[ichabod @replies]

@whisht   Thanks for that, good lively sound — always welcome!  Sister is okay, and has been scared into changing her (culinary) ways, so I may get to have her company a lot longer!  Thank goodness, and thanks for your good wishes.

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion  If she’s a claricle, then her time is up at some point! And this is what the Doctor fears? Can he now prevent this? Would it mean a pre-emptive regen?

Maybe something like that — but with a different outcome (CapDoc remains CapDoc despite it?).  I remember that they’ve been saying something happens that will make us “think again about the whole idea of regeneration”, in some way.  Can he give her one of *his* new regenerations (all of which she got for him, from the TLs) in some way, only — instead of dying, she regenerates, just this once, into a version of herself that is cut off from him in some definitive way, but at least not dead?

Only — now?  Right at the beginning?  Or, only to be resolved later on in S9?  My head is spinning.  At this rate I will be a proper pudding (entirely, not just brain) by Sat. night.  Surely this level of engagement should be reserved for  Great Aht.  Ha.  No time for it.  I just want to know *what happens next*!!!

[ichabod @replies]

@bluesqueakpip  If you insert a living being into a time-stream, someone who should never have existed, how long will they live?  Possibly, like all those Claricles, precisely as long as they’re needed.

Whoo, that is *cold*.  But yes, I can see it.  It could work, and be quite horrible — if Clara has never *been* anything other than a pawn in a game played by others.  “Clara, my Clara, you never were real, you were never meant to have a truly human life, and that made you all the more precious to me . . . And now our time is over . . . ”  Ow, ow, ow.  It’s that damned leaf.  It just rankles, somehow.

@barnable  Someone mentioned a reason for the Doctor introducing tanks, dude, and guitar solos to medieval England, sorry I can’t find who said it. It created big disturbances in history so Missy and Clara could find him.

I thought he looked pretty surprised to see the two of them up on the wall there, looking in.  But then he immediately swung into action as if there was no need to stop and think or ask questions, just starting with a flourish the closing down of his interlude in Bors’ village.  So he might have been prepared for their appearance.  I find the whole arena thing perfectly in character for him, as his “all of me” self, not the more tightly focused CapDoc of S8, so it could go either way.

@purofilion  Sorry, had no idea about the “rewards” system you describe — God, what a mess we all keep making of our efforts to get kids educated!  Part of the Problem of Clara, for me, is that she doesn’t seem to *have* any ambition.  It’s as if she’s just marking time at Coal Hill, but without any other context than — marking time, alone and unconnected to anyone but Danny, and that only as a counter-magnet to life with CapDoc.

Anyway, these questions are useless if I’m not attempting to answer them and I can’t! I can ask with the best of you but I just can’t unravel the riddle of Clara.

No one can, but isn’t it delicious to try?  And questions aren’t useless; I think they do fine, keep us all strung out til we start getting some answers Sat. night!

 

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion  @bluesqueakpip  It is worrisome to me that Clara other than her teaching has no life outside of her travels with the Doctor.  What other life is she supposed to have that we’d see? 

Exactly, IMO, the kind of “other life” that was completely omitted for Danny, which made him a nonviable character for so many viewers who have posted quite passionately about it all over the net.  Danny didn’t really come alive in a meaningful way until “Dark Water”, for me, and then it was all about being pulled through to the end if DiH.  I’ve suggested before that what was needed to make Danny real enough, during his normal life, to carry the weight of truly being Clara’s beloved alternative to life with CapDoc, was just a scene or two suggesting that he *did* have “other life” besides the classroom, and mooning over Clara.

Some possibilities (for Danny), small scenes NOT with Clara or schoolkids in them:

A therapist trying to help with his PTSD, where maybe Dannt hesitantly mentions this young woman he’s met.

An old mate from the Army and Danny in a pub, played out in any one of a dozen ways — still “other life”.

A (now grown) kid from his orphanage contacts Danny, or they run into each other by accident.

Danny visits the orphanage, in whatever state its in, runs into someone from those days there.

And so on.  The point is just to give the character a bit of an anchor point in the rest of their current experience, which then validates the idea that the character is “real” and has had an actual life before getting all tangled up with (Clara) and dominated by concerns about her.

So I dislike the implication that Clara has a “little life” -that “simple teaching” isn’t sufficient unless you have a relationship with a male. In fact as someone who once worked in impoverished areas (at least 26 yrs ago, now) it peeves me to tears that this would be considered second best, somehow or insufficient

But even here, puro, why couldn’t we see Clara excitedly telling a kid from her class that the kid has been accepted into an advanced class in science or something, or getting a commendation or award or proposed promotion because of her excellent work at the school, or Clara sitting with her grandmother in a tea shop and talking over an offer to do some teacher training for work at Coal Hill — it doesn’t have to be “other life” somewhere else, only other *meaningful dimensions* to her normal earth life; like why it’s so rewarding (and rewarded) that she’s sticking with it even in the (painful) absence of Danny.

