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Wow – just amazing.  CapaldiDoc’s speech was breath-taking, a blistering performance.  As was Coleman’s portrayal of Clara-Bonnie.  Zygella – ha!

Loved the quick wee gags too – ‘London, what a dump’.

Time to let it all sink in now.

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@pedant So what does it mean to be a Zygon?

Or, So what does it mean to be a Zygon, particularly when one’s home planet has been blown up in this <insert adjective> time war, and now we’re meant to work with this man/Time lord whose race was one of those responsible?!  From that viewpoint I think they’ve been remarkably calm.  Anyway, that’s  the backstory, and, whatever the current situation, there’s always a backstory.  Whether its our personal story, or countries, it can be very helpful to acknowledge the history, and very unhelpful to stay stuck in it.  It appears that the Majority!Zygon (© @pedant ) want to move on, integrate (lets hope its a majority).  But, as is the case in the current day parallels, what does it mean to live in a situation where the next generation down the line may choose to rebel again?

@purofilion What makes you who you are?

Who Nose! 🙂 I think this question is why I’m finding the series so absorbing.  The Doctors attitude, which I’m very sympathetic to, would seem to be that it doesn’t matter what (alien) race you are, its all part of life,  its all ‘people’.  And, some people do bad things.  As I’ve learned in my life, its not usually personal, its just that’s what they do, its how they are (and, as @bluesqueakpip pointed out above, they don’t necessarily keep on doing it, there is always the possibility for a fresh choice).  So, the question becomes, what do you do about it?

Please pardon my atrocious grammar today.  I stayed up waaaay too late and am now brain-frazzled.

Anyway, time will tell… specifically a time tonight!

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@bluesqueakpip I’ll go check – I’m not far from Inverness… Not many milkmaids these days at all, it has to be said!

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@pedant  Thanks!  I’m on a new PC and haven’t yet set everything up.  If its not fashionable, then perhaps I should head in that direction.   As Mark Twain said.

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@purofilion
Also, beautifully expressed. It is quite true -in this internet age, there is so little we know about each other really, but the first thing, the most important question, I suppose, is: “who are we?” or “Who am I and what do I stand for? If I do not stand for something then I will surely fall”

Indeed.  And I find that it takes constant questioning and inner work to start answering that question, and to maintain that awareness.  Its terribly easy to be in default mode, which is where certain politicians and media want to steer us.

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@supernumerary

as far as I’m concerned, a spade is a spade until it lays its suckery hand on me.

<<sleeucchh>> sound of suckery hand! Behind you!

Anyway, how do I know you’re not all zygons?  You’ve assumed the identities of these forum posters, and are merrily creating diversions and plans.

Actually , I just remembered a favourite book from years past ‘ Freddy’s book’, by John Gardner.  The first part deals with the encounter between an arrogant intellectualising professor of Scandinavian linguistics, and the ‘monster’ (physically deformed) son of another, emotionally distant, professor.  The second part of the book is the story that has been written by Freddy (the son).  This is a lively, highly entertaining parable of life in 16th century Sweden, in which the Devil appears in various guides, always whispering counsel to all the leading characters.  This counsel is of course always contradictory egotistical, and increasingly mad!  We realise that the Devil in the end has no plan, and is resorting to a kind of desperate hope in increasing chaos that something will come of it.  I shan’t give away any more of it!

Darn it, Firefox keeps trying to Americanise (with a ‘z’) my English.

Did anyone else find the shot of the troops marching into the cave in lockstep a little odd?

Yes, that really stood out for me.

@mudlark
The woman who aborted the drone strike earlier because she saw what looked like her family wasn’t prepared for the sight, so her hesitation is understandable even if her mind wasn’t being manipulated.

I thought that whole scene was very, very good.  I’ve read some articles by drone strike operators.  How they go to ‘work’ for the day, like anybody else, except that work is in front of a video console, directing drone strikes.  The whole setup removes them from engaging with their actions and with the results, its all quite horrific.   The main article I read was where the operator rebelled and couldn’t do it any more as he (I think it was a he) came to realise his humanity, but also the sheer military ineffectiveness of creating many more rebels through their actions.  Creating increasing chaos.

@pedant  Thank you for the Vonnegut.  I have to admit I haven’t read any (yet!)

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@mudlark @pedant

Thank you, so beautifully written and expressed.

I think what stands out is that many of us here have an appreciation for the Doctor’s ‘humanity’ (wrong word when applied to all species) and compassion.  Always striving to get the bigger picture, to understand your apparent enemies, to appreciate where they’re coming from, to see what you can do that might make a difference.  It makes life more involved than the “Hang ’em Flog ’em” brigade of the mainstream media would have us believe.  And hopefully, more rewarding, as we have a chance to discover our shared experiences with ‘aliens’.

