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@ohboyatoycar  Goths and Batman?  Huh?  I just don’t see it, but as you do, you might skip the rest of S9 and rejoin the show at the start of S10.  There’s a short interview with Capaldi and Moffat on the Den of Geek site in which they discuss how they’re expecting to shift the tone of the show for that season using the tone of the companion(?) they pick.  They can’t go much darker after S9, IMO, given that DW still *is* a show categorized in the UK as “family viewing” and “youth audience”, and Capaldi started watching at six or so and has said that he wants it to stay accessible to modern kid viewers, which means scary but not gruesome (there’s a marked lack of spilled blood in DW, which is quite noticeable, and is not accidental), and also funny and wittily entertaining.

So you, and other fan who’ve been put off by the darker depths of S8 and S9 can very likely look forward to something lighter and maybe more rackety in S10.  Remember, Capaldi’s earlier work is better known for comedy, in  “Local Hero” and “The Thick of It” than the darker dramatic explorations he’s been making in DW, light, satirical, and funny is also right up his alley.  By the end of filming S9, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he and Moffat were both ready to move on from the inherent tragedy in DW to more fun, games, and foolery.  So don’t lose heart.

@puro  Not to mention the Tank-and-Rock show, loads of high quality Doctor/Clara and other banter (“Big nose, Big — ?”  (Yikes) ” — Handkerchief!” and other cheery bits salted in among the tense moments), and “Odin” being routed on camera by a puppet-dragon, among others.  But some people are more sensitive to darker elements, and don’t get the benefit of the fast interplay of dark and light in the same story and often a single scene.  Which is a pity, but there it is.

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@lisa   can there also be an inherently evil Patronus? No idea?

That would be, I suppose, not a Patronus but a curse or a demon, wouldn’t it?  Unless the person is himself evil, and so the Patronus enhances that quality?  Or — offsets it?  Interesting.  Where does a Patronus come from?  Does it just appear, or do you go find one, as a shaman finds his or her power animal(s)?

@blenkinsopthebrave  The video link is to a page full of trailers — which one do you mean?

 

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Damn it.  “A smarlinb, stumbling lump” = “a snarling, stumbling lump”, post #47202.

@jphamlore  @whisht  When I was learning to read Tarot cards, The Moon was also interpreted, broadly, as “Seeing things by a False Light”.  That’s kind of what we’ve been saying here about “Sleep No More”, isn’t it.

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@blenkinsopethebrave  it will be revealed that the Doctor and River did have a child, and that his child/children/grandchildren will, in some way, figure in series 10.

That would certainly be a strong enough development to prevent him from going off alone for a thousand years to mourn the loss of Clara . . . but again, there’s the problem that this would be a Time Lordy child, and he’s been pretty clear about understanding that he needs a mayfly to travel with, not another quasi-immortal with a high, cold perspective.  Or, maybe such a person would be exactly what he would be eager to take on, with the goal of making sure his kid *does* learn from the mayflies (and *not* team up with any Missy-types or descendants)?

Worrisome as to Soap Opera possibilities, but an interesting prospect anyway.

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@lisa  I’d actually love to see Clara morph into the Doctors ‘Patronus’. She would be his guardian
of deep affinity. They are usually an animal in Harry Potter. I wonder what the Patronus for
the Doctor might look like?

Nice idea — so does a Patronus in Roman belief reflect the attributes (physically and/or otherwise) of the guarded one, or supplement them with the attributes that the guarded one is low on?  If the basis is “deep affinity”, that would suggest the former rather than the latter.

And I agree that Ashildr in the publicity shots has a newly dark, sleek look that I would say bodes no good, character-wise.

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@kharis  — What an excellent Nutcracker scheme!  Drosselmeyer does look like a Doctor Who figure — and there must be others: the older, mysterious, clever, “magical” authority who’s often not just a trickster but an evil-leaning character manipulating the story behind the scenes, like Lindorf in “Tales of Hoffman” (“je suis vieux mais je suis vif!”), who just popped into my head.  The “trick” with the Doctor is that he’s a *combination* of the wise and magical elder and the vigorous young adventurer . . . is this a somewhat dim sort of archetype here?  Much is made of the “maiden, mother, crone” succession, but there’s the also a “callow youth, seasoned hero, wise old man” progression too, isn’t there?  With the Trickster an ambiguous outlier, usually male, having no female counterpart because of the usual mish-mash of restrictions on how females are categorized, or maybe that’s the beautiful enchantress . . . Dunno, gotta get FOOD.  And fed.  And coffee . . . and watch this episode a second time.

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@geoffers   i think rassmussen himself is the man who hasn’t slept in five years, perhaps? his nervousness and mannerisms throughout the episode, at first, could be due to the monsters, the life or death situation. but when we find out he’s been a bad guy all along, i think it’s a clue that he’s just not been sleeping well/or at all. 

Great theory, love it (as a person who turns into a smarlinb, stumbling lump when a few bad nights accrue, I know the feeling well).

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@jphamlore  perhaps it is the Daleks who offer a peace with an adjudicator, Clara, trapped in a chronolock for all eternity to enforce the peace, past and present. It turns out that Clara has been in training throughout her life to handle this role.

Ah, I like that — she could be gone, but not dead; just gone, on permanent assignment . . . And I certainly could see Ashildr as designing a baleful revenge, though that seems more Missy’s style to me.

I dunno, though.  Ravens symbolize death as well as Munin and Hugin (have I got those right?  Memory and — ??).  She has to be brave in order to face a deadly danger, or a death sentence, but maybe not to take on a job of towering importance, saving not the Doctor but the peace of the universe . . . her multi-hybridizations supports preparation for such a fate, but the vibe I’m been getting about her throughout S9 is more dark and dire than that.

I am very glad, though, to see the red velvet coat at last — been waiting.  Red as blood, walking wounded . . . Moffat says somewhere in a comment something about taking everything from the Doctor, pushing him to the utmost to see to what destructive extremes might he go — a Time Lord with literally nothing to lose?

