@purofilion: How about this symmetry:  In Kill the Moon, Peter Harness has the Doctor test humans with Clara their representative having to make a critical life-or-death decision about another species, a morality test for the worthiness of humans.  In his Zygon serial this season, perhaps Harness is showing the Zygon version of Clara having to m…[Read more]

For Tarot card followers, this might be the moment for the card of The Devil:

http://www.tarotlore.com/tarot-cards/the-devil/

Osgood might be The Devil tempting the younger rebel Zygons with a choice that will give them what they claim to want.

The imperative of the politics of the story are that those of the elite who appear to be traitors or incompetents must in fact be competent patriots.  If one considers Osgood in isolation, it would appear she blundered by first hoarding critical information, going off reservation, then being captured by the younger Zygons.  And she was showing f…[Read more]

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The Doctor always knew, somewhere deep inside, that humans and Time Lords were the prophesied hybrid that would one day terrorize the universe.  Why else did the First Doctor go to what was the Time Lord equivalent of worse than a Third World planet relative to Gallifrey?  Why else did not just the Doctor but the Monk and the Master also find t…[Read more]

@supernumerary: That’s why I think Clara was told to deliberately not pick up the Doctor’s phone, so he would not trust her.  Having tried to contact Clara so vigorously, note how quick once they meet the Doctor is to part.

Flying on the President of the World’s plane also has to be a ruse, as the Doctor was shot down in its predecessor in Death…[Read more]

@purofilion: In the original series Star Trek episode What are Little Girls Made Of, Captain Kirk as he is being duplicated for an android copy deliberately repeats a phrase that he would never say in order for the android to instantly arouse Spock’s suspicions.  Perhaps something similar was done for Clara if as I speculate she was being…[Read more]

Not long ago it was being argued on this forum that Moffat often reverses what appears to be death.  Perhaps this two-parter will be another example.

I wonder if the apparent deaths, weren’t. Perhaps they were almost all dragged away and stuffed into pods for duplication, and once the civil war is resolved next episode, a huge number of people…[Read more]

If there is a political message, what it must argue against is that the elites that call themselves progressives are instead out-of-touch with reality, incompetent, and have a traitorous agenda.  Therefore I expect to see in the second-parter a burst of competence from leadership.

I speculate not only Osgood but Kate Stewart established some…[Read more]

This will be interesting seeing how the writers plan to put the genie back in the bottle.

To me the obvious solution is for the Zygons to voluntarily agree to ingest some formula that permanently suppresses their ability to imitate humans, leaving them in their true Zygon form.  The younger Zygons had a point.  Be what you are, without shame.  Af…[Read more]

I’ll make a prediction that will of course be stunningly wrong:  The real Kate Stewart is pretending to be compromised.  For one thing, in The Day of the Doctor, Queen Elizabeth I was able to make everyone believe she was the Zygon leader and not the human.  (How a mere human could fool the Zygons into thinking she was a Zygon seems rather far fe…[Read more]

Whereas I think in the spirit of the say the serials of the Fourth Doctor, not only does importance of accepting mortality apply to individuals, it also applies to species.  There is a time for a species to live in the Doctor Who universe but also I believe a time for it to die, or at least cease to be of great influence, including Time…[Read more]

As mentioned by others, the leonine character seems to be some sort of other dimension analogy to the Tharils in the Fourth Doctor serial Warrior’s Gate.  If Moffat is trying to appeal to those who were introduced to Doctor Who by the Fourth Doctor, he would be aware that audience would be quite used to near psychedelic time / space travel…[Read more]

@purofilion: It seems to me Moffat has been playing with the idea of consciousness captured in a virtual reality for a long time such as Forest of the Dead, which seems to me to be an interesting analogy for what can happen to Clara, as compared to what happened to River Song.

@purofilion: Isn’t River Song investigating the Weeping Angels?

I expect there to someday be a *Genesis of the Weeping Angels* serial with the creation of a Davros-like more human angel that can talk regularly with the Doctor.

For the tarot card that describes Ashildr, I am going to argue, as I did before The Woman Who Lived, that the proper card is Justice:

http://www.tarotlore.com/tarot-cards/justice/

Trace back the meaning of the twin pillars of justice between which the woman sits all the way back to Mesopotamian myth:  They are the tree of life and the tree of…[Read more]

Here’s my bonkers theory about why a death can open a door to another universe:  It’s a computer bug.  The multiverse is a giant computer simulation and a death forces a transfer of control that gives a brief window of opportunity to hack the system.

This sort of idea should be very familiar to fans of the Fourth Doctor with serials such as Logopo…[Read more]

At the start of the episode Ashildr has neither purpose nor happiness.  By the end of the episode Ashildr has purpose.  The Doctor has convinced her she still cares about the people of Earth and that he is also the one best suited to be Earth’s protector.  But Ashildr has lost all hope of happiness.  She no longer even has the chip to make a fel…[Read more]

It’s Missy who talked to Ashildr.  Here’s why:  Both Missy and Ashildr agree the Doctor should not have human companions.   Missy wants her friend back and thinks humans are beneath the Doctor; Ashildr thinks the Doctor is being irresponsible with the companions and should as a near immortal be man enough to bear his burden alone just like Ash…[Read more]

@kharis: Brilliant catch, bravo!

@arbutus: Try this bonkers theory.  Where else would Clara’s mom be but in Missy’s Nethersphere?  Taking a life can open a portal to another dimension.  What if Missy is sowing the seeds for Clara to go into the Nethersphere, perhaps to trade her life for her mother’s, just like Danny Pink was able to send back to…[Read more]