My own approach is to question, ‘is this true?’  – do I really know something to be so.  Really, it can be so dangerous to assume anything about anybody, we really most of the time do not know.  So, all we can know is what is in us, and strive to know ourselves better so that hopefully we can choose better actions.

Knowing ourselves better is of course the Fool’s journey, as we have been discussing this series.  That it has provoked these reactions shows just how bang-on the series is, not shying away from awkward and painful topics.

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@ichabod

I think that’s an excellent question!  And it raises one of my ingrained objections to concepts of “purity”, in the name of which so many great crimes have been committed.  How can you tell what’s “pure” unless you’re in a chem lab?

Indeed! Thats what I was heading towards, although in my normal long-winded fashion I didn’t actually get there.

@whisht I’m on my rewatch, and just came to the school.  Its actually ‘Drakeman Junior School’ (11:05 in).  Drakeman, or Drake-man ie another hybrid!

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@countscarlioni Brilliant, on the ‘box’ being empty.  I like it.  Also Kate as Zygon-Kate, this could work very well.

@whisht
The school called Draketown

Well-spotted! Excellent – serpent theories can continue unabated 🙂

@iusedtobethedoctor Hi there – I’m about 200 miles North of you… I disagree however that Clara’s fate is to end up as the Clara in ‘Asylum’.  The story there (from memory…) was that she had taken a job on the spaceship so as to see the galaxy, so there was a complete back-story.  It could all have been implanted, of course!

I personally hope that Clara’s fate is something interesting, beyond our ordinary conceptions.  Her character has grown immensely and has contributed enormously to the Doctor.  My worst ever companion exit was Donna, I just felt her fate was awful, to have lost the memory of how much she had grown, and I felt it was unfair in a storytelling sense.  I’m hoping for something unexpected and sideways for Clara, rather than tragedy.

I’m off for a much-needed re-watch.

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Thanks for the link! @bendubz11  Its always encouraging when others are having similar thoughts.

@countscarlioni It was delightful to see Osgood, and I really like how she played it as there being no difference, it didn’t matter which she was as she and her sister were true twin-hybrids.  And that conversation – question mark underwear!

@jphamlore
In some sense the current Zygon situation is forcing them to pass, to pretend to be what they are not, to be second-class citizens, and be subject to violence if their cover is broken.  There are many political movements today that consider such arrangements unacceptable.

Tarot-wise, could this be the Justice card?  Overtly, the militant-Zygon sect want their view of justice.  The Doctor of course has his own much wider view of justice!  My limited Tarot knowledge suggests that Justice is about balancing knowledge of one’s inner (Zygon) and outer (apparently Human) selves.  “The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend”.  Know thyself!

@purofilion Indeed, I’m very much enjoying that gentler, introspective, storytelling side.  Although (from hard-earned experience), the inner journey ain’t usually gentle!  Thinking back to The Girl Who Died, Ashilde tells stories, creates stories – and then projects them – like a hologram.  All she needed was the technology.

Back to hybrids.  The question could be, are they a good or a bad thing ?  (Like the Doctor?)  In our society just now we are busy creating all manner of hybrids – specifically genetically-modified organisms and plants.   Is this Dr Frankenstein (@winston Doctor Funkinstein?) out of control, or will everything balance out?  There are theories that life on earth was seeded, and continues to be, by genetic material carried through space, virii and so on.  What manner of hybrids might we already be, unknowingly?   Life adapts, evolves, moves on.  Its different, thats all.  Yes, it matters to the specific personality caught up in that moment, but the Journey is about moving on and identifying with the greater awareness.

Edited to remove strange <span> formatting

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Ooooh! That was exciting, very movie-like.  Before I go any further, ‘hello’ to past friends here.  I’ve been feverishly playing catch-up, having watched all the season’s episodes so far in the last ten days, so it was a treat to watch this week live.  I’ve also been reading as many forum posts as I have time for to catch up on your wonderful theories and feelings.  Too many to mention (sorry), but as ever @purofilion  <waves> I’m impressed by your wonderful humanity when you write about this show.

Life has been rather full-on in the last year, and not much time for ‘entertainment’ (as if!  Dr Who for me is far from being merely that).

Beyond the obvious hybrid theme, though, I haven’t a clue.  I’m impressed by the Tarot theory, I know a little Tarot, so I can see how its fitting.  I’m very into the theme of our journey, and how the symbolism helps us to question where we are, who we are, where are we going.

In that sense, this week’s episode asked those questions overtly rather than through the symbolism we think we had in previous episodes.

I’ve enjoyed immensely all the episodes so far, the quality seems really high, in storytelling and in production values.  Its all about the storytelling, so far as I am concerned.  I don’t watch many shows, and get totally drawn into the characters.  My partner watches things and says ‘ oh, thats <names actor>, he was in… ‘ whereas I’m totally believing that character, the story (unless the acting is really bad!).  As I think I wrote last year, there is so much in Dr Who that resonates with my own personal life, its been a real companion through difficult times.

