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Just randomly searching for famous women, here’s a perfect person for Ashildr to have been in history, Aphra Behn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphra_Behn

1. Mysterious past
2. Writer
3. Adventurer
4. Died in her late 40s.

 

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I wonder if the next episode will deal with some of the constraints on what Ashildr can do as a woman in that time period.   It seems to me that The Girl Who Died placed Ashildr in a Norse society that relative to its time may have accorded women considerable authority, especially since the warriors would often have been absent.  Ashildr herself appears to fancy herself something of a Valkyrie.

Moving on through the centuries, perhaps the best role in leadership for a woman would have been Maria Theresa of Austria.  But that would have required considerable machinations to have replaced her.  For a storyteller and a woman, the ideal time and place might have been for her to be running a salon in Paris before the French Revolution.

 

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In Pyramids of Mars there is an interesting exchange between Sutekh the Destroyer and the Fourth Doctor where Sutekh simply assumes that the Doctor’s planet is in the Milky Way galaxy and the Doctor does provide its coordinates relative to “galactic zero center.”

That’s a rather interesting coincidence isn’t it that Gallifrey and the Earth are even in the same galaxy.

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@mirime: I think Ashildr is important because even before she met the Doctor and Clara she was a born dreamer and creator of stories. She is a future shaman.

Whoever controls the story controls what can happen, particularly concerning what Time Lords can do and not have paradox. An immortal storyteller could potentially put an unlimited number of hooks into the human story where gods, demigods, superheroes, etc. can intervene without their story being believed, and thus not vulnerable to paradox. Storytellers are miracle machines in the Dr. Who universe.

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Yet another impossible character, Odin, yet another “appearance”.  Of course this Odin was fake.  But who implanted the original idea of Odin in human consciousness?

Robin Hood, Santa Claus, Odin, etc.  What are they?  I argue they are placeholders put by someone as hooks so that they can manipulate the story.  Need some miracle done in human history?  Use a “mythical character,” then have no one believe the human primitives when they ascribe the miracle to gods.  That is how one avoids a paradox, because no one believes the actual story.

It’s the ancient astronaut theory applied to the Dr Who universe.  Only the Time Lords are the ancient astronauts.  Because otherwise they cannot come back, so they must influence humans as spirit beings.

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<span class=”useratname”>@plainolddave: Three in a row, remember the discarded Daleks in the sewers who got their revenge after being regenerated by the Doctor.
</span>

 

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Rewatching Genesis of the Daleks, I conclude the two-parter to open this season is one of the greatest feats of continuity spanning decades, at least in the depiction of the Daleks.

Davros programmed the original Dalek containers to restrict certain thoughts, and the Fourth Doctor confirms this as well.  Davros also issued the orders to remove all compassion and other positive emotions from the very DNA of the Daleks in the incubator room … but the Fourth Doctor actually winds up destroying that incubator room.  (To be precise he goes back a second time to destroy it and then a Dalek drives over the wires to complete the circuit.)  Even the old Daleks discarded in the sewers remind me of the former experiments of Davros on animals left in the Kaled underground passages.

It is actually astonishing how many ideas find their way into later serials, such as the Daleks being defeated by a virus, Davros being asked by the Doctor if he would use a weapon that would destroy all life in the universe, Davros’ contempt for democracy, the conflict at the very beginning between Davros and his children the Daleks.

I continue to wonder if there is some sort of decision either by the estate of Terry Nation or by the BBC that nothing other than what can be traced back to Genesis of the Daleks can be permitted in subsequent depictions of the Daleks.

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@scaryb: The episode goes out of its way to show the Mire’s technology is nothing special relative to other space-faring races.  It also says their reputation for being the deadliest warriors is simply part of their story.

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As for the Doctor’s limits working with time, isn’t the real limitation what the Reapers as shown in Father’s Day will do?   Don’t they feed on time paradoxes?

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There is an out that would explain why Ashildr did not wake up screaming in agony:  Adrenaline numbs the pain temporarily.  That would explain why she might become something of an adventurer, perhaps she is almost literally an adrenaline junkie.

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And now for the immediate candidate for quibble of the week’s episode:  The existence of technology that can grant near immortality with such a simple procedure as implanting a chip makes ZERO sense whatsoever, and some way needs to be found to expunge this from the Dr. Who universe.  It wasn’t even tuned to native Earthlings before the Doctor hacked it for heavens sakes, and he is not a good doctor.

