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@fivefaces: In at least the Fourth Doctor story City of Death, the Doctor took the Tardis back to Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop to find out why there were multiple copies of the Mona Lisa in the present time. Then he used a felt marker to write “This is a fake” on the canvases that would later be used by Leonardo to make the copies!

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@lisa: I have no idea if Sir Charles Lyell was a Freemason. The rumors of such a membership are more associated apparently with Charles Darwin. But just read Lyell’s biography say here. The man had connections. His background gave him knowledge of all the sciences and mathematics. I view him more as a peak rationalist of his time:

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-Charles-Lyell-Baronet

Now one more thing that may relate to the Doctor: the time period I see for Lyell’s involvement would be the couple of years after the death of Lyell’s beloved wife of 40 years, a wife who shared his interests in geology. Think of an older Lyell who may have been driven to despair and desperation, due to the death of his longtime companion, to finally explore past the safe limits investigating the artifact.

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Let us go for complete bonkers in another direction.

If I understand correctly, the location of the artifact is Caithness at the northeastern tip of Scotland. At the time it was being investigated it might have been the part of the UK furthest from invasion and also far away from London in case some disaster occurred. It was on land under a dam that could flood the area. What if none of this was an accident. What if a Scottish branch of a precursor to UNIT had a base at Caithness where this artifact was being isolated for study.

What if the various famous Scottish scientists, engineers, and philosophers were all part of this organization. The first dead guy had what looked a prominent mutton-chop whitish beard. What if he is none other than Charles Lyell, the then head of this organization?

https://www.google.com/search?q=charles+lyell&biw=1252&bih=545&source=lnms&tbm=isch

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Let us not forget the Cloister Bell rang. This is supposed to be an extremely grave threat.

What if the ship contains the ancient Mesopotamian mythological object of ultimate power, the Tablet of Destiny? Reinterpreting this in the language of Snow Crash, the Tablet of Destiny, that control panel on the back wall with the circles, lists the assembly code that can be used to hack into minds of sentient creatures across the universe and who knows what else. This assembly code may enable the hacking of reality itself. That is why it is ultimate evil yet also so intoxicating to contemplate.

In myth the Tablet of Destiny was said to be stolen by a bird. In ancient astronaut terms, this bird would have been a space ship.

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Could this be a season of Scotland? This incarnation of the Doctor described himself as Scottish?

I confess I know almost nothing about Scotland, so forgive my errors.

The underwater base the Drum is located in Caithness. This area at the northern tip was settled / invaded by the Norse. Hmmm.

There are also a tremendous number of Scottish scientists, engineers, and philosophers who contributed to the Industrial Revolution and subsequent discoveries such as evolution. I do not think it is impossible that it will be shown that extraterrestrial influence may have aided these people, especially with the popularity of theories such that Scotland is the hiding place of either the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant.

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That control panel at the back of the spaceship is the key to all. The corporate guy was studying it before the solitary ghost at the time turned on the engines killing the commander in charge. It appears to be a circle in the middle surrounded by two rings of I believe 9 circles and then another ring with I am not sure how many circles.

I could not find on a brief web search an obvious occult equivalent of this control panel, but obviously I could be missing something.

I conjecture this control panel is a super-weapon or can be configured to be a super-weapon. It is therefore possible that the signal is a desperate measure to call in reinforcements to contain this weapon before it is misused.

I do believe it is the Doctor who is inside the survival capsule.

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My new bonkers theory is Moffat is using some themes from Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash. The alien(s) are using some sort of neurolinguistic lower level assembly code that apparently works to hack humans, Time Lords, maybe many more species.

This leads me to wonder if Missy will eventually try and set up another version of her Netherverse as an equivalent to the metaverse.

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I explain the Doctor’s strange comments about ghosts as being the result of the writing’s earworm that was affecting his consciousness as was clearly shown. Else why would the Doctor forget he has had plenty of ghost-like encounters such as last season’s Mummy on the Orient Express that in the end had some sort of scientific explanation.

