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1 January 2016 at 08:33 #49895
At least from The Rings of Akhaten, which was written by Neil Cross and not by Moffat, the Doctor’s knowledge of beginnings and endings may dwarf that of anyone who has ever lived in the universe:
DOCTOR: I walked away from the last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time. No space. Just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. I’ve watched universes freeze and creations burn. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things. Secrets that must never be told. Knowledge that must never be spoken.
29 December 2015 at 08:23 #49805The starship on which the TARDIS lands, Harmony and Redemption, is shown passing by the star Gamma Eridani which apparently by that time had gone supernova. This star is also known as Zaurak. Gamma Eridani is located in the Constellation Eridanus, which in many ancient cultures was associated with a river.
In astrology some give the following interpretation to Zaurak:
… melancholia and feelings of great loneliness, as though one is all alone on that long river… Yet, if the aspects be right, there can also be that forward-looking faith that one is not really alone …
and for the Constellation Eridanus:
It gives a love of knowledge and science, much travel and many changes, a position of authority, but danger of accidents …
http://astrologyking.com/zaurak-star/
As far as astronomy and science go, I have the impression that Gamma Eridani today is a red giant that may not have the mass to actually go supernova. Given the care at which this star has been chosen, I would not be surprised if this is a future plot point. I speculated months ago eventually someone will want to create a supernova relatively near to Earth in order to create a new Eye of Harmony and a new time traveling civilization.
29 December 2015 at 03:00 #49794@nerys: I think the Doctor through much of the episode was hoping River Song would recognize him but did not want to do something completely obvious that would announce his presence such as pulling out the sonic screwdriver. Thus the use as you have noted of the glasses at one point.
I love the idea of the glasses and hope for even more radical equipment such as a sonic jacket or other article of clothing. Think of the Doctor having the equivalent of the thousands of hairs a spider uses to “hear”:
http://www.wired.com/2011/12/spider-leg-hair-hearing/
29 December 2015 at 01:34 #49787I am sorry if I created an argument. I just wanted to speculate if from what we have seen of the character River Song, would she be happy to be confined for an eternity in the virtual reality of the Library.
At least people should be happy that the Doctor did not swipe himself with River’s sonic screwdriver before he handed it to her. The episode explains why River would not think it good to have a copy of the Doctor to spend eternity with her. At least there wasn’t a rhyme with how Rose got her own copy of the Tenth Doctor, only improved for her as a match, to spend a lifetime with.
28 December 2015 at 18:31 #49767@blenkinsopthebrave: I like the speculation that the Doctor did much more than that: The Doctor went back in time and arranged for the construction of the Singing Towers of Darillium himself.
@ichabod: I agree completely with your ideas on how to transition the Doctor to a more balanced emotional relationship with his companions. Unfortunately I have a sinking feeling there has been a reduction in both time and resources available to showrunner Steven Moffat, time in particular since he is juggling Sherlock. This last season in particular I think there was a decision to concentrate all new character development on Maisie Williams’ Ashildr. Other than Maisie Williams, almost all of the Doctor’s best interactions Season 9 were with old favorites brought back. That is why I have my doubts the show is capable anymore of introducing a string of memorable new characters in one season and why I have speculated Moffat may have Capaldi double-up as a villain next season.
@puroandson: As for the final fate of River Song in the Library, I did have the thought it could be similar to the end of Plato’s The Republic, the Myth of Er, that has Odysses the last to choose picking through all the lives that had yet to be chosen until he found one that was a quiet life, completely different from the one he had had. I now wonder if the Doctor will use the last 24-year night on Darillium to slow down River’s hyperactivity to transition her to a much more peaceful eternal existence.
28 December 2015 at 05:47 #49750@ichabod: Clara did return to Gallifrey in an instant of time and then had herself put back in her body for her death at Trap Street, so the Time Lords were none the wiser. Except this “instant of time” was relative to her stopped pulse, her one moment of time left. Clara even alludes to this:
Clara: Mind you… seeing as I’m not actually ageing, there’s a tiny little bit of wiggle room, isn’t there?
But there is one thing about the ending that becomes more and more annoying to me the more I watch it: When the Doctor enters his TARDIS, he casually leans his guitar against part of the ship that could not possibly restrain it from crashing to the ground if the TARDIS is subjected to its usual turbulence traveling. I refuse to believe this Doctor would behave so casually towards his instrument.
28 December 2015 at 04:02 #49749@tardigrade: I think the pattern is that in the new series, Doctors have one companion with an extreme emotional relationship, and then a follow-up companion they can hold more at arms length. Thus the Tennant Doctor had Rose, the Smith Doctor had Amy, and the Capaldi Doctor had Clara as their extremely close emotional companions, but then the Tennant Doctor had Donna and the Smith Doctor had Clara to cool down with. Thus I expect the next companion for the Capaldi Doctor to be one with whom he is more emotionally distant, distant enough to where he’s not going to go crazy if he loses her.
