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5 June 2017 at 06:13 #58554
@cathanabel [memories of mum] they aren’t part of ‘history’, part of Bill’s official story even. They’re therefore safe from Monkish interference
Yes, that makes sense — the “love” that’s there, that’s really operating behind the scenes, is the simple kindness of the Doctor in traveling back to take those pictures and then planting them for Bill to see. Thinking about it, most of us have a touch time doing “love” for people not very close to us for formative times in our lives, and time and circumstance breaks down love as easily as you’d swat a fly. But *kindness* is the virtue that keeps on giving, time after time, to all sorts of people, never mind how long you’ve known them or how well. That spark is united by a word, a glance, a touch, a glimpse — it’s one-on-one, usually, and if you are a kind person, it’s pretty damned reliable.
Maybe that’s part of why — @missy — I loved this episode: light, sweet, harsh, a mite cynical, and not heavy handed in the “explanations” department. Not really my pot of tea, but I enjoy a cup or two.
@nick the Doctor’s monologue about the seconds ticking away to Death as support for the idea that PC’s Doctor is aware that his end is nearing and that it is having an effect on him.
Yes. He knows, but he’s not going to let it bring him down — he’ll just jump higher. And I’d say he was using a bit of his long experience with The Master to throw out that “Dear Leader” propaganda.
. . . the Doctor’s immediate physical reaction (the facial impression, staggering backwards) suggests something more than blanks were fired. In context the beginning of the regeneration worked. Is it possible to speculate that live ammunition and not blanks were actually fired ?
Yes, IMO. Can he just *start* a regeneration at will when he’s unhurt, and then stop it midway?! I was thinking, he needed real injury to get the thing started — and then stopped it, how?
More importantly, *why* did he need that energy at that moment? Is he just playing around with regeneration because he knows it’s coming, and he’s defying it, or trying to see whether he can control it to some degree? That bit left me very confused. Also, why isn’t he explaining regeneration, afterward (like while sitting on the statue base talking with Bill). You’d expect her to at least ask!
5 June 2017 at 05:36 #58552@serahni I can’t shake this feeling that the Doctor’s promise to “guard this body for 1000 years” was somehow a reference to himself. I did wonder if he managed to use the device to kill Missy to somehow transfer something of himself to her, since she had just asked him to teach her to be good. Is this remorse a reaction to a foreign empathy that’s been grafted onto her personality?
Oh, that is *delicious*! Great bonkerses! But I wonder whether we’re going to such deeper places this season. I think not, on the whole. This is Moffat demonstrating that by Hell, of COURSE he can do old style, lighter, zanier, plottier stories with a much thinner layer of characterological (is that a word?) base and relational complexity. And he’s doing fine at it, which is delighting many fans, disgruntling others who somehow want both at the same time (preferably without Moffat being involved at all, of course, so written by — ah — angels, weeping or not). And then there are the ones I can claim to be among, I suppose, who absolutely feasted on the sable glories of S8-9 but know that you can’t carry on long like that unless you go into the pits of proper Hell, which can’t happen with “family viewing + kids”.
This season so far is pretty much just what I’d been expecting, and it’s having an interesting effect: it’s letting me slowly back off a bit, see the show much more — lightly? — and prepare to say a relaxed goodbye to CapDoc when that moment does come.
Well, maybe; maybe not.
1 June 2017 at 05:45 #58347I saw a translation of the Pope’s outburst that went something like this: “Where are we? What are these girls doing here? I thought we were back at the Vatican — Doctor, why have you brought us here?” This last as he darts back through the doorway to where the Pope’s retinue are waiting.
31 May 2017 at 07:37 #58316@fatmaninabox Hey, glad you got out alive! Welcome back.
31 May 2017 at 07:33 #58315@wolfweed Thanks for that very sad news about this terribly hard stress Moffat was under (and still is and will be for a long time, I imagine). I think Capaldi’s mother died unexpectedly just before they began filming Season 8. Such a hard, heavy kick in the heart that is . . .
@countscarlioni the Doctor requesting a coordinated military attack on the pyramid. It’s both un-Doctor-y and, the Doctor must know, doomed to failure, given the alien tech he’s already seen the Monks deploy. Like Bill and Nardole, I’d like to know what that was about!
I doubt we’ll find out. Maybe it was as simple as realizing that his own capacities were so hampered by the blindness that the best first move would be for humanity to try its heavy weapons. The munks wouldn’t retaliate with deadly force, since they seem to be after non-violent conquest, and all that simulation work suggests not wanting to throw all that away at the last minute. And he might be able to learn more about them from how they do react. He stepped back to let Clara deal with the moon-egg; here he steps back to let the humans try to deal with the invaders, just in case we can actually repel them ourselves so he won’t have to do it — or admit that he can’t help this time.
That makes logical sense to me, but it needed a more set-up, and more development of the emotional dimensions of that decision. Damn. I wonder where else they would have strengthened the script, and how. Capaldi’s run, and Moffat’s last years on DW, seem to be marked by these sudden, harsh beats of real-world loss.
30 May 2017 at 20:30 #58292@missrori Hell Bent: everybody including Clara regarded him as a selfish monster for his actions, for risking everyone else’s safety just to save one person no matter how important they were. No one but Clara cared how he felt and had suffered; everybody else was more important than him. Why couldn’t he have just contented himself with soup and rescue from execution
Because he’d become obsessed with somehow keeping his mayfly (“someone he can’t bear to lose”) alive indefinitely despite her inherent “fragility”. He been pushed well beyond reason, which I heard Moffat say in several interviews at the time. Clara did her final “save” by asserting her right to deal with her own life’s end (to the Fisher King in Before the Flood — “You’ve stolen their deaths from them”, bad!).
(Bill’s choice) She’s placing all the responsibility for what happens next on his slim shoulders. She’s not going to help him, she doesn’t say “We’re all in this together.”
That didn’t seem “off” to me. I also see her feelings about him as affection for a distinctly “eccentric” (!) tutor, but not partnership in any deeper sense. She’s hardly fought her way through time and space as Batman’s Robin here, partly because he hasn’t offered her that kind of closeness (Clara; River; still fresh losses). Bill is brash and lively, but she’s still in a sort of eager “ride-along” situation, not a partner who’s trying to be like him. I think her choice is strategic (whatever the monks think), and it’s to save her planet, still her home, and everything on it from being sludge. She knows the Doctor, blind or not, is our best hope of defeating the monks eventually, but she certainly doesn’t see *herself* as his shotgun-rider in that endeavor. So she tries to save what she thinks she can, in hopes of giving the Doctor room to do a fix somehow later on.
@thane15 I’ve not found this second part to be “saggy and illogical.” Rather I see this as a play on our own esoteric tradition involving power, consent, duty, hubris and the condemnation of proposed, traditional definitions of love and the supernatural. Bill removes the Doctor’s free will and her grace at a moment where she is convinced there is no alternative. I would strongly suggest that these points in our own life also come when least expected. And will we be ready? This is the narrative strand of the episode, in my opinion.
This episode ripped right along for me and swept me with it. “Bill’s grace” — she is also “blind” here, isn’t she? To all that the Doctor is and can do (no fault of hers; he’s deliberately kept her “in the dark” in order to try to keep a mutually “safe” distance between them). And how provocative that a young POC woman, who reflected on slavery in “Thin Ice” with the particular awareness that would come with being dark-skinned in white cultures, has just assented to slavery for humankind — under extreme duress, and to salvage *some* future from the prospect of *no future*.
