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@thane16 Hi, thank you! and ish.

Yes the ‘hello’ really struck me. There’s usually a moment of confusion – though not so much I think with Fifteen? But at least, maybe a sense of being newborn. She was more as though she’d stepped through something.

@blenkinsopthebrave – yup, when I thought it, I thought I knew the lot that would appreciate it!

@janetteb – yes, I wish for once they really would. I’m never really disappointed with a RTD finale to be fair because my expectations of him are generally – intriguing set up, slightly frustrating landing. Not that there arent’ holes to pick in Moffat’s, or that I don’t think there have been better endings offered here for his series, but they’re more satisfying for me.

@whohar – excellent company to be in.

And to be honest I hadn’t formed the Piper-Tardis theory till I saw Reality War. I just felt a shiver of resemblance, the importance of ‘hello’, as well as Piper bathed in regeneration light – and also, to be honest, what reason would annoy me least- might I actually like. Because there’s a canon explanation right there, Rose has been exposed to the Tardis energy, which the Doctor has then taken on, and he’s just used his own regeneration energy to manipulate the time vortex. It’s more meaningfully full circle than just ‘featuring Billie Piper’. And it will be the second time Piper has played someone/thing else with Billie’s face.

None of this means it’ll happen, if anything its a fairly neat and logical explanation, which means ….

 

overall, this series of all series present the problems for readers when a work is still ‘live’. All the intertextual connections we can make, the stories we can create out of the material are just there to be – completely contradicted by the next instalment. But sometimes the formation of the bonkers theories is fun enough for its own sake. And these are works that make us want to interact with them. Especially when Doctor Who draws on so a large and varied intertext as the huge body of work that comes before it, with which we all have our own personal responses.

 

I am a little upset about Rogue, though. Did he just burn through an entire River arc in one episode (the first time they meet he A: tries to kill him then B: dramatically sacrifices his life for him)? Or will he get his night in Darillium?

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Hi guys been a while, been trying not to avoid and procrastinate other work, but I had to come here just to say – could Piper be the Tardis? Another kind of physical incarnation of the Tardis? Rose looked into its heart and almost died as a result, could there be some kind of an imprint made? Sort of related to what he was doing that caused him to die?

 

(As well as, you know, placeholder, stunt casting, they haven’t decided yet etc).

 

 

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@thane16 one chance is – The Doctor is ordinary. Like Ruby, as in, normal parents, normal baby – for wherever he comes from. He grew up in an elite. He turned out to be the blueprint of the elite. But he’s average for his natal race.

and yet, if some of them turn up – oh he’s extraordinary now. All the things he’s done and the people he’s met. He could literally be the runt of the litter, abandoned, but he’s… the Doctor. And he’s special for the same reason Ruby is. He’s kind, he strives for goodness, he wrestles with his demons, he loves.

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@vickymallard I don’t know if it’s misdirection, and there is something else coming.

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@whohar in this light of this I do have a first Pratchett recommendation: going postal. It’s very much on this theme.

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@whohar oh that is a matter of great debate! most people agree that Night Watch is hands down his best work, but it works better with the context of the earlier watch books, feelings are very mixed about the first few novels, wars break out about standalone v particular series (the witches, industrial revolution, wizards, DEATH, the Watch). Just don’t mention the Night Watch series, it’s the only point at which the fans turn violent. His earliest works are basically having affectionate fun with fantasy tropes, by the end it’s social commentary. He’s very much a writer who evolved as he was writing. You might like one phase and dislike the later.

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@wolvesarerunning I feel like I’m defending an episode I was pretty disappointed with but here’s the thing – when pictures of Ruby’s mother popped up by instinctive, instant reaction was ‘oh, she looks so ordinary’. And RTD did, as you say, troll the hell out of us with possibilities. The woman in the tent, no one can’t convince me that wasn’t a bit of misdirection when the Doctor turns up – is that baby Ruby? Is she the hooded figure or is it the Doctor after all? Ruby was set up as another impossible girl. But I respect the ordinary twist (I was disappointed by Ray Palpatine in another franchise). I like the idea of the companions not having a wild, impressive origin.