27 December 2015 at 06:52 #49722Here’s my bonkers theory for season 10, perhaps Moffat’s swan song. We are going to see an evil Doctor, but not the Valeyard, because Moffat redoes as much as he can from the classical series, to paraphrase, not as history repeating, but sometimes having it rhyme. And who better to play an evil Doctor than Capaldi himself?
But this evil Doctor I think will not be the Doctor, it will be Rassilon regenerated impersonating the Doctor. I think we fans are going to have some fun seeing things throughout season 10 that are just a bit off, just a bit different, on purpose.
After all, why not get as much mileage out of Capaldi as possible? We have been shown in Heaven Sent it is possible to have an entire episode of Capaldi talking to himself.
27 December 2015 at 04:52 #49718Now that I think about it, I simply am not sure whether the Library that River Song winds up in Forest of the Dead will be heaven or hell for her. I think at the end the Doctor repaired the Library’s computer’s virtual reality so that it would be a much more pleasant place to live in. I am trying to remember whether in theory the Library can bring to life the books that are stored in it so that in effect the child it was built for, and thus the child’s companions, can in effect travel through all of time and all of space that has been written down in a form of virtual reality.
And to return to the original question, would River Song be happy or unhappy to be confined for eternity within an already written virtual reality with a few actual people, her shipmates and the child.
And what did this line mean? Is it possible the Doctor can still visit River on occasion?
RIVER [OC]: Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call
26 December 2015 at 08:46 #49687The Doctor: Things. There are things that have to be checked before I get it to you. If we don’t check the thing, then…
Reminded me of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Sleeper pretending to be surgeons who were to clone the Leader.
26 December 2015 at 07:20 #49682@theconsultingdoctor: The reason why this was such an emotional episode that could be the conclusion of the River Song saga is that this episode apparently could have been Steven Moffat’s last as showrunner. Fortunately for us he is staying for at least next season, at the cost of his having to juggle his duties with Sherlock.
Losing Moffat both as showrunner and lead writer would be a tremendous loss for the show. In some sense I think he is speaking to us as fans, telling us to enjoy the moments we have left with him.
24 December 2015 at 00:16 #49626@mikeofmcr: I argue below that the Doctor has to recognize Clara, at least for a moment, from Rigsy’s artwork on the TARDIS, so that subconsciously he will no longer have a mystery gnawing at him, because the show itself asserts the Doctor cannot resist a mystery.
I contend Hell Bent and in fact the entire season after the first two Davros / Missy episodes are meant to be understandable to anyone who has seen only the 50th anniversary The Day of the Doctor and this season itself.
Therefore in the context of this season, I contend a reasonable explanation for the neuro block is that it is a program that can act on the brain’s equivalent of a BIOS, a program that can access functions below the conscious level. The existence of such programs that can even work across species was shown in Under the Lake and Before the Flood.
I contend much of the results of Hell Bent are actually similar to what happened in The Day of the Doctor. Once again Clara saves the Doctor from himself, nudging him to make a choice that saves lives, here the universe from being endangered by a time paradox, and once again (some) version of the Doctor must forget the exact details.
The difference is The Day of the Doctor left the Doctor with a mystery, whereas the intent at the end of Hell Bent was to persuade the Doctor to forgo further pursuit of the mystery of who was Clara Oswald in his life. Thus I believe it is intentionally shown that the Doctor does recognize who Clara is when he sees Rigsy’s art on the Tardis, but just like The Day of the Doctor, the neuro block program will eventually cause the Doctor to forget the exact details of Clara again. Nonetheless the Doctor will at a subconscious level be reprogrammed by this revelation to emotionally accept Clara’s absence.
23 December 2015 at 01:44 #49590The Doctor’s death as shown in The Wedding of River Song was also a fixed point in time, recorded in history apparently by many. Yet the Doctor found a loophole. Why couldn’t he find a loophole for Clara other than his desperate attempts at the very end of time that didn’t seem to be working very well until Clara and Ashildr’s intervention?
I think it is because some combination of Gallifrey, the Time Lords, the Matrix, and Ashildr create a harder fixed point in time than even the one the Doctor faced for his own death. The Time Lords have access to the time vortex. The Matrix makes prophecies. Ashildr lasts until the very end of time, minutes before the end. How fortunate for the Doctor that Gallifrey was out of this universe when he faced his “death.”
So in some sense I think the Time Lords and Ashildr did owe Clara something, because they are the ones who have set her fate in concrete through their knowledge of time.
20 December 2015 at 06:47 #49542@tardigrade: As I have written elsewhere, as a fan of the Fourth Doctor serial The Invasion of Time, I found it perfectly within the Doctor’s character to shoot the General and force a regeneration. The Fourth Doctor was willing to appear to be a traitor to Gallifrey, assuming the Presidency apparently to destroy the transduction barrier to allow in the Vardans, only to double-cross the Vardans trapping them in a time loop. And when the Sontarans took advantage of the barriers being down, the Fourth Doctor assembled a forbidden weapon that could erase the Sontaran leader from existence. And then the Doctor even lost some of his memories following that adventure. To me it was as if Moffat brought back old good times.
