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@supernumerary: To me the real problem UNIT, the elder Zygons, and the Doctor are having is the younger rebel Zygons are in the right.  It appears that humans, admittedly ignorant, started the killing in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, of “Brits,” before it was even known some could be monsters.  The younger Zygons were simply transported to strange locations with no money or jobs or support other than what they could provide for themselves.  The younger rebel Zygons movement is strong because they have a method of concealment, they potentially have large numbers, they have the energy of youth, and they believe they are in the right, strong enough apparently to be willing to give their lives for their cause.

At some point the leaders such as the Doctor, Osgood, and Kate Stewart, and probably the elder Zygons, are going to have to resolve the situation by intelligence and perhaps persuasion, not brute force.  There’s also what seems to me to be an obvious deduction that simply stranding Kate Stewart in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, away from where the apparent action may be where the Doctor is located, would not make for a great resolution of the story.

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Here’s my candidate for something in plain sight that the producers might be laughing at online fandom for not observing:  Kate Stewart completely changes the color scheme of her clothes between when she is supposedly leaving Jac and Clara for Truth or Consequences and when she gets out at that town.  The darker outfit at Truth or Consequences is what the Zygon Kate Stewart might be more familiar with.  And we also saw with Osgood that preference in clothes might be sticky as far as human – Zygon duos go.

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@denvaldron: Maybe the Zygons modified the Skarasens to be more like giant earthworms.  After all, something was needed to dig all of their tunnels …

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@arbutus: Yes both in Osgood’s film and the Doctor’s words, the health of both Osgoods is vital to the health of the treaty:  The two Osgoods together are the treaty.  When one was killed, the health of the treaty was endangered.

I am wondering if there is just enough wriggle room, especially if almost all of the deaths were not deaths, for even Bonnie the Clara Zygon to have some sort of redemption.  Of course that theory may almost literally be exploded if Bonnie’s missile massacres most of the crew of the Doctor’s plane.  But if the missile can somehow be averted, a quick resolution may be to find another partner to bond with Osgood, if the remaining Osgood is human, especially if that partner shows some generosity.  The original Osgood bonding occurred when both realized they knew who was human and who was Zygon due to who had the inhaler in *Day of the Doctor*, but both chose to carry on.  The younger Zygon rebels are perhaps a good psychological fit for an Osgood, a peer.  Perhaps one can step forward, even Bonnie, and show her worth by doing something to step back from the brink of war.

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The BBC has commissioned a new series based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials:

http://variety.com/2015/tv/global/bbc-orders-philip-pullmans-his-dark-materials-1201632207/

“His Dark Materials” is the first commission from Bad Wolf, a U.K./U.S. production company founded by former BBC executives Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner, and co-sited in South Wales and Los Angeles … The series will be executive produced by Pullman, Tranter and Gardner for Bad Wolf, Toby Emmerich and Carolyn Blackwood for New Line Cinema, and Deborah Forte for Scholastic.

Tranter and Gardner had huge roles getting the new Doctor Who to the success it is today.   I am not knowledgeable enough about to business to know if the article is also stating who will be the showrunner.

I have been thinking for some time that Doctor Who’s future must be about going into not just this universe but others across the multiverse, times and spaces.  It seems to me the BBC is willing to have gentle synergy between different productions, see Vikings in this season of Doctor Who.   So after Moffat finishes telling his grand story, perhaps with the fate of the Time Lords, I wonder if the next great story will be about the Doctor’s adventures across the multiverse.  This would more easily allow characters to show a range of talents, from being a hero one serial to a villain the next, or in between, as their roles change depending on which universe the Doctor is in.

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Here’s my evidence almost everyone in The Zygon Invasion is operating on a pretext.

Before she goes back to her apartment where she is captured by the Zygons, Clara refuses to answer her phone and also is wearing red lipstick, makeup something the Doctor has asked about before as to why she painted her face before a date with Danny.   Clara deliberately made herself seem suspicious to the Doctor.

