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@nerys  It’s like I almost get it … then realize I don’t.

Exactly!  Right to the edge — but not onto the carousel.  It goes too fast, and so many animals and colors!

 

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@nick  . . .  you’re already paste.

Well, I certainly feel like paste this morning.  Gerk.  I’m feeling apprehensive for — Missy, of all people!  She’s quite grown on me . . . not something I expected.  I just think — bad people trying to be good so often make a hash of it, one way or the other.  And then pay a (the) price.

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Something I think is pertinent to DW’s fan audience — by way of perspective (though if we’re downplaying links to other sites here now, please, mods, cancel this post, no problem!):

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170616-the-joy-of-hate-watching

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@thane15  Or, actually nothing’s happened on the upper levels because we’re back to the beginning. Except, we’ve got time ahead and time backwards and so……no.  Noooo, this still isn’t computing. I have space nausea.

Not me; I’ve got Time sickness, and none of this time stuff makes any sense at all to me except at the moment somebody explains it.  Then later, when I try to remember what the somebody explained that made sense, all I can recall is blablablah.  This is why I generally just shut my eyes and whistle through the worst (or best) of the timey-wimey.  So I’m hoping (probably in vain) for simplicity . . . or, afterward, some blablablah that actually sticks.

 

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@doctordani  Would he sacrifice one of his hearts to save her? I know it’s probably a really daft notion, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.

I wondered abut that too — but – but – to keep her alive as a human, or a cyberman, or something in between — ?  That was a hell of a big hole blown through her middle, I dunno . . . but it’s DW, so anything is possible.

@jimthefish  The Whoniverse of the 1960s was multifold, disconnected, unknowable and even a bit chaotic (kind of like its real-life version). It would have been far better I think if the Time Lords had been only rarely seen, if at all.

Definitely agree; I’ve generally found the TLs in their natural habitat too silly for words, and weirdly minimizing of whatever else is going on just by their presence.  I don’t mind the class inferences that come with the Doctor’s identity as a TL himself, and I love the fact that he himself occasionally has been a bit boastful and arrogant about it, but seems to be completely unaware of his own privileged status most of the time.  I think he completely forgets it, and maybe in part always flees Gallifrey to keep on forgetting it.

Well, his TARDIS is old and semi-broken (as him himself often is), he never has any $, and he doesn’t get all sniffy about, say, being chained up in a dungeon (with Robin Hood, or anybody else).  Maybe  CapDoc, with all his losses, generally thinks of himself as *under* privileged because to him immortality is “losing people” and that’s a powerful deprivation he can’t escape, TL or no TL.

 

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@missrori  (Bill)  She freely made the choice to help the Doctor and knew the risks.

But *did* she know the risks?  As far as we’ve seen, she still doesn’t know what a regeneration is, does she?

[Of Razor]  He teaches her to settle for less, to not be so curious, and soon she’s mopping the floors and no longer treating the world around her as a horror. As Nardole put it back in “The Lie of the Land”, convincing a person that things are just the way they are and have been for a long time is 90% of the game.

Yes; she starts off having just been unceremoniously *killed*, which is a pretty strong signal that you are sooo out of your depth, young woman . . . so she’s ripe for this kind of “regression therapy” at Razor’s hands.

@thane15  Puro  [Of the shock of Clara’s Raven-death] Ordinary, sweet people die every day in ordinary ways. That’s the tragedy. Not for all of us is it Mahler or Brahms, sometimes it’s a bit of Mendelssohn. 🙁

I get you too, Puro.  It was the stunningly bare — and quick — event that was so shocking, to me.  Like (very often) the real thing in RL.

@janetteb   trying to run while attached to one of those drip things, that is the very essence of nightmare.

GODS, yes!  Awful!  That’s the other thing in breaking Bill down to humble acceptance — in a hospital setting, even a bright, modern one, you give up your autonomy because it’s the expertise of the staff in keeping your body alive that you’ve come there for.  It’s a strange, voluntary kind of helplessness, isn’t it, especially if you’ve little experience with it.

@brewski   I’m making my own head spin here…

Mine too!  Must take nap, come back re-zoned as “sane”.  Meanwhile, I hope, along with @soundworld and others here, that Bill ends up somehow reunited with PuddleHeather.  As for Missy, I could see her waffling between two treacheries/allegiences, the Evil Master (herself) and the Doctor (her other, potential self).  She could help Simm Master kill 12 off, and come back at Xmas contrite, and looking for some way to make up for having turned on him after all the effort he put into trying to change her attitude.  He’s been loyal, in his way, to her — and v.v., and that’s exactly the base of the kind of TL friendship Missy was trying to describe to Clara in tWA, as so different from human bonds of affection.  I do love it when the alienness of those two and their weird connection is brought up, highlighting the comparative narrowness of our usual human concepts of friendship and love.

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@maribiscuits  Damn nice!  Tickles me right in the nostalgia.  Thanks for that.

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@missy  — I can’t!  Well, except for the tuxedo boy who lives next door but hangs out in my hard and desperately wants to get into my house; he sprays on my porch to emphasize the point.  Vinegar helps; but then, vinegar, in moderation, helps most things.

Kinda like cats . . .

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@missy   No apologies needed!

@rutledgemann74  Hi!  Welcome!

@thane15  Ooh, “San Junipero” — good story, with a good reputation!  I haven’t been all that impressed with the rest of Black Mirror, though.  Looking back, there’s not much that’s stayed with me.  I have yet to begin “Rectify” — I have a tough time with any kind of story that’s set in the southern states of the US, though I enjoyed the first season of “True Blood” (partly because it simply omitted the pernicious — IMO — religiosity and generally reactionary politics of that area altogether).  Been there.  Don’t like it.  Tell me good stuff about the series.  It’s good to have my — attitudes shaken up.

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@missrori  Malcolm’s cussing,

Yep — that’s the bravado of the gifted outsider who lives by his wits, the exasperated incomer from the sticks trying to herd a bunch of stupid, posh housecats to political victory.  But he’s the one who winds up holding the bag, to be packed off to prison.  Brilliant.