In last season’s Time Heist we have seen there is a thriving market in all sorts of tech.  So how exactly would the knowledge of this immortality chip be kept secret?  Why wouldn’t Madame Karabraxos have heard of this and used it to repair herself and remain fairly young and beautiful?  Why wouldn’t the Daleks use it on themselves?

There is a way around this that is found in innumerable science fiction stories, particularly short ones.   Unfortunately the light-hearted nature of this episode and possibly the next preclude this solution.  The obvious answer why no one should want this tech is that the chip repairs, oh yes, constantly.   Every minute it repairs, every second.  And when it repairs it destroys and rebuilds, painfully.  Every second of one’s existence one feels incredible pain, pain that one would given anything to have taken away, especially by death.  Have Ashildr be searching for the one alien artifact that can give her release from the curse the Doctor has given her.

Alas, I strongly doubt that will happen.

 

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Long life might be sad or not to whoever has it, the danger is when they think they are right.  Because we have seen what happens when another long-lived being thinks he is right and has the time to try and enforce that view on the universe: Davros.

Now what would an immortal Earth person who dreams do with her time during the centuries when Earth is too primitive to have its own advanced tech.  She would go and try to steal whatever alien artifact was on Earth.  And who knows what that might be, perhaps as I speculated Moffat’s version of the renamed Hand of Omega.  Let us hope that Ashildir or whatever she will call herself in the future does not think she is right, or the universe may burn.

If there is any consistency in the story, when Clara ceases to be a companion, especially if it is a tragic circumstance, the Doctor should consider having time-limited ones.  I have a sudden vision, a Christmas special with Kate Stewart as a companion and two others, the children Kate Stewart mentioned she had when she introduced herself to Missy last season.

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Considering all of the foreground stories and portents before the full character of Clara even emerged in the show, that is why I have been asking who in recent episodes seems to be a candidate for the next female companion.  I wonder if there has been a decision to not go down the direction of an incredibly convoluted history or to not give what are in effect superpowers to the next companion.   What puzzles me is I’m not seeing any new candidates in recent episodes.

I am also wondering if there could be a series of companions who last for only a serial or two, candidates with some kind of strength that make it plausible they won’t have to be rescued by the Doctor from the start.  That is why I have mentioned candidates such as Kate Stewart, a revived Osgood, River Song, or even Missy.

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I am convinced Strength is Kate Stewart, who has already appeared in the first episode of this season.  Look at the lion.

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

“A woman crowned with crown and cap of maintenance, who calmly, and Without effort, closes the jaws of a furious lion. She represents Strength.”

If Moffat wanted to go throwback to the atmosphere of the 1960s – 70s of shows such as Sandbaggers, I wonder if Kate Stewart could be the victim of office politics at some point.  That would give her time to have an adventure or two as the Doctor’s temporary companion.

 

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<span class=”useratname”>@purofilion</span>: I bow to your greater knowledge of music and many other things.   Thanks for a history lesson.  🙂

In the original series of Star Trek, Requiem for Methusaleh, the character of Flint apparently had been various famous men in history including Leonardo da Vinci and Brahms.  In an act of sheer genius, having found himself immortal on Earth, he decided to leave Earth where he became not immortal, and old looking, and devoted his life to creating the perfect woman, who did not fancy being with an older man, Flint failing to make a backup of his work.  And I am not sure if the Federation figured out they could at least try sending him back to Earth to see if he could regain his immortality.

One wonders what would have happened if Flint had thought of bringing to outer space a coffin whose bottom was lined with soil from Earth.

 

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I think the enduring popularity of Bach can be argued to be almost an anachronism, because his music was so little valued at the time of his death that years later some of his original music was being used as wrapping paper at a local store.

The music earworm might be Pachelbel’s Canon which was written maybe very late 1600s and was almost unknown until 1968!  And then it exploded to become a fixture in weddings etc.

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On the issue of souls and the Dr Who universe, that is why I mentioned recently that as far as I know, we the viewer know something the Doctor may not:  Unless Missy planned an elaborate ruse that didn’t work, we the viewer know for certain that souls and the afterlife exist in the Dr Who universe.  Because unless Missy went back in time, revived from the brink of death the kid that Danny Pink had seemingly killed sweeping the building, and saved that kid’s physical body specifically to torment Danny in the Nethersphere, where else did that kid come from?  Even if the kid is just a copy, SOMETHING apparently used to be sweeping the entire Earth to backup every living person.

It’s not clear to me that Clara ever completely explained to the Doctor the kid or if Danny completely explained to Clara why that kid was so important for Danny to save.

