[Mudlark @replies]

@bendubz11  Anything relating to episodes which have not yet aired counts as a spoiler.  If it concerns information or material released officially by the BBC, then it goes on that thread.  Anything from any other source belongs under general Spoilers.

[Mudlark @replies]

@denvaldron   @ichabod

I have been hesitating whether or not to butt into this debate but, as you may have gathered, my position is somewhere in the middle, so maybe I have something to contribute.

Yes, Davros was being devious; he had made his plans and set the trap and he was calculating and manipulative throughout.  On the other hand, he knew the Doctor well enough to realise that it would be very hard to fool him unless he let his guard down a little and displayed a measure of emotional honesty.  He isn’t an automaton and he isn’t a true psychopath, simply someone whose thinking and emotions and natural capacity for empathy were twisted by the circumstances into which he was born.  “Are you an enemy?” the child asks the Doctor, because in his life and experience, that was the most important thing to establish. In his world there were only two states of being: us (friend) and not-us (enemy).

When he talked of the Daleks as his children – why he created them and what they mean to him, he did so with what I saw as true feeling, and when he spoke to the Doctor about the need of everyone to have a people to whom they feel they can belong, that spark of empathy was genuine, even though the people he was referring to in that instance are mortal enemies in his view.  And when they shared the joke, that was surely a point of true contact; Davros couldn’t have made it if he hadn’t, in some measure, felt an affinity between them.  But none of this means that he ever lost sight of his true objective.

The flaw in his plan was, as I have said, that the Doctor understands him better and at a more profound level than he understands the Doctor. The empathy the Doctor shows was real, because there was always a hope, however remote, that his adversary could be redeemed, but he wasn’t deceived.

[Mudlark @replies]

@purofilion

they’re playing a clever game with each other.” But not a game in the sense of chess: Knight 2 to Bishop….This is more organic

That is pretty much how I understood it.  On one level it does resemble a chess game – move and counter move, as I said in my first post on this thread; but there are many more levels, and few of them purely cerebral.

Davros has a game plan throughout which depends on exploiting what he considers the Doctor’s weaknesses* but whether or not it was part of the plan originally, this entails a summoning of his latent, somewhat shrivelled capacity for empathy.  By comparison the Doctor has empathy in bucket-loads for all sentient creatures and can feel for and with even his old enemy. This emotional connection enables him to ‘read’ Davros far better than Davros can ‘read’ him, giving him a distinct advantage in their mental and psychological manoeuvres. But however much he feels for his adversary, he does not allow this to cloud his judgement or lose sight of the objective, and his blade of a mind remains sharp and firmly in control.   He needles and goads and snipes, no doubt partly because that is what Davros would expect, before allowing glimpses of his genuine understanding and mutual feeling, which is what Davros also hoped for and expected, but all the time he is probing for clues and analysing the answers.

Whether he started out with a hunch as to what Davros really wanted of him, or worked it out it and arrived at a  solution in the course of their exchange, he responded to Davros’s cues with his eyes open, even if at the end it meant additional risk to himself – although for that matter he had been at risk from the moment he allowed himself to be brought to Skaro.  The only thing which may not have entered his calculations at that end point was the trap set by Colony Sarff (and had he really failed to notice that some of the cables were snakes?).

 

* with a plan B involving the use of force.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@brewski

I am wondering, too, why the Doctor didn’t retrieve the sonic when he went back.

Perhaps because Davros, had kept it and many centuries later shown it to him as proof that he remembered their original encounter.  To have retrieved it after that would have been to create a small, but possibly significant glitch in the space-time continuum.  There would have been no point in taking it back from Davros after their later confrontation, because by then it was corroded and inoperable – see the artwork on the BBC website.

[Mudlark @replies]

@ichabod

I’m in the camp of seeing that intimate little conversation + shared laughter as absolutely authentic — these are the tiny points of light still extant in Davros the survival of which make his treachery not just awful but sort of tragic

I meant to respond to this earlier, but ran out of time.

Up to a point I agree.  This was a person who was born with a normal, maybe exceptional capacity for empathy, but he was born into a generations’ long war which had devastated the planet and, during his traumatising upbringing in the environment of that war, that capacity had been distorted and subverted into a driving will to protect his own people, and only his own people, at whatever the cost.  All else had been suppressed and become atrophied in the course of his centuries of existence. But the latent capacity, reinforced by the Doctor’s long ago intervention, remains.

A clever and observant psychopath could no doubt mimic the sentiments and emotions which Davros displays, but Davros, contemplating the possible end of his existence, is in an emotionally sensitive state and so primed to tap those buried reserves of genuine feeling.  On the surface it makes him more convincing but, further than that, and perhaps to his own surprise, what emerges is to some extent genuine, even if it never obscures his ultimate objective.  It helps, also, that he appears to have a genuine, if grudging respect and feeling of affinity for the Doctor, and in the moment in which they share a joke at least, the barriers did indeed seem to have dissolved entirely.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@serahni   Prophecies are tricky things, and even if they are taken seriously, it comes down in the end to how they are interpreted.  There have been hints in the past that the Time Lords have some means of accurate prognostication (other their ability to take sneak peeks at the future?), but Davros here was probably relying on rumour and hearsay and twisting it to his own ends.  The actual existence of such a prophecy, its content and its meaning, is another matter entirely – maybe the seed for a possible future episode in the saga.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@denvaldron  @purofilion  @arbutus

Another reason why Clara failed to exhibit her usual quick thinking and resourcefulness on this occasion might be that from the moment they meet in The Magicians Apprentice, Missy has been doing all she can to undermine her confidence and put her off her stride.  When Clara arrives for the meeting in the square she appears composed and confident, but within minutes Missy has cut the ground from under her feet and left her floundering, and from then on the psychological battery is relentless.   Even when Missy saves her life by teleporting her from the Dalek chamber, she then reinforces feelings of helplessness by trussing her up and suspending her upside down. At no point is Clara consulted or allowed to exercise initiative, or to have any say in the plans which Missy devises.