@idiotsavon  Yes, it’s challenging to keep up, now that we have the new series.  Nice Goethe shoehorn, by the way; do keep ’em coming!

 

 

[ichabod @replies]

@brewski  “Davros remembers” what the Doctor did to him. He allowed him to live that awful life. Curse his compassion!

Brilliant, brewski!  I love it!

@phamlore  It might have been perfect to have some countdown occurring appearing to be for the Doctor’s demise but instead to wind up being Clara’s, perhaps her time being up so that she would have to disappear back into the timestream to be the Impossible Girl.

That’s one resolution for Clara that hasn’t been mentioned — it would be a new way to do it, and to not actually kill her off . . . I never “got” the Impossible Girl concept (it just didn’t work for me — what does being “born to save the Doctor” even mean?  Who arranged that, born to what mother, what what what?) or the predictably virtuous Clara that embodied it (rather than the angry, impulsive Clara of S8).  But I could see absorption back into the Doctor’s time stream as a workable ending for Clara enitire.

[ichabod @replies]

@papermoon   There’s the Doctor’s cryptic question to Clara ‘Which one of us is dying?’, maybe it is Missy.

I don’t think Missy is being referenced here; she hasn’t been greeted yet by CapDoc, and the conversation is still jus between Clara and CapDoc.  The question, “Which one of us is dying?” is asked by Clara, not the Doctor; and his response, that hug, is far from reassuring.  He’s not just hugging her; he’s swaying a little, swaying them both, from side to side, as you do when comforting someone — when you’re cradling someone who’s in trouble in your arms, but standing up.  I’m reading this as his answer: “You are, you poor darling and it makes me feel terrible, but I don’t want you to feel badly too, so ‘A hug is a great way to hide your face’,” and he does.

And I don’t think this refers to what I think is a faked death in the scene with Davros at the end of TMA.  I think he knows a good deal about Clara’s exit from the story, and *that’s* what’s got him so upset (this is a huge pivot away from the flashy bravado of the arena scene up until this point — and which he then resumes in his greeting to Missy; so it really stands out for me).

I wonder if the CD Missy has is indeed the same one the Doctor gave to Ohila.

Or whether it’s been tampered with since Ohila took it.

 

@mudlark  He says ”I’m going to save my friend in the only way I can’. But who is the ‘friend’ he is referring to? Clara? Missy? or, harking back to the Prologue, is it the enemy who is a friend he hasn’t got to know yet – i.e. Davros himself?

Good reminder, thank you!  Could well be.  Looking back, the whole Missy/Clara/Tardis Extermination looks staged to me — by Davros, or Missy, or the Doctor himself — for purposes as yet unknown.  We have this thing where Clara rebukes the Doctor for plainly having known for some time that MixMaster didn’t die, and he apologizes; but his having known that and kept it a secret opens up time for a lot of devious planning to set up this new confrontation on Skaro, for whatever purpose(s).

[ichabod @replies]

@janetteb  It’s even more difficult to assess a story told in two parts — without having seen both of them.  Word I hear is that TWF answers a lot of questions opened by TMA, and that it’s “better” than TMA, so . . . Agh. It’s not even *Wednesday* here!

[ichabod @replies]

Gawd, it never occurred to me to doubt Missy when she identified the CD player of Rassilon as a “Confession Dial” and explained it as a Last Will and Testament.  Drat that Michelle Gomez!  She has one again pulled ze wooool over my eyes!  That there’s a slice missing doesn’t mean it’s been opened or broken into, apparently, but it could mean that a crucial portion of the Doctor’s “testament” (if that’s what a confession dial really is) has been removed and hidden or maybe just left somewhere . . . by the Doctor himself?  Cagey bastard . . . I’m assuming that you don’t need the slice to open the thing, since it won’t open until the Doctor is dead, and then it opens on its own; so why does it need to be defended, as @lisa says, from the wrong person’s touch, since nobody can get into it anyway until the Doctor dies and the dial opens itself?

I’m betting it may be a will etc., but that it also has other, sneaker functions that have to be guarded from people who is not the Doctor’s TL “friend”.

[ichabod @replies]

@janetteb   I keep thinking about that, too — that Danny’s first death might be revisited and revealed to have been part of Missy’s larger plotting . . . Though in a way I hope not.  I do love the idea of Danny having a first death that’s just as meaningless as most of our accidental deaths seem to be, then being succeeded by a truly heroic death in DiH.  So Clara’s determination does bring about a great resolution for him, with a fine flourish to finish it — the return to life of the Afghan boy instead of his own return.  That’s a very fitting Karmic solution in its own weirdly Doctorish way, and it pleased me very much.  I know some see that as sentimental, but from a Karmic viewpoint, it’s a reasonable, elegant, and kind conclusion.

[ichabod @replies]

Started here in the States last Saturday night.  Next, part two of S9 Episode one: hurry up, damn it!  It’s outrageus that tomorrow is only *Tuesday*

[ichabod @replies]

@phamlore  Wow, great saga there!  I like it very much!