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@lisa: I have a theory that Missy trapped Osgood’s soul in the Nethersphere and that it is possible for her to come back if Clara offers to go to the Nethersphere.

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@purofilion: My quibble for this season is why didn’t the Daleks, who were specifically shown casually flying over their city, simply fly away and escape in spaceships from new Skaro instead of staying to be eaten by their discarded Daleks from the sewers? 🙂

Or from the episode, why weren’t the Tivolan Prentis ghost and the O’Donnell ghost trying to kill the Doctor and Bennett back in 1980?  Did the O’Donnell ghost hang around under the lake until 2119, knowing to hide outside the Drum base to avoid a time paradox until it was okay to attack? 🙂

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The suspended animation capsule looked perfectly sized for the Doctor, too small for the Fisher King to me.  That’s why I thought from the end of the first part the Doctor would wind up in that capsule.

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<span class=”useratname”>@purofilion</span>: Correct me if I am wrong because I probably have no idea what I am talking about, but it seems to me that Beethoven’s Fifth is worthy of being called a precursor to rock music because it marks a break with what Western music used to have as its function.  The Fifth is, unless it is turned into disco as in A Fifth of Beethoven, not easy to dance to.  It is not Italian opera.  It is not church music.  It does not fit the previous categories of being social music.  It is not music composed for royalty.

The Doctor wants humans to rock on and chill and is willing to introduce anachronisms to do it.  Why would he want to do this besides having fun and wearing cool shades?

Because the ultimate warlike species won’t be the monsters such as the Fisher King.  The ultimate warlike species might be humans who are so warlike they are willing to war with each other until destruction, as shown by the setting in an abandoned base where there were preparations for a war that had it occurred might have ended human civilization.

Missy already tried one hybrid of warlike species with humans in Cybermen tech.  After all weren’t the Cybermen originally from a sister planet Mondas to Earth.  And who knows what other horrifying hybrids humans can form, perhaps with Time Lords.

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The Doctor is already a rock star with one group of females as has been shown at least twice relatively recently:  Osgood and O’Donnell, the younger technically inclined ones who are familiar with UNIT and the Doctor’s work.  This is starting to be a trend.  Look at how giddy O’Donnell was to actually be able to travel to another time in the Tardis, especially when contrasted to her unrequited love Bennett.  And had Osgood lived I am sure there would have been similar excitement to see time and space.

And therein is the paradox.  The one who is likely to be the Doctor’s companion is not the one giddy with excitement who has worshiped the Doctor from afar, it is likely to be the one who tells the Doctor she has to think about it.

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@arbutus: What I am thinking is that Missy’s plan is to create a companion Clara with whom the Doctor will be so emotionally invested that her loss would completely shatter the Doctor’s desire to have longterm human companions, at least for a while.  Because Missy means what shes says:  She wants her friend, the Doctor, back.

I wouldn’t mind if for a season the Doctor chose companions whom he told in advance they would have an adventure or two and no more, that there is a definite time limit.  Imagine if for one serial the Doctor traveled with Kate Stewart (who I believe is deliberately being portrayed as non-military so that the Doctor would find her acceptable).  Or a revived Osgood.  Or River Song. Or even Missy.

 

 

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<span class=”useratname”>@bluesqueakpip</span>: I like your theories about Clara.  I try to temper mine to leave the door open for the show to bring her back for a guest appearance or two should Jenna Coleman’s schedule be favorable.  That is why I reject theories that leave Clara simply dead.

And I do like how the Fourth Doctor’s companions were generally depicted leaving the show because they found good and noble things to do with their lives apart from the Doctor.  Or for that matter how Nyssa elected to stay behind on Terminus.

Here’s my completely bonkers theory where Clara could wind up:  I think part of Missy’s Nethersphere and its inhabitants is still out there somewhere.  (As an aside, it is rather strange there is something we the audience know that the Doctor does not.  We, and Clara, have been shown something equivalent to souls being resurrected is possible because we have seen Danny Pink sacrifice his own return to return a kid he killed years ago to life.  I wonder if Clara has even mentioned all of this to the Doctor.)  But there is clearly some kind of incredibly difficult to cross barrier to go from there to the material universe.  I think Clara will eventually cross that barrier to help tend to children who are trapped there, possibly with Danny Pink at her side.