In any case, she didn’t always display composure in the face of the unexpected. In The Caretaker her panicky attempts to explain the Skivox Blitzer and associated signs of mayhem to Danny when he unexpectedly arrives on the scene are absurd.  Her experiences, both in teaching and in her travels with the Doctor, have built up her confidence considerably, but that does not mean that the armour of confidence is impregnable.

@serahni

Is it possible, and this is just a wild theory, that Clara is terrified most of being inside the Dalek because a part of Oswin lingers in her timestream?

Very likely, I would have thought.  She has evidently retained little or no conscious memory of her Claricle selves, but assuming that the Clara who re-emerged from the Doctor’s timestream was the re-integrated sum of all of them, it seems probable that there would be some lingering traces in her subconscious mind.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@serahni

when the hybrid was first mentioned, I immediately thought it was a misdirection to make us assume it was Timelord and Dalek when, in fact, it is really human and Dalek.

I very much doubt it. Davros was quite specific  “Is that what you ran from, Doctor?  Your part in the coming of the hybrid, half Dalek, half Time Lord?” 

When Davros says this the Doctor is trapped, held fast by Colony Sarff’s snakes*,  and he calls the story of the creation of the hybrid a prophecy, which is odd if it refers to an event in the past.  So it seems to me that his suggestion that the Doctor fled Gallifrey because he had helped create such a hybrid is not meant to be taken literally. Instead he is taunting his adversary by pointing out indirectly that this is what, in a sense, he is doing now, as the regeneration energy drains from him and infuses new life into the Daleks.

*which alert viewers will have noticed earlier, hanging amongst the cables, though to all appearances the Doctor didn’t.

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I am reminded of the Groucho Marx line: “This thing is so simple, a six-year old child could do it. Someone run out and get me a six-year old child”.

Oh, yes!  Those (not least certain trolls who infest the Guardian CiF comments) who dismiss Doctor Who as ‘just a kids’ show’ in a derogatory manner, clearly have very little comprehension of just how much a child is capable of understanding and appreciating.  I can only suppose that their own childhood has either been obscured in an amnesiac fog, or must have been very restricted and stultifying.  Lack of experience may make a child’s interpretation different from that of an adult, but in place of experience there is a generally a more open receptivity and a sharper and more vivid perception.  To stray a little off topic, my mother mentioned to me once that she had read Charlotte Bronte’s Villette at the age of seven (her family had very few books because they could not afford them, so my mother read all that were in the house).  When I asked whether she had enjoyed or understood any of it she said that, yes, she had enjoyed it and it had made a great impression, although what she had understood and got out of it then was very different from what she had understood reading it again as an adult.

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave  This is beginning to get confusing. You posted #43624 before I had finished mine above.

So, to continue, the Doctor may have been able to make an informed guess as to what Davros might want of him, and no doubt his preparations included exhaustive research into all things Skaroene, including the sewers, but I still don’t think that he went in with a fully thought out plan of action.  His strengths are his flexible thinking and the speed of his reactions and, as every soldier knows, once the battle begins, the detailed plan of action will probably go out the window anyway, so why bother with one in the first place. Far better to let the enemy hoist himself with his own petard (to mix a metaphor)   🙂

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Well, presumably the Doctor didn’t know beforehand what Davros wanted; he was simply reading and second-guessing him as the game played out, and when it comes to the crunch he can reason and calculate at far more than light speed. So he seized on the cues and clues that Davros was giving him, taking each of them a step further and improvising on that basis.  Once the point to which he was being led became clear to him, he realised immediately the implications which Davros had overlooked, and that by acting as Davros intended him to he could subvert the whole plan.  That is how he has, on so many occasions, triumphed at the last minute, although in this instance he could not be confident that he would survive – hence the confession disc.  His choice was always either to chicken out and betray all that he has tried to stand for, or to accept the challenge, do what he could beforehand to reduce the risk, and take his chances.  And maybe, as @juniperfish said, in his preparations he used the confession disc in a roundabout way to enlist Missy as backup, in which case his foresight was amply repaid

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@kharis  I apologise if I gave the impression that I thought you were expressing approval of the ‘tough love’ approach. What I meant was that, whereas un-empathic teachers or parents may bully and coerce the children in their care, and think that criticising their achievements is giving them an incentive to do better (which is appalling in itself), they at least think that they are acting in the child’s interest; a psychopath such as Missy has no concern for the interests or well-being of anyone other than themselves, except as it impacts on their own interests, whether they use persuasive charm, bullying or violence to achieve their ends.