Kate Stewart apparently went without backup to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, something the cop Zygon repeatedly mentions.  The beginning of the episode recaps how she and her Zygon double negotiated the original treaty neither knowing who was the human and who was the Zygon.  I argue they should retain a bond similar to the Osgoods, or at least a working relationship.  Also the Clara Zygon lies to the Doctor claiming that the original Clara is dead and also mentioning Kate Stewart is dead.  Thus Kate Stewart must have somehow survived being attacked by the cop Zygon.  We also see UNIT hiding out in one of their safehouses.  UNIT acts as if Osgood vanished to America just yesterday having done nothing to protect her files from outside access.  Perhaps they act as if they woke up yesterday because they did wake up yesterday, as Zygon duplicates of UNIT, the real UNIT safely at their real headquarters.

The reason why it is acceptable for Zygons to die is they volunteered to die, both sides, as it is their life-or-death moment on this planet.  The captured Zygon on the Doctor’s plane is apparently willing to die for his cause as states the plane will not land.

I am hoping this is not the worst child acting ever, but the two Zygon 7-year old leaders give every appearance they are in on their supposed kidnapping and execution.  Look at how they interact with the Doctor before their kidnapping.  The Doctor tells them to go nowhere, yet they are showing turning their back and moving away to exactly the right distance for the smoke bomb to provide them cover.  They also must have seen the truck used by their kidnappers.  Then they turn around to face the Doctor while the Zygon smoke bomb is detonated and remain fixed watching the Doctor with their characteristic smirk on their face, until they are grabbed from behind and then start screaming.  And their supposed execution is only shown on video, easily faked.

Osgood(s)’ home movie is shown at the beginning of the episode, but who is it made for?   This movie seems suspiciously concocted to be captured footage from her files that leads her captors to desire to open and use the contents of the mysterious Osgood box.  Osgood is said by UNIT to have gone crazy after the lost of her double, yet everything in this episode shows Osgood as being completely rational.  This really looked like the trope of someone appearing to be a defector from the good guys who is actually feeding false information to the enemy.

And what could be that ultimate sanction, the last line of defense, in that box?  What was shown from *Day of the Doctor*:  The Three Doctors were for a moment able to make the Zygons and humans in that room in the Black Archive not know who was human and who was Zygon.

Whatever the ultimate sanction is, it is probable to me the Doctor cannot unilaterally impose it.  It must, as so many other episodes in the past, be a choice between the moral option and the greedy option, with punishment only occurring if the enemy chooses the greedy option.  And maybe that is why everyone else is acting on their own pretexts, because they are all playing the role of the Tarot card of The Devil:

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

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Let us try to make progress by constructing a timeline according to the events of this episode.

Two years ago, in *Day of the Doctor*, humans and Zygons negotiated the treaty.  The two Osgoods not only became the administrators, they were the treaty.  Twenty million Zygons are hatched, imprinting mostly on residents of the UK, and then many are relocated to areas such as Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  They appear to have retained their imprinting, as they arrive in Truth or Consequences as “Brits.”  Unfortunately they start getting into fights and some are even murdered, causing them to band together and possibly starting the Truth or Consequences movement.  It would have been nice if UNIT could have monitored the situation after stranding them with no money or jobs in an isolated American town, but the information of the Zygon relocation was kept by Osgood(s) and Osgood(s) alone.

Then one of the Osgoods is murdered by Missy in *Death in Heaven*.   At the beginning of the episode, in their recording, the Osgoods specifically mention that if one of them is killed it would be a crisis for the truce.  The Doctor later in the episode reaffirms the Osgoods’ importance saying they are the treaty.  Shortly after her double’s death, the remaining Osgood goes AWOL from UNIT and goes undercover somewhere in America.  The two leaders of the Zygons then become secretive and uncommunicative with UNIT, seemingly linked with Osgood’s disappearance.  As we have seen in the show, multiple periods of time, at least several weeks, have passed between the events of Death in Heaven and the current time.  There is no indication that the Doctor, who knew the health of both Osgoods is essential for the treaty, reached out to try and assess and / or comfort the remaining Osgood.  After all, who could have possibly known something could go wrong with the mental health of a woman who evidently regards the Doctor as a god, because she has been shown cowering and praying to him for deliverance in Day of the Doctor.