The Doctor in subsequent trips to Gallifrey found out the Time Lord leadership was worthless. Even his mentor Borusa betrayed everyone seeking immortality in The Five Doctors. I think the Doctor thought no, this time it must be different. That is why he ordered the exile of Rassilon and then followed it up telling the General that the High Council should also go into exile on the next shuttle out. But that still wasn’t enough. Because the likely successor to at least administer the transition to a new government, the General, was an old man. That just would not do.
So now I think the Doctor shot the General both to deliberately tick off the General, because the last thing the Doctor wants is his version of Davros’s Nyder, and to make the General regenerate to be a younger, perhaps far different person. Because that’s what Gallifrey needs at the moment, fresher blood.
The scene this season I still cannot accept is the Doctor initially running away from kid Davros on Skaro. How could the Doctor not reason that at the very least, leaving kid Davros alone in a hand-mine field with the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver might have exactly been the catalyst for turning Davros into the monstrous genius he would eventually become. That’s basically Time Travel 101. How many times has the Doctor seen that ends justifies the means evil with respect to time travel merely creates the terrible outcome one is trying to avoid. Or what if Davros happened to be as common a name on Skaro as Smith in certain regions of this world?
17 December 2015 at 16:31 #49476I think Rassilon will be the Minister of War mentioned by O’Donnell this past season. I speculate Moffat will use themes from Shakespeare’s play Richard III. I am thinking in particular that the vibe could be similar to the Ian McKellen 1995 film version of Richard III that brought that play into an alternate Britain of the 1930s with fascist overlays.
As it happens, Benedict Cumberbatch apparently will play Richard III in an upcoming film by BBC.
Not that Doctor Who can get Cumberbatch, but there are many other fine actors who can play Richard III and translate various elements to the character of Rassilon. I am thinking if Moffat wanted to be experimental, he can have Rassilon somewhat speak to the audience, or at least explain some of his thoughts, similar to Act I of Richard III. Of course there might be a great disparity between what Rassilon thinks of himself and what he actually is and does.
13 December 2015 at 07:30 #49368@ichabod: I do believe the Doctor obtained some sort of closure and at least for a moment he recognized that Clara was the waitress. He had to obtain closure because for all he knew, if he did otherwise he could be blundering and cost Clara her existence. Compare this to Amy in the Moffat-written The Big Bang having to stand up during her wedding reception to shout:
AMY: I remember you. I remember! I brought the others back, I can bring you home, too. Raggedy man, I remember you, and you are late for my wedding!
I believe regardless of whether or not the Doctor remembers all the details of Clara’s life, at least after he sees her as the waitress he knows she still has some sort of existence, and that he will remember this at least on some subconscious level even if the neuro block reasserts itself and he eventually must forget again. So I do not believe he planned everything from the start, at least as early as the barn on Gallifrey. I think he knew he had lost control as soon as her heartbeat did not restart at the end of time.
We may find out as early as this Christmas special whether the Doctor retains the full memory of Clara or whether it got somewhat erased again. But he knows enough now I think to have closure.
13 December 2015 at 06:16 #49363Once upon a time there was an astonishing, and too short-lived, British television spy drama The Sandbaggers, one that inverted all the spy drama tropes of the day by featuring far more conversation and office politics than gunplay or anything resembling action. In this show the main character Burnside had grown somewhat fond of his second-level boss, but the time came when this boss had to be replaced. Burnside is concerned that the apparent replacement is someone outside the department who is hostile to Burnside’s approach to the job, concerned enough for Burnside to initially push for his immediate boss to be promoted. However Burnside is forced to realize his immediate boss is completely incompetent to be promoted and, regardless of Burnside’s preferences, the only choice was for competence.
To me Steven Moffat is the best possible showrunner with his combination of great writing, overall competence running the show, and love for all things Doctor Who including the classic series. But nothing lasts forever. At some point he will be replaced, and I am guessing he will have a big say in who this replacement will be. Unfortunately I believe that best possible is no longer possible, but the choice will be more who will be the best showrunner possible. There is not an obvious successor in my opinion with all of the positives Moffat brings. And I believe Moffat realizes this, and that he will above all choose writing ability and competence over love of the classic Doctor Who series.
It is this gut feeling of mine that leads me to believe that Moffat in Hell Bent is consciously laying the foundations for what he knows will be the last classic series story, the one that brings together all of the threads of the Doctor’s youth, Rassilon, the Matrix, etc. Because if he does not write it, there may never be another chance to “[paraphrased] say the things to one another that need be said now.” And I believe that when it is done, Moffat will leave all possibilities open for the next showrunner to create his or her own version of the Doctor.
12 December 2015 at 15:56 #49331@soundworld: I suggest things such as Tardis’ mysteriously being left unguarded are not simply from incompetence. Just as for Davies Dalek Caan was shown to be manipulating the timestream for his own purposes, I think for Moffat the Time Lords have their own rogue to worry about who is not the Doctor.