Is that failure?
@missrori But if she takes the Doctor’s free will, doesn’t that make her no better than the Doctor was when he planned to mind wipe Clara, or later Bill herself, for their own good, when he felt there was no choice? Hmm.
Clearly, we are still chewing that conundrum over in this series, aren’t we? What are the proper responsibilities of power; where do they begin and end? Though I don’t think he was going to memory-wipe Bill for her safety, as with Clara (nobody’s chasing Bill), but for his own (“No one must know I’m here; I’m in disguise”).
@thane15 Puro If the Doctor lies and sometimes has to go through the same experience over and over before settling upon a better choice then I think we should give a young girl several chances to do the same.
Yes. She’s growing, the way we grow — take action, rather than just stand there: and learn from the consequences (though you might not like what you learn).
@tardigrade His inability to confide in her may literally have cost the Earth.
I’d say it was a choice not to confide; not to risk more of that damned unpredictable, painful, and ultimately doomed closeness. So many of us make similar choices so often . . .
@miapatrick Bill’s . . . in a complicated relationship with a dangerous man who’s lied to her! Her responses to the places he’s taken her have been of wonder, quickly followed by fear and distress.
True, I think — she’s a lover of wonder, but no thrill-seeker. She has challenges in her own life to deal with — orphan, fostered, a bit shy (as someone else pointed out) under the surface confidence. I find the appeals to her mother a lovely vein of child-like vulnerability underlying her quick, sturdy practicality.
@thane15 Puro This is expedient Doctor. . .companions learn from their tutor, then Bill is also using expediency.
Wow — yes! For a moment she really *is* his “representative”, making the dangerous choice that offers possibilities rather than the one that shuts everything down for good.
29 May 2017 at 01:18 #58192@pedant I wonder if there is a sim within a sim going on.
Yes! I think so. I think the monks ran their sim Doctor to the point where they defeated him — only first he got the word out to RealDoc, so “Damn! Run the simulation on, let’s see what in informed sim Doc will do when we do the invasion part of this simulation, and figure out how to stop him later on in the process.” This would explain why the Tardis — a sim Tardis — couldn’t protect or revitalize Nardole, and why the “world leaders” buckle so easily — although they *could* have made the UN guy’s quick cave more striking if they’d specified that he’s Japanese, and sees the ruins of Hiroshima times 1000 in the world-ends future.
@countscarlioni On Bill’s decision: A surrender with the Doctor in play is far better than a soon to be surrender with a dead Doctor as that would be hopeless.
Yes! And there’s that undercurrent as well, I think, of personal remorse for being the indirect cause of the Doctor’s blindness. I think that remorse, and Bill’s growing affection for her alien tutor, is what the monk reads as “love”. The monks don’t really seem to have a very accurate idea of “love”, but if they’ve been studying North Korea, there it is — our “Dear, dear Leader, we love him so much” including, presumably, all of the gov’t officials who support Dear Leader — that is, those with “power”.
I think “power” to the monks is freedom to make effective choices, so their idea of “love” is just what the Doctor says it is: “Love is — slavery.” Well, he should know: he was recently shown increasingly enslaved (and perverted from his natural, chosen course) by one hell of an obsessive love for his former companion.
@thane15 Hope you all enjoyed it -or some of it
Loved it — the pace, the rush, the cleverness — and what looked to me like a quite deliberate contrast, between the brief, almost casual presentation of the “world leaders” vs. the detailed and loving detailed character of Erica the lab person. Moffat (in my imagination): “You don’t like recognizing/representing all kinds of people in DW? As *your* ideas of whole categories of people including those ‘like us’ are cardboard cut-outs to begin with, up yours, and meet Erica, whom the Doctor has no hesitation in quickly sounding out for, maybe, companion status.”
Gotta love it, truly.
@pedant Oh for heaven’s sake. Bobby Ewing coming out of the shower meant everything that happened in however many seasons Patrick Diuffy was absent for NEVER happen.
Thank you! They do keep wittering on about this like idiots on reddit; so annoying. DW fans are supposed to be smart fans, not foggy-brained dolts. I am disillusioned; or maybe just spoiled rotten by this lot, here . . .
but The point of this story wasn’t “who is real”. That story has been done. It was the central Capaldi-Doctor dilemma – how do you choose when all the choices are bad?
Yes, but I think it’s also about “blindness” — the different ways in which people can be “blind”, and why. Bill’s step-mum is blind to Bill’s sexual orientation. The Doctor is blind to how costly his dealings with the Master/Missy are, and not just costly to himself. The monks are blind to this “love” that they think they’re looking for. The eyesight of both lab techs are impaired. And even very smart people can mistake a simulation for reality. Look well, o wolves.
And it is also still about who’s real and who isn’t, if indeed everybody real is still stuck in an extended simulation run by the monks (if they themselves aren’t part of the simulation, and somebody else is running that).
@steppstaff 2:29: Orange President. A clue that this story is a further advanced stage of the simulated world of “Veritas”; the monks have tweaked the simulation to reflect changes in our reality. But good laughs!
28 May 2017 at 04:57 #58132@pedant My first thought on seeing the monk, walking towards the Doctor bak-lit by the portal was “Buddhist” and they have monks too.
Me, too. It was the one bare arm extended out to the side when we saw him in silhouette. Many of the Buddhist monks I saw in Thailand kept one arm bared, for doing stuff with, while the other was hidden by their robes — which were shades of deep orange and red and their heads were shaved (smooth like these mummy-guys’), so that’s what I thought of too. They certainly prompt me to think of Christian monks. And let’s not forget that the spokes-monk told the Doctor, “This *is* a game.” I don’t see how the word “monk” would set off this reported-about-other-people outrage, when the image and behavior of the said monks have nothing to do with Christian monks (at least, as I’ve seen them portrayed, and in reality).
@miapatrick She’s says save me, not help me. and the doctor did/was, he saved everything he saw and sent it on.
Well spotted, although I think she actually said both things — I haven’t finished my re-watch yet.
The very-temporary eyesight fixer as a possible game-changer at the end of the series: It will be called a deus ex machina by people who don’t understand the term.
Abso-effing-lutely.
@thane15 on the in-class story exam I got the top mark: A+ My teacher wants it in a competition.
That’s fantastic! And it sounds like a cracking good story, too. I’m very glad I could be a little part of such a successful project, and thanks for letting us in on the outcome.
@thane15 Puro The Pope rushing into the room, bewildered is deeply offensive to your friends.
I do hope our current pope watches DW (like your bishop!), because I think he’d get a good laugh out of it; and so would John XXIII, a mensch if ever there was one. Great post, by the way. And I like (but also cringe at) the idea of winged weasels. Why the hell haven’t they turned up yet as baddies in DW? Why, I ask you?!
@craig My thought at the moment is that Capaldi can now possibly regenerate into a new Doctor, but can continue living in the alien reality – and be back with River (after The Library). There could then be an episode or two with the new Doctor in the real world, and Capaldi Doc in the matrix world, working together at the series finish, or at Christmas. That’s my bonkers for tonight.
