A few thoughts –  loved everyone’s ideas a lot and the tarot match ups are very interesting.

@Juniperfish

Totally agree about Jack.  He owned that part and  he made it special for me too

@Nerys                                   @jphamlore                                    @Ichabod

I think that ignorant is when you are not completely informed b…[Read more]

I am minded to agree with @jphamlore (almost) and @ichabod (more so). It wasn’t a lesson about weak women because Hubris (not, in this case, ignorance and stupidity) is gender-neutral. Clara had successfully aped the Doctor on several occasion (with great courage to be sure), but the thing with believing your own publicity is that Hubris’s good…[Read more]

@lisa  I don’t think she died because she had some suicidal death wish. It was to my mind cause she just realized all along that she’d get caught eventually running with the Doctor

Maybe it’s not gone so far as becoming a death *wish*, but remember that phone call in Under the Lake — “Die on the one after me!  You do not leave me!” roughly…[Read more]

A little love for Puro everyone, she is back in the hospital and needs our warm thoughts.  Remember, she was in pain when she wrote that post.  Puro loves the show and this Forum and I’m sure it’s eating at her to be part of any disruption or hurt here.  I think she is just taking a break here because of her illness and stress.  I’m sure she wil…[Read more]

@jphamlore You make some very good points about Clara missing what the Doctor truly needed from her. But I think there are two distinct elements to Clara, as we know her, which may have kept her from fully understanding this:

1. She and the Claricles (or maybe she too is Claricle; dunno) were meant to save the Doctor. Surely this must have…

[Read more]

@jphamlore

The more I think about the death of Clara, the better I like it. 

I prefer to call it departure. It doesn’t sound so indelicately and you can openly say that you like it. 🙂

@jphamlore One could also argue that traveling with the Doctor for such a long time, longer than any of the other companions, damaged Clara irrevocably. The traveling process had eroded her sense of what it means to be human and to live, and then Danny’s death snapped that tether altogether. The Doctor, as Clara noted, gave her a reason for being.…[Read more]

and the only ones who know about a confession dial.

@jphamlore Davros also knows about the confession dial and expressed interest as to what the confession was.

@lisa  How did Ashildr/Me know to say to the Doctor in ‘The Woman Who Lived’ that Clara would die on him and also! blow away like a puff of smoke?

She meant that *any* human that she or the Doctor became fond of would, sooner or later, just die their little mayfly-death, blowing away like smoke and eventually forgotten in their long, long lives…[Read more]

@jphamlore

I’m thinking of the white light from Clara is possibly a form of protection
against the black smoke raven monster? Maybe its a way of her ending as the Doctor
and saving future victims against the ravens death? Like a guardian or a barrier. Well
its all possible in Dr. Who. I could see it as part of her hybrid evolution too. Maybe…[Read more]

@Lewis

Yes, I agree with your post too. Clara the Nanny/caretaker of the Doctor. She
was born not only to be the impossible girl but also with strong instinctual gifts to be a
nanny which made her perfectly suited to be this Doctors companion. She was that from the time
he was a small boy telling him his fear was also a companion. He helped…[Read more]

@jphamlore.  You are correct and my memory was at fault. I was making the same mistake as the Doctor and forgetting that she had corrected him.

The character of the hidden enclave would, however, still be constant with the date of construction of the original station in 1848, assuming that was what Ashildr meant.  At that time of rapid ex…[Read more]

@akhaten

Welcome aboard!

she went out not with a bang, but with a whimper

I’m pretty sure the jury is still out on that one.

@jphamlore

Waterloo is not especially complex – big, but fairly straightforward. However, the first station was only built in 1848, a full 33 years after the battle. South London railways builders generally were renowned…[Read more]

@Jphamlore – more like Icarus and Daedalus, actually.

Okay, I’m out of denial and now into furious anger.

Whether or not Clara is actually dead, the production team has two episodes for me to make some dramatic sense out of this. Otherwise it’s going to be a million-and-one viewers lost for series 10.

I’d disagree that this ending was in any…[Read more]

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@catladymeow Good criticism.   Yes, some of us, like you, understood the episode just fine.  I was also never confused by it, just didn’t really move me in any kind of way.  Appreciated the brave attempt, and always like a good layering of ‘Matrix’ like themes, it just never pulled me in.

@jphamlore & @ichabod I agree about the Moon tarot ca…[Read more]

@miapatrick @mudlark @bluesqueakpip @jphamlore

I was relistening the epiosde and I noticed how often the characters used the word “god”or “gods”, e.g.”For God’s sake”, “Oh God”, “May the Gods”. I counted them and they used them 18 times. The crew, Rasmussen, Clara, even 474. Everyone except the Doctor. I’m not suggesting that Doctor is an atheist…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

Damn it.  “A smarlinb, stumbling lump” = “a snarling, stumbling lump”, post #47202.

@jphamlore  @whisht  When I was learning to read Tarot cards, The Moon was also interpreted, broadly, as “Seeing things by a False Light”.  That’s kind of what we’ve been saying here about “Sleep No More”, isn’t it.

yep @jphamlore – I agree about the Moon (though I don’t actually think Gatiss was aware of the Tarot thing when he originally wrote it, but we don’t care about that – he’s merely the writer!).

I think that card also has something to do with “uncertainty and confusion” (according to my Tarot book) which fits in with everyone’s experience of…[Read more]