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I know it’s a bit late, but thanks very much @bluesqueakpip for the Tempest synopsis, and for explaining the parallels. (Out of curiosity, I rented the Helen Mirren version that you mentioned from iTunes, and regret not buying it instead. Tom Conti in particular was a real treat.)
I confess I have a copy of Shakespeare’s Complete Works displayed proudly on my bookshelves – gathering dust and fooling no-one. Perhaps it’s time I actually read a page or two!
@geoffers I never thought to look at the positions of the chess pieces. Hmm… Three major pieces (=main characters) breaking the rules of chess (=laws of time) shortly before being knocked over (=blasted out of the universe) by a football (=by an absolutely massive football). That’s my prediction and I’m sticking with it 🙂

 

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@arbutus @purofilion     I just learned that the title Austen originally had in mind was “First Impressions”. Very apt.  (Or not, as the case may be…)   🙂

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A couple of references in recent episode threads to The Doctor

suddenly treating people like chess pieces

@serahni

and the possibility of Missy

setting up the board for a cosmic game of chess, and gretchen and humpty are two of her pawns

@geoffers.

A game of chess is central (quite literally) in the final scene of The Tempest, as well.

And now a rather difficult-to-ignore chessboard in the school quad-thingy, to which our attention is drawn both visually and in the script. So perhaps chess references are another thing to watch out for now? But who is the King and who is trying to capture him? The Doctor might be a Lord of Time, but he disowned the title “King of OK” 🙂

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@thommk
I was wondering about the significance of the Tempest as well. I was thinking along the links of Tempest/Storm. The Doctor is occasionally referred to as the Oncoming Storm – so possibly the play’s “not-finished-ness” mirrors the Doctor’s “not-finished-ness”, whatever that might mean!

I saw the Tempest once many years ago, and don’t think I can remember anything especially pertinent to the episode (or indeed, anything much!) But yes, Prospero is the usurped and exiled Duke and magician. The tempest brings to the island the men who plotted against him.

 

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@fivefaces

 

maybe what they are collecting in the Nethersphere is not souls but stories

I really, really like this as an explanation of why the PC didn’t cut the mustard 🙂

Also, we’re told in The Rings of Akhaten that souls ARE stories:

CLARA: She didn’t say stories. She said souls.
DOCTOR: Same thing. The soul’s made of stories, not atoms. Everything that ever happened to us. People we love, people we lost. People we found again against all the odds.

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Oooh and Chris Addison : “Now then. Annny questions?” – if that’s not teasing the audience, I don’t know what is! 🙂

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If I’m honest, anything set in a school is bound to annoy me a bit, because I can’t help nitpicking. (A London secondary school with a tiny staffroom and only one caretaker for example? I’m not so sure…)

However, I absolutely loved the humour of this episode. Most laughs for me this series by far. The dialogue was excellent. Would agree that it was possibly a bit of a rubbish monster compared with last week. Having said that, thematically a good choice (a killing machine whose actions are dictated solely and completely by orders from its superiors – the ultimate soldier perhaps?)

 

@lisa – I noticed a different belief angle this week (more “belief” in the sense of trust), in that a) Danny doesn’t believe Clara’s lies, no matter how much she would like him to and perhaps b) Clara is able to act so fearlessly because of her faith/belief in the Doctor.

 

For all the emphasis on Clara’s lying, I suspect Danny has been telling a few lies, or at least keeping some secrets, of his own… He certainly had no intention of telling Clara that he was planning on spying on the Doctor. (Clara: “A thing?” Danny: (hesitates) “Tomorrow instead?”) Bit Bonkers but – is he spying on Clara too?? Manipulating the truth out of her while keeping his own “other life” well-hidden? Is that how he knows she’s lying – because he knows more about her than he lets on? (I very much doubt it, because he’s too likeable as a character. But still – a thought to play with.)

I think Jenna Coleman does a brilliant and hilarious line in panick-lying, by the way. In particular “I think it was just a general wink you know, just a general welcoming wink” – really tickled me.