The first 4 episodes all featured dragon/serpent/snake, and I was thinking that we would at some point get some Ourobouros, to symbolise the bootstrap-looping.  Maybe not yet.

How many hybrids have we had?  Dalek-Clara (plus timelord energy);  Ashilde-Maia;  Zygon-Human; All probably diversions, so far, while Moffat hides the real plan behind a curtain, in plain sight!

Mentioning Ashilde, another thought on her name: A-Shield.  A shield for the ‘victims’ of the Doctor.

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I watched the 2 episodes in the last few days.  It was personally upsetting and hard to watch as a close family member passed away just before the first epipsode, with the burial just before the second.  If I’d known in advance, I probably would not have watched these ones just yet.  I’m glad to have read through the forum though, as your thoughts have helped see some things (in Dr Who that is) from a different angle.

This series really has been a fairy tale / spiritual journey (Thank you @arbutus who mentioned this above, I like the way you expressed this), and I feel I need some time in a darkened room to see the wider picture.  The currently open bottle of whisky will help 🙂  (A dear departed friend used to ask ‘what’s your favourite malt?  Answer – The one thats open’).

Donna’s fate really stung, because it seemed so unfair and against the rules to deprive somebody of all the growth they had gone through.  I admit I never liked Danny’s character,  but on reflection he had a cohesive story, and he has found redemption.  I don’t think he should be brought back, although I’m sure his DNA will create Orson ‘OurSon’ eventually.  I’m deliberately ambiguous here – I’ve no idea as to how this will happen, I feel Clara being pregnant is too easy!

Some fantastic humour though, and great moments.  I would never agree that the story was a step too far, just personally hard at the moment.  I’m holding on to the thought that Osgood was Zygon-Osgood (or that Zygon-Osgood will take her place) – but it was still a brutal shocking act.

I’m sure that Missy has been teleported to safety – as was demonstrated in the Karabraxos Heist.

@badwulf yes that got me too – maybe there’s a perception filter on tardis arrival/departure so people ignore it.  Or a ‘Somebody Elses Problem Field’.  (HHGtTG) ?

I need a signing-off phrase!

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I absolutely loved it!  I’m surprised by the amount of  negative comment.  ‘Rewilding’ is quite a theme just now in ecology, so it was wonderful visually to see that concept of London taken over by giant forest (and a shame, IMHO, so see it disappear just as quickly – I’d like to see the forest stay, and people learn to live with the forest and the notion of ‘the wild’ – but thats just my personal vision).

@mudlark I love Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy Stories’ and his defence of the need for fantasy.  I like how he writes about the power of archetypes tying into our imagination so we produce the scene in our heads and flesh it out from our own experience, when he mentions ‘the tree’ or ‘the valley’.  (NB from memory – I read it about 20 years ago but it made an impression!)

I too grew up reading the Scandinavian and celtic myths and stories, which fuelled my young imagination.

I liked that the menace was underdone, thats not what this story was about.  Not all stories are about the great menace.
Thank you @phaseshift for your defence, I was going to write something similar that the inside of a forest is one of the greatest natural protectors, and the biggest threat to this planet is deforestation.  It was a great concept.

I also liked the Doctor’s message about listening (listen!) to the children, or to people who are off the wall and different, who are tuned into somewhere different to the norm – doesn’t make them mad, it might make them crucial.

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@scaryb Thanks for the link to Mathieson’s blog.  I thought the way they referenced Holbein’s skull in the episode was great, and scary.  Also thanks for noticing the Abbott estate – that had passed me by, I tend to look out for the details on a rewatch, which I’m due this evening hopefully.  Regaining health is a long-term plan –  ’nuff said!  I think it was remarked on this forum last season though, how life’s experiences, and what we make of them, hopefully act to develop our empathy and compassion and make us better Human Beings.  Best not bring in notions of ‘goodness’ however!

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Hello everyone
Hi @purofilion, as you know I have been rather unwell for a long time, so big commiserations to you on your recent hospitalisation and hope you’re feeling better now.  Are you up for a <small> glass of red wine, perhaps?  A large one?

I love your writing (purofilion) on the closeness or otherwise of the Dr.  I think we are seeing much closer to his real character with fewer facades, and we see genuine empathy and compassion and humour, only in glimpses but they are strong, genuine, and brilliantly played by Capaldi with that look, or those eyebrows.  He seems to me to be an incredibly present character, which is why this episode (to me) really worked with him imprisoned off-centre from the main drama and from Clara.  He was still thoroughly there, exasperated, alone, and maybe close to his end, trapped inside a dying Tardis.  To those complaining about it being dr-lite, with all due respect, I disagree.  This story alllowed us (the viewers) to explore though Clara, what it means to be the Doctor, to make the decisions he is faced with.  The same idea as in Kill the Moon.  Which gives credence to the idea upstream (sorry, I think several have mentioned it) that Clara is somehow doctor-in-training or at least reflecting the question: what does it mean to be the Doctor?