[Mudlark @replies]

@kharis   If we were judging solely by the way that Missy prodded and goaded Clara early on in the episode into reaching an understanding of why the Doctor always survived, then yes, it might just about be interpreted as an example of the kind of ‘tough love’ you describe, though I think that even that can be very damaging if practiced without understanding of or regard for the mental resilience of the person on whom it is practised,  but for the rest, no, I can’t see it in that light.  The way in which she puts down, belittles and uses Clara looks more like the abusive and manipulative behaviour to be expected of the self centred sociopath or psychopath which she clearly is.  Clara’s well being, personal development and ultimate safety are not at all her primary concern.

The Doctor’s treatment of Clara at times last season is another matter.  At the end of The Caretaker, Danny likened him to the kind of officer who could push his men to achieve more than they believed themselves capable, even though they might resent it at the time,  and I think that this was apparent several on several occasions.

@blenkinsopthebrave

I also wondered why, if he had planned all this in advance, he told Davros about Gallifrey.

I doubt if the Doctor had any particular plan in advance, beyond the preparations involving the confession dial. How could he, given that all he had to go on when he walked into the spider’s web was the reasonable assumption that Davros was trying to lure him into a trap.  It was Davros who had the elaborate game plan, devised on the basis of his knowledge of the Doctor and what he saw as the Doctor’s weaknesses- the exercise in reverse psychology which @juniperfish outlined so lucidly in post #43570.  The Doctor, as so often, had to react on the hoof, relying on his own sharper, or at least less blinkered and rigid intelligence and his reciprocal understanding of the flaws and blind spots in Davros’s understanding.  Perhaps it was a lapse on his part, lowering his guard so far as to let Davros know that Gallifrey still existed. On the other hand, perhaps he felt confident enough in his ability to beat Davros at his own game and so thwart his immediate plans, that he thought it could do no harm, and that it might be useful to let him know that the Time Lords were still around, at least in potentia, as a warning

[Mudlark @replies]

A few further thoughts prompted by reading posts made earlier by others, then I will go away to sit quietly in my corner.

@juniperfish  you wondered whether Missy’s line about Clara representing an enemy inside a friend or a friend inside an enemy might be an oblique kind of joke, providing further evidence that Clara is in some degree descended from the Master and/or Doctor.  For my part, I rather doubt it, even though we have long known that the Doctor had at least one child, and now Missy has revealed that she has or had a daughter.  The whole complicated dynamic between Missy, Clara and the Doctor does not strike me as in any way familial, even by their eccentric standards.  Furthermore, Missy has said that she ‘chose’ Clara. Admittedly the choice could have been made from among various descendants, but her attitude towards Clara does not suggest the primary objective was to benefit Clara herself.  As I said earlier, she treats Clara very much as a useful pawn or a catspaw – a pawn who is in the last resort disposable – in the long-term game she is playing with the Doctor .  If Clara benefits in any way, it is incidental as far as she is concerned.

As @bluesqueakpip noted and I echoed, a double meaning could be read into Missy’s words about why she ‘gave’ Clara to the Doctor, and one of those meanings has decidedly sinister implications.

@bluesqueakpip   You raised the question of why Missy shielded Clara from the explosion rather than using her as a shield. Clearly Missy still had a use for her, but there is also the consideration that Time Lords’ bodies are considerably more resilient than the bodies of earthlings, and in the last resort Missy had the option of regenerating.

@miapatrick   The Doctor’s acquisition of a cup of tea, apparently conjured out of the air, reminded me of River and her champagne at Vastra’s séance in The Name of the Doctor:  ‘How did you do that?’ ‘Disgracefully’.

[Mudlark @replies]

I have been mulling over Davros’s words concerning   ‘… a hybrid creature. Two great warrior races forced together to create a warrior greater than either’.  He refers to it as a prophecy on Gallifrey, rather than a story or a legend, but then goes on to ask, ‘Was that what you ran from, Doctor? Your part in creating the hybrid, half Dalek, half Time Lord?’  which implies that it happened long ago.  Davros is speculating, in an attempt to provoke answers or find a point of weakness, but even if there were such a project and the Doctor had ever been involved in it, it could only been after he originally left Gallifrey, and therefore not the reason for his departure.  When Hartnell Doctor first encountered them the Daleks were still confined to Skaro and, as it turned out, dependant on a highly radioactive environment for their survival.  Moreover it seemed clear at the time that he had never encountered them before and knew nothing of their origins until he met the Thals and was able to access their archived history.  So a red herring to lure us into further bonkers theorising.

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Yes, ‘Your sewers are revolting’ .  A line no Doctor or, for that matter, any schoolchild (of my generation, at least) could possibly resist in the circumstances.  One might almost suspect Moffat of having devised the whole denouement in order to provide a pretext for it   😈

 

[Mudlark @replies]

That was stunning, and the final twist was wonderful. The Doctor does indeed go back in time to change the past, but it is to make a very subtle change whose ultimate effects he has already observed – a perfect loop!  Even after a second watch this morning my mind is still buzzing.

Davros and the Doctor, adversaries who by now know one another very well, face to face and head to head in a deadly game; move and counter move.  Davros is on his home ground, backed by his ‘children’ and has had plenty of time to plan stratagem and tactics. The Doctor arrives armed with little except the Tardis, his wearable technology and the awareness that he is almost certainly walking into a trap. But he also has the ability to think super-fast on his feet and as Missy prompts Clara into realising, he faces even the most perilous predicament with the assumption that he can overcome it and survive.