 

I thought Danny’s showdown with the Doctor was reminiscent of bad behaviour in a classroom : He figures out what buttons to press and presses them relentlessly (“Sir, yes Sir!”) until he finally gets sent out of the class (I mean Tardis 🙂  )

 

There is certainly a lot of prejudice informing the first impressions that the Doctor and Danny have of each other. Is there perhaps a bit of pride as well? (Pride & Prejudice is the book Clara’s class were studying…)

 

Finally – the suppression of human instincts/senses crops up again, if only in passing: “You weren’t even scared.. But you should have been”

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@5faces  @geoffers   Nope, no luck pasting. See my avatar instead !

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@5faces @geoffers

Hope I’ve pasted the image correctly! It’s exactly the same poster. Good spot! 🙂

 

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@ barnable

Hmm… Dino-Missy-Tesselecta…

 

Now I think of it…  Cor dear, that’s a bit too mad even for me…

 

If it actually happens , please feel free to point at me and laugh 🙂

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It definitely links with my new idea about robots vs humans, and what robots can never do (Robots can never believe). 🙂

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Right.

@lisa and I have had an idea  (well @lisa really… and I really like it!)

It centres around the similarity between  names: “Neverland” and the “Nethersphere”, and the notion of belief…

I’m not a big expert in Peter Pan (@Lisa???), but I think the whole point is that you have to believe in Neverland… And the name “Nethersphere” is not so far away from “Neverland”. So perhaps the theme of belief is not so far away either??

And in the Whoniverse, there have been lots of times when believing/remembering turned dreams into reality: Rory’s resurrection/Amy’s wedding…

So Belief? The Nethersphere/Neverland? Is it al linked?? @lisa??? 🙂

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@barnable  I’ll be honest with you, it’ a bit of a gamble 🙂

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@ barnable

If it comes true, you will regret ever having doubted yourself 🙂

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@barnable

We can have a dino-missy-tesselecta if you like. That’s why it’s called Bonkers Theorising  🙂

Interesting that you think Missy is an “Evildoer”. I’m not so sure. I very much hope that Missy is completely mental, because Michelle Gomez does that brilliantly 🙂 But I suspect there’s a mixture of good and bad involved (maybe good intentions with very bad consequences.)

 

I don’t think she’s a proper evil nemesis.

 

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@thommk @fatmaninabox @bluesqueakpip

I’ve spent 10 years teaching 11-16-yr-olds. I second @fatmaninabox: Thommk junior will be back behind the sofa before too long :). And I second @bluesqueakpip : Being bored of (and possibly a bit too cool for) everything your parents do is a rite of passage for every teenager:)

 

And I’d just add this:

Of the kids I’ve taught, almost all have had some sort of teenage anti-parent rebellion (even if it was only “Mum wants me to learn German but I prefer Dutch” 🙂 )

But one thing they all have in common: their parents are their rock, and deep down they idolise their mums and dads 🙂

 

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@purofilion

Have a great holiday and lots of fun 🙂 I learned to scuba dive in St Martin. Very nearly got my PADI but couldn’t for the life of me change jackets in the water  🙁

 

Still, even without a certificate it was money well spent. I’ll never forget the deeper dives. It was an amazing experience. I’d love to have another go.

 

Enjoy!!  🙂

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@lisa

”go to your assembly and worship something”

 

Ooh interesting. Probably just a throw-away comedy line. But within the story arc?? Maybe a bit more sigificant 🙂

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@lisa – I ike your episode references. A belief theme running throughout the series so far, I think.

 

And in Time Heist, the belief theme was subtle, but in a way it was central: each “bank robber” had to believe that the heist was worth doing. And they had to trust (believe in) each other.

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@barnable (and others who are asking “How can Future-Karabraxos call the Doctor and cause him to do something she knows he’s already done??”)
The best explanation comes from Tennant Doctor in Blink:

 

DOCTOR : People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

 

@mudlark re: the “ever-increasing burden of memory” .. I like this idea. A lot.

unless there is something in the canon which suggests that Timelords have a direct mindlink to all the information in the universe

Well, maybe not quite that,  but (9th Doctor, “Rose”) …
I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That’s who I am.

