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4 August 2013 at 09:09 #15038
@gothamcelt Yes, all time-loops welcome. I’m still really up for David Warner playing the first Doc…
Hello everyone! <waves at all> Thanks for missing me @scaryb and @craig et al. I’ve just had a wisdom tooth out so am feeling a bit woozy!
Glad to see you are up and about @htpbdet
I hear we have a wee BBC announcement coming up this evening 🙂
Like @romanprincess I am in mourning for the departure of Smithy. All the speculation about his next incarnation has meant we haven’t yet celebrated his best moments – I suppose that comes once he has taken his last bow (tie).
Capaldi would be great, although as @jimthefish says, there would indeed be a deluge of sweary Who memes to contend with (I’m sure the first few would be hilarious).
I do have to agree with @IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan aka @pedant dear @arkleseizure
Thanks for all the strong female parts in EastEnders (really) but “soap is for girls, sci-fi is for boys” doesn’t help expand those prescribed gender norms we need to change to stop non-conforming children of both sexes being bullied.
Woman or man, I feel for the actor about to take on the Who mantle today! Just imagine the butterflies in their stomach as they prepare for a deluge of press following tonight’s announcement (unless the “announcement” proves to be some kind of giant Moffat wind-up).
Royal baby coverage? Pffft – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet 🙂
8 July 2013 at 19:15 #13384@craig it was epic 🙂 Are you going on the Sat? Me too.
@scaryb @bluesqueakpip @Shazzbot and @craig – perhaps we could all get together Friday evening for a wee dram.
Who is going dressed as what? 🙂
@jimthefish Sorry you and Mrs Fish missed out 🙁
British summertime is actually in evidence – whatever next!?
8 July 2013 at 14:27 #13363Wow – glad to hear you both got through eventually!
I think the website must just have been on the fritz due to the volume of hits @scaryb
Sorry to hear you guys will be going on a different day, but happy for you both 🙂
Tom Baker will be there on Saturday, apparently. Unlike @phaseshift I didn’t ever meet him as a child and if he’s wearing the hat and scarf I fear I might cry a little.
8 July 2013 at 09:51 #13332@scaryb <waves> Well I’ve managed (I think!) to get a Saturday “Ice Warrior” ticket – although it’s a very confusing and labyrinthine booking system so I may, in fact, have signed a one hundred year contract in ice-warrior indentured servitude 🙂 Hope you’ve managed to get through! If so, I’ll look forward to seeing you there 🙂
5 July 2013 at 21:53 #13229<waves at @phaseshift> Well I don’t live too far from London so I am severely tempted to queue on Sunday morning.
I’ve fervently resisted a smart-phone thus far however…. I need the Doctor to enable my anachronistic one for intergalactic communications 🙂
5 July 2013 at 21:09 #13225Hey everyone 🙂 My lack of work-life balance has eased off slightly and I have learned how to make home-made margueritas – hurrah!
The convention in November is definitely something I’m up for and a Who Forum meet up sounds fun.
The prices are relatively reasonable compared to the outrageous US TV show conventions, where you can pay £75 for a photo op on-top of the several hundreds of pounds ticket price.
The Prom is indeed very soon now! I missed getting tickets unfortunately. There are standing tickets available on the day(s) but the queues may be very long I suspect! Happy to hear they’ll be broadcasting at some point.
23 June 2013 at 16:23 #12825Waves fishily at everyone, including newcomers 🙂 So much to catch up on after only a short time away!
Nice idea on the Talons re-watch.
Aww I guess everyone has already seen Matt with very short hair and his post-it note thankyou to fans on the BBC Doctor Who website? <sniffs> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01bqbpb
9 June 2013 at 20:15 #12099@scaryb Awwwww beautiful – it’s clearly a soppy Sunday 🙂
Have someone else with a mellifluous voice for good measure…
9 June 2013 at 19:54 #12098@cathannabel @bluesqueakpip @scaryb @Shazzbot @miapatrick
I was coming round to @bluesqueakpip‘s theory that the next Doc is indeed Jenna Coleman and starting to get excited about it.
But, now @chickenelly ‘s Rory Kinnear clip has given me pause (damn you, you top-hatted bird) because it does seem credible Moff’s mate and writing partner Mark Gattis is shaping up as “most likely” for next showrunner The Crimson Horror was really good Who. And Kinnear has positive previous form working with Gattis…
I did see their version of HG Wells and enjoyed it, although Gattis is a better writer than he is an actor methinks.
Alas, I still regret the throw-away possibilities of Oswin-Dalek as a companion. Imagine the Doctor sitting down to boiled eggs and toast in a little café somewhere, Oswin Dalek cracking the shells for him with her sucker. Pandemonium breaks out (naturally), the Doctor brushes crumbs off Oswin-Dalek and tries to reassure all the petrified folk he hasn’t lost it, but explaining that all he sees is a pretty young woman in a red dress doesn’t help (of course).
I suppose it could get old quickly, but it could also be full of fun and pathos.
“A Time Lord and a dalek walked into a bar…”
OK, it’s fan fiction… <retires under a rock>
9 June 2013 at 19:19 #12096@scaryb That’s a lovely Waits’ song (and album). He would be magnificent as Who but I don’t know if he could do a PG version 🙂
That tune got me thinking of this one by another gravelly voiced crooner of love and regret:
7 June 2013 at 18:13 #11994In all honesty I actually hoped you’d give some feedback on my post…
Ah well, I was tactfully ignoring you 🙂 only because I largely agreed with Naomi’s Guardian criticisms of our dear @danmartinuk but, as you say, click-bait city, intended to rustle the hornets either way! Interesting however that Naomi’s piece was given right of reply and not Dan’s – suggests to me that a female Doc may actually indeed be potentially in the works.
