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Wow, ok, thanks for the images everyone.

I may be looking just a teensy bit (and no doubt erroneously and prematurely) pleased right now… 🙂

Red fish, blue fish, doppleganger fish, different time-streams/ universes/ versions of Clara and the Doc woo-hoo fish!

Of course, the entire colour scheme is probably going to change to neon orange and puce stripes two week’s hence, haha 🙂

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Nice work @scaryb – you have caught the red/ blue meme bug I see!

My theory is (yes still seeing the three TARDISes sans vino) that the Eleventh Doctor has simultaneously been moving towards and away from a pivotal event throughout the entirety of his tenure – red shift/ blue shift, expanding universe/ contracting universe.

Most likely that event is the TARDISes collision/ Big Bang.

If the entire Moffat arc has built-in circularity (and I’m betting it does) I will have a narrative-gasm 🙂

@htpbdet Yes I’ve been convinced for ages that the Doctor’s real name is the key to the Time Lock, just as I’ve been convinced for ages that the Time Lords are on their way back into the narrative.

Exciting times!

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@scaryb <hic> yessss I’m seeing in triplicate 🙂

But indeed, the correspondences of threes do seem interesting, particularly given the old Christianity Easter references – is Moff doing some variation of Father, Sone and Holy Ghost”! (see @htpbdet ‘s post on the sofa about ghosts).

Also Vincent’s painting of the exploding TARDIS does look as if there are three TARDISes now I think about it…

Yes the concentirc circles of red and blue are both the red shift of the expanding universe and the blue shift of the contracting one – cycle of death and rebirth again you see.

And you know the purple works too, because that’s the point where it all starts mixing together, red and blue, death and rebirth…

If this is it, a three season story arc with The Big Bang in the middle I will cover myself in chocolate cake and bow-ties and celebrate for three weeks 🙂

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@htpbdet You were talking about ghosts which suddenly made me flap my fins in excitement…

Because if we think back to the Forest of the Dead/ Silence in the Library episodes, do you remember that the space suits “ghosted” and the consciousness of the person lived on as an echo in the suits for a little while even though the body had been eaten by the Vashta Nerada? That’s what gave the Doctor the idea that he could “save” River’s consciousness/ soul/ ghost to his sonic and upload her to CAL.

So I’m now more convinced than ever that there is a link back to River and the Library.

NB I’s so glad you are warming to Smithy – maybe we will see that “S” yet!

 

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@htpbdet – So sorry to heart you have been in hospital! Hopefully you are out now and feeling a bit better. A warm welcome back.

We had a discussion just before you popped in about keeping discussion about the ongoing series to the episode spaces and saving the sofa for general chit-chat – so I’m going to go and answer your thinkings on the Hide thread!

xx to you too

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Right <runs offs with some of @scaryb ‘s wine from the sofa>

What if three versions of the TARDIS collided with each other in The Big Bang – they were all Eleven’s TARDIS from different points in his time stream. The “first” version spun out of control and nearly exploded and landed in Amelia’s garden, the “second” version trapped River inside it piloted by forces unknown, the “third” version is coming – i.e. we’re heading for that point in time now.

The Doctor, his Friend, her Daughter, his Wife (Hello Peter Greenaway)… As the arc seems (if my Osiris/ Isis musings are correct) to be about the cycle of death and rebirth, somehow another generation is added in the third collision, namely – Clara.

I know this probably isn’t what’s happening but how cool would it be if it was – a storytelling arc plotting, a la Arabian Nights, rippling out in concentric circles from a big bang in the centre of the three seasons leading up to the 50th.

 

 

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Oh and @elwingt All devotees of the multiplying bow-tie theories gratifyingly welcome 🙂 Spotty bow-tie, spotty Doctor being the current one I’m inordinately pleased with Oh, errr hang on, you’re a cat. This is all a cunning plan to get me to rise to the surface of the pond and foolishly bask isn’t it…

@chickenelly 🙂

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Just nice to have our webmaster back @craig ! See you in the DJ-ing corner when you’re in the mood again. That old skool snare drum dance track really got me smiling over some old times. Right – I actually have to go do some work – boo!