The information about the Zygons’ location is in Osgood’s files, which apparently are in the cloud since both the tablet used by Jac and the younger Zygons can in theory access them after Osgood is taken prisoner.  Nobody at UNIT bothered to at least revoke Osgood’s access to her files despite her lengthy unauthorized absence.  UNIT at least knows the last location of Osgood’s phone is Truth or Consequences, but does nothing to actually investigate that location until Kate Stewart goes there in person, even though there is an American branch of UNIT and even though, as has been stated repeatedly in the episode, Osgood is the treaty.  Then only after footage is recorded of Osgood being held prisoner does UNIT try to access these files, only to learn that Osgood has been compromised and they are now locked out.

I as a viewer am now throwing my hands up into the air and am praying to Moffat and Harness to save this plot in The Zygon Inversion.  Please, please, please, Moffat, make these characters calculating, with a plan, and competent.

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The only bad thing ordinary humans are accused of doing in the episode are the murders of the Zygons in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  Unfortunately for the argument that one shouldn’t kill something just because it looks like a monster, the Doctor himself felt no compunction against programming humans to slaughter members of the Silence on sight in Day of the Moon.

Any political argument falls apart because the elites actually got everything they claimed to want now and apparently made a total hash of it.  The elites were apparently able to completely mask from the general public the resettlement of 20 million Zygons, so how could the general public be blamed for killing monsters they would have no idea are peaceful aliens.  In fact the elites today claim there (1) is no conspiracy and (2) no danger whereas in this episode there is a conspiracy and the entire human race may be in danger of being subjugated by a technologically superior and undetectable species.  The elites kept the general human population from having any knowledge and thus any political input.  There are zero human politicians or businessmen depicted in this episode, not even in leadership.  Instead the ones making the decisions for humanity are a woman in a pantsuit, an asthmatic cosplaying groupie, a school teacher, and an extraterrestrial who is basically a community organizer who has been appointed the President of the World.

This is the basic contradiction of this episode, that if there is a political point being made, the side being preached against is completely out of the loop in the decision-making and is blameless.  If humanity truly is in danger, maybe it was a bad idea to put all of the decision-making in the hands of a pantsuit wearing woman, a groupie, a school teacher, and a community organizer, and maybe less scientific expertise and more common sense and professional leadership is needed.

I am praying for the franchise’s sake that the writers realize this and are planning to show in The Zygon Inversion that the elites actually have a well-thought out plan that will dazzle us all for defusing this situation without loss of life.   This is the one episode where it simply won’t be good enough for the Doctor to wing-it and save the day at the last moment.

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Err, there is a non-zero possibility that all of the purported violence in the context of the story of The Zygon Invasion is faked or will somehow be blocked.  So this would if anything be an anti-lesson in the seriousness of using weapons or bombs.

The missile is not actually shown hitting and exploding the President of the World’s airplane.  And if the Doctor and the remaining Osgood are not copies by the young rebel Zygons, something has to happen to save their lives.  For all we know the airplane is actually the Tardis or some magic tech on the plane will block that missile or somehow the occupants of the airplane will be magically whisked away at the last second.

It is possible every single thing in the context of the story is staged.  Even the leaders of the Zygons who are apparently kidnapped … notice they are backing away from the Doctor before the attack against his orders while he talks on his phone, their own actions putting them suspiciously just at the right distance so that the smoke bomb can separate them while they are taken into the van.  They are only “executed” on a video not depicted live in the story, so the video might have been faked in the story.

In Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the cop Zygon guides Kate Stewart to view what are supposed remains in the dumpster.  Supposed.  Notice that Zygon Clara tells the Doctor that real Clara is dead.  But we at least we have seen that real Clara appears to be in a Zygon pod, not dead.  So the younger rebel Zygons who are boasting of their killings have been shown to simply be lying.  It seems quite possible to me there are rules of some game being played here where the goal is to get the other side to start the actual killing first.

If the goal is to show some sort of realistic portrayal of violence and its aftermath, this is possibly the worst effort I have ever seen.  Even Resurrection of the Daleks had the decency to show a major character companion Tegan horrified by the deaths she experienced to shock her into fleeing from being with the Doctor.

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@blenkinsopthebrave: As I have been speculating, the only way to preserve the political message is to have what appear to be incompetent elites actually be competent.  The adult Zygon leaders claimed they had a plan to control the situation.  I am assuming they do.