Now for something really mind-bending:  There is these days a red-hot theory in theoretical physics that in some sense all of reality is some sort of hologram, a holographic universe, the holographic principle.   Now consider in the show we have been hearing about holograms recently, and consider how the interior of Missy’s Nethersphere was depicted, with the buildings on the inside of a gigantic spherical surface.

Perhaps to be in a different dimension like Gallifrey is is to be on a different holographic surface.   Perhaps Missy Nethersphere is another holographic surface.  And what if Missy somehow tapped into a spiritual plane to populate her Nethersphere.  After all the Doctor remarked to Clara before setting off to find Danny Pink that every culture had some notion of the afterlife.

 

 

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@ichabod: I wonder if a decision on what the next female companion should be like has already been made.  It seems to me the show lately has been going out of its way to reject candidates who have any technical competency from training.  Osgood is killed, O’Donnell is killed, the engineer from Mummy on the Orient Express rejects the Doctor’s offer.  I suppose the feeling is that a technical person would argue with the Doctor on technical matters which would be boring to a general audience; whereas a nontechnical person would argue on the limits of using technology, why technology can’t be used to help people at that moment.

In theory Clara is supposed to be this innate super-hacker but that seems to have been played down considerably in recent episodes.  In fact I think someone watching Clara who has never seen her before in her earlier appearances would have no idea how potentially good Clara can be at hacking.

The transition from Clara I think will be difficult.  I would have thought a year could be spent using guest companions like a revived Osgood, Kate Stewart, and even Missy.  I wonder what the reaction would be if they instead tried to go with a new Tegan with no technical qualifications whatsoever.

 

 

 

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<span class=”useratname”>@supernumerary</span>: As for relationships, I think what this episode is doing is highlighting a big problem with Clara and the Doctor’s relationship.  O’Donnell and Bennett’s relationship was one that could have become permanent pretending to be a temporary one.  What if for example O’Donnell had been cleared and was promoted elsewhere?  Does Bennett just say, “Seeya”?  No matter what he would have been put on the spot to either try and transfer to be with her, in which case his feelings would have been obvious, or lose her.

The Doctor and Clara on the other hand are a temporary relationship pretending to be permanent.  Neither, especially Clara, seems to be dealing with the fact that the Doctor and a companion’s relationship ends in a jarringly abrupt way that is becoming increasingly alien to this modern world with smartphones and Facebook.  One moment they are standing back-to-back fighting together to save their lives and the next they may be cut off from communication for decades or forever.  Whenever a companion becomes like Donna, thinking all she wants to do with the rest of her life is to adventure with the Doctor, tragedy must follow.

 

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Wouldn’t audiences have been familiar with causal time loops at least as far back as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? 🙂

http://qntm.org/excellent

 

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I’m more trying to understand the stories of the Fourth Doctor and how time works. Back then both the Doctor and the Time Lords in Genesis of the Daleks seemed to think he could change the Daleks past, perhaps even wipe them out, and the Doctor and the Jagaroth in City of Death seemed to think it was possible the Jagaroth could save his ship to prevent the creation of complex life on Earth.

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@bluesqueakpip: A causal loop should be a mainstream idea by now considering it was a major plot point of the movie Interstellar …

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@ichabod: In my opinion, considering everything that has been shown in the series since the return to TV, having the Time Lords ever return to the normal Dr Who universe would be a complete betrayal of everything that has been asserted.

The Time Lords can’t return because it has been shown clearly if they ever return it would start another Time War across the universe. We have been shown planets that have been destroyed as a result of this war. Wasn’t this what caused the Zygons to have to seek a new world in the first place? And nothing has changed with the Daleks as far as the Daleks being irredeemable. It might actually be contractually impossible according to the estate of Terry Nation for the Daleks to ever be greatly changed from what they are now.

The Time Lords can’t return because time and time again we have been shown that many things do change, beings die, and people have to go on as best they can. That happened in this episode where Bennett has to go on as best as he can without O’Donnell, a forever unrequited love. The Time Lords live a long time but they are not immortal. Plenty of super-powerful species have been shown throughout the years but the one connection is that these species eventually came to an end, just like the Osirans including Sutekh the Destroyer came to an end, even though Sutekh on his own at full power is said to have been able to defeat the Time Lords combined.

As stated even in this episode, the Time Lords are actually just living off their inheritance. They did nothing to actually earn it, and they have done nothing with it. A Time Lord return would destroy any moral message of the returned series and any claim to morality of the Doctor. It would I believe eventually destroy the returned series itself.