@idiotsavon I like your spot there on the multiples of ’11’ .  Multiple fragments/aspects of Doctor 11? (Clara being the Isis trying to put it all back together again @puro),  bleeding through into the virtual-reality test-world run by Missy?

Now to my own post:
Well, didn’t that give a lot to think about.  I was excited when I saw the trailer last week, wondering if any reference wold be made to the classic work on 2D and dimensions: <i><b>Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot Abbot ( see wiki article).</b></i><b> </b>

“Flatland is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as “A Square”, the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella’s more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions.

He is himself visited by a three-dimensional sphere, which he cannot comprehend until he sees Spaceland (a tridimensional world) for himself. This Sphere visits Flatland at the turn of each millennium to introduce a new apostle to the idea of a third dimension in the hopes of eventually educating the population of Flatland. From the safety of Spaceland, they are able to observe the leaders of Flatland secretly acknowledging the existence of the sphere and prescribing the silencing of anyone found preaching the truth of Spaceland and the third dimension. After this proclamation is made, many witnesses are massacred or imprisoned (according to caste).

After the Square’s mind is opened to new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth (and fifth, and sixth …) spatial dimension; but the Sphere returns his student to Flatland in disgrace.”

No obvious references that I can see, other than the entire concept of beings limited in dimensional perception which has inspired SF stories and films ever since, so…

Now to those lines:

“..thank goodness – wasn’t I a great Doctor though?”
“You were an exceptional Doctor Clara. Goodness had nothing to do with it”

We could stretch this to mean that an external goodness had nothing to do with it – its down to Clara’s innate goodness.  If it weren’t for the chilling delivery!  What is goodness?  (Without going on an entire Zen and the Art of… exploration and blowing our minds).  Does this mean that to be a good Doctor, all one has to do is , what?  Cleverness?  Its all tautological, one can’t be a good Doctor, making the choices he makes, trying to save the entire Universe, without goodness, without an innate morality.

DannyBoy might be good, but he’s not necessarily good for Clara.  Something happens when they’re together, and Clara becomes less than herself.

I’ll stop now before getting too tied in self-referential knots here.   Please pardon my typos (especially capitalisations) this keyboard is getting very worn out and temperamental)!  Like myself 🙂

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@lisa thank you for the link, thats interesting.  I’d been thinking very Joseph Campbell too.

It could be as suggested earlier up-thread that this season’s episodes are taking place within a virtual-reality type environment as a series of tests; maybe Missy is interviewing people after they are ‘Doctored’ out of the game?  She still doesn’t come over in a terribly benign way, to me, however!

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A final aside from me on the nature of reality, fantasy, and moon-dragons – I’ve been re-reading my Lem, and found this wee passage:

“Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”

– Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad

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@spider
Apologies! You are totally correct.  No theft intended – just too tired…
So, good news – you win the informal competition.  Your prize details are just downloading now into my system – hang on – ah, here we go: Free tickets for 2 on the Journey of a Lifetime, it says here, See the Wonders of the Known Universe on the Orient Express, in SPACE!  🙂

@jimthefish @juniperfish thank you for the kind mentions.  The accumulated wisdom of fish!  The Horatio quote sums it up perfectly.

Here’s another from the same source, which perhaps expresses the general Who-ness of things
“All is not well – I doubt some foul play”

On things Hamlet, I do love ‘Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern are Dead’.  The notion that the tragedians, the actors, are the only ones who really know whats going on (because they’ve read the scripts/ create the scripts as they go along) and are masters of their own fate, while everybody else are confined to their parts in the known play, playing out their destinies to the bitter end.

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I’ve enjoyed the discussion on drama, and now on science in the Whoniverse.  I grew up reading the Scandiwegian myths, then Celtic and Greek stories, then Tolkien + Douglas Adams, with some Vedic stories thrown into the mix too.

For me, Who works far better at a mythical level than a scientific-rational one (and I’m an engineer, but also a musician and artist).  After all, its starts with a magician in a box, where anything may be possible.  “In an infinite Universe, anything, even The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is possible”.

The importance for me is in how the story and the characters relate to us.  What would we do in this situation?  I don’t even think it has to be always internally self-consistent, much as our ordering minds would like it to be, as there can always be explanations of alternate realities / virtual worlds.  Curve-balls like the dragon hatching from its egg are just breathtaking moments of storytelling that break all the conventions of what we thought we knew – and I believe this is a very good exercise for our logical minds to experience!  (Yes, the rational side of me is also wondering how on Earth*  the Dragon can exist in space, but that also applied to the space-whale.  Its just a wonderful mind-boggling fantasy concept).