About Vastra — does she time-travel?  I think she started out a while back in some — caves on another planet?  And then fighting the Sontarans — she wouldn’t have a Tardis, but she sure did get around, and now seems anchored in Victorian London.

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion @janetteb  Thanks for the run down on the basement full of trolls at the Guardian — sounds about right to me!  Naw, the haters don’t love the show, never did.  They actually hate it.  IMO, they are pudding brains, poor dears, the real thing on display.  No wonder you came away wanting a shower!  All that pudding splashing wildly about . . .

[ichabod @replies]

@bluesqueakpip  Of course Boy Davros ended up believing that compassion was wrong. The Soldier shows compassion and gets killed, helping Boy Davros not one jot.
The Doctor chucks him his screwdriver, lectures him on being the ‘one’ instead of the ‘thousand’ and (seemingly) leaves him to get on with it. If Boy Davros did then escape the handmine, the lesson he learnt was that showing compassion was wrong.

Thanks for doing that much more clearly and concisely than I managed to.  It’s not quite a fit to Old Davros, though, if what he means by “Compassion is wrong” is actually “Showing compassion, rather than a passionate determination to kill, is wrong,” at least until — that last shot of the Doctor with the gunstick.  At that point, he does appear to be more Dalek than man.  It all depends on what happens next; the unfolding results of what the Doctor actually does, and the point in that unfolding that Boy Davros assesses as the major “lesson” of the experience.

[ichabod @replies]

@serahni  Thank you — and I like your point about the tense chosen, “When do I not see you?”  Checking out the words Moffat chooses is always a good idea — sometimes those choices unpack in such interesting ways.  This is why it drives me to distraction when whiners moan on about “lazy writing”.  They have no clue to the high quality of what they’re dismissing so cavalierly, mostly just to claim a spot in the super-sophisticated in-crowd (as I think they see themselves) of people who show their “love” for the show by tearing it down (only because they want to make it “better”, of course).  Reddit is full of them.  I should stay away, but it’s hard — and there are some smart people there too, whose comments are worth reading.

[ichabod @replies]

@scaryb  It’s not in the DNA of the show to put the central character on that much of a psychological journey (Look at the problems they ended up with, with the last of the TimeLords thing). The companions change so the Doctor doesn’t have to.

Brilliant!  Yes . . . he is not and can never be a child-murderer, except in a horror show about a good person being driven to extremes and cracking, becoming a used-to-be-good person now stumbling from awful crime to more awful crime.  That was “Breaking Bad”.  This ain’t that show.

[ichabod @replies]

Damn.  “Confession *dial*”.  There.  I’m behind on so much that I’ve got calendars on the brain.

[ichabod @replies]

@stellaluce33  I like your thought, there; that would make a truly ghastly series arc, wouldn’t it?  Boy Davros has to survive to become Monster Davros or the universe collapses, so — Sorry, Clara.  Oy.  Surely not!  Um.  It is rather rather splendid bonkerising, though . . .

[ichabod @replies]

@lisa  Oooh, the CC  personifying itself as the Moment did?  Well, if it’s the Doctor’s story, the *whole* story, then couldn’t the CC manifest as any one of the past Doctors whenever somebody triggered the right “bookmark”?

[ichabod @replies]

@scaryb  Whatever, that last scene of the Doctor shouting “Exterminate!” is as chilling as the boy saying his name at the beginning.

Yeah, beautiful bookending there — call, as it were, and response . . . separated by the rest of the episode.  That missing piece is a whopper too — getting back without the Tardis (how?!), but with a gun stick?  What?!!!  And I agree that the problem with these possible time “fixes”, supposing that they’re possible despite timelocks etc., is that once you change event A, you have *no idea* whether you’ve changed the right element (in the right way) to produce the different future effect that you’re after (including your own survival into an altered future, or whether the timeline will shake off your change and proceed in a rather more roundabout way to the some future outcome, or some other damn thing.  (I’ve told you, timey-whimey makes my brain melt.)

Anyway, the Doctor could go back fully *intending* to “exterminate” Boy Davros, but just not be able to do it; end up doing something else instead — blasting enough of the hand mines to get Boy Davros out, instead, and trying to set him on a different path (like, take that sonic back, for starters!)?  Could Boy Davros become — a companion?!  For a while?  Whoo . . . how did lisa’s tin foil hat get onto my head?

[ichabod @replies]

@mudlark   * In passing it has occurred to me to wonder whether this ‘will’ was a document comparable to what we mean by a Last Will and Testament, or whether it was something compiled and updated as an ongoing document of a Timelors’s lifetime.

Oh, I like that!  And I think the “Will” would indeed have to be different from our “what to do with my stuff” document.  More testament than Will, perhaps, as you suggest, and a distinct part of the process Missy describes when Clara asks how a TL is supposed to die.  Maybe like the “life review” that some people think we all do *after* our own deaths as part of some form of “moving on”.