That confession dial — I don’t think it’s a maguffin.  I’d think it’s what he speak into when he’s alone in “Heaven Sent”, working through the story, his options, and his rage before the storm of “Hell Bent”, only then can he give/have given it to Ohila to give to Missy back at the start?  A confession of what he *intends* to do in response to losing Clara, only to be unsealed when he’d done it, and died in the process?  Possible?  How out of order are we here, in terms of time?

 

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave  — It’s a story.  Which Rasmussen is telling us, admitting at the outset that bits are missing.  But he’s the bad guy; must we accept the ending we see — his victory, the Doctor’s failure and retreat — is the truth?

@django  Ah, you got there before me:  I loved the audacity that what we had all just watched was not only a fiction in our world but was a fiction within the Doctor Who world. Who knows how much of what we were presented with actually happened and wasn’t constructed by Rasmussen.

And he’s not only a bad guy, he’s also psychotic, so — this could be a *very* crazy version of events that did or did not happen in reality (such as it is).

@whisht   Doctor: But I’ll *try*.

Ooh Whisht — chills.  I love it; but no such luck, I fear . . .

@arbutus  The Twelfth Doctor always seems a bit taken aback by what people see on the psychic paper!

Their imagination has to supply the text, so always is a surprise to find out what they see (because they expect to see it); right?  Or can the Doctor sometimes “pre-load” the psychic paper so that it shows what *he* wants them to see?

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@purofilion  Or, PissedOffPuro — lovely! — Yes, it wants more watching, partly because it goes very fast, and there are lots of visual figures to keep track of in many scenes (while you’re figuring out whose “eyes” you’re looking through).  Just got home from a family visit in San Diego and watched for the first time tonight.  It’s all a bit helter-skelter still for me, but the very busy weave has some dark, dark threads.

“To die.  To *die*.”  Damn it.  CapDoc is so thinking about death, which has, perhaps, no benefit, whereas sleep, which  Rasmussen has “murdered”, is something we can’t do without . . . And good Lord, who goes around quoting The Scottish Play?!  Because they’re in a drama of death and confusion, luridly lit, or black and white, like the changing light on a battlefield as shells go off.  It’s a *story*.  What else is a story and a drama?  Maybe a lucid dream?

For the record, I liked Robot of Sherwood very much — the playful, gently satirical tone, the evil sheriff’s vast ambitions growing even as he articulated them, Robin using the Doctor’s maneuver on the bridge to bop the Sheriff into the gold soup, and so on . . .

And I like the Doctor’s defeat here, which is not a small one — the potential infection of all sapient life in the universe through the spread of the video is at stake.  Confused, missing things (that’s not new), but I think maybe it’s this low hum of death-death-to-die in his thoughts (connected, I can’t help but think, to Clara’s future or the snuffing out of her future) is part of his discombobulation.  Usually when he’s annoyed with himself for missing something (usually something he later declares was obvious all along), the next thing that happens is that he *gets* it, as if saying he’s missing it is an order to his subconscious to get going and find that missing perception and present it.

Not this time.

Clara caught a few minutes of this sleep-concentrate in that pod.  Will she now be unable to sleep for a while?

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@bluesqueakpip  Clara was born to save the Doctor – but the Doctor no longer needs saving.  Her job’s done.

Whew!  That’s strong.  Are you suggesting a voluntary departure?  Or someone else making the determination that she’s no longer needed here and so *should* move (or be moved) on?  I like how you’re thinking here . . .

I think my main problem with Clara never leaving the Dalek is that I’d expect the Doctor to be doing everything possible to find a cure. Instead, he’s acting as if Clara’s oncoming death is something he can’t do anything about.
As if, in fact, he’s seen it in her future.  The Doctor: I can do anything. There’s nothing I can’t do. Nothing. But I’m not supposed to.

Seen it as a fixed point, you mean?  Or would it be sufficient that he’s seen it as one event among many? (me and time travel again — sorry, it’s just not gettin’ in)

 

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@supernummerary  Re the playground scene, older man, two kids:  that was part of the point, the alien Doctor’s lack of awareness as to how this looks- as well as the general gag of having the commanders hide out as two tiny blonde girls.

Thanks!  Now it makes sense.

@blenkinsop @pedant  I’m with you too; I don’t think the Doctor is a zygon.  The little girls would have reacted quite differently to him in the playground, for starters.

@bluesqueakpip  that was part of the point, the alien Doctor’s lack of awareness as to how this looks- as well as the general gag of having the commanders hide out as two tiny blonde girls. . . doesn’t matter who is a Zygon and who isn’t, because the people in UNIT are traitors, all, to the idea that Zygons and humans are fundamentally different. They all signed up to the treaty. They all agreed that the ‘other’ was ‘people’.

That all works very well for me; thanks.

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@soundworld  Knowing ourselves better is of course the Fool’s journey, as we have been discussing this series. That it has provoked these reactions shows just how bang-on the series is, not shying away from awkward and painful topics.

Your comment is bang-on as well.  And thanks, @pedant, for the good Vonnegut material.

@purofilion  I can truly say that educating the young is the only we way we stop such horrors from continuing to happen. My mother, were she alive today, would be shocked that tyranny, in all its forms is still aflourish and she’d weep -she really would. I could imagine her saying “Why did we leave? The world is in an even worse place now”

Thank you, too, for sharing that story with us.  These things are hardly new; whether we talk about them or we don’t talk about them, it seems, they recur.  Everyone’s choice is theirs to make, over and over, and we can only hope that times of better choices will come sooner rather than later (or not at all).

 

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@bluesqueakpip  I live in an area where children are being groomed by terrorists. This is too serious an issue to NOT make it family entertainment,

Second.  Absolutely.  Talk about it, don’t hide from it, or hide it from kids.  Darkness encourages mold; sunlight kills germs.

@mudlark  Yep, I hear you.  And ever since “Mary Tyler Moore” dealt with the death of a cast member by having an episode in which the others dealt with the emotional impact of that real death, the ground has been shifted around this issue: serious stuff in shows that have a lot of comedy content.  I’m also on board with the view that DW is a brilliantly layered show, with a more comic crust that anybody who wants to can just skate over with laughs and light thrills over a much more complex and significant under layer where anyone who chooses can burrow right down into material as dark as you care to take it.