The Doctor, alone in the heart of the Dalek city and with Missy and Clara missing, possibly dead, first tries strong-arm tactics, taking Davros’s chair.   When this fails, as was almost inevitable, Davros then, with devious intent, draws his attention to the life-support/hyperspace relay system and tells him its function.  Big mistake: Davros must have been counting on the unlikelihood of the Doctor succumbing to the temptation to commit genocide by this means, but by showing him the potential he handed him the key to victory.  If by some remote chance Davros was truly resigned to death and simply wanted to watch a last sunrise, then the use of a little regeneration energy would do no real harm.  In the much more likely event that it was a trick, the Doctor was clearly aware that beneath the city were tunnels filled with living, semi-sentient and very resentful Dalek residue, and he understood the implications.  The sewers did, indeed, revolt.  So game over once again, as far as Davros and the Daleks were concerned, although it took a bit of luck and the intervention of Missy to ensure the Doctor’s escape.

Davros awareness of the Doctor’s compassion enables him to use it as a weapon against him, but it is interesting that after all this time he also remembers and understands enough about sympathy and even empathy to be able to feign them with remarkable conviction.  Interesting also, that he retains at least a vestige of a sense of humour and can make a joke.

Missy, in the meantime, was also winging it, but rivalling the Doctor in her ability to remain at least half a step ahead of the adversary; (note, however, that her ‘get out of gaol free’ device was based on an idea pinched from the Doctor).  Her motives remain ambiguous, but here it was in her own interest to take on the role of the Doctor’s ally, however unreliable, and Clara was on hand as a useful catspaw/familiar.  I love the mixture of playful and sinister in the way she keeps teasing Clara and putting her down, but what was her real intent or hope when she urged the Doctor to shoot the Dalek shell containing Clara?   Was she half hoping that the Doctor would not realise the truth until too late, and that she would thereby get rid of a rival? Or was she confident that he would see through the deception, and did she, as she said, simply wanted to demonstrate that a friend might be appear as an enemy, and vice versa, perhaps with particular reference to herself.  Everyone is a hybrid, she says, which, on the face of it, and as others here have already noted, has been increasingly a theme in the show; that there are no absolutes, only varying shades of lighter and darker grey. But in this case, when it is Missy talking, I sense a possible, more sinister implication.  She chose Clara, but – as we are still wondering and speculating – for what, exactly, and when.  Was it to ‘save the Doctor’, or as a useful pawn, or is Clara some kind of unknowingly conditioned sleeper/time bomb like River: a friend whose ultimate activation may reveal an enemy, or at least a tool to be used to undermine the Doctor in some way that benefits Missy?

 

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@thekrynoidman   Thanks for the reminder.  I came across that amazing session a few years ago when it was featured on, I think, the Sky Arts channel.  There can seldom, if ever, have been such a backing line-up, and The Boss, in particular, was clearly having a ball!

[Mudlark @replies]

@ichabod   I agree that when the Doctor hugs Clara it seems to be about more than the feelings of guilt and shame which she detects in him.  There were too many hints last season that he knew what was in store for her and that her time might be short.  Maybe this is what he foresaw, but I doubt it.

I am also with you in feeling that Danny never really came alive for me as a character, nor did his relationship with Clara convince prior to his death.  Maybe it was partly a lack of ‘chemistry’ between the actors, but I suspect that it was more to do with the constraints placed upon the writers.  As it was, the ARSE brigade were up in arms about the time devoted to Clara and her life beyond the Tardis, and any time spent developing it more fully would only have provoked them further.

At least in AG Who the background of the companions is fleshed out to some degree.  In the days of BG Who, the companions arrived with a more or less sketchy back story, spent however long it was travelling non-stop with the Doctor, then departed to pursue other interests or, as in the case of Sarah Jane, to a life haunted by feelings of abandonment.

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave  I had a feeling that someone had already suggested that idea, but could not at the time of writing remember who. My apologies.  As the typos might suggest, I was posting in a hurry.

I should also have acknowledged @jimbomcmaster for the Schroedinger’s cat reference but, again, I had a temporary lapse of memory.

[Mudlark @replies]

@idiotsavon   Welcome back!

When both Missy and Clara were zapped they became translucent and their skeletons showed in silhouette, which has traditionally been the effect when Daleks shoot people.  In the old days the glow faded and their was a body, but I can’t recall whether that has been the case more recently.  I have a feeling that in Into the Dalek those killed were vaporised, but I may be misremembering.

This suggests that Missy and Clara were indeed killed, but it would be unlike Missy not to have a trick or two up her sleeve, even though she was initially very much disconcerted and alarmed and so, presumably, unprepared, when she realised that they had arrived on Skaro. However, after she has made her offer to the Daleks, she says  ‘Or would you rather just kill me?’ and poses, much in the same manner as she did in ‘Death in Heaven’ just before the cyber-Brig shot her, and even though she hasn’t bothered to explain how she escaped on that occasion, we can assume that she probably used a vortex manipulator to depart the scene at the last minute.  Clara screamed as she was being zapped, but whether in fear or surprise at finding herself transported from the scene remains to be seen.  So we for the moment we can suppose them, like Schroedinger’s cat, both alive and dead until observed in the next episode.

The Doctor’s distress at witnessing these events leads us to suppose that he, at least, thinks that he has witnessed their deaths, or that of Clara at least.  On the other hand, his words in the final scene could be seen as ambiguous.  He says ”I’m going to save my friend in the only way I can’. But who is the ‘friend’ he is referring to?  Clara? Missy?  or, harking back to the Prologue, is it the enemy who is a friend he hasn’t got to know yet – i.e. Davros himself?