It might all a fake.  Fake UNIT UK headquarters.  Fake UNIT Jac and soldiers.  (They’re Zygons.)  Maybe a fake President of the World plane and a fake Doctor.  Mommy Kate Stewart Zygon is going to teach those uppity kids a good hard lesson.

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@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 make a critical decision involving how Zygons will live with humans, a morality test for Zygons.  Or perhaps in another direction, perhaps in the Zygon serial, humans through Osgood will show their independence from the Doctor, with Osgood taking the role of The Devil to tempt the younger Zygons to try and steal and use the secrets of her box.

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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.

 

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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 fear hiding under a desk.

So everything we think about her must be wrong lest what she is, a cosplaying asthmatic woman scientist, be seen as wrong and evil.  She must instead be a prime instigator.  The two Osgoods I speculate must have realized in the long-run it was impossible for humans and Zygons to live in peace if one side, the Zygons, had the ability to almost flawlessly imitate the other side and infiltrate at will.  So they took some hints from what Harry Sullivan must have been working on and did a variant, one that strips the Zygons of their ability to imitate and leaves them in their native form.  But they have no right to impose this on the Zygons.  It must be the Zygons’ choice.

So when one Osgood was killed this was the time for the remaining one to bait the trap.   She only pretended to go crazy and flee for Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the hub of the rebel younger Zygon movement.  She had herself brainwashed so that if someone were to break her in interrogation, she would appear to spill information that would enable the younger Zygons to defeat UNIT and conquer the world.

This is a very old plot that as I have pointed out was used in the original pilot episode for Hawaii Five-Oh  several decades ago, where Steve McGarrett had himself brainwashed with false information so that Wo Fat would believe it to be true when he broke McGarrett in Wo Fat’s sensory isolation tank.

Now the younger rebel Zygons believe when they activate whatever Osgood pretended to have as this super-weapon they will get what they dream, the ability to live in the open as Zygons.  And so they shall.  It is what they have asked in their manifestos.  But it will not be what they expect, only what they deserve.  And it will be their choice.

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I refuse to believe the human Osgood would have ever agreed to have created a device to have threatened humanity.   Martha Jones’ willingness to even consider using the Osterhagen Key is my in-story reason why she is no longer worthy of appearing at the Doctor’s side.  An Osgood who would do such a thing is no longer worthy of ever stepping in the Doctor’s Tardis as a companion, the one thing Osgood wants.

I’m going to guess this Osgood box will simply strip the Zygons of their ability to hide among humans.  Then we, humans and Zygons, will be face to face and will have to simply deal, one way or another, with living beside each other in openness forever.  This is a sort of Br’er rabbit and the brier patch:  Can’t force the younger Zygons to give up an ability that is their birthright, but if their leader chooses to do so and grant what they have stated is their deepest wish, to live in the open as they are, then so be it.

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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 their way to Earth?

See the evolution of the Doctor, how the First Doctor didn’t even want to help at first and was just being a tourist in Earth’s history.   But he knew for certain at least by the end of the Second Doctor’s life when the Second Doctor saw how the War Lords had chosen humans among all of the species in the galaxy to use as the raw material for their army, humans the most warlike because they would fight not just others but also among themselves to the death of all if need be.

And then he tried to avoid the inevitable fate of humans and Time Lords.  He tried to broker peace between the Silurians and humans and Sea Devils and humans, but failed.  He tried to spread his message throughout human history of kindness and peace versus brutality and war.  And he tried to broker a lasting peace between humans and Zygons.

But the two prime species in Doctor Who have always been humans and Time Lords.  And the Time Lords are banished, ostracized by the rest of the universe for their use of forbidden weapons that threatened to tear apart the very fabric of time and space.  The Time Lords only hope of return is to do what some of the Zygons tried, to hide among the humans undetected, although this would be a far more ambitious undertaking, trying to hide throughout human history.

The Time Lords bear the responsibility for the forced migration of Zygons.  But I have to wonder if the Doctor chose Earth as their new home in an attempt to spoil Earth as a possible hiding place for the Time Lords.  Because if the Zygons could truly integrate undetected from the 21st century onwards among humans, the Time Lords could never safely plant their own agents without fear of accidentally exposing themselves to the Zygons.

