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25 July 2014 at 23:59 #29338
@craig – Ah yes, Tunnock’s would be great 🙂
But no brand names on the Beeb (apart from the Liberty wall paper highly evident on Sherlock etc. ahem).
Perhaps a bag of sweets?
Not jelly babies obviously. Aniseed balls?
He could sort of muffle the “aniseed” in his diction and give cross-over universe fans everywhere a thrill as the new Doctor appears, in a pale echo of Malcom Tucker, to say “balls” a lot.
25 July 2014 at 23:13 #29335Holy chameleon circuits <the J-fish catches up after life in the slow lane>
I didn’t realise video cuts as well as scripts had been leaked.
Half the fun is watching, not just with Auntie Beeb, but along with all the other fans – why would you want to time travel this one?
Tsk tsk – avaunt spoilers, avaunt!
25 July 2014 at 23:01 #29334@scaryb – yes, hurrah – happy to be back 🙂
The question is – what sort of biscuit-crumbs should I be sprinkling on the sofa now?
Which kind will Capaldi-Doctor prefer? He seems like a garibaldi kind of Time Lord to me – “Would you like a squashed fly biscuit?” <snarky eyeroll at villain of the week>
But, if he is in fact the Valeyard, then perhaps he will despise biscuit-kind altogether!
25 July 2014 at 22:50 #29332Hey everyone,
Good to “see” you all in fine discussant form! Ouch to that red hot poker option @Bluesqueakpip 🙂
It’s a scorching summer and a non-sweary Capaldi is almost upon us – hurrah. Did anyone see his little turn as Cardinal Richelieu in the BBC’s hammy Musketeers? He did louche and wicked with a strong hint of “dear gods am I really in this thing?” beautifully.
Lol at GoT “honest trailer” @craig – esp “King Justin Bieber”
I think a GoT thread esp when it returns is a great idea.
I have a lot of catching up reading to do!
J-fish.
15 June 2014 at 04:04 #28286@craig and @phaseshift Hello and well met again to you both, fellow time-travellers 🙂
The Forum is looking good! Sorry for fishy inactivity <hastily polishes barnacled scales> I got Absorbalof’d by work [yes, that bad :-)]. I have done some homework – a young lady called Foxes will be getting swept into the time vortex, apparently. I had to look her up – a couple of lively songs on Youtube involving a) a food fight and b) being lost in a nightie at a vaguely 60s outfit-inspired party. Clearly, the TARDIS will do her good.
I’ll definitely be around more in the run up to the Day of Capalidi <strokes chin and heads to the speculation thread to catch up>.
First off, we’ve had “Allons-y” and “Geronimo” – will the reign of the wince-inducing catch-phrase continue? Or has the War Doctor’s “harrumph” put paid to that nonsense? I feel it should be “Wizard” for Capaldi.
xx J-fish
14 June 2014 at 14:05 #28234Flies onto the sofa, munches a couple of stray jammy-dodgers, accidentally sits on a piece of a Type 40 lego <ouch! and whoosh!> gets zapped forward in time <waves at everyone> <settles in for Capaldi’s, snarky and sweet? Doctor?>.
7 March 2014 at 22:09 #26220@phaseshift and @jimthefish <waves> Yes, very sorry to see BBC3 go – The Fades and In the Flesh were the best new BBC sci fi I’ve seen in aeons.
@tomsscarf Capaldi would indeed have made a great Master – perhaps we will get a body swap story to allow him to Master-it-up for an episode or two 🙂
@scaryb Oopsy – the glitter is still getting all over things on the sofa I see <tee hee>
7 January 2014 at 20:44 #24051SPOILERS for Sherlock
PowerSign of Three 🙂@bluesqueakpip I like the witness protection programme idea.
I think they’ll go with canon insofar as CAM will be a blackmailer, but I doubt Mary’s issue will be some indiscreet letters.
It would be a terrible shame if Moffat/ Gatiss kill Mary off so quickly, because she’s great, but alas, they probably will. Not sure they’ll go for “two men and a baby”, except that Moffat is rather fond of writing about families.
Now that I know that his wife Sue Vertue has a very distinguished producer mother Beryl Vertue, I begin to understand that the whole Amy Pond mother-in-law dynamic in Who was either a family in-joke or some interestingly Freudian creative leakage!
I don’t know if there are even plans for a fourth series of Sherlock, as both actors are probably, by now, taking far lower fees than they could get across the pond out of affection for the show. Maybe Sherlock will die in Watson’s arms having taken a bullet to save Mary’s life, just to complete this season’s fan fiction inspired romantic flourish.
Apt you should mention Dorothy L. Sayers and Busman’s Honeymoon. Whether you liked or hated The Sign of Three does indeed all depend on whether you like a heavy dose of romance with your detective fiction. Sayers admitted she fell rather in love with her own detective creation, Lord Peter Wimsey. Personally, a much younger (but still hopelessly romantic) me, really loved Busman’s Honeymoon.