 

@mudlark see above, but, I think it’s because he was in the Time window with them, and that’s why he encountered Ruby’s mother, and it was so strange that he couldn’t see her.

@whohar,@blenkinsopthebrave sentimentalised post-Victorian Fairies, no, me neither. But Elves handled like Terry Pratchett handled them….

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”

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@mudlark my impression was that it was Ruby’s mother who he couldn’t see – this mysterious hooded person in the video that was projected into the room.

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@theconsultant I don’ love this episode, but I think the point with the god was, he couldn’t see her. He assumed she must be incredibly significant and important for that to be the case. And she was, but just to Ruby.

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@juniperfish @thane16 – he looked in pain when Ruby left – but was he crying? I’m not sure there were tears.

I think somebody has said here that this Doctor hasn’t shown the kind of awe inspiring anger that some of the last Doctors have, there is an outside chance that a Doctor might be too  well adjusted – or alternatively, we’re just not used to one who’s sorted his baggage out. Or, on the other hand, he doesn’t quite have balance yet. He went through instant attraction through come away and travel with me (understandable, Rogue was entirely his type, type being: River (tending towards the amoral but also acts of terrifying devotion)  to ‘it’s very sad he’s gone but I have to keep moving forward’. You’ve got to not brood on your pain but you’ve not to avoid it.

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@nanoroar I’m the same. Episodes three to seven were fantastic to me. I felt really engaged in the speculation. The resolution isn’t so satisfying. I do think there are possible threads. I don’t really understand why the snow – was it the Tardis engaging with Ruby? Mrs Flood remains intriguing. Rogue will hopefully be another River-Character.

At the end of the day I liked Moffat’s Who. incomparably more than RTDs, and I enjoyed the specials and this season more than I enjoyed his first run around (apart from the Donna season). I think Chibs might get a bit of a reassessment as time goes on and more credit for the audacity of what he did with the Doctor’s past.

 

But yes, there was so much to play with. I’m left hoping that this wasn’t the hinted biggest bad after all.

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@cookgroom My theory is Chameleon arced. At some point during the Christmas episode it was broken.

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@ps1l0v3y0u. quit possibly we’ll see him actively looking out for his daughter/son, which he said he’s rather shied away from, but knew would exist at some point, because he knew Susan. RTD hasn’t told us/decided yet how much he knows. I think he thinks Jenny is dead. But this is one thing I really do like – the Time-whimey child, who’s own child turn up so much earlier in the Doctor’s Timeline than them.

 

And I think overall this kind of thing works better done the River way – a mysterious reoccurring character, rather than a full time companion so I’m glad it’s not Ruby after all. And its so much easier for the show to lean into the idea that everybody matters, everybody is important, when its not carrying a show-stompingly significant one of the kind literally the centre of the universe human around at the same time.

 

@blenkinsopthebrave I feel similar, but as a consolation, the Doctor was right there with us for a while. Who is Ruby? Is that woman Susan? There must be some clues in this tape. But he’s just happy to have one of those ‘nobody dies’ episodes (this episode anyway, I know someone died last week).  and, as you say, @thane16, ‘we invest things with significance’.

 

 

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Well, there’s the Russell.

the total death and destruction so early on confirmed we were watching to see how he undoes it, no ifs. Which is fine and it wasn’t badly done but…

Ruby is important because she was important to the Doctor. Which isn’t a bad shift back in emphasis rather than a second Clara.

but what does this explain? Why was she making it snow? Why was the importance of who her mother was to her able to make her seem so significant? We’re still entrenched into the magic entering the world, but, is that the big boss sorted?

It’s not been confirmed Mrs Flood ISN’T Susan 😜. She does remain interesting – she’s not a minion of the god, she’s not a normal human. She seems to be at times on the side of the Doctor.

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@thane16 – I mean, think about it. Pond, River, Flood – names on the Matriarchal line.

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<span class=”useratname”>@mudlark The more I think about I the more I like it, as much in terms of storytelling style as anything.