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@craig and everyone else – basically it’s brilliant here, and any paradoxes will work themselves out eventually 🙂

Right – feet up and a drinkie on here – over to the Hide thread for speculation

@lula awww that it was scary over on The Graun. We are all cuddly here 🙂

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Hey @craig – No that’s cool – let’s just gently direct general speculation on Season 7 direction to the current episode thread in that case, to leave more room for tea and toasted crumpets here!

By all means move @lula ‘s post and my reply to the Hide thread…

@bluesqueakpip That is odd – perhaps the point of the nesting consciousness is to reduce the number of posts on The Graun? Doesn’t make sense in terms of advertising hit rates tho’, so who knows. Shame, as I kinda like having the portal open between the two universes. Is it Saturday yet? 🙂

[Juniperfish @replies]

@craig Welcome back! “Novels to read” Lol

@lula Yes I am convinced Moffat has written an arc which spans all the seasons since he started as showrunner.

For a start the Big Bang happens in the middle of the run of episodes from Eleventh Hour to the Wedding of River Song – a TARDIS which looks as if it might explode at the start, a TARDIS which does explode in the middle but which the Doc reboots to create the universe anew, and a collapsing universe at the “end” (thanks to River’s attempt to avoid the “fixed point” of the Doctor’s birth). What if the Doctor’s unstable TARDIS in the Eleventh Hour is the result of a collision with the TARDIS from the Big Bang time-point? 

Then  we have a universe expanding out from the big bang explosion into the story in some directions and a universe contracting as time collapses in the other, which means the red and blue bow-ties really can be seen to symbolise red and blue shifts – a cycle of death and re-birth which is now being repeated on a yet grander scale it would seem in terms of the Doctor and his origins and, I think, the origins of the Time Lords too. 

@craig – Maybe we need the General Season 7 speculation thread open again? This feels a bit hardcore for the sofa!

@elwingt Welcome – I like the cats-eye avatar. Whovians across several continents reside here. Yes I grew very fond of Rory – Arthur really imbued him with charming character. Join in!

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@bobbyfat – Gosh I really like that, I like it a lot.

If we see the  heart of the house as the heart (s) of the Doctor then it’s no wonder there are statues recalling weeping angels in there, because he is still grieving the loss of Amy (and Rory) and they were the beasties responsible for separating him from her.

This theory of yours fits with what I (and others) were saying earlier – that Clara may be the repository of the Doctor’s memories meaning his heart(s) and soul. Music (or perhaps one Dr. Song) is clearly going to be key to bringing the Doctor back to his heart(s).

However, I think things are going to get a lot more icy before we get there!

 

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@badwolf99 a walking time-writing typewriter 

@bluesqueakpip [an] indigestible leaf of infinite might-have-beens 

@haveyoufedthefish a big, walking, timey-wimey butterfly effect

Perhaps we can say that if Clara is a pass-word protected repository of the Doctor’s memories, she is therefore the repository of the Doctor’s heart (s) and soul, downloaded to keep it safe.

 
This fits with her as a representation of Dr. Who the show (a la @bluesqueakpip) and with her being his granddaughter or great great granddaughter, because I can imagine Moffat liking the idea that one’s descendants are the repositories of one’s heart and soul.

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@whisht

I think that Clara is normal – but like us all is capable of amazing things because we all are.

(apologies – almost needed to get a hanky as had something in my eye)…

Dammit now a bee has coincidentally flown into mine!

Seriously though, does anyone on here think love is NOT going to save the day 🙂 The odds at the bookies must be rubbish. Ha, now Moff needs to pull off a 180 degree about-face and wreak bloody vengeance (see my post on the Furies above) in the 50th Anniversary special!

What do you mean, think of all the sobbing kids?

You think we’re they’re not going to be sobbing when bloody love saves the day? 🙂

Stock market run on tissues…

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@ardaraith Someone needs to sign up here with the call-sign Holy Mackerel. Holy Mackerel, God Complex of Clan Fish – if only because I want to see “Holy Mackerel on the Sofa” pop up on my dash 🙂

Wow everyone’s been rolling in the clover of literary allusion today. Good work team. 

You have inspired me to remember that the text Moff has referenced twice now. once with a mention in The Power of Three and once in the Rings of Ahkaten (with the Walrus and the Carpenter quote) is Through the Looking Glass.

There are three queens in that story; the Red Queen (cue all the colour theories) the White Queen and Alice herself. Three versions of Clara?