 

So he’s got a bit more than Google in his head 🙂 Amnesia is perhaps a good solution. At this stage, he could be at risk of going mad. Eleven was already a “madman in a box” after all.
And the last “Architect” that I remember meeting in Who was in a mental asylum (Bedlam – The Shakespeare Code.)
Re: The Tardis re-routing the call… River states this explicitly. Can’t remember which episode, but I think it’s Churchill who calls her. He was trying to contact the Doctor, but reaches her. At any rate, she definitely says something like: “You called the Time Vortex. It doesn’t always work, but the Tardis is clever. She re-routed the call”. So @bluesqueakpip yes to what you said. The Tardis rerouted the call from Karabraxos to the best place and time.
@purofilion @mudlark – Definitely a TM on “wetware” – the ultimate difference between robots and humans 🙂

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@thommk

It seems like we are being asked to go against our human nature a lot this series.

Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head… And I think it’s going to have something to do with robots.

What separates us from robots? Well… We’ve got involuntary reflexes and involuntary thoughts – but we can control them (to a point). we’ve got senses – but we can control or block them if we need to. We’ve got emotions – but we can keep them under control. We can go against our human nature 🙂

And if we’re part-human, part-robot, we can even choose which memories to keep and which thoughts to have. Emotions are perhaps more a chemical process and not so much a spiritual experience – for a cyborg.

But one concept that is entirely human, I think, is the notion of belief.

A human being doesn’t choose what to believe.

We either believe something or we don’t… We can pretend to believe something, but we can’t stop ourselves believing it or make ourselves believe something else…

We can research the evidence, and look for reasons to believe or not believe. But the belief bit either happens or it doesn’t.

We can’t control our belief the way that we control our breathing. We can choose to suspend our disbelief (e.g. when watching Doctor Who) or we can take a leap of faith.

Belief is not mechanical the way that thoughts, senses and reflexes are mechanical…

…So I think the way that Robot Of Sherwood centres around belief in something impossible will turn out to be very important.

…Which is why it’s incredibly weird that we’ve got robots who appear to believe (in in a very human way a) in a Promised Land. Not sure what we should make of that???

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Wow, only gone a few days and absolutely loads to catch up on. (Gives a whole new meaning to “Don’t Blink”!)

 

Will do my best to catch up on all the recent posts. But in the meantime, here’s a bit of bonkers for you…

 

In Let’s Kill Hitler, when the Doctor talks to the Tesselecta (or with Carter, controller of the Tesselecta), the conversation goes like this:

 

CARTER: Throughout history, many criminals have gone unpunished in their lifetimes. Time travel has responsibilities
DOCTOR: What? You got yourselves time travel, so you decided to punish dead people?
CARTER: We don’t kill them. We extract them near the end of their established timelines.
DOCTOR: And then what?
CARTER: Give them hell.

 

The Tesselecta’s MO in Let’s Kill Hitler is to travel around in time “extracting” bad people on the verge of death, miniaturise them and punish them.

 

Bonkers Theory number 1009: The role  (and crew) of the Tesselecta has moved on. Nowadays they “extract” good people and reward them…

 

Missy’s heaven has something to do with the Tesselecta. People are “extracted” on the brink of death and rewarded in a miniature “Heaven”.
The miniaturisation process in Into The Dalek, and reference to miniaturisation in Robot Of Sherwood could both hint at an ongoing theme of miniaturisation. And the saving of Gretchen and Humpty could be Tesselecta “extractions”. The brink-of-death teleporting of Psi and Saibra mirror the Tesselecta “saving” of Gretchen and Humpty. We still don’t know whose ship the were teleported to. They could have been miniaturised!

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@banjofiddler

Clara laughing inappropriately 23:44??

Wow, that’s mad – good spot. I missed that completely. Clara is pleading with him not to use the shredder. Why on earth would she suddenly be smiling? I can only imagine there’s a bit of dialogue that was cut – but then why wouldn’t they edit the smile out? It’s so wrong!

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Senses, thoughts and reflexes: Don’t breath/Do breathe/Listen/Don’t look at it/Think of your childhood/Don’t not think of your childhood… The obvious one this episode was “Don’t think at all”. But we also got “Don’t touch it” with the memory worm before the opening credits, and Saibra who doesn’t normally allow herself to touch people, but whose touch is essential to the heist.