What a nifty (and bonkers) idea! Love it. Also the musical analogy, from @arbutus — an excellent and clarifying approach, so thanks for it. I’ll use it.
@thane15 Puro mysterious and odd, which is how I take my
coffeeWho.Okay, now you’ve done it: I want to know how your coffee is both odd and mysterious.
@thane15 Puro love the confusion. It’s good to be in the dark sometimes.
Oh, delightful, and sometimes quite moving. I’m reminded of the European version of Lem’s “Solaris”, so bafflling and troubled . . . Maybe the Doctor has some lessons to learn about the *good* aspects of being “lost in darkness”, hmm? Along with us. Good spot on no one can know I’m blind (except my worst enemy, of course, She Who Must Not Be Obeyed). I’m still trying to figure out at which points Earth Prime switched over to Earth sim, and — back again, I think. But I just sit back and wait for smarter folks to get it and pass it on; never could cope with Time switching, sometimes not even flashbacks!
24 May 2017 at 02:13 #57963@pedant Right; everybody in SF knows that moment where suddenly the scientific underpinnings of your story collapse under the weight of new theories and discoveries; you just hope that your story is good enough that nobody (who notices) will care. “Timescape” is that good a story.
The notion I dislike the most is the parallel universe one, where every time somebody makes a decision, one time line pushes on straight ahead, but the decision(s) *not* taken branch off and keep branching (why not?) until all you have left is a page entirely covered in pencil lines, or a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly and utterly meaningless fluff made of all the stuff that ever *could* have happened, to everybody on every world in every direction — now, *that’s* a mind-splintering nightmare if ever there was one.
I mean, where do you draw the line? Only big decisions by great men create splits? Why? Whether I choose to brush my teeth tonight, or forget to and go straight to bed, should be (minus the values-weighting that we attach to everything we do) exactly as split-inducing as your decision to wear loafers this morning rather than lace-up shoes, or somebody else’s to read the whole newspaper rather than just skimming the headlines; and then the alternate you in the alternate timeline creates split-offs with each of his or her decisions as well, and so on and so on literally ad infinitum.
As a story-maker myself, I am (rightly or wrongly) a strong partisan of the Arrow of Time as we (think we) know it. DW gets a pass because it’s such a delightful feast of ideas and creative realizations (and mistakes to learn from).
24 May 2017 at 01:08 #57960mudlark Ha! How nice. I’ve certainly never forgotten the opening chapter (I think?) in which a scientist is flying somewhere, over the ocean, and notices the red bloom in the water of the mutant(?) algae that are slowly but surely on their way to suffocating the seas and, eventually, choking off our species. A beautifully thought out piece of work, like another book of maybe 15-20 yrs earlier, “Earth Abides”, which I think I’ve described here before; and “The Genocides”, I think by Phil Dick — aliens want our territory, pesticide us to death, and we all die, the end. Intelligent writers have been thinking these thoughts, on this scale, for a very long time, but “nobody” noticed until similar books were published as “literature”, not SF: “The Road”, “On the Beach”, and “Children of Men” come to mind.
This is the trade-off for writing in the SF “ghetto”: you are guaranteed a small readership of very bright, imaginative readers and like-minded authors, and also (usually) no significant readership outside the ghetto wall. The cutting edge is by its nature tremendously exciting, but also very very thin.
23 May 2017 at 21:34 #57948@morpho net result of *all* of that is that the (real) Doctor is alerted to an imminent alien invasion, i.e. pure exposition.
What’s the “net result” of Don Quixote, or Alice in Wonderland, or “Midnight”, for that matter? DW isn’t a novel; it’s a long picaresque tale of tales that goes in circles (Doctor wakes, goes on adventures, “dies”, revives as a new version of himself, goes on adventures; dies . . . The stories entertain, provoke thoughts and question from trivial to profound and back again, and sometimes relax a bit for some by-play as part of preparing for a big jump. If exposition is funny, shocking, threatening, smart, and enlightening re the rest of the story to come, I’m all for it; loved this episode.
Which reminds me of perhaps the best “Time Travel” novel I know of: Timescape, by Greg Benford (physicist, Southern Californa, probably retired now). I’m thinking of it because the characters in the story don’t do classic “time travel”, and the “two earths” are an earlier earth and a later one, but the crux of it is the transmission of a warning message that does traverse time, going into the past. I haven’t read it in a while, but I remember it as being unexpectedly moving because of the dogged heroism of one doomed group of people who nonetheless persist in sending another group a vital message . . . . Huh. (Lots of exposition in there, too, but I read every word.)
@missrori if the Doctor were following the Aesop, he’d have let Missy fry and happily guarded her corpse for 1,000 years!
Yup; but scorpion and frog are animals working off survival instincts; the Doctor is an alien who can live on and on by changing outward forms for thousands of years, and he seems to be trying to redress the imbalance in lifetimes between mayflies and mountain ranges by helping to keep sapient life of all kinds alive when it’s threatened. It makes a weird sort of ethical sense — “I have this huge longevity advantage which I will try to extend to protect those who *don’t* have thousands of years to live, even though I can’t prevent their (or my) inevitable death in the end.”
The case of Missy, of course, is complicated because she was his friend when they were young and she’s a TL too — so she also has a mountain range’s lifespan. Hmm. Nardole may be right about this one: “You never learn, do you.”
23 May 2017 at 09:45 #57920@missrori . . . “Without hope, without virtue, without reward”…if that is to be the Doctor’s fate in “The Doctor Falls” for doing what’s right, well, no wonder there are so few heroes in this world!
I think there are many, many heroes in this world — and a lot of them go unrecognized til after they’re gone, if then. The nature of our lives, so far as I can see, is that our idealistic, spiritual selves are often outflanked and undermined by our survival-at-all-costs motivated animal selves. The world is more geared to animals than it is to “souls”, because the world is about survival and propagation, not the immortality of spirits and spirit stuff. More and more I feel that the job is not to “fix” or “perfect” the world because the world already works perfectly on its own terms: survival of the fittest, and nobody wins in the end.
Looks like the Existentialists were right: the test is, can we learn to live here as spirits anchored in animal bodies without giving in to despair once we realize that Nature cannot be “fixed” (made to be kind, forgiving, fair, and reasonable)? Nature is like Missy: immune at the core to ethics, empathy, reason, or kindness. Remember this story? The frog has agreed to swim the scorpion across the river on its back, since the scorpion says, reasonably, “Of course I won’t sting you — if I did you’d sink, and we’d both drown.” But halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, who cries, “You said you wouldn’t! Why would you do that?’ And the scorpion says, “What did you expect? I’m a *scorpion*.”
Are we here to learn to be heroes — ethical, empathic, reasonable, and kind — by simply refusing to be scorpions? Without hope, without recognition or reward and often without even success, to reach always toward the good because we choose to?
That is one hell of a tall order. No wonder we need the Doctor and other heroes, fictional or not, to look to: they make mistakes and stumble, but they try, and maybe that’s maybe the best that we can hope for, for ourselves. It has to be good enough, because that’s what we’ve got, even at our best (Madame Curie was indifferent to the dangers of her work to her assistants; Mother Theresa believed that suffering was good for the sick, and acted on this belief; Gandhi was, I’ve read, unkind to women; Edison was a thief and an exploiter of the genius of others; Lincoln was, at least early on, a racist; etc.).