I’m not trying to demean Clara with the “puppy” designation, which Missy most certainly *is* trying to do, out of jealousy as you said (part of the madness being to be jealous of someone with a mayfly-life, for goodness’ sake!).  I’m addressing the content of Missy’s comparison rather than its style of delivery and purpose, and that content is true as to the disproportionate lives and conditions of TLs vs. humans.

[ichabod @replies]

@serahni  ALL of his incarnations are invited to the party, and yet most of their previous contact with the Claricles has involved them not seeing her at all!

Yes — but S8 was all about mutually seeing, finally, and for Clara, CapDoc at his own multiple party, his celebration of the great wide universal canvas that’s his home, it’s his tenderness for her that brings him back to the Doctor of the S8 two-hander so he can speak to her from that identity: the one who became a friend who would *always* see her, wherever, whenever.  Graciously, he offers her truth cut to fit her puppy dimension, rather than the wider truth of all the earlier not-seeing.  That’s how I read it.  He wants to acknowledge that closeness and acceptance achieved in S8, because it’s rushing away as the focus widens and broadens to include his whole, vividly populated upheaval of a universe again.  He showed her parts of that universe that she would otherwise never have seen.  But he couldn’t *give* it to her: she can’t live long enough or have the big-brain capacity to receive it all even if he tried.

She is not a Time Lord; he’s not a human.  Since S8, he will always see her, and she deserves to know that; but she can’t go with forever.  Whose tragedy is shaping up now . . .

[ichabod @replies]

@arbutus  @mudlark   One of the ways in which Capaldi is, for me, absolutely the Doctor, is the way in which he is able so subtly to convey glimpses of those earlier selves. I completely agree with this. And I too loved the “all of me are invited” line!

YES!  So yes.  And “it’s my party” — he can be as flamboyant and changeable as he wants to be: it’s his party, and this whole scene — this whole first ep — is reassurance to the fans, *all* of them, that yes, things will still be dark and edgy, but yes, we won’t forget how rich this character is (simply through accretion over time of many aspects of the core personality) and we *will* indulge all the youthful, goofy, impulsive, bombastic stuff too.  It’s a declaration of peace, if you like — which, of course, the grumps over on reddit and the pirhannas of tumblr etc. will reject, because rejection is their MO.  But hey, never mind — this is a high; enjoy it!  We’re meant to.  And we’re doing it.

[ichabod @replies]

@doctordoctorwho  Michelle Gomez spoke about the Nethersphere making a possible return.
Perhaps that’s where Missy and Clara have ended up?

Maybe; but in Danny’s last conversation with Clara (when he sent the Afghan boy home instead of coming back himself), he said of the Nethersperhe, “This place is dying.”  So — ?  Depends.

Hmm, a thought: could knowing that Danny did that — saved the child he’d accidentally killed — be a factor in the Doctor’s decision to go to Davros for a judgment for having left a child in peril, himself, on Skaro?  Would the Doctor know that?  If he did, I think he would care — Danny, object of the Doctor’s dismissive scorn, mended his grave error. How can the Doctor not address his own?

[ichabod @replies]

@bluesqueakpip  The Daleks as children with their choice taken away from them; children with no choice but to be evil. Clara with her Space Dad and Wicked Stepmother. Boy Davros as a child, abandoned by the Doctor.
It’s still about the children of the Time War.

Yes; it’s not just “Protect and save the children — ”  It’s also, “protect and save them from the ever outwardly rippling and horribly deforming effects of War.”  Doctor: “Which war?”  Boy Davros: “Just — the War.”

@purofilion  I think, personally, the core idea is the “manic derailment[s].” It’s the Doctor tuned into himselves. He would have a party: a final revel to out-class all revels. . . . What worked was the genuine feel for the Doctors which Capaldi summarised with intensity: I felt a whiff of Troughton, Hartnell, Tom Baker, McGann, and Tennant. The shouty, partying of Tennant blended nicely with what would be Baker’s frustration as well as his peculiar banter. Add that to a dollop of McGann-type shock and loss near the end and I feel I’m watching almost all of them.

Exactly; I didn’t find anything “choppy” about CapDoc, because he, the Doctor, owns it all, and in the face of what *might* prove his death, he flaunts it all.  I loved the arena scene, beautifully done; bravura is the word that comes to mind — but then, logical consistency has never been my standard for DW in general.  There’s a different level of story going on here — this ain’t a Clive Cussler novel or a deft police procedural.  It’s a glorious fantasy, with a solid dash of silly in the mix.

As to the assertion of “cool”, I’m fine with it — something for the younger sets who get off on cool, and why not?  The Doctor may abandon Davros, but he will never abandon his younger fans — not CapDoc, anyway.  And he’s going back for Boy Davros too, one way or another.