By the way was it ever resolved who created the AI Gus or who phoned the Doctor to take a ride on that space train in the first place?

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I have speculated that just as Dr Who has mined ancient astronaut theory in the past such as the Fourth Doctor’s arc Pyramid of Mars, so must it continue to do so in the present, especially since there are more and more ancient astronaut programs on the so-called History channels.

Orion is said in ancient astronaut lore to be, well, lots of things such as maybe their origin or having a stargate. See for example Ancient Aliens: Destination Orion.

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@bluesqueakpip The Tardis felt great danger, enough so that the Cloister Bell was rung, yet it took the Doctor and Clara there anyway. So I am wondering if this is for Clara’s sake. Perhaps the Tardis is hoping the radiation from the nuclear reactor will help cure Clara of some of the effects of the Dalek nanogenes.

If this is peak Clara, she is simply too reckless. Now I have an appreciation for some of the earlier companions who were horrified enough by the slaughter of some arcs to at least wish to stop traveling in the Tardis for a bit, say Teegan. This cannot end well for a companion to simply with to travel with the Doctor forever. Look what happened to Donna.

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@purofilion: The BBC’s licensing the rights to use the Daleks from the estate of Terry Nation was quite a struggle to obtain. At first there was no agreement:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3859651.stm

Fortunately this was resolved:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4469761.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3535588.stm

The question to me is what sort of editorial control does the Terry Nation estate have over the Dalek appearances.

I am guessing with no inside information that the BBC is very careful to avoid further intellectual property entanglements. Anything that did not appear on screen during the Sylvester McCoy era, the bulk of the story, would I guess have to be licensed. Therefore it would be better to avoid any such question and simply recast the ideas to forms over which the BBC would have undisputed control.

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@mudlark: One can dream of a Dr Who scene where Colony Sarff is on an airplane with a Samuel L. Jackson cameo.

Maybe someone can call in a favor such as how John Cleese made an appearance in the Fourth Doctor story City of Death.

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@gamergirlavatar: I suspect Missy is only acting bananas when in actuality every moment she is coldly calculating.

For example, the three are being held prisoner and Missy appears to be singing possibly to be deliberately annoying. No I think, she’s probably using her voice like a bat trying to probe the chamber they are in. Later she is shown dancing but now it is explicitly stated by her she is probing the nature of the gravity in the chamber, determining it is from a planet not artificial.

Missy stated in Death in Heaven all she wanted was her friend back, the Doctor. She achieved her objective, also communicating to the Doctor the fact she was still alive and what her new form was. And in this episode she’s demonstrating to Clara that DNA is thicker than water, that the Doctor and her sharing the same DNA and in the same species matters more than any other bond.

No I think Missy is coldly manipulating the Doctor to eventually buy into her view that the Time Lords must be brought back, but perhaps “better”, edited.

Because that’s what Missy said in Death in Heaven, “upload the mind, upgrade the body.” And while they are it, maybe upgrade the mind as well since Gallifreyan civilization had proven to be defective.

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@lisa: I am just wondering if there is going to be a connection to Arthurian legend and the Holy Grail or whether they are just going to randomly use the name “Fisher King.”

It seems possible to me stories this season are having a theme of magical resurrection and perhaps even raising from the dead. That might come in useful for the fate of Clara …

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@denvaldron: Wonderful analysis, thank you.

About the Hand of Omega in Remembrance of the Daleks, what is most interesting to me is I do believe, but I might be wrong, that Davros wanted control of it specifically to turn the Daleks into the new masters of space and time with powers equal to that of the Time Lords. I think the story clearly shows both Davros and the Doctor wanted Skaro’s sun to go supernova, only Davros wanted the supernova explosion to be contained enough to control its singularity, I presume to create a new Eye of Harmony, to fuel the Dalek conquest of time and space, whereas the Doctor just let it be an uncontrolled explosion that wiped out the entire system including Skaro.

Yes and the McCoy era definitely had hints the Doctor was somehow more than a normal Time Lord.