Damn. I must be drunk (well, the wine bottle is empty, so there’s a clue . . . ). Weird mood; off to bed. Sorry if I’ve been lecturing. From the inside, it feels like groping around in a fog, feeling for something solid and good to grab onto, but not to worry. I’m used to it. “Scottish philosophy: life is shit,” quoth the Doctor. My dad was Scots-English, and I heard plenty of that from him, the old crab). Zzzzzz . . . .
22 May 2017 at 11:16 #57854@thane15 Puro — this universe is patterned. The repetition of tropes, if done successfully, mimics the very thing from which we cannot escape:
Isn’t that fractals? Perhaps the universe blossoms through time like a paisley design. Sheesh, I’m high on Time stuff — and real time. It’s 4:20 a.m. here, and this is getting ridiculous.
Sleep first; then, think more. I love this episode — and this discussion — very much. I don’t really want to sleep, but at least I go to bed happy!
22 May 2017 at 11:11 #57851@steffstaff Welcome, and thanks for this: I can only think of one possibility for Earth victory here… And that’s if one of the shadow-doctors during the multiple test-invasions works out he’s in a simulation and chooses to deliberately let the invasion succeed,
Excellent!
@mudlark . . . maybe the Doctor’s blindness is not just a challenge for him to overcome, but a means on the path to greater understanding and wisdom – though I can’t see him ever becoming the Philosopher King.
Yes, I think so too — comparing Clara, once again “Impossible” with her between-heartbeats “life”, was the means by which the Doctor learned, in Hell Bent, about how sometimes giving up and giving in is the best course (“This is right; I accept it”) and that he had the Donna atrocity to “make amends” for. And being a Philosopher King would be far too boring and stuffy for our rebel TL (well, the Huck Finn side of him anyway).
And, “yum!” indeed; just what I was hoping for — some resonance, not just topicality (the earlier eps of S10, by comparison with this).
@countscarlioni Bang goes the soft reboot. That was the full Moffat and nothing but the Moffat. I’m going to miss his audacity.
*sigh* Me too. The NERVE of this guy! Wonderful.
22 May 2017 at 10:34 #57845@pedant It is, evidently, set soon after River’s death and one of the canonical symptoms of depression is for people to not take care of themselves.
Yes — you couldn’t miss the shabbiness of the jacket, compared to the swashbuckling dark red velvet one . . . or even the Regency black. A nice, telling detail.
@thane15 wherever I look on the youtube arena a really big hate-group for Moffat. I find this odd.
I find it pretty much batshit-crazy, and rooted in a weird, neurotically jealous, possessiveness about the show. Moffat loves taking risks; sometimes he over-reaches. Given the kind of show writing we normally see in the US on television, by comparison Moffat is a galloping genius, flops and all. [This is changing a bit with the creation of original content on Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, etc., and occasionally HBO.] It’s like the knee-jerk rantings of cliques of mean girls in High School against a more intelligent girl, only it’s mean boys as well — baffling.
he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself,
Mm, excellent; and yes, respect for words (River’s, and River’s precious book), and word play, and the effects of words — like “simulation”. Man, I really enjoyed this episode and have already begun a re-watch.
I really felt that Life as Illusion
Oh, I think it is — I like Daniel Dennett’s idea of the “manifest image” that our unaided senses give us — the chair we bark our shins on, the chocolate mousse that some idiot has put “sea salt” on to be trendy — and the “scientific image” that science delivers, all sub-atomic particles, gravity, dark energy, etc. One seems more real than the other — but which, and when? The scientific image could be illusory too, couldn’t it, since it’s still coming through our senses, refined and extended? As I understand it, at least.
21 May 2017 at 06:55 #57758@gamergirlavatar (Good that) the Doctor is blind because this can be developed over the course of the season and won’t be played like a fun adventure we’ll never return to. I can’t wait to see how The Doctor and the other characters adapted to this.
Interesting to see what he does with a condition that he can not talk his way out of. It’s a bit like Samson with his hair cut: then what? Sulk? Rage? Conceal and pretend, using secret work-arounds? Retreat, keep everyone at arms’ length, refuse to ask for or accept help? Brush it off with a quip and a laugh? Go to ground, sleep all day? Go to Ohila, or even Gallifrey, for a cure? Give everybody orders to get him what he needs? Have the Tardis build him a K-9 seeing eye dog? Or a small seeing eye gadget that he wears on his shoulder that whispers in his ear? Run away — because Bill is too upset (and guilty?) and he can’t stand it? Make a Geordie-visor to semi-see with?
All of the above? Something completely different? I want to see what Moffat and Capaldi will invent around this. Moffat was so right to say, no quick cure — play it out.
My man — YES! Some fans complain that we never see a handicapped companion, so — here you are, then: a handicapped Doctor, and it’s not hangnails or a headache. I love the choices that Moffat makes. This one is classic: raise the stakes. Doing so is rarely a mistake in fiction, but tone and timing are crucial to make it just enough but not too much — or not too too much. Fascinating. (And, weirdly enough, I don’t give a damn who the next Doctor will be — too caught up now in this 13’s fate and Bill’s, but that’s because PC is “my Doctor”).
20 May 2017 at 19:58 #57709@wolfweed Moira means destiny/fate, btw…..
@thane15 Of course it’s Bill. Fate and me we have a thing.”
I wondered. Now I have the jitters. Love it. “Oxygen” was a breath of fresh air (?); we are *not* doomed, after all, to a season or mere fun and games (and, well, people being eaten by wood lice or nano-thingies or monster fish). That was just a feint, a set-up for dark days ahead, I think*. There’s nothing to restrain Moffat now, is there? Nothing to lose.
Go, man, GO!
*Of course, if you don’t go to Khaza’dum, you will also die — just maybe not so soon. But I think Mathieson knows that.
20 May 2017 at 07:26 #57682@missy I quoth it, all right; and I too dread ye xmas special (although I think “The Doctor Falls” will be the toughest go for me, Xmas being a calmer, more gentle denouement, perhaps).
After that, all bets are off. I suspect that the Broadchurch “chums” (wasn’t it only him and one other writer?) were simply too much of a dicey proposition after Moffat — and that may well have played into Capaldi’s decision to go. I’d sure be concerned if I were in his place. The show is, as Capaldi and Moffat have both said recently, a juggernaut — huge, important, and involving many people at many levels of decision making. That can be exciting (as well as exhausting) and fun, if you’re working with your mates, with plenty of jokes and respect and creative spark in the air.
But if important people you like and trust and know you can work with are gone, then it’s you and the juggernaut — and maybe you feel that you’ll be reduced to a cog in a gigantic machine rather than a creative whipping up great fun and games with your best mates. Then it can become a mere job, a gig, a chore you get paid to do.
But damn it, man!
Let’s talk about River’s diary.
20 May 2017 at 04:09 #57672@missrori . . . the darkest the show’s been since “Dark Water”.
Oh, wow — *can’t WAIT*! It could be that Moffat took on the earlier, lighter episodes just to lull us into a (false) sense of security, and now — one hell of an oncoming storm! I would like that. No, let’s be honest — I would love that. He’s got an actor with a fine, stygian snap-and-smoulder to him — give Capaldi some light fantastic to play with (well, zombie suits, eaten children, skeleton fertilizer too, so some, er, gray in there as well), and then — bring it, for gods’ sake!