Over the last few series (and I’ve only watched since Tennant) I’ve been amazed at how the metaphorical/mythical elements of Who have reflected deep issues in my own life.  This is why I watch.  Is this close to the original Greek purpose of drama?  (Or was it purely entertainment, too?)

After all, we had the entire Whoniverse rebooted from Amy’s last breaths.  Who knows how that affects reality?  That concept really did remind me of the Total Perspective Vortex in HHGttG. It goes something like: Since everything is related to everything else, in principal, the entire history of Creation can be extrapolated from say, one small piece of fairy cake.

I believe there are mathematicians who have shown that we cannot tell whether we are ‘real’ or are in fact inside a virtual reality.  From the inside, you cannot tell.  So, reality could all be in our minds anyway.  There’s other evidence to suggest we do make it up as we go along (we agree on the commonly-held illusion of what is reality, what is or is not possible given the rules we have all agreed on subconciously).  If the rules evolve or change, what is possible changes.  I have personally witnessed things which are (so far) outside of the normal rules of everyday reality.  They’re in my version of reality (I’m not bringing notions of sanity into this!).  Nothing of the order of moon-dragons though, but enough to show me that ‘reality’ can be flexible on occasion…

Thats probably enough wandering for now, the audience is probably asleep.  Anyway, it was a cracking episode.

 

*alternate Earths may also be available

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Regarding the question of Clara lying (or not) to Danny and the Dr, there’s this wee snippet in the conversation between Clara and Maisie when they are trapped in the storage carriage – Maisie says:

“Life would be so much simpler if you lied to the right people, people you were supposed to like.  But then I guess there would be no fairy tales”

Maybe that helped Clara in her decisions…

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@thommck
You were going to win, until I thought of Gallifreyans Using Stealth…  I suspect though its more a case of ‘Gatiss Using Subterfuge’ or would be of he’d had a hand in writing it!

Perkins is suspicious.  He has a set of documents at hand very quickly, and he says ‘Yes Sir, I must be the mummy… or, perhaps, I was already looking into this’.  What is the ‘this’ he has been looking into?  The initial death – which on its own wouldn’t be suspicious, and its presented as being the first death on this trip, there haven’t been previous ones to trigger Perkin’s suspicion; or the issue of the mummy – which again has only just been raised by the dying lady.  Some FOREknowledge may be implied.   Perkins certainly may be Chief Engineer – as in engineering a situation (or,  ‘architect’ of).

I don’t think GUS created the mummy though.

There was a focus on the mummy’s shuffling feet.  In The Heist, we had a very similar focus on the Teller’s feet/hooves.  I can’t rememb er at the moment any other episodes where this features.

Further to my theory upthread that Missy’s world is only a phase-shift away from our ordinary Doctor-world and can thereby materialise in and out of ‘reality’ at any time to pull people through, this could also apply to the monsters in Listen (assuming they were real).

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I absolutely loved the episode.

I continue to have extreme reservations re Danny – his character just doesn’t seem to fit, to me.  Whenever Danny and Clara are together, something inside is going ‘noooooooo!’

@gothamcelt (and others) Is Missy perhaps attempting to reverse-engineer Time Lord abilities? Perhaps too the idea of being in-phase is important.  perhaps Missy’s world is in a different phase to our normal (Dr) world, and can thus be occupying the same place and time whilst being completely not-there.  All it takes is a momentary phase-shift to grab somebody otherwise about to die, into Missy’s clutches.  The teleporting may be a red herring – then again…

Apart from that, I’m going bonkers trying to find good things for which GUS might be an acronym:
Great Universal Soldier
Grand Unified Solution
Gah! Useless Soldiers (probably not!)
Guaranteed Useful/Useless Software

Maybe a theme for a competition?

Apart from that (2) I wrote a long, long post to last week’s thread which completely disappeared into the void.  ??

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With the (rather more limited than some of you) classical listening I have done, I agree re the light dynamic nuanced touch compared to the German school.  The only music I had growing up was classical, in fact mainly Medieval and Renaissance, my father was a big David Munro fan, with many LPs and listening to his breathless enthusiasm on Radio 3 each week – I can barely remember this!

I always thought the Academy of Ancient Music were amazing.

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Yes, but at Psi also before his farewell

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@rob

I am a time traveller is literally the phone number as phone are alphanumeric

I just had my second viewing – he writes something (presumably the tel no) on the paper, folds it over, then writes ‘I am a time traveller’ on top of the folded over bit.

I’m sure Psi has the number too since Dr was doing the ‘phone me’ gesture, but I’d tend to think the Dr has just slipped the number to him.

Definitely a good romp 🙂

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@handles I think the Big Bang is one ‘odd’ paradox though generally many people would say that, ironically, whilst not necessarily proven, The Big Bang is ‘fact’

@purofilion I believe that rather than being a paradox as such, the Big Bang is a singularity, a point where everything known breaks down and nothing can be known.  Perhaps a point where anything can happen.

