “Do you think a Cyberman fears a merciful death?” I think she may have picked just one of the species in her street to use as an example. I think we are not meant to know the actual species of the executed(?) man and his wife, and instead simply empathise with them and their situation.

It’s also to explain why the punishment for crime in Trap Street is so dire; only something truly awful could keep members of the 27 species the Doctor has totted up as innately aggressive in line, for the safety of all the refugees.

@fatmaninabox  Mayor Me states that no-one leaves the ‘trap-street’ without being retconned. The Doctor was teleported away before this could happen and so I think that he’ll go back there either to confront or forgive Me but will leave having had his memories ‘hidden’.

That might be one way for him to lose his memories — of Clara, which could be a relief for him if he just can’t cope.  If Ashildr tries to help by blotting her out of his mind for him, that would be tragic on a scale that would really be —   It would also set him up as a (relatively) clean emotional slate for a lighter S10 and a new companion(s).  It would also enrage the part of DW fandom that loves Clara.  No, better not.  Guys?  Better not.

@whisht  As far as I know, Dick using the I Ching to plot The Man in the High Castle is well-known among SF authors.

I’m still waiting to understand why the Doctor “recognized” Ashildr at once in The Girl, but maybe it was just as he said: deja vue = remembering forwards.  At least, for him.  Gods know he sure has *reason* to “remember” her that way, now.  In any case, I can’t even start to cope with reordering the S9 episodes!  Of course, Moffat, who has a brain the size of an upright if not a grand . . .

@mersey  now I’m confused. Matt Smith established himself as the Doctor in the first seconds of the show. Probably it’s the new regenerative cycle. Everything is somehow new for him and he is the first one who fully feel the burden of his past. But now we’re heading towards the end of the second season and I still feel like the Doctor regenerated only few episodes ago

I don’t have that problem; I just see him as much more multi-dimensional than SmithDoc, which I like, but which meant a much slower unfolding of a more complex person who attracts very sharp shocks to himself (he goes looking for trouble and he finds it, quelle surprise) (literally, in the case of his confrontation with Davros), and each of those impacts shake him up enough to rearrange his many facets and bring different ones to the fore — a bit like a regeneration writ small.  I’m loving it — but I have a tendency to create coherence for myself even where it’s lacking, so . . .

I feel really sorry for Clara, bacause she started as a very solid and stable person and died as a rather broken one (without a sense of stability).

I never saw her as solid and stable, myself; more as a character developing very rapidly under tremendous pressures, from one-dimensional Impossible Girl to some one on an emotional roller coaster with an equally insecure and mercurial Doctor, to a person doing a dance on a tightrope in a state of mixed terror and delight while quivering with anxiety about the future, who comes down to Earth hard and fast in Raven where she’s fully realized, clear, purposeful, and forceful, in her final moments.  Shattered here and there along the way, yes, but with all the dross burned away by the urgent necessity of the situation, and operating at a peak of focus and simplicity.  Gorgeous, and deeply satisfying.

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

And I don’t buy the eternal damnation thing — not in the Doctor’s universe.  Although you could see being turned into a cyberman as pretty damnation-ish, provided they have souls (though Danny certainly hung onto at least part of his in DiH, as did the Brig — if you believe in the concept of souls).

Me, I think she’s gone, burnt away; she’ll live on only as a voice in the Doctor’s conscience (but in story terms, that’s one hell of an “only”– she’s there til he deletes her!), and perhaps as some echoes here and there, til they fade away . . . while life hurtles onward, carrying a certain space/time traveler to his next adventure among new and old people.  No wonder viewers get so invested!  Without the glamor, the lively imagination, and the usually excellent writing, this is our life, and the deaths of those we’ve loved.

Guess I’ll stop now.  It’s late, and this is making me feel very bad.  We’re not even done with this remarkable S9 yet, for cripes’ sakes.

 

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@lisa  Thanks for the pics — this is the only site I’ve seen that lets you blow them up for a good look.

@kharis  I think the diner scene is a scene of acceptance, letting go, and release, which would put it not in “Heaven Sent” but in the final episode, “Hell Bent”.