Ha! I’m calling B*llsh*t on that one, as a fervent admirer of your posts since season 5. Your preference for “gender bending” ideas are clearly being hidden behind “a role model for girls” excuse!
Well that’s kinda a thump on the arm and a pat on the back all in one go 🙂 I’ll take it!
I’m not arguing simplistically from a “role model for girls” perspective. I think the Doctor is already a role model for kids, boys and girls. It’s simply been that case that, for fifty years, girls have had to imaginatively cross-gender identify in order to envision being him. I’m actually asking why men and boys can’t have a go at performing a similar feat of imagination should the Doctor happen to regenerate as female this time around.
The reason for some of the resistance to this idea does, I think, come down to the inflammatory “p” word (yes, patriarchy). Men and boys in British culture have been, historically, taught that “being a girl” is a lesser and negative thing to be (don’t throw like a girl, cry like a girl, fight like a girl etc.).
Children’s imaginative play is inherently identificatorily flexible, I think, Kids will imagine being anthropomorphic animals of all kinds, aliens, elves, the lot. But, boys have been culturally shamed for imaginatively playing female in a way that girls have not for imaginatively playing male (the “tomboy” has been more permitted than the “sissy”). That historic cultural shame (the imperative given to men not, at all costs, to “be a woman”) is the reason why, in my view, so many in the Whoniverse mediasphere are freaking out about a female Doctor. The equation goes:
“I strongly identify with the Doctor.
The Doctor is now a woman.
Oh dear gods, I cannot strongly identify with a woman, that would make me a woman (which is bad).”
So, because I see the root of this particular freak-out (which by no means all male fans of Who are having, just some, rather publicly) as underpinned by an historic devaluation of female-ness, it makes me cross, to the point where I am even now making my “That’s Ms Doctor Who to you” placard 🙂
You’re right, I love gender-fluidity of all kinds. But, if the Doctor regenerated as a woman, I don’t think the way to conceptualise the Doc would be as a male consciousness in a female body, and I’d be disappointed if the show wrote her that way. For sure, as the Doc has, up to now, inhabited male bodies exclusively (as far as we know) viewers might reasonably expect an adjustment period when the Doc comments on her new female identity/ self presentation, but then she’d adjust and be off in the TARDIS as usual, I’d hope.
In all honesty – are there any scenes you remember from previous series, or lines, that would ring alarm bells if you heard or saw a woman perform them?
Well, the sonic erection gag in The Crimson Horror might not work 🙂
No, I like my Doctor capricious, wandering, layered, kind-hearted, a little dark sometimes, petulant, given to more than occasional flashes of grandiosity, bright, brilliant, mad-cap, full of wonder. And I like all those things equally well in men and women. Her own version of Idris’ “beautiful idiot” is just right 🙂 She should stride across the universe quite as arrogantly and as endearingly as before. And the universe should just damn well catch up.
OOps that got a bit long…
6 June 2013 at 20:27 #11947Oh and @riverrunsthroughit Welcome, first time caller! Lovely to see the curly-haired one as someone’s avatar.
That’s quite a list you’ve got there. Yes, I can’t say I see Bradley James in the role myself, there wasn’t an ounce of darkness in his Arthur. Of the Merlin crew I would choose Anthony Head in a heartbeat, although I realise that would be a bit of a continuity headache, given that he was last in the Whoniverse as a giant evil bat-person susceptible to chip-fat.
Oh and also thanks to @wolfweed for the Kingston interview clip!
6 June 2013 at 20:12 #11946As to the Doctor being a woman, I suppose this might be TMI but I slightly prefer fancying a male-gendered Doctor. I have no doubts that the right woman would provide good female-gendered fancying though, so my personal ability to mentally explore back rooms of the TARDIS with the Doctor are irrespective of gender. People that feel strongly about a certain flavor of sexual expression probably care a great deal about the Doctor remaining in the gender role that they most fancy.
Ha! Well, I really liked your honesty on this 🙂 Most of the professional commentators’ arguments for why there should “never” be a female Doctor are clearly about people’s personal preferences, e.g they like identifying with the Doc and find it easier to think about continuing to do so if he stays male, or because they like fancying the Doc and find it easier to think about continuing to do so if he stays male.
Fine, but dressing up personal preference as “because he’s a role model for boys” (implication – which women can’t be) or because his “qualities” are inherently masculine (@juniperfish “impatiently” and “petulantly” side eyes @danmartinuk – really Dan!?) seem rather thin attempts to avoid just being honest, unlike you @curvedspace , and saying “Because I wouldn’t like it as much!”
I didn’t start out rooting for a female Doctor in particular, but the more I read all the cries of horror, the more I think “bring it on”.
4 June 2013 at 09:08 #118234 June 2013 at 09:01 #11821@craig – Thanks for the Today programme link – I missed that bit.
The discussion mentioned a recent Daily Fail article “Who Should Be the Next Doctor? ANYONE but a Woman…” being its charming headline. I won’t link, because that newspaper has perfected the art of the faux journalism troll in its (unfortunately successful) grubbing for click-rates. You can Google it if you must.
The gist of the argument is that “the Doctor has been a role model for three generations of boys”, providing a brainy alternative to muscle-bound superheroes. I know it’s a troll, but dammit. Presumably girls could only dream of being one of his lovely assistants (and that’s the way it should be).