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@phileasf: I really like your point the Doctor’s self-loathing being the key that allows him to figure out who the Architect is. There was a similar resolution in Amy’s Choice, where Matt Smith was able to figure out who the Dream Lord was because “There’s only one person in this universe who hates me as much as you do”.

I also like your observation about Karabraxos as a mirror (Twelve hates the Architect/Karabraxos burns her clones – both symbols of self-contempt)… Taking this a little further, and thinking of the Doctor’s line “You’ll be old and full of regret for the things that you can’t change” – Is the older Karabraxos also a mirror? (Karabraxos: “I am old, with many many regrets”. Doctor: “I’ve made many mistakes. It’s about time I did something about that”.)

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Cor blimey, that needs a re-watch. I’m not entirely sure what just happened!

“picture the thing you want most in the universe and decide how badly you want it.” (Faust, anyone?? 🙂

“Everything has a price tag I think you’ll find” (What about the Doctor’s new regeneration cycle?)

From Don’t Blink to Don’t Think… I’m convinced that controlling thoughts and reflexes is a Thing.

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Right, with 5 mins to go before the next episode, I’m watching out for anything Faustian (If there’s a servant called Wagner I’ll claim my £5.) But also for anything that involves controlling and/or suppressing senses, reflexes or thoughts – which I think is becoming a bit of a theme. (Don’t breath, do breathe, think of your childhood/don’t get distracted (don’t think of a pink elephant) don’t look at it, listen… that sort of thing) Maybe “Don’t listen” this time?

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@ whisht Crosswords and join-the-dots are both really good analogies, I think. I came across this forum when I was pondering the Impossible Girl mystery and was blown away (have been ever since) by everyone’s ideas and the level of discussion. It doesn’t really matter whose ideas turned out to be right. The conjecture was the fun and interesting part.

The join-the-dots thing reminds me of A Beautiful Mind, where Russell Crowe/John Nash draws pictures in the stars.
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@katharine
Ha ha, I knew I was on thin ice the second I clicked on Wikipedia 🙂

No Gretchen character in Marlowe then? And no question about Faustus’ ultimate damnation? … Hmmm. Don’t think I’ve got any way out of this. Seems I’m (quite unambiguously) wrong. (Sorry everyone!)

Still. Onwards and upwards… Could still be a Faust theme going on… If there isn’t, Moffat’s missed a trick in my view…

Glad you came out of hiding @katharine. Even if it was only to expose my woefully poor knowledge of English literature :)…

Forgetting Faust for a moment, I’d be fascinated know what literary references you see in Dr Who. (Like, properly informed observations based on actual knowledge, not Wikipedia!) Any thoughts?

@whisht Hmmm… I suppose that FACTS aren’t all bad 🙂
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Just to add: Dr Who will always be non-committal where religion is concerned. So definitely no way that this is about any sort of Life Everlasting. Whatever Missy is, she’s not the Devil, and whatever her Nether Regions are, they’re secular, not spiritual. And they’re scientifically possible (even if it’s in a nonsense wonsensey way).
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@bluesqueakpip @timeloop
Re: whether the choice of the name “Gretchen” implies ambiguity about where she goes when she (apparently) dies…

It feels a bit of a stretch to assume that Moffat knows and cares about the contrasting fates of Gretchen in Goethe’s earlier and later versions of Faust.

However, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that he saw/read/studied Goethe’s Faust (final version) at some point. And we can be certain that he is familiar with Marlowe’s Dr Faustus.

Moffat need not have studied Goethe in any depth. If Marlowe’s Gretchen is damned, and Goethe’s Gretchen is saved, we get the same ambiguity.

Also, much to my shame I know very little about English literature – so I looked up Marlowe’s Dr Faustus on Wikipedia. I thought the following was interesting (under the title “Damnation or Salvation”)

The scene following begins with Faustus’s friends discovering his clothes strewn about the stage: from this they conclude that Faustus was damned. However, his friends decide to give him a final party, a religious ceremony that hints at salvation. The discovery of the clothes is a scene present only in the later ‘B text’ of the play — in the earlier version of the play devils carry Faustus off the stage.

So both Goethe and Marlowe had a change of heart when it came to damning people.