@thane 15  @missrori  That’s an interesting way of putting Twelve — “equally confused as his companion”!

Succinctly put.  I didn’t really have that in clear focus, just been talking around it.  Bull’s eye!

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Thanks, but not yet — I don’t get to see WEaT until tomorrow morning!  “Had we but world enough and time, Lady, this coyness were no crime — ”  I first looked that up after reading a very good thriller called “The Iron Gates” by Margaret Millar, many years ago, and finding out where that title came from.  “Time’s winged chariot, hurrying near” — if I have that right — is that what the Doctor is running from?  Like the rest of us, but for much longer.   Hmm.

Bed-time!  Story in the morning.  Nothing like some decades of life to teach you to accept the rewards of delayed gratification.

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@missrori  Ha!  Kindred spirit here.  Lots of ’em, I think.  I really enjoyed “Robot of Sherwood”, myself, still don’t get what all that grousing was about afterward.

I came back for Capaldi because of TToI, really — loved that show for its snarling cynicism, and its subtle heart.  So I came to see what this guy could do with the Doctor, and was several times smitten by Deep Breath — including, to my surprise, by the heated self defense that Clara mounted in her conversation with Vastra.  I hadn’t liked Clara at all in the previous series — boring, faultless, heroic Mary Sue with metaphysical pretensions, I thought.  Her rebirth as a dismayed, exasperated, confused, charmed, and passionate person whose trajectory could not be predicted sparked my interest as much as the new/old Doctor, desperately thrashing around in search of his own true nature, did.  I was drawn in from the get-go, and still am.  This stuff is re-watch Heaven for me.

 

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@janetteb  I wonder if Nardole has a bigger role to play. The Doctor brought him back to life possibly using some of his own regeneration energy. Is Nardole actually some kind of splinter Doctor, the shadow Doctor, created to be a kind of external conscience?

Oh, that’s tasty!

@nick  The more the season has gone on, the more I would have wanted to see the continued adventures of the three of them. Is that going to add poignancy to the finale though ?

It’s going to be killer at my house, in any case.  I really don’t want this season to end . . .

@wolfweed  — that is the Duck of Doom if ever I’ve seen one!

@missrori  he’s putting off just dealing with her out in the open, seeing who she really is and could be.
Nardole complains about him having adventures with Bill, but those experiences have reminded him that he’s capable of being more than just the jailer.

Yes, restlessness, the growing unease of a natural rolling stone pinned down by — responsibility, however willingly undertaken.  Tears before bedtime, sure as I’m sitting here  . . .

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I’m a bit hesitant to trust people who aren’t adventurous or flexible enough to enjoy the company of cats.  Well, I’ve got two, plus the feline gentleman boarder who comes in for meals and a safe place to sleep . . . If they did nothing more than lie round being beautiful, that would be enough for me.  They just delight my eye so . . .

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@nerys  @blenkinsopthebrave  Agreed; self-doubt rooted in a lively self-awareness that I don’t recall seeing much of in previous AG Doctors.  I get the sense of a very complex and sensitive subjectivity in this Doctor, and that’s part of both the hesitance and the impulsiveness that I see there.

@wolfweed  Old lady: I already knew that because I’ve been following politics since 1970. Doesn’t change my opinion though. Also, my cat was run over by a lorry 52 years ago. I blame Moffat for that too.
Me: You were born. I blame Moffat

Just know, friend, that *this* Old lady is with you 100%.  I am probably older, and therefore (ahem) wiser, that your Old lady who is clearly Moffat’s fault.

@missy  when some of these ‘humans’ were born, the pediatrician slapped the wrong end

Thank you for that!  I am officially stealing it, okay?

@thane15  It’s a bit weird to me too? It’s like this great Moffat experiment suddenly turned into something people hated when actually it was the BEST. I loved Mat Smith but the stories with Peter have been better -very interesting, and layered and adept 

It’s the layering that drives them crazy; the ones willing to re-watch have a tendency to change their minds, I’ve noticed.

@pedant  It didn’t – it’s just that the gobshites can’t and won’t accept that they may be wrong and will not discuss with civility (and cry like toddlers if anyone pops back)

The show outgrew them, emotionally and intellectually.  They *hate* that.  It’s okay; Chibnall will probably dial it back down a bit, and huge carols of relief and victory will arise spontaneously; at least, until people get restless, possibly even a bit bored, and start mumbling about how much better the Moffat/Capaldi run was . . . Moffat says he had to persuade Chibnall to sign on for S11, and I’ll just bet he did.  Tell you one thing: *I* sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a writer-runnger taking over after Moffat.

@thane15  Doctor 12 -he’s more complicated; he’s not a Halloween one size fits all doctor and yes, it was darker, angsty, complex -like real life IS. RL is bloody, at times disastrous, it asks questions of us and our dignity and our morals as people in a dusty and confused world of contrary political ambition. All those issues were highlighted more than ever in Series 8 and 9 and I found it truly meaty. It made me think and it still does.

Well-said.  Part of some fans’ problem with CapDoc and Moffat is exactly that the show got uncomfortably close to RL (for these fans, that is), and they said so — “Why does Bill have to be POC and gay?  Why does the Doctor sneer at capitalism?  Why did Moffat turn the Master female?  Wah!  I come to DW to get *away* from scary real stuff like that!  Gimme back my TOY!” It’s understandable: modern life is, as you point out, pretty upsetting these days, and in our faces about it as never before (the internet, I mean).  Lots of pressure, and demanding ideas.  [Best wishes for your toes, by the way.]

@missrori  Thanks for that report on the Chicago TARDIS con.  Very cheering!  I wonder how many older fans had dropped off DW back BG, came back for Eccleston, dropped off again, and returned specifically for Capaldi?  That’s my story, and a more mature take on the Doctor for more mature viewers (like me) was exactly what I was looking for, although I wouldn’t have been able to frame it that way back before Deep Breath.  I suspect there are quite a few.