@lisa  I cant imagine Zygon Clara writing cheat answer cards for the Doctor like the ones he used in Under the Lake.

Neither can I!  That was Clara her own self; and so was Clara on the phone with the Doctor demanding that he not “die on her”, IMO.

@jimthefish  the ones saying that on the ‘other place’ are basically saying ‘it was too heavy handed because it’s a political argument I personally don’t like’. If the Doctor was walking around saying ‘send em all back where they came from’ I’d imagine they’d all be calling it ‘timely and subtle’.

Exactly.  Everyone is entitled to their more tender sensibilities, but it’s the viewer’s charge to stop watching a show — even if only for a few minutes — if it’s bothering them, and then decide whether to come back to it or not.  It’s not the producers’ job to foresee world new months later, and censor themselves over what might or might not happen — although, of course, DW did just that with the beheading scene in RoS, last year.  It has to be left up to them: “I know when I can, I know when I can’t.”  And then you deal with the consequences.  DW already operates under a sort of censorship: no troublingly sexual material — but then they went ahead and turned the Master female, and some of fandom went nuts, and now it’s hardly mentioned as an issue any more (well, not until Capaldi leaves and a new Doctor must be chosen).

@pedant  Truth or Consequences c/w Trick or Treat. Somebody knew the broadcast date and remembered to be a bit subtle.

Ha! Thanks for that!  I didn’t occur to me at all!

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@starla  the one who travels to New Mexico, is zygon Kate. We don’t see what happens to her once the police officer changes into a zygon

Well, not exactly — but our last shot of Kate — isn’t she holding up and looking at what sure looks like a zygon finger or something?  I thought, if she’s a zygon copy but a *good* one, she’s taken out a *bad* rebel one, and then lied to Bonnie over the phone.  Or she’s still Kate, and ditto.  Possible?

@avaris  And yes, Missy’s prophecy came true. “The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend.”
Clara inside Dalek, Zygon takes Clara’s shape.

Good spotting — I didn’t see that, really, until you pointed it out, so thanks.

@janetteb  wondered if there can be more than one zygon copy of someone. That raises interesting possibilities.

It raises the possibility of my head exploding, if I have to try to keep track of more than one zygonic copy of people!

@blenkinsopthebrave  Clara on the bike with lipstick — Lucy in the sky . . . Thanks for the earworm, dang it!

@countscarlioni 3) What’s in the Osgood Box?? Nothing. The box was left by the Doctor simply as a `security blanket’ for Unit and its political masters so they’d feel better about the Peace Treaty. The Doctor really wanted the humans and zygons to work things out rather than rely on some deux ex machina.

Damn, *love* that idea!

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@soundworld  life on earth was seeded, and continues to be, by genetic material carried through space, virii and so on. What manner of hybrids might we already be, unknowingly?

I think that’s an excellent question!  And it raises one of my ingrained objections to concepts of “purity”, in the name of which so many great crimes have been committed.  How can you tell what’s “pure” unless you’re in a chem lab?

@jphamlore  a huge number of people will be released unharmed so that the Zygons aren’t mass murderers.

Mmm, that is another good question: if you can’t tell people from zygons, how can you hope to tell bad zygons (the ones responsible for murdering humans) from good zygons, when it comes time to settle accounts?

@supernumerary  The other thing that stood out to me was the absurdity of Kate, the head of UNIT, just travelling to New Mexico to investigate something completely alone.. . why the Doctor wouldn’t have travelled to Turmezistan . . . in his TARDIS? Or even taking Kate to New Mexico in it, sussing that out, then going to join up with UNIT once they had arrived.

I forgot about using the Tardis, but Kate her own made NO sense.  None.  Really yanked me out of the story; I hope this is addressed next time!

@purofilion  that speaks, metaphorically, to our own impending race and culture wars…do we prepare for the inevitable or do we simply work optimistically with what we actually have?

Yes.  For the US, I think it’s safe to assume that we’re preparing very incompetently for the possibly inevitable, since we can’t get the damned Thug-dominaed Congress to do *anything* useful with what we actually have.

@mudlark  The socio-political message of the episode wasn’t subtle, but it was embedded organically into the narrative and was not jarring or too obtrusive as far as I was concerned; and, as @bluesqueakpip said, it needed to be reasonably overt for a target audience of children and young people, not to mention some older people with narrow and entrenched opinions on these matters

I think they hit it just right, myself.

 

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@millymac  he brings a darkness with him, very very different from anything I’ve seen before, it makes you feel like there’s going to be something sinister coming, but it doesn’t happen! So strange.

Oh, I think it’s coming; but it’s Moffat’s genius to make us *wait* for it.

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@doctordoctorwho  Turmezistan… what?

Uh . . . chief export, turmeric?

@jphamore  the two real leaders who made the human-Zygon peace treaty, the Doctor and Kate Stewart, must be shown to not be incompetent fools. They must have a plan, or be able to devise a plan on the spur of the moment to make it look like they had a plan, so that we can trust their leadership when they ask us to do things that appear against our current interests.

Sounds right; also impossible, since we still haven’t come up with anything remotely useful in our real-world analog to this situation.  I’m very curious to see what they decide to do.

@countscarlioni  127 missed calls, I think: that’s a lot.  And I’ve forgotten what she’d been up to on her own that kept her from checking her phone — ?  It’s nice to know now that the “Bad-ass Clara” on her bike with a rocket launcher really *is* a bad-ass, that is, a renegade zygon.  Those who’ve wanted to see a “Clara turned bad” get a chance to see that in this story, though of course it’s not really Clara at all . . .

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@purofilion  I didn’t see Captain Jack as intense, just as always just-this-side-of-hysterical and way too exhausting, like a large, over-eager dog with (sometimes) soulful eyes constantly sniffing crotches and trying to hump your leg (or the leg of the guy standing next to you).  Let’s just say I liked him best as the huge, jarred, and somnolent Face of Boe (which, apparently, was just a throw-away joke anyway).  I’m sure I’m firmly in the minority in this as in many things, and so it goes; not to worry.