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

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

Ashildr’s snaky tattoos?

@jphamlore  “I promised it a soul and only I can break that contract. When you took it from him, you changed the terms. You cut me out of the deal.”  These are not the tropes of a standard execution, no, it’s much worse. These are the tropes of signing a contract with the Devil and risking the loss of one’s soul.

My ears pricked up when the Doctor used the word “spirit” — what?  The guy who interprets everything as science, even if it’s mostly fantasy science?  Does he ever use the world “soul” in this episode, or anywhere else, in anything but a skeptical way?

@lisa  it only looks like a confession dial in the way the Tardis looks like a phone box don’t you think?

Interesting thought!  So what might it really be — something much bigger, shrunk down for easy portability?  A book like one of Ashildr’s diaries?

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

She took a bit too much to heart Missy’s lesson in the series premiere: that the reason the Doctor is always able to find a way out of impossible situations is because he never really believes it’s impossible. So Clara has started to try and live that, but she isn’t quite clever or wise enough to pull it off, and just a bit too extravagant in her risks.

I like it; simple, and has the advantage of the planting beforehand of Missy’s theory of why the Doctor wins.  But that mistake leads her to becoming the best Doctor she can be, in the final scenes, human limitations and all — the moments leading to her death.

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

True; nobody said the Quantum Shade *eats* souls.  But perhaps it burns souls up/destroys them (some of the smoke, at least — most of it becomes the Raven).

@juniperfish  Thanks, that tells me why some people might love Capt. Jack.

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

Maybe it’s not gone so far as becoming a death *wish*, but remember that phone call in Under the Lake — “Die on the one after me!  You do not leave me!” roughly; her *awareness* that he could die and leave her alone but that if not she is bound to die before him is very clear, and must be a constant background anxiety, and that’s explicit here.   With that mind-set, I can see her pushing it into the background so that she can enjoy the time she has with the Doctor, but that in a lethal situation that offers an opportunity to get this dying thing done, and in an optimal way in terms of Doctorish values (sacrificing self for others), she might well choose to make it here, now, and follow through quickly, before she can change her mind.

On the same point, @janetteb   I think she was simply “careless of her life”. (quote from Bleak House) That carelessness often manifested as thrill seeking but in the end she measured her worth to others against Rigsy’s. He had a dependent, his child, she had none other than the Doctor. She was not seeking death but certainly undervalued her own life.

I’ll go back and look again; for the moment I’d say she measures her life’s value *against the value of the life of another human being rather than against the Doctor’s, and if so I think that’s brilliantly appropriate — because Doctor-ly as she is in her lasts moments, she’s also still a human being, not a Gallifreyan.  And I agree with @nerys, above, that the Doctor has a reptilian aspect to him — which I like because it works to confirm him as at least in part as *alien*.  Not that I love reptilian traits — I have a relative who’s gone way over to the reptile side, and I avoid him because of it.  But in character terms, it works well for the Doctor, IMO.

@nerys  When he asked her what the point of being a Doctor was, if he couldn’t heal her, Clara replied, “Heal yourself.

Ah; easy for *her* to say!  Seriously, that’s well spotted and I appreciate it, but it simply may not be possible for him to heal himself without first venting his rage and his grief through revenge.

@jphamlore  Clara wasn’t ignorant or stupid; she died of her human limitations + very bad luck (which harks back a bit to Danny’s death); but I share your hopes for next companion.  I’d go for Rigsy on those grounds, but he has a wife and little kid at home, which makes that exceptionally problematic — I doubt the Doctor would take him on board for more than a short time because of that.

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

I disagree; I don’t think the implication was that she *shouldn’t have tried to be Doctor-like* at all, but that there are extra risks to that role when a human emulates the Doctor.  He has a huge alien memory capacity in which to store worlds of experience acquired over many lifetimes, and that massive accumulation of accessible input isn’t possible for a human being, male or female.  I think the comparison of his memory to Ashildr’s records-in-place-of-memory was made several times over this series to stress this innate difference between the Gallifreyan Doctor and humans he interacts with.  Come to think of it, the Doctor himself could have died permanently early on in his own career, if he hadn’t been granted his regenerations, so even his vast experience has often been insufficient to make his assessment of risk good enough to keep him alive.