There definitely are some sort of Gallifreyan dissidents or outcasts as shown in Invasion of Time where there are even inhabited wastelands outside the Capitol.

Rewatching Time of the Doctor, it is interesting the Doctor is able to control himself in the truth field over hundreds of years enough to never have to say his actual name to anyone else. So perhaps he was also able to conceal some of why he left Gallifrey in his brief sentence introducing himself to the town people of Christmas.

@purofilion: In the current Dr Who series itself the Silver Nemesis is not the Moment, but I was just suggesting it had much of the same role as being this unstoppable weapon, with some sort of personality and intelligence, that the Doctor could wield that could extinguish entire space civilizations. But I was also speculating the BBC did not want the two to be identified as one because the entire Sylvester McCoy era of the Doctor is an unfinished story that the BBC would not have clear and unequivocal rights to as far as the parts that were never shown on screen.

But just like the Silver Nemesis / Moment there is a role that has to be played regardless of the specific name. The Doctor on occasion does need to have at his disposal an interstellar doomsday weapon he can talk to.

And now I think there is the need for another role, that of the Hand of Omega or whatever it will be called. It should have something to do with harnessing the power of a black hole’s singularity, especially given the movie Interstellar that featured special effects and science developed in large part in the UK. It should have the ability to endow a species with the power of the Time Lords.

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@purofilion: I personally think what is scary about Missy isn’t that she’s crazy, but that she is only acting crazy. Both she and the Doctor are the only known Time Lords left in their universe with Gallifrey … somewhere else. Missy realized a bit earlier that regardless of their feelings, they eventually have to work together to move forward on some plan to re-create the Time Lords.

So what I believe about Clara is that she is a plot by Missy to break the Doctor once and for all of his desire to travel with a human companion as opposed to Missy. Missy wants Clara to be the absolute limit in the good sense of what an ordinary human companion can be. Peak Clara and Doctor. And then of its own weight, perhaps not even with Missy’s direct intervention, it will all come crashing down. Clara like Icarus will fly too close to the Sun and her wings will melt off, and then she will fall and nothing the Doctor can do will save her.

The Doctor I speculate has a totally different viewpoint because of the responsibility in his possession of the Hand of Omega which he stole when he originally left Gallifrey. The Hand of Omega can create a new race of beings who can control time and space out of anyone who operates it to capture the power of a singularity in a black hole at the moment of its creation in a supernova. The Doctor thought he might be dying at the hands of Davros, so he sent instructions to Missy on how to retrieve the Hand of Omega.

But … and this part may never be part of the story … I speculate that the Doctor encoded the location of the Hand of Omega in a series of adventures that Missy would have to undergo as a treasure hunt. These adventures would hopefully force Missy to a viewpoint of other beings more in line with the Doctor’s.

So that is why the Doctor and Clara have been apparently separated for long times even after Last Christmas when they seemed to happy to be reunited.

Missy in her own way thinks she is saving the Doctor’s soul in order to save her people while the Doctor is plotting to save Missy’s. Is this not perhaps the one true remark Davros made to the Doctor, that everyone needs his or her own people to be whom one is willing to sacrifice anything to help? The difference between Missy and the Doctor is Missy sees only the Gallifreyans as being worthy of her people while the Doctor is more expansive.

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I speculate the candidate(s) for the next companion are hiding in plain sight and has / have already been seen in the show. Guesses?

A good and bad thing about Michelle Gomez as Missy is that her dialog with the Doctor or actually anyone else would be hard to sustain over an entire season of episodes. Imagine a full season of Missy and the Doctor traveling together in the Tardis having adventures. But the writers would probably keel over in exhaustion halfway through regardless of how comfortable their writing circumstances are.

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My speculation the Doctor’s last will and testament is the location of the Hand of Omega. It was directed at Missy not Clara because knowledge of the Hand of Omega would be useless to Clara and would only endanger her life.

The stealing of the Hand of Omega is why the Doctor had to leave Gallifrey in the first place.