“Release the kraken!”
Well. You know what I mean . . .
20 May 2017 at 02:45 #57671@craig . . . the show (Supergirl) may seem like fluff, but that’s a writer making a point. I inwardly cheered. After the Doctor’s experience in ‘Oxygen’ this week I felt worlds colliding.
Feelings have been running pretty damned high around here, with messages of resistance to oppression popping up in all kinds of places — a very good thing, IMO.
20 May 2017 at 02:36 #57670@pedant We also saw him lose his screwdriver.
But the Tardis, as we saw in Hell Bent, can make him another, right? Trouble is, how can he use it effectively if he can’t see?
@janetteb I wonder how much Nardole really knows about the Doctor.
And v.v..
@countscarlioni Chris is sticking with a team he’s got used to working with on Broadchurch.”
Agh. My heart sinks . . .
@missrori . . . it’s better for him that he (and Bill) experiences these things not only because so many others will benefit, but because he will be stronger for his hardships and secure in the knowledge that he will never be cruel and never be cowardly (and if he ever is he’ll make amends). I think this arc (and the Twelfth Doctor era) is going to come to a very powerful conclusion if he can see this inner strength through. It’s sad, but beautiful.
Yes! And, to your point about deliberately cocking a snook at whoever set him to guarding the vault (even if it was himself!), well, he’s a rebel TL when all’s said and done, and none of his losses and resultant wisdom is likely to change that. He doesn’t take orders — even from himself. I like your point about “guarding the one thing” that’s over-ridingly important being an experience he had with Clara, and it didn’t end well for him in some major respects (not that he remembers the emotional experience, just the raw details). Is the Doctor nailed down to one task instead of roaming the universe putting his foot in it still “the Doctor”?
15 May 2017 at 09:05 #57502@missrori Of course it’s sad but beautiful. That’s practically a theme of Capaldi’s tenure…
Mmm, yes!
And what will Bill do if/when she finds out he’s still blind because he saved her?
Ow, yes! That’s got to be a tough one for her. He, of course, will make light of it (sorry, sorry . . . .)!
15 May 2017 at 04:42 #5749914 May 2017 at 06:59 #57438@missrori Twelve isn’t nice to all those poor souls who end up in the Nethersphere, but Missy is. “Nice” can easily fill a hole where “good” would otherwise be.
Spot-on. The Doctor’s focus is on doing good; he rarely seems concerned at all with “being nice”, which makes a great deal of sense since there’s often not time or space for niceness in an emergency situation, and many of the series’ villains often start off seeming quite nice (even the Landlord, who is both “nice” and creepy, brilliantly done by David Suchet).
9 May 2017 at 08:12 #57304@thane15 Puro — I respect Mr Suchet, immensely, however. I think this story was important for its dialogue during prologue and epilogue.
Ha. Time for a re-watch (I haven’t done that yet. Bugs . . . I’m relieved, though to have them out of the way now, so I don’t have to worry about a heart attack now that they’ve arrived and done their thing).
@tardigrade So promise = oath, and it seems guarding the vault is part of that. Generally though, if you’re guarding a vault, you’re protecting what’s inside from someone outside, not locking away someone inside to stop them getting out- it’s not a vault then, it’s a prison.
And CapDoc did express relief, in Pilot, that whatever was mucking about in the basement wasn’t after or interested in the vault (but seeking Bill). So a threat from outside seems to be what he’s concerned about, which is backed up by his walking in there without hesitation at the end of Knock Knock. So he’s not expecting whatever’s in there to charge out or attack him; so he seems to be guarding something from attack rather than keeping something prone to do the attacking itself from getting out.
9 May 2017 at 08:00 #57303@kharis So, enjoy my latest craziest “person in the vault playing Fur Elise” theory and please come up theories even more insane then this one.
Trying, really trying, but — love it just the way you put it! Ah, there we are — Alan Moore!
@arbutus . . . villains who aren’t really villains. I confess it’s a theme that resonates with me.
Me too; even villains who really *are* villains have their reasons. Time and again, you come across criminals, often child-molester types, whose explanation (excuse) is that they’re only doing what anyone do if they had the courage to follow their instincts instead of submitting to the constraints of the law. And they believe that, because they literally can’t imagine the inside of another person’s head working *differently* than the inside of their own: so everyone else is just pretending to be “good”. To me, now, that’s a real horror story.
@jimthefish My personal theory is that the Doctor’s regeneration has already started or will start about halfway through the series.
Holy crap — that would be a kicker and a half!
@frobisher Could the Christmas special be the story of young 13 going back in time, and growing up under the care of 12, leading up to the start of this series?
Aarrghhh — now I want to see this.
@missy Loved the addition of a piano and Nardole’s comments. “you’ll/you never learn.’
Mm. You never learn — what? I’m thinking, maybe, “You never learn that no matter how considerate and conciliatory you try to be with an enemy/dangerous unknown entity, they will chomp your ass when they get the chance. You never learn not to pet the tiger! That the tiger is not your friend!” After all, the Doctor’s approach to new things is usually curiosity rather than suspicion and defensive offensiveness. That’s part of the courage the Doctor has, and also his foolhardiness — he assumes that other people are like himself inside their heads until they prove otherwise. Which, incidentally, is what makes him the opposite of the child molester who says, “I just have the guts to do what you all would do, if you had the nerve!”
It makes him a “good man”.
9 May 2017 at 07:11 #57300@wolfweed Always read the small print! Did nobody scrutinise that contract? I’d love to see the actual wording.
I was surprised that the Doctor didn’t have a look at that contract!
@frobisher . . . the twist was unexpected. There is definitely a theme of release going on, imo.
Loved Suchet — and yes, liberation . . . will that be this Doctor’s departure’s resonance?
@countscarlioni David Suchet would have made a marvellous Master!
Good Heavens, yes! He has a splendid voice, too, very noticeable in the after-show interview. And wow, the eyes — you would need a writer with a wider take, though, on the Master and his/her motives and feelings, or you’d be underserving this actor.
6 May 2017 at 08:09 #57140@missy Oohh — Somehow I read your last line as “It will be interesting to see who comes out of the closet.” Good grief; how late is it here?
5 May 2017 at 06:15 #57117@countscarlioni The power of SM’s conception of Clara for me was that we in a way got to see at times perhaps not two Doctors in the Tardis but maybe a Doctor and a half.
And — how ultimately there’s only “room” for one Doctor in the Tardis, as CapDoc said in S8. We can have an uneasy and demanding team of (more or less) two Docs for a bit, but not, it seems, in the long run. Although if the second Doctor were not a human but another TL — we’ve seen that with the Master, way back in Delgado’s time as I recall. Of course the Master was nuts, so that’s hardly a test case.
5 May 2017 at 05:06 #57116Ooops — it’s the Bad-tempered Schism, right? There’s a vortex lying around somewhere too, but they’re not the same thing? Brain on strike . . . !
@missrori Thanks; it’s been on my mind since that line of Missy’s, because “the puppy” rang true for that aspect of the Doctor/companion relationship, right on the mark about this niggling unease. I have conflicting feelings about it. On the one hand, the Doctor, as a 2,000 (+?) year old regenerating time-and-space traveler with technology that provides whatever he needs at no (apparent) cost, is a) objectively superior to normal humans (so far), and b) free from the basic economic pressures that constrain all human lives at some levels. From that angle — yes, we are “the puppy”.