What’s unfortunate is that we haven’t recently seen a *male* human exemplifying the limiting effects of normal human physiology (short life span, limited memory storage perfectly fitted to short life spans), but two women, Ashildr and Clara.  Swift the Quick might have been a good addition to this very special human club, just to make the point that standard human limitations are the problem here, not female fragility.

As to Captain Jack, a male example of a human with serial lifetimes but always as himself, I can’t speak much, since I had no interest in the character — he seemed very static to me, and dull in the ways that old-fashioned hero-protagonists of the pulps were static, so I pretty much stopped watching.  His resurrections seemed no different from the common plot fix of “with a single bound, he was free!” in those stories, bar a weirdly masochistic element of a lot of added pain each time.  I’m not an unprejudiced or knowledgeable observer in his case, but I’m curious to know what others think about him, as a sort of a Doctor.

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

ichi

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

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

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So, SPOILER bonkerizing here . . . just to get it out of my system.  Mods, if it’s too specific etc., feel free to delete.

The Doctor, I think, will crack up pretty badly in “Heaven Sent”, and part of that will be him revealing everything he put into the confession dial (some assorted dialog lines from the final three eps are up at Radio Times or BBC, and one line is “I confess that I know who the hybrid is; I confess that I know where it’s hiding; I confess that I’m afraid.”  I think he knows because he *is* the hybrid).  Maybe he can only find his way out of the castle by revealing these secrets, so that we’ll know what’s in the dial *without* the Doctor actually dying (only he could be lying, of course . . . ).  Maybe that’s why he’s trapped in the castle — the TLs are tormenting him (and helping him torment himself) to get the goods on him before dragging him home to Gallifrey for punishment, because he broke the rules of time when he defiantly resurrected Ashildr.  No idea how Ashildr got him to timelocked/not timelocked Gallifrey.

Or, I think he will trace Ashildr’s contract back to the TLs and go there himself after he leaves the castle, to provide a “rain of terror” where it properly should go.  Either he trashes the place (keeping its children safe), or he submits after all to Clara’s orders, and chooses instead to remain a Doctor/healer.

In any event, I think he must learn the lesson of this enormous loss: to accept what can’t be changed, and forgive the people involved (himself most of all) and get on with his life; to surrender any idea that he can *rule* Time, or worse yet, *over* rule Time, never mind that he says “I know when I can, I know when I can’t” when Clara demanded that he go get Danny back, in Dark Water.  He can’t, and he shouldn’t even when he “knows” that he can (and that he does know the difference may have been a lie too, to make Clara back off).  I think he goes to Karn to repair his emotional self (Ohila is listed in the cast of characters for “Hell Bent” in Wiki thing, as is Jenna Coleman, presumably in her waitress outfit).

At some point I think he goes back to Lake Silence because he knows there’s a claricle there, and he just wants to see some version of Clara again.  Whatever he intends to do or say, it’s clearly useless as has no idea who he is or what he and Clara prime went through together.  So he leaves again and shuts the door on any further search for her in any form, for good.

Maybe he’ll commit himself to only thinking about his Clara for five minutes every day . . .

 

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

She meant that *any* human that she or the Doctor became fond of would, sooner or later, just die their little mayfly-death, blowing away like smoke and eventually forgotten in their long, long lives.  Not Clara specifically, so it wasn’t foreknowledge, just general advice.

@jphamlore  He’s going to take it out on the Time Lords, but unlike the Time War, he’s going to take account of the exact number of children on Gallifrey to save.

I’m not so sure (about vengeance on the TLs for Clara’s death, since she explicitly forbade him to go all vengeful god on whoever is behind the trap of Trap Street that inadvertantly got Clara killed.  More to say about that, but it better go on spoilers.

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

Dollard has nothing to be ashamed of.  The message you see here would be, IMO, better stated this way: “Don’t try to be a powerful, quasi-immortal alien when you are actually a human being, no regenerations allowed; no amount of trying will make that alien and *any human being* physical equals.”  But I read it as, “Don’t believe everything your mentor tells you, and don’t think he or she will always be there to catch you if you fall.  Reach as high as you like, but don’t be careless about it — he has the margin to be cavalier with danger by virtue of his regenerations.  You don’t.”