However the Hand of Omega will not be called the Hand of Omega, just as the Silver Nemesis was amplified and renamed the Moment. Having read this site, I now believe the BBC wants to avoid having the same problems with the Daleks and Davros as far as intellectual property claims go and therefore will recast everything from the Sylvester McCoy era to something different enough to own outright:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Cartmel_Masterplan

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I am guessing any exit for the character of Clara Osgood will allow for her eventual guest-starring in a later huge episode, circumstances permitting in Jenna Coleman’s future schedule. On the other hand I expect a certain finality as to why she can no longer journey regularly with the Doctor in the Tardis.

Now imagine this: The Nethersphere still exists and that’s where Missy imprisoned Osgood who is technically dead, just like Danny Pink is. Some circumstance occurs where Clara gives her life so that Osgood can come back and Clara can re-unite with Danny, perhaps to help raise a bunch of orphaned children. The Doctor vows to some day find a way to bring them all back.

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Tarot cards, sorry if I am repeating others’ theories:

Strength I am certain is Kate Stewart. Note the lion.

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

The Tower may have been the purported destruction of the Tardis or the Dalek’s trying to steal the Doctor’s regeneration energy awakening their discarded brethren:

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

The Chariot is the Doctor’s tank or Davros’s chair:

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

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At the end of Genesis of the Daleks, just before the Daleks slaughter all of Davros’s team, Davros does scream at the Daleks to show some pity.

Perhaps Davros has deduced the Doctor has a moral code that distinguishes monsters from beings that show some sort capacity to live with others in peace. Killing monsters in the Doctor’s moral code, especially that of the Fourth Doctor, is perfectly acceptable. The Fourth Doctor is going around trying to kill several possible last members of species, from Sutekh the Destroyer last of the Osirans, the Fendahl, and the last of the Great Vampires. And the Fourth Doctor said the Jagaroth were a terrible warlike species that the universe was better off without. Killing sentient beings on the other hand who are not monsters is genocide in the Doctor’s moral code and is unforgivable.

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“… Cloister Wars … the night he stole the Moon and the President’s wife … since he was a little girl.”

And when the Doctor left Gallifrey after he stole the Hand of Omega?

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@purofilion: Much of this Doctor’s portrayal is reflected in the Sylvester McCoy Doctor era, but the writers have indicated they believe the McCoy era stories were badly written and perhaps blame it for the show’s cancellation back then. I was relieved they at least showed part of the McCoy Doctor’s diatribe against Davros.

The cold calculated emotional manipulation for example is shown in the Doctor’s breaking Ace’s faith in him so that Fenric could be defeated. Also in the McCoy era we see the Doctor having control over the Silver Nemesis which might as well have been the Moment in the current series and the Doctor hacking the Hand of Omega to destroy Skaro’s star system in Remembrance of the Daleks. Then as now the Doctor gives Davros the means of committing genocide but relies on Davros’ own greed to push the button.

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@purofilion: The scary thing is what if the Master / Missy was acting for somewhat rational reasons and not mere jealousy.

Suppose there was a Time Lord Nostradamus who made some terrible prophecy such as:

A warlike race old and tired will conspire
With a young fanatic one who knows they’re right
The union of their might
Will set the universe on fire

After all Missy asserted precisely in Death in Heaven that she did not need an army but the Doctor did because he thought he was in the right.

The Master / Missy has thus been interfering in Earth affairs to deliberately try and create rule by corrupt leaders around whom Earth would never rally around, to breed cynicism and despair, to destroy the notion of hope and right. Because otherwise it was prophesized by this Time Lord Nostradamus that religious fanatics from a planet suspiciously resembling Earth would be recruited by some older interstellar power to spread war throughout the universe.

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@kharis and others: Thank you for bringing to our attention the tarot card references, which are no doubt correct.

In some sense I see this as a throwback to the early part of the Fourth Doctor’s classic series, because back then any sort of mysticism that could be tied to extraterrestrials was fair game as an explanation. For example, consider pyramid power and ancient astronauts in Pyramids of Mars.

