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16 December 2015 at 00:10 #49450
I don’t get that there is a problem with the ‘immortal’ Clara. She has to go back and face the Raven someday – and potentially has, what, 4.5 billion years to get to Gallifrey the long way round in order to be returned to face her death. Not a bad innings! Unless she gets tired of it before then. I agree that she could in principal work out a way to reprogramme or cheat the quantum shade – and from then on she’d be back to her ordinary human lifespan. That might be quite a choice.
The method by which she gained “immortality” is the problem. It could be done with anyone, any number of times, and there is no condition given for how long a person could take advantage of it — we just know that they do return. But why would they return? Of their own volition, or what? Does the reason matter? YES! Because without these concerns being addressed, it turns into the mother of all get-out-of-jail-free plot devices. A deus ex machina. And even if they were addressed satisfactorily, there’s a person going around the universe whose body shouldn’t be able to do a single thing. It’s just as ridiculous as the moon-dragon-and-egg scenario from last year’s Kill the Moon. The extraction chamber is an overpowered plot device unless it has limits, and we’re given no indication that there are any. That’s why I have to think up stuff that Moffat didn’t write in order to satisfy my intellect. It’s fine to leave some things up to viewers’ imaginations, but in this case, the details are too important to not include.
Anyway, the tone in the above wasn’t so much directed at you as it was toward the director of Super Smash Bros, who just made some announcements that absolutely infuriated me. But between big disappointments coming from one of my favorite shows and one of my favorite game series, and with specific other insane happenings going on (that are far more important than a TV show and video games), my mood isn’t that great right now. Please take no offense at my venting.
15 December 2015 at 01:12 #49434@puroandson
No I don’t think anyone has said this and it’s a great idea. So she doesn’t ever have to face the raven? Awesome idea!
She’d still have to face the raven, but she’s clever enough to pull an Impossible Astronaut-type death stunt: rig the game so that you only appear to die. As Me said in Face the Raven, you can’t cheat death by the quantum shade, so either Clara could mess around with it before the timer hits 00 and her past self enters the street, or a new deal could be made with either the raven itself or with the Time Lords, who may have supplied Me with it in the first place. By the end of Hell Bent, Clara is still young, but Me has supposedly lived for billions of years. Perhaps she’s ready to die, and that could be the new deal with the raven.
I’m just trying to put things together such that they make me happier with the way the episode went. I just wish a hint of any of it had actually been given, because it could assuage many people’s problems with the immortal Me and the “immortal” Clara.
14 December 2015 at 15:46 #49423I haven’t read anything since the page my last post was on, so I may repeat someone else’s novel ideas unknowingly. Anyway, I’ve thought of some things that make the plot better for me, as far as making sense of Me’s and Clara’s longevity.
The chip that the Doctor implanted in Me was originally installed in the armor of a Mire warrior, not in the warrior itself. It would have healed injuries incurred for some amount of time, but it wouldn’t necessarily do it indefinitely. Why do I say this? Because the Doctor sonic’ed it. I believe he said he did it to make it compatible with human physiology, but with his ineptitude with gadgets, he might have, in the process, altered it such that it retains its integrity and functionality by syphoning nutrients from Me’s body. That can handily and believably explain why Me is apparently many billions of years old in this episode.
And Clara…. I love this part: she needn’t die in the trap street encounter with the raven. Now that she has, in Seb’s paraphrased words from last season, “more time than she expected”, she is free to reprogram the quantum shade (if possible) or to make a new deal with it. Then, she goes back to Gallifrey and inserts herself back into the trap street encounter, and the raven only seemingly does its thing (perhaps that’s the reason for the flash of light on Clara when it enters her body). She exhales Raven Gas (TM), falls down, and is presumed dead by the Doctor, who then goes back inside the building. At this point, no main character of “Face the Raven” is there to view her body. She could just get right back up and leave. Maybe the deal was to take Me’s life, instead, or something different. In any case, she could actually survive the raven encounter, whether or not it qualifies as cheating death. Nice, eh? 🙂
7 December 2015 at 15:41 #48983So, I still need to get through this page’s posts, but two ideas crossed my mind, and they constitute a reasonable joint resolution to the Clara-still-needs-to-die-but-has-no-reason-to problem. First, presumably, the extraction program won’t remain active forever in local Gallifreyan time (do you really think it’s still going when Me and the Doctor are talking?). Assuming it’s connected to Clara in some wibbly wobbly way, we could treat her remaining time alive like a call from the TARDIS to someone’s phone in another time period: durations of time are equal on both sides as long as the connection lasts. In other words, if the extraction program can keep “Raven time” frozen for, say, 100 local Gallifreyan years, then Clara, whenever she is, would have that amount of time left to her from her own perspective before needing to return.