I do believe I dreamed last night of attending a meeting addressed by Ursula K. LeGuin.  Capaldi and some of the cast and crew were there, too, along with many of my writing colleagues (I head off to the World Fantasy Convention in Saratog, NY, next Wednesday, so I guess I’m jumping the gun and already thinking in group terms).  Big Issues were on the table.  I wish I could remember what they were . . .

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@purofilion  I also agree that in T/wrd the physical stuff was “obtrusive” to the point of ridiculousness.

It was like being in bl**dy High School again — who’s going out with who, who had a fight with their maybe s.o. and is sulking over it, who’s not attracted to the satyr Captain Jack, god almighty, can we please get some of this damn soap off us long enough to have a story?  The *only* thing I remember — visually, in my brain — is, would you believe it, John Frobisher and his family — people with actual grown up problems, like being afraid for their children.  I came to really dislike Captain Jack H., thinking I sure wouldn’t want this guy with the fiery pants for everything and everybody all the time around if I had life-threatening business to attend to.

But I’m a fan of subtlety and depth, so that show was never for me (I tried, though; I did).  And of course my memories of the show may be distorted by time . . .

@missy  Best in my opinion, too.  And I agree with whoever it was who noted that re-watches of Tom Baker’s best tend to bring out the cringe in me, although he was “my Doctor” for years.  I have to watch the zygon invasion tomorrow on an iTunes download, because the sound on the TV broadcasts is so overwhelmed by the music that I miss half the dialog.  On my computer, I control the balance at the speakers, so I get all the lines there.

I can tell you one thing, though, without sound: when I saw Truth or Consequences as (obviously) imagined by the Who staff, I had to laugh.  I’ve teen to T or C, as it’s called around here.  It’s out on the barren plains that form the eastern half of New Mexico, not a mountain in sight; and it has *no* “Hispanic” style to its architecture at all, having been founded by a bunch of white Baptists from West Texas, as I recall.  So that’s *me* found a nit to pick!

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@doctordoctorwho  Yes, we had a brief visit from some Underbridges last week (and just before, too), and I think since we take care to keep this a friendly place, we tend to let the snark out when trolls come calling — and it takes a bit to get back into our normal groove?  Anyway, I remember the shots you mention, now that you remind me, and I’m sure you’re right.  But they still have to solve the main problem, which, given that they’ve set it up as metaphorically about immigrants, can’t possibly be done by releasing a gas that will turn all the zygons inside out!

 

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@millymac   I’d really love for the new companion to be an older woman, maybe a historian. So when she and the Doctor are travelling she’s interested in artefacts and the history, and he’s away busy dealing with a hidden alien society or something. It would be fantastic

It would be fantastic, and I for one would love it — but can you imagine the endless firestorms of nit-picking craziness from the fans who are still screaming about electric eels in The Girl Who Died?  The writers and researchers et al already have their plates full; I wouldn’t want to see the scripts scanted because too much time was spent researching how many buttons were usual on a vice rear-admiral’s coat cuff (if any!) in 1815.

As for Capaldi, I think he’s magnificent in this role.  He was great in TToI, but as a satirical comedy, the show offered him a pretty restricted range (at least until the very end, when they gave Tucker the boot).  DW, with all its wild gyrations of tone, has really cut him loose.  Well, except no overt sexy stuff, given the audience, but frankly, I don’t miss it.  As a powerful driver of real life action it’s omnipresent for us in *reality*, but pushing it very much into the background (or reserving it for Torchwood, where I found it really annoyingly obtrusive, in fact) leaves DW free to explore other stuff — our responsibilities to and for each other, the workings of character flaws, violence and government, and, of course, Time, for starters.

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@bluesqueakpip  I keep joking that the reason they haven’t announced the new Companion is because the new Companion is Clara. Only played by a different actress. 😉

Good grief!  You are a veritable *devil*!

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Thinking about Clara’s end. I think might be spoiler-y, so I’ve put it here instead of on The Woman Who Lived where we were talking about Clara’s departure:

Consider that bit of trailer with the Doctor standing in a very tall space with golden light streaming down, and then the close up — at the top of this page. I think that’s from Heaven Sent.  His hair is cut shorter.  He’s dressed “formally” in what might be his power suit, but maybe just a suit, and he looks strung tight as a longbow.  You know when you cut your hair short, in many cultures around the world?  When you’re in mourning.  I’m thinking that after lethal events in Face the Raven, the Doctor goes somewhere special, a place of power that he might ordinarily have nothing to do with, to plead a very special case . . . probably unsuccessfully, considering that there’s a following episode called Hell Bent.

Just doodling lethally, here . . .

 

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@arbutus Yes, I’d hope for a different slant too, if that happens. In any case, though, the Doctor will be having some dark thoughts about his own part in shaping whatever sequence of events brings her departure about — unless she goes zooming off in her own Tardis or something (and maybe even then?).  Further thoughts on the “BBC spoiler” page, just in case:

 

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@arbutus    I’m pretty sure that the Doctor himself has moved on. I think that in his view, he is neither a good nor a bad man, and that the question itself is irrelevant. He does what is right by his own standards, or tries to. Goodness has nothing to do with it!

Agreed — but wouldn’t that be called into question again if he were to see *himself* as the immediate cause of Clara’s death?  We were talking about what happens if he were to kill her himself, under the illusion that she’s some monster or other (as almost happened in TWF, thanks to Missy’s manipulations), and that’s the context I had in mind: a future action bringing back an old, previously settled question.  It would all depend on circumstances, as these judgments usually do in reality, too

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@purofilion  I’d rather be discussing the potential for a female Doctor with a female companion than program numbering

Me too, and that’s me who wore meself out discussing that very issue elsewhere!