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and we have two mysterious older women, two mysteriously abandoned babies.

this has been such a playful series!

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So excited for the next episode- Moffat level for me more than original RTD.

final predictions in descending order of confidence:

 

Ruby is whatever the Doctor is. Potentially his daughter.

 

The heart issue won’t be 100% satisfactorily explained.

 

The Doctor is linked to the pantheon. He comes from magic.

there should be a few between the last and this:

Mrs Flood is Susan, who had been chameleon arced till the Christmas episode.

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@bunface that’s a good point about the Whovian chatroom feeling.  Who is this woman who keeps appearing? Could it be Susan? Let’s replay this video really slowly and look really closely. Is that an anagram? I found that really fun.

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@thane16 oh I think he can be. And thinking about it, when is Mel most use to him? When she’s telling him he’s amazing, or when she’s telling him to get over himself and get on with it? Companions, after all, keep the Doctor grounded.

 

another thing that’s occurred to me. When he explains regeneration to Ruby he says sometimes their faces change, often to survive injury, but they stay the same person. Which is true, though they don’t stay the exact same personality which, I need to do a rewatch, I think is later referred to by other characters. It was a no entirely satisfactory explanation, I think – but isn’t Ruby leaving after this series? Or I’d think she would be experiencing a kind of mirror to what Clara faced – she had to deal with the changed body, and see through to the same fundamental (though in a different iteration) self. Ruby might be expecting more or less exactly the same personality. Bu she’s not going to see that…

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@thane16 and I loved hat the mother whose raised Ruby wanted to tell her birth mother that she took her in, that her baby was cared for – not in a possessive way, but in a don’t be so sad, she was looked after and loved.

I wonder why is that that when, briefly, Ruby had not been her daughter, she was just so cold, and blank, and uncaring. A coldness that returns when whatever was said was said to her in 73 Yards. Ruby’s warmth and compassion seem natural coming from such a warm and compassionate mother – but without Ruby her life became bleak and cold.

I think it was (a little self-entered – the Lord of Time was Vain) frustration. He’d just had a conversation on how he was dangerous, no, Mel said, you’re wonderful – and here comes another casualty, and Kate looking at him, just for a moment, the way people looked at Ruby when the apparition spoke to them. He’d been having a lovely reunion, the possibility of a family one, two exciting mysteries, hoping to give Ruby what she wanted, a step maybe to her own family reunion,  and here it comes, death and misery, and Rory’s words, maybe, echoing in his head, how dangerous he is to people – Kate told the solider to stop, he told him to keep on looking. Because he was right the first time when he spoke about this child – he’s dangerous to people. those soldiers in boom – dead. those influencers – dead because they wouldn’t let him help. The handsome Darcy-country hunter, trapped in a dimension for his sake. Het’s had a time of it, but this isn’t the time for him to indulge these feelings, as Mel (and you) say. Bu he can be, a little, vain and blind. Especially when someone’s trying to blind him.

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@thane16 doesn’t Ruby’s mother (the known one) say it’s the beast?

This Doctor is very in touch with his emotions. Crying every episode, his horrified frustrated rage in Dot and Bubble. His instant flirty crush in Rouge. After all, if Fourteen is working through his stuff on earth, with his earth family. it’s probably going to lean into that. And there’s no particular reason to just try and learn how to be a functioning Gallifrayan instead, because he isn’t strictly one, though he is a base code.

What did the Harbinger (honestly, Kate, if you’re really increasingly with magic, binding with salt etc and someone turns up with the name H. Arbinger, maybe give it some thought? Perhaps the security clearance ought to involve this kind of thing as well, just to be sure) Say about the Lord of Time again? The Lord of Time was blind, and vain, and knew nothing?

I wonder if the Doctor has to let go of some of this humanity, if the Lord of Time (as it seems in context) means more than Timelord/Original Timelord, indeed, plays into how one being from an unknown dimension could create the Time Lords.

I’ve always fallen between two theories – that Ruby is a whatever the Doctor is, or lately, the Doctor is from the same place at the Toymaker, Maestro etc.