Critical reaction to The Sign of Three is actually radically different in different spaces online. British newspaper professional critics may have carped, and the Guardian comments were largely inchoate. I am always confounded by people who just write “It was shit” or words to that effect. Tumblr however loves and adores this season (not that it speaks with one voice – there are very thoughtful criticisms there too). Tumblr, being populated by an international younger generation, is the future, so festivities there, plus very healthy viewing UK figures and I think the Beeb will be celebrating overall.
@scaryb If there is extra drunk footage I’m sure they’ll put some of that on the DVD 🙂
6 January 2014 at 14:22 #23997SPOILERS for Sherlock The Power of Three !
A knowing opener in which the banks keep getting robbed from within over and over again, and then we were off…
I found myself tremendously moved by this episode. I thought the acting was superb (it is really hard to act drunk well), some beautiful cinematography, as last episode (I particularly liked the time-speed devouring of the wedding feast) but the meditation on friendship, love, feeling different in the world and the passage of time was what made me laugh and cry, cringe in empathy and watch with my heart sometimes really squeezed in my chest.
There are some interesting discussions online about the Moffat/ Gatiss’ Sherlock’s self diagnosis as a “high functioning sociopath” and his possible “diagnoses” as either on the autism or Asperger’s spectrum. This one from someone who says they have asked the opinions of four psychiatrists (although, as many who’ve encountered them report – what do psychiatrists know!) is worth a read:
http://wellingtongoose.tumblr.com/post/47219236641/sherlock-does-not-have-aspergers-or-autism-thanks
The point being, that it’s important not to take dramatic narrative as diagnostically accurate (any more than it usually presents accurate forensics) and any labelling of Sherlock’s “difference” is something to be treated with extreme caution.
However, the depiction of his experience of living with “difference” (as well as the experience of those around him) is at the heart of The Power of Three and it is painted in visual and emotional layers of love and lavender.
Feeling “outsider” is something many people have experience of, whether temporary or longer lasting, and it’s painful. Cumberbatch’s Sherlock’s permanent experience of living with “difference” may have been treated to a degree of extended sentimentality of which the detective himself would assuredly not approve, but the episode’s portrait of friendship, as an admixture of admiration, irritation, exasperation, and loving the heck out of someone because of all of it, was damn sweet.
“A sentimentalist,” said Oscar Wilde, “is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it”. But have no doubt, pay we will. This love-fest of an episode contained plenty of signs that terrible things are on their way.
Unfortunately, those terrible things look as if they are coming for the women in particular…
Molly’s boyfriend is obviously a wrong ‘un, and Mary received a wedding telegram which made her blench from someone who signed themselves CAM, Charles Augustus Milverton being a notorious blackmailer in the original stories. We already know Mary’s hiding something (Sherlock’s speed deduction of her character in the previous episode contained the word “liar”). Hold on to your top hats and tea cups for next week…
4 January 2014 at 22:36 #23940@tardisblue What a lovely post 🙂
DO NOT visit the General TV Discussion Thread yet as there are definitely spoilers for Sherlock: The Empty Hearse on there. You will have to wait until after the 19th, which I believe is the US airdate.
Happy New Year!
4 January 2014 at 01:14 #23898@bluesqueakpip I fully admit that in the original stories there are many well-heeled homes with butlers and maids.
However, there is also a grimy atmospheric poorer London in evidence. For example:
“In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally, maritime London, till we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe. Here, in a broad thoroughfare, once the abode of wealthy City merchants, we found the sculpture works for which we searched. Outside was a considerable yard full of monumental masonry. Inside was a large room in which fifty workers were carving or moulding.” (The Adventure of he Six Napoleons)
“Mrs. Warren’s house–a high, thin, yellow-brick edifice in Great Orme Street, a narrow thoroughfare at the northeast side of the British Museum. Standing as it does near the corner of the street, it commands a view down Howe Street, with its more pretentious houses… When we returned to Mrs. Warren’s rooms, the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one gray curtain, a dead monotone of colour, broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and the blurred haloes of the gas-lamps.” (The Red Circle)
“The man is by trade a conjurer and performer, going round the canteens after nightfall, and giving a little entertainment at each. He carries some creature about with him in that box, about which the landlady seemed to be in considerable trepidation, for she had never seen an animal like it. He uses it in some of his tricks according to her account. So much the woman was able to tell me, and also that it was a wonder the man lived, seeing how twisted he was, and that he spoke in a strange tongue sometimes, and that for the last two nights she had heard him groaning and weeping in his bedroom.” (The Crooked Man)
It would be very possible to create contemporary equivalent glimpses of London’s tremendous diversity of income, nationality and locale. I just find the London of Moffat and Gatiss ‘ Sherlock a little too shiny.
3 January 2014 at 22:28 #23891@jimthefish and @scaryb I will certainly grant you that Conan Doyle is not Dickens 🙂
As you say, fish friend, the original Sherlock and Watson are Victorian gentlemen and Sherlock’s clients are generally upper or middle class.