I see we have Clara as the Doctor’s lover, wife, mother and sister simultaneously on the go in the multi-verse today… 

Our trusty friend Wikipedia has an interesting entry on Lewis Caroll’s differentiation between the Queen of Hearts (in Alice in Wonderland) and the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass:

I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion a blind and aimless Fury. 

The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm – she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses! (Lewis Carroll)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_(Through_the_Looking-Glass)

We already know one of Clara’s “things” is taking care of children (nanny, governess, ship’s entertainment officer). Was she the Doctor’s nanny??!!

I did say the red umbrella was a bit Mary Poppins.

As Carroll is talking about Furies that made me think of the “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” line. It sounds very Moffat (given his “hell in high heels” line about River) that there might be a scorned woman in the Doctor’s secret past.

Or perhaps we should think about vengeance. The Furies punished oath-breakers. What has the Doctor forsworn?

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@haveyoufedthefish

Well, I do believe my own press 🙂 So the mega-post, in mirror universe, doppleganger, red fish/ blue fish style was both tongue in cheek and not tongue in cheek 🙂

In other words, I’m pretty pleased with it, but it’s probably b****cks. 

But yeah, if Moff was messing with us with the red and blue balloons (which he probably was) I was attempting to “mess back” by having a go at potentially making it all fit 🙂

If we were being really obsessive we could go back through the entirety of the Moff canon and look for signs that blue bow-tie Doc behaves slightly differently from red bow-tie Doc – were we to go with the literally rather than figuratively two Doctors end of the dark doppleganger Doctor theory.

But, that’s a procrastinatory task for another night!

Sleep well all…

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Hi @bobbyfat Welcome! Yes it’s like Who theory crack on here 🙂

Yes I definitely think there are two versions of the Doctor there, and that the bow-tie is a clue. What we can’t tell is whether this is two versions of the Doctor overlaid in time – the first and second times he was there OR two entirely separate Doctors.

I’m leaning towards the first and to the “two different doctors” as a metaphor for an approaching dark Doctor at the moment rather than a literal ganger Doctor. But, I’ve been open to the idea of a return for ganger Doctor for a long time, as has my good comrade here @jimthefish .

Either way, I’ll wager the Doc is heading for the dark side.

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@phaseshift

Imagine the sound of enthusiastic applause (unfortunately, it will have be the one handed variety). I enjoyed reading that.

That’s uncommonly kind of you 🙂   

TBH I posted it with a slightly evil grin as I imagined those few who did get all the way through wondering nervously whether @juniperfish actually has a sense of humour or not.

Improbable stretches aside… red as the colour of love and blue as the colour of ice does have a pleasing simplicity, which I’m not saying I could have said in one sentence but… 🙂 

And I suppose, all dancing on the head of a pin for fun aside, that may have some credibility if the red settings on the sonic and the red outfits of Clara become more apparently linked to love and the ice metaphor more apparently linked to dark Doctor as we go onwards through the time vortex.

[Juniperfish @replies]

Apologies for the length of this post!
I’ve just re-watched Amy’s Choice as part of my interest with the old red/ blue bow tie dealio. I want to have a think about the red and blue balloons in Hide and possible correspondences.

Quick refresher – this is where Amy and Rory are living in Upper Leadworth and Amy is pregnant but at the same time they are travelling with the Doctor in the TARDIS and all three of them keep hearing birdsong and then falling asleep in one “reality” only to wake up in the other one. Turns out they were being messed with by a character called The Dreamlord who tries to force Amy to choose which “reality” is the “real one” (and hence to choose between Rory and the Doctor)…

Right, so, bow-ties and pocket universes…

Roses are red, violets are blue…

Amy’s Choice is even more brilliant on a re-watch than I thought it was the first time around, because now you can see the foreshadowing.

Amy pregnant? Yup, happens for real further down the road.

The TARDIS blows up? Yup, that happens for real further down the road too (in this ep the Doctor blows it up in one of the dream worlds).

Dark version of the Doctor?  Yup, well, you see where we’re going with this…
The (Upper) Leadworth Doctor is in a blue bow-tie and the slowly freezing TARDIS Doctor is in a red bow-tie. Both are dream worlds. The restored real universe Doctor is in a red bow-tie.