And now I’m also thinking about 73 Yards, if the apparition was always Ruby, the same Ruby, saying what she said at the end, or something else or a different her, saying something truly, truly horrifying. She must have been saying something to get those reactions, what could the Ruby we know say to have that effect? What is the significance of this episode? The magic trapping Mad Jack, local legends used to make fun of outsiders that are real and catastrophic, (or improved at the time and becoming real). The Doctor finds Ruby after he lets magic in/starts using its rules. And Ruby stops mad Jack, but does so by doing something she herself finds absolutely horrifying.

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Puppy!

 

@janetteb I was thinking of you during the first half. I think at least, it’s like when you get the wrong answer on The Chase and so does the Chaser, because the Doctor was really buying the Susan theory for a while there.

 

And we have new Susan knowledge! The Doctor isn’t a dad (yet). And he’s scared to become one. What would that actually mean? He doesn’t know much about Susan’s parents – she didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell him about her parents? Which doesn’t bode well, but could be a fixed point in time thing.

But also raises a lot of questions, because he’s been pretty sure he’s the last of his kind a couple of times, how do they retro-fit this with Nine? Once we get to Ten these questions become most easily answered with ‘River’.

 

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@janetteb I was thinking that she was thinking how taking her with her. This series does keep teasing companions not from contemporary London…

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So, having bought about it for a while.

I feel the Doctor might have found the Mr Darcy to his Lizzy Bennet. (Only the Doctor knows damn well he’s handsome enough to tempt him). It was interesting seeing a little reversal of the Doctor-River encounters, I saw a little of River in the Doctor in this encounter. And to see a little of that dynamic without the Timey-whimey. At the same time, Rouge is very, very River. Amoral employment as a bounty hunter rolling his eyes at the Doctor insisting they not kill anyone – check. Fully prepared to sacrifice himself for the Doctor – couldn’t be more check. Wistful flirty ‘find me’ – might be the new ‘spoilers’.

 

There is also possibly a theme in this series of the Doctor not being the unique Great Saviour. Or a focus on what the quality is that makes him special. There are a few Doctor-y characters so far. The woman in Space Babies, acting as nanny for all the babies left behind – but she’s scared of getting too attached, and them getting too attached – and tries to kill the snot monster out of misguided love. There’s Rickey September, who could have been great in a Tardis, with a huge impulse to learn and to save people, but maybe didn’t fully understand his own people, or, as they were known to him, his fanbase. There’s Rouge who is very take charge, come on run, find a last minute loophole in the science – but has more of an emotional than a moral compass. And there’s the Doctor, when he thinks Ruby is dead, pleased to think they’ll suffer for centuries after he’s exiled them to another dimension (which casts a different light on his ‘don’t kill, safely contain’ insistence.

 

Donna made the point that he needs to travel with people to keep him grounded, keep him from the darkness. But this episode shows us how his love for people can pull him to the darkness.

 

Another thing – someone on t’other place suggested that The Doctor might be connected to the Toymaker et al, might be from there, might be one of them, the Lord of Time… which makes me think why the Doctor instinctively knows what could happen if he uses salt, if he plays into these superstitions, that he might let magic into the world, why this could be the effect. I wonder if Ruby coming to this world might be one of the effects. I’m very much thinking of this as a twelve episode season/arc.

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<span class=”useratname”>@devilishrobby My hope is a new River. Bit amoral, but goes all in with the Doctor.

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I did play with an idea of a stray regeneration of River for a second. Would have been fun, but probably not.

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@craig And I’d love to wish that portion of the interweb a ‘very happy die mad about it’. 🙂

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@fozzyb o be fair, Blink is one of the most praised newer Doctor Who episodes, and it was even Doctor Lite-er :).

I feel they made this episode work with it, the last episode worked too, but there is a weirdness in pacing in having two Doctor lite episodes in a row in quite a short run. But I think a lot of that is logistics and doing what they can with it.