However, Sherlock’s investigations do take him to parts of London other than the West End. For example, he visits an opium den in the East End in The Man with the Twisted Lip (a contemporary equivalent would perhaps be a crack den or “shooting gallery”) and in The Sign of Four he and Watson visit the “questionable and forbidding neighbourhood” of Cold Harbour Lane.
My point being that the Moffat/ Gatiss Sherlock, so far, has spent a lot of time in fine restaurants, gentlemen’s clubs, art galleries, the well-heeled homes of high end dominatrices, Buckingham Palace…
@phaseshift, @thommck, @jimthefish, @cathannabel, @scaryb, @whisht – I also commented on the Lawson article because its complete lack of depth or research (writing professionally about television should require more than simply watching it) really annoyed me, so it definitely is doing its job as “click bait”.
Open access online newspapers are in a bind, because they are advertising funded and advertising revenue comes from numbers of eyeballs, so the nature of journalism is changing. Sadly, pieces designed primarily to create controversy/ high blood pressure are one result.
3 January 2014 at 00:47 #23824@jimthefish Gatiss is actually credited as the principal writer of The Empty Hearse so Moff bashing isn’t really the way to go on this one (although of course BBC Sherlock continues to be a collaborative Gatiss/ Moffat enterprise).
SPOILERS FOR THE EMPTY HEARSE
There’s a lot I could say about BBC Sherlock. I find it seductive television in many ways. It’s eye for establishment eccentricity and for the physical detail of that – Sherlock’s lovely coat, the Liberty wallpaper, the hailing of black cabs (that’s a very expensive way to get around London on a regular basis) Mycroft’s detailed knowledge of fine wines… definitely seductive. On the other hand, despite Sherlock’s network of “tramp informants” there is no real sense (unlike in the Conan Doyle stories) of the poverty of London which (today as then) co-exists alongside the intrigues of diplomats. That means this is a rather chocolate-box version of Sherlock. Perhaps especially regrettable given the times we’re living in. It could be so much grittier.
I think some of the acting is compelling. Martin Freeman was really excellent in this latest episode, Una Stubbs (Mrs. Hudson) has lovely comic timing, particularly when doing impressions of the Holmes boys. Amanda Abbingdon works a treat as Mary Morstan and Gatiss himself has really stepped up his acting game this season. The Mycroft/ Sherlock interactions crackled nicely, and icily, with sibling love/hate.
Some of the cinematography is fantastic. The way the camera cuts from Lestrade and Anderson’s coffee cup bottoms, just after the line “God rest his (Sherlock’s) soul” to a close up of Watson’s eyes (ergo by the power of visual narrative – ta da – John is Sherlock’s soul), the use of slow motion in the “dance” sequence where Sherlock arrives like a bad penny at Watson’s proposal dinner. Yes, some super visual story-telling.
Cinematography and character detail worked rather better than overall plot however. The tube bomb under the Houses of Parliament was a sort of Wachowski siblings’ V for Vendetta tribute and I didn’t like it the first time around. Terrorist bomb plots have become a tiresome contemporary TV drama cliche.
I’m not comfortable with the way the series continually has Sherlock and Watson “mis-recognised” as a gay couple in-show, has the show deliberately position them as an emotional “couple” on innumerable occasions (notice the way Sherlock’s parents finishing each other’s sentences is made a deliberate parallel for the way John and Sherlock speak together) and yet, then the perfectly reasonable, given the Moffat/ Gatiss source material, fan extrapolations of a sexual and or romantic love are shut down as ridiculous by Moffat (to be fair, not by Gatiss) in interviews:
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/jan/20/steven-moffat-sherlock-doctor-who
Likewise, slash fans are made fun of in-show and by associated journalists. Caitlin Moran caused a bit of an internet riot by getting Cumberbatch and Freeman to read out some Sherlock/ Watson slash without the permission of the author, and to the discomfort of the actors apparently, for the purpose of taking the piss, at The Empty Hearse preview screening, something which allegedly earned her a backstage BBC bollocking.
Yet Gatiss himself has written, rather florid, gay erotic fiction under the pseudonym Christian Fall.
Overall, this gives the impression of a show somehow tittering behind its hand at the possible sexual and emotional intimacy of men, which it has done everything to stir up, whilst shouting “it’s all in your heads” at the audience. I don’t think that’s a great message for young LGBT people and I think it’s past time when gayness should be an on-going joke.
It’s actually the lack of bravery on the part of the associated cast, crew and BBC PR machine which make this more galling. One interview from Gatiss which at least acknowledged that a reading of his Sherlock and Watson as queer is perfectly plausible given his text (whether that’s queer platonic, bi-curious, closeted, or whatever), if absolutely not the only reading, would go some way to dissipate the on-going “no homo”.
But, I’ll give them this, Mrs. Hudson does serve a mean aggrieved plate of biscuits 🙂
1 January 2014 at 15:10 #23770@phaseshift Happy New Year!
I agree completely that time is (now) passing for the Time Lords in the bubble universe. In the previous reality, when Gallifrey was not in a bubble universe but in a time-lock, then I think they were in a stasis of perpetual war.