However, how is she to know that? The only ways she would go back to her death without this knowledge are as follows (and this part is the second of my two ideas): 1) she’s coerced into going back on pain of some worse consequence (e.g. perhap’s Me’s or the Doctor’s death); 2) her time travel adventuring forces her into a situation that would be paradoxical if she didn’t go back to die; or 3) the Time Lords are actively hunting her to ensure the absence of a paradox on the trap street. As you might be able to tell from my italicization, I really like the prospect of the third. However, any of the above three options would make for an excellent episode and a true logical resolution to the problem of Clara’s death created in Hell Bent.
What say you all?
6 December 2015 at 15:43 #48823Hm. Mixed bag. I prefer Moffat over Davies, but his finales are never very airtight — they’re huge in scope and impact (which is the part I enjoy), but there are always plot threads that they either don’t tie up or don’t tie up satisfactorily, or there are logical… issues. As an example of the latter: I’m perfectly ok with Clara “surviving” and the Doctor forgetting her. What I’m definitely not ok with is how she “survived”. I love her character, and no matter what, her fixed and known death greatly saddens me. But now she’s free to wander the universe for as long as she wants, as long as she has the right clothing and bodily condition in which to die later. And she’s doing this… without a pulse. Her body shouldn’t be doing anything at all. Yes, sure, Doctor Who takes liberties all the time, but this is a little too much. Even if we grant that she can live without a pulse, what happens if she gets injured? Unlike Me, she doesn’t have a repair chip embedded within her. I suppose we could just hand-wave it away by saying that we already saw her die, and thus we know the necessary conditions definitely will obtain for her (the ones I mentioned), but… but…. *sigh* I wanted either a Martha-style goodbye or a definite end, like with Amy and Rory. There are very creative ways to do either. What I got, instead, makes me feel like a parent whose child has run away and ceased contact. With the added caveat that I know how my child is going to die, and when.
And then there’s Me, whom I thought was going to have a much more important role this season than just to get Clara killed and talk to the Doctor at the end of time (which should have been trillions of years in our future, as was mentioned about Utopia upthread). What happened to the Doctor “remembering” her from his future, or whatever it was? And unrelated to Me, what about the huge potential importance of lines like “the longest month of my life” and, paraphrased, “I called you 127 times and you didn’t answer”? What about Missy’s “I have an idea” line in The Witch’s Familiar? Just as with Orson and the quirks of last season, I thought the Moff would take fuller advantage of what was put into previous episodes of this season.
And then there’s Gallifrey, which is, somehow, back in our universe. Frozen in time, but then not, by the machinations of the people frozen in time?! What? I could forgive Eleven for just guessing that the planet would be frozen in a single moment in time and being wrong, but we just entirely missed the planet’s universe-hopping! Forgive me for being cynical, but if there’s one thing I’ve come to expect from Moffat (who, again, I prefer over Davies, just so everyone’s clear), it’s that he doesn’t adequately — or, sometimes, at all — pick up and run with plot threads left hanging from past seasons. This far out from The Day of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor, I don’t think we’ll get much in Series 10 explaining how Gallifrey got from a pocket universe — and potentially frozen in a momemt of time — back into its home universe. I love this show, but if there’s one misgiving I have about it, it’s that it doesn’t constantly live with the expectation of science fiction that things need to make sense.
All that aside, I really enjoyed the rest of the episode. Everything else, everywhere, was excellent. The confession dial was perfectly explained. The Doctor’s emotional states, both during his revenge scheme and in the diner, were extremely well-acted. Well-done, Capaldi — between these last two episodes, you couldn’t possibly have been any more believable in your role! The general is a character I liked up until his regeneration. The regeneration itself, and the male ego comment, were completely unnecessary, as was the comment by someone upthread that conservatives should “suck it up”, or however it was phrased. There’s nothing wrong with casting women or non-whites — the issue is in casting people with certain characteristics “because there aren’t enough” rather than because of acting merit and compatibility with the script. Fortunately, the only problem I see with the general’s regeneration is that the episode shouldn’t have needed to deprive us of an actor we’ve come to like in the manner that it did (I’ve come to like him, anyway). I actually found the “my last body was the only time I’ve been male” comment rather funny.