@hudsey @geronimo  Puro messaged me that she’s back in the bloody hospital again and backing off the forum because she’s not feeling too clear headed there and feels she kicked up some dust here that she shouldn’t have.

Yes, the Doctor just stood there.  He saw the trap before she did — his face shows it; and shows that he knows he can’t prevent it.  He can’t make Clara pass the tattoo on to him or anyone else there (assuming it could be passed on twice) because Clara won’t willingly give it to them because of *her* mistake.  In that respect, they are all innocent (even Ashildr, in the sense that she was setting a trap for the Doctor, not for Clara — she greets Clara as a legend and shows no animosity towards her, and didn’t even actually kill Rigsy’s supposed victim, the Janus).  She has fatally over-reached herself, and why should someone else die instead because of that?  She’s called to BE “the Doctor” Clara in this story, and she steps up and does that, probably better than he would.

@janetteb   there are still Claricles out there. I rather hope that the Doctor will keep running into them for a long time yet. 

Oh, I hope not!  None of them will have experienced anything of S8 or 9 with him.  I think running across them would be incredibly painful for him, and baffling for them.

@avaris  Good points, all.  Thanks for more to think about. #47504  And She did something The Doctor would definitely do, and was just unfortunate this was the one time that wouldn’t work. Because sometimes, once in a blue moon, but sometimes, The Doctor loses.  

Yes.  Clara “forgot” about that, supporting those who think she’s had a covert death wish ever since Danny’s death.

@mudlark  It seemed odd to me that, unless I missed something, the Doctor, having witnessed her death, went straight back inside to face Ashildr/Me.

A scene between Clara’s death and the Doctor coming back in was in the script, but was cut, says Dollard.

@tommo  despite her now legendary status as a companion who has saved the doctors life more times than any, the simpleness of her departure gives her character even more nuance.

It was stressed, in fact: note the figures passing, paying no attention as Clara stops to face the Raven.  She’s the true modest hero, about to die but not calling attention to herself.  Just the Doctor, self-made and in command of herself, meeting her death.  While he watches — they chose, brilliantly IMO for Capaldi to stay in the background, still and obscured by darkness, so that Coleman has our attention in that scene, and even in the preceding scene.  He’s there as a helpless, mute witness, as we sometimes are as someone we love leaves us.  Gorgeous.

He’ll have his turn next week, center of attention and a wreck himself.

@pedant  she went out not with a bang, but with a whimper
I’m pretty sure the jury is still out on that one.

Not for this jury member!  She went out exactly as — was it Missy, or Ashildr? — predicted: “She’ll blow away like smoke.”  And yet she made that small, appropriately mayfly-scale death great, her own choice, made with her own courage.  I think perhaps the scream went silent because she could not take a breath to scream it with (the Shade hit her right in the diaphragm, from what I could see).  Perfect.  But then, it’s what I wanted most when we knew she would die.  Only better.

Waterloo Station has a clock?  Clara, some time or other: “I was born under a clock”.

@whisht  Now, the entry for the Hanged Man in the book I have is “A sacrifice must be made in order to gain something of great value”.  It is a voluntary sacrifice. The other thing this book says is “The notion of exchanging the mundane for the spiritual is the central theme of The Hanged Man.”

Wow!  Thank you, Whisht!  That hits home, all right.

@geoffers  there’s nothing he can do, and that’s the worst kind of defeat. looking on, helpless, constrained by an unknown power. in this instance (rare though it may be), he knows he can’t cheat death like he has so many other times…

Yes — his only “power” here is to step into the street and watch *this* one die, to witness, and to have that scene burnt into his memory forever.

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@serahni  Post 47463 — I’ve read that Dollard say there *was* a short scene between Clara’s collapse on the stones and the Doctor closing the outer door in which he demanded that Ashildr leave Rigsy his memory so that upon return to normal London, Rigsy can have Clara’s body looked after and her family and the school be informed about her death.  My guess would be that he brought her inside first.  Unfortunately, IMO, that scene was cut.  Maybe someday it will be restored — ?  Please . . . ?  BIG DAMN MISTAKE.  Meantime, we shouldn’t take that sudden cut as meaningful re the Doctor’s character or affections, so worry not.