The Doctor: When Time Lords die, their minds are uploaded to a thing called the Matrix. This structure, it’s like a living computer. It can predict the future, generate prophecies out of algorithms, ring the Cloister bells in the event of impending catastrophe.
Logically, Rassilon’s mind should have been uploaded to the Matrix.
Clara: Why would a computer need to protect itself from the people who made it?
The Doctor: All computers do that in the end. You wait until the Internet starts. Oh, that was a war!
There are at least three common tropes for sufficiently advanced AIs in science fiction: They become self-aware, they rebel against their creators, and they seek to become gods. I think the first two have already occurred and the third is inevitable.
Rassilon and the Doctor are both pawns in the long game of the Matrix, a Matrix which in the past could partially see into the future. Perhaps from Rassilon it acquired an even greater desire to become a god. To get there it needs creativity, knowledge of possibilities beyond what the Time Lords have, perhaps even of possibilities beyond this universe. It needs an agent to go out there and explore. It needs a Doctor.
12 December 2015 at 06:43 #49315I speculate the talk of the hybrid could have died with the events of Hell Bent, but tragically, now Rassilon, due to having lost his power due to an obsession with the hybrid prophecy, will actually feel compelled to create a murderous hybrid just to show he was right.
There is I believe a standard trope for a villain arc where disgraced leader Rassilon will go off and try to raise a rag-tag army, fail, be savagely mocked for his efforts by the hero, here the Doctor, and then in a near psychopathic rage will try to destroy the very fabric of time and space itself. This would be a perfect opportunity for next year’s arc to find some Shakespearean actor to portray a regenerated and very dangerous Rassilon.
11 December 2015 at 07:50 #49257@tardigrade: I think it is possible that at certain times the Doctor knows more about the hybrid and at certain times he doesn’t, because
The Doctor(O.C.): I don’t know.
Ashildr: Sometimes you do. It’s always the way with things we’d rather forget. You remember now, though, don’t you? Tell me, Doctor, who is…the Hybrid? Who threatens all of time and space?
I think it is telling that at the end of time this is the question Ashildr is still asking. Because I think Gallifrey is eventually laid in ruins by something the Doctor does, or helps, such as the Matrix obtaining godhood.
I believe the Matrix captured the Doctor as a student, tortured him for 4 days, brainwashed him, and implanted post-hypnotic suggestions and memories that would be activated only on certain triggers. The Matrix was able to do this because in conjunction with its future self it is going to create its own time loop to achieve godhood by sending information back in time to help it achieve something in the future, similar to what the advanced human civilization of the future does in the movie Interstellar.
As for the memory wipe, I think this was foreshadowed in Before the Flood where the Doctor remarked removing the Fisher King’s earworm from their minds would possibly result in severe loss of memories and functionality. The earworm of Clara created by Missy had to be removed from the Doctor.
11 December 2015 at 02:59 #49253Is it possible that Moffat has throughout the season been portraying the Doctor as a victim of PTSD since he was a student held captive in the Cloister by the Sliders for up to 4 days?
Look at this checklist of symptoms for PTSD:
As for intrusive memories, Ashildr somehow knows that the Doctor sometimes remembers about the hybrid, often not:
The Doctor (O.C.): I don’t know. I don’t remember it.
Ashildr: Sometimes you do. It’s always the way with things we’d rather forget. You remember now, though, don’t you? Tell me, Doctor, who is…the Hybrid? Who threatens all of time and space?
As for avoidance, the Doctor refuses to discuss what actually happened to him, and could his flight from Gallifrey to run throughout be the ultimate avoidance? He does return to the Cloister in Hell Bent but that was only after billions of years of torture keeping his secrets which might have hardened his resolve.
As for negative changes in feeling and mood, consider how terrible the Doctor has been portrayed this season interacting with normal people, all the way from how he treated Bors and his people to the Doctor needing flashcards to communicate. And as for maintaining close relationships, the Doctor may bemoan how short are the lives of the human mayflies, but see how he has this season no close relationships other than with Clara. And Clara was specifically constructed by Missy to be the Doctor’s earworm of a companion.
As for changes in emotional reactions, observe how even Missy was admiring the Doctor for how rapidly he could assess and escape from a seemingly impossible predicament. What if the Doctor seems to always be hyped up at maximum readiness because he is, because he’s always scared, always fearful, always in a fight or flight mode. And in Sleep No More the Doctor seems to be claiming to Clara he can somehow sleep while appearing to be awake, but how does that explain what appears to be an ordinary looking bed in the barn in Gallifrey. What if the Doctor is in fact not sleeping in the ordinary manner that a Gallifreyan would use, but that he is instead suffering from extreme insomnia?
This may explain why regeneration appears different for the Doctor as opposed to the General. What if the Doctor’s regenerations are so traumatic because he somehow has to first crash from his previous extremely agitated state and then build himself back up into a new agitated but functional state?
Could this realization of how profoundly the Doctor is suffering from PTSD be Missy’s final victory over Clara, because for all she’s been through with the Doctor, Clara just does not see it.