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@bluesqueakpip  To me, Peter Capaldi is just not ‘The Doctor’. A Time Lord, yes, fine. Alien, definitely. But he’s not ‘The Doctor’. For me, Peter Capaldi’s playing the Gallifreyan who really lives behind the role of ‘the Doctor’. But I don’t enjoy watching that. 🙁

That’s a good description, really, except that I love watching that.  The Gallifreyan who’s taken the role of “The Doctor” has turned out to be so human as well as so alien.  He’s not a “good” Gallifreyan TL, or he wouldn’t have rebelled and run away; but he’s not always a “good” Doctor, either, just as none of us humans would be that “good”, no matter how hard he tries, and regardless of those moments where “being a Doctor” does seem to come naturally to him.

He’s an actor playing an actor (who’s a TL) who’s playing his own ideal of what a TL should be.  That is so familiar — it touches me to the heart.

But, strokes and folks (and yeah, he’s lovely as Mr. Curry).

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@nick  Well, that’s a brighter prospect, then!  Thanks for the info.

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@thane15  [Peter’s Doc]  I don’t personally see that any “buzz” has gone missing?

Yes and no, IMO — Tennant was and apparently remains a “heartthrob” for many younger fans (young women in particular), and having been so successful at that with him, I think BBC were dismayed to see some falling off of that “fangirl” fervor with Capaldi (and a lot of venomous commentary from fans linked to that weird Moffat-hatred among some older fans).  Mind you, I think he also drew in a lot of adults following from TToI, many of whom will drift off again if he’s followed by another cute young fellow in more action-y stories; but if you’re trying to build your audience as fast and high as you can with an eye toward the future who’s more important — youngsters, or oldies (out in the wider world, I mean, specifically, where populations are majority young)?  It’s inevitable, really, from a mass-audience, commercial pov.  So I don’t think @devilishrobby is being “cynical” at all, just realistic.

@nick  Susan (and the photo in the first episode) resonates with the fan audience, but would mean nothing to the general one.

Yup.  I barely remember her, myself; but I don’t go out of my way to re-watch BG.  Too much else going on (well, books, and new stuff via Netflix, Amazon, et al).

This is the watering-down (IMO) that happens when creatives hit it this big — numbers tend to over-rule everything else.

 

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@nick  I guess Chibnall, will go for more up tempo, more adventure and probably slightly less complex stories (more RTD like) to try and get back to something more David/Matt like in terms of audience appreciation.

Yep, that’s what I’m expecting too.  Moffat said someplace that he had to talk Chibnall into taking it on at all, so who knows what it all means for the future; except that if it goes as I think it will, I’ll probably wander off again — not moaning and grousing, just recognizing that “some things end — because they have to.”   And the times, they are a-changing.  And, of course, so is the self.  I’d be one of the older DT audience that needs some depth to hold my attention, and I think that puts me into a sort of “side-show” category (speaking of .02 and not-even-that’s-worth) that just sort of accreted by accident with the AG show and won’t be missed (certainly not by the BBC) when it fades out.

Okay; but not YET, by damn!

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@missrori  Well put, and you’re right.  Given a choice, he’d refuse to lose what he’s learned while wandering the universe with our company.  I’m just not feeling very — admiring of us right now.

Although new human heroes are definitely in the making as we speak; the times demand them.

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@missrori  (BBC) want to go with a complete, “modern”, “youthful” rebranding and overhaul of it with Thirteen, which would mean not invoking much of the recent continuity and effectively treating it as a whole new show again.

I think they want to go in that direction, yes, but with — Chibnall?  Doesn’t seem like a realistic fit, to me . . . I know what you mean, though.  I hate to think we’ll get a massive re-boot based on total negation of what the AG writers and runners have done with DW.  Complete — disrespect.  But what am I thinking?  It’s TV, after all . . .

@wofweed  Thanks for the clip!  and I think the bonkerizing is going very well here, I’m happy to say.

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@bluesqueakpip   in real life, anecdotal evidence is often what you’ve got.

I think that may be the deciding factor in whether a discipline is called a “hard science” or a “soft science” (although from a long enough perspective, I suppose it’s *all* anecdotal, so “hard science” is really “malleable” rather than “hard”).

Thinking about that after I caught a panel on “The Biggest Questions”, where I have to say, I favored the members who were hands-on practical — the neurology brain guy, and the Doctor working with patients waking from significantly long periods of coma.  The rest, I thought, was a weird kind of fun, and a good illustration of “pipe dreams” or a kind of competitive crossword duel:

Loved the German guy; isn’t there a sort of Doctor-ish flavor about him?  Rapid thought, boundless enthusiasm, and flashes of humor.

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@missrori  An interesting conceit raised over in the “Eaters of Light” thread is that Missy knows, or at least senses, what is going to happen to the Doctor and company — and that’s why she’s crying.

I’m getting that vibe too — she’s something like the Raven, a force of destruction that’s not fully in control of her own trajectory.  @janneteb  If the Doctor forgives Missy then she turns on him and betrays him it would demolish that theme of forgiveness and reconciliation   Or — it would show how there’s always that *risk*, when enemies join forces, of betrayal, so choosing to help instead of attacking each other is also an act of courage, hope, and trust.

@thane15  I actually don’t read any of the drivel on other sites. It’s usually too upsetting and filled with dumb people so Mum and I find this a ‘haven’.

Heck, me too — I’ve pretty much stopped going onto other sites; wish some of those folks would “grow the Hell up”, and of course they will; but meanwhile, they’re too annoying.  Did you see that Gatiss said something in an interview the other day about how being tapped for some major task in DW is not just an honor and a delight, but “a poisoned chalice”?  Huh.  He should know!

@missrori  Intentions are always the most important thing, right?

I’d say that’s generally true, since nobody can know, when they take an action, what its reverberations down through time will bring.  In that sense, every action is heroic (and that includes every inaction, too).