@bluesqueakpip  Most or all of your objections to the episode has been addressed at length in discussions at Den of Geek and Doctorwhotv, and these points have been settled to my satisfaction (and that of others) there.  It’s too late for me to take it all on now — *gotta* sleep — but if you check out their reviews of Raven and comments under the articles, that may throw some light on thorny issues.

@jimthefish  @supernumerary  But I have to try a little on a couple of things: IMO, the cause of this death is twofold.  First, Clara taking the Doctor at his word back in Girl who Died: “I can do anything; but I’m not *supposed* to.”  She *has* seen him do remarkable things.  She takes the tattoo risk because she truly believes that if necessary, he *can* fix it.  Second, the Doctor himself brought this down on them both.  He didn’t just transgress the rules of time when he raised Ashildr from the dead.  He yelled a fierce and defiant challenge to the enforcers of time’s rule — the TLs themselves, I’d guess.  This is retaliation for *his* hybris not hers, and when he works that out, if he hasn’t already . . . . Clara is collateral damage in a war that *he* declared in resurrecting Ashildr.  And he knew something was coming — all those bleak stares at her.  But he couldn’t just leave her behind (“You’ve made yourself essential to me . . . you’ve given me a reason to (live, of course).”  So here she is, and due to a mistake of overconfidence (and maybe also a bit of a death wish), she got in the path of his feud via Ashildr as a pawn of (probably) the TLs.

And no, her death isn’t too “small”.  She does, when she realizes that she’s trapped, step up and actually become the Doctor for her last moments — taking charge, accepting dire conditions that can’t be changed, thinking more of him than of herself and trying to end-run the fury that she knows will follow in order to keep him a healer, not a raging destroyer.  And she started by protecting *her* companion — Rigsy, from Flatline (so yeah, those who want a female Doctor just got her, and she was great).

She’s calm, collected, no wailing or whining because that’s what she’s learned.  But she’s only human, not a grand figure like MissMaster or Davros, and as a mayfly, she gets a mayfly death, accidentally caught in wheels set in motion to trap the Doctor.  This set up and its wreck are way past Missy and Davros’ machinations, IMO; they couldn’t know what Clara would do.  It’s the TLs, guarding the rules of time as Ashildr guards the rules of Trap Street, for the good of all who set out to punish the Doctor, and have gotten Clara killed by mistake.  What makes it transcendent is the way she steps out to meet her death, not because she’s fearless (“let me be brave!”) but because she knows as well as he does that something like this has been in the works for some time, and would still be in the works if she were to avoid it.  So here it is, let’s do this thing.  And she does.

@countscarlioni  The ripple the Doctor caused by breaking the rules in The Girl Who Died by saving Ashildr has now become the wave that has swept away the person he cares about the most. He’s made a big mistake and some of his anger at the end of the episode must be to do with that realization. 

Agreed.  Both “Doctors” made big mistakes, but he made his first, in The Girl Who Died.  In fact, if he accepts Clara’s “order” that he not take revenge on whoever set this up, that leaves him no one to take revenge on but himself.  She should have thought of that, but under the circumstances . . .

 

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@bluesqueakpip post 47463 over at “Sleep no More” discussion, answer continued here:

You asked, anent good hybrid warriors like Osgood, what *kind* of hybrid warrior are is the Doctor worried about?  Well, he’s worried about it, for one thing.  And, if the hybrid was made by the Time Lords (with or without the Doctor’s participation), I’d hazard a guess that it wouldn’t be a good one, only an effective one loyal to its originators and eager to follow their orders.  And if that’s what’s been “chasing” the Doctor in S9, according to general descriptions of the series before it even began (it’s their “Glory Days” but some pursuer is closing in on the Doctor), so much the worse.

I am having spoilery thoughts here growing out of this plus some recently BBC-released hints . . . No.  This isn’t bonkers enough, it’s all too realistic.  I’ll take it away to doctorwhotv.com or Den of Geek.