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@mersey  Crazy Man Michael makes a terrible mistake, kills the raven, and so kills his own true love. Given the great play in the series so far on the problems of separating friends from enemies, and the pre-season promise from Peter Capaldi (as far as I can tell, unlike SM, Capaldi might be economical with the truth but does not lie) that the Doctor would make a catastrophic blunder in this series, I wonder/worry if this is the direction we are moving in???

Ye gods!  What a wonderful, horrible idea!

@purofilion

Oh, we are cookin’ tonight!  The Greeks had that right, I think.  And definitely, yes, the “am I a good man” question hovers always, never really settling one way or the other.  I could see Clara’s fate as a massive blow on this score, if the Doctor can blame himself for it (and he’s good at that, isn’t he?).  There will be some soul-searching, I think .  I doubt he’ll run; he despises himself for running, as per that scene in “The Girl”, because running *is* sometimes cowardly, and also it’s ineffective.  So in Clara’s honor, I think he’ll stay put and “face the raven” of grief and loss after the raven of death has done its work.

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@jimthefish  Orphan Black took me a long time to get into and it’s still a case of like but don’t quite love. Tatiana Maslany is going awesome work on it though….

My feeling too; it never became “appointment TV watching” for me, so I missed some episodes and completely lost the thread, so I went elsewhere.  By all means, send in the clones — just not so damn *many* of them.  Can’t keep ’em straight.

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@blenkinsopthebrave  It is very nice that people seem to have responded to my idea, but…it doesn’t have to turn out that way. 

No — but your way is very elegant in its simplicity and potential impact.  On the other hand, of course the story might go in a completely different direction, delight us all with something unforeseen.  Only people here are so damn smart, theories tend to be less bonkers than one might expect . . . and of course Moffat is halfway bonkers himself (IMO and in a definitely good way).

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@drben  Oh Master Blenkinsop, what a beautiful thought. For the Doctor to be in a position (yet again) to save Clara’s life, and for Ashildr, with her (by then) 1100 or so years of life, convincing him that the kinder choice is to let her go rather than prolong the inevitable. It’s poetic – bravo.  I also envision this as being part-and-parcel of the whole Clara-as-bootstrap-paradox thing, and her death will reverberate across centuries, with shots of Claricles from all times and places, as the singularity collapses upon itself, so to speak.  Would make a boffo season ender.

@cybercat  the Doctor having to accept his role in the fate of his companions.

@lisa it depends on who shows up – Me or Ashildr

Wow.  Brilliant.  And thank goodness for the questions left wide open, so we can’t get too fixed on this and then be disappointed if the real ending doesn’t exactly match.  There are lots of plates in the air here, potentially — Davros.  Missy.  Ashildr/Me.  River.  “Odin”, who made threats to return and make the Doctor pay.  (Plan 9 From Outer Space ?  No, no!)  And there’s always left field, but I’d rather not see something too new and unexpected, because this is so beautiful and satisfying.

I wonder . . . will the Doctor come out of this still reasonably settled that he is, indeed, a good man?

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@blenkinsopthebrave  Oh!  Thanks, I’d lost that bit.  It’s been so long since we’ve seen River (or seems so long) that I tend to lose sight of her altogether, although she is due back this season, of course.

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@arbutus  Does the TARDIS still not like Clara, or was that resolved after Name of the Doctor?

Mmm, search me — I’m not the one to answer that, memory in sieve mode.  If resolved, would Clara’s treachery in Dark Water have annoyed the Tardis again pretty severely, even though no actual damage came of it?  The time-line crossing thing is an issue, though: I could see Ashildr and the Tardis both trying to prevent the Doctor interfering in Clara’s ending, canceling each other’s efforts, and thereby turning Clara’s “fate” in some other direction — ?  A lot depends on whether that resolution is a “fixed point” in time or not (I’d say, yeah, probably), and whether his spidey-sense with regard to his time line (“I know when I can, I know when I can’t”) fails him this once, or he just goes against it anyway out of desperation.

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@blenkinsopthebrave  In fact, what might be called for is a visit from “her indoors” to give him a bit of perspective.

Who would that be?  The Tardis in person, maybe?  *Somebody* will sure have to help get him through the sads.  If they can catch him: “I’ll run and I’ll run” (he said it himself).  He might set the Tardis for “any universe but this one” and go . . . except Tardis might take him where he needs to be, instead.  I think the sunglasses have an equal chance of staying for a while — grieving people sometimes wear them in public to shield their eyes and close their expressions to others.  Finally setting the glasses aside might be part of his emergence from grief.

@cybercat  Ashildr certainly might mean (referring to companions) that she will protect them from the doctor by allowing them to face the inevitable – death – that which she cannot have!!  Makes complete bonker-sense!

It does, it does; though she can die if she wants to, being, as the Doctor pointed out, immortal but not invulnerable.  On the other hand, while the Doctor still roams the worlds he will always present that “collateral damage” danger to the mayflies, chiefly the danger of having their destined lives shortened, so in getting herself killed she’d be giving up her chosen role as protector while the danger is still out there.

Will she manage to get herself off Earth?  How?  The lion-thing didn’t work out so well, which doesn’t auger well.

 

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@purofilion  It’s only an affectation, IMO, if your eyes aren’t more sensitive to glare than normal.

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@purofilion  I think if anyone can do sans companion it would be this Doctor in particular -he really is larger than life. His tone and unusual presence, height and funky accoutrements would make him fearsome. Even with the sunglasses which seem to have caused an internet ‘burn down’

Oooh, yeah.  But what *is* it with the sunglasses, for cripes’ sake?  The fact that he wears them indoors?  That look goes with the electric guitar as naturally as — whatever goes really naturally with something else.  Grass and sheep?

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@arbutus  I think that @jimthefish probably meant that Twelve is not being written as a romantic lead. But from an audience perspective, he gets my middle-aged heart beating a tad faster–

Thanks for that correction, quite right I’m sure.  And yes, thaaaaat’s what I’m talkin’ about.  The heart thing.  Mmmm.

@purofilion  Oh yes, he sonics phones and the door to the Tardis, one’s fridge, normal doors (that aren’t wood) and ….rackets too…

Great; do you think he could fix my watch too?  And yes, meditation/contemplation are good for us.  I ought to remember to do some . . .