@wellicanbake  I think that might work very well — they’ll want to give Missy a big send-off, too, since Gomez’s “Mistress” has been such a success and a favorite.  Maybe Bill gets her conclusion (I’m betting on Heather, myself) in the next episode, leaving the finale to the Doctor and MissMaster?

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@blenkinsopthebrave  @countscarlioni  The key point I thought came from Bill when she realised that everybody must seem like a child to the Doctor. Well, not everybody, and so no wonder he’s yearning for more `grown-up’ conversations with Missy.

Good point — “Grow the Hell up!” was a surprise.  It’s another sign of “wearing thin” — I wonder whether taking on the gatekeeper’s job (for however long before devising a way to shut the gate for good) was almost tempting to him, as a respite from all us “kids” and our mistakes and foolishness for a bit . . . Who knows better than the Doctor how long and arduous the a sapient species’ road can be toward maturity?  But I think his future is on his mind.

@missrori  Yes, he did say he might have skewed his future regenerations badly by using some of that energy to ameliorate his blindness; and then he blew off a blast of it when Bill shot him, which looked like a weird and terrible joke at the time, but might also have been a way of demonstrating to her something that he knows is coming but that she, apparently, still knows nothing about — ?

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@arbutus  @soundworld and everybody else who loved this — I loved it too!  It seemed to rip right along, was full of good jokes, and ended with a beautiful set-up for the end of this series — the idea of the Doctor being a tad irresponsible (as well as off-handedly heroic, of course) in signing up for who knows how long as the guardian here, and having it pointed out that this isn’t his fight; he has monsters of his own to face.    @blenkinsopthebrave  Yeah, a little avoidance there … maybe of acknowledging that the Mastress is *never* going to be truly good, and it’s his job to finish her evil for good (if he can).

None of this felt “heavy handed” to me, maybe because the whole episode has this robust plain-ness and frankness about it.  Scottish-ness maybe?

I wish they’d had a moment to have the “Roman” lads say where they’d come from, emphasizing how very very far from homes they’d never see again some of them would have been.  Or was it too early in the Empire’s history for troops to be drawn from all over the mediterranean and Europe?  Not sure whether it was another military invention of the Romans or not, but they were well-known for taking recruits (and maybe conscripts?) from one part of the Empire and posting them well away, to reduce the chances of too much sympathy with rebellious locals.  If you survived your stint in the legions, your reward was Roman citizenship, I believe.  Race and religion didn’t seem to enter into it at all.  Anyway, knowing how far some had come would have underlined the reasons for their “cowardice”.

Birds — interesting.  Loved the crows — maybe survivors from the 9th legion buried or hid their Eagle symbol to keep the locals from co-opting it to their own culture?

@soundworld  Thanks for the photos — I think that one thing I’d really like to do in the next couple of years is take one of those trips around the British Isles visiting ancient monuments and ruins.  “Death by Scotland” does sound a bit rough, but what with Global Warming — oops — “Climate Change” I mean — it might not be that bad.  I know when I went on a 2-week archaeological dig in SW Ireland on summer, the sun baked us all like turkeys . . .

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@cathannabel  something last night about Grenfell Towers

A true and tender offering — thank you for the link.

Damn these evil times.

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@missrori  Excellent point — the TARDIS is his friend.  She may come to his rescue as only a Magic Box can (or its resident genie/fairy/wish-granting carp) can.

Come to think of it, the Tardis itself is a brilliant concept for creating a variety of stories in different settings, without needing to take a chunk of run-time setting up plot reasons to go there in the first place: “Whoops, there’s war on here, run!” or “Hmm.  Seems quiet, but there’s something creepy — ”

So why not, “I’m already glowing here, and you insist on going to Bill’s place to ruin her Christmas?”

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@soundworld  I really liked the ideas up-thread that Missy might be a regen of the Doctor, although I don’t think that is likely. The Doctor has already made a lot of acknowledgement of his dark side and many moves towards integration, I don’t feel that his character would go through that kind of total flip. His need to have his friend back, and his hope that she can change, may well over-ride his knowing that she can’t.

You know, he really does need to have his friend back.  Clara was a weirdly miss-matched “soulmate”, and that had to be ended; River is gone; Bill is a good, upbeat companion but the Doctor isn’t, and never will be, and wouldn’t want to be, the central focus of her life.

So who’s left?  Who else is there who knows all about him, understands his background and his experience, can talk with him as a knowledgeable equal (when she’s not trying to maneuver or kill him)?  Missy.  Who else?  ?   ?   Home is impossible; Earth is too confining.  Even Ashildr has become too detached — she’s outgrown him.

Missy hasn’t.  She wants her friend back (she’s as lonely and as exiled as he is); he needs his, so he makes himself believe that she could finally come round and see things his way.  But why should she?  She’d rather embrace chaos that have to submit to it being imposed on her, hurt others than be hurt by them.  Her position (if I’ve got it right) is more realistic than this.  She’d rather stay cold and inflict suffering, with all of life a heartless prank; he burns hot with ideals and hopes, and suffers loss and disappointment because of it.

They need to be friends, confidants, fellow exiles, a comfort to each other in the enormity of cold space.  But it’s impossible . . .

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@missy  Perhaps I am easily pleased, but I do know that I have been more transported, with dleight, sadness, grief and laughter, since Capaldi took over the Doctorship.

Me too; I just haven’t been this *engaged* in DW for years — it could be partly the hark-back to Tom Baker, who was the first Doctor who really struck me as an original creature from no known place.  With CapDoc, I think sometimes, Jeez, man, stay away from us humans — we’re not really all that good for you.  

Talk about addiction — the Doctor is addicted to US.  And there are consequences all round.

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@nerys  Yeah, pretty stretchy all round, but that’s DW for you, and it was a cheery little “Tarzan and Gunga Din at King Solomon’s Mines” story with a more accurate take on Victorian Empire building.  Except for the beach ball part . . .