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This season seems weirder and weirder to me because the episodes seem to be going out of their way to NOT have a female candidate to one day replace Clara as the Doctor’s companion, whenever that might be. The first two two episode arcs have no candidates, especially considering the females in Under the Lake were military and therefore blacklisted by the Doctor forever from even being considered as companions. And the next guest-starring actress has another gig.

Kate Stewart I believe is prominently not military in contrast to her father. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her in at least some sort of transition arc as a temporary companion.

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In Under the Lake I remember seeing O’Donnell hitting Bennett playfully after he survived the first trapping with a ghost; therefore I considered there might be more between them. In retrospect, there should have been.

O’Donnell sadly was doomed before the episode ever began as I noted because as a lance corporal the Doctor would never invite her to be a companion, the one thing she would have most wanted. In some sense she lived the peak she could ever live as far as adventuring in time in space with the Doctor. Neither apparently did the Doctor invite Cass although Cass was as he noted the smartest in the room to him, because she is forever tainted in the Doctor’s eyes. That is an interesting thought of the Doctor having an unforgivable sin.

The Fisher King was actually the anti-thesis of the ancient astronaut theories. It is clear the Orion aliens have never visited Earth before or they would have enslaved the planet in unbreakable chains millennia ago. And these aliens seem to have an allergy to large amounts of water instead of being from the water, as the Fisher King I believe promised to drain the planet.

I’m glad the sparse whiteness of the craft’s interior, a sparseness as I noted was worthy of Johnny Ive of Apple, was a plot point. But now I am wondering if only the lack of one of the craft’s power cells prevented the Doctor from accessing all of the other stuff that the Tivolan said was workable in the craft.

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Here’s why I think Clara will turn out to be baseline human: Because Moffat needs to show her being vulnerable as a way to wound the Doctor as he has never been wounded before.

In Under the Lake the Doctor and Clara have an exchange where states his responsibility to keep her safe. But by the end of the episode the Doctor appears to be a ghost. But we the viewer know the Doctor will somehow escape from this condition.

Time Lords as this season has been emphasizing are aliens, they are different. In many ways they are better suited for the dangers to be encountered out there in time and space: Two hearts, stronger, more knowledge, and as a last resort, regeneration. The Fourth Doctor could be “killed” by one of Sutekh’s robots in Pyramids of Mars and seconds later hop up and be perfectly fine.

Humans compared to Time Lords are both fleeting and fragile.

The wings of Icarus Clara has been getting are from being around the Doctor, learning to think on her feet like the Doctor. In last season’s Flatline she had to play the full role of the Doctor leading a group to try and survive monsters. At the start of this season UNIT and even Kate Stewart respects Clara enough so they listen intently to everything she says in a quick analysis of why the airplanes are frozen. And then Clara undergoes training from Missy. In Under the Lake the Doctor says that everyone in the room should be smarter just by being around him.

But the problem with the wings of Icarus is they will melt when they get too close to the Sun. And so I fear this will happen somehow to Clara. For she is not the Doctor and I think she is not a Time Lord. That I think is Missy’s point, how Missy tries to get back her friend the Doctor.

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This is speculation about what I believe will never be confirmed in the series.

I conjecture that around the time of the Fifth Doctor serial Warriors of the Deep, 2084, the two superpower blocs were looking for excuses to hide nuclear missile launch bases. So under the pretext of looking for oil, there was a boom in constructing underwater bases with nuclear reactors in them.

After the Silurian / Sea Devil attack in Warriors of the Deep, it was realized that the deep water floors needed to be examined for other species bases. Near the Caithness Drum base’s location both a gigantic oil deposit and advanced technology were discovered. But instead of the advanced tech being from a Sea Devil base, the tech turned out to be Zygon. A search of UNIT records revealed a likely explanation: This tech was from abandoned Zygon installations used by the group encountered in the Fourth Doctor serial Terror of the Zygons.

(To me this also gives another reason why the Zygons sent out their monster in Terror of the Zygons to attack the oil platforms: The Zygons wanted to preserve as much of the oil as possible because they needed it once they conquered the Earth to induce a shock greenhouse effect to terra(Zygon)form the planet.)

I conjecture the Drum therefore has a dual mission: Explore the oil deposit and scavenge advanced technology left behind by the Zygons. The corporate guy Pritchard might not have been let in on part concerning the Zygons; on the other hand, he would still have great influence, as due to the cold war blocs, that world would likely be still run by their military industrial complexes.