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@bluesqueakpip  when Series 2, Series 3, Series 6 and Series 7a of the After Gap Series all had an ongoing romantic arc. As Jim says, times change – we had to go through that arc to get the Doctor to a place (effectively, he’s a widower) where he can say that his Companions are far more like surrogate family than they are romantic interests. He is, after all, married, even if his wife is dead.  But we had to move through that arc to come out the other side. And the Doctor is different for it, more willing to acknowledge that losing his ‘family’ hurts like hell, every time.

I missed this, late in commenting — I think this works very well.  And your replies on fictional characters changing course, radically or otherwise.  Though I recall someone discussing mystery novels, in the Christie sense, as comedies because they do what comedies do — bring things back to the beginning, setting all to rights, which often means that the characters re-set to their old selves and positions.  Maybe thinking of DW as more comedy than drama and liking it that way could lead to disliking the drama that comes with deeper emotions.

@nerys  And this — exactly: The stories gain coherence through the relationships. It’s not all about creating the most logical plot, and I am grateful for that. If I want logic, I’ll watch a documentary on statistics 

@pedant  Thanks for that clarifying summary of the ratings/audience-numbers issue.  The point can’t be made often enough, it seems.

@purofilion  Things must change: only a Church would have the strength to say something is “eternal.” I don’t think the Doctor is ‘eternally unchanging”. To imply that is to suggest that the Doctor really is some kind of prophet-even a Christ,

Or a comic book hero — and these days, even they aspire to the depths that come with acknowledging the ubiquity, and the invincible, nature of change.

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@purofilion  Oh, avoid Youtube.  Many of the loudest shouters sound as if they’re still in school, secondary level mostly, or uni.  Reminds me of the boys at the movies back when I was a school kid myself, and there’d be a close-up kiss onscreen and all the boys would make “EW!” noises (now they’d be yelling “Oh, GROSS!” I guess), while the girls were thinking, Mmm, really?  But how do you make the noses fit without getting a crick in your neck?

Some of the hatred, I’m convinced, is just “fitting in”, signifying nothing but kids desperately seeking social safety.  Some is rage at having lost some kind of imaginary “control” of “their” secret sort of cult-y show that hardly anybody but a much smaller group of fans even knew about, because if lots of people love it now, that means it can’t be our superior secret any more.  Some is outrage from young feminist hotheads (heaven help them, and long may they wave) who automatically reject a story in which a succession of women orbit around a central figure who’s simply by his apparent gender and his position in the story a symbol of dreary old patriarchy.  Some is the misogyny of old and young fans (of both sexes) who *like* orbiting females and furiously resent companions developing ideas, goals, and character of their own (“Oh, now it’s the Doctor Clara Show, I wish she would *die* already so it can go back to being about the Doctor again!”).

A good deal of this is on exhibit at reddit.com as well.  They are themselves bringing what they find, but can’t bear for others (and newbies, too!) bringing/finding anything more complex or challenging than the fast and flashy surfaces they love.  It makes them feel as if they’re missing something (which they are — DW generally aren’t stupid) about *their show”!  The horror, the horror . . . It’s all okay, except for the hysterical (testoxical?) vindictiveness that sometimes gets flung about.

But not here: here there be civilization and its contentments.

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@purofilion  Moffat’s brain….wunderbar.

Not to mention what he’s done to the brains of the rest of us through DW!  We’re all — *bonkers* here!  I rest my case.

 

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@randypan  There’s a sketch where Stephen Fry is ranting about that book to Hugh Laurie, and keeps saying “balls” about things he thinks are stupid in it, including the line, “Reader, I married him.” Hugh points out she’s talking to the person reading the book, and Stephen says, “Oh, double balls and bollocks!”

Damn, that’s wonderful!  Those guys . . . “And I shall have my re-wengy!” No, no, it’s all too much –!

@purofilion  “we should not look at Goblin men….we should not buy their fruits.”  Wonderful allusions.

Wonderful.  “Who knows what they have fed upon, their hungry, thirsty roots.”  Have I got that right?  Went to the gym today, probably drove some actual circulating blood up into the memory bits of the brain.  On the other hand, having your tennis racket sonicked — I bet that’s a first in the Hidden History of Who!

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@purofilion  Also, I must add, that on this Forum, and in this place, I’ve left my mind open and my mouth closed (not today evidently 🙂 and this really means I’ve changed so many of my opinions and habits. To be 47 and to be open to change, is rather marvellous, no?

It’s wonderful at any age, IMO.  The problem with rigid, long-held opinions is that entropy rules the universe — rigidity generally leads to death in one form or another, or lots of forms in a grim cascade . . .

“Reader, I married him.”  An interesting last line — not “He condescended to marry me-the-mere-governess”, or “He rewarded my strength and loyalty by marrying me.”  No.  “I married him.”  And first he had to be cast down so far from his high horse (Rochester meets Jane as the man on horseback, the pattern of the aristocrat in a landscape  of peasants) that he reaps the reward of his fall — a forced surrender to his own humble humanity, so that he can be glad that another humble human wishes to join her life to his.  Not bad.  It’s not the fault of “Jane Eyre” that the gothic romance has been so debased in our time.

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@jimthefish  he’s not really a romantic lead any longer anyway.

You might be surprised; for at least one sector of DW viewers, CapDoc most certainly *is* a romantic lead — in their own minds and conversations, and certainly in the fan fiction stories they write.  Well, look closely: Moffat said he looks for an actor who is attractive but off-beat looking, which certainly fits in this case IMO, in this case a mature man in late middle age.  That’s a figure run into the ground in American movies and other media as not just a romantic lead who has no trouble physically attracting much younger actresses or beautifully aged older ones.  Add a fictional character who is highly intelligent, accomplished, active, about as distinguished as you can get (last of the TLs sort of), extremely powerful in terms of doing what he chooses to do, and with a delightfully naive and childish side (The Fool) + two passionate hearts, if you can get past the distance of his natural reserve (and a bit of shyness). Good God, people — !