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@nerys  I apologize in advance for my ignorance: Would it have been historically accurate for a soldier like Vincey to be serving in a Victorian-era regiment?

Gatiss talked about this in an interview — but he came across an article about a young boy who was adopted by a regiment in — somewhere in Africa of the middle east (?) who did, in fact, grow up to serve in the Army, but not as a soldier — some kind of support position, but it did entail wearing a uniform.  He took the record of there having been at least that one POC in Victoria’s troops as license to write him (a version of) into the story.  So it’s a hell of a stretch, but — there was this one, at least.

 

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@soundworld  he would be able to link directly into the ‘hall of records’ and access the full horror of what he went through.

Hmm, a tulku who can visit the akashic “library” — but then wouldn’t he also remember everything about Clara that he’s forgotten, neural blocker or no neural blocker?  kind of undercuts the end of HB for me.  And yes, I’m not counting out the possibility that the Doctor is out of kilter in some way, but because of the kid who falls through the ice.  I argue that that could be his alien nature showing, but it could also be more and else.

@missrori  He wouldn’t want to help others anymore, because look what happened because he helped Ashildr and her people, he lost the love of his lives! He’d become little better than Missy, and possibly worse.

Neat; so, from a long perspective, he was at least willing to take the chance of wiping his own memory with the neural thingie instead of hers.

@thane15  So it’s in the giving away, in giving Clara back to the universe free of the Doctor and travelling with an equally strong individual, Lady Me, that he shows himself at his most unselfish.

Wow.  I certainly hadn’t thought about it that way — but if you want to extend it a bit, he’s been complicit with Clara in the making of a human “Doctor” out of her, and being able to head out into the universe like that isn’t just a gift to her; it’s also, he trusts, a gift to the universe (making up for having been so cavalier about blowing the whole thing up just to save her, before): she’ll be the best “Doctor” she can, without him, and undistracted by worries about him.  And I agree with @missy that he’s been playing fast and loose with that big brain of his (talk about recklessness!).  Maybe he’ll choose to regenerate because he faces the fact that he can’t depend on his self definition any more — too many mistakes lately?

@missrori  He’d go to Hell for her if she asked…but he’d do it even if she didn’t ask!

“I never asked for that!”  “You shouldn’t have to ask!!”  Part of the “hero” role is that you don’t always stop to ask — you just get to work saving people, especially the ones you love.  Even when that also means, yanking the reins out of their own lives out of their hands now and then . . .

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@nick  Re the Doctor in HB being “cowardly” — He had the chance to say a final goodbye and find the beginnings of an emotional closure (an overused word) to companion Clara. But he fails that test and runs from the best answer, which would be to stop and return Clara to her grave.

Okay, got it now.  How interesting!  I’m seeing what you’re seeing, but I think I’m seeing it through a specifically feminist lens: I see “I save people” — and I sure as hell am going to save you, no matter how.  To me, this reads as fear, yes, fear of losing some one again and fear of the pain that would cause him (not her, because she’d be truly dead and feeling nothing).  But beneath that I also see defiance — he still hasn’t learned from Ashildr’s ordeal of immortality.  I see his rebelliousness against Death making him see everybody he cares about die.  And I see a kind of privilege: “I’m the Doctor, this is what I do, because I can.”

And, of course, “If I can’t do this — save a very important person in my life — then — am I the Doctor?  If not, who am I, what am I for?”  So he must act, in any way that confirms his identity as this hero-figure he’s made of himself by responding to fear with defiance (even though that ID embarrasses him when he’s called a hero because he knows his failures).

What turns him back into a hero, for me, is that he listens to what Clara has to say for herself, instead of continuing to listen to what he has to say to himself, and he gets it, as he didn’t with Donna.  He responds to Clara by putting them both on a footing of parity, “flipping a coin”.  But he’s truly committed to that act and that parity, which he’s created by acknowledging her right to play the cards she’s dealt along with him playing the hand he’s about to be dealt.

It’s not cowardice, to me.  It’s growth, a step forward into greater maturity, which pays off in his handling of River’s impending death later on.  That clever solution — 24 years — is the fruit of his turning away from the role of “I’m the decider” (*either way*) to “let’s play it as it lays”: acceptance, but not by putting his brain on ice (but first, 24 yrs on Darillium).

And I hope there’s a grain of sense in here somewhere.

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@missy   All of which must have had an affect on him, and the fact that he looked so tired when they returned to the Tardis, is to my way of thinking something to be taken into consideration.

True; lots of stress and conflicting demands, plus some big losses and challenges with very uncertain outcomes.  That stuff could wear out even a TL; maybe that’s why they stay home on Gallifrey.  Rebelliousness isn’t “freedom” necessarily, and it does have its costs.

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@nerys  Who will heal the Doctor?

Probably nobody, fully, until he heals himself — by regenerating; turning the page on 12.

Damn it!

@thane15   Our hybrid is humming right along tonight (well, night for me, anyway).  I didn’t care for Seinfeld, but I do like “the bar man is the therapist”.   And you’re so right about that shabby coat — at least, for people who’ve had the experience to know what they’re being directed to recognize.  These days, I should think *most* people have seen the kind of uncharacteristic self-neglect that depression of either type can bring about.  These are anxious times.

And yeah, for all that it’s designed to be thrilling but also comforting to young kids, there’s a powerful current of existential angst built into DW’s basic assumptions, there to be polished to a high shine by a writer or show runner who chooses to favor that “darker” illumination.

 

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@lisa  Wow! I’m inspired! I shall market it on Etsy and at Comic Cons 🙂

You’ll make a fortune, at least until “Deadpool Face and Bleaching Cream” comes out, not to mention “Batman’s Bat musk”.

@nick  Anyway Ichabod, the questions that most relate to S10’s strange behaviour, is why and how does it relate to the last 2 or 3 episodes of D12.

Not for me, because I’m not convinced that this behavior is all that strange, given that it’s the Ancient Alien we’re talking about; but we’ll all find out, so I’m happy to leave it there.