The Dream-Lord wears a red bow-tie on the TARDIS, but in Leadworth he doesn’t wear a bow-tie, he wears other ties (blue, then yellow, then no tie at all). This coding suggests the Doctor in the TARDIS, in general, has “something of the Dreamlord about him” (because it is there that the Doctor/ Dream-lord ties match). A supposition confirmed when, having blown the psychic pollen out of the TARDIS doors at the end of the episode, we see that the Dreamlord is still present (in the Doctor’s psyche) because when he looks down into the shiny surface of the TARDIS console, that’s who we see reflected back up.

Moreover, The Dreamlord zaps in and out of vision on the TARDIS exactly like the TARDIS interface which we have seen most recently take on the form of Clara.
There is an interpretation, which we touched on at the time of original air, that the Doctor engineered the entire scenario in order to get Amy to realise her heart lay with Rory so they could all go on travelling together without awkward sexual tension. In that interpretation the Dreamlord was the TARDIS interface. Very dark indeed…

And pretty dark in any case, as The Dreamlord is an undoubted creep and, yes @bluesqueakpip, a bit of a psychopath.

“Psychic pollen,” says our Doctor, “it’s a mind parasite – feeds on everything dark in you, gives it a voice, turns it against you. I’m 907 – had a lot to go on”

The red bow-tie universe in Amy’s Choice was the one where the Doctor, Amy and Rory were still travelling together and the blue bow-tie universe was the one where he’d left them behind and was travelling on his own. “Reality” ends in a red bow-tie, with them all together and the dark side of the Doctor (the Dreamlord) banished (contained).

So the message is one we are familiar with as it has continued down the road – the lonely monster needs a companion (or companions) to stop him from being a monster.  The “resolution” is that the Doctor gets to keep his companions.

There’s quite a compelling case therefore that the Doctor did engineer the entire thing (consciously or sub-consciously) to avoid losing Amy and Rory (because of the unresolved sexual tension with Amy) thus helping himself avoid being more open to being “monstrous”.

So, coming back to the balloons in Hide and their possible correspondences with the bow-ties in Amy’s Choice (significant because this is the first episode where we see the two coloured ties appear together)….

@feralcat said:

 As noted by other here, we have blue and red balloons representing the two universes. The doctor blows up the blue one first to represent ‘our’ universe, the red second as the pocket universe… it’s our (blue) universe he lets down, not the pocket universe!

So, bow-tie theorists, which is the real doctor / real universe?

If there is a colour correspondence with Amy’s Choice, then the Doctor “lets down” the universe in which he is alone and without companions (the blue balloon universe) in his demonstration of his proposed solution to Emma.

The “solution”, for all our sakes, should always be that the Doctor travels with people (the red balloon universe) to stop him going dark-side. Nu Who has made that pretty clear (look at Waters of Mars).

@scaryb ‘s question upstream about whether there was any significance to Emma sensing the Doctor had a sliver of ice in his heart (one heart, not two) might be because there are two (possible) universes. One universe/ heart is symbolised by red (bow-tie/ balloon), the colour of love, and in that one the Doctor has companions and he loves and is loved. The other is symbolised by blue (bow-tie/ balloon), the colour of ice, and in that one the Doctor is alone and dangerous.

Hide itself, as I’ve said upstream shows the Doctor in two states in the pocket universe, one without his spotty bow-tie and one with it – one afraid and running away from the monster (which represents his monstrous self) and one running towards the monster to help it find love. See correspondences above… 

So perhaps Clara wears red a lot because she represents the importance of the red universe (the one in which the Doctor has companions and love). The red settings on the sonic may also key into this colour symbolism, as the red-setting sonic was the one which enabled the Doctor to “save” River, the Doctor’s beloved.

But @Feralcast noticed that “our” universe was represented by the blue balloon in the Doctor’s demonstration to Emma. That’s not good. That means that, presently, in “our” universe, ice in the Doctor’s heart is coming.

The task will be to switch those balloons/ universes around again and make sure (as the Doctor actually does in the demonstration) that we return to the red universe, in which, of course, love saves the day.

And that my friends, is some colour symbolism, it-all-hangs-together, bonkers bow-tie theorising for you! J

Congrats to anyone who made it this far!!!

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@scaryb

ice in his heart – in both his hearts, or only in one of them?

Wellllllllll – Emma is an empath, she doesn’t have X-ray vision :-). So, I imagine she simply said “heart” because she doesn’t know the Doctor has two.