For folks thinking we’re going to see that the Doctor has gone into this with a cunning plan (so some of his actions are deliberate deceptions), I’m more and more inclined to think you’re right — that CD Player of Rassilon sets off alarm bells for me.  And I agree that in his own mind, he’s not facing certain death: he’s facing a comeuppance for leaving Boy Davros, but who knows what, exactly, that might be?  Layers and layers . . . I like looking at the levels of deviousness we find in these ancient people, TLs and Davros himself — which is also part of putting Clara in a larger framework.  Her lies and manipulations of S8 dwindle to nothing in the face of how these larger than (human) life figures operate — the passionate but ultimately small obsessions of — a puppy?

 

 

[ichabod @replies]

Jude@Fjackets  I wish I knew.  Damn, what a loss.  Do you have tech companies nearby who specialize in recovering data from damaged discs?  Or you might find some recommended ones online.

[ichabod @replies]

@mudlark   Leaving him, as the Doctor in hindsight quickly realised, was the ‘biggest mistake’ – the decision which probably scarred Davros’s psyche and contributed to the formation of the adult who came to believe that ‘compassion is wrong’.

If an adult walks away instead of protecting you, what can you think?  That the adult is normal, for adulthood, in showing no compassion.  Since adults know more than kids do, this suggests that compassion is something that adults dismiss as irrelevant.  Kids want to be adults, so — learn from the man who turned his back on you, stamp out compassion where you can, and declare compassion to be foolishness.

Worse yet, you run into the same man, and you see him offer compassion to *others*.  If you’ve had all the ego beaten out of you, you conclude that you, in particular, simply weren’t worthy of his compassion.  But Davros has plenty of ego — so to him, it must be that the Doctor is wrong, infuriatingly wrong, in acting against his own deeper knowledge that compassion is wrong, and must be corrected, must be forced to admit that his compassion (extended to others) has been a mistake all along.

Ugh.  But it makes a kind of sense . . . ?

Also: the betrayal of his own most basic principles, let alone what he now suspects were the consequences of that betrayal, was a torment to his conscience and something which he needed to face up to and atone for. ‘Did something happen? asks Ohila; ‘Was it recent? And the Doctor hesitates and looks away uncomfortably before admitting ‘Yes’.

Hmm; but he could be lying about “recent”.  Ohila reminded us that he lies.  So what is the something that happened?  Colony Sarff’s visit, looking for him, and announcing Davros’s demand?  Did that prompt the Doctor to remember the abandonment of Boy Davros?  If so, then this falls squarely in line with the Doctor’s declaration in Deep Breath, about having lived a long life: “I’ve made many mistakes.  It’s about time I did something about that.”  At the time, I hoped that we would in fact see him trying to do just that in S8, but that was premature, since first he had to put himself back together again and (I presume) so have something to measure his remembered mistakes against: the man he hopes to be vs. the man his less admirable actions revealed.

So now, I think, this is the logical sequel to that declaration of purpose: abandoning Davros was a big old bastard of a mistake.  Going to confront what Davros has become is setting rectification in motion (even if it means being killed — but he didn’t count on the [apparent] murders of his Tardis and his friends before his eyes).  That, though, is what it takes to force him to go back and confront the person he abandoned — not ancient Davros, but Boy Davros.

So: is he about to add to his toll of “many mistakes” or take on the “fixing” of this huge one?  Well, it is the Doctor after all . . . what are the odds?

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion  There was a feel that the Doctor’s fully cooked and confident but totally alien.

It’s the dimension of time that’s been added, IMO, time on a TL scale instead of a human one.  Vastra spelled this out to Clara in her own way in Deep Breath, but seeing the Doctor actually returning to old relationships rooted in his inhumanly long-gone youth and childhood (via Davros and MixMaster) makes this real for us; as does Capaldi’s echoings of those earlier Doctors, as you say.  And the deeper his time-reality goes into the past, the more distant and mysterious he becomes, from Clara’s pov (and ours).  She can call him to account for lying about, say, Missy’s survival, but she’s just not going to “get” it even when (and if) he does try to explain.

They are the grown-ups now; by contrast, Clara is a child (or a pet in place of a child), listening to adult conversation she can’t fully understand.  She can be a strong child, a courageous and quick-witted child, but she can simply never (if she stays human) be on a level with two TLs with a long TL style past together.  In her “Impossible Girl” phase, she must have had an inkling, but that’s all forgotten now it seems (human brain can’t retain it?).  These scenes with Missy and Missy + Capdoc are powerful in part because they expand the focus to “all of time and space”, which Clara can visit, but can she ever really be a long-term traveling inhabitant the way the TLs are — only a young woman having very exotic adventures for a part of her human life-span.

On that ground, I wouldn’t say she’s been relegated (cut down) from a complex lead in her own right to a subordinate position.  But her human limitations vs. TLs as a species are being relentlessly revealed.  After a two-hander season, S8, showing her learning to be more like the Doctor, I find this poignant.