Watch this space.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@lisa

Thanks for the link.  I hadn’t come across the article in Archaeology, but I was aware of the project.  Norfolk and Suffolk were my professional stamping ground before I retired, and I am familiar with quite a few of the churches.  Norfolk in particular is a good place for investigating the incidence of such graffiti, if only because of the sheer number of medieval churches in the county – far more, and in far greater density than anywhere else in the UK.  Many are now ruinous or were adapted for other uses after the Reformation, but at one time it wasn’t uncommon for there to be two, and occasionally even three in one parish.  Norfolk in the medieval period was a very wealthy county, and the land in parishes was often divided between several manors – hence several lords of the manor with a need to demonstrate their piety, and perhaps compensate for their sins by endowing churches.

But I digress.

The patterns look very like the kind of thing that we used to draw with our compasses on the covers of our rough work books when I was at school, and one or two do, indeed, look a bit like a simple form of Gallifreyan calligraphy.

As regards the design on the CD (of Rassilon), the lines radiate across only part of the arc of the dial, like the lines radiating from the gnomon of a sundial and, as in some sundials, the point from which they radiate is off-centre, so the design isn’t completely symmetrical.  It occurs to me that the dark segment even looks a bit like the shadow cast by the gnomon.

@lisa  @serahni   I rather like the idea that it might be some sort of device akin to a chameleon arch fob watch – perhaps a back-up for the essential Doctor – which would still make Missy’s statement true in a fashion, in the sense that it was a testament to the Doctor’s life.

@jphamlore   With respect to Clara’s arc, we should bear in mind the heavy hints last season that her future might be curtailed, and that the Doctor knew something about her eventual fate.

@purofilion

when the gent comes to Clara’s classroom door, and says “they’re trying to put you through to the PM!” does Clara say “you’re such a mop!” ??

What she actually said was the man’s name, Mr Dunlop, but she was speaking very rapidly and it was hard to catch (I confess that I often turn the sub-titles on for my second viewing, just in case I missed anything important the first time ).

[Mudlark @replies]

@scaryb

Aww, thank you! (shuffles feet, blushing profusely)

[Mudlark @replies]

@bluesqueakpip

If we take the tradition of ‘closest friend’ as genuine, that suggests Missy’s next line:

Well, of course it was sent to me. What have you got to do with it? I’m his friend, you’re just…

could suggest that Missy was about to reveal what, exactly Clara is – but stopped herself in time

A very good point.  Cue another re-watch methinks.

 

suppose it’s another confession entirely?

The real reason that the Doctor left Gallifrey in the first place ???

[Mudlark @replies]

@lisa  @purofilion  @ichabod

Re the CD (of Rassilon):  I paused that scene to have a good look at the object, and I’m not sure that the black segment represents a missing piece.  The design on the surface consists of two concentric circles crossed by lines radiating in the manner of the lines on a sundial.  The black segment extends only to the outer of the two concentric lines, not to the rim of the disc, and when I saw it originally I took it to be another surface marking.  Perhaps  the inner concentric discs defined by the surface markings are designed to rotate independently within the outer rim, and the black segment functions as a pointer in relation to the radial markings, in order to open and to read different sections.

In the glimpse we had of the disc which the Doctor handed to Ohila in the Prologue it did not appear to have any surface markings, which might mean simply that it was face down. But another possibility is that the markings have appeared because Missy has opened it. Or maybe it is not same disc and it is part of one of Missy’s scams, or a piece of misdirection by Moffat

[Mudlark @replies]

This isn’t about a TV show in the sense of a series, but this seems the best place to comment on a short programme  shown on Sunday on the art of Escher, presented by Sir Roger Penrose, the mathematician and cosmologist.  I recorded it for later viewing and have just finished watching it.

We were discussing a short while ago the purpose of art and art criticism, and Escher’s work is something which speaks to me and intrigues me, despite the fact that my mathematical ability never extended much beyond the GCE ‘O’ level pass (geometry, algebra and trigonometry) which I managed in 1959.  Escher had an intuitive grasp of mathematical concepts, despite having had no mathematical training, and the topological patterns and puzzles which he depicted remind me in some ways of the way that Moffat plays with time loops and paradoxes.  Why can’t Moffat’s detractors see it in that light  😕

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@lisa  And Delgardo Master watched the Clangers (and was beguiled into thinking that they were a fascinating, and genuine alien species).

[Mudlark @replies]

@purofilion   All power to you and all those here who brave the zoo that is the Guardian blog BT and have the fortitude to engage with the small minded, the obtuse and the haters.  I generally find it too depressing to wade through more that a page or two – and tend, even so, to end up feeling more than a touch misanthropic.

This time, at least, I was encouraged by the fact that, in the few that I read on Sunday, those who enjoyed it and had positive things seemed to be in a majority, and so I may attempt to read more of the comments if I can find the time.  As others have said, the nay-sayers seem often  to be a relatively small, though noisy minority.

[Mudlark @replies]

@janetteb

I agree that Missy and Clara are most likely dead as is the Tardis.

Missy and Clara possibly. As I said a while back, the fact that their skeletons showed briefly as they disappeared suggests that they may have been caught in the Dalek fire, whether or not they were using the vortex manipulators to shift themselves.  The Tardis is another matter entirely.  As @scaryb noted, the HADS (Hostile Action Displacement System) was almost certainly enabled – it is unlikely that the Doctor would have forgotten this under the circumstances – and she would have removed herself from the scene the instant she sensed herself under attack from an external source.