I’m not getting the “cowardly” thing about Hell Bent.  “Cruel”, although more in the sense of “Shut up and get out of the way of my solution to this problem” than the “I’m about to make you scream and squirm, just for fun” sense.  In the case of shooting the general, even there, before pulling the trigger the Doctor makes sure that he’s not taking the general’s last life; and his thoughtless recourse to the Donna solution for Clara is just that, thoughtless, not actively cruel.  She gives him room to change his mind by arguing — by making him think.

Or is it something else about Hell Bent that could be considered cowardly, that I’m missing?

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@pedant  Thanks, that’s exactly the point I was trying to make, that difference between situational and clinical depression; you lay it out much more clearly than I did.  I’ve seen examples of both types of depression close up, so I’ve been a bit sensitized, I guess, to maintaining that distinction.  I think many people don’t really see it at all.

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@lisa  “New, exciting perfume scent is discovered: A Whiff of Rassilon!  It’s inter-galactic!”

@nick  Being The Doctor means accepting fate, accepting companion’s decisions sacrifices (River sacrificed herself to save Him after all) no matter the personal cost.

Agreed; but it *also* means sometimes giving up, stepping back, “Why can’t I just lose?! . . . You still won’t be there .”  I see it from maybe a reverse viewpoint: I see the person who carries the title The Doctor having to learn that lesson of ultimate acceptance over and over again, because “never give up” is directly opposed to “This is right.  I accept it.”  The conflict is built into the character’s series of journeys, so to me, that intermittent lapse of acceptance  isn’t failure.  It’s part of the Doctor’s self, his nature.  It’s all “Doctorish”, including glimpses into a very very long, TL perspective on things from time to time.

He learns, over and over (because it’s so hard to maintain that acceptance if you get attached), what ordinary humans also learn, or try to learn, or avoid learning, over the course of a single lifetime.  He’s an inspiring figure because he keeps moving to and fro across that dial from “never give up!” to “I accept” and back again.  And we generally get to know what that’s like, if we’ve lived any length of time with active self-awareness and intellect.

 

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@geoffers  . . . as moffat seems to be quite obvious sometimes, with hindsight, might this infer some connection to sherlock and the reichenbach falls? perhaps the doctor takes a bad guy with him, in some certain death scenario for both of them (such as a black hole)…  only to reveal how he survived, later… in the xmas special?

Yes!  That would be dandy; and Capaldi has said numerous times that “he goes out fighting”, which could mean physically struggling with someone, couldn’t it?  Call back to the fate of half-face in Deep Breath?

@missrori  . . . the title “The Doctor Falls” — what if that refers to one of his duties? Something that comes in the line of being a Doctor? The firefighter fights fires, the butler buttles, the barman serves drinks…the Doctor falls.

Hmm.  Well, he does, doesn’t he — sooner or later.  Nothing silly about it, since structurally (over the lifetime of the series so far) it’s been true right along.

@lisa  Curious indeed.

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@pedant  Or he was thoroughly few up with losing people and had been tortured for 4.5 billion years.  

Yes; that’s my version of the story, and I’m sticking to it.  DW deals in depression quite a bit, and that’s <i>our human </i> story too, for the most part, just scrawled all over the universe over massive amounts of time instead of over a small (or large) handful of decades right here on Earth.  I’m talking about what I think I’ve seen labeled “situational” depression (as opposed to “clinical” depression): your brain chemistry is fine, but you’ve just run into tangle of razor wire and there’s no (apparent, or maybe actual) way out.  Doesn’t matter whether you “give up” or not: you’re not getting out.

@nick  each Doctor in the Hell Bent castle has no memory of the previous Doctor. He has to work it out from first principles and then spent whatever time left clawing at the wall. Surely the impact can only be intellectual and not physical as there are no accumulated memory.

But what he tells Clara in the cloister suggests that he does have accumulated memories of at least the wall-punching part of his ordeal in the Dial — particularly of the 4.5 billion years (they really did over-reach a bit with that, IMO).  He’s embarrassed to tell her how long he was trapped there, but does remember *why* he kept punching: to free himself to go get Clara, because of his “duty of care” (ie, “I love you with the extravagant, time-annihilating, all-forgiving love that TLs go in for — see, Missy and me”, as I read it; and also there was nothing else to do in there).

@mirime   they had to meet for Clara to jump into the Doctor’s timestream and create herself. I like her ‘ending’ – she finally gets to go off and live her own life

I love that too — “I’m one heartbeat away from my death, so I’m gonna do my own thing while I can.”  A feminist take that in fact is one of the choices that many women face when their nuclear families disintegrate, one way or another, come to think of it.

@pedant  That’s not how depression works. The stressors inflame the illness, they don’t define it.

Do you mean that there is no such thing as “situational” depression, unless there’s also an underlying clinical condition waiting to be set off by stressors?  Can you talk a bit more about that?  It seems deeply counter-intuitive to me, particularly in the case of the Doctor, who’s seen so much carnage over a couple of thousand years . . . I’m thinking, for example, of older people who’ve led reasonably cheery and successful lives but who, as they get well into old age, start losing everybody else and visibly retreat into what I don’t know how else to describe except as depression.  They may stay there right to the end (not my dad, though, who was very “down” in his last years with us, but had a complete turn-around of mood when he and a lady at his care facility fell in love), but how is living long enough to be “the last of your kind (family and friends) necessarily an “illness” in the mind, if you really are the last?

@nick  . . . suggesting that he’s acting unDoctorish because of depression caused by this sequence of events

Was he acting unDoctorish — or having one of those flashes of acting “more alien”?  The TLs, as I recall, lean toward non-interference due to taking a long, cold, rather utilitarian view, which he objected to early on but sometimes does still show, himself (Into the Dalek, when Clara smacks him for it, and other bits in 12’s story).

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@rorysmith  The Tardis is connected to all of time and space so she knows the Master has an important role to play.

Oh no — a Deus in Machina!  I like it.