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@fozzyb for me, the relative inactivity of the Doctor goes to confirm that the issue is race. He appears first, she won’t listen. Ruby does most of the communicating with her as you say. Even when she does begin to listen to him she says things like ‘he’s not as stupid as he looks’ and ‘he’s defiantly going to be disciplined’. About him, not Ruby. He and Ruby are clearly working together. Ruby is also an outsider.  Why is she more willing to listen to Ruby?

 

It’s not just about the one line. It’s the light that one line throws on so many earlier lines.

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Exactly. And I think it’s important to consider some of the things people have been doing with social media – engaging in political activity, taking public records of police brutality. It’s also a way to really communicate, organise, support. It can be used actively or passively.

In the 18th century, there was a kind of explosion of social media similar to what we encountered in the last few decades, as letter writing became more and more popular. To the point where people complained that at house parties people spent all their time writing letters about the party rather than engaging in it – sound familiar?

But even before that, through the early modern period, manuscript culture operated as a form of social media through which people shared their writing, commented, commentated on writings. There is a difference with digital media, but it’s very much a new iteration of a long standing human impulse. And use of social media is always split between entertainment/distraction and significant communication, learning, and activity.

It’s also worth noting that had the bubbles not been community based – had, for example, the people on that planet all lived shut up in their own homes only reading up on history – the Doctor would have had a much harder time trying to save them. Their social media is a big part of the problem, but it was also offering a solution. And the fault was more in the community itself, the ingrained racism and general ignorance and over dependence, than the bubble. Used as a way, for example, for her to communicate with her family as well as her friends – that’s actually useful.

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thinking more about this episode – and how I’m enjoying it – there is a unity/overlapping of themes over the series so far. I totally get where the ‘are they the space babies grown up’  ideas are coming from. The society that abandoned the babies because they can’t let them not be born but won’t take care of them is a different but equally awful thing to the deeply racist bubble culture. And these young influencer types are essentially babies suddenly left to fend for themselves – their parents/parent planet aren’t coming for them.

 

But the way they’re left at the mercy of an AI set to kill them is closer to the soldiers on Boom, who, in a similar way, have to be persuaded to look around them and see what is actually happening.

 

The Devil’s Cord shows us how bleak and dangerous is a world without the beautiful distraction of music (though much as I love Rickey, I’m not sure it’s that much less bleak with Itsy-bitsy etc). But TDC is almost an interesting counterweight.

Ruby is certainly seen in the pub in 73 yards as coming there out of her London bubble. (Although ‘can I pay on my phone isn’t an unreasonable question in a pub). And again a little counterweight in that for a lot of people their phone is their bubble, but it gives her access to her money, and a way to get home.

I think it elevates above a typical anti-social media fable because I think the bubble concept runs through this series in interesting ways.

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<span class=”useratname”>@blenkinsopthebrave Yup. Pains me to say this but the space babies were better than that. </span>

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@juniperfish – I think he’s cried every episode so far. I’m starting to think it does indeed have a deeper meaning than just that he’s worked on himself and is in touch wit his emotions. But even that has something to it, he’s no longer trying to be stoic, or avoid any emotions other than happiness and anger – because if y0u do that (avoid grief and sadness) you end up with less and less happiness and more and more anger.

 

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@cathannabel – indeed, it’s still very much a might. But he finds things interesting, he just wants to help – I don’t remember seeing any reactions from him when the Doctor talked to him at admittedly a stressful point. I think he would have tried.

 

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@monkey8ea5t  I wonder if in some way I wasn’t a reminder for people (like me) who don’t have to face the question of racism, who don’t experience it, to occasionally drop our bubble and look. Ruby herself surely already knew and then faced again the fact that she can be as unprejudiced as ever but she can’t protect someone she loves from that pain. And even the Doctor, he can tell them it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care, that they can think what they like just let him save them and it doesn’t matter, because there are places where that runs so deeply that no good intentions or generosity of spirit and sympathy can touch it. And in the end it is about them being outsiders. It’s just that Ruby could, well, ‘pass’.

Star Trek has an impressive legacy, even with the compromises they were forced to make it was groundbreaking from its first series, and I get the impression the fandom is one of the less contentious. But it, like most sci-fi I would say is constantly making points about racism. It’s trying to present a world where racism is a thing of the past for humans precisely because it isn’t a think of the past for us right now, I think.