It may be passing at a different speed however. Love the idea that a Time Lord civil war or at least power struggle is probably ongoing there right now. I previously suggested that one faction (led by the Doctor’s mother) may have created Tasha Lem.
It’s always worth looking at the mini parallels to illuminate the larger themes in Moffat’s Who. Amy’s Choice turned out to be significant in that it showed different versions of the Doctor in different “realities” and lo and hehold that’s eventually what we got in a big way vs a vs the use/ not use of the Moment.
I think Hide is key to questions about the Time Lords and the bubble universe, as that was all about, in miniature, a bubble universe. Time moved differently there for one thing.
I think the fact that there was a crack at Trenzalore lends more weight to my theory that Trenzalore is a special place of quantum superposition, because when the Doctor rebooted the universe the cracks disappeared. The fact that one still, paradoxically, exists at Trenzalore suggests a place where the walls between ‘verses in the multiverse are especially thin.
Going back to Hide, Emma Grayling the empath was able to communicate with the pioneer time traveller Hila Tecorian trapped in the bubble universe because she was a direct descendant and “blood calls to blood”.
I think Clara’s flirtations with the Doctor are a smoke-screen and given the mystery about River’s connection with Clara which River left the Doctor with and the fact that Clara knew the right word to stir the Doctor’s stumps last Christmas special (“pond”) and the fact that Clara is able to communicate with the Time Lords through the crack (“blood calls to blood”) I am still betting that Clara turns out to be a Pond (a descendant of River and the Doctor).
31 December 2013 at 14:06 #23711@osakahatter Yes, that’s the one <whispers “Skynet” very very quietly, oh oops in public on the interwebs>
I think I’m getting to the age when part of me is grateful there are some futures I won’t be around to see.
31 December 2013 at 14:02 #23709@scaryb Nice 🙂
I think River would have this to say:
31 December 2013 at 13:52 #23707@phaseshift – Yes, your On the Sofa comment inspired me to watch it! It’s great!
I was particularly happy that the stereotypical “markers” for “female” in animation, such as boobs or long-eyelashes were totally absent from EVE. She was a scary mo-fo 🙂 The musical score was marvellous too.
I haven’t read @cathannabel ‘s blog yet – but I will.
Hmmn, regarding a certain right wing reaction to Wall-E – not a surprise – the sympathetic depiction of a duped over-fat junk food fed US populace was particularly nail-on-the-nose.
But, prior to this, the Simpsons and Avatar are perhaps only some of the the most recent US entertainment products which critique US contemporary capitalism. Such critiques are popular and therefore, ironically, highly profitable…
Apparently, according to James Cameron, Fox initially asked him to leave the “hippy tree hugging crap” out of Avatar. He refused and Avatar was a box office smash hit, so now they’ll be ordering versions of “hippy tree hugging crap” (although actually much of Avatar was a full-on battle) for years to come.
One of the things, I think, which has made capitalism as a system so very much more robust than communism, is that it permits big entertainment criticism of itself, which not only turns a whopping capitalist profit, but persuades people they are free. It’s a very, very clever system.
I still love Wall-E though!
31 December 2013 at 13:32 #23704@scaryb Van Morrison is a truly lovely way to see out the year.
My somewhat darker contribution (but is seems appropriate both for this season’s and Who’s present regeneration theme of death and rebirth) is John Grant’s “Pale Green Ghosts”. Also, the intro bars sound like a version of the Who music…
31 December 2013 at 12:36 #23694@craig I have a small New Year request <smiles fish winsomely> 🙂 Could we have a “Looking Back at the Eleventh Doctor” thread perchance?
Now that Eleven has, alas, regenerated, it would be great to be able to consider Matt Smith’s work as Eleven in its totality and there isn’t a space for tributes to our fallen Doctor elsewhere.
What thinkest thou?
31 December 2013 at 12:32 #23693Hi @scaryb Here we are in the pub again 🙂
The tea-serving dalek gives me the shivers actually – there’s something especially menacing about an instrument of total war with a tea cup.
Are people familiar with Big Dog? The company (Boston Dynamic) is making the robots of the future and they really are scary – imagine that thing with a weapons system patrolling the streets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ
Anyway, on a perhaps less dystopian note, I just saw Wall-E for the first time and was mightily impressed by a tale told almost entirely without dialogue. Oh wait, that wasn’t altogether less dystopian, given the subject matter!
Ahem 🙂 Under grey and rainy skies, I can still see birds dancing in the wind (that’s better).
Happy New Year Who comrades!
31 December 2013 at 11:09 #23685Seconded! The Doctor Who Forum has almost 1000 members and many more out there glancing at the pages.
Thanks so much @craig and mods @Shazzbot @fatmaninabox @phaseshift @jimthefish (any others?) and everyone who uploads content and musings!
From @bluesqueakpip ‘s diagrams to @wolfweed ‘s crazy captions and carefully sourced fan art to @scaryb and @whisht and @craig and others in the DJ box, @phaseshift ‘s “watch with Master” and cocktail recipes for the 50th, the arrival of many new members on the sofa dodging glitter and jammy dodgers, it’s been fun.