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@purofilion: When one starts a PC the BIOS initializes the hardware and provides services so that the operating system can take over. What I am trying to say is that in the Dr Who universe, in analogy to ideas from Snow Crash, what we have seen in Under the Lake is that across species such as humans and Time Lords there is a lower level of communication that can be used to program the brain, a level lower than that of the words of language. I speculate in the Dr Who universe that there is also a lower level of commands, a lower level than physics, that can be used to (re)program all of time and space. This is where we get the tie-ins to mysticism such as Madame Vastra’s demonstration that time travel is possible in dreams.

So BIOS versus operating system, ear worm versus language, mysticism versus physics, I speculate there is a higher level of control that is easier to reason about and use, but underneath is a lower level that can be manipulated to subvert or override what is expected from the higher level.

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Toby Whithouse has quite an impressive resume. I wonder if he is being considered by the BBC for a far greater role in Dr Who as a backup if Moffat should decide to leave. What would his grand vision be.

School Reunion was a big deal in many senses, with the return of the character of Sarah Jane Smith. But also there was a big idea, that there was some equation that, with some children’s imagination thrown in, could be the secret to controlling all of space and time. Think of this as assembly code to access the multiverse’s BIOS.

Now in Under the Lake there is apparently some kind of assembly code that can access across species the mind’s BIOS. Now we have been shown that the Tardis has some sort of consciousness but it is not an overt one since the end of The Doctor’s Wife. Perhaps that is why the Tardis could not translate the symbols nor apparently be affected by them.

Snow Crash has the metaverse, but I suspect eventually for the Dr Who universe its equivalent of the metaverse will not be a combination of physical and online, but instead it will be physical and spiritual. For as been shown with Vastra, time travel is possible in dreams.

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I am wondering if this is possible: Could a Faraday cage or a modified version prevent the signals the Zygons use to synch with their captives? Do they need such signals?

Given that the Tower of London in the 2010s was Tardis-proofed, I find it difficult to believe it wasn’t enclosed in a version of a Faraday cage, so this theory is probably provably wrong.

But suppose by some miracle some sort of Faraday cage could unmask Zygons. This would explain why the members of the Drum stumbled upon a way to stay alive from the ghosts: They instinctively ran to the Faraday cage hoping the ghosts were some sort of Zygon weapon. While they were waiting in the Faraday cage daylight came on and then they discovered the ghosts had vanished. And they trusted the Doctor and Clara because they had entered the Faraday cage too.

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@purofilion: I’ve just had a better thought that might explain the anomalies. What if the Drum is meant to explore a hopefully abandoned Zygon base not a Sea Devil base?

Suppose that humans in that time had determined that the Zygons from the Fourth Doctor serial Terror of the Zygons, as part of their plan to terraform (Zygonform?) Earth, had created an enormous oil deposit near an abandoned base.

This then explains all features of the Drum: The personnel are mostly military, they are few in number, they have unexpected equipment and can salvage spacecraft from the ocean floor, and they apparently have to ask the outside world for rescue submarines to leave. They are few because they don’t want the Zygons to capture and mass impersonate, and they want the crew to know each other well. The lure of stealing tech from the Zygon base is worth the trillion, even inflated, dollar investment.

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The more I think about it, the undersea base the Drum does not make sense.

Ostensibly the base seems to be there for resource exploration. But a trillion dollar base? Now obviously more than a hundred years from now inflation may have made what is a trillion dollars now be a billion or less, but I think the context really was Vertex and others had invested an equivalent of today’s one trillion dollars. That would have to be one GIGANTIC oil deposit to justify such a base.

The base is huge. Yet there are relatively few people on it. Perhaps this is due to budgetary constraints and story-telling purposes so everyone gets their moment of characterization. But the people on it are military? At least O’Donnell is mentioned I believe to be a lance corporal. (As an aside, it is somewhat a shame O’Donnell is military because that probably means the Doctor would never even consider her to be a long-time companion. The actress playing her Morven Christie seems very respected.) From my understanding the crews of modern oil derricks are far larger than just 6.

Offhand I would guess that “oil deposit” is actually a Sea Devil base, only there is seemingly zero indication of that happening.

This base reminds me vaguely of something similar to the base of the Fifth Doctor Davison era Warriors of the Deep, only this time period is considerably after that time period. Perhaps this base is converted after the Cold War type of hostilities of Warriors of the Deep had lessened on Earth.

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@jimmythetulip: Breaking the fourth wall to me is the character acknowledging and directly addressing the audience. In this context, not that I think this has any chance of happening, that would be Capaldi addressing the TV audience wondering why no one noticed the Doctor was acting so strangely.