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@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 in Heaven.  That is why I speculate that is actually not the plane, or perhaps is a piece of the Tardis wrapped around that plane.

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@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 debriefed and possibly brainwashed by UNIT while she was incommunicado with the Doctor.

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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 will be released unharmed so that the Zygons aren’t mass murderers.

 

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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 sort of working relationship with her Zygon counterpart post-The Day of the Doctor.  That counterpart may actually be human Kate Stewart’s backup, as the possibility was raised the Zygons could disguise themselves as animals, or basically anything.

A long long time ago, decades, the pilot for the original version of the American television show Hawaii Five-Oh was actually science fiction.  Steve McGarrett allowed himself to be brainwashed first by his government so that when he was captured and broken in a sensory isolation tank, he fed prepared lies to his arch nemesis Wo Fat.

Now imagine this alternative scenario:  Kate Stewart’s Zygon counterpart contacts her about trouble between the Zygon generations.  Osgood allows herself to be brainwashed with whatever Kate Stewart wants the younger Zygons to learn and pretends to go off reservation to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.  And what was Clara doing while her phone was ringing while being called by the Doctor?  She was being debriefed and possibly allowing herself to be brainwashed as well by Kate Stewart.   By not answering her phone, she alerts the Doctor not to trust her.  So he doesn’t.  Wouldn’t it be wild if the so-called President of the World’s plane was actually the Tardis with a repaired chameleon circuit?  The Doctor never expected Clara to go back to the Tardis to hide out.

UNIT headquarters might be fake as well.  After all, Kate Stewart ordered both the Doctor and Missy to be tranquilized in Death in Heaven.

We might be seeing quite the counterattack from the establishment in the second-parter.  After all the mature Zygon leadership claimed they could get the situation under control.

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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.  After all once the Zygons were known to ordinary humans they would no longer be monsters.  They would probably become celebrities, especially if someone wrote a book on how one could tell them apart by counting indentations or whatever Zygons use to distinguish each other.  After all in some contexts humans regard Cybermen as monsters, but when Missy threw her hat on the ground, everyone wanted to have their picture taken with them.

In some sense the current Zygon situation is forcing them to pass, to pretend to be what they are not, to be second-class citizens, and be subject to violence if their cover is broken.  There are many political movements today that consider such arrangements unacceptable.

 

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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 fetched to me, but it shows it is possible for Kate Stewart to also turn the tables, especially as she has already experienced being copied.)

From a political perspective, the criticism from the opposition, of what the writers of this story apparently want to promote, is that the leaders who advocate tolerance are incompetent fools.  Therefore the two real leaders who made the human-Zygon peace treaty, the Doctor and Kate Stewart, must be shown to not be incompetent fools.  They must have a plan, or be able to devise a plan on the spur of the moment to make it look like they had a plan, so that we can trust their leadership when they ask us to do things that appear against our current interests.

 

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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 Lords.   Those who resist accepting their mortality become monsters, and at least during the Fourth Doctor’s reign, monsters were free game for extermination.

Of course in the new series there are the Tivolians who in some sense are the opposite of conquerors, accepting all invasion, but they are not respected by the Doctor either.

To me the meaning of the Gallifrey Falls No More painting is that the palace shown never existed in the physical Gallifrey.  Actual Gallifrey was all dingy and decaying, with wastelands outside the capitol.  What that palace is is an idealized Gallifrey, an ascended Gallifrey, a Gallifrey that has obtained Enlightenment and has left this worldly plane.  The Curator is a Bodhisattva who temporarily renounced his own ascension to assist others to ascend.  That is the Doctor, a Bodhisattva.

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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 stories, such as Warrior’s Gate, a serial that had the stunning departures of both Romana and K-9.  Perhaps a portent for the future.

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@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.

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@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.

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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 knowledge.  Ashildr ate of the tree of life and now desires knowledge.  The card of Justice is associated with Astraea, the Greek goddess who grew tired of the ways of men during the age of iron and ascended into heaven, just as Ashildr wishes to leave with the Doctor for the stars.

The woman is seated with a crown.  This recalls Ashildr seated with the helmet of the Mire, and also in The Woman Who Lived the Doctor picks up a crown and Ashildr recounts her tale when she was a queen.  The woman is dressed in a red dress, as was Ashildr in this episode.