@missrori  But this deeply personal relationship with Missy is still holding him back. Perhaps that will be key to the finale — his coming to an understanding that he needs to free himself and her from this and let the chips fall where they may.

Good thought; I’m glad that Moffat is playing around with Missy’s character, since I’ve generally found the Master (in the past) to be a bit of a pain — “Absolute powaaah, hahahahahahahaHAHAH!” — and underused in the sense of rough infill of a very crude outline from melodrama.

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@jimthefish  if I ever see Barrowman again in Who it might be enough to tip me over the edge. For me Captain Jack will always be a potentially interesting character ruined by casting someone who couldn’t really act in the role.

Both character and actor drove me nuts.  To me, it looked as if something interesting was — pretending to happen there, but neither writing nor performance gave it life.  It just felt like some annoyingly intrusive distraction, but I’d have to be paid actual money to watch Capt. Jack again.  He’s got a Broadway stage musical smash-it-out-to-the-balcony style that puts me off.

@thane15  Puro  Adlai Stevenson: it’s far easier to fight for principles than live up to them.

So true; thanks for that hark-back.  That’s the struggle for everyone with principles, including the Doctor.  Far easier to have none, or perhaps just one, so that “living up to them” is simple: just crush anybody who has  different ones.

@missrori  perhaps he finds a golden chance to do right and realizes just how much doing it actually means. Less A Christmas Carol than It’s a Wonderful Life, but still capable of being moving.

@frobisher  Ultimately, he is convinced, given a new lease of life, and regenerates at peace with himself. Happy ending all round, glass of sherry for Granny.

I like this line of thinking — and Granny thanks you for the sherry.  Sherry is nice.  And a toast to @blenkinsopthebrave for scouting a way to a Missy-Doctor13.

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@nick  Who better than having his original self to remind him of who he really is ?

Oh, I like that very much!  And, @pedant  At BBC Roath Lock I never saw her be anything less than entirely lovely

That’s very good to hear; thanks.

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@missrori  To save whomever he can if he can, instead of leaving them to the wolves…but he does have to do it without hope, witness, or reward to be truly virtuous. (sniff)

I’d put it this way: he doesn’t have to do it; it’s a choice.  And he chooses to do it.  He chooses to try for the best outcome, however unlikely it may be.  That choice expresses exactly what kind of person he is, in essence, however widely he may stray from time to time (since he’s as imperfect like all of us).

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@missrori  The Eleventh Doctor had his Day, and so will the Twelfth Doctor in the end.

I’ll drink to that!  I don’t think Steven Moffat or Peter Capaldi would want to end on a note of doom and despair, so the Xmas special gives them a place to soften and brighten the final landing for this series.  And I do think they’ll use it well.  After all, they both love the Doctor, don’t they!  They’ll exalt the concept, not fail it.

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@nick  Suppose Missy made some incredible sacrifice for the Doctor (before reappearing as Simms Master) as her act of redemption.

You know, I have to confess — I’m not buying the “redemption” thing with Missy.  I think she’ll go along with the Doctor’s hopes to convert her to a decent person up to a point, but her truly twisted nature (not twisted by her own doing, let’s remember — she is, in her own way, a tragic figure, which the Doctor himself well understands) will reassert itself with some firework-y act of treachery.

And thanks for the Hay Festival links — Angst!  Blood!  Anguish!  Wah-hoo!  Bring it!

And then a gentler Xmas coda for the soothing of raw souls . . . yes, please; I’ll have some of that.  All that’s offered.

@thane15  Puro  Gosh, he’s a terrific guy: 28 mins with him and you learn about optimism in the face of dire friction, sexuality and its portrayal, how to write comedy vs horror as well as some difficult personal issues.

Yes.  And I need that good advice right now, about being “stuck”, and the need for persistence, and patience.  Gods, yes.  Moffat’s a mensch, and brilliant with it; it’s a pleasure and a privilege to get to spend some time with him in interviews and discussions.

Perhaps a vivid and animated conversation has been interpreted as “lecturing” on Pearl’s behalf.

Damn.  I hope it was something like that, if the “diva” report is true at all.  IMO, if Pearl is — or worse yet unfairly comes to be seen as — one of the factors in Peter’s decision to leave DW, her future career might suffer badly as a result; which would be a pity because she’s pretty damned good at this acting thing.  Peter’s reputation is secure; she’s a relative beginner, and female, and POC.  It’s no contest.

But — stuff happens.  I recall fairly recent interviews with Mandy Patinkin in which he excoriated his younger actor-self as an obnoxious, arrogant idiot (which was an admission to something that was not exactly a secret to begin with).  Acting is a crazy enough profession as it is, from what I’ve seen, without loading yourself down with the extra baggage of becoming known as difficult to work with.

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@nerys  I think the Doctor’s basic problem is that he is lonely for his own kind. Missy is the only one left

Well, Gallifrey is back so there are TLs for company if he wants to make some kind of a deal for visiting; but if we take “his own kind” to mean other *rebel* TLs who’ve broken away from Gallifreyan rules and attitudes, then I’d agree that Missy really is the only other (that we know of, anyway), so that comment makes a lot of sense in that context.

@blenkinsopthebrave  I have a feeling that we might be left with a tragic end for this Doctor. Not just a sad end, or a wistful end, but a tragic end.

I’m inclined to agree — partly because of the context in which that end will occur: a big shift in the direction and tone of the show itself after Capaldi and Moffat and most of Moffat’s writing crew are gone; a shift, I expect, away from brilliance and complexity and boldness,.  That’s pretty damned sad, IMO, all by itself, and if you add a “writers’ room” approach and some snarky kid-heartthrob playing the Doctor, plus the times we now live in (of what appears to be a rising tide of reactionary politics and economics), well . . . I hope for some mature acceptance by CapDoc, but I hope more for — some swaggery defiance and wisecracks as well — just a flash of Malcolm Tucker would be great (another character who came to a tragic end, come to think of it).