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just to add – another sad thing about it is, you know who of any of them might have jumped into that Tardis and just had a blast travelling the universe learning about everywhere he goes and saving people? Rickey September. The absolute waste.

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The episode was good, the ending rendered it devastating. Like many people I think I started thinking of Black Mirror from the start, but thinking of the black mirror episode it most resembled, this was actually much, much more bleak.

And it is interesting to think about the early signs. I had barely registered, I’m afraid, the total whiteness, but I did notice the ‘I just thought you looked the same but you’re the same person’. And apparently that end scene was the first scene he shot… Imagine going straight into it with that.

I do find the pacing of the season overall weird – mostly because I really didn’t think much of the first two episodes. This and the last one are up there as my favourites, but as people say, two Doctor-light episodes. The bottleneck episode (that still cost money) coming as episode three.

Little obvious arc development here other than a brief conversation about having seen this weeks Twist character before – both remembering her from different places.

As for the bugs – and I insist on calling them bugs, for the sake of this argument as well as my nervous system – it’s got to be bugs because it’s a computer system. But they’ve got to be physical bugs because they’re killing physical people. So they are bugs and it makes sense and there’s a decent chance I can sleep tonight. Bugs is what they were.

 

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On that was – I very much liked last weeks episode but I’ve never and never thought I would watch an RTD episode after a Moffat one and prefer it so much.

re RIP and I miss you – I think you can love someone and miss them and be absolutely determined that they remain out of your life.

is it possible the dangerous prime minister remains a more manageable level of danger but not full ‘got the nuclear codes and will definitely use them’? It seemed like he was about to do more than bring the world to the brink of nuclear war till Ruby stopped him.

how the Doctor disappeared and still knew a different timeline I don’t know. As in I don’t know quite how many timelines we’re dealing with here. But after all hasn’t the Doctor been promised another one on one with Time?

this episode tapped into so many fears. Slow, persistence predator, everyone, even those you love and trust turning against you. Standing back and letting someone get hurt.

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@ps1l0v3y0u OK that almost makes it seem possible, if we’re getting call backs to old stuff…

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@ps1l0v3y0u They’d take to controlling the metal caseings really well…

 

I’m envisioning Dalek’s advancing, spinning slightly, towards someone electronically demanding CUD-DLE-ME! They could be the most terrifying iteration of the species yet.

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@mudlark I think you’re right on the meaning but I’m a little bothered about it because she has a legal next of kin – her mother adopted her. What she has is no genetic relatives. Legal next of kin is generally decided by closest generic relative – or spouse/civil partner – but in cases of adoption, it’s adoptive family. I might be being a bit pedantic because I had to research this quite a bit not long ago (one day I might tell you all about the hospital heist).

 

All that said, she has no living next of kin, it’s clearly long after her mother’s death.But that could be true of any companion… there’s just something about it that feels a little clumsy and I find the use of ‘no next of kin’ a little unfortunate because so far I think they’ve really well balanced the fact that A: she wants to find her biological family but B: she has a mother she loves very much.  I’m still intrigued about the way she was asking the Doctor.

@whoha possibly the magic pot of gold has been widely overestimated. More than you can get out of the BBC doesn’t necessarily translate to a whole dragon’s horde. Still, there’s been a few episodes where you can see where the money was spent for effects – but the story could have been shot without it. And this episode: a quarry, a silkscreen, some inventive use of cardboard boxes. It might have been fun if they’d just gone for it, given some of the fans what they said they wanted. But just as possessions expand to fit a bigger house, or ideas expand to fit a bigger word count, doctor who’s writer’s ambitions, as you say, can probably strain any budget.

 

I always enjoy bottle episodes, I like the way necessity has created a particular kind of episode that even carries over now where there is more money.

 

 

 

 

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@craig a bottle episode, indeed, and this is something I have noticed in the new RTD Who. Bigger budgets, but yet, I don’t think it’s affected the contents. And this is a big example of it, it could easily have just been filmed in the BBC sci-fi quarry without making any real difference. And this I think is a good thing – the effects budget is mostly being treated as decorative. So there doesn’t feel as though there’s that dependence on it, yet.