There are battalions of middle-aged women who have been looking for this guy all their lives, and very happy to find him in a *fictional* character who will never knock at the door and ask them to sew a button on his coat or wash his socks for him.  And I don’t think for a minute that Moffat et al aren’t well aware of all this.  They connected with mobs of younger women with Tenant and Smith; CapDoc is a brilliant next step, in terms of attracting and holding a viewership beyond kids, nerds and Sf fans of both sexes, and the rest of the traditional DW audience from BG.

Which reminds me, there are lots of younger women who “get” CapDoc on a romantic level too, and are deeply invested emotionally in a smoldering (if largely unexpressed) passion between him and Clara as their own surrogate.  I can’t speak for what that’s about, but I remember the, er, middle ages, with all that disappointed idealism and longing for something better than what’s typically on offer, feeding itself on gothic fiction, vampire/werewolf and every other kind of romance, etc.

The degree to which the viewer brings what he or she finds in the story is not measurable, of course, subjective assessments are and remain just that — subjective; letting us all have exactly what we came for . . . or go find it somewhere else.

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@jphamlore  But above all the episode is about what is just, what is fair, what is balanced. In the end Ashildr decides her role is to try and be some sort of balance in the lives of those who survive the visitation of a demigod the Doctor.

Love it!  “Justice” is a card that I always have trouble with, maybe because I’m a Libra, and as such have a terrible time with decisions (we tend to see all sides of an issue, which often leads to gibbering paralysis).  I like thinking of it in connection with Ashildr, and this episode.

@brewski  — I’m pretty sure you’re right — I think that if he knew the details of Clara’s fate, he’d be spending some time trying to work out ways to avoid it, not just space/time hopping as usual.  Which reminds me — if he *does* see a way to protect her and attempts to swing events in a different direction, would the Tardis — that has awareness of unknown limits — be his ally, or his enemy in that effort?  Tardis doesn’t like Clara, for whatever reason, and might try to steer events in  some different direction . . . ?  And I’ll have a cocktail now if you please (love your story!).

More than “Cock Ale”, anyway, @fatmaninabox, which sounds — I have a bad bad mind . . . !

@lisa  Oh, yes, you’re right!  I wasn’t thinking of it that specifically.  Lady Me must have wanted to demonstrate how capable she was, to convince him that she’d be a good traveling partner, not a wimpy drag.

@bluesqueakpip  Doctor had them around because he does hallucinogens when he’s bored and can’t think of what planet to go to, and didn’t want to explain that to Clara. But we all know he would never do that, because he’s not that sort of person. Despite the guitar and the shades.

Oh, hahahahah — love it!  Well, he certainly can’t admit to it, given all the kiddies watching and listening . . . !  Myself, I’m kind of saving the hallucinogenic experience for old age, when I’m like to die of boredom, like Wagner.  But the Doctor himself is *so* past old age . . .

@blenkinsopthebrave  Well, I envisage a scenario where Ashildr will be there to stop the Doctor from saving Clara. In other words, to allow Clara to fulfill her destiny.

Gorgeous.  Glad you kept on thinking about it, with or without wine (or a cockle-tail).

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@miapatrick  I would say Masie is better in Game of Thrones- but she’s been doing it for so much of her life. Watching her act with Charles Dance was one of the best experiences in my life.

I know — those were a few wonderful scenes!  I wanted to see them developed, but since it didn’t happen in the books, no such luck.  This was Arya as a younger, softer person, and my writer brain wanted the two of them  together for a while, so he could soften a little toward someone he might see as sort of daughterly (in his hyper-masculine world of scheming, war, and hunting, and with adult Cersei as his real daughter, that would have been interesting); and she might find herself fascinated by a leader, like her dad, but a *successful* one due to the ruthless that the times required.  Then she could have gone with whatsisname and become an assassin, and a rich and wonderful confrontation could have come of it later on . . . I’d much prefer Tywin dying at *her* small hands than Tyrion’s (the latter struck me as so sharp a character swerve as to be downright ridiculous).  I was watching GoT at that point because I like Charles Dance — great presence as an actor.

@staria Potentially using a lucid dreaming aide, from Dark Water. You know the one that induced the very real dream state where Clara believed she was destroying TARDIS keys?

Mmm, that could be a factor somewhere in here, but there’s the question of how much of a dream and how complex you could keep a person in with that patch, and for how long . . . with so many other people and events in play.

blenkinsopthebrave  The Doctor could well be there, but perhaps Ashildr might also be there to play a role in Clara’s end/departure that the Doctor cannot play . . . 

Put that way, yes, I can see it — could be very interesting, .

one is is a traveler in space and time, whereas the other is destined (it would seem so far) to live through time in one place only (Earth). I think this had something to do with why the Doctor did not take her onto the TARDIS.

Yep, Ashildr spent, what, 800 yrs living different constructed social identities and in times (when we meet her as Lady Me) when serious long-range travel (to Russia, say, or Bali, or the Antarctic) was barely even possible for a female person, so she’s gone a bit stir-crazy trying to get away to someplace different.  Taking her with him would be a potentially huge commitment because (unlike Clara) she has the potential to *never* leave him (at least, for a long, long time), which might be a off-putting for a man who needs change the way we need water, however much he bemoans the loneliness that continued change brings him.  Like it or not, the losses that sadden him are inextricably bound up in the adventures that make his life(lives) worth the living of it.

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@purofilion Says Martha: “oh you know the Doctor….he’s wonderful. But he’s like fire. Stand too close and you get burnt” This is what Ashildr was referring to, I think. And it stands to reason that these things don’t change -with the Doctor -no matter the incarnation

Well, as long as he both attracts dangerous situations and can’t seem to resist being attracted to them in turn no matter who’s standing next to him, yep. Very dangerous materials there. AND he sometimes forgets his hard-won humanity for a bit, and the importance of various humans themselves . . .

As for Ashildr, I think that by the close of “The Woman Who Lived”, she has woken from the moral sleep of being Lady Me and is once more Ashildr, since when the Doctor calls her that in the pub, she doesn’t reject the name, as Me did, quite vehemently.