It’s a little trickier nowadays because some of the tropes that could be used back then are now seen as offensive ethnic stereotypes, and the BBC is trying to market Dr Who worldwide. Tarot cards are a great avenue.

Is there some good online reference that explains the relations between the cards? Is there some order the cards must appear?

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@bluesqueakpip: I agree something definitely should have changed within the Master / Missy after the revelation about Rassillon and the Council of Time Lords.

That’s brings up to me the question of why does the Master hang around Earth so much even after he was able to escape imprisonment there? One solid interpretation is his jealously towards the Doctor and the Doctor’s protection of Earth. Is the Master’s jealously so great that he would hang around a planet that makes him / her sick to the stomach from the rotting smell of its inhabitants?

But I have to wonder if there isn’t some terrible prophecy about Time Lords and Earth, that humans might not be the warrior race that will one day form part of a duo that will devastate the cosmos.

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@arbutus: “In fact, a lot of what you said about Davros might apply to the Mixmaster as well!”

Missy won. Missy is still the Doctor’s best friend and no one else can ever match being the only one left of the Doctor’s species in that universe. Certainly not the poodle.

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It is possible that Missy is behaving completely rationally given that she is a Time Lord supremacist over humans. She stated her goal plainly in Death in Heaven: She wants her friend back, the Doctor. Actually she has come quite far. Despite all of her crimes, some which came quite close to extinguishing humans, here the Doctor still treats her as his closest friend.

What she really needs to do to get her friend back is to break the Doctor’s desire to have other companions. My theory with what she is trying to do with Clara is to raise Clara up to be the greatest human companion the Doctor can ever possibly have only to have the Doctor lose Clara in some tragedy.

As the Doctor ages it seems to me it is getting harder and harder for him to change companions.

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@barnable: If the Doctor preserved the time line which I believe he did, then old Davros is shown before the Doctor even arrives with the sonic screwdriver stays the same.

@kharis: I speculate this episode is not parenting, it’s office politics.

Think of Clara as a new temp hire who has no shot at ever becoming permanent staff. The Doctor and Missy are rival managers.

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@arbutus: Davros has now owned that sonic screwdriver probably longer than the Doctor has. It would be crazy to trust any of the programming on it or its hardware after Davros had had maybe millennia to hack it.

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I didn’t predict the glasses but I knew the Doctor had a backup to the sonic screwdriver somewhere. This is the guy in the classic series who had a duplicate of K-9 ready to go.

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What Missy is doing is constant experimentation as a ruthless scientist. Look what she did with the Cybermen: They can now fly and can be totally controlled by a bracelet. She’s going to do the same to create her own army of Daleks.

When she, the Doctor, and Clara are being held prisoner look what she’s doing: She’s singing her song like a bat exploring the area. She dances to figure out gravity. And now she uses Clara to explore all aspects of how to control a Dalek, what happens when a living being is trapped inside the tank. What are the limits to controlling communication?

Although Missy did say she did not need an army for conquest. Perhaps she’ll use them to explore the universes to try and track down Gallifrey.

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Dalek nanites help reprogram the brain of whatever is in the tank to be able to use the tank. The first introduction of Clara to the Doctor’s new glasses with the power of the sonic screwdriver was well afterwards when the Doctor rematerialized the Tardis.

I can sadly conclude that the Doctor did nothing overtly technical to counter the nanites and that they still might be in Clara’s brain perhaps reprogramming her still.

“Davros remembers.” Even during their talk Davros seemed to indicate he had only fairly recently deduced who his rescuer was. I wonder if the Doctor did some sort of mind wipe after he dropped Davros off to his home that Davros has only recently completely broken free from.

“Who created Davros?” The Doctor still did by the equivalent of breaking Star Trek’s Prime Directive. Davros had from his youth the sonic screwdriver and some residual memory of the existence of a strange traveler with powers. The Doctor was in effect a demigod, an ancient astronaut, who interfered in the affairs of mortals, causing an extreme reaction in belief.