@mudlark – I noticed the dad skills and the link to the episode with child-Danny

@thane16 re the lack of delicacy/woke crap etc- I think RTD has moved as a writer, from Queer as Folk to It’s a Sin, he’s really, really bringing the anger now. The love, but also all the anger. And it feels like there’s more right now to be angry about than we might have thought there would be in the 90s and 20o0s. I think sometimes about the people who say ‘ok, yeah, older sci-fi was political too but it wasn’t as in your face’ and I wonder if, if that was true, it was sometimes to subtle too make people take it in? Because some people missed the political content, some people disagreed with the progressive messages and powered through it. He’s not a subtle writer- but he’s not going for subtlety I think. As a side note, in terms of catering to American audiences I think the part about being scared of being picked up by an ambulance has a particular resonance in some places…

@scaryb so there’s a (Susan) Twist at the Start of one of the Anniversary episodes – and then a Twist in each episode of this season so far? And is she following the Doctor?

@juniperfish If it wasn’t pretty likely that Ruby having two hearts would have been noticed in her lifetime, I’d wonder if she’s not a timelord in any way, but she is whatever species The Doctor is. But we don’t really know enough about the Doctor to know he’s a specific species, that he wasn’t an experiment before he was found. And I do wonder with the themes from TBBW, binding with salt, the Toymaster etc following, this extra-dimensionary theme – how far they’ll take this?

@cookgroom Yes that was interesting because in her day to day life on earth, her mother is her next of kin. That’s who she’d have put down on forms all her life. In this particular context, however, that’s difficult – say she and the Doctor die and her mother gets her remains with a hollogram – it’s not ideal, but better than never hearing anything of her again. But she seemed genuinely confused and stumped, and why was she asking the Doctor?Does she assume he knows something?

 

 

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@whohar I noticed in the babies episode as well wen he runs from the snot monster he says, he never runs – wasn’t ‘run’ the first rebooted doctor line? It seemed to be that he was saying he runs towards things not away but that’s… canonically untrue. Inconsistency? Or something about this character, he doesn’t get scared, he doesn’t run away, he doesn’t hide, only now he is and does. Of course, maybe scary things are more scary when you’re with someone you care about.

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@janetteb I think Mavity was one of the readings on the screen, though I can’t be sure, I’ve not re-wathced yet.

But yes – so nice to speculate! I think, even when I enjoyed quite a few of Chib’s episodes more than I have these last two, they didn’t give me as much to think about and say.

@ps1l0v3y0u: indeed. But holy high expectations. I don’t know if I could write through that kind of pressure.

 

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Another thought about this episode that actually makes me like it a bit more – the almost killing of the snot monster.

The space babies are on the whole, more so if you like that kind of thing, sweet, affectionate, don’t cry all that much, make intelligible sense, are clever, brave, are maybe something close to a platonic ideal of a baby that don’t really require all that much hands on care. The monster on the other hand, is disgusting, snotty, hostile, terrifying, everything you might dread, a PPD nightmare. And this one woman, along on the ship caring for all these babies, terrified of seeing them die, running out of resources, her trying – and her failing – to kill the snot monster actually makes a lot of thematic sense.

I’m still not a huge fan of the episode, but taken on the level of discourse on reproduction rights, refugees, and, maybe, parenthood, its definitely got something.

 

I think I just get the feeling with both these episodes of a very truncated final draft of a very interesting, much longer first draft of a story. But I don’t think either of these exactly warrant a two-parter. Or alternatively, an exciting brainstorm of ideas woven together – not quite successfully – into a narrative.

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@jimthefish I suspect that the drag aspect of the episode is another example of RTD going in hard. There are parts of the US I believe where there is a tremendous fuss about letting children see drag queens, whereas that’s just part of Christmas and often the first theatre they see for UK children. As signs go re: Disneyfication etc, the selling of souls to The Mouse etc, it’s a pretty good sign I think. I know she’s American, and the US has a long standing drag tradition, but throwing a drag queen into a family show feels quintessentially British, and well times given certain recent legislation.