On the other hand – maybe it’s a clue that 10.2 (metacrisis Doc) is crossing back over, as he really does only have one heart. But I don’t think 10.2 is going to turn out to be the Big Bad…

@phileasf On Carlyle (nice spot) having to re-write something (his book) from scratch.

Well, that’s what the Doctor did during his universe re-boot (Big Bang 2) and I’m pretty sure something went wrong about that juncture which will come back into play before we’re through with the adventures of Eleven, namely the reason why the TARDIS exploded in the first place (and that old hissing voice “Silence will fall”).

I am now going to have to go and re-watch Amy’s Choice (which by the way is just the cheekiest nod to the “sex pollen” trope ever) in order to think further about red balloon and blue balloon universes.

Damn you Moffat! <shakes fins> <and so does my doppleganger>.

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@scaryb you bad, bad person – you have given me serious attack of the Sunday giggles via your post over on The Guardian – fish biscuits indeed – you know whereof I speak 🙂

@arkleseizure Welcome to the sofa!

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OMG @Shazzbot – I am just about to go out for an evening stroll and now you have made me frightened of daffodils 🙂

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@phaseshift well done 🙂 I really do like the idea of our site and Dan’s blog as mirror universes with a watery portal in between. Seems timey-wimeily [magically even – to continue a debate :-)] appropriate. The Who text bleeding out into the Whoniverse and seeding new little mirror universes as it goes…

@blenkinsopthebrave there was a typo in your name in my post upstream and I wanted to make sure you got an e-mail alert so you’d see there is numerological hope for your Kennedy fourth wall theory still!

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@wibbly  Re “the chin”. I’m sure that’s the kind of thing River would tease the Doctor with (if she hasn’t specifically already?) if only to get back at him for the “Mrs. Robinson” crack. She did tease him about his resemblance to the Moai on Easter Island during their conversation about @jimthefish and they had very pronounced bone structures. More Clara/ River connections?

@Shazzbot I’m very impressed by the Morse code – keep going!

@theatreguy Caliban/ CAL – I like it. I’m not ready to give up on the Caliban connection either – too full of juicy references to dream-worlds and monsters and Moff does like to use his literature degree 🙂

Oooh – and the “jump cuts” in scenes we’ve been seeing (such as last week’s strange under water episode for Clara and then the jump cut to her not being drowned…)  doesn’t it put you in mind of the way time worked in the Library? And Doctor Moon’s phrase “and then you remembered”, as he re-writes life for Donna to make it seem “real” for her in there?

Takes a puff on @chickenelly ‘s pipe

@haveyoufedthefish

The frustrating thing with this episode from the old theorising POV is that it’s firing clues and references pretty equally in every direction – its somehow managed to reinforce every possible conflicting theory

Chin up old chap! That’s the point innit? 🙂 How else will we have fun chasing the narrative ball of string about?

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@davemorris316 Welcome to bow-tie theorising!

Over on The Guardian I had this to say about the bow-ties:

Two versions of events took place. In one (bow tie-less) the Doctor was afraid of the “monster” and tried to run away from it – “I am the Doctor and I am afraid”. In the other (with bow-tie) he ran towards the monster to embrace it and try to help it find love.

A parallel is drawn between the Doctor and the monster. He actually says “every lonely monster needs a companion”.

Very Jungian. Run away from your shadow-self and it will control you, embrace it and you will control (aka integrate) it.

So this little story is a mini reflection of the big arc, methinks.

Interesting question is, given all the time paradoxes between the pocket universe and ours – did those two versions happen sequentially, or concurrently, or was one, as we watched, in the process of over-writing the other?

I very much like your idea of the arc as a contest between “true” and “dark” Doctor – most certainly that contest is happening in his head I think, as the “sliver of ice” works its way further into his hearts.

Yes, agreed  I also thought only River and the Doctor could fly the TARDIS but maybe the TARDIS recognises Clara’s DNA as a blood relative of one or both of them (blood calls to blood).

 

 

 

 

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@chickenelly what do you mean, still “clinging on” to the bow-ties theory 🙂 <glares glassily out of fishy dalekising eye-stalk>

 

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@Blenkindopthebrave <waves> How nice to “see” you – on another “drink the Quantas club lounge dry” world tour eh?