[ichabod @replies]

@denvaldron   On ratings — I’d be curious to see how much of the drop (from Ep 1 S8 to Ep 1 S9) was in US viewership, because S8 came to us without adverts, but S9 ep 1 was chopped to bits so ads could be added — 21 minutes of ads, to be exact, vs. 45 minutes of show.  This idiocy made a very complex and grandly expansive episode very difficult to follow even for a pretty experienced fan like me; I actually turned it off because the ads were driving me crazy (and watched it whole and uninterrupted next morning on Youtube, where it was released today by BBC).  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to give up in disgust on the commercial-ridden BBCA presentation.

Yes, reviews have been enthusiastic, which has made the haters go ballistic — I saw one lift a minor critical comment from a rave review and say, “I agree with this review — the show has gone stale, lousy writing,” the usual bumf.  Getting to more accurate figures that include other sources besides the initial BBC/BBCA broadcast won’t be easy.

@jphamlore  The Doctor created Davros. He owes that kid, and if he’s anything of what I think the Doctor is, he’s eventually going to find a way to let that kid have his own destiny.

Absolutely agree; Clara thought she was “owed” a big favor (Danny’s resurrection) by the Doctor; but Boy Davros is owed too — a lot.  I can’t believe he’s going to kill Boy Davros, no matter how much he feels driven to do it.  I think *he* is under the influence of something like the “sound of drums” (there is in fact a sort of snare drum riff going on in the background of his scenes from the extermination of Clara and Missy AND the Tardis on), but I don’t think he’ll let himself succumb to the madness of murdering an as-yet innocent child.

 

[ichabod @replies]

@spider   For me the great change in tone was the kind of dumbing down of Clara here. Don’t get me wrong, I too loved her being the stand in for the Doctor with UNIT, that was fab! But with Missy I think it was a much needed slap to the chops of us the audience. We have got so used to seeing the Doctor though human eyes, through the companion and I think we forget how very VERY different he actually is. Clara (and us) thinks she knows him – we really don’t.

In that new interview with Capaldi, he says *he* doesn’t really know 12 yet either, is still finding his way there.  Which is, again, part  of the re-assertion of Capdoc as an alien.  I wouldn’t say Clara got dumbed down; I think she got set into a much broader context — taking charge at UNIT, yes, but outclassed by Missy — that deliberately distinguishes her firmly from her “closest friend” (a man whose own closest friend is Missy, although he loves Clara perhaps as we love our pets (on an assumption of a short-term relationship with a sad ending).

@blenkinsopthe brave  Missy needles Clara about Danny’s death to unsettle her; but we also need to be shown that Clara has long since accepted Danny’s death — not his being hit by a car, but his heroic Cyberdeath, which was not “ordinary” and “boring”, as she’d protested early in Dark Water.  And she shows that acceptance to Missy, deliberately: “See, I’m not just some soppy, spoiled kid longing for the past-and-gone, here.”  Worked a treat, I’d say.  I don’t think Danny’s coming back.

[ichabod @replies]

@miapatrick  Yep, old punk; and he looked so happy that it almost made me wish I was one too.  In reality, though, I was never punk in any way, shape, or form.  So I guess I’m just old.  *sigh*

[ichabod @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave   So from what will Clara (+ allies) save the Doctor now?  Maybe from completely losing it and killing, or trying to kill, Boy Davros?  Which he’s only even contemplating doing because his mind has been blown by the deaths of Missy, Clara, and the TARDIS in one fell swoop on Skarro.  Normally, if we can use such a word, it would never occur to him to even seriously threaten a child; in that recent interview Capaldi said that his conception of the Doctor is that of a person who may get you into dangerous situations, but who will always protect you from ultimate harm at any cost.

So I think he’s going to exterminate the handmines (would the gun-thing have enough charge to get them all?  There were *lots*) and rescue Boy Davros from the battlefield (well, that’s the whole planet after so much war), and —

What then?  Take back the sonic, keep Boy Davros with him and protect him from the other timeline in which Davros is crippled and crazified?  Drop him off on Karn for safekeeping?  Something designed to change the way the Daleks are, so that there’s no longer a huge army of bloodthirsty Daleks waiting to bash Gallifrey to smithereens as soon as it pops back out of the pocket universe, I’d guess (but the Doctor still has to locate it first).

[ichabod @replies]

@barbable   Oh, thanks!

[ichabod @replies]

Can’t wait to see it on my computer tomorrow via itunes, *without* the god damned ads that were on BBCA.

[ichabod @replies]

@blenkindsopthebrave  I bought a season pass myself, this morning, thus freeing myself of scheduled broadcasts, which is a timetable flexibility I need these days.

Cheers!

[ichabod @replies]

@toinfinityandbeyond   Baldric, yes!  A very big, BIG Baldric, with an axe — run away, run away!

[ichabod @replies]

@craig   Thanks for the clarification.

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion  Yes, it looks like you get access to everything — says here, it all goes into your iTunes “purchased” file, so it’s really yours, I think.