However: while most people might like to have a puppy at least at some point in their lives, nobody absolutely needs a puppy. But the Doctor needs humans, as often as he can get them to accompany him. He’s got Nardole now, and has had for some time; but he still can’t resist inviting Bill into the Tardis. The company of machines (K-9, Handles, the Tardis itself) doesn’t do it. From what we’ve seen, he needs humans to keep him sane, presumably because solitary confinement, even in a nifty spaceship, isn’t good for anybody’s mental health, and Moffat keeps telling us that the Doctor is nuts from the get-go (I haven’t seen that in any of the AG Doctors, myself).
So the question is, what does a human companion bring that no other kind of companion does?
5 May 2017 at 03:50 #57113@craig Not quite sure what that says about the meaning of “companion” but I’m not sure it’s completely complimentary now. Especially as the Doctor may not see humans quite the same as himself.
Missy: “You’re the puppy.” She wasn’t lying; she was telling it as she understood it. I’ve always seen a touch of this — species condescention (including the affectionate “duty of care” owed to the “more fragile” and less knowledgable being) about the Doctor. It’s part of what makes the character interesting: TLs are not human, and all of them but this one appear to be completely uninterested in us. He, on the other hand, is not so much interested in as fascinated by us. He visits Earth a lot, hangs out with us or at least around us, a lot.
And sooner or later invites this or that human along with him into space and time — in part to have someone to show off to. Now, you don’t show off to your puppy, right? And crusty as he can be about it, he does clearly like affection between himself and his human companion(s). Is he just starved for warm and mercurial relationships (assuming that TLs are “above” all that, back home), and human company is the best source of that he’s found? Does he stand midway between the cold, manipulative TLs and the violent madness of Missy, and that position is like ours as a species, so that draws him to us? Not a “bad” TL because he was a crappy student and a goof-off, but because looking into the thingie-vortex didn’t make him crazy, like the Master, but it also didn’t make him cold and aloof, like the TLs; so he’s defective as a TL, and the closest thing to comfortable company that he can find is — us?
4 May 2017 at 19:52 #57095@nick Do people even have companions today ? I can’t recall it being used in real life speech.
I think it faded out when it became associated with closeted gay men living together (Liberace and his long-time companion, Rock Hudson and his long-time companion, etc). I think it still works in DW because it’s always carried the sense of “traveling companion” even though we rarely use it that way any more in common parlance. I can’t think of a better term, myself.
4 May 2017 at 19:19 #57090@mudlark “urchins with a business sense”
A very apt definition of a mudlark 😀 though I have to admit that as regard the business sense the moniker doesn’t really suit meI wonder how many people notable for their business sense and success are DW watchers? The Doctor himself carries no money, isn’t “enterprising” in the usual sense, asks no pay for his services, and generally travels with humans who don’t worry much about losing their jobs or their customers while they’re gone. Of course, “We can be back before the kettle boils” does create an enormous loophole — you won’t get fired for not showing up if nobody knows you’ve been gone.
@janetteb I wish I’d been there your sessions on the Industrial Revolution — sounds like a wonderful approach to take to the subject. I don’t think I’ve come across a book reckoning up the societal toll taken by the Enlightenment, specifically, either. Ah, well; a project for the next life, maybe.
I love the idea that his promise was to River; but in that case, even after 50 yrs, would he flip it off so lightly for a spin in the Tardis with this lively young human?
@nick But “Companion” can imply a sexual relationship ( a mistress who travels with her – usually richer – male lover) and can imply a difference in the status in the relationship (the obvious is a sort of nurse who travels with her wealthy patient or a usually poorer women who travels with her wealthy patron).
Yes, there is that — the Doctor himself does, from time to time, underline that status gap himself: he *is* superior to humans in the depth and breadth of his knowledge and experience, and in the durability of his exceptionally malleable body, so that sense of “companion” works fine. Also the human companion is quite a bit like an attendant keeping an eye on the Doctor’s mental health (“I’m his carer” = I’m his keeper). As for the possible sexual meaning, using a term that allows for that possibility is one way of keeping your audience involved when they’re grown up.
4 May 2017 at 03:55 #570714 May 2017 at 02:26 #57069@pedant Ah, thanks for that! Love it. For me, music that connects does this magical thing; it doesn’t only connect you with other people who hear it and love it, and the people who compose and play it — it also connects your everyday, busy, preoccupied self with yourself — your basic emotions, whether or not you remember what first made you feel that way. And, of course, if you’re dancing, with your body. It’s this potentially powerful interface between your current consciousness and your own deeper emotional self, those feelings and very direct perceptions rooted way back in your life. Nothing does it like music, because the vibrations of those sounds reach out and shake you into visceral memory, no thoughts necessarily involved.
People with dementia can respond to music, even though they haven’t spoken in ages. I see visitors at my husband’s dementia unit — wives, children — singing quietly to their elders, and the response is there: a smile, a scrap of humming along. If there’s magic in this world at all, it’s music.
4 May 2017 at 01:57 #57068@nick The Doctor studied under Dr. Bell? Bell, the model Conan Doyle used for Sherlock Holmes?! OMG, what a gas!
Companion v. assistant v. — ? I like “companion” because it’s nice and broad and allows for variation. Suppose Missy traveled with him for a season? She’s not exactly a friend, and would die rather than be thought of as an assistant, but she is, after all, his oldest — companion. “We were traveling companions” does describe the situation pretty well, I think.
4 May 2017 at 00:01 #57062@jimthefish (of Clara hate) . . . individuals who I strongly suspect hate any deviation from patrician, superior Doc and a breathless, deferential companion. (In other words they prefer ‘assistants’ to ‘companions’.) During Clara’s run these oafs became more and more vocal (witness all the ‘it’s more like The Clara Show now’ drivelish). And that frankly was the lighter end of what was being said and I’m afraid I’ll make no apology for ever calling anyone out on that kind of nonsense.
Yes! As I saw it, the people who disliked Clara for being basically a Mary Sue were reacting to Clara pre-Capaldi, where she was. They never bothered to notice (or refused to see) that under the stress of losing SmithDoc, she sprang to life as a human with her very un-Mary Sue response: resentment, anger, havering over walking out or not, super-frustration with this old-new guy, casting around for an alternative as opposite as he could be (Danny), growing an ambition to be “a Doctor” herself, etc. On the other hand most of the “she was good until S8” was, IMO, from the sweet-and-helpful is okay crowd, who read all of her later character development as taking away from the stature of the Great Man — because Mary Sue, more or less, is the proper role for a woman in the Tardis. And that *is* a sexist attitude, flat out.
The misogynist rancor was unmistakable, including what I read as a weird form of — jealousy? — from some female fans, furious that Clara — a complex and sometimes unlikeable woman — got to travel with the Doctor (yeh, crazy, I know — fictional people and all) despite her being “mean” to him, while they, who would have been properly adoring Mary Sues in her place, could only look helplessly on, grinding grinding their tiny teeth . . .