If there is a Faustian undercurrent (and I think there is) then there’s also a lot of scope for ambiguity about the nature of redemption/damnation – regardless of whether or not Moffat is a Goethe expert.

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@ timeloop

I think he changed it to heavenbound to underline that ones actions can always influence the future.

Never occurred to me. I really like that. It’s never too late 🙂
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@spider when you wrote “who knows” I saw Tom Baker speaking to Matt Smith: “Who knows, eh? (taps nose) WHO knows.” What an incredible scene that was. (Also “The Trousers of Iron”? This simply has to happen)

@arbutus I know, the Mr Men reviews are brilliant aren’t they? If I’d written them, that would be my entire life’s work done… Also, is it just me or is the whole concept of ironing completely absurd?

@whisht Everything that you just said. Brilliant. Can I paste it into an email and send it to the so-called friend who sent me the Mr Men reviews? And for that matter to anyone who tries to piss on the bonfire (the Bonkers Bonfire… The Bonkfire?? Could that be a Thing?)

@purofilion Ooh, really good point about the bet. In the folk tales, it’s a pact, but Goethe puts his own take on it and turns it into a wager. Gives Faust free will. Not sure what to make of that, but the Dalek in Ep 2 jumps to mind – free will when he’s broken? Or free will when he’s fixed? Or free will when he’s fixed but still “good”?…

@timeloop Good question. Do we think that Moffat knows and/or cares about Goethe and the whole Urfaust/Faust thing? If we must bother ourselves with pesky FACTS, then probably not. However, the whole Faustian pact with the devil is a very old and very common story. I hope Goethe is involved, but he doesn’t have to be. Marlowe wrote a Faust story too. I know next to nothing about it, but I think Marlowe’s Faust was Dr Faustus (A Doctor, no less) who made a pact with the devil. And if I remember rightly, @bluesqueakpip said Marlowe’s version had a Gretchen character who went quite unambiguously to hell (is that right?)

… With all this talk of saving/not saving and moral ambiguity, I’m reminded of what you @purofilion said about Waiting For Godot in the Deep Breath comments. You said something in that post about the Doctor being like the Thief from the Gospels… This really isn’t my area, and correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Waiting For Godot include a discussion between Vladimir and Estragon about the two Gospel thieves? And about how the Gospels differ in their telling of that story? And the dialogue points towards the arbitrary nature of salvation, I think. Possibly? Anyway, the whole thing of being saved/not saved is there. Or not there. One or the other 🙂

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Meh. I suppose for me, when Yes seemed a real possibility, it would undoubtedly have impacted negatively on my day-to-day life. But I had a real sense that people (just regular, normal people) can make huge changes if they get together.
I hope that feeling doesn’t go away.

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Who will fight Scotland’s corner do you think? Do you think people have the will and the capacity to organise and influence policy, without recourse to politicians? That would be amazing.

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Not trying to stir up any trouble, but I’m very conflicted about Scotland’s “no” vote. (Can we go there?)
As a very left-leaning English woman, I was kind of hoping that Scotland would stay put, so I’m glad about the outcome : The Tories can’t get too comfortable in Westminster.
But I was also kind of rooting for Scotland to be a proper, independent country and show the rest of us how it’s done. Like Iceland but impossible for the press to ignore (and with bagpipes to boot) 🙂
Maybe though, just maybe, this Referendum has shown what happens when the people really get involved: The politicians all panic and no-one knows what to expect. It’s exhilarating isn’t it? That would be a real result 🙂

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@spider

Ha ha, that’s ok then. When I arrive dishevelled and unprepared for work tomorrow, I’ll simply explain that I was very, very busy “conferring meaning that wasn’t there”

And she’ll say “We’ve all been conferring meaning that wasn’t there, but some of us found time to iron our trousers.”

And that will be true on a frightening number of levels.