As I noted in post #43169, the consequences of the Tardis being destroyed would be catastrophic, as indeed we saw in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.  At her core is what is essentially a star in process of going nova, held in stasis by what we must assume are some highly exotic forces.  The release of all that contained energy would fry everything within a radius of many light years, and this was only prevented in The Big Bang by the Tardis going into a loop which created a local suspension of time.  Even so, the explosion-in-stasis was enough to replace the sun when the rest of the universe disappeared.  Similarly, In Journey into the Centre, she created an internal stasis which temporarily prevented the explosion from extending beyond the core.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

Thinking about the Tardis and its ‘infinite’ interior dimension, I was suddenly reminded of the asteroid in Greg Bear’s Eon.  Externally just a large, potato-shaped lump of rock, but in the hollowed out interior, a series of compartments containing habitats, the furthest of which has no end and continues indefinitely.

[Mudlark @replies]

@ichabod

Hmm; but he could be lying about “recent”.

A Timelord’s idea of ‘recent’ might not be ours, but the Doctor who deserted the child Davros was the current incarnation, and I am pretty sure that once he had had time to recover his wits and think things through, he would immediately have started to feel guilty about his failure to live up to his ideals, and to consider the possible repercussions.

After the first viewing of the episode I re-viewed the Prologue, and from this it seemed pretty clear to me that by the time he arrived on Karn, well before Colony Sarff came looking for him, the Doctor knew that Davros was seeking him, and why, and that knowledge had brought him to the point of deciding what he needed to do to atone, even if it meant walking into a trap. He had made his preparations and arrived with the ‘confession dial’ ready to hand over for transmission to Missy.*  Now he was simply procrastinating, while trying to nerve himself to the point of acting on his decision – hence his hesitation and prevarication in the face of Ohila’s questioning.

As an afterthought; the Doctor, before abandonment of the child Davros, might nevertheless have provided him with the incentive to escape the handmine field, with his encouragement to ignore the 1000 in a 1:1000 chance, and to concentrate on the one.

Other random thoughts:

The suggestion by Missy that Clara was no more than the Doctor’s pet was clearly aimed at undermining Clara, and not to be taken too literally, even if the relationship is between a 2000+ year old alien and an ephemeral human – a fact which, as @spider pointed out, we perhaps need to be reminded of.  But Missy is jealous; she wants to be the doctors one and only friend and cannot help but put down a very temporary rival, even if that ‘rival’ is, for the moment, an ally.

I think it was @nerys who suggested that Davros created the illusion of Missy and Clara being killed; but could he in fact do that?  He admits (though he could be lying) that he is no longer in control of his ‘children’.

Missy and Clara may or may not really be dead in the current timestream, but I cannot accept that the Tardis has been destroyed.  A Tardis could, no doubt, be decommissioned and dismantled (very carefully), but I cannot see how it could be zapped into oblivion on a planet without the planet being annihilated.  In Journey into the Centre of the Tardis we were told that ‘this ship is infinite’ – at least in the sense of its interior dimensions being without defined boundaries, and at its heart, held in stasis and powering it, is an exploding/imploding star in the process of becoming a black hole.  If the Tardis could be destroyed in a single blast, think of what energies would be released!

Finally @denvaldron  Thanks for the recap of Dalek design.  I can now confidently affirm that the Dalek resident in our local branch of Waterstone’s is of Genesis vintage.

 

* In passing it has occurred to me to wonder whether this ‘will’ was a document comparable to what we mean by a Last Will and Testament, or whether it was something compiled and updated as an ongoing document of a Timelors’s lifetime.

[Mudlark @replies]

@jimbomcmaster   Hmmm…   Missy and Clara: wave forms ready to collapse when observed by the Doctor or by Davros.  I like it  🙂

[Mudlark @replies]

@bluesqueakpip  @Supernumerary

faced with a frightened child, he leaves him to die. Never mind that the child is Davros. That little boy hadn’t yet done anything, anything to deserve being left alone in a minefield. ‘The Doctor’ was cowardly, he gave up, he gave in.

In mitigation, he had arrived on the scene completely unaware and unprepared and immediately received an enormous shock, and he reacted instinctively, without thought.  As he admitted in A Good Man Goes to War, the rules by which he lives are there because he needs them; because he is not, at least as he sees it, a good man. And now, in this instant of crisis, the rules are driven from his mind.

Once he was thinking clearly, and certainly by the time he reached Karn, he would have realised that Davros must have escaped the minefield without help, since nothing subsequent to that event had changed but, as you say Bluesqueakpip, the betrayal of his own most basic principles, let alone what he now suspects were the consequences of that betrayal, was a torment to his conscience and something which he needed to face up to and atone for.  ‘Did something happen? asks Ohila; ‘Was it recent?  And the Doctor hesitates and looks away uncomfortably before admitting ‘Yes’.

 

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@bluesqueakpip   Exactly! I can just imagine it.

@Supernumerary   The shifts in mood between light, serious and dark are to my mind very much a part of what Doctor Who has been since almost the beginning, with the segueing from sheer, frivolous fun to the contemplation of serious moral questions, and to me the balance here seemed nicely judged.  I certainly didn’t find it as jarring as you evidently did.