Wasn’t there also some very Egyptian-looking stuff down there in the private vault?

Re the discussion on music, I’m amazed at the knowledge of people here, the ability to pick out a piece of music and know its cultural references.  I have some classical music knowledge, just nothing like you guys!  I think that watching an episode without the music score is a brave and interesting thing to do.  As somebody who works with sound and has studied the psycho-acoustics of music and sound, its such an incredibly important part of the whole experience (and I found many of the RTD era soundtracks to be a tad overbearing for my taste!).  I should imagine though that listening without the soundtrack you would perhaps see a whole different set of things – your focus would be different.  One of my favourite books is Nada Brahma – The World is Sound, by a German jazz musician and theorist, and he talks about research into the more feminine aspect of listening vs the male aspect of a more visual culture and how this shapes our whole mental map (amongst many other things!).  The book is a fascinating study into consciousness and sound.

puro – yes, I really enjoyed A Beautiful Mind.  I don’t watch much TV, but Dr Who and Sherlock are two shows I’ve become a fan of, simply because they are witty and intelligent and well-crafted, unlike a lot of what seems to pass for entertainment.  I grew up without TV, so I’m really fussy!

I always wondered if the flesh doctor survived…

So, back to the episode… I’m tending to agree with the idea upstream (@janetteB ) that Missy (whoever she is) is using a teleportation device, and this episode was giving us a clue to that.  But I don’t think she’s working with the Doctor.  I took ‘boyfriend’ in an ironic way meaning sparring-partner.

Might we see another application of The Dimensional Shift Bomb?  What if it blew a hole to a different dimension (as in multiverse?)  instead of a hole in an ordinary 3D dimension  – could that be where Missy hides away?

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Hello everyone,

Well, I’ve had fun catching up on all episodes of this series in the last week 🙂  I’ve enjoyed them all, they are all very different, and the depth of layers and possible meanings seems to be multiplying faster than – well, I’m stuck for a metaphor.  Mirrors, reflections, possible virtual worlds, blue/pink shift…

Even Robot of Sherwood, I am sure, will turn out to have some critical arc insight which turns around to bite us in the backside.  Metaphorically.

I love CapaldiDoc’s witticism and dialogue (especially in Deep Breath here in Scotland when it was broadcast just before the referendum – independent state of eyebrows indeed!).  And Shutuppity up up up!

I need (time) to rewatch but he had a bit of dialogue about human’s brains being so limited – reminded me of Marvin in the original radio series of HHGTTG – from memory it goes something like:

Arthur: You mean, you can see into my mind!?
Marvin: Yes…
Arthur: And???
Marvin: It amazes me you can live in something so small.

Anyway, back to this episode.  I really enjoyed it, thought it was very well done stylistically and great fun.  I’d come to the same conclusion as Bluesqueakpip above, gthat the Tardis would reroute a phone call back through time – after all, she did so at the start of Bells of St John, and worked out who the Architect (of the scheme) was about half way through, but I don’t think that was being hidden too hard from us.  Other than that, a few echoes of The God Complex (lonely Minotaurish monster with super-psychic abilities).

I’m puzzled why a solar storm was going to destroy the place, though …?
Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep up with the thread now!  having taken a few days to work through it all so far for this series, you prolific lot.

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Well, I’m a little bit late to the party – its been a tough few months, and I have only just watched ToTD (twice now!).

I’ve very much enjoyed catching up on this thread and reading everybody’s thoughts.  The first viewing I was so sad seeing the Dr ageing, alone, and I really did not want to see the end of Matt smith’s Doctor.  On second viewing I’ve picked up a lot more, of course.

I kept expecting ‘Handles’ to snap back to cyber-life – I was constantly expecting a ‘No! behind you!’ moment.  I haven’t checked a thought which just occured – is Handles the cyberhead that was visible in the Black room under the Tower of London in DoTD?

So many great ideas from you all, particularly many from @purofilion and I especially liked @bluesqueakpip

“Act One: he stops running away from himself. Act Two: he stops running away from what he’s done. Act Three: he stops running away from death.”

The whole cycle of the 3 stories starts with the Doctor’s decision to travel to Trenzalore, despite knowing its the one place he must not go to.  I don’t actually see any conflict (see @wolfweed post above) with the fact that the tomb now no longer exists.  The point is that the Doctor stopped running, and embarked on a journey of the self, stayed on Trenzalore to the point of death and was awarded a Resurrection.  We could view the regeneration as a Singularity, where many things are simultaneously possible, in this case he embarks on a new timestream.  But he lived a continuous ‘story’ to get to this point.  For external observers it might look like a paradox, but for him and Clara, this is the way it all happened.  Like some kind of figure -8 or mobius time-strip.  Viewed from a higher dimensional perspective it all makes sense!