My advice: You need to copyright the whole Mr Men / Dr Who thing before it’s too late 🙂
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@oblique (again)
I like what you said about pace, and am interested in your thoughts. I don’t watch much TV, but when I do, I feel like there’s some unwritten rule that scenes can’t last more than ten seconds, and I often find it offputting.
I think this Dr Who series is slower-paced and I like that a lot. Much as I adored Matt Smith, I’m beginning to appreciate the brooding and the waiting and the quiet of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor.
Do you think so far that this series is too rushed?
I’m second guessing you here, but I feel like you think that bonkers theorising is a bad thing, whereas I think it’s a wonderful thing. It doesn’t matter if the Dr Who franchise is chasing targets, competing with X-Factor and trying to sell a million Clara Dolls by next Tuesday. Stephen Moffat remains an artist, and artists delight in art. We don’t know what the twist will be but we know there will be a twist. We don’t know what the clues are, but we know there are clues. We don’t know what the visual allusions are, but we can be sure they’re staring us in the face.
Guessing is fun.
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@oblique
Hee hee, I was banging on about the cleverness of Dr Who the other day, and my friend sent me this link to some overly-academic Mr Men reviews. His point is well-made 🙂
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1SM813W6H36YA/ref=cm_pdp_rev_all?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview

Is that what we’re doing, in your view? Over-analysing and conferring meaning that isn’t really there?
Or is it something else? I ask again: Am I wasting my life? 🙂
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Just sitting down to respond, but my dog has other ideas. Very quickly though: Unlike Goethe’s world, the Whoniverse cannot and will never offer an unambiguous position as far as metaphysics is concerned. Goethe’s world has a God, a heaven and a hell. Dr Who has an eternally vast universe ruled by laws of (all be it wibbly wobbly) time and (if you ask a physicist nonsensey-wonsensey) science. Personally I think that Heaven/The Promised Land/The Nether Region is a very real physical place.
Anyway, I’m always grasping for literary references, so here’s a thought: Remember Clara’s necklace that she used to wear? The bird with a wide wingspan hanging around her neck?… I’ve not studied the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but bet someone on this forum has… If we go with the idea that Clara will be in some way a sacrifice, and the albatross around the neck is a poetic symbol of wrongdoing/guilt/unnecessary sacrifice of something magnificent… Is Clara’s early necklace a portent of her ultimate fate??

My dog is attempting to lick my skin from my face. (I am 4 minutes late for our evening walk.) Very torn, but should probably take her out. I do love this forum 🙂 x

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@oblique
I’d be interested to know your thoughts about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Are they both just children’s books written only for children with the sole purpose of commercial gain? Or can they be read at a number of levels? Are they in fact a bit clever?
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Going back to @purofilion and the whole Gretchenfrage from ages ago. It’s been swishing around at the back of my head. I studied German and loved Goethe, so I’m probably grasping, but…

… Perhaps a point of interest (alternatively a point of boredom) is that in Faust, Gretchen is saved. She is explicitly and noticeably saved, in that when she dies in the play, the Voice Of God shouts from the wings “She is saved!” So definitely an emphasis on being saved.

So if there’s a deliberate Faust allusion, then the name Gretchen definitely implies being saved…

Except that it doesn’t. Because Goethe spent a lot of his life writing Faust, and earlier on in the rough drafts of Faust (or the Urfaust (original Faust)) the Voice Of God shouted from the wings “She is damned!”. So between the rough drafts and the final version, the metaphysical fate of the Gretchen character changed from hellbound to heavenbound – all at the stroke of a pen.

Now why did Goethe change his mind? Was it maturity that softened his heart to the plight of poor Gretchen? Or was it the need to appease a growing commercial audience that convinced Goethe to send her to heaven? Or was it just the random and inexplicable whim of the all-powerful author?

Why am I posting this here and not back on “Into the Dalek”? (I hear you ask) Well, in answer to your question (we really didn’t ask ourselves that, but do go on…) I want to float the theory that the allusions to Faust (and there are a few of them, I think) are deliberate, and they point towards an ongoing Faustian theme. (Stay with me here…

In the old folk tales (pre-Goethe) Faust sold his soul for anything from a feeling of true bliss to material wealth to the elixir of eternal life…

Now, could it be that the Doctor has unwittingly entered into some sort of Faustian contract? Do his extra 13 regenerations carry some sort of yet-to-be-discovered Faustian price?

Or is Moffat being all postmodern and giving a little wink to the concept of the “whim of the author” (Screw canon. I’m God of the Whoniverse and I’ll save who I like… “Never tell me the rules”)?