An especial toast goes out to @htpbdet whom we sadly lost before he could tell us his thoughts on the 50th but who contributed some beautiful posts about his life with Doctor Who – champagne, because he liked it!
Happy New Year everyone!
30 December 2013 at 18:07 #23668Hi All,
I’d agree Hush is a great choice from both horror and self-contained perspectives.
In terms of Doctor Who/ Buffy connections there is, of course, Torchwood’s “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” by Chris Chibnall which features James Masters (Spike the vampire on Buffy) as Captain Jack’s old lover. Not to everyone’s taste I’m sure, but I like it – it’s got great Barrowman/ Masters chemistry 🙂 Plus, the title references a wonderful movie, one of Downey Jnr’s best.
30 December 2013 at 11:17 #23655@geoffers Yes @htpbdet took the long view and his loving critique was definitely an inspiration. Let’s toast him for the New Year!
@scaryb Ah ha – well my theory is that perhaps the Doctor’s Mother (whom we saw in The End of Time) and a coterie of Time Lords sympathetic to the Doctor somehow created Tasha Lem.
Not all Time Lords agreed with the methods the Time Lords came to resort to in the Time War – not all of them voted for Rassilon’s final solution. We saw the Doctor’s Mum weeping then.
Perhaps the Tasha Lem Mother Superior was created as a check and balance to ensure the Time Lords couldn’t so easily swan back into the universe and restart the war.
Obviously, the Silence went rogue under Kovarian, invaded the earth and tried to kill the Doctor. Oops.
But, maybe the Doctor’s Mum had a hand in the creation of River (through Kovarian) and foresaw in the time-lines that River and the Doctor would fall for one another. Perhaps she wanted to give that gift to her son.
Kovarian seemed familiar with Time Lord tech. She knew that a child conceived on the Doctor’s TARDIS would be part Time-Lord and she clearly possessed some form of time travel (she sent River back to Lake Silencio in her assassin astronaut suit at the “right time”).
The time travel ability could have been acquired from the Time War daleks or traded with Dorium Maldovar via contraband Time Agency tech, but Tasha Lem can fly the Doctor’s TARDIS, which previously was a surprising ability of River’s only…
Yes, I’m liking the possibility of a Tasha Lem/ Time Lord connection…
29 December 2013 at 23:47 #23640Just some additional thoughts on the Tasha Lem / River Song connection.
The actress who plays Tasha, Orla Brady, said in a pre-air BBC interview that she meant to ask Moffat if her name was a reference to the writer Stanislaw Lem, the famous Polish sci-fi author who wrote Solaris.
In that most famous of his works, a sentient planet recreates a dead man’s wife who killed herself (just as River did to save the Doctor in the Library). The actress who plays the wife character in the most recent movie version (Soderbergh 2002) is Natascha McElhone (Tasha).
I wonder if the Time Lords created Tasha Lem.
29 December 2013 at 22:52 #23639@phaseshift re “brilliant and bonkers” <laughs fishily> 🙂 Well, we have to live up to our by-line, right?
@Purofilion and @scaryb glad you enjoyed it!
What some of our dear participants seem to be missing, is that fan speculation is a form of play. And play is such an important part of being fully alive, whatever age you are. The Doctor would heartily agree, I’m sure.
Play is an activity undertaken in the spirit of joyous, participatory fun.
Do I think Moffat sat down to ensure that Tasha Lem was an anagram of “Mels Ta ha” and that he had River and Sura 20 of the Qu’ran in mind when he did so? I really don’t know! Probably not?! Maybe?! Who knows?!
Speculation (literary criticism) provides new and interesting ways of looking at the text which aim to enhance its interest even more for others. It is not simply about “being right” at deciphering the “one true meaning” intended by the author.
On the subject of Moffat’s merits and demerits as a writer and show-runner of Doctor Who, a whole thread could be created. We certainly should create it! Perhaps when he finally hands over the reins.
@d12345 I think you are incorrect that this is a corner of the Whoniverse which uncritically worships at the church of Moffat.
I’ve already expressed my distaste for his sexist “hell in high heels” brand of humour and my disappointment that the Clara dynamic has turned into an awkward flirtation in previous posts.
I also think its pretty damning that there have been no Dr. Who scripts written by women for the last six years. We’ve also previously discussed this on the site.
On the other hand, I have really enjoyed Moffat’s interest in time – fixed points, loops, causality, the multi-verse.
The play with visual themes such as watery portals, bow-ties and dopplegangers from the Eleventh Hour to The Time of the Doctor has also been lovely (in my view) and has had narrative pay-off. Gallifrey is in a bubble universe through the looking glass/ a watery portal and there are two versions of the Eleventh Doctor – one heir to the War Doctor who used the Moment and one heir to the War Doctor who did not.