 

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@spider  @purofilion  Got it; sorry for any spillover into spoilery — I have a tendency to forget which thread I’m on, in the very pleasant heat of discussion.  Must watch out for that.

@phaseshift  I’ve been wondering about these counter-messages about hybridization, if that’s what they are.  Yes, we are all hybrids in all sorts of ways, and need to get over ourselves about it and what it means (enhanced genetic robustness, if you take it to that level, and thank gods for that because here on poor old Earth we’re gonna need it); on the other hand, an ultimate hybrid *warrior*, born and bred for the purpose of war, is a very dangerous thing.  So if the Doctor ever in the past had anything to do with creating such a being, he’d have plenty of reason to run like hell in the opposite direction, especially lately, having seen so much of war in his travels since leaving Gallifrey.

 

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@purofilion   Happy to help; got some word-chops, me, feels good to deploy them from time to time!  And I like that word.  It has character(s).

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@puro  Oops — In my defense, such as it is, I was quoting a now rather widely quoted comment by Moffat during an interview shown on one of the other discussion sites — Den of Geek or Doctorwhotv, I think — so I thought that was okay; it’s been up there now for a while.  Or is it my comment about what we might infer from it that’s spoilery?

If so, may the Mighty Ones move the whole megilleh over to spoilers — regular one I guess, Spoilers 2?  And apologies if I crossed the line there.

I can’t help but think that much of these choices by show-runners are not random and are positioned deliberately like a recitative in an opera, or a separate ‘between’ section in a ballet (forgive my lack of knowledge of ballet terms!)

Is a divertissement only a musical term?  Maybe it would work with ballet too . . .

@bendubz11  Has the Doctor lost this round?  I’ve seen it posted that in fact the Doctor and Clara escaped in the Tardis after setting the station spinning into the colonized moon with nobody left alive on it but — no, Rasmussen is turned to sand, so nobody, just the video.  In that case they *may* have foiled the evil plan (if Verrier smashes to bits and the video is lost).  I’m left with the impression, though, that the Doctor himself still regards this sequence of events as a failure because even though he’s sent Verrier station to its destruction, he still can’t figure out what was going on there — it still “makes no *sense*!”  Because after he and Clara leave, *we* get to see the end of the story that the two of them haven’t seen.  So it’s no surprise, really, that none of it makes sense to him the Doctor.

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@kharis  Morpheus has dream crabs inside feeding, the rest is a story. “Don’t trust anything you see” as the Doctor said in Last Christmas, and his glasses are proof he needs help looking past the obvious. He needs to listen more, see less. The biggest wild card in this: River. She is always trying to bend time to save the Doctor at any cost. Also, Ashildr, she is problematic, and am more and more sure she will become the Nightmare Child and the death of Clara and the Doctor s the destroyer of world’s will drive him into he Valyard next season.

Great bonkerizing!  I’ve also kept looking back over my shoulder at Last Xmas, because . . . well, because, damn it!  As for the valyard, I can see him going that way just ahead, if the S9 ending cuts him too deeply and there is no relief.  Only I suspect some form of relief in Hell Bent, because there’s that Moffat thing about how the final 3 will “shock you, terrify you, and surprise you.  Strictly in that order.”  So whatever we see in Raven or even Heaven Sent could potentially be radically revised or reversed in Hell Bent (SURPRISE!).  “Don’t trust anything you see” indeed!

I love that “see less, hear more”, by the way.  Yep, you could say that about him in general — funny how in such verbally agile scripts, we didn’t get to hearing (words, for example) until Under the Lake, as far as I can remember, and even there it’s vibrations in the floor that play the chief auditory role (and the sound design, of course).  Don’t worry about typos — everybody’s probably feeling a bit rushed and jittery, so close to Sat. night/Sun. morning, and because spending time here and elsewhere sharing ideas about DW naturally shoves all our (er — my) necessary chores etc. into the Corner of Neglect, which makes everything even more rushed since I do have to squeeze them into my schedule (!! Ha!) somehow.