Actually, the Doctor has been a role model for generations of children. Plenty of girls wanted/ want to be him too. Women have simply, historically, had to become more accustomed that men to fictional cross-gender identification in the sci-fi genre, because most of the heroes of most of the stories have been boys or men.
In fact, it’s broader than that. It’s still the case that when you ask boys and girls who their role models are, boys will name male figures almost exclusively, but girls will name men and women. A girl who says Obama is her role model? No one bats an eyelid. A boy who says Hilary Clinton?
I’m looking forward to a future where that is not the case.
The Sarah Jane Adventures did a fine job on that front.
So yeah (hot damn Daily Fail you’ve made me cross before coffee – I’m such a sucker) but bring on a female Doctor, and why should the Doc, in female form, not continue to be a role model for boys, as for girls?
NB – the offending article does, at least, have the decency to suggest Helen Mirren for the role. She would ace it.
<swims off to caffeinate>
2 June 2013 at 10:32 #11613Thanks @scaryb – coffee can’t heal a broken heart, but it helps!
@chickenelly Ah, nice touch.
Right, I am going to crawl under a rock and SULK 🙂
2 June 2013 at 09:57 #11604@chickenelly “What in the name of sanity have you got on you head?” 🙂
@juniperfish arrives here to sob uncontrollably for a while. I know it had to happen, because it always has to happen, but oh Smithy I will miss you SO terribly much.
<waves hello to @misspawsintime>
@craig – Shouldn’t we have a “Tribute to the Eleventh Doctor” page? Or is it better to wait on that until the <huge sob> time of his regeneration draws near?
I can’t think about the next Doctor yet <gulp> I need a cup of strong coffee myself <attempts to nick some of @scaryb ‘s>.
Can they really be going for a regeneration story at Christmas? Regeneration is a traumatic event for young fans and the Christmas eps are usually light. Heh heh, prepare for “dark Christmas”…! Or maybe it will be a joyful regeneration freely chosen this time?
1 June 2013 at 17:57 #11518@bluesqueakpip “as bonkers as a bath full of fishes” HDU 🙂
Well, I could write a whole similar post for S7 but, just briefly for now:
S7 part 2 “Doctricals” (dark doppleganger Doctor mirrors) would include “grandfather” the sun-god, devourer of souls, in The Rings of Akhaten, Skaldak (great and ruthless warrior out of time, with an explicit parallel via his dead daughter) in Cold War, the monster in the bubble universe in Hide (and the fact that there are two versions of the Doctor and one of them runs towards the monster and one away from it). In Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, frankly, we’re the other side of the looking glass and the Doc himself is his own dark mirror here (the thing which frightens Clara the most), then Mrs. Gillyflower in The Crimson Horror, as you say, but there are also two versions of the Doctor in this story (the one in the photograph who is not red in the eye of the dead man, and the one who is red). In Nightmare in Silver, of course we have Mr. Clever, and in The Name of the Doctor we finally have Hurt Doctor himself.
So, yeah, I’d say S7 Part 2 fits pattern…
1 June 2013 at 17:01 #11515@bluesqueakpip re mirror Doctors. I think so.
I had a think about this in fictionalised form under your blog post on The Children Who Waited in SIDRAT.
I think we’ve been seeing dark doppleganger Hurt Doctor struggling to break through into the Doctor’s “reality” ever since we first met Eleven, in all kinds of metaphorical parallels in the narrative.
The title of the The Beast Below alone speaks of a dark underbelly or look at the Krafayiss in Vincent and the Doctor. I always thought it odd the Doctor referred to that beastie as “evil” when he saw its face in the painting. He seemed unusually quick to make such an absolute judgement. But now I see the Doctor was projecting, and rejecting, a lonely monster side of himself (another “glimpse behind the curtain”).
In a big timey-wimey loop spanning the Moffat era, which we’ve talked about the possibility of before, the Doctor has been seeing time-ripples of Hurt Doctor since Amelia’s garden because he has always already jumped into his own time-stream, thus disturbing the internal force-field between himself and Hurt Doctor.
The cracks in time are, in one sense, the cracks in the wall in the Doctor’s consciousness.
1 June 2013 at 16:48 #11514Way to go on the music thread folks 🙂
Thanks to @scaryb for the Byrds and @craig for “Free Falling” (lmao at all the ’80s outfits), @whisht for The Who (lovely tune that one) and @timeloop for all the fan-vids. I love fan video as a fan art-form, me.
Here’s one think you might like @craig , another one on the theme of snow, from my favourite Coil album.
31 May 2013 at 19:18 #11465Waves at @theseniletardis welcome to you! And to all the other new folks.
Wow @craig – you are the Web-Master of an expanding universe.
Thanks for the heads-up on @danmartinuk ‘s blog post on River Song over on The Graun @phaseshift – I’ve nipped over there to post something. Must see what the BBC site is doing to celebrate the glorious curly-haired one today.
26 May 2013 at 20:13 #11069@fishcombobulated Welcome to the boards and to Clan Fish!
@whisht There are so many fish because me, my doppleganger-fish (otherwise known as “dark Juniperfish”), my good comrade @jimthefish and the rest of the shoal are on a cult recruitment drive to ensure that the denizens of the known and unknown universes accept @holymackerel as their personal God-Complex.
Don’t mention fish fingers and custard if you want to live!