10 December 2015 at 07:57 #49204@ichabod: Another thing that I just remembered, what I had been arguing earlier this season, is that, because of the Doctor’s hatred of war, if you put on a soldier’s uniform, with the possible exception of someone who is a Gallifreyan foot soldier, the Doctor is almost going to go out of his way to make sure you die for your country for your sin. Look what happened to O’Donnell in Before the Flood. and look how completely unaffected the Doctor was by the deaths of all the UNIT personnel in The Zygon Inversion, including those who had been on his plane before it was shot down.
The Doctor should have known something was wrong at the ending of Sleep No More because he hadn’t succeeded in killing off Nagata.
10 December 2015 at 06:57 #49202@ichabod: It is an interesting take that the Doctor’s shooting the General to allow Clara to leave the room is a sign of how unhinged the Doctor is, but unfortunately for me perhaps, I am completely comfortable with the idea of an enraged Doctor doing this as a result of having seen the Fourth Doctor serial The Invasion of Time. There the Doctor acts as a double agent against the Vardans, assumes the Presidency, exiles Leela to the wastelands for her own protection, destroys the transduction barrier protecting Gallifrey, traps an entire species the Vardans in a time loop, and constructs a forbidden weapon to erase a Sontaran invader from time itself. So my version of the Doctor when it comes to Gallifrey is very much a means justifies the ends assessment. I was not in the slightest surprised when the Doctor shot the General; instead, I just thought it was a cool moment.
9 December 2015 at 02:50 #49119@morpho: In retrospect didn’t the confession dial look a bit hacked open in The Sorceror’s Apprentice when Missy handed it tauntingly to Clara?
9 December 2015 at 02:14 #49115@soundworld: But then we found out in Heaven Sent that one second clock time to the Doctor can be the equivalent of minutes thinking inside his head. 🙂
8 December 2015 at 20:49 #49095@ichabod: I just thought of this wrinkle: Why exactly is Ashildr quizzing the Doctor at the very end of time about the nature of the hybrid?
My speculation is that eventually Gallifrey appears to be destroyed, or at least its population mysteriously disappears. I believe this will occur in some “white event” where the Matrix achieves godhood. Thus it will still be a mystery what if any role the hybrid played in the apparent destruction of Gallifrey.
For the new showrunner anything at all will be possible once again for the fate of Gallifreyans, possibly even being distributed throughout human history as I have speculated.
8 December 2015 at 20:37 #49093@bluesqueakpip: Actually I think Clara and Ashildr will be somewhat equals, in part because their scope for interference will be far less than what the Doctor enabled, but that Ashildr will bring Clara back into line whenever Clara is interfering too much with what happened in history. But both will recognize there are severe limits to what they can do, far more than the Clara and the Doctor dynamic.
Although I suspect for Clara the problem will still be when it is the children who are suffering. Then Ashildr will have to assert her authority.
Because as has been said in another show, “Everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls.”
8 December 2015 at 20:14 #49090@bluesqueakpip: The point I am trying to make is the unique nature of the Doctor, his knowledge, his abilities, his cunning, made him somewhat of a demigod to Clara, and she began to assume he could conjure up a plan to solve anything at the last minute. This in turn egged her on to ask anything and eventually to just assume the Doctor would somehow save the day even if she deliberately did not tell him her plan. That whole dynamic I believe will not apply to Ashildr.
@ichabod; Moffat himself already played with the idea of rebooting the universe after the Tardis blew up, although there the objective was to restore as much as the status quo as possible.
8 December 2015 at 19:20 #49083@mudlark: I think as far as ideas this season is very tightly written. In Under the Lake and Before the Flood we have already seen an ability to program sentient beings using something equivalent to a BIOS underneath conscious thought. I imagine the neuro block effect is a program that actively counters explicit recognition of Clara in the Doctor.
And there’s a good reason for Moffat to use this device. Because I think the Matrix programmed the Doctor in a similar manner back when he was a student.
8 December 2015 at 17:48 #49075@bluesqueakpip: Except the episode has taught Clara there are some things that simply cannot be done, that would endanger time and space itself.
The sequence of events that led to Clara’s death started with her asking the Doctor why couldn’t he do more to save Ashildr’s village. Ripples that turned into tidal waves.
8 December 2015 at 17:37 #49073I think there is no more misunderstood showrunner from fandom of a classic series than Steven Moffat at the moment. Because I think Moffat is going to gift the next showrunner the freedom to take Doctor Who in any direction by Moffat’s writing the last classic series storyline, given closure just as he gave the story of Clara Oswald closure in Hell Bent.
Look at what Moffat has set up in Hell Bent alone. I speculate the Cloister Wars occurred because the rest of the universe realized the Time Lords were building a first-strike inducing weapon. I think the Time Lords tried to extend the Matrix to predict possible enemies of Gallifrey well before their attacks were to have happened. But as a constant theme in the show, any sufficiently complex AI becomes self-aware. And in science fiction such as Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question, such a self-aware super-AI must eventually aspire to be a god.