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@bluesqueakpip  I think there’s definitely a link between stories. The biggie, I would bonkerise, is that what we think is the story isn’t the story.

Good god(s)!  Now, there’s a chilling thought — a story hidden in a story (like a Clara hidden in the mind of a Zygon Clara . . . no, that’s just NUTS).

He asked her to see him – but right now, he can’t see her.  There is something inside Clara, and it’s getting ready to be born. That’s the dalek casing/zygon pod/sleep pod imagery. The other image carries on from Last Christmas – that the real Clara is asleep and the Clara who is wandering around walking and talking is the result of Clara’s dream.

Or . . . maybe *not* so nuts?  I also remain uneasy about where the dreaming started and ended (if it did) in S8.

@lisa  I thought that may have been the purpose of the sonic glasses? To see Clara in some different way?

I thought the glasses were to show him whether Clara was a Zygon or not.  As for the long looks — I’ve been seeing those as him looking at her because for one thing he knows (one way or another) that will soon be gone, no more looking; and for another, because he’s trying to see past some terrible image of her destruction that he’s brought back with him from a clandestine trip into her future.

We’ll soon know; or begin to know, anyway.  Lots of room for surprises and reversals in three linked episodes, two of them unusually long!

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Blast it!  Moffat turned *54*, not 34!  I am a idiot!  Well, my fingers are.  The left hand especially.

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@puro  Oh, I agree — it gets annoying when people come here with what looks like every intention of complaining (as some of our recent Underbridges have actually stated outright!  Godsakes, as if there weren’t plenty of other sites just dying to hear all about it!).

@frobisher  Yes, I felt the same — Smith’s era had turned me off.  When Deep Breath went right for the throat in a harsh but also very funny way, I was once again enthralled.  Still am, and I love the humorous touches as much as the grittier underlayer of mistakes, challenges, wounding and tears, and perils not just physical but ethical.  Which is a good thing, because I think we are headed for some Stygian depths in these closing weeks, and then for a lighter fantastic in S10, so I’d better like both — and everything in between.

Amazing, how they have to plot these shifts out in relation to keeping the viewing audience balanced and growing, for which we should all be grateful.  Sometimes it must be like running a shrewd political campaign that never ends, so you’re always figuring out how to steer into the curve of commercial necessity while working artful magic.  Moffat turned 34 yesterday, I think.  Jeez, the sheer *energy* of these people — !

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@janetteb  I’m not so sure that the spoilers are right.  In a comments section on the DWTV site, one of the discussion moderators, who apparently has seen the next two eps and talked to sources about the last one, goes so far as to say that Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent are a single long sequence, so a death could be set up in Raven, but completed later on in some way.  Moffat says it’s “shocking, terrifying, and surprising, in that order.”  And there’s room for all that, in a 3-episode story.

DWTV has much better chatter about all this than those newspaper sites, and better articles for people to comment on, IMO.  That’s a good alternative to here, for those looking for more conversation.  It can be more spoilery, but it’s nowhere near so nastily show-offish as the relentless BTL bile-fest.

 

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@janetteb  I’m not so sure that the spoilers are right.  In a comments section on the DWTV site, one of the discussion moderators, who apparently has seen the next two eps and talked to sources about the last one, goes so far as to say that Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent are a single long sequence, so a death could be set up in Raven, but completed later on.

Or not.  DWTV has much better chatter about all this than those newspaper sites, and better articles for people to comment on, IMO.  That’s a good alternative to here, for those looking for more conversation.  It’s nowhere near so nastily show-offish as the BTL bile-fest.

 

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@lisa  Yes, thanks for the link — I’ve referred to it in reply to a (new?) member posting a lugubrious comment on how dark S9 is and it’s been putting him/her off the show.

@janetteb  Yes!  Let’s see all that anxious quibbling about the different ways the show could be in format next year (not on this site, obviously, but on several others) done and dusted.  Everybody’s so keyed up over the upcoming finish of S9, there’s a propensity to go off half-cocked over any bitty little rumor; it’s annoying.  But it’s also nice to have some reassurance from the horses’ mouths — and what a fine team they are, these two!  I love it that they consult at length over these momentous decisions!

 

 

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