26 May 2013 at 20:04 #11066@craig I like “The Rose and Crown” <buys a quick fishy round and back-flips out of the saloon doors>
24 May 2013 at 01:23 #10638Just read your post on metanarrative and the Eleventh Hour @bluesqueakpip and it made me think (see my riff under your post).
The Doctor steps into his time-stream. Hurt Doctor stirs in his bubble universe. The walls are breaking down.
The cracks in time are the work of the Doctor.
23 May 2013 at 15:12 #10543Quick wave at everyone here and looking down on us from cyber-space in your TARDISes 🙂
There is so much happening in our marvellous and organic space that I can’t keep up right now!
See you all soon sweeties
I’ll be in and out regularly even if I can’t read everything – I am suffering under work deadlines.
22 May 2013 at 09:54 #10324I’ve just got the ‘no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer’ part of the prophecy.
The interesting thing is that the one who spoke the Doctor’s name was River and as she was dead she could have spoken falsely or failed to answer.
She therefore had fore-knowledge which meant she knew opening the tomb was the right thing to do. I like to think that she was the one who set up the Doctor’s tomb including her false grave as the secret entrance and that somehow in their timey relationship not only did he witness her death but she witnessed his.
We don’t of course know whether the prophecy Dorium referred to was about this point in time at Trenzalor or another point in time that we have not seen yet.
But if this was the point in time the Silence wanted to prevent, then I’m wondering whether they are some kind of parasitic manifestiation of the Hurt Doctor, who has been steadily leaking out into the universe throughout Eleven’s tenure (i.e. not nearly as well contained in that “bubble universe” as he should have been) and now that “our” Doctor has entered his own “tomb” he will be able to “cleanse the wound” thus excising The Silence from the universe…
River always knows.
I loved that line, all the affection and exasperation in his tone, the constant delight and irritation at being one step behind her in the times-stream, always, and him a Lord of Time 🙂
21 May 2013 at 22:38 #10283@scaryb Lol at beige formica tops ! That really would be evil 🙂
21 May 2013 at 22:34 #10280Just to go back to red and blue. I know you must be really bored of it by now but I just need to revisit
Ha ha – cheeky!
When the GI jumped in to The Doctor’s time stream, it seemed that the room was then bathed in red (by the time stream) and it was only when Clara jumped in that it reverted back to a more white/blue. So maybe red isn’t the uncorrupted? Or was it just red is death. Just a thought?
Yes, that messed with my symmetry!
I can only conclude that Moff has been reading our comments all along (well let’s face it he’s obviously a Guardian reader) and has been personally playing a red/ blue game of messing-sh*t-up with my double-fishy heads 🙂 <Errrm… grandiosity? What grandiosity?>
You’re right that the Doctor’s original (as far as we know) “scar-tissue” was blue and the GI made it flare red. This doesn’t “map” to Mr. Clever as a direct colour mirroring of GI infected “dark Doctor”, as Mr. Clever took the blue side of the Doctor’s brain/ chess-board.
However, there are two “dark influences” in the Doctor’s time-line – the GI (neutralised by Clara) and Hurt Doctor (split off in a “bubble universe”). So there is no “uncorrupted” time-line as such, because there is no timeline in which Hurt Doctor did not happen. The Doctor has split Hurt Doctor off which means he cannot erase him.
The solution is the Jungian one of facing and integrating one’s shadow, not eliminating it, I think!
In Amy’s Choice, the Dreamlord was still “with” our Eleven at the end (red bow-tie) because we saw his reflection in the TARDIS console, but he was submerged again and the Doctor was with loved companions. Companions, as we know in Nu Who, are what stop the Doctor from geting too dark. So Hurt Doctor was/ is companionless, no doubt.
The general red/ blue time theme stands as metaphor for Doctor and dark doppleganger even if it doesn’t literatlly map.
I have thought before about whether red bow-tie and blue bow-tie Doctors behaviours were subtley different, as in decisions made, mood-swings etc. But that way madness lies and right now I have to get back to work, you enabler you 🙂
21 May 2013 at 22:06 #10270@craig Cripes, yes, I picture you in some Who decorated garret fighting spam-bots and errrr… what-not [we already know what level my technical know-how is at 🙂 ]
Go you! And tell us if it gets too much/ you need help in whatever way – someone to join the tech team (sure there are folks on here who could) , £ contributions to move to more bandwidth (right?) etc.
Meanwhile, yes, don’t forget to join us for bonkers theorising. I actually have to get back to work, I’ve had a serious visit from the great god Procrastinatus when I have deadlines!
21 May 2013 at 21:51 #10262<waves at comrade @jimthefish > I think we should have a Clan Fish moot at some point and make offerings to @holymackerel the God-Fish-Complex 🙂
Vincent’s painting of three exploding TARDISes – hmmn – we’ve seen the TARDIS explode / near explode three times now.
The Eleventh Hour, The Big Bang and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.
Some unknown force was controlling the TARDIS in The Big Bang – the one with the hissing voice. I think some very clever person either here or on the G-blog reckoned that hissing voice sounded like John Hurt’s!
In some massive time-loop they will all be connected 🙂
On a more “shippy” note (waves at @pedant mischeviously) I want to know whether River met Hurt Doctor.
21 May 2013 at 21:45 #10258@tournikate A warm welcome to you, the only Who fan in the village! 🙂
No, Trenzalore is a Moffat invention, there is no continuity with Old Who.
Our resident Old Who lore expert @htpbdet is not with us at the moment, but as soon as he’s back (we miss him) he can verify I’m sure!