But above all the episode is about what is just, what is fair, what is balanced.  In the end Ashildr decides her role is to try and be some sort of balance in the lives of those who survive the visitation of a demigod the Doctor.

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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 Logopolis.

This also enables Moffat to bring in more ideas from Snow Crash with the multiverse itself serving as the metaverse.   And this explains how dreams enable time and space travel:  dreams also involve a switch of control in the software of the multiverse and thus enables hacking the multiverse.

So perhaps Missy was lying about how she obtained all of the souls in her Nethersphere.  What she did instead was to hack the universe and download some of its information into a Gallifreyan hard drive.

This continues the trend this season where ghosts have some sort of physical presence including interactions with electromagnetism.  This enables a fusion of spiritualism with science fiction.  It is very much in the spirit of the Fourth Doctor serials and thus fans who grew up watching them as their introduction to the show.

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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 fellow immortal to be her companion, the one she gave the chip to being unworthy.

To Ashildr the Doctor travels with his companions for his happiness.  But Ashildr will never have happiness, yet she will do her duty.  So by this logic, the Doctor does not need happiness either.  The Doctor does not need to have human companions.  So he should not.  That is why Ashildr would listen to someone such as Missy who could devise a plan to break the Doctor of his habit of having human companions.  That is how Ashildr could acquire knowledge of Clara Oswald such as Clara Oswald’s mother.

[jphamlore @replies]

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 Ashildr has to if he’s not going to travel with a peer like Ashildr.   That’s motive.

Missy has stated she has gone “up and down the time line” exploring the life of Clara.  Missy was the one who gave Clara the Doctor’s phone number and knew enough about the Doctor and Clara’s relationship to put in the newspaper the line “Impossible girl” to attract Clara’s attention.  Missy had the boy that Danny Pink killed in the Nethersphere, thus it is likely if Clara’s mother is dead that Missy has her as well in the Nethersphere.  That is means and opportunity.

There are now two near immortals, Ashildr and Missy, who want to break the Doctor of his habit of longterm human companions.  Their best shot is with Clara trying to break the Doctor’s heart completely.  As Missy said last season, the Doctor would “go to hell and back for her [Clara].”

And note the continuing theme of a life required to be taken to cross dimensions.  Danny Pink had to surrender coming back to this world so that the boy he killed could come back instead.  A life had to be taken to activate the Eyes of Hades to open the bridge between dimensions.  I think that Missy and Ashildr’s plan is to put Clara into hell, the Nethersphere, and dare the Doctor to try and get her back, possibly at the cost of his life.   One person’s life versus the millions on millions the Doctor can save.  Ashildr and the Doctor agree the Doctor is Earth’s protector.  Missy and Ashildr probably agree that Clara is the Doctor’s weakness.  So choose then Doctor, protect Earth versus the life of one woman Clara.  Sometimes all choices are bad, but one must nonetheless choose.

 

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@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 life the boy.

Missy’s objective is to break the Doctor’s heart like never before so that Missy can get her friend back.

 

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I had the impression the Zygon original planet was destroyed because of the Time War.  Their presence on Earth is the fault of the Time Lords and maybe even the Doctor.

Also I thought the Zygons don’t even like current Earth, unless they have found more hospitable climate say closer to the Earth’s core.  They wanted to do some extensive terra(Zygon?)forming back in Terror of the Zygons.

All indications are the Zygons shouldn’t even be on Earth, so therefore I can with certainty predict some kind of pretext will be invented to explain why they have to remain.  But really they should go and terraform Venus.

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Ashildr will have to eventually make her way into space to keep trace of Mel and Peri?

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In theory there is at least one other Time Lord other than Missy that Ashildr could have encountered, the Monk, but due to the emphasis on Missy and the Doctor being the last of the Time Lords, the Monk I am afraid has been erased from recognition.