As you point out, complaints about “the Clara Show” didn’t really appear until “Deep Breath”, where she went from sweet little magical thing who’ll do anything for her hero to “WTF just happened, and how we *fix* him?” Compare and contrast early Clara, sashaying around in her Cutesy Barmaid outfit, with Clara snapping back at Mdme Vastra, or raging at CapDoc in KtM. The Magical Barmaid “born to save the Doctor” is a cartoon character. Angry Clara, defensive Clara, demanding Clara standing her ground — she a workable rendering of a woman with a mind of her own. That always brings out the misogyny in those who discomfited by women stepping out of “their place” (as “the assistant”).
Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t other reasons to dislike Clara as a character (for some, her edgy volatility read as incoherence, for example). I just didn’t see much of that in the haters’ ceaseless carping and sniping. It was a lot like having mosquitos whining in your ear as you’re trying to fall asleep . . .
@mudlark The fact that the pupil has ended up as his companion in adventure was obviously not his intentionI thought he was obviously giving in to temptation, and explaining to himself how it was okay, really, because they’d be back before teatime. Uh-huh. On the painting — a nice gloss to the episode in terms of commenting on the grinding harshness of the Industrial Revolution, deftly un-romanticized in this story of an enslaved creature churning out fuel that men with rags tied over their noses prepare for shipment so that an aristocrat and his family can stay rich. Plus urchins with a business sense.
In their own way I have found them very satisfying.
So have I; and I agree that it’s all been very well done, with elegant efficiency and charm (that blue silk top hat; that feathered bonnet! That gorgeous stone bridge! That punch, which, considering the strength of a TL, should have pretty much caved in Lord Sutcliff’s face but hey, family viewing).
This focus on character so far has, to my mind, been well judged, and I suspect promises to be the prelude to something more meaty.
Agreed — Moffat is fully capable of catching us up in a vortex of emotional arcs and call-backs, closing out with a lion’s roar (“Take THAT!”); which would be, for me, more satisfying still. Meantime, I’m not going anywhere — as long as I can watch PC and Bill, I’m in for the ride to the — bitter? Uplifting? Rip-roaring? Sad and meditative? — end.
3 May 2017 at 09:04 #57054@missrori . . . they’re all, effectively, set free in the end. Freed of chains, of programming, of…oaths…or promises…don’t mind me, I’m just overthinking things again.
Oh, please, indulge — Well, drat, I just overthought of something: the Doctor, end of S9, set himself and Clara “free” of each other. Is he now going about committing other “liberations”, until his own final “freedom” from this current incarnation?
Ah, bonkers. Overthinking is such a pleasure!
@jimthefish @janetteb . . . I’m starting to feel just a little hungry for some arc. Next week looks like another interesting ep (I’m getting vibes of Hide meets Fang Rock with a bit of Cabin in the Woods thrown in) but I think I’ll definitely be ready for something a bit arc-ey by the end of it.
Yes. Yes, yes. I think this, that we’re seeing, is exactly what the Moffat critics want and what he’s determined to give them (see, a-holes, I can do this stuff with bells on) — monster of the week, and (so far) comic book depth, mostly (IMO). It’s delightful; it’s also, for yrs truly the OverThinker, a bit — thin? In the way that I found so much of early AG DW a bit dull. Bill is great — she’s giving us what depth there is here, but it’s all — sociological? I’m missing some compelling personal connection, but maybe that’s being saved for when the Masters come on the scene. I hope so. Maybe it’s just because this is so *exactly* what I was expecting, after the deeper waters (IMO) of S8-9; but I’m thinking, I wonder if PC decided to leave because he saw how this was going; foresaw that it might go back to character-heavy work with Chibnall but Chibnall is not Moffat, so why do more of it but — with heavier, more obvious and bathetic scripts (judging by “Broadchurch” now)?
@thane15 Puro — . . . Clara’s character was wonderful. Freed from the Impossible Girl arc she became even better.
Yes! That was the key to the intensity of S8, setting up S9.
Loved it. Will mourn it.
Me too. Already. But I am (however grudgingly) all right with this shallower level of entertainment — you can’t do Sibelius all the time — but I’m already feeling hunger for more: I want some meat, some heft, some solid bass notes, deep and long. Can’t help it, rational analysis aside. I’m not sure I’m made for fun so much any more . . . but that’s the darker shades of my soul speaking, and it’s not as if there wasn’t a lovely feast of sable velvets in S8-9.
Just — restless. But patient, too. Moffat will deliver what Capaldi needs, to deliver his own contribution. Bring it on.
1 May 2017 at 04:36 #56967@winston I like to see his eyes, too, and actually prefer the sunglasses as something he gets to play around with as a prop. And yes, he’s softened and warmed, but reassuringly calm and confident about the downside — people dying. Not happy about it, mind; but not demoralized by guilt and remorse, either. Good; he’s earned some inner peace and balance. I wonder how long it will last . . .
1 May 2017 at 04:01 #56964@morpho I liked the Doctor’s explanation that the butterfly effect happens anyway, even without time travel.
*Loved* that; a quick and easy way of dispensing with a long, depressing disquisition on why Time travel into the past is bound to change the future to *some* extent, but you’d probably never know (who says it has to change in ways you’d notice?), so let’s not worry about it! Delicioius, and so Whovian!
@mudlark Agreed, a lively and entertaining episode, full of good lines and taking on the race question head on instead of pussy-footing around it or just tossing off some throwaway line about it, et fin to that.
Since those diving suits were of a design getting on for a century later than 1814 and had no visible means of air supply, they were presumably provided by the Tardis who seems to have a liking for wrapping advanced technology in a retro design shell.
I thought those were really quite flattering, for diving suits.
@mirime . . . giving Bill the choice like with Clara in “Kill the Moon”. Also liked the conversation when Bill is upset after the child dies and comparing it with the conversation with Clara at the end of “Mummy on the Orient Express”
We’re not to be allowed to forget the two dark seasons that got the Doctor to this softer place, it seems. Good! Since intense suffering can leave its victims in reality with more negative effects than positive ones (check accounts of this by people whose parents survived the Holocaust, among others), it’s important, I think, to see the Doctor coming out of his own ordeal as a kinder person, a calmer person, because that can happen, too; while his ability to detach from loss and keep going is also crucial to his nature and his function. Well done!
@jimthefish the stories are not what you’d call complex
Exactly; Moffat promised a return to a more “traditional” format, which was usually monster-of-the-week, not a lot of personal reflection, and that’s what he’s been delivering — a kind of, “Yes, I and my writing team can do that and do it damned well, so here you are then.” Now we’ll see a lot of carping about stories being “trivial” or “shallow” or whatever else the Spites have in their little rucksacks of poison. F**k ’em, says I.
Is the over-arching theme of series going to be ‘our responsibility to the rights and freedoms of others’.
Damn good thing if it is, IMO.
@wolfweed WOW. Love the image! I want that person heading the best inter-galactic university in existence. Beauty and intelligence — gorgeous. And it’s the not-smiling that makes it work. Funny thing about that . . . .
30 April 2017 at 07:10 #56905@missy Or — was that Missy he played it for? Or both, when he spotted them on the battlement above?
30 April 2017 at 04:42 #56899@phaseshift I suppose the ultimate question is whether you think the show deserves such analysis or not.