21 May 2013 at 21:41 #10254@Shazzbot “I’m very good” – I loved that line of Ten’s, so endearingly and arrogantly him (he said it when he saved River to the sonic) but, it’s not all me 🙂
Back on the G-blog that line was pondered over quite a bit in seasons past, when we were wondering whether one version of the Doctor ended up taking the “slow path”. Remember when he was waving to Amy and Rory out of history books and Laurel and Hardy movies? We were thinking ganger Doctor from The Almost People in those days.
This could still end up working, if Hurt Doc is a version of Eleven – who knows!
So yes, I’m reviving an iteration of an old theory now we have an explicit “other” Doctor to play with!
I now desperately want to see “dark TARDIS” 🙂
21 May 2013 at 21:23 #10247Wow – I just can’t quite catch up to you all! So much timey theorising going on.
Lol @phaseshift to your poem. I confess it may have been me who started the Buffy/ Gentlemen comparison on the G-blog! And I’ll defend it too 🙂 Modern undertaker clothes or not @bluesqueakpip . Nu Who has paid persistent tribute to Buffy/ Angel. The episode with the Gentlemen is almost as good as The Body – still on my list of “best television ever”.
He told an archaeologist the password to one of the most famous tombs in the universe.
Yes, that’s really glorious isn’t it and another fit for all the Egyptology and tales of discovered mummified Kings etc. Bet River wrote “The History of the TIme War”. It was probably her PhD thesis 🙂
If you go back and take a look at Ten’s face when River tells him his name in the Library – he really does look like a Time Lord who has seen a ghost.
Perhaps we have been treated to A variation on the bow-tie theories mentioned ever since Time of Angels:
Red: Timeline as messed up by the GI
Blue: Timeline as fixed by Clara
Patterned: Original timelineYay converts to the bow-tie theory! Amy’s Choice man, I am actually having a fit of fan-squeeing about how brilliant it was to put all that foreshadowing blatantly into an epsiode riff-ing on a fan trope about “sex pollen” back in Season 5 and then continue to riff on it (not the sex-pollen part) via various other doppleganger appearances and watery portals to other time-streams ever since.
A ++++++ for submerged arc narrative in the metaphors. I LOVE IT!
Yes I’m still going with blue as the messed up time-stream because of the colour symbolism – “ice in his heart” and all the red Clara has been wearing – red being for love. Plus when the Doc faced off against Mr. Clever, Mr. Clever’s half of the brain was blue. I don’t think patterned is “original time-line” either – I’m still going with “spotty bow-tie = spotty Doctor” as he approaches the trauma of a confrontation with his shadow side the Hurt Doctor.
I like your theory that Hurt Doctor is Alt!Eleven, particularly as that fits literally with all the doppleganger metaphors. But if not the Time War, then a war is in the mix – the “blood of billions” is on the Doctor’s hands said the GI and Mme Kovarian talked about an “endless bitter war”.
I’m still going with the Time War myself, it’s just that we are going to find out the Doctor did something more terrible than we’ve yet explicitly come to know – sacrified whole civilisations of innocents in order to lock the Time War up, most probably, including his own daugher (mother of Susan).
Happy to see you’re reviving my three TARDISes collision theory too. I would very much like it if they tied it all together, so that Eleven’s TARDIS was indeed spinning out of control from that explosion when he first lands in Amy’s garden.
Does anyone remember that Prisoner Zero taunted Eleven then by singing “the Doctor in the TARDIS doesn’t know”. Does the Hurt Doctor have a “dark TARDIS” (visually, I’d love to see that!). Or is he “the Doctor without the TARDIS”?
Go Moff on your three season arc you beauty!
21 May 2013 at 20:31 #10237Welcome to new members!!!
Hello everyone, we seem to have had quite a few new sign-ups recently.
In particular delighted to see someone called @janisthorns – I always liked Leela’s fights with Four about those. And I see at least one new member of Clan Fish @mzellepoisson . Swim on in and join the rest of us in @whohar‘s bath, kindly set up here for the purpose by @scaryb [the Weeping Angel in the blue fez – watch out for her :-)]
Sorry we haven’t been able to tempt @TheGrimSqueaker over from The Guardian yet, because I was so happy to see that moniker.
It’s a slightly bonkers, delightfully playful place, this, in case you haven’t caught the flavour yet.
Now the dust of the Season 7 finale has begun to settle everyone’s deep into the time-loop ramifications of Clara’s scattering throughout the Doctor’s time-line over on the episode thread.
Meanwhile I’m wearing my red and blue bow-ties and having an extended “all the red and blue” things party with my doppleganger-fish.
Do drop by the sofa and say hello. Or just get stuck into the temporal quantum mechanics, whatever takes your fancy!
Also waving to all of you viewing from deep-space in your TARDISes without landing, from our sofa, currently strewn with party fezzes and some Victorian dress-up.
@craig is our lovely webmaster and @jimthefish and @phaseshift are our
over-lordsmods. They seem to be writing poetry from the bath-tub and timey-wimey ball-of-stuff theorising at present.Welcome to The Doctor Who Forum!
21 May 2013 at 20:15 #10234<waves at the webmaster> Hey @craig 🙂
Wow that’s a lot of eyeballs! We are going to need a bigger sofa!
Fish-clan’s plan to convert the Whoniverse to red/ blue bow-ties and halves of the Doctor’s brain symbolism etc. is going swimmingly then!
Hope it’s all not getting too much for you to manage.
Continuing thanks for all that you do.