@bluesqueakpip has performed some very nice numerology over on The Guardian for @scaryb linking 25th November 1974 , the date mentioned in this week’s episode, to the Kennedy assassination by explaining that this is Clara’s fourth outing with the Doctor and 22nd November 1974 (four days earlier) is eleven years after the Kennedy assassination. Good huh?

Did I get that right @bluesqueakpip ?

It also suggests a close link between Clara and the Doctor too, whether that be Clara-as-future-Doctor or Clara-as-grand-daughter or great-grandaughter etc. !

So, chin up, your Kennedy theory could still be a winner…

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@scaryb and @morbius

Time is definitely interesting.

Not only is three minutes mentioned (three minutes since the crash from the astronaut Hilaire’s perspective and millions from ours) but when Clara first screams at the TARDIS to take her to rescue the Doctor, the Clara interface says that in that bubble universe the TARDISes power would be drained in four seconds and she would be dead in ten (implying initially it’s impossible to rescue the Doc).

Not to mention all the ticking clocks.

There were so many call outs to previous Nu Who episodes as well as old Planet of the Spiders. I mentioned the Unquiet Dead (where Gwyneth the maid is a psychic bridge for the Gelth) before but there is also the shot of the “monster” moving across the window of the old stone house which calls back to the Krafayiss in Vincent and the Doctor. Then the orange space suit the Doctor wears, which looks like the one Ten wore in The Satan Pit. Evidence that the Doctor’s mind is fracturing and that it is adding visual ghost-touches from his past, rather like something one sees just at the corner of one’s eye but can’t quite remember?

The most frightening evidence that the “sliver of ice” in the Doctor’s hearts is getting wider is when Emma, with the Metebelis crystal head-set on, asks whether it will hurt or not. The Doctor initially reassures her, but then ends up saying something like “it might be agony actually, I’ll be interested to find out….” Yikes! Empathy fail…

In Asylum of the Daleks, talking about the proces of nano-gene dalekisation, Amy and the Doctor have the following exchange:

Amy – “Well what comes first? How does it start?
The Doctor – “With your mind. Your feelings, your memories, and I’m sorry but it’s started already…”

 

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@bluesqueakpip Gah also 🙂

I so wanted the red shift/ blue shift to work with the bow-ties and it very nearly did (in terms of forward or back from our viewer-time) but not quite. Of course it could be that it was always tied to whether we were seeing older or younger versions of the Doctor himself…

Yes, I enjoyed Clara telling the Doctor to shut up when he was insensitively going on about the loneliness of empaths. I like the red/ heart combo too.

Incidentally, no red setting on the sonic in evidence this week.

To be honest, I am only warming to this version of Clara’s character slowly. Perfectly fine actress, but she is rather fractured (in time). My favourite iteration of her was Oswin Dalek. Or maybe it’s more that the Doctor is so very wary of her that the Doctor-companion bond isn’t really there yet.

I did really feel for her in the “to you we’re just ghosts” speech however, because the Doctor’s responses were SO alien (and frankly off, even for him) and the burden of what she’s got herself into, travelling not just with an old Time Lord, but with a possibly unstable old Time Lord on the way to the dark side, was very apparent.

 

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@feralcat

As noted by other here, we have blue and red balloons representing the two universes. The doctor blows up the blue one first to represent ‘our’ universe, the red second as the pocket universe… it’s our (blue) universe he lets down, not the pocket universe!

So, bow-tie theorists, which is the real doctor / real universe?

Really good question. I’m so happy about the red/ blue balloon spot by @rema

If Moff really has been playing the long game and I’m sure he has, then it comes back to Amy’s Choice, which is where we first see the red and blue bow-ties in an episode together. Both versions of the Doctor in that episode were equally valid/ invalid fictional universes created by the Dreamlord…

The red/ blue bow-ties are probably metaphors for different versions of the Doctor rather than a literal fit, unless it really does all come down to rogue ganger Doctor running around since The Almost People in the end (which it still might!).

I do recall that there is a scene on a beach at the end of that two-parter with a red balloon, I think were two or three of them… and we wondered at the time if that was a hint that ganger Doc survived.

Probably the two universes (red/ blue) are equally possible. In one, the sliver of ice in the Doctor’s hearts takes him over and in one he is saved from that (by love, as we can all bet on with some pretty favourable odds!)