Or is the writer very subtly pointing out (to a ridiculously small number of people, possibly only me) that the mature Doctor (like the older Goethe) is more inclined to mercy than his brusque demeanour might have us believe.

Or is the Nethersphere (Please can we start calling it the Nether Regions? Just for larks?) a morally ambiguous place? Is Gretchen Carlisle both saved and damned in some weird-but-linked-to-Goethe way?

Or is it a more general allusion to old Romantic ideals?

Or did Moffat just throw a dart at a list of baby names?… Am I wasting my life?

@rickgreen – All of the above is scientific FACT. 🙂
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[idiotsavon @replies]

@rickgreen
For a bonkers theoriser you seem incredibly sure of yourself. I am instantly suspicious. You could be a disgruntled BBC employee. Or perhaps an un(der)-paid intern blowing the whistle?? In any case, if you turn out to be right, I will immediately suspect you of foul play, and try to forget everything you just said…

And if you turn out to be wrong… well, GOOD. 😉

Luckily, I know the real truth of the matter… So here it is. The truth of the matter… ‘****MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT****… None of Dr Who ever happened. It’s all an invention of the hive-mind of a particularly busy ant colony… On Neptune… And the ants are the size of houses, and incredibly clever… They tumble-dry their clothes on windmills, their legs have a doctorate each, and their antennae are mini-tardises… And they’re all called JR Ewing.
Seriously though, if your comment is anything but conjecture it belongs in Spoilers or in quarantine 🙂
x

This will be revealed soon…

🙂 🙂 x

[idiotsavon @replies]

@bluesqueakpip (again)

Hmm… it seems to be played as when she looks into people’s eyes. And in Deep Breath the Half Faced Man took someone’s eyes, and in Into The Dalek, they went in through the eyestalk.

What’s that old saying? The eyes are the windows to the soul.

Definitely an eye-related visual theme: Dalek antibodies look like eyes; some memorable close-ups of eyes in Deep Breath; Dalek bodywork looks like eyes (see my new avatar); Clara’s blouse is covered in them. Into the Dalek has as its climax the Dr talking to an eye (which is fair enough, since there’s not much else for him to talk to except pink squidge) and while he’s talking to the Dalek eye, behind him is the projected image of a star being born – which mirrors visually the Dalek eye that he’s talking to (I liked that touch a lot). Lots of close-ups in Deep Breath of HFM’s weird eye, and it’s the optic nerve that he steals from the dinosaur before burning it.
How bad do puns have to be before people get permanently banned from this site? (I want to say “the eyes have it” but will edit as required…)

[idiotsavon @replies]

@bluesqueakpip – yes, that makes a lot more sense. I didn’t think of it that way. He’s not competing for her, but for her attention – and for everybody’s attention really… It puts in a new light the intial “take a punt” conversation. She asks for Robin Hood, but he offers her Ice Warriors on Mars – or the Other-People-in-the-Other-Place. Places he knows, and where he can show off and be in charge.

I really enjoyed the line “At last, something real” (upon walking into an utterly fantastical futuristic spaceship control room!) Perhaps, then, not just relief because this feels more real to him – but also “This is really my area. I can shine here” 🙂

Yet he’s still very self-effacing when it comes to any talk of him being a hero.

[idiotsavon @replies]

Very, very, very late to the party (I’ve brought wine though)

Usually by the time I get online after reading a thread, I realise I’ve passed the point where I could have said something relevant, so don’t say anything at all.

But sod it…

For what it’s worth, I thought this was a very well-timed bit of fun, after a couple of quite intense episodes (both of which I liked, but was ready for something lighter.)

I enjoyed the overplayed merriment, and the way that it aroused suspicion in the doctor. (No matter what the situation, location, millennium, world, universe or indeed dimension… how can anybody possibly be this happy? …… And more to the point, why won’t they stop?!) I liked all that.

At times I did feel a bit like the Doctor was competing with Robin for Clara, and not sure that’s a subtext that I like – but perhaps he was competing more generally to be alpha male, or just refused to believe Robin was even real (“He’s a legend” overheard by Robin himself was one of my favourite moments by the way.)
More to say, but feel like I ought to make the effort and look back so that I can address my thoughts to the people that made me think them.