I welcome reading your theories. Since at least 99% of what I speculate will turn out to be sheer nonsense, I at least have no right to throw stones at anyone else’s theories. 🙂

Missy I believe in the first two episodes is clearly training Clara, trying to uplift Clara’s ability to think in new situations like a Time Lord would think.

This forum has some of the best and most fun discussion I have seen on any Internet forum.

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@purofilion: I must confess I find some of the Doctor’s behavior in this episode completely inexplicable, although I am sure someone can dig up precedents in the Doctor’s long history. But it is as if the audience has been trained by Moffat by Moffat’s own earworm so that the audience can’t see it until possibly later in the season. 🙂

The Doctor has encountered plenty of phenomena that looked like they might be ghosts but from what I recall never blurted out they might be ghosts. What does that actually mean? In fact everything in this episode points to there being some scientific and not supernatural explanation for these ghosts including their interactions with the electromagnetic spectrum. This part might be explained by the earworm.

There have been several Doctor Who serials where the whole point was to get to the control room. Here the Doctor is in a spaceship whose interior looks like it was designed by the spaceship designer equivalent of Sir Johnny Ive. (It’s all white with no seats or seeming padding or decoration on the walls.) What else could be used to control the ship or its records other than that control panel in the back? That control panel stands out about as much as the click wheel on an iPod classic. And wouldn’t the best way to figure out the spaceship’s original mission be to try and access its records?

In the context of classic Sherlock Holmes, talk about a dog that doesn’t bark in the night. In another series I would expect Capaldi to break the fourth wall and start lecturing the audience in part 2.

[jphamlore @replies]

Both Missy and the Doctor might be acting a bit crazy and eccentric while masking their true intentions. It seems to me this season the Doctor is a bit erratic, especially at the very beginning but with lingering effects. So I wonder, what would one do to get one’s affairs in order before going on a journey where one might be captured and die, or worse?

It seems to me not only would the Doctor create something like his last will and testament to give to Missy, but he would make sure information he didn’t want know by his potential captors would be safeguarded. We have been seeing a steady stream of references at least since season 8 to the Doctor’s deliberately deleting his own memories, such as Time Heist and Last Christmas where he casually mentions he reflexively deletes memories of people unimportant to him. I am wondering if prior to going back in time to be found, the Doctor did a mass deletion and / or suppression of a huge raft of memories. Perhaps that is another reason for the Doctor to carry his new glasses as a link to the Tardis, a backup of information.

The Doctor may have also deleted or suppressed knowledge of certain potential weapons such as the Hand of Omega and the Moment. I am seeing situations where the Doctor normally would investigate such as the control panel at the back of the space ship but where he does not. (He went for the control panels as the Fourth Doctor in Pyramids of Mars.) There isn’t that much else in the ship to look at that can possibly be a control panel. And the control panel has been shown in at least two shots, one with the corporate guy examining it with greedy looking interest and another a shot where the control panel is framed in the shot between Clara and the Doctor.

Something I think is not right with the Doctor.

[jphamlore @replies]

@purofilion: When the Doctor takes off for the past with his two new companions (are they officially now companions since they will help him in his next adventure after traveling in the Tardis?), Moffat takes care to show a closeup of the ring of circles moving around the Tardis. I speculate these are not just for artistic decoration, they are mathematical symbols that bind the Eye of Harmony, the black hole singularity that powers the Tardis.

I could barely make out some sort of symbols inside the circles on the control panel of the spaceship. The Tardis circle symbols seem to me to be entire solar systems, while I had the impression the spaceship symbols were more focusing on a star symbol.

So I speculate the spaceship’s rings of circles when they are pressed in the right order start the rings moving and calibrate the spaceship to turn a star into a supernova and perhaps collapse its core to a black hole, and then control this collapse so that the singularity can be extracted.

[jphamlore @replies]

Here’s my bonkers theory using Norse mythology.

The great snake Jormungand is the wormhole, the Einstein Rosen bridge, that threatens to swallow whatever goes into the black hole and send it to another dimension, such as the antimatter dimension of Omega. The Fenris Wolf is the black hole, perhaps one formed after the supernova of Betelgeuse, that seeks to swallow the stars, the planets, and the moons. That is the dark.

In Norse Mythology Fenris was bound by a magic chain made of things that do not have overt existence. Translated to science, the black hole’s singularity was bound by mathematical equations similar to those shown in the movie Interstellar. Also in mythology a sword was stuck in Fenris’ mouth to keep its jaws from closing. That is the sword.