20 May 2013 at 22:55 #10120To date, everything that Leadworth – sorry, Upper Leadworth – dream predicted has come true
Yes, yes it has and I shall now, for the sheer glory of it, bring back my “Amy’s Choice is pivotal” red / blue “dark doppleganger Doctor is coming” post from four weeks ago 🙂
http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/s33-7-10-hide/page/3/#post-6325
Yes you’re right, we’ve already had a sonic-screwdriver erection gag (which fits in with the magic penis of Osiris, as we said, haha Moff) and the Doc is narcissitic enough to find himself extremely hot. Plus all the mirror symbolism (falling in love with one’s own reflection)…
I don’t know which theory I prefer:
Clara as River/ Doctor progeny (“I was born to save the Doctor”)
Clara as River/ TARDIS progeny (“I was born to save the Doctor”)
Clara as future-Doctor (“I was born to save the Doctor”)
Looking forward to finding out.
Still predicting that, one way or another, there will be children for / from that Gallifreyan cot.
20 May 2013 at 21:15 #10110Yes! You’re right, and River explicitly told the Doc “spoilers” regarding her link with Clara before that hearbreaking “Goodbye Sweetie”.
Only trouble is, Clara seems to be assuming the Doctor is kind of her boyfriend at the moment. She certainly doesn’t correct her young charges when they refer to the Doc that way…
Yes @scaryb you can “ship” relationships which are textual rather than subtextual, particularly where there are “options”, so some folk “ship” Doctor / Rose and some “ship” Doctor/ River.
However, fandom language is fluid and ever-evolving so some people do use “shipping” for non-canon relationships only.
And I guess, if you’re a member of the Asexual Doctor Preservation Society (no disrespect to asexuality btw) then neither Rose/ Doctor nor River/ Doctor are sexual relationships and therefore they cannot be “shipped” in a sexual romantic way (although they can of course be shipped in a non-sexual romantic way).
If a River-Doctor child does emerge canon is settled on that one!
20 May 2013 at 20:12 #10094Your Osiris / Isis story could simply be our S Moffat* teasing the more intellectual amongst us {points finger at Jfish} with gorgeous harkenings back to human myths. Certainly the ‘name as word of power which opens the door between life and death’, and Osiris being scattered about, memes are strong in this episode.
Do you posit a parallel between the end of the Osiris / Isis myth and the plot of the 50th?
Moff is not teasing in some kind of empty way, I think, but drawing on cultural resources available to him to tell a story, and yes, playing a game of mutual enjoyment by sticking markers / signposts to his resources in there (all the Egyptology, pyramids etc.) for those readers who want to play.
It’s done so you don’t have to know about Osiris/ Isis to understand that this is a story about death and rebirth, it’s just added fun if you do!
Well if the Osiris/ Isis parallels continue, then we can expect a child – because when Isis resurrected Osiris she conceived Horus.
So yes, I’ll go out on a limb with my mythological markers and say that seeing the Doctor’s cot again was a fore-shadowing and we will encounter the Doctor’s progeny at the 50th…
To the Doctor, a daughter…
20 May 2013 at 19:23 #10080@satsumajoe Hurt Doctor as Set
Yes quite possibly. Or perhaps every dark thing in the universe now has a little bit of “dark Doctor” in it.
@arkleseizure Love the oxbow lake thought – trapped in a “bubble iniverse” inside the Doctor’s subconscious perhaps? That would makes sense of all the alternate/ bubble universe parallels.
Perhaps the Doctor used some of the Gallifreyan tech with which he put the time lock on the Time War to also put an internal lock on his Time War dark incarnation.
Is his name the key to both as well as being the key to his tomb?
Yes, I do think and hope the TIme Lords are coming back.
I’d also be delighted to see some of the TIme War as @ardaraith and @brotherjohn were speculating. Perhaps that is the “endless bitter war” of which Kovarian spoke…
20 May 2013 at 18:53 #10074@chickenelly Your avatar is a hoot (although you do look, worryingly, as if you might have been in the microwave).
Anyway you’ve picked the red side of the chess board – the side with heart. @scaryb and @Shazzbot are currently batting for the dark side of the force with ice in their hearts.
Sorry you missed out on making a sixties style sci-fi outfit with your baked potato foil wrapper 🙂
@phaseshift Good spot on the Hippocratic Oath.
Now, what do you think happens when you not only cross your own time-line once, which we know is a “bad thing” but when you cross it at all points simultaneously?
I can’t believe the Doctor just hopped in there after Clara. What a catastrophe not just for the Doctor but for the universe, surely?
Of course, my Osiris/ Isis parallels are happy.
River (as Isis) “made” the Doctor tell her his name at some point in her past so she has his “word of power” (just as Isis “tricked” Ra into giving up his name and so had power over him). This word opens the Doctor’s tomb (the door between life and death). Isis was able to use this word of power to help resurrect Osiris. River is able (using Clara) to save the Doctor.
First Clara and now perhaps Eleven (?) are scattered across time as fragments. Osiris was dismembered and scattered across the world. This does point quite strongly to the possibility that Clara is the Doctor a la @bluesqueakpip and others’ musings.
The Doctor has just crossed the threshold of his own death. He has, in effect, entered the underworld, just as Osiris did. This is both literal and figurative, as he is going on a journey to the “dark side” of himself – aka the Hurt Doctor.
Now, a la Clara’s phoenix jewellery, he needs to be resurrected at the 50th.