And thanks, puro, for the kind words, earlier on.  Which reminds me, I can’t fault the goat-muncher on Americans not being clever (the shambles that is our election process pretty much cancels that option right there out in the open for all to see); but I do take it very hard that the M. Underbridge thinks that we aren’t funny.

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@nerys  Am I overly sentimental, or somehow bringing the show down because I appreciate an emotionally true story over a fastidiously logical one?

Naw.  You’re going in exactly the direction the creative crew goes in: the Doctor gives a perfectly logical explanation of why “run!” is all the help he’s going to give the villagers in The Girl, and he could well be right, logically speaking.  Then he speaks for an infant’s emotions, and is galvanized into action.  The character itself is a long conflict between the colder, analytical moments of the more alien Doctor in S8, and the Doctor-grounded-in-his-reclaimed-emotions in S9.  Without emotional truth, this show would never have lasted half a century and counting.

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@seeoswald   I’ll make my last remarks about Doctor Who here now.

Anyone wanna bet?  I do wish this Underbridge would toddle off now to eat a goat or two, because my stomach is hurting from laughing.  This “forus” has had such funny use lately that I’m sorry to have missed the fun as it rollicked along like a dumb ol’ ‘merican hayness ride.

Never mind; I am ready for some zygons, Mr. DeMille.   Oh, and we loved Northern Exposure.

@worldaway  Welcome!  It’s not always this funny, though; I hope you realize that.

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@nerys  by the end of Smith’s run, I felt he was suffering from an overdose of mania and an underwritten companion. It was a relief to slow things down a notch with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, and also see some vastly improved writing for his companion, Clara, who no longer felt like a placeholder but a more fully realized character. The chemistry between them in Seasons 8 and 9 has put them on equal footing, IMO, with all the other great companions and their complex relationships with the Doctor.

Exactly — couldn’t put it better myself.

@plainolddave   Teary-eyed glurge just isn’t the Doctor’s style.

Actually, sometimes it is.  CapDoc has teared up a couple of times (although his voice goes dry and husky rather than wet) and it’s damned effective.  I think maybe it’s not *your* style, which is hardly a problem given all the differing opinions constantly swirling around various elements of this show.  I don’t much care for it in Tennant, myself, but then Tennant in general isn’t to my taste.  But that doesn’t cancel the opinions of those who love him, glurge and all.

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@spacedmunkee  yes I thought it strange that ashildr would be so dismissive of Clara, given she helped her and was so nice to her in previous episode. Possibly she was jealous that the doctor chooses to travel with a “Mayfly” rather than her

I think so too — she clearly had expected that Clara was long gone, being just a mayfly, so Clara’s still welcome but Me is not — she’d be ticked off, given how badly she wants to travel with the Doctor herself.

@wolfweed  Thanks for the tidbits!

@django  . . . calling for a cocktail . . . It’s not that anachronistic. The first recorded use was in 1798, only 150 years later and it’s perfectly possible that the word was in popular usage before this record was written.

Good point; the term did stick out though, as if we need to take note and remember it for a later reveal, so . . . ??

@doctordoctorwho  I’ve heard some people say this episode had poor directing, I didn’t notice it, could anyone point it out to me please? Thanks! 🙂

The gripers are *always* griping about the directing, when not griping about the writing.  If they just say that, without giving any specific examples, it’s baloney, griping for its own sake.  And if there *are* examples, the gripers are responsible for finding them and pointing them out.  Til then, I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.

@cybercat   the doctor didn’t explain why he couldn’t take Ashilda with him other than ripples/waves or something terrible.. ?

I *think* he meant that two immortals, each struggling to hang onto their human-scale feelings in order to deal decently with humans (and other mortal species too) might each reinforce their longer, colder, immortal perspectives instead and become twice as dangerously high handed and distant as each one on their own.

@lisa   She is extremely ambitious and tenacious. That photo of her felt like her message was game on
to the Doctor.

I don’t read Lady Me as ambitious — she’s lived long enough (800 yrs!) to practice, say, forgery to perfection, and could climb the ladder of wealth and influence pretty high if she chose to; instead, she’s taken the “low road” of highway robbery, for thrills and distraction, I should think.  Tenacious, yes — or she wouldn’t still be alive.  I agree about the selfie, though — though whether it means, “I’m coming to getcha” or “See? I said I’d be keeping an eye on you and your doings”, we can’t know yet.

To my mind there are several candidates as hybrids. I was thinking though that Clara could have already had a hybridish super power to survive the time stream. Maybe if she was born of an immortal mother then could she have the ability to resist death going into that time stream?

You know, lisa, that whole Time Stream thing, where she was warned that she, the original Clara, would die, has never set right with me.  So why, and how, did she survive after all?  Her survival does seem to indicate some kind of special powers, the powers that make into the Impossible Girl.

@brewski  The amulet opens a bridge to other dimensions, but someone has to die for it to work.  What if another dimension it opens to is where Galifrey is?  And what if Clara sacrifices herself to get to it?!

Oh, that’s lovely — not sure I see enough urgency in the Doctor about getting to Gallifrey to power that sacrifice, though — yet, anyhow.  He seems to me to be quite committed to zooming around to adventures (“anywhere you want”), giving Clara a high old time to the best of his ability — because he knows how it ends.  I don’t think there’s time for him to think much about Gallifrey in this series — he’s too preoccupied thinking about *not* thinking about what he knows he’s going to lose.

@blenkinsopthebrave  Great idea about Clara as bootstrap. My latest thought is that the Doctor made Ashildr immortal for the precise purpose of following (guarding?) Clara through the her life/lives, and…to be there at the end. In other words to oversee Clara’s end.

I’d really like that, but — it’s kind of — cowardly?  I don’t think he could bring himself to leave that task — seeing Clara to her finale — to anyone else.  The Doctor *needs* to face the pain his actions/inactions have caused; if he stops doing that, if he fobs it off on someone else or ignores or dodges it, he becomes exactly what he was afraid Ashildr had become: a distant, uncaring, god-like monster of casual cruelty.

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