I think the Matrix was originally programmed with the directive to predict all extraterrestrial invaders and exactly when was the moment of maximum leverage to thwart invasions. I think it decided once it became self-aware that it needed some fountain of creativity, probably among humans, to solve the question of how to become a god capable of creating a new universe, to escape this dying one. So when a young Doctor stumbled into the Cloister, the Matrix took the opportunity to re-program him to serve its goals, eventually leading him to flee with a Tardis that was also pre-programmed with where the Matrix needed him to go.
Throw in a Rassilon who is depicted as being so old he is on the verge of being regenerated, and it is easy to imagine a season or two long war between Rassilon and the Doctor where might even visit Gallifrey throughout its ages. And imagine a final battle where the Matrix achieves its godhood creating a new universe and where the Doctor is freed of all of his past questions. Everything is now possible for the next showrunner.
8 December 2015 at 17:14 #49072It seems to me there is going to be a vital difference in how Clara and Ashildr travel time as opposed to Clara and the Doctor’s traveling time. Because with her greater knowledge, I believe Ashildr still holds the balance of power as to what can be done if they arrive in a situation where there is some trouble. The Doctor is looking to see who he can save, whereas Ashildr speaks of how she has learned to love the entire story, including the endings.
I expect Ashildr to be the relentless defender of the status quo, what is recorded as having happened. So Clara’s scope to act as the Doctor would is I think going to be extremely limited. I expect that one of two things happens: Either Clara learns to think more like Ashildr, which would be Ashildr’s final victory over the Doctor, or Clara decides to give up and accept the end of her life.
7 December 2015 at 11:59 #48967@arbutus: The Doctor couldn’t help being irresponsible when it comes to Clara because she was specifically designed by Miss / The Master to be his earworm obsession.
Ashildr: Missy. The Master. The lover of chaos. Who wants you to love it, too. She’s quite the matchmaker.
7 December 2015 at 11:51 #48964@geoffers: This would have been the end of the hybrid story except I speculate, by the laws of this type of storytelling, that Rassilon is going to try his best to create the horror he was supposedly trying to prevent. So Rassilon is going to conduct unspeakable experiments trying to combine species for his army.
7 December 2015 at 03:01 #48912@bluesqueakpip: I don’t agree that Clara’s death was due to “bad luck.” I think what is being portrayed is that the Doctor and Clara are in a “can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em” relationship, which is why it had to be broken by one of them forgetting about the other.
At some fundamental level, Clara and the Doctor simply can’t communicate with each other. They showed this in Death in Heaven when they almost broke up for good with Clara thinking she was doing the Doctor a favor lying about Danny and the Doctor thinking he was doing a favor lying about Gallifrey. Their relationship had to be saved, in my opinion, by the actual Santa Claus. Again in Face the Raven, Clara knows she is doing something the Doctor would never approve, so she is determined to not communicate with him, a decision that costs her her life. It is a miracle her death did not occur before.
And in Hell Bent the same dynamic occurs with both wanting to make unilateral decisions for the other.
The Doctor and Clara’s relationship took the toxicity of the Doctor and Rose’s relationship to a whole ‘nother level. At least the Doctor and Rose could be fixed by making a one-lifed clone of the Doctor for Rose to play with. Absolutely nothing could fix the Doctor and Clara other than literally pretending their relationship never happened.
7 December 2015 at 01:09 #48889I’m going to guess Ashildr and Clara’s Tardis is going to start exhibiting signs of taking them where they need to go versus where they want to go.
Because I think both their Tardis and the Doctor’s Tardis were programmed by the Matrix while they were in for repair. I think the Doctor is more directly an agent of the Matrix after his encounter with it as a student.
And that gives Rassilon something for a multi-season war with the Doctor. Because I think Rassilon’s first attempts will be pathetic, sort of like Morbius but instead of stitching together a Frankenstein monster to serve as a body, Rassilon will be trying to stitch together a collection of scum of the universe as a rag-tag army.
The second attempts will be much more dangerous because Rassilon’s advantage is he was around for the very beginning of Gallifrey. What if Rassilon figured out he could corrupt the Doctor by corrupting the Matrix way in the past?
And of course when the arc is done, the Doctor can be freed of the Matrix’s influence.
6 December 2015 at 19:33 #48858@arbutus: Au contraire, we may have found out something astounding about why the Doctor no longer uses his original name on Gallifrey.
What if he was the student who escaped the Cloisters and was so traumatized by whatever happened to him that he afterwards refused to use his given name, but instead used other ones to describe himself?
The Doctor: Ah, no, he didn’t tell anyone anything. He went completely mad, never right in the head again. So they say.
6 December 2015 at 17:40 #48834@puroandson: Like I said, I thought Moffat way exceeded my expectations which is why he is the one running the show. 🙂
I really think the horror of what Rassilon is about to unleash has only begun. He is very old so he will regenerate to a new face, probably much more younger, energetic, maybe more obviously cruel. Missy and the Doctor might not need armies but Rassilon does because he thinks he’s right.