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How fortunate for the Doctor that Ashildr did not decide to accelerate the rate of human progress to get off this rock.  All she would have had to do was hang around certain scientists even of the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s in England and France and coordinate their efforts.  She’s smart.  Because in the late 1700s this was the device that created the modern world, Jesse Ramsden’s dividing engine, the device that enabled the endless cascade of more precise measurements, more precise devices creating other devices:

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/04/standardizing-precision-and-beautiful-technical-prints-ramsdens-dividing-engines.html

I would hope Ashildr did something for Ursula Blake after the events of Love and Monsters, because I don’t buy the idea she was really happy.  The ending for Ursula Blake seemed ironic to me.

This episode mentioned another dimension, so perhaps it is a sign of what I think will be the show’s evolution to showing more of the multiverse, time and spaces, not just time and space of this universe.

 

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@countscarlioni: Great catch on the line “Time will tell,” from the Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks.

One of my pet theories for this season is that the Hand of Omega or some renamed equivalent makes an appearance to create a new black hole out of the relatively nearby-to-Earth red giant Betelgeuse, so I am hoping this reference is much more than it seems.

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Humans have been known to be a warlike threat to the entire galaxy since the Second Doctor serial The War Games.

But there is going to be a need for a lot more bodies than one hybrid.   Because the Time Lords are never going to make it back into this universe in their old bodies.  They’re going to have to try to “upload the mind, upgrade the body.”

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@arbutus: Yes but who knew instinctively to ask the Doctor to translate the baby’s sounds?  Wasn’t it Clara?

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It is odd to me Doctor Who went out of its way to show the Shadow Proclamation in the first episode only to depict the galaxy as basically being lawless the next couple of arcs.  I wonder if whoever used the “suicide moons” was able to cripple what is supposed to be an interstellar police force.

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@missy: A very good point about the Tardis possibly rejecting the Master as a long-term companion.  After all, it is the Tardis that most of the time is calling the shots as to where the Doctor goes.

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The Doctor is a shepherd-like bodhisattva.  A quote the Dalai Lama likes from the works of Shantideva:

For as long as space endures
And for as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.

Many of the Doctor’s fellow Time Lords lost their way advocating the Ultimate Sanction in The End of Time.  They needed to strive to be king-like bodhisattvas helping others after they obtain enlightenment, not to seek to destroy all of creation other than themselves.   I think the Doctor will find a way for the more peaceful of them to attain this.

And those Time Lords who fail to realize they need to strive to leave the Wheel of Pain and not be bound to it, they will be trapped as Weeping Angels.

I suspect the Doctor will correct Ashildr to seek enlightenment.  Immortality need not be a trap.

 

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@purofilion: I interpret Missy’s killing the UNIT agents as being part of her training of Clara so that Clara would still be able to think fast and to control her emotions.  Thus the very next arc when Clara tells Lunn to go after the phone, which ironically I believe does not play a part in the rest of the action, she is asked whether traveling with the Doctor has made her as cold and calculating as he appears to be.

Humans as uniquely warlike among ourselves is a trope that has probably existed as long as human civilization has existed.  Examples in Dr Who include such serials as the Fifth Doctor’s Warriors of the Deep where humans, with a little shove from the Silurians and Sea Devils, are on the hair trigger edge of blowing ourselves up.

The prophesied hybrid would appear to be a union of two warlike species.  As to me it is almost certain that humans will be half of the hybrid, by definition in the show itself, humans must be warlike relative to the rest of the universe.

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@phaseshift: For the first few hundred years of her life, I think Ashildr’s problem won’t be that she’s immortal.  Her problem will be, to quote another franchise, that

Everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls.

 

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@purofilion: As for Orson Pink, my bonkers theory still stands that Clara’s ultimate fate is to go into the Nethersphere to be reunited with Danny where they can teach the Nethersphere’s children.  That would leave her story to be open depending on what Jenna Coleman decides to do for future appearances.

Pre-The End of Time, the Master was being driven crazy by the sound of drums in his head.  I speculate Missy is only pretending to be crazy.  As we have seen in Time Heist, atrocities are justified if they are committed to keep a species alive.   The Doctor and Missy are the last of the Time Lords.

Earth and humans stink to Missy.  Yet she and the Doctor keep hanging around Earth and humans.  I think because the Doctor, and Missy, probably know that humans are going to be one half of the hybrid that threatens the universe.  Who is more warlike than humans who not only war against other species but also incessantly with each other?  The Doctor’s trying to convert humans one at a time to be more kind and peaceful does not scale.  Who is to say Missy’s apparent cruelty is not the right approach.