But I’d say that the episode’s penultimate scene inside the TARDIS was perfection incarnate: the Doctor is reborn as the Doctor and gets a NEW SONIC SCREWDRIVER!!! Time to get adventuring again, Doc! As another Doc said in Back to the Future: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need… roads.” Can’t wait for next season and the presumed arrival of a new companion!
29 November 2015 at 14:56 #48207@nerys In The Day of the Doctor, the Time Lords should have seen 13 TARDIS’s seal them in the pocket universe. To my mind, Doctor 12’s participation in said event was necessary in order to convine the TL’s to give him another cycle of regenerations in the very next episode, since Doctor 10 “wasted” an entire regeneration on his own face. If 12 hadn’t done this, the TL’s might have suspected that he had another regeneration left and had tricked Clara into conning a second cycle out of them for himself.
29 November 2015 at 14:44 #48205From the Next Time segment, the line “she’s my friend” (or however it went) could be referring to Clara or to Missy. And since we can never predict Moffat’s moves, the regeneration could be that of Clara, Ashildr, Missy, or the Doctor.
How is the Doctor a hybrid? Or if he didn’t mean “me”, but rather “Me” (which I suspect more), then how is adding an alien life-support chip to a human the creation of anything worth labeling “hybrid”?
29 November 2015 at 14:39 #48202Oh, yes, now I remember more of what I was going to say. Something else that needs to be explained is the presence of the messages about “12”. How would the TL’s, Missy, or anyone but Clara, really, know about that number’s relation to the Doctor?
29 November 2015 at 14:25 #48201Excellent episode and probably the best this season. Possibly the best of these two seasons, competing with Listen if nothing else.
There are some dangling threads that need explained, though. If this castle scenario was created by the Time Lords, whence the mangifier and the picture of Clara? And the grave? Surely the TL’s couldn’t know about Clara and her death unless Missy had witnessed it and is somehow responsible for this, or unless Me somehow (and somewhen) did it. And what was the first time through the castle like (e.g. someone mentioned that there wouldn’t be any drying clothes)?
I do have to admit, though, that I had an inkling from the moment I saw the lever pulled by a dying hand that it might have been the Doctor. The drying clothes and the ocean of skulls sealed it for me. My only mistake was in thinking that a time loop was involved. As for the fact that some rooms didn’t reset, I think the issue is actually one of focus — don’t focus on those rooms, but rather on how the reset ones actually get reset, which I imagine was just through some kind of tech not relating at all to time travel. However, admittedly, I’m not sure that anything can explain why the teleporter/whatever room wasn’t overflowing with death dust from so many disintegrated Doctors.
But as to time… it was, indeed, progressing. Several billion years, according to the stars’ positions. But was the sky that of Earth or that of Gallifrey? And because this is a live question for me, I have to wonder, also, where the majority of the episode actually took place. Was it inside the confession dial, and the dial was merely simulating the sky (in which case the external time elapsed may have been mere seconds)? Or was it in an actual location and the Doctor came through a portal? Maybe this question would be answered with a rewatch, but I wanted to get my ideas out there before I forgot them all.
Did we witness the creation of the confession dial (which would logically explain why Me took it from the Doctor — to avoid having the dial within the dial)? Or was the Doctor transported into the dial at the end of Raven and the dial was transported to Gallifrey?
I had more to post, but it got lost somewhere inside a castle in my mind. Drat.
This episode was definitely a Moffat masterpiece.
24 November 2015 at 13:38 #47709@jphamlore Hm, I thought the Ood we saw with the Cyberman was a “man” doing some repairs or modifications to him. No idea what the wife was.
@ichabod In the Series 2 episode in which Ten and Rose went to Pete’s world, as well as in Death in Heaven, we saw a Cyberman’s emotional inhibitor thing deactivated, revealing what was left of the original person. So one could say that Cyberman do still have “souls” — they’re just the “souls” of the people they used to be.
@pedant I thought that was just Ten using his Time Lord abilities. I only recall him grasping Joan’s hand or putting it on his book.
@whisht While it’s very plausible that the policemen were Judoon, my first thought — because we’ve seen this latter species much more recently than the Judoon — was that they were Mire. Anyone want to confirm one way or the other?
15 November 2015 at 13:11 #46988As far as the color sand-footage of Clara unlocking the TARDIS is concerned, I think some of the footage that the Doctor reviewed when the sand-as-camera revelation was made was also in color. I noticed it then and thought it odd. Not sure what to make of it.