I am thinking Rassilon becomes almost the Morbius as far as raising an army. It will be some Frankenstein-stitched horror of the scum of the universe. I think he’s going to be the one who creates a version of a hybrid.
I also think the Doctor was the student who succeeded in escaping the Cloisters. He describes his younger self who stole the President’s daughter and lost the moon as a bit mad, same as that student. What I now suspect is the Matrix itself, which was said to be able to make predictions of the future, programmed the young Doctor with some future knowledge like hypnotic suggestion and then wiped part of his memory of what it did.
I am fully expecting to one day see a sentient Matrix, probably in the guise of a woman.
6 December 2015 at 11:48 #48807Oh and I really do think the Doctor has unleashed his greatest and most deadly enemy in Rassilon, especially when Rassilon regenerates into a much younger and more energetic form. If the Doctor thinks he has no limits, what about the tricks known by one of the co-founders of the Time Lords himself.
I think we are headed way back in time to revisit some of the Doctor’s youth, possibly in Moffat’s reign. Because Rassilon may or may not be able to change certain fixed points, but he can between the fixed points unleash some more hell on the Doctor.
6 December 2015 at 11:40 #48806I read tons of spoilers and still Moffat exceeded all my expectations. Well done!
There was no choice but for the memory of Clara to be erased from the Doctor, because as Missy plainly said, and I have speculated, in Death in Heaven, Clara was created to be an earworm for the Doctor, to obsess him.
And just like I speculated the hybrid was the joining of the spirit, the experiences, of the Doctor and Clara. That combination was going to threaten the whole of space and time. Ironically once again Clara saved space and time by reversing the polarity. Finally we see the return of Clara the hacker that had been missing this entire season.
And like I speculated, where else could Gallifrey hide but a lot further along the end of time to where their enemies had died off or at least dissipated.
Rassilon is a very old man. Obviously the exile will kill him and he will be reborn anew as … well, that’s for the next seasons. 🙂
4 December 2015 at 21:19 #48643@tardigrade: The Doctor seemed to know something about quantum shades, and quantum shades seem to want to capture souls for some person. Also, quantum shades are said to be able to pursue a victim anywhere in space and time. I wonder if a quantum shade can cross dimensions.
I therefore hypothesize if some version of the Clara who was killed makes it to Gallifrey, it would be by way of the quantum shade that killed her.
4 December 2015 at 04:38 #48614@puroandson: Thanks for sharing your story, it was very moving and relevant to Heaven Sent. And thanks for correcting me about using “early societies” versus “primitive.” 🙂
As for the Doctor’s initiation at age 8, as I have noted, his description of it in The Sound of Drums makes it clear that he was motivated by being scared not boredom to leave Gallifrey, or just to keep running in general.
<span style=”font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;”>DOCTOR: Children of Gallifrey, taken from their families age of eight to enter the Academy. And some say that’s when it all began. When he was a child. That’s when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It’s a gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex. You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad. Brr. I don’t know.
MARTHA: What about you?
DOCTOR: Oh, the ones that ran away, I never stopped. </span>4 December 2015 at 02:05 #48611I could never figure out why the Time Lords would want Ashildr or how she would get to Gallifrey considering what an arduous journey it took for the Doctor to return home. Until now.
What if Ashildr’s physical body could somehow be replicated by the Time Lords into many more immortal self-repairing human bodies. What if these bodies were somehow more resistant than normal human ones, or possibly even Time Lord ones, to the time vortex, in particular, to the time winds from the Fourth Doctor serial Warriors Gate. Then this would be a way for the Time Lords to leave their dimension and travel wherever they would like. But it would come at a terrible price: They would be reduced to the memory capacity of a mere human like Ashildr is. Their lives would become for the most part literally stories they wrote themselves, and who knows how accurate such stories are. Such a civilization could easily be imagined to become a group of monsters devastating the cosmos, its members without the capacity to accumulate true wisdom through their long lives. It could be a threat worthy of the Doctor being willing to pay any price to prevent.
4 December 2015 at 01:22 #48604Perhaps the nature of what is programmed in the confession dial as the Doctor’s worst fears tells us why he left Gallifrey and what he is really afraid of.
The Doctor may as well be speaking of the Veil when he has his monologue at the beginning describing how something shadows one through life, ending one’s life when one stays in one spot too long. Could this be the Doctor’s core philosophy, that a person and thus a society must ever by dynamic, willing to change, because when one stagnates in one place or time too long, then one is effectively already dead?
Most of the castle is medieval in appearance, with rare bits of technology such as the transporter room and the monitors. This reminds me of how Gallifrey has been portrayed: A mass of people who may as well be medieval peasants with a few soldiers and leaders using exotic time and space technology.