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@missy: I think it has been pretty much established ever since The Doctor’s Wife that the Tardis does indeed control the Doctor at least in the sense of taking him not where he necessary wants to go but where he needs to go.

Now we see how scientific, how rational, the Master / Missy’s campaign has been to try and convince the Doctor to stop traveling with human companions and to instead travel with her.  There would be natural questions, such as wouldn’t the Master do as he / she always does and try to acquire some power source for selfish reasons from whoever they meet?  Well, Missy already acquired what could have been the power to conquer the universe, Earth dead in Cybermen bodies … and she went to the Doctor and gave the controller to them to the Doctor.   And she said she did not need an army, but he did because unlike her he believed he was in the right.  And Missy has also been demonstrating that humans are too frail, too easy to snuff out, like gutting a fish, while she is near unkillable.  I suppose her crowning argument would be if Clara were to be killed off despite being under the Doctor’s duty of care.

There’s actually only one thing standing in the way of the Doctor and Missy’s taking off together to see the universe as friends:  an agreement that neither the Doctor nor Missy see Earth nor trouble it again.  That is the one thing that for some reason the Doctor will never agree to do although most of the time he is complaining when the Tardis takes him somewhere on Earth.  Now why should that be so.  Because somewhere deep inside the Doctor knows that half of the hybrid that is prophesied to threaten the universe comes from humans.

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Given that the Doctor has already voiced a worst-case scenario at the end of this episode, there is no way in my opinion that that his decision to save Ashildr will be shown to ultimately be the wrong one.  He is going to redeem her if she has fallen.  That’s what the Doctor does, he saves people.

It’s great to see Maisie Williams in the series, but the disadvantage is that her future availability is highly in doubt even if Ashildr should prove to be an incredible character creation on the order of Davros or the Master.  That is why I believe her story will be brought to some sort of satisfactory and happy ending by the end of the next episode.

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This idea of an ordinary human who unexpectedly discovers they have immortality, but then has to experience the loneliness of over-and-over again outliving everyone they know, is exactly from the original Star Trek episode Requiem for Methusaleh, and is no doubt far older than that.

However in contrast to Star Trek’s character of Flint, who apparently lived lives of recognized creative greatness such as Leonardo da Vinci and Brahms, I think the second part has to show the character of Ashildr, a storyteller, being constrained by her being a woman in the times before now.  It is what would give the two-parter some real gravity saying something about the human condition.

I have identified at least three plausible candidates for who she could have posed as:  Aphra Behn (1640 – 1689), Emelie du Chatelet (1706 – 1749), and Madame de Stael (1766 – 1817).   It may be possible to interleave or replace one of these with another of the better known great English writers.  I do not think the Doctor’s giving Ashildr the gift of immortality will result in total tragedy.  I think he will find a way to inspire her to fight through the constraints of her time and place.

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Here is my third candidate for the subsequent life of Ashildr: Madame de Stael, French, 1766 – 1816.  Her works helped to lay to foundations of Romanticism.  She is surprisingly often quoted to this day, such as:

One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.

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Here is another candidate for a subsequent life of Ashildr: Emelie du Chatelet, French, supposedly 1706 – 1749.

One of Aphra Behn’s translations was of a French popularization of astronomy, A Discovery of New Worlds.  As Emelie du Chatelet, Ashildr would have had the opportunity to converse with many of the leading French minds of that time including Voltaire who at least according to Wikipedia was one of her lovers.  One of her most noted feats was translating into French Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.

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@denvaldron: Condolences, you are always welcome here among us.

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Here is something for this forum, especially those who have been talking about tarot.

Aphra Behn wrote often under the pseudonym “Astrea,” that is a reference to the Greek goddess Astraea (“star maiden”) who was very popular in literature around that time.  According to the Wikipedia entry on her,

In the Tarot, the 8th card, Justice, with a figure of Justitia, can thus be considered related to the figure of Astraea on historical iconographic grounds.

According to descriptions such as this of Justice:

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

It is the card of sorrow as well as of deeper satisfaction … It is also the card of the secret, or hidden.

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