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@branfish – Ah ha – finally another missing member of Clan Fish! We have @pufferfish and @jimthefish and @haveyoufedthefish and @IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan (aka @PedanticHammer)…

Welcome!

Yes, I can’t keep up with the nesting. I lose the threads of the discussion. Still enjoy it over there and will continue to float between – but the flow is easier here. Also, we have cupcakes 🙂

 

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@scaryb – Hmmn nice blue crystal/ eye-stalk spot and @bluesqueakpip continues to ace it on the numerology.

There were a lot of ticking clocks about – that and the Doctor’s reference to the bubble-universe having a “three minute” life-span leads me to further support my time-was-over-rewritten theory… not saving the monster the first time vs saving the monster the second time, which is probably an echo for the big arc.

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@bluesqueakpip – yes nice Snow Queen spot!

So the sliver of ice could be either:

1. The Great Intelligence slowly taking over the Doctor

2. Dalekisation slowly taking over the Doctor (after the wrist-band snafu in AotD)

3. The Valeyard pucnching a hole through from an other universe/ time-stream straight into the Doctor’s consciousness and taking over

4. A dastardly plot involving the GI, the daleks and the Valeyard (or some combination thereof) all working together

@feralcat – I like the Graham Greene reference and the Doctor is a pretty frequent re-writer of time (so an author in that sense)…

@chickenelly Yes 🙂 Maybe the TARDIS was simply being mean to Clara with the umbrella-stand rather than existing in two different versions – but two different versions fits with the bow-tie issue…

Clara is wearing red again – the woman in scarlet. Is A Crimson Horror (upcoming ep) a play on this I wonder?

Oh no @scaryb sorry about your i-player glitch. Are there any flickering lights? Don’t blink (sorry – that was monumentally unhelpful!)

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@bluesqueakpip – Ha!

Yes I was just about to post on that note myself having spotted the bow-tie shenanigans on my re-watch.

I can’t figure out whether Clara “really” made the journey to the pocket universe in the TARDIS twice, once to rescue non bow-tie wearing Doctor on his own and once to rescue bow-tie wearing Doctor and the “monster” together, OR whether, as the Doctor says in the episode twice, the “paradox resolves itself” and the “second” trip corrects the mistake the Doctor made the first time (overwrites it – seeing as “time can be re-written”)….

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@wolfweed – ah – drat – I was going to have fun with The Tempest !

My re-watch makes me wonder about multiple TARDISes again, because when the Doctor and Clara go on their trip in the TARDIS so the Doctor can take photographs of the place at different points in time, Clara has a red umbrella with her when they first enter (Mary Poppins governess reference?).

She looks for an umbrella stand and the Doctor says there is one by the door, and then wonders if he is “going mad” because actually there in no umbrella stand and he was sure there was one. Different version of the TARDIS? Or just further evidence that the Doctor is fracturing, a la shards/ slivers/ broken mirrors?

Also – that trip in the TARDIS goes first to the magma past of the beginnings of life on earth (6 billion years ago)  then to a landscape with a giant dragonfly, then to the house in the Victorian era (or is the dragonfly in the Victorian era?) and then to a desolate end of life on Earth future. Three points in time rather than four has a better symmetry with the three versions of Clara…

Also, I kept getting a bit of an echo-back to the Dickens episode with Rose and the Ninth Doctor and the Gelth, what with a gost and a brief trip to the Victorian era and a haunted house. Did anyone else?

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@rema Welcome and I could kiss you!

My red bow tie/ blue bow tie as a foreshadowing of two Doctors theory has been with me since Amy’s Choice (see my avatar for proof of tenacity!) and I remain convinced that dark doppleganger Doctor is on the way. I’d missed the red balloon/ blue balloon call-back. So yay for that!

I’m now on my spotty bow-tie = spotty Doctor portion of the theory 🙂

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Welcome @galactus ! Yup the Doctor is swiftly darkening….

I’m half way through a re-watch and I think the name of the house was given as Caliban? Although I may have misheard. Anyone else hear that?

If so, we have Shakespeare’s The Tempest to mine and its association, as with the many Egyptology references from episodes past (no, @htpbdet I haven’t been able to spot one in this week’s ep just yet!), with magic (and of course with dreams).