Score for both dark Doctor and Osiris/ Isis 🙂
19 May 2013 at 22:20 #9906@phaseshift Thanks for that clip 🙂 Nieve and Alex together – that’s fun.
Yes I would like to add to the blog section (different from a blog-roll @scaryb innit? Unless we now also have a “blogs we recommend” section that I’ve missed?) when I have some time – not for a while yet probably 🙁
@pufferfish Well hello there shy-fish and welcome to an epic post of your own!
I love the idea that the Doctor is named Mr. Song in the TIme War book and I did enjoy the reversal whereby River called the Doc “him indoors” this episode.
Well I would laugh at the circular ingenuity if Hurt Doc were Prisoner Zero. But why disguise yourself as a giant multi-form snake I wonder?! 🙂
@davemorris316 Clara as Future Doctor – maybe, maybe. I do love the idea of the Doctor unwittingly flirting with himself. Not convinced this is where they’re going tho’.
19 May 2013 at 21:53 #9899@timeloop Hello – I can’t prove anything 🙂 What speculative Who board are you on!
I posted up-thread that I thought it likely River was the hooded figure in the prequel to Asylum of the Daleks who sent the Doctor the dream message giving him the co-ordinates to Skaro, thus engineering his first meeting with Clara (whom River knew would save him – “River always knows” said the Doctor to Clara in The Name of the Doctor). This link was made becasue the same psychic link/ dream message technique was used by Vastra and River in The Name of the Doctor.
The other evidence for a link are the song pass keys, the musical narrative insertions from the music room heart of the house in Hide to Duran Duran in Cold War – songs with narrative significance pointing to the involvement of River Song.
Why would River speak the Doctor’s name and open his tomb to the ravages of The Great Intelligence if she did not have fore-knowledge that Clara would be the solution (because she and the TARDIS had created her for this purpose)?
Clever Professor Song.
19 May 2013 at 21:43 #9897@danmartinuk You need an avatar! Your green-haired imp from the other place or something else?
Yes I am pretty pleased all my fishy rooting for dark doppleganger Doctor has come through with a promise of the Valeyard and/ or dark Hurt Doctor 🙂
I like your idea of a Nov meet-up – I’d like to go to that convention – we’ll only be around for one 50th anniversary!
@rtlloyd98 Welcome – will check out your post. As for a promo – well hang on ’til we’ve checked you out! 🙂 We don’t have a blog-roll on here at present.
19 May 2013 at 21:31 #9894@scaryb Wonderful – very fetching in blue 🙂 An angel with ice in their stone heart however… as if they weren’t scary enough!
I’ll have to go and listen to the Kate Bush.
@Shazzbot I likesd @bluesqueakpip ‘s theory on the G-blog that the episodes we saw clips from were some of the not-so-great ones which could really have done with a re-write! Very funny and cheeky.
I did also like Clara’s many period outfits.
@phaseshift Enjoyed your Paternoster Gang blog post – for the steampunk alone it should happen. Vastra in glittering black VIctoriana at a seance table with floating Gallifreyan co-ordinates above it? Scrummy.
19 May 2013 at 20:50 #9886Hi @scaryb I haven’t complemented you on your fine fez-wearing angel yet. I feel you need a blue version too 🙂
You know I reallly love the musical pass keys theme in 7.2. , all relating to the importance of River Song of course. I love it when music is used as part of the text in TV drama. I got quite teary-eyed about “Tracks of my Tears” which the Doc mentions in his “last” scene with River (ok I’m in denial) and which I’ve posted in the music thread.
It’s a pleasure when everything is not spelled out and we have to put the pieces together (such as John Hurt Doctor being the thing in the Doctor’s room in The God Complex).
We seem to have near consensus that Hurt Doctor (and isn’t that name wonderfully symbolic in itself) is Time War Doctor. I’m looking forward to finding out more in November.
I don’t think they ever contemplated Ecclestone as “dark Doctor” – he was, after all, the first generation of Nu Whovians “my Doctor” and I think it would be a retcon too far. I hope Smithy will get to play a dark version of himself as Hurt Doc and “our” Doc fight for control, just because Smithy does dark so well.
Wow his scene with Kingston blew me away on re-watch. She packs “goodbye sweetie” with all the tremulous and impish au revoir you would expect from River – love her acting chops! She raises Smithy even higher.
19 May 2013 at 20:35 #9881@rema Hi there 🙂 Well, on the parallel universes flickering together at infinite speeds and red and blue realities not occurrring…
In a way, they are !
We saw the Doctor and the Cyber-Doctor face off for control of the Doctor’s brain via a game of chess in Nightmare in Silver and the Doctor’s brain was coloured half in blue and half in orange-gold (red near enough). Blue was for heartless Cyber-Doctor and red was for hearts-filled “our” Doctor.
Now we find that deep in the recesses of the Doctor’s memory/ unconcsious is an incarnation of himself which he has split off, to whom he denies his name “The Doctor” because that incarnation has done such terrible things.
Imagine if what is coming is a struggle for control between this split off shadow side and the Doctor we know. Two different versions of the Doctor, flickering together at infinite speeds, one symbolised by ice in the Doctor’s hearts (blue) and one symbolised by love in the Doctor’s hearts (red).
I actually think that at the level of Jungian Time Lord cosmic consciousness, the red/ blue universes are not done yet!
@besd1 Hello there – yes Clara says she was “born to save the Doctor” – I suspect she was engineered by River and the TARDIS – we did not get to see that room in the TARDIS capable of making anything in JttCotT and in the same episode as a cyborg story, for nothing.