@lisa   He never out right rejects her. They have an unusual and intimate thing going on. 

That does seem to be a deep part of the Doctor’s alien-ness, doesn’t it; “unusual” intimacy (even with Davros, at times).  Being lonely for his closest companions, though — I don’t see much evidence of that, probably because the show needs us to concentrate on the current companions, not past ones that some viewers haven’t seen.

@thane15  I’m connecting all this waaay back to when Clara and Missy were sitting under the shade of the tree aeroplane & discussing the “friendships of TLs”.

That conversation was so crucial to relationship issues in DW — largely as reminder of the idea that friendships that last, on and off, for thousands of years would have to be different from our human concepts of friendship.  It’s one of the ways in which the Doctor, however closely or familiarly he may engage with human companions, is not a human being but an alien.  Missy is our faithful reminder of that fact.

 

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@missrori  I think what Moffat and co. meant about Bill not being “special” was that she does not enter the story as having some great mystery surrounding her, as Amy Pond did with the crack in her bedroom, or Clara Oswald did with her multiple lives.

Yes, you’re right — and thanks for that post, it’s really right on the mark (especially that Chosen One thing, which regularly drives me crackers).

@nick  It seems to me that these are two further instances, which suggests an inner instability (strange behaviour, craziness) in the Doctor, which is running through series 10. All aspects of (future) regeneration – a pre-regeneration psychological crisis ?

Oy!  I hope not.  They did such a thorough job on that in S8 (post-regen shattering); best not do it over again.

@tardigrade  . . . I think the joke was more one by the writer and targeted at the audience, not really the Doctor pranking Bill- that’s certainly how it felt to me. That may be why it feels “off” as an in-universe event.

Yes, I think that’s it.

@thane15  Puro  By removing the Doctor’s free will ( as Bill did) it became: “now see your new world, Doctor” which was bleak indeed. When Power beats down free agency we live in a faked collaborative environment: too frightened to resist, incapable of moving, and filled with ennui.

Hmm, yes — the outcome hinged on the *lack* of any effective resistance to the monks, so that their security was crap because they feared no opposition.  That opposition required an outsider (Bill) used to relying on strong real-world memories in crises, and the support of another outsider (Nardole), to get going.

I saw this group of episodes as a parallel with our modern world and a parable about accountability

Very much so.  Certainly Trump is a natural monk: “Everybody has to love me, no matter how much I take from them to please my rich pals.”

@nerys  Thanks; I think we tend to forget those strict limitations on DW content because here we treat it as an adult show with adult meanings, and forgetting that it’s not just also a show for kids, but meant to be a show for kids.

@brewski  And he has been Doctor 13 since then! But in his post-regenerative madness he doesn’t even realize it himself.

Also all of the post from @constance — Well up there on the bonkers-scale.  I really enjoyed this episode — it was brisk and funny and surprising and I wanted it to be longer (I didn’t realize that it actually is a little short).  It also isn’t the bolder, more thoughtful ending that we needed, I think, to round off the monk story, so we’re tying ourselves in (very creative and interesting) knots to try to make better sense of it.  Something failed here, some steadiness of vision, and it’s shaken people up.

And I’m feeling very fretful about that shabby, faded coat.  I thought it made a clear statement at first that he’s been neglecting his appearance the way people in a long mourning process sometimes do (and goodness knows he’s entitled to be a bit down, what with all the acceptance of loss that’s been stuffed down his throat lately).  We saw it first, after all, in the set-up scenes with Missy being “executed” when she taunted him about Clara’s fate.

But — now?  Why now?  He looked positively spiffy in Thin Ice, and wears his normal dark coat in “back home” scenes at the university, so — ?  I really like Puro’s free will idea; but I’m feeling baffled and discombobulated now.

In the middle of the night

Miss Clavell turned on the light.

“Something is not right!” she said.

This quote (or more probably misquote) from “Madeleine” should not be running through my mind.  For the love of pudding, bring on the Ice Warriors soonest!

 

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@wolfweed  Maybe he can knit himself some hair?

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@glasgowboy  Why wasn’t Bill imprisoned from the start? 

As the one who made the link, she’s supposed to have a more or less normal life and have kids, one of whom will carry on the link, as explained by — Missy?  That’s less likely in a prison than living a relatively protected life at large.

@pedant  “In amongst seven billion, there’s someone like you.”  That is what the story was about, not the logistics of post-War reconstruction.

Agreed; but it does give us Bill as “special”, which I thought we had got away from with the earlier episodes of S10.  So, it seems, not.  She’s now the young woman whose dead mother has been returned to her, in memory at least, by the kindness of the Doctor (not just deciding not to wipe part of her memory, but going one better in the opposite direction, to a partial restoration of memories).

On the other hand, she has in fact shown herself to be special in terms of courage, and that’s not something the Doctor gave her.  She’s not fearless — we’ve seen her good and scared — but she she’s got grit, in a pinch.

@miapatrick  Her importance is, in a way, quite ordinary. And it focused on her mother, not on him, there really is no such thing as an unimportant person. And there is a level of normal, devastating human grief in this conclusion, love for a parent she doesn’t know, built out of photographs gifted partly out of embarrassment at an unexpected Christmas present.

Ah, thanks.  I’d forgotten about the Xmas present!  Memory again . . . Miss CrazyHair doesn’t really remember anything much about the monks — that human weakness again, against which the Doctor has fortified Bill with the gift of those photos.

@thane15  Puro  This is also a PG show, if it were referenced more often then I believe the “warnings: explicit material about loss of life and mental illness” would appear before the show, it would change the timing of the programme and the limits of the 12 year old viewers would be tested. So, I do feel I agree with @nerys that it’s a frequent device used because it works 

There is that: this isn’t the targeted audience for Children of Men, it’s DW, where even showiing a bit of gore is problematic.  They want to give the kids a scare, not horrify them into depression.  A certain amount of soft soap to glide over the rough bits is necessary for practical reasons.

 

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