@cathannabel

when her nan was talking bout her grandad to me it sounded like she was describing the doctor…

You don’t think…  noooooo.  Surely not.  But …

It certainly came across that way to me.  An even more bizarre thought: Clara IS her own nan… reminiscing and giving an encouraging wink!

And, @juniperfish and the Egyptian mythology –

Trenza Lore (the lore of the braid) is a place of quantum superposition, where simultaneous possibilities exist in the multiverse. Gallifrey, in its bubble universe, is simultaneously present and not-present. It is pressing against the skin of the universe it has been banished from at Trenzalore, through a crack caused by the explosion of one of its own time-machines, the Doctor’s TARDIS. And the TARDIS always takes the Doctor where he needs to go.

Wow! To the Egyptian mythology explanation – that just feels so right as a deeper level of whats occurred.
As others have said, the answer to the question ‘Doctor Who?’ is ‘The Doctor’ rather than ‘the Warrior’.

Re the debate on fixed points in time.  Any event can happen – its all probabilities in the underlying ‘quantum foam’.  Some likelihoods are of course more probably than others.  Once a particular event has happened,  it has coalesced out of the quantum foam and into what we amusingly like to call reality.  Perhaps, the more people that this event affects, the more that this event is in the general mass consciousness, the more ‘fixed’ it becomes and is harder to change?  But we have just seen in this story that things we thought might be fixed, can be changed.  The tomb is no longer on Trenzalore – but its still there in the old time line (just a jump to the left away).

I’m reminded again of Heinlein’s multiverse stories – different agencies competing with each other to constantly rewrite ‘history’ and to create their future – but all timelines still exist, constantly branching (gives a headache to think about it).  If ‘you’ split between different timestreams, which is the real ‘you’?  The one telling the story?  The sum of all the parts?

Its way to late for this – goodnight, and apologies for coming so late to the party. There weren’t even any cheesy nibbles left down the back of the sofa. 🙂

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@RTDFan Isn’t it marvelous how different aspects of Who appeal to different people?  I think thats the beauty of the format, that all manner of different genres and styles can be brought into play.   Sometimes where I have thought an episode was weak, on rewatching, I’ve ‘got it’.  The 50th anniversary episode meta could be seen as  ‘the day it was impossible to get it right’, tying together strands from various ages of the show.  For me, it worked marvelously.

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@MartyB :: shakes fist at sky :: Why can’t I think of these theories in time?

I know!  You lot are all so inventive with madcap speculation and erudite knowledge, as he-who-lurked for many months it was hard to take the plunge, especially as a new recruit to the Dr (Tennant onwards).  The challenge now is to keep swimming.  Work/life/etc can make it hard to keep up – I had some great ideas (OK, at the time it seemed so) when I first joined, but then I had a lot of work on, and by the time I could come back here  a few months later, it was all a bit late.  Its fantastic fun to read through the threads though, and I do hope to keep up to date from here-on.

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Oh, just posted and its completely disappeared.  Ok, here goes again.

@timeloop I was expecting something to do with the red/blue shift references from various episodes.  (and, noting that ‘shift’ is an archaic word meaning ‘dress’ hence Clara’s red/blue dress?  )  I hope we may still see something on this in the Christamd episode, along with an explanation for the 2 slightly-different doctors eg in TCH (The Crimson Horror – still to get the hang of these acronyms!).  Could timestream2 Dr go back and change things in timestream1?

@purofilion I so enjoyed your beautifully written posts from the heart.  Thank you, its part of what makes this community such a wonderful find. Being a (part-time) musician myself, I am also intrigued by your musical comments…

@phaseshift Thank you for the link earlier to Time Lords: Time Locked, and I’m loving it, very informative and amusing.  Reading this I would think it likely that if the Time Lords do return, then a reason will soon have to be found to get rid of them again!  Although I would hope that the AG writers could come up with better Time Lord storylines than they seemed to manage in BG – maybe not!

@bowtiesarecool37 Ah, but they could get around that, by simply saying that only 13 Tardises were required in order to correctly space the grid around Gallifrey?

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@timeloop My own conviction was that we would see something to do with the red/blue shift (and one, archaic, meaning of shift being a loose dress thus clara’s red/blue dress symbolism?) Maybe this was all superfluous detail, maybe we will have some explanation in the Christmas episode.  I’m also thinking of the ideas re there being two doctors with slight differences (eg in The Crimson Horror – sorry, still haven’t got my head around episode initials!).  Could timestream2 Dr go back and change things in Timestream1?

@phaseshift thank you so much for the link to your blog earlier at Time Lords: Time Locked, and I’m loving it, very informative and entertaining.  I think from this that if we do see the return of the Time Lords, then they’ll soon have to invent a reason to get rid of them again!  Although, the story arcs and the writing AG tend to be more self-consistent than BG. I get the impression that having story arcs is quite a recent concept?

@purofilion What beautiful writing and expression from the heart.  Thank you.  This community is a wonderful find.  As a (part-time) musician, I’m intrigued by your musical comments too!