Some of Moffat’s themes such as the Egyptology one running through S7 could indeed stand to be more dramatically coherent and “surface evident”, but, on the other hand, one of the things Moffat has done well is to create texts which have generated “buzz” i.e. acres of intense internet speculation, thanks to the “puzzle Who” he’s created. Really, a good piece of fiction shouldn’t contain all the answers. It should always leave room for the audience to play.
Does Hamlet really see the ghost of his father or is it all in his head?
Is the governess in Henry James’ Turn of the Screw acting out a deep psychological disturbance or not?
I hope Moffat develops both his ability to weave long-running visual thematics and his obvious delight in horror/ mystery as we head into the Capaldi era. Personally I’d like to see less bottom slapping, sonic erection and “need a manual to work out a woman” gags.
29 December 2013 at 01:02 #23573But can anyone identify the paintings that surround Tasha Lem’s altar/ bed?
I’m wondering whether they are from Michael Angelo’s Last Judgement (Sistene Chapel) which would be neat!
If Tasha Lem is River, it would be a fitting role reversal at the end.
On Trenzalore the Doctor is, effectively, in prison (certainly for a time traveller, being stuck in one location = prison) although he has voluntarily chosen to be there, just as River agreed to be in the Stormcage.
Tasha Lem arranges visits with the Doctor and brings him marshmallows and good company, just as the Doctor visited River in the Stormcage…
28 December 2013 at 22:55 #23558Right <hastily swallows a Christmas fish-biscuit> back to Trenzalore and Tasha Lem.
The most interesting parts of Moffat’s Who sometimes do seem to happen off-screen in the under-realms of speculation.
Did I mention I am still The Grinch when it comes to Who Christmas episodes? 🙂
I’ve been thinking about Trenza Lore – trenza means “braid” in Spanish. Did you know that braided matrices and braided linear algebra are part of quantum theory mathematics?
This ties in with the fact that the Doctor was reading a book on Advanced Quantum Mechanics in the preceding episode, The Day of the Doctor – a book embossed with the image of The TARDIS.
Trenza Lore (the lore of the braid) is a place of quantum superposition, where simultaneous possibilities exist in the multiverse. Gallifrey, in its bubble universe, is simultaneously present and not-present. It is pressing against the skin of the universe it has been banished from at Trenzalore, through a crack caused by the explosion of one of its own time-machines, the Doctor’s TARDIS. And the TARDIS always takes the Doctor where he needs to go.
Trenzalore is rather like one of the earth poles, it has very short daylight hours – in other words, it is a shadow realm, and one where one must speak the truth. In the Eqyptian underworld, Duat, the soul is judged. It must pass through a series of gates guarded by monstrous beings (in this case Weeping Angels, Daleks, Cybermen, Silence etc.) until it reaches the ritual of the weighing of the heart. In this ritual, the gods weigh the actions of the deceased and if they are found worthy, the person proceeds to the afterlife.
At Trenzalore, the Doctor’s heart is weighed by his god-people, the Time Lords.
Remember that in Hide, the empath Emma Grayling warned Clara that the Doctor had a sliver of ice in his heart? That was the heart(s) of the Eleven descended from The War Doctor who burned Gallifrey. The heart(s) of the Eleven descended from The War Doctor who did not burn Gallifrey (and of course they are the same Doctor, they just made different choices, which changed them) chose to take the slow path (something we know he finds really, really difficult) in order to save the people of Trenzalore.
The message coming through the crack from Gallifrey, “Doctor Who?” is not, therefore, simply asking for the Doctor to give his name as a password which will tell the Time Lords it is safe to come through.
It is a question of judgement, a weighing of the hearts.
The Time Lords, being a canny people, likely know what we know now, in their bubble universe. They know that the Doctor burned Gallifrey, and did not burn it. “Doctor Who?” is their question, about the man who remains after these events. Is he heir to the War Doctor who used the Moment, or heir to the War Doctor who did not? Both exist, for them, in quantum superposition.
The Doctor proves to them, by his patient vigil on Trenzalore and in particular his care for the children there (no accident, given the focus on the deaths of the children of Gallifrey which the Doctor caused by the use of the Moment in The Day of the Doctor) that he has removed the sliver of ice from his hearts. Clara proves it to them also, because she is young and she speaks to them about the Doctor with love. Moreover she tells them that his name is “The Doctor” – in other words he has reclaimed the name of healer which he renounced when he decided to use the Moment.
And so, the Doctor’s hearts are weighed and found worthy. He is forgiven and he passes to the afterlife. He is granted a new set of regenerations and in so granting, the Time Lords also re-learn compassion.
@bluesqueakpip – therefore, absolutely! “There were always two Doctors” – one Eleven who burned Gallifrey and one who didn’t.
As for Tasha Lem, the fact she can fly the TARDIS and that the Doctor is willing to surrender a TARDIS key to her is pretty intriguing. I love the idea of her as a River reincarnation.
Her name is an anagram of Mels Taha . Ta Ha is a sura (verse) of the Qu’ran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta-Ha w,hich “employs a ring structure” (Moffat’s now famed loops of time) and contains an account of the day of judgement.