You thought that the Doctor completely lost character in the medieval amphitheatre, but isn’t it typical of the ways in which he has so often tried to distract himself from feelings of guilt and shame? at least since the ending of the time war when, in the first iteration, he had destroyed Gallifrey and all his people with it.  Think of the abrupt mood swings and at times almost manic behaviour of the Tennant incarnation, and the restlessness and clowning of Smith’s Doctor.  After a long period of adjustment following his last, unexpected regeneration he has, it seems, integrated all his previous selves, so that ‘all of me’ could be invited to the party.  One of the ways in which Capaldi is, for me, absolutely the Doctor, is the way in which he is able so subtly to convey glimpses of those earlier selves.

[Mudlark @replies]

@geoffers  @pedant   Given the preamble, it doesn’t look as if the Daleks knew where and when the Doctor was prior to Unit tracing him.  For a start, we don’t know when Bors was dalekised.  Colony Sarff might have been primed to ‘convert’ any suitable person once it/they had located the Doctor, and given the means to do so.  Alternatively, but more extravagantly, Bors was just one of a multitude of ‘moles’ planted by the Daleks in likely places throughout space-time, to be activated (by Colony Sarff?) only when the Doctor was found.

[Mudlark @replies]

‘How is a Time Lord supposed to die?’ asks Clara; to which Missy answers ‘Meditation, repentance, and acceptance. Contemplation of the Absolute’.   But we have seen how rubbish the Doctor is at meditation (repentance is another matter), and Clara knows him well enough to realise this.  “Do not go gentle into that good night” quotes the English teacher; ‘We’re looking for a party’.  Although she isn’t quite prepared for what they find.  ‘He’s never like this’.  To which Missy, demonstrating her infinitely longer acquaintance, responds ‘Oh, you really are new, aren’t you’.

The Doctor is throwing a party to which ‘… all of me is invited’, and we are treated some dreadful and (in the context) anachronistic puns and some bravura guitar playing.  I was prompted into laughter, though, when the Doctor, having spotted Missy and Clara in the gallery, launches into the intro to Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’.

Among the things which I thought were particularly well handled was the confrontation between Missy and Clara, with Clara initially managing to play it very cool, almost deadpan in the face of Missy’s subtle and not-so-subtle needling, but finally losing it when Missy decides to kill a random couple of bodyguards, simply to demonstrate that she is ‘… not guid’.  Missy here is perhaps not quite as flamboyantly bananas as in Dark Water/Death in Heaven, but she is still a complicated psychopath, pursuing ‘…a friendship older than your civilisation, and infinitely more complex’ and she is still a bit nuts.

I was also very taken with the snake colony creature, Colony Sarff  ‘We are voting. We are a democracy’.

[Mudlark @replies]

On second viewing this morning, with time to savour all the details and incidental references, I enjoyed it all the more; and there is so much worthy of comment that I am at a loss as to where to begin.  Perhaps the best place is with the heart of the story; the Doctor’s dilemma revisited.  In Genesis of the Daleks, however, he came into the situation fully briefed; here the Tardis has  brought him to the scene totally unprepared and, as @bluesqueakpip pointed out, he chose wrong.  He had three options:  to kill the boy; to intervene and help to save the boy’s life; or to leave him to take his chances.   Killing the child Davros would have major repercussions in the future of the universe – the kind of  overt changes which we have hitherto been led to believe are inadmissible for a Time Lord and could have disastrous consequences for the fabric of space time.  Helping to save him might make a subtle difference to what Davros and his creation, the Daleks  were to become, without altering their future history too obviously .  Leaving him, as the Doctor in hindsight quickly realised, was the ‘biggest mistake’ – the decision which probably scarred Davros’s psyche and contributed to the formation of the adult who came to believe that ‘compassion is wrong’.

Having just witnessed the deaths of his friend and his oldest frenemy, it appears that he is about to make an even worse mistake.  In the events of Day of the Doctor, it was possible to change the past because, as far as the rest of the universe was concerned, it made no significant difference whether Gallifrey was destroyed and the whole of the Time War rendered inaccessible beyond a time lock, or whether Gallifrey simply disappeared from the observable universe. This would be have an all to obvious impact

Incidentally, I think that Missy and Clara were really killed.  As usual when someone is blasted by Daleks, their skeletons showed briefly before they vapourised – they didn’t just disappear in a flash of light as Missy did at the end of Death in Heaven.  It is now up to the Doctor to find a way of changing the past just sufficiently to avert their deaths, without disrupting the entire universe.

 

 

[Mudlark @replies]

That was well worth the long wait and all the teasing.  I had worked out that it was Davros who was seeking the Doctor, but the twist was unforeseen.  And this is a Davros who, dying, is dialled back to something more like he was in the beginning but now, at the end, a touch philosophical and ready to acknowledge with resignation that he no longer has control of his creation.

The Doctor’s oldest friend-become-adversary and his oldest enemy converging, and to what extent is he responsible for what each has become?  Would it have been better if he had actively saved the child Davros, or should he, as the cliff-hanger suggested, have exterminated him?  And what would be the consequences of changing history after the event?

On a more frivolous note, the Doctor partying anachronistically in a medieval castle reminded me strongly of an earlier incarnation partying in 17t century Versailles (The Girl in the Fireplace).

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave

The Falco novels are great fun.  Lindsey Davis is a classicist and, although she wears her learning lightly and the style of the narrative is irreverent and colloquial, the background details can generally be assumed to be accurate.