[ichabod @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave  iTunes is offering a “season pass” to S9 for $31.00, access to anything and everything DW that comes down the pike, looks like.  If iTunes will let me set a new password instead of the old one that I remember perfectly well only they don’t, I plan to sign up so I can catch up if medical emergencies or travels interfere.  Worth it to me!

[ichabod @replies]

@thecleverzygon  Right, got it this time.

Only I think, @pedant et al, that the spoiler at issue is partly my doing, in responding to two earlier posts on the subject set off by a sighting of the news, as news after months of speculation we’ve seen on this, on FB.  I made the same assumption that those posters did — that if it’s announced in the media across a number of outlets (especially on the net), it qualifies as not spoiler-y any more.  Clearly that isn’t how others here think, so deepest apologies to them.  I will try to be quicker on the uptake about this sort of thing in future.

 

[ichabod @replies]

@missy  The German interview was unusually thoughtful, as I recall.  As for SM, he does know how to provoke — but I think of it more as (among his duties as show runner rather than episode writer/doctor) doing effective publicity for a show with long wait-times between seasons/series.  He’s got an unusually restless and intelligent audience to keep hooked *between* runs of 13 weeks out of 52.  Secrecy (plus calculated leaks and punctures) is a great tool of doing that.  I’m sure he’s got publicity staff to help (like running a Facebook page for Capaldi), but having people working for you also means having to stay on top of what their doing, and orchestrating changes etc. as called-for — it doesn’t actually mean getting out from under job yourself, particularly since with non-commercial TV there’s probably not a lot of money sloshing around to pay publicity staff.

I don’t know of course how that’s all arranged, but since writers in the US now have to do all their own publicity work — the part that publishers used to do but won’t any more unless a book is already flying off the shelves and doesn’t need help — I know a little about what a time-eating, hit or miss royal pain it is.  My step-daughter has just gotten a self-help book published with a small local outfit in San Diego, and she’s hired her own publicist (who’s doing an excellent job, I must say) because as a health services professional she herself has no time to organize and run a publicity campaign  for her book.  She can do this *because* she has a day-job with a salary.

But back to the subject — I think SM plays fandom very well, providing extra entertainment for us and bracing up support for the show between seasons at the same time.  I think the guy does a hell of a job with all this, and it really annoys me when know-nothing baby-brains attack him (mainly, I think, for occupying a place in their fantasy-worlds that they themselves could of course occupy so much more brilliantly) with their “Moffat must go!” B.S.  Who would have thought that doing consistently above-average-to-excellent tv would bring with it these weird waves of hatefulness — from some of the people your work serves and that they keep on coming back for?

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion  No, no, I saw it in one of the bits and pieces that keeps getting thrown onto my computer screen as I cruise around — they’ve put out so many teasers, in long and short forms with various mixes and matches of glimpses from here and there that I can’t identify the source of anything much — except everything I’ve put here comes from at least *one* of the BBC issued teaser clips for the two part opener.

On the other hand, I do have my naughty moments . . . just not about *important* stuff!

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion   I came to this board after S8 was over, or nearly over, so I haven’t gone through however the spoiler question is handled here for the start of a new season/series — in terms of when (and where) we can discuss what we’ve just seen, after episode 1 airs.  Someplace, I hope!

We get The Magician’s Apprentice tomorrow night (Saturday Sept. 19 for us at 8 pm MST and/or 9 pm, I can never figure out but always tune in early, just in case).  Right now, it’s 2:30 a.m. Friday Sept. 18 here; we get “The Doctor’s Meditation” on tv this coming evening on BBCA, and then the first episode tomorrow night, same place.  Netflix is supposed to be carrying S9 on a sort of available-next-day basis, for re-watches, or for watching first time out if you don’t have a TV service that carries BBCA.

That, at any rate, is where I think I stand; but it’s 2:35 now in the a.m. of Friday, so what I actually know and know accurately is questionable at best.

Very Soon Now — !!!!

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion   I’ve seen the trailers posted at the head of this thread; a sort of compressed version of the second one, I think, that had a couple of new shots in it; a 2 minute “prologue” (to episode one?) titled “The Planet” (or “The Planet Karn”) with a conversation between the Doctor and Ohila of the Sisterhood about him taking off to go see somebody at great risk to himself; and an 8 minute “prequel” to episode 1 called “The Doctor’s Meditation”, which is supposed to be shown Friday evening on BBCA in preparation for Episode 1, S9, to be shown Saturday evening.

If there’s anything else, I haven’t seen it, but there might be some snippets of the trailers floating around the net.

[ichabod @replies]

@purofilion  Missy says the disk is a “Confession Calendar”, I think, and also the Doctor’s last Will & Testament, which he implied (to Ohila of Karn) should to to Clara if he himself is presumed lost (one way or another).  Clara  takes it to Missy — I think; that scene with the two of them at the table.  Missy is examining the disc and tells Clara what it’s called, and also that she, Missy, can find the Doctor (with this thing’s help?) if anyone can.