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For a seemingly baseline human companion, Clara has had some high notes of competence and seems to be in a process of being improved by both the Doctor and Missy. That brings up an interesting question of will this continue to be a trend or will there be a reversion of competence as occurred in the classic series when competence rose from Leela the Savage to Romana the peak to Nyssa who was very good, and then what I consider to be a rather abrupt precipitous decline until finally Ace could at least blow things up.

For very good competence Kate Stewart or some version of Osgood would be good candidates. The problem is for a reversion there would be basically an infinite list of possibilities including a character we have never seen before.

Of course in the modern series there is greater movement of companion arcs so that they develop skills and become more capable of fending for themselves. But at this stage are people eager to go through more 3+ year arcs to see characters go from near helpless to exuding casual and earned confidence?

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Missy was sharpening a stick, Missy is trying to sharpen Clara’s mind for these adventures. This is like the Danger Room of X-Men Comics without the safeguards. If nothing else that might be the edge to save the Doctor’s life.

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I am guessing Missy helps save some of the hybrid Dalek / Time Lords for her own purposes. After all Missy was experimenting all episode long to hack the Daleks. But there will be another hybrid that might fulfill the prophecy of great destruction: human / Time Lord hybrids. Of course River Song already is one, a good hybrid, but she was born of love. As this episode has shown, hybrids can also be born of hatred.

Once again Skaro is devastated. Full fledged in the open Dalek and Time Lord civilizations cannot coexist now at the same time. Gallifrey may stand but it as a painting on a wall, forever cut off from the image being part of this universe’s reality. Another way must be found for the Time Lords to try and return.

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@purofilion You have to see the movie Interstellar some time. 🙂 Once one gets past the early scenes with all the corn fields, the movie becomes this generation’s version of the movie 2001.

Besides, the special effects and quite a bit of the science were made in the UK. I am sure the BBC has the connections to achieve similar effects for television at a reasonable price tag.

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@purofilion The Doctor appears to have been shown reading books on quantum mechanics. These days in the popularization of quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics is linked to the many worlds theory and the multiverse. (I’m not saying that is what the science necessarily says, after all, I know very little about quantum mechanics. I am just saying that’s what popularizations of quantum mechanics are telling the public.)

Although I must admit to being partial towards another path, incorporating elements from the movie Interstellar, especially the at least remotely possible science fiction elements explained by Caltech’s Kip Thorne. Imagine a future civilization that has extended itself into an extra space dimension, the extra space dimension that helps determine gravity (extra space referred to as the bulk). This civilization also is able to create structures along the dimension of time such as the Tesseract they constructed for Cooper inside the black hole Gargantua’s singularity. This civilization is the science fiction equivalent of Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, a civilization that has transcended space and time to where it can reach back and influence events to ensure its own creation.

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@blenkinsopthebrave Fear not, I am certain what has already been observed in the time line must take place. But what Dr Who has shown is that these observed events are roles. Just as it was observed that the Doctor appeared to be killed by River Song in a space suit, so must that act be played out. But that does not necessarily mean the Doctor is dead. Thus my speculation that when Davros comments to the Doctor that he approved of the Doctor’s new face, that is a foreshadowing that the Doctor could in an act of stupendous sacrifice use a huge part of the Capaldi Doctor’s lifespan, perhaps before he is about to regenerate, to take the place of Boy Davros and play the role of Davros throughout history up to the events of this arc.

Think about how many times Davros has apparently been killed. He was supposedly shot by the original Daleks back in Genesis of the Daleks before he was able to push the destruct button. He was attacked by the virus that was produced to kill the Daleks. It is as if Davros suspiciously has the power to regenerate.

The number of murders Davros commits is also far less than the number his Daleks do. Actually for most of Davros’ appearances his Daleks are in rebellion against him. Davros disappeared at the start of the Time War. Some deaths Davros did commit were for example the people on whom he tested the reality bomb in Journey’s End. But perhaps we have been shown the Capaldi Doctor can be a bit callous towards those he believes are fated to die.