19 May 2013 at 20:23 #9879@danmartinuk A warm welcome to the sofa as @scaryb @Shazzbot and @jimthefish have said 🙂
It’s lovely to have you here – so glad you made it through the watery portal, if that is indeed you and not @DanMartinTheValeyard version!
Have a jammy dodger and the tipple of your choice. Some of River’s virtual champagne or Vastra’s virtual tea perhaps.
I think the action is mostly in The Name of the Doctor thread at the moment, but I can also highly recommend the music thread and there are some enjoyable blog posts up too.
This place arose thanks to your blog, where many of us “met” and had fun in virtual fashion. Oh the lists of bow-tie colours I have made in your blog-space 🙂 . So thank you and welcome to “it’s a spin-off”!
Jump in and join the rest of us Who loving fish, fowl, squeaking things and folk from several continents, from Mexico and the US to Australia and mainland Europe.
@craig our lovely webmaster can help you out with any tech queries.
19 May 2013 at 11:46 #9747@satsumajoe Yes I think you’re right that Hurt’s Doctor was what Eleven saw in his Room 101 in the God Complex.
And, yes, whoever said it upstream, the TARDIS clearly had issues with Clara because she was a time paradox and perhaps a teensy bit on River’s behalf, River being her “child”.
@ardaraith posted the prequel to the second half of Series 7 (the prequel to Asylum of the Daleks) in the previous episode thread. It’s on the end of this collection of Series 7 prequels here:
I’m wondering whether the hooded figure who sent the Doctor to find Dalek Oswin on Skaro was River. The figure appeared to him by “psychic link” in a “dream message” and we saw Vastra and River use that technique in The Name of the Doctor. So River was guiding the Doctor and Clara all along to Trenzalor, knowing it was necessary for Clara to be scattered through his time-line to save him?
Given that River was the one who used the Doctor’s name to open his tomb (suggesting foreknowledge) I suspect that’s the case.
@ardaraith I’m not convinced River is a Clara echo or Clara is a River regeneration. That was a pretty frosty exchange that went down between them at Vastra’s!
What I don’t understand really, is how the mere fact of Clara’s presence throughout the Doctor’s time-stream was enough to “save him” from the ravages the Great Intelligence was promising to visit upon the Doctor’s life events, personality, frienships etc. That suggests Clara is not “just a girl scattered in time” but a clean-up anti-virus programme. A link to CAL via River would explain that kind of capability.
River saved him at his grave-side from beyond hers, even though he’d never once gone back to visit her “afterlife”. He surely was lucky he met Melody Pond.
19 May 2013 at 09:47 #9730@bluesqueakpip Re Clara as Moff’s meta Mary Sue joke.
Yes, he does, of late, apparently love to sass-back his critics in-script. The “fine you don’t want an arc, have some blockbuster movies ( and a submerged arc)” of 7.1 for instance. Not to mention the “big friendly button” of JttCotT which was a huge and deliberate wind-up/ elephant trap for those who like to scream “deus ex machina”, and boy did it work.
I think Moff reads some of the fan commentary out there in the vast seas of online Whovian space and laughs a slightly demonic laugh 🙂
On the other hand, Clara was the weak spot in this episode, for me. All the emotional punch lay in Vastra’s terror at losing Jenny and the Doctor’s grief over River. Clara’s sacrifice for the Doctor and his rescue mission for her felt feather-light by comparison. I have no sense of Clara as anything other than “born to save the Doctor” at this point, because I don’t feel that a genuine personality has been built for her – just fragments.
Whilst that has served a delightful timey puzzle, which I’ve much enjoyed, it hasn’t been able to craft character or emotional connection. It seems she is a rebound attraction for the Doctor and he is someone who puts stars in her eyes. But truthfully, I don’t care.
Some people seem to love her however. I can appreciate enjoying her acting, It’s just, who is Clara really? I suppose we will find out. So far she has been a puppet (all those Pinocchio references) and now she will become a real girl – perhaps!
I wish they’d done the brave thing and had her be scattered forever through the Doctor’s time-line without a way for him to save “original” Clara.
Maybe I’m just sulking because I was hoping for a granddaughter revelation. That would have had the most wonderful narrative symmetry across 50 years.
Waves at newcomers @inigo and @jpw1
18 May 2013 at 23:00 #9659Right, while @phaseshift and @galactus are carving up the universe, let’s think about Clara.
We now know that she suggested to Hartnell’s Doctor which TARDIS to steal. We also know, from The Doctor’s Wife, that the TARDIS stole her thief. Ergo – Clara is either a manifestation of the TARDIS or is psychically linked to the TARDIS. We already know she is psychically linked to River.
River, the TARDIS and Clara are all connected therefore.
River is a child of the TARDIS, that much we know. I don’t think Clara is her daughter or granddaughter, not from the way River interacted with her at the seance table. She is, surely, the creation of River and the TARDIS working together to save the Doctor.
On whether John Hurt is Doctor Zero or the Valeyard (who comes between incarnations Twelve and Thirteen?) or the Time War Doctor (between Paul Mcgann and Ecclestone) or the “real” Eleven, with “our” Eleven as Twelve, we don’t know. I think Time War Doctor seems like a good bet, but what do I know 🙂
Check ou “Tracks of My Tears” which I’ve posted on the music thread if you are a soul who wants to cry about River and the Doctor a little more…
NB Oh, @topperofgallifrey Welcome – that summary of speculation on which Doctor John Hurt is was for you!
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