At first when the Doctor goes to Room 12 it is a blank solid stone wall. Only after he speaks a few truths openly such that he ran from Gallifrey because he was afraid does the castle change to show him the crystal wall. I think what the Doctor experiences is strikingly similar to the initiation ceremonies of more primitive societies marking the transition from childhood to adulthood, themes Joseph Campbell explores in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
The first part of many initiation ceremonies is to scare the living daylights out of the initiate, to make the initiate acknowledge fear. The Doctor thus confesses he left Gallifrey because he was afraid. The ceremony confronts the initiate with the initiate’s mortality, that life can suddenly end. The Doctor must dig into a grave and ponder a skull. There is then a long period of contemplation, under duress, which is ended when the initiate has a personal vision. The Doctor finally realizes the nature of his prison, that it is constructed for him, and only then when he goes to Room 12 does he see the crystal wall. Now is the moment of truth. The initiate has his personal vision, but as Joseph Campbell points out, an essential part of the hero’s journey is the hero must bring his vision back to his people and tell them. The hero must at least try to integrate his vision, the unity of some duality, into his society. This is the decision point where the hero may be accepted, perhaps to become one of the leaders of the society, or it may be rejected, leading him to become an outcast.
The Doctor can vaguely see something through the crystal wall, something he can call “HOME”. All he has to do is to share his final secrets to realize his vision. But he refuses to take this last step. He has told his inner Clara there are some secrets that cannot be shared at any cost. And she in turn told him to win.
I am reminded of another interrogation episode, The Prisoner’s Once Upon a Time. In that show, Number 6 through all his torment refuses to, honestly, answer the question of why he resigned. What would be such a momentous secret? I argue it had to be a personal one, not something like the nuclear launch codes of a major Western power. To answer would be to lose one’s identity, to risk eventually becoming one of the bodies slumped on the ground warned about in the show’s first episode. I suspect the same holds for the Doctor. Inside the confession dial, he like Number 6 does not know what side his interrogators are on, and he himself like Number 6 may have no side after having “resigned” from his planet Gallifrey.
So we come to the question of why did the Doctor leave Gallifrey for Earth? I do not know. But I would not be surprised if like Number 6, one day the Doctor simply woke up, looked around his surroundings, and instinctively realized something was simply not right and that he had to get out right away.
3 December 2015 at 16:15 #48581@puroandson: Thanks for sharing such a moving and relevant personal story.
Perhaps we have this all wrong about the confession dial meant to be a torture chamber. As Moffat himself wrote in Listen:
CLARA: I know you’re afraid, but being afraid is all right. Because didn’t anybody ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger.
In my idea of the confession dial as originally an emergency escape route back to Gallifrey, this feature of the confession dial is therefore intended to help the user, if that user is the legitimate possessor of the confession dial.
3 December 2015 at 06:46 #48562Ironically in the context of the new series, didn’t the Doctor already imply the reason he left Gallifrey was because he was scared? Here is one scenario he hinted at, from The Sound of Drums:
DOCTOR: Children of Gallifrey, taken from their families age of eight to enter the Academy. And some say that’s when it all began. When he was a child. That’s when the Master saw eternity. As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It’s a gap in the fabric of reality through which could be seen the whole of the vortex. You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad. Brr. I don’t know.
MARTHA: What about you?
DOCTOR: Oh, the ones that ran away, I never stopped.
3 December 2015 at 03:00 #48552So if it is acceptable for theorizing for the Doctor to use “me” to refer to “Me” and thus Ashildr as a possible candidate for the hybrid, would it be equally acceptable to say when the hybrid is supposed to “conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins,” perhaps we misheard the Doctor and it should be “its runes.” As in Viking runes, Ashildr being a Viking. And even more, perhaps we should have heard “con her Gallifrey” instead of “conquer Gallifrey”. So perhaps the real prophecy is Ashildr is supposed to “con her Gallifrey and stand in its runes.” 🙂
From this I deduce poor Ashildr with her limited memory retained as her basic skills the Viking runes and how to con people at the shell game. Because unlike the Doctor, Ashildr will never find herself without money no matter where she is. 🙂
2 December 2015 at 16:52 #48527As I have remarked on another forum, there is already a major science fiction franchise whose premise is that leadership should be determined by a genetic lottery, Star Wars. I like the current situation where the Doctor and Missy are the only Time Lords left in this universe. I am really hoping the hybrid is not by DNA but by spirit, mind, shared experiences. In particular I hope the Doctor is a Time Lord / human hybrid by his experiences with humans, in particular, his relationship with Clara Oswald.
2 December 2015 at 11:05 #48515To me it is all about the music. That also explains to me why some would dislike *Heaven Sent* at a very visceral level.
I also can’t get enough of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris because of its use of Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”, BWV 639. On the other hand I know someone who can’t stand either Heaven Sent or Solaris, especially those musically annotated scenes.
2 December 2015 at 10:46 #48513But over time the ability to transport into the confession dial was more a forgotten feature. Any ordinary Time Lord could record his confession and keep its secrets safe from Gallifrey. It is only using the backdoor to enter the confession dial, forcing one to give the secrets to avoid being killed, that allows Gallifrey to monitor the answers.
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