@bowtiesarecool37 They can get around that one  easily by saying that only those 13 incarnations were required to do the job of saving Gallifrey? Maybe the grid around Gallifrey only works with 13 equidistant tardises.

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@arbutus The whole regeneration thing is an interesting question, relating to the rest of Gallifreyan society.  My apologies if my lack of knowledge of older-Who means these things are already established – I’m not sure that the answers to  these questions have been established?

Are all Gallifreyan children capable of becoming Time Lords, or do just some exhibit the potential?  Is it family-based thus establishing a highly hierarchical society? Does the exposure to the Untempered Schism charge their ‘ regeneration battery’.  I think its implied in some episodes that long-term exposure to the Schism gave Time Lords their ability, but River Song would tend to show that exposure to the Vortex can do it in one generation.

On other points: I’m definitely in the Ma’am camp.  I am from the far North of these islands but do have a good ear for accent and idiom…

@MartyB I agree re compact storytelling.  You could fill entire series with the time war and it would just become tedious.  Tedious enough to make you want to press a big red button and end it all.

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Thanks @timeloop  that was good – especially as I am a nu-Who person, in fact I’ve only seen it since David Tennant (although I’m only 5 years younger than the show, I grew up without TV in an isolated place with hardly any cultural references, and generally have an extremely low TV threshold – I devoured books instead – but Who just speaks volumes to me).

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@timeloop Simple ideas are often the best – and it works.

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@tardisblue  This ‘Who-nose’ will sniff out the answer…

I’ve just rewatched the special, and it is just so amazingly well put together, so much more to pick up on in the second viewing (I know, I took my time to get around to it).  So much to watch out for having read through this thread since it was broadcast.  I just loves it 🙂

@arbutus (and many others) I have enjoyed very much your reviews and thoughts above, which you have expressed far better than I could.

A minor point perhaps, but as the 3 doctors use Gallifrey and the painting to enter the black vault, that means that Clara was also there on Gallifrey for that time (present-day Clara, or at least present-day-Clara from the viewpoint of the time of the film).  I don’t know if that has  significance? Do they create the painting at that point in order to use it as a portal?

Also, the camera spent some time lovingly showing us the Cyberhead while Clara was talking to Hurt-Doctor.  Is that Moffat just playing with us, or is it significant?  I tend towards ‘significant’ as earlier in the gallery we also have the painting of the Cybermen on The Raft of the Medusa.  Perhaps to be visited in the Christmas Special – or perhaps never!

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Foundit!  Off-topic but relevant (I hope)

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/369785-one-of-the-major-problems-encountered-in-time-travel-is

 

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By the way, I don’t believe that we are still stuck in the time stream.  I think the next episode may show us how they escape from the timestream, which will possibly be very easy as it is all collapsing already, now that the Dr had found Clara at the end of TNOTD.  The timestream has been changed bcause of Clara’s intervention so Trenzalore is no longer the tomb (or at least, not yet).

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@curvedspace

Yes, Heinlein did user that idea a lot (I was an avid reader in my teens), but I don’t like the result!  You could view all the various possibilities as just that, possibilities in the quantum foam with each having a probability, until one version ‘collapses’ into becoming reality.  Clara of course is zipping about through the behind-the-scenes quantum superposition and making darn sure that the ‘right’ probabilities collapse(d) into reality.

Time-travel grammar – I seem to recall Douglas Adams had a good go at that…

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I watched on TV as there isn’t a cinema for 60 miles where I live, but it was just amazing.  Visually, the scenes with the paintings worked so well in that it looked 3D and you could see the depth in the painting even on a flatscreen.  I shall be watching again later when time permits!

I’m with @timeloop and @juniperfish – really like your analysis.  Definitely a healing of the past (lives) so that our Dr can move on free from guilt.  The two timestreams idea works so well.  Loved the scenes with John Hurt in the desert shack.

And presumably, once Gallifrey is found and restored, the grateful High Council will bestow a batch of fresh reincarnations?

But first – return to Trenzalore…

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Hello! I simply had to join up – I’ve been an occasional visitor over the last series, but having just watched all of Matt Smith’s episodes back to back in the last fortnight (OK, not quite all – I just watched ‘Hide’), I really wanted to give a big thanks to you all for the bonkers theorising that has kept me entertained and intrigued.  Its quite an incredible story watching it all again, and seeing soooooo much more in each episode, with hindsight.

I’m most intrigued by all the red/blue shift – once you know its there it just leaps out.  Watching Hide just now I shouted out in excitement when the pocket universe was illustrated with a red balloon/blue balloon.  (Maybe its time I got out for a bit).  Is there a specific place on the forum to discuss stuff like this that happens across multiple episodes?  Not that I have many ideas yet – my brain just explodes (luckily not as devastatingly as a tardis explosion).

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