It would be quite a parallel to what the Doctor appeared to be doing for Clara in Death in Heaven when he offered to execute Missy instead of Clara having Missy’s blood on her hands. Could the Doctor be prepared to take the blood off the hands of the future of the Boy Davros?

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The Doctor is the magician, Clara I speculate is his familiar.

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

She is a ghost in the machine who hacked the multiverse. At least this spirit is friendly.

Davros could be the magician’s apprentice. In another life, he could have been something akin to the Doctor only creating a police force of Daleks that would have enforced order and peace and not destruction and war. That is why I think the Doctor will find a way for someone else (himself) to assume Boy Davros’ future role, to save the time-space continuum, but will allow Boy Davros to have his own life. Boy Davros could be raised by either Clara and Danny in the Nethersphere or by Amy and Rory.

From time to time even in the classic series Dr. Who had hints of the multiverse. Well there was the entire storyline of Inferno. Also the Fourth Doctor in Pyramids of Mars was able to take Sarah to an alternate future where Sutekh the Destroyer had broken free and devastated the universe again including Earth. The more years Dr. Who accumulates, the more likely it seems to me the Doctor will become an explorer not just of time and space but times and spaces, the multiverse. And he will meet creatures who live in this multiverse.

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@purofilion
@bluepipsqueak

I believe the series has shown that having seen the wonders of the universe with the Doctor, Clara will not be happy with just teaching and staying where she is. In the shared dream she had with the Doctor in Last Christmas, the older version of her tells the Doctor that she taught I believe in all the countries of Europe. I believe the dream part is that she would ever be content with domestic life with Danny stuck in one place or that she would constrain herself to Europe. Look how the series is portraying her: She would prefer to ride her motorcycle rather than be picked up by helicopter by UNIT. Look at the sheer joy she has when she rides her motorcycle right into the Tardis.

Everything I am seeing about how Clara is being portrayed is telling me she isn’t going to completely survive by the end of her time with the Doctor. She is wild horses that must live free or die.

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@purofilion: However in the teaser interviews for this season I believe it has been specifically mentioned that the Doctor and Clara are going to be in their peak form in their traveling relationship, but what does that mean for Clara? I interpret this as implying traveling with the Doctor is a high that Clara is going to find difficult to match with anything else after she stops being his companion, and that time must eventually come as it does to all companions.

Like it or not I believe most of the happier departures of female companions from the series have been shown to have either some moral cause or some romance as the reason. Romana could leave to fight for E-space, Nyssa could leave to tend to the patients on Terminus, Amy and Rory at least had each other, Rose had a one-life duplicate of the Doctor, etc. The one bad ending was Donna Noble who had no one and nothing outside of the Doctor.

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@serahni: It is worrisome to me that Clara other than her teaching has no life outside of her travels with the Doctor. I would draw parallels with Donna Noble who states that all she wanted to do was travel with the Doctor forever. Even in the context of the Dr Who fictional universe, that cannot happen. At least Rory and Amy had each other. And I think it can only be done once to duplicate the Doctor and have the shippers’ dreams finally come true of pairing Rose with a version of the Doctor.

I don’t know when Clara’s arc will end, but I suspect it will end bittersweet at best. Scattered throughout time to be the Doctor’s guardian angel as the Impossible Girl actually would have been the most appropriate end to her character arc and would have easily allowed her to return any time if Jenna Coleman’s had an opening in her schedule.

The show for the moment seems to have gone away from the blatant foreshadowing such as Bad Wolf. That is kind of a shame. It might have been perfect to have some countdown occurring appearing to be for the Doctor’s demise but instead to wind up being Clara’s, perhaps her time being up so that she would have to disappear back into the timestream to be the Impossible Girl.

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Even in the classic series the Master apparently went up and down the Doctor’s timeline. The Master knew about the existence of the Valeyard.