To get Fenris’ cooperation the god Tyr was required to place a hand in Fenris’ mouth on penalty of losing it if he would break his oath and have the magic chain be a trap. And so Tyr lost his right hand and became an oathbreaker, perhaps an analogy to the Hand of Omega. That is the forsaken.

[jphamlore @replies]

The snake all the way at least back to the Epic of Gilgamesh represented immortality since it seemed to have a new life after shedding its skin.

The snake swallowing its tale could represent various astronomical phenomena including some of the effects around a black hole.

Orion would be noted from any direction in the local area of stars around Earth’s sun because of the red giant Betelgeuse which is speculated to go supernova fairly soon, at least relative to cosmological time. I believe Betelgeuse has enough mass to form a black hole after going supernova, but of course I am no expert on such matters.

[jphamlore @replies]

@purofilion: I believe showing the Black Sun occult symbol would be a public relations nightmare for the BBC. Check out the Wikipedia entry for why this would be.

It is not even a symbol that could be argued to set a historical mood, in contrast to showing a flag that would identify a particular time period and location.

What I call the made up name of the White Sun occult symbol, the control panel with rings of circles, at least has the potential of a cool effect if when the control panel is fully activated the rings of circles start moving like the Tardis rings of circles do.

[jphamlore @replies]

The pattern of rings of circles around a central circle is I speculate an occult symbol of the White Sun. I just made that up. The problem for the BBC is it cannot use the occult symbol that would be recognized everywhere, the forbidden symbol of the Black Sun. So what has to be used is the made up symbol of the White Sun. Still the idea is the same, the symbol of ultimate evil, the power that should not be harnessed. The White Sun represents the black hole singularity bound by the rings of esoteric rune knowledge, the assembly code that enables one to hack minds and reality. Its power is to time and space as powerful and dangerous as nuclear power is to this world, which is why the nuclear reactor features so prominently in the story.

[jphamlore @replies]

When the Tardis leaves for the past the shot shows a slowed down closeup version of the moving ring of circles. The control panel at the back of the alien spaceship shows concentric rings of circles. The Tardis binds within itself the Eye of Harmony, the singularity of a black hole.

Could this spaceship be a Moffat version of the Hand of Omega?

The dark: before the supernova. The sword: the Hand of Omega. The forsaken: someone like Omega has to go to the other universe the black hole connects to, possibly to stabilize a wormhole to extract the singularity. The temple: a new Gallifrey to rule space and time.

Note the episode does say the signal has some connection to the constellation Orion. And as I pointed out months ago before the season started, what is in Orion is a red giant Betelgeuse that is expected to go supernova relatively soon in cosmological terms.

[jphamlore @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave: Well-spotted about the poster of Lenin and the Russian Orthodox church.

@bluesqueakpip: Another option is right after World War I. Another poster @kharis has noted the name Sinclair having various connections. It so happens that there was a famous British naval officer Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair who among other exploits led a taskforce that began the British campaign to preserve Baltic state independence.

[jphamlore @replies]

Let’s see if we can chip away at some mysteries like the Doctor would using very little information.

The first ghost appeared when the base members were examining the inside of the ship. I still believe the first murderous attack that killed the commander was clearly shown as occurring right after the corporate guy was shown spending a lot of attention on that rear control panel with the circles on it. I surmise what is being defended is that control panel.

If the goal was to infect as many people with the earworm using the writings, the writings would be on the outside not the inside of the ship. It also appears to me that the writings are scratched into what is described as a near impenetrable surface. I therefore believe the writings are a defense mechanism and not an attack mechanism.

The first ghost killed the commander creating another ghost, and eventually he killed the corporate guy creating another ghost. Now the Doctor appears to be added as a ghost from the past at the same time the first ghost was created. This tells me the military base where the capsule was being manipulated, at least in the final stages, just have been near empty for some reason, else there would be a battalion of other ghosts. Yet the capsule seems of significant mass especially compared to the technology that would have been available to one man hundreds of years ago. I infer this man had help possibly moving the capsule to where it was found, opening the castle, and moving the suspended animation case. Yet these helpers were apparently not turned into ghosts. Also if ghosts murder to create further ghosts, who created the first ghost? I conjecture the first ghost was the result of that man deliberately secluding himself with the capsule to experiment on its contents, in particular, the control panel. I believe he must have set off some sort of defense mechanism that caused the etchings of the ear worm inside the capsule.

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