Oh – and as I mentioned over on The Guardian, I thought the time-traveller and her white suit was a River Song reference, particularly given the forest setting, but of course there is also the well. The Professor mentions that the “Caliban ghast” is know as the Witch of the Well – so we have water and a forest and song (music) at the heart of the house and love saving the day…

River is returning…

 

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@mephistopheles – nice shard/ Shard mirroring catch.

Broken mirrors and watery portals are everywhere in the new posters.

Things fall apart – the centre cannot hold…

So <tickles tummy reflectively> I’m happy to see the music (song) theme continuing this week, with the music-room as the heart of the house. And that room was also full of marble statues. And the instrument?

A harp.

Now what other-beings play the harp in our culture?

Ah yes – that would be angels.

Obviously I’m in doppleganger heaven after this episode. But I didn’t spot any Egyptology. Did anyone else?

Off for a re-watch methinks…

I’ll be time-jumping through our friendly wormhole between here and The Grauniad.

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@bluesqueakpip Through the Looking Glass to dark doppleganger Doctor it is then 🙂

Maybe there are no watery portals or shattered mirrors in Crimson Horror because Victorian era Clara is not yet linked to the TARDIS/ Doctor/ Song pass-key matrix… (and we are, indeed, continuing to see episodes ‘out of order.

I am itching to return to the mysterious duck pond of the Eleventh Hour and find out it was a watery portal all along.

Please Moffat be that long-arc schemingly good…

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@phaseshift – thanks for fixing it! I am just copying a url from YouTube straight into a text post, but?

The Roxy tune would be great as a ring-tone 🙂

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@craig I enjoyed it! I spent a fair bit of the ’90s being into dance music.

In that vein have Coil’s “The Snow”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pIXfA2p27A

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@phaseshift lovely and puts me in mind of Roxy Music’s “If there is something”

(which I probably won’t be able to embed!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSnRvL_CKc&feature=player_detailpage

Phaseshift Edit You may have missed @whisht‘s advice above. I really don’t like doing this but just copy and paste the YouTune LINK I.e the ht…… etc, without creating a link and post. The Wordress Host does the rest.

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@phaseshift Totally lost on the points thingy 🙂

But I’ll bet on the library and the swimming pool, possibly merged as you say…

Maybe some former companions’ own rooms too. How about one for the lovely Prof. River Song?

Or some kind of shrine room, where sketches and photographs and mementos of former companions are pinned up on the walls and candles lit, with “Et in Arcadia Ego” written over the door [or is that too pretentious? :-)]

I’d like the Doctor’s some-time walk-in wardrobe to get a look-in too, with the outfits of former Doctors hanging up there, along with various bizarre Comedia del’Arte masks etc.

What’s my score?!

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@haveyoufedthefish Haha “Tin god we trust” is my fave 🙂

Now I challenge you to actually write the story and post the link in the “Fan Creativity” section! NB, for hosting, “A Teaspoon and an Open Mind” is the major online Dr. Who fan fiction archive – here:

http://www.whofic.com/

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@phaseshift – the Doctor Who Prom is happening on my birthday weekend and I want to go like burning – I think tickets are being released for sale some time in May but I reckon it’s going to be pretty tough to get them!

You can sign up with the Royal Festival Hall for an e-mail alert when tickets are released…

I just know it will be one of those once in a life-time events, in the 50th anniversary year and all…

 

 

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@phaseshift and @wolfweed – love these posters – thanks for uploading. Their retro feel is lovely for the 50th and an HG Wells reference for No 1 too. I’d have to choose the Nightmare in Silver poster as my fave – that Cyberman in motion and light is a thing of beauty.

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@ardaraith – oooo! And River’s back for the finale –  yay.

I’m betting the viewers don’t learn his true name tho’ – someone will be whispering in someone’s ear again no doubt 🙂

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Hey @craig  – I just got an e-mail from the site in relation to your last post in this thread – if that helps 🙂

 

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The Doctor Who Prom has been announced! It’s July 13/14th

Link here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2013/july-13/14610

Confusingly I don’t think you can buy tickets just yet…

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You’re a star @craig 🙂 Thanks for your hard work.

Is this one costing a lot more? If so don’t be shy, it’s a collective endeavour of bonkers Who enthusiasts after all and I’m sure people would be happy to donate £10 each via PayPal.

 

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