I am starting to wonder if the current Doctor will eventually make an effort to randomize his timeline to throw off Missy’s tracking of him. Even in the classic series, the Fourth Doctor in Pyramids of Mars took Sarah to an alternate future where Sutekh the Destroyer had been left unchecked to ravage the universe including Earth. In Last Christmas note the dream older Clara calls the Doctor “impossible”.

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I think we have reached the point where there has to be an advancement of the Dalek story, some resolution to the Dalek problem. Wasn’t Moffat supposed to have thought the Daleks needed to be given a rest back in 2011? With the reappearance of Skaro this means millions of Daleks could be waiting to be unleashed on the universe. But we have been seeing this story of a Dalek army that can never be fully unleashed all the way since at least the classic series, Pertwee Doctor, Planet of the Daleks. Last season’s Dalek story just wasn’t that memorable for a Dalek story.

The Shadow Proclamation which appears in this story seems to be something of a United Nations or more specifically the Security Council. Yet here are the Daleks openly setting up death camps where they rule. And I don’t think the story is trying to say the Shadow Proclamation is toothless, divided, and ineffective against evil. It is just that the Shadow Proclamation is outgunned. They have the will not the means instead of having the means but not the will.

And that is another reason for the Time Lords to never be brought back. They just were horrible at the task of maintaining interstellar order after a promising start slaying giant vampires. First they went evil creating the Dead Zone then they retreated into stulified bureaucratic decay. And then when they finally went to war they lost versus the Daleks despite having all of those secret forbidden weapons.

It is time for the other species to step up as a group to the task of containing the Daleks, something that was promised at least as far back as Genesis of the Daleks.

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What do the handmines do?

I speculate the handmines digest their prey and convert the prey’s cells to more handmines. This digestion and conversion process is why I think they may be able to mutate DNA and create mutants is someone somehow escapes. Thus this is a mechanism to create a Davros. Note the Doctor seems somewhat aware of what they can do and how to counter them.

Now what would happen if handmines would try and digest a Time Lord …

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Speaking of a generation gap, Davros has never really understood his children the Daleks nor perhaps they he. From the very end of Genesis of the Daleks until now, Davros has been caught between trying to correct their flaws while bragging to the Doctor how unstoppable they are. Actually at the end of Genesis of the Daleks, Davros was trying to push the self-destruct button before they seemed to turn their death rays on him. Curiously in the old series Davros was trying to introduce what might be flaws, first suggesting in Destiny of the Daleks that what the Daleks needed to do to was to program their battle fleet to deliberately make errors, while later contemplating adding more compassionate emotions if only to give the Daleks the ability to understand other species better.

And what’s up in the newer series with Davros acknowledging the existence of a Supreme Dalek other than himself, although perhaps he could rationalize the newer Daleks were created from his own cells.

It is quite believable to me that Davros could hand the Doctor the power to make or destroy the Daleks back at the dawn of their creation not caring what the outcome was, thinking he would win his argument either way.

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@bluesqueakpip Unfortunately Gallifreyan television is hobbled by the older generation’s nostalgia for when it featured the equivalent of the fights in the Roman Coliseum, with live broadcasts from the Death Zone.

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Weren’t the Doctor and the members of UNIT making references to Thunderbirds in Death in Heaven when the Doctor first boards the command plane? Then again apparently everyone makes references to Thunderbirds, in particular, the former Top Gear.

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@supernumerary: As the Shadow Proclamation seems the equivalent of an interstellar United Nations, it would not be surprising if the Doctor could “win” for the moment by finding a way to cut the Daleks down to size enough for the Shadow Proclamation to at least keep them in check. Missy mentioned the Daleks are running death camps which ought to violate some of the Shadow Proclamation’s laws. I think this is consistent with the Fourth Doctor’s belief that the Daleks existence could do some good if it inspired the creation of such an intergalactic United Nations.

@stevethewhistle: Davros’ third eye is I believe an electronic one that replaces the function of his other ones since he is blinded. It would not be unexpected if the hand mines blinded him and even stole his eyes.

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