I really like the idea that Moffat has combined a feminised Catholicism (the Papal Mainframe) with a reference to a sacred verse from the Qur’an, at a point of reconciliation – the attempt to create peace in the universe in the aftermath of the Time War.
To be honest, I like that a whole lot more than Clara’s “boyfriend” cooking a turkey in the time vortex (some might, unkindly, say, a metaphor for the episode!).
I might have preferred a somewhat different send-off for Smithy, but I salute him. His Eleventh was a mad-cap lightening bolt of physical comedy shot through with consummate flashes of darkness. Oh how I will miss the bow-ties!
27 December 2013 at 17:35 #23488Happy Christmas all!
I
m not a fan of the Who Christmas episodes as a rule - they often add too much saccharine, and I cant really say this was an exception unfortunately. Harumph!A town called Christmas filled with Victorian literature type folk ? Nooo – just why?
I wasn’t keen on the ‘you’re my boyfriend / ding dong’ Woody Allen in space schtick either – I really don’t need Clara to have the hots for the Doc. As we still don’t know why River had a holographic connection w Clara beyond Vastra’s link I am still, perhaps vainly, holding out for a familial connection, particularly as Clara seems to be able to fly the TARDIS to a degree.
I like the Tara Lem as River spec – she certainly reminded me of the mysterious dalekised woman who sent the Doctor looking for her daughter in Asylum of the Daleks…
More later!
ed C
27 December 2013 at 17:35 #23489Oops double post! Happy the Doc’s name is the key to the TL return!
22 December 2013 at 21:02 #23243Hey all,
I’m still betting on doppleganger Elevens – one “light side”, one “dark side” – with Eleven “dark side” as The Valeyard (he being the version of Eleven from the time-stream where Gallifrey did fall).
Hoping River makes an appearance!
20 December 2013 at 23:20 #23182@scaryb Sorry for getting glitter in your fur and for getting you into trouble with our new overlord @fatmaninabox – heh – but not that sorry – glitter is immutable 🙂
@craignixon I miss Oswin Dalek myself – definitely my favourite Claricle. A gift to fan fiction at any rate.
15 December 2013 at 16:20 #22844<sprinkles glittery seasonal space-dust all over the sofa>
Oops! I know glitter is very hard to get out of things and everyone’s jammy dodgers will now be gold-flecked for weeks…
<swims off, cackling with dubious fishy shadow-double>
15 December 2013 at 16:16 #22843@blenkinsopthebrave Glad you and Mrs. Blenkinsop had an enjoyable sniffly watch together.
I’m really fascinated by the way in which this show about time travel has travelled in time! A fictionalised origins drama by a grown-up child fan to mark the 50th, wrought in an inevitably tinted-by-today vision of the ’60s, yet all about age and time!
15 December 2013 at 16:11 #22842Apparently (according to the Doctor Who official Twitter feed), Sarah Jane Smith made her first appearance today forty years ago – more here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006v18m/profiles/sarah-jane-smith
12 December 2013 at 21:04 #22705I know SFX is full on industry guff , but they’ve got a rather nice interview with Moffat about the departure of Smithy and the arrival of Capaldi this month. Preview of it here:
http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/12/09/peters-quite-vital-steven-moffat-talks-twelfth-doctor-peter-capaldi/
The Resonance show sounds great @wolfweed – thanks for pointing it out – you are our go-to denizen for link finding!
11 December 2013 at 22:26 #22677@phaseshift I am going to be the Christmas goose with the golden plug, I can see 🙂
11 December 2013 at 21:26 #22661@craig – Trailers are always the grey area between Spoilers and Speculation threads – the third time-stream!
I vacillate as to whether I engage with them – wibbley-wobbley and unhelpful I know.
Why not have a trailers thread, as it’s Christmas 🙂
11 December 2013 at 19:27 #22652@ardaraith The Doctor’s cot is certainly prominent… I’m calling it – “Dr. Who and the Storks of Time”.
@wolfweed “What if it turns out Matt Smith’s tenure was all a dream & he wakes up in the shower with Tennant”
Get thee and thy fan fiction to the Fan Creativity thread! What do you mean, it’s me?
That scenario would make a lot of fans happy, to be honest 🙂
10 December 2013 at 23:09 #22606Thanks @phaseshift for the @danmartinuk alert – swam fishily over there to post in the other time-stream before returning mysteriously sans fez.
9 December 2013 at 22:05 #22507@fatmaninabox Also a great story 🙂 (and yours @whisht)
The narrow escapes and egregious escapades of The Doctor Who Forum seems like a blog all of its own.
Ugh – every now and then I get a flash-back to the Absorbalov episode.
9 December 2013 at 21:57 #22505@timeloop I like it – someone he saved from the wreckage.
9 December 2013 at 00:35 #22477Nice work @craig on spam clean-up as usual – we were at 1000 members earlier I saw, but some with “bot” names 🙂 Thank you for site house-work.