[idiotsavon @replies]

Hello!
I’ve had to wait absolutely ages (well, two days but it felt a lot longer) to watch Deep Breath.
Finally had a chance to watch it though, and then immediately came to read everybody’s posts on the Doctor Who Forum (obviously). I forgot what a friendly, interesting and really rather clever corner of the internet this is!
I’m a big Ben Wheatley fan, and love Peter Capaldi (who doesn’t?) and Jenna Coleman was the best I’ve seen her. I also liked the script, and adored watching Capaldi doing such a hilarious job of disliking his own face. (There are a few scenes in Being John Malkovich that I love for very similar reasons).

However, on first viewing, I have to say I found myself appreciating the episode rather than enjoying it, if that makes sense. And there wasn’t any good reason for this. Nothing was wrong in particular. I just wasn’t feeling it, and I couldn’t work out why… until the phonecall. I hadn’t seen any spoilers, so Matt Smith was a complete bolt out of the blue. And I’m not too proud to admit that I got dust in both eyes simultaneously.
The truth is, much as I can’t wait to find out who the new doctor turns out to be, I’ll also miss the last one. The friendly, smiley one. “I wear a fez now” and “Geronimo” and “Who’s for Twister” and “Do we tend to say yowza”. I absolutely loved all that. It was fun.
I’m not complaining. I think I’m just a kneejerk “Change Is Bad” sort of person. Didn’t watch Nu Who for years because it had CGI and a pop star (Billie Piper) and it just seemed all wrong. (Later saw the error of my ways and bought box sets…) The consensus seems to be that the phonecall was aimed at small children. I’d say it was probably aimed at small children and change-averse 34-yr-olds who should know better 🙂
I’m surprised that so many people think Clara’s response to Twelve was out of character. I didn’t see it that way, and thought it was consistent with the “He’s a-comin’” dialogue in the Xmas special when Eleven was ready to regenerate. And when Clara first saw him, all fresh-faced, didn’t she say something like “You’re you again”? – Not “you’re young again”, but “you’re YOU again”. She didn’t even feel that the old him had been the real him. I thought that scene showed that Clara was going to find it difficult to adjust to his new face (and body, and personality… and kidneys.)
I agree that the “Trigger’s Broom” metaphor was a highlight – well-scripted and brilliantly acted. I remember a similar speech in the Doctor’s Wife, made to the couple that House kept repairing with bits of Timelords. Something along the lines of “You’ve been patched up so many times I’d be surprised if there’s anything left of the real you”. I wondered whether this, too, was about the Doctor as much as the patched-up people… I also think it’s a big part of being human, but that’s more of an undergraduate essay than a forum post 🙂

Looking forward to watching the new series, following the bonkers theories, and possibly even coming up with one or two of my own!

x

 

[idiotsavon @replies]

@cathannabel  Re: Eric Ritchie Jr.

Some years ago, I had tickets for, but ultimately missed, a West-End production of “A Christmas Carol”. The actor playing Ebeneezer Scrooge was Eric Richard. Coincidence???

I loved your blog post, btw.

x

[idiotsavon @replies]

Ten minutes later and it turns out that putting a jogging suit on has made me feel remarkably tired. Time for a lie down I think…

 

To be honest, this comes as no surprise. Happens every january 🙂

[idiotsavon @replies]

I know it’s late, but… Merry Christmas! And just the right time to say…
Hello and Happy New Year to you all!

Thanks for the welcome-backs, the welcome-any-times, and thanks @fatmaninabox for putting me on the sofa last time 🙂

New Year Resolutions anyone? I’ve gone for (in reverse order of importance):
1 Run a marathon (this year I mean it);
2 Be “the change I want to see in the world” (not entirely sure what that means – saw it on Facebook);
3 Partake in a bit of bonkers theorising.
4 Annoy people by using parentheses in most (if not all) sentences.

So, starting as I mean to go on…
I’ve written down a few ideas, but am not sure where to put them.

So I hope it’s ok if I ask first:
To talk about running themes (“repeated memes” if you will…) that have emerged over the course of the last series or two, where is it best to go?

Speaking of running, it’s time to crack on with my final resolution. See you in 26.2 miles. Or failing that, when I get tired 🙂

x

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