I think it doesAs do I; given a durable framework and many changes rung upon it over the years by different writers, show runners, cast members, et al, the result is ripe for analysis (and gets plenty of it, happily). And, let’s not forget, while the option of un-analytic enjoyment is the basic purpose, the kind of analytic and sheer bonkerizing joy to be found by playing in Moffat’s DW sandbox is also on offer — for those of us who love to play. This affords a whole different level of engagement, for those open to it.
It’s been a feast that way, with Moffat, and I agree that he’s done an amazing job — but that’s what you’d expect, from a deep-dyed, true-blooded fan of the show, particularly one who’s proven to be so talented and skilled.
30 April 2017 at 03:38 #56896@jimthefish I’ve loved the guitar/fading rock star aspect of Capaldi’s Doc…
D’you think I’m off in seeing a gleam of self-satire in the flamboyance of the entrance-with-guitar-and-tank? It never struck me as “fading rock star” but rather as “wannabe rock star” — which was, at one point, what Capaldi and his friends all were. “If you can’t be childish sometimes — ”
@mudlark Quite right, that was a private moment with music. Sometimes I wish they had time for a bit more of that sort of thing, but of course the story must be served before all else . . . Still . . . stillness also serves sometimes.
29 April 2017 at 08:04 #56854@Puro Hell, I’d listen. So, here’s a guy who got what he wanted: his “dream job”. Now he’ll head out on his own and think about all that that meant, and what it means now. I remember when he said on some panel, or in some interview, back at the beginning, something about how overjoyed he was to have this chance at the role of his dreams, but that of course, “being Scottish”, he couldn’t help but think too of how it would have to come to an end at some future point.
What better man to play a 2,000 year old traveler with a Tardis.
29 April 2017 at 05:13 #56851@pedant I get the impression that nobody was offended but old fan geeks (like me) who think that having been watching forever, they somehow have acquired the right to defend “their” show from anything they see as “new”, plus the right to school everybody else in the few ways that it is appropriate to enjoy DW (unlike me, thank goodness). Although young fans can be rigid in their own ways, of course. Maybe if more of both cohorts had bothered to go back and listen to Capaldi’s group doing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” . . . only he wasn’t playing the guitar, so . . . maybe not.
I liked the guitar; I liked the sunglasses. I like *anything* that gives this highly expressive and inventive actor more stuff to turn into “stage business” so that it serves the scene. I guess I’ve just got no standards; sometimes it’s just more fun that way.
28 April 2017 at 19:03 #56837@mersey So — “Loose clues drop shoes” and other war-time slogans . . . Yes, I’m on Eco’s side but Barthes is no dope, and writers of both inclinations have lots of fans who love their work. I will miss Moffat — more, or less, depending on what Chibnall does in his turn. I hope he delivers more of what you’re looking for.
@missy What if you can’t stream or haven’t got an ipad? Then what? Wait until you can buy the series?
I can’t stand the ads, so I buy a “Seasons Pass” on one of the streaming services and watch the day after broadcast, on my desk-top computer. Hardly ever watch the TV any more — it’s really a wasteland right now. Here (US), new series of intended high quality tend to be closed-ended (“The Young Pope”, “Tattoo” — or was it “Taboo”? “The Leftovers”), and when they’re done after a dozen weekly episodes or so, we’re left with “Law and Order” again, “Elementary”, and reruns of “Star Trek” and its children (and PBS’s UK imports and documentaries).
perhaps charging a fee would give them more money to buy more quality programmes. Any opinions?
That should help. Our local PBS station is running on subscriptions, and when they do fund-raising they always stress that good programs are expensive for them to buy so please be generous.
@janetteb There is nothing accidental about the items which feature just as many of the names have significance.
I think Moffat has been packing in bits and bobs (resolved later or not) for several reasons (not because he’s a slob at writing). I feel that the does this to thicken the visual and aural texture of the show as befits something that’s been around for so long and gives it a bit of weight even when it’s being silly; to keep threads of continuity running throughout, knitting one Doctor’s experience to the others’ without having to spell it out all the time; to re-enforce thematic elements of a season as it rolls out; and to bestrew the field with unresolved and echo-y bits to be picked up and used later, either by himself, or by successor writers taking over the show after him (again, re-enforcing structural continuity) — or, maybe never. It’s the bits he leaves dangling that irritate some fans. To me, they’re evidence of confidence, and a way of creating playfulness in and around the show. We get to guess what a painting means (or will mean), and he gets to play with our expectations — he’s been writing this show for a very long time, as these things go, and it needs to be play for him too, as well as work, to keep it fresh and engaging for him.
@brewski Susan – Shoshona – Lily — thanks! Love it.
28 April 2017 at 05:53 #5681728 April 2017 at 05:42 #56816@mdlark Stories in which every meaning is dictated, every t crossed and every i dotted, and in which nothing is left to the imagination of the reader or viewer are seldom very satisfying.
When an artist says (or thinks) “I hope my work survives for a decade or two after I’m gone”, he or she is usually talking about hoping that the work has enough “resonance” to be lastingly attractive to another generation — like, say, “Don Quixote”, which went from being anti-romantic satire to becoming the core of super-romantic stage musical of very impressive stamina. You *want* your work to have loose ends, bits of scenery, ambiguous notes, that will catch the imagination of your audience and the next one with new ideas about what you “meant” and whether those ideas “work” or not in the context of the work and/or the artist’s life.
@mersey That doesn’t mean that a writer or painter or composer sets out to confuse everybody (unless, in fact, they do), or that nobody now can enjoy the work unless they analyze it to death or “see” levels of meaning further down than surface-deep (a lot of that is or could be projection by the critic/reader/viewer etc.). A personal connection with a piece of art is just that: personal. Speaking as a writer, once a story of mine is published, I’ve let it go, and you’re free to make your version of it yours (or to ignore it or throw it across the room), like every other reader/viewer/listener — deep, broad, narrow, high, whatever you like (or all at once, or in a progression of re-reads or re-watches over a lifetime). “Bonkerism” is always an option, of course, and thank goodness.
Needless to say, there are plenty of story-tellers who take a different view: they try to restrict and control the meanings that their audience finds in the work. I think that’s neurotic, futile, and a good way to handicap your work against its own survival.
@blenkinsopthebrave I am not sure who, or what, is in the vault, but it would be pretty great if it did tie back to Susan and the first Doctor.
Gosh, yes! That would be fun, and emotional, too, especially for older fans or newer ones who have watched all the DW available, going all the way back.
@tardigrade If it can get off the public purse and pay for itself, it can hopefully cease to be a political football.
And become a commercial football instead . . . unless, as you say, some sort of subscription is offered that can keep it alive and healthy. Something being offered now in the US is called “Britbox”, best of British programming + iTV, whether on DVDs or streaming I don’t know yet, but I’m definitely going to have a look.
27 April 2017 at 22:41 #56810@redlemons As far as his playing the guitar, if I lived as long as him I think I would learn lots of instruments.
Yes — things aren’t hopping all the time; we don’t get to see the quieter moments a stretches of time in the Tardis, we get the *stories*. Why wouldn’t he play guitar? Though I think he’d play some quieter, more meditative work too, in those quieter times. But we’ll never see those . . .
27 April 2017 at 21:34 #56806@thane15 Excellent idea! Let us know the outcome . . . !
Meanwhile, Here, just because I can. Well. Because I can’t help myself. And I’ve recovered from LMAO over it.
Hope the link works. It’s worth fixing it, if not.
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