Looking at Missy in the second trailer (I think?  One about the Witch’s Familiar?), there’s this arena set up with side walls blazoned in red and green and “villagers” (maybe from the Viking village).  Bors, with his axe, is foregrounded as the Doctor enters with the light behind him — holding, it sure looks like, that guitar (*his* axe, though I thought that term in pop music circles refers to a saxophone rather than a guitar).  I’m seeing a SPOILERY narrative here, though it’s not about motives etc., only actions so beware —

 

Somehow, the Doctor and his friend big Bors (from “The Doctor’s Meditation”) are pitted against each other.  Clara’s in in the mix somehow.  So is Missy: she stands holding a handkerchief at arms’ length, in a pose recalling the stance of a referee about to drop a  handkerchief to signal the beginning of a contest.

The Doctor puts on his way-bad sunglasses (giving Clara a wicked grin) and then whacks the bravura hell out of that guitar — and, I think, everybody is roaring a song along with him, and somehow he has won.

Further on, Clara uses that handkerchief to surreptitiously pick up something — the sonic? — from the arena floor (clearly it was no use to the Doctor in the contest, since he needed both hands for the guitar, so maybe he discarded it or was forced to do so).  And there’s a big hug between her and the Doctor in that same setting, presumably after the contest is over.

No hint as to who the Doctor came to see — the old friend/enemy whatever — so maybe he never got that far, and this is an unintended detour from the dangerous journey he set out on from Karn.

Saturday night, then.  When will everyone have seen the Saturday opener, so we can talk about it without worrying about spoiling?  Or should we confine such talk to this page anyway, or a page dedicated to “The Magician’s Apprentice” and okay for detailed discussion?  @craig — ?

[ichabod @replies]

Maybe this belongs here — an interesting new interview with Capaldi, with some insights into this and that:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/11858973/Peter-Capaldi-You-dont-just-play-the-Doctor-you-represent-him.html

And you were right, @puro (I think?), there is some running problem going on — I’d rather assumed that back trouble was more likely (long-torso’d people often have back problems), but maybe they need to tone down the running down corridors a bit.

[ichabod @replies]

I think Missy called the disc a “Confession Calendar.  This is the last Will and Testament of the Doctor.”  The sound’s a bit woozy right there; my conclusion, given Capdoc’s instruction to Ohila (“You know who to five this to”), is that the disc is given to Clara, who tries to use it to find the Doctor (for urgent reasons), can’t, so goes to Missy for her help, and sure enough, Missy knows that the gadget is and how to use it (“If I can’t find him, no one can”).

I think . . .

[ichabod @replies]

@gallifreyangoldfish  About Jenna Coleman leaving — a few thoughts ventured: for one thing, playing *any* role for years at a time probably gets pretty wearing after a while, not least when you’re still a young actor looking forward to new and different jobs so you don’t get type-cast and end up only playing, say, “sidekicks” (or monsters — see Boris Karloff, aka William Henry Pratt, who made a big splash every time he managed *not* to play a monster after “Frankenstein”).  Which is an issue for female actresses anyway, since female lead roles are harder to come by than male ones in both TV and film.  And I doubt that her lifelong ambition has been to play a DW companion, as playing the Doctor has been an ambition of Peter’s.  For most actors most of the time, I think a job is a job.

Acting is about as secure a career as getting your poetry published and making a living at it.  No doubt her agent has been on the lookout for the past couple of years for good new possibilities for her, and one that looks good has come along, so . . . strike while the auditions are hot (my brother in law was nursing along a very minor acting career for years in New York, finally turned to real estate for actual income).

DW shooting and publicity schedules are very demanding; I can easily see having had enough and looking elsewhere, not to mention security issues: DW can be a long run, but the political machinations at the BBC can always erupt and leave you gasping on the beach, a casual casualty of some personnel or “philosophy” tsunami or other.  That can happen in any show, but DW is a target for the Right because it’s frighteningly “liberal” to them.

And lots else not so easily apparent.  It’s a career; decisions get forced on you by circumstances, minds change, ambitions change focus.  There may also be an element of not wanting to be in the spotlight of so much fan-hatred and fan-defense as Clara in DW.  You never know.  These folks have their compelling reasons — I’m just very grateful to have their talents in the Show as long as we do.  Etc.

[ichabod @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave  Thanks, lovely!  We loved those UK comedy films when I was a kid.  Bringing it back . . .

[ichabod @replies]

@thecrynoidman  Thanks for the Orff!  A bouncy start to the day, much appreciated!

[ichabod @replies]

@thekrynoidman  Thanks — it amazes me that they’re talking about sending her home after two days and one night — but glad she’s smart and tough, and will probably be all right.  Nothing like a good sound kick in the butt as a wake-up call to fix your bad habits . . . mine too, I hope!

[Author]

Posts