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@cookgroom yes a more logical plot might have been they turn up at Abbey Road, it’s not a recording studio any more or if it is the Beatles certainly aren’t there and then they track them down and… the way they did it is more logistically handy. You’ve got a location to base it around, a famous piano etc but it’s not entirely clear why people are even bothering to make terrible records when its so disgusting and embarrassing to make music at all. I wonder if some of it started off as a commentary on AI generated music, art, writing etc and the story morphed. As it is, music is terrible now, people find it rather shameful, even when they work in the industry, but they’re still making and people are still buying it enough for any one to bother.

 

Also, thinking about it – the idea is that music is effectively gone. People are only making this really bad music – and its bad enough to be safe? When someone plays or sings something good, Maestro turns up but the terrible stuff they’re recording is ok.

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@scaryb that would be OK by me…

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@janetteb @scaryb re music – I think it is a part of the best of us. Though I’m reminded how, just to really drive home her psychopath status, when Villanelle in Killing Eve was asked was kind of music she liked she said ‘national anthems’ ;). I think it’s just tat – not only is it appropriated for war-like purposes, this, pretty universal aspect, I think, of human beings… doesn’t tend to keep us from mongering war. Would we be worse without it? Very probably. We’d certainly be less human. But our human qualities aren’t always our best. Music also often ties into our tribalism.

@gotthejam there are oh so many places on the internet for you to rant about ‘woke crap’ and make weird comments about consequences and impressions from drag queens. This just isn’t one of them.

@juniperfish I’d never really thought about Dalek gender identity – I think in general, there are a few species, like the ones you mention, which don’t fit into a binary (like some humans). I think Daleks entirely identity as Daleks, firstly, and then whatever rank secondly.

 

 

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OK so this time – I’m just not that into the Beatles. I find Beatleworship irritating, but for all that, I did like it when Paul joined John at the piano and they finished the sequence of keys. I found the ‘we need music to make us us, otherwise disastrous war’ a little twee given that we are, on the whole, a reasonably warlike species that loves music.

But at the same time – there’s a lot of focus on time. The butterfly effect last episode. The moving back and forward and the world changing on this. Isn’t the Doctor supposed to get into it with Time itself at some point?

@scaryb, so you’re saying is that so far there’s always a Twist, if not necessarily at the end?

 

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Hello everyone!

so… I don’t know.

I came in with moderate expectations, remembering I wasn’t all that obsessed with Doctor Who under RTD the first time. On the other hand, I really liked the anniversary episodes and the Christmas episodes, much more than his original ones. So what about this?

It doesn’t help that I don’t find babies particularly appealing. But, to be fair, had they turned up on a space station being bravely run by a pack of puppies all trying to be good girls and boy’s, I’d have been all over it. I’m that pathetic. The comment on abortion rights, given the situation in the US was on point. And refugees. Some people say it ought to be more subtle, but when people are so determined to miss the political messaging of older sci-fi shows, I’d say, maybe the shovel is warranted.

I liked the Butterly effect part. And the saving of the monster. I found space babies underwhelming, I thought the episode dragged. I thought it would turn out the babies were Daleks for a moment there, spinning around in their chairs. The Doctor realising he’s been cuddling Daleks….

I like the fact there’s a bigger story, I’m concerned that it might be another impossible girl. Or maybe a kind of reverse Bad Wolf? Or maybe it turns out Ruby is a whatever the Doctor is? Maybe they don’t all have two hearts? I wonder what’s wrong about her. I’m interested in that but I’m not – loving it the way I loved Moffart Who. So right now I’m slightly preferring Chib’s Who as a less good version doing similar things, while here we’re back to fart jokes…

I love Gatwa’s Doctor, though. I’m intrigued that clearly 10 has done a lot of work to deal with his pain – but this doctor, he cries. He cries and he smiles. He get’s scared, but he’s so physically protective. I’m defiantly going to stick around for the character. What was he going to say about his name?

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