[Mudlark @replies]

For those who like this kind of thing, many of the clues in the Guardian cryptic crossword today are Doctor Who themed.  Something to while away an hour or so and distract the mind while waiting for tomorrow evening.

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave     😀

I wonder how many viewers realised that the original inspiration for ‘UpPompeii’ was the comedies of Plautus, right down to the prologue (to help a dim Roman audience follow the plot).  And Plautus in turn was drawing on the Greek comedies of such as Menander.  In both, the clever and wily slave was a stock character.

Are you familiar with Lindsey Davis’s novels set in the Roman world of the first century and featuring Marcus Didius Falco?  In ‘Last Act in Palmyra’ the setting is a troupe of travelling actors who deal in just this sort of comedy.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Put like that, yes, it does have a certain appeal.  What occurred to me, though, was that Lurcio never, ever got to deliver his prologue properly, and we never learned what tale or drama he had in mind because, invariably, he would be interrupted and called away to deal with some farcical imbroglio in which one or more members of the family had become entangled.

By that reckoning we would never discover who was looking for the Doctor, or the identity of the enemy, frenemy, and/or creature referred to, or what the DVD of Rassilon portended.  Instead, the Doctor would find himself having to avert some disaster consequent on the complicated love lives of the Daleks   😮

[Mudlark @replies]

@toinfinityandbepond    I sincerely hope not. If it is an ‘Up Pompeii’ type prologue, then there will be an interruption as soon as Saturday’s episode starts, and we will never learn what the story was supposed to be about   😉

[Mudlark @replies]

My copy of next week’s Radio Times has arrived and I have had a sneak peek.  Speculation on at least some of the things featured in the trailers is at an end (probably; possibly) and it is revealed that the hands-with-eyes are an excuse for a truly groan-worthy pun   😈

Other than that;  permission to …..  SQUEEE!

[Mudlark @replies]

@pedant   I watched An Inspector Calls last night and agree that it was a very good adaptation and that David Thewlis was impressive in it.  My only criticism concerns the ending, which I felt that they could have left as written, rather than signposting the final twist in such an obvious way.  When the original was written the Welfare State was just coming into being and Priestley could have hoped that the society it described could be relegated to the past. It is horrifying to think that its message is still needed today.

[Mudlark @replies]

@arbutus   Yes, I was thinking of the way that traditional fairy stories in particular are generally illustrated.  But there is, as you say, another class of wonderfully illustrated children’s books. Your comment prompted me to look out one, a copy of which I gave to my one of my nephews and which was one of his favourites when he was little.  This was Tiger Flower by Robert Vavra, illustrated with paintings by Fleur Cowles.  The paintings are extraordinary, vivid and slightly surreal studies of plants, animals, trees and African type landscapes, but with everything in inverse scale and in curious juxtapositions, so that toadstools become the size of trees, a tiger can light upon a blade of grass, and lions hunt flowers.

[Mudlark @replies]

@ichabod   I’m sorry to learn about your sister, and glad to know that she is bouncing back in fine style.  As @bluesqueakpip says and I can testify personally, stents are wonderful.  I had one installed three years ago, after I started having angina attacks, and have had no problems since then in the cardiac department, even if I am crumbling gently in other areas.

[Mudlark @replies]

@arbutus

the visual look and feel to a beautifully illustrated children’s book

Not as in my copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The illustrations in that are the stuff of nightmares – although, to be fair, I don’t think that particular edition was intended for children; my great uncle who gave it to me just had a very robust idea of what a six year old could cope with.

In any case,  I always had a preference for the Arthur Rackham style of illustration, with witchy-fingered trees and bug-eyed goblins, to the more Romantic, pastoral style.

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@whisht

I think the disc the Doctor handed over is something important that could unlock the Timelords from wherever they are.

This – bringing them back – is the Doctor’s “destruction”. But this is what he wants to do.

That sounds distinctly plausible; it fits the scenario and the Doctor’s character. But the variety of possible interpretations is such that my brain is a jumble and I am resigned to possessing myself in patience and waiting for enlightenment.

In any case, if the tone of this taster is indicative of what is to come, then we are in for a cracker of a season  🙂

 

 

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@purofilion  @arbutus

On the subject of critics in general, I tend not to read reviews of fiction unless, as in the case of The Bone Clocks, it is after I have read the book, out of curiosity to see what others have made of it.  I tend to choose on the basis of recommendations by family or friends, or because I have liked previous works by that author, or simply by browsing in book shops and reading a few pages of anything that looks interesting.  No doubt I miss out on novels that I would enjoy, but life is too short to investigate even a fraction of all that is published.

@ichabod  @arbutus  @purofilion   To revert to another point under discussion, yes indeed; without challenges, tension, conflict and some kind of resolution there is no story.  Just preserve me from the tendency in some quarters (film and television in particular) to pander to some peoples’ desire for a saccharine happy ending.  Give me bitter-sweet or ambiguity every time, or even an unhappy ending if that is more consistent with the preceding narrative.

On the subject of fictional utopias, Arbutus and ichabod mentioned Ursula le Guin’s ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’  but I was reminded even more of her novel ‘The Dispossessed’, featuring idealists who have left their planet of origin to establish their idea of utopia in the form of an anarcho-communist society.  The flaw in this utopia, more subtle and more human than the horror at the heart of Omelas, is the pressure within a completely egalitarian society to conform, manifest in the tall poppy syndrome which threatens to stifle the genius of the central character, Shevek.

[Author]

Posts