@bluesqueakpip Yikes, that was a lucky escape. I got stuck in Budapest with a friend probably around the same era. and also as part of an inter-railing trip, on a Sunday with no money and all we could afford was a large white raw cabbage and a tube of mayonnaise. Not quite as dramatic a story there, lol 🙂 But it felt like it at the time!
9 December 2013 at 00:29 #22475@phaseshift Schrodinger’s cat, I trust!
Wow – I haven’t been in this section for a while – so much lovely creative stuff.
Rockin’ Matt portraits from @jimthefish and @wolfweed and pillows from @englishmaninnc
Glad to see art is being credited to the fan artists in question too. Should we also, I wonder, @Wolfweed @craig @phaseshift @jimthefish and all here, maybe be putting links to the original sources too? (esp if it is someone’s DeviantArt page, in case the artist gets a sale out of it?)
@pedant you really should swim on down here and check it out 🙂
7 December 2013 at 20:01 #22378<laughs> Thanks for the “golden plug” award @phaseshift , which I see can also handily be used as a dummy to shut up the over-zealous plugger if required 🙂
There were so many great cosplayers at the event. Including someone as one of those very creepy dolls from the Mark Gattis’ episode “Night Terrors”.
I just love it as a popular art form; play and dress-up for all ages. And, of course, the gender-bending aspects too!
7 December 2013 at 18:01 #22372@ardaraith I haven’t seen them, but I will do a double-fishy two bow-ties dance of joy if dark Eleven (Valeyard) vs Eleven comes to fruition.
7 December 2013 at 17:58 #22371@wolfweed Thanks for spotting that 🙂 @craig was hiding behind the camera carrying the six different bags I thought it was a good idea to drag round with me (lol – not quite that bad). Linda Lee was a total sweetie.
I was dressed as a future female version of the Doctor for anyone wondering! Suck it, haters! 🙂 That includes Peter Davidson unfortunately, whom I’ve seen quoted in an article as saying the Doctor should never be female.
7 December 2013 at 17:53 #22369Hey Who sofa-surfers, as we skate towards Christmas and the <sob> departure of Matt Smith.
@Shazzbot I just wanted to tell you again how thoughtful your presents and certificates were for the 50th Doctor Who Forum meet-up – they made the evening!
@scaryb I just watched The Last Day prequel to The Day of the Doctor – thanks for the tip, I’d missed it! It has a lovely Time-Lords-of-Old feel to it. The link is here again for anyone who wants to catch up:
3 December 2013 at 21:04 #22216@wolfweed Thanks for the clip. Does it count as a spoiler?
I ask before I
rantdiscuss 🙂I love Matt’s Doctor in so many ways; the darkness in him, the Chaplinesque physical comedy, the dress sense, the old, old eyes in a young body…
But this clip showcases an aspect of the way Moff and team sometimes (not always) writes for him which I really don’t like and I hope it won’t carry over into the Capaldi incarnation.
It’s there when Eleven refers to River as “Hell in high heels” in “The Wedding of River Song”. It’s there when Eleven checks out Jenny in “The Crimson Horror” and we get the sonic erection gag, then he sweeps her off her feet and snogs her without her say so. It’s there when a monk in “The Bells of St. John” asks of the painting of Clara “Is it an evil spirit?” and the Doctor replies, “A woman”.
The fact that I understand Moffat is trolling his critics in these moments, specifically the critics who accuse him of sexism, doesn’t ease the “ick” factor for me.
If Tom Baker (my childhood Doctor) had uttered these lines or behaved in these ways when I was watching him as a young thing I would have been so, so disappointed in the Doctor.
The Doctor may have called his female companions “My dear” quite a lot in days gone by, but he never made gendered jokes like the above – at least to my recollection (someone can correct me if I’m wrong!).
I just see/ hear the writers’ voices and not the Eleventh Doctor’s in moments like these and it rings “wrong”.
I have no problem at all with a sexual Doctor. The way Eleven kissed River goodbye in “The Name of the Doctor” was touching, heartbreaking, quite lovely. But, I don’t, as I’ve said before on The Grauniad, want Doctor Who to be Woody Allen in Space!
2 December 2013 at 22:20 #22164@bluesqueakpip and @ardaraith the votes for a Who nativity scene of sorts are piling up… excellent!
I’d love to see River on-screen one more time before Smith goes, maybe Amy and Rory too.
It would be time-travel-tastic (that sounds like an Eleven-ism) if River and the Doctor’s daughter had been adopted by Amy and Rory (her grandparents) dropped off by River and her vortex manipulator of course, then her daughter, Clara, was adopted having “blown in on a leaf”. Presumably River was hiding the Doctor’s offspring from nefarious influences…
The leaf connects Clara to River and Amy, as I’m sure we’ve speculated before.
Clara is also hinted to be a Pond when she knows the right word, “pond”, to say to bring the Doctor out of his blue funk at the top of the spiral staircase.
2 December 2013 at 22:10 #22163Lol @Shazzbot – now where else can you get ARSE definition from sitting on the sofa and blogging! 🙂
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