When the Doctor said something about the situation being like a story, I immediately thought of Ashildr. Heck, I thought it might be her in the pod near the end until it was stated that the person inside was male. Then I thought of the guy Ashildr gave the second self-repair device to.
I did see two potential visual connections between this episode and the preview for Face the Raven, but I think one of them is merely coincidental.
@mudlark “Eukaryotic prokaryotes” — you just summed up, in two words, one of the major issues I have with Kill the Moon (nope, still not shutting up about my opinion on that episode). But it would be interesting if Ashildr were somehow responsible for the “weird” episodes from S8 and S9, don’t you think? I believe this idea has been brought up before, and I would definitely not mind if it were the case, just to rid me of my contempt for the aforementioned episode… and to make ones such as Robot of Sherwood and In the Forest of the Night make more narrative sense.
18 October 2015 at 15:48 #45030Good episode. Not my favorite genre, but the comedic aspects were welcome, just as in Robot of Sherwood. Like someone else here said, I think it was concealing some very important things. Also, even though I’ve now seen plenty of British TV, the accents still trick me sometimes. I thought “the Maya/Maia” were attacking the viking village, and that the girl was “a shielder” (maybe someone who tends to shields before/after battle?). Oy.
One connection I can’t help but make is between last story’s mention of the Minister of War and the translation of “Ashildr” as “god of battle”. Thanks to whomever first brought that up in this thread. It instantly brought up thoughts of the Master as Prime Minister in Series 3 and how it was referenced many episodes in advance of the revelation.
I understand that Doctor Who isn’t “serious” sci-fi, but all the playing fast and loose with different time travel theories is bugging me. On the one hand, the Doctor changes the future all the time. On the other, what could be seen as his meddling in history is actually just one point in an already-established causal loop. The fact that he keeps making a big deal over altering the future seems to indicate that he doesn’t remember all of these causal loops he’s been involved in.
Speaking of causal loops, it’s due to the nature of the show that the 12th Doctor — one who “should never have existed” — is enmeshed in the history of the universe that his previous selves are contained within, thus contributing to the history that led up to their adventures. In other words, the 12th Doctor was destined to be, as is every future version of him (due to the fact that he’s been to the “end of time” once or twice). But now that I’m on this topic, I’ve been wanting to write an article/blog post about time travel problems and paradoxes from the Matt Smith years. @craig, I’m told you’re just the one to contact about this. What say you, and (@everyone) who would be interested in discussing this?
13 October 2015 at 02:43 #44646@sarah-jane109
<span class=”useratname”>@bluesqueakpip</span>I only saw two posts from sarah-jane109. Are there more? I’d like to give him/her the benefit of the doubt on not being a troll, because at least one of the allegations in his/her first post seems true from my own experience, and his/her final post doesn’t strike me as something a troll would write, especially the part about removing oneself from the forum (which was subsequently done).
Said poster alleged, in his/her first post: “But what I’ve found is a forum void of any dissent – all opinion is positive or pettily questioning minor points.” While I’ve seen negative opinions of episodes or aspects thereof (i.e. criticism) expressed on this site, I don’t see them engaged with very much. I think that’s largely a function of the low number of frequent posters and of the place that Doctor Who, as a phenomenon, occupies in their minds due to their history with the show. This forum is more of a small club of regulars than a typical internet forum, and I think it shows in how off-topic and personal-detail-oriented many posts are (and the frequent back-and-forth of posts with such a nature). And while there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it makes it a bit difficult for newcomers — especially those with dissenting opinions — to make the forum home, as the personalities and opinions of the regulars carry more social weight than they would on a more populated forum (e.g. one dedicated to video games, a very general category).
I’m not the type of person who gushes about media — whether it be TV shows, movies, or video games — on forums; I tend to do that in person, if at all. Thus, one might see a greater amount of negativity than positivity from me online. But it’s not the tribalistic brand of negativity that proclaims “if it’s not X, which I like, then it must suck!” Rather, it’s the kind of negativity borne of disappointment with something heavily invested in when it fails to please us. Examples includes a person being his own worst critic (if you buy the popular phrase) and a parent being more disappointed and critical of his/her child than he/she would be if a stranger exhibited the exact same behaviors that bred the disappointment. I don’t think sarah-jane109 was a troll, and believe he/she was expressing the kind of negativity I just explained, rather than the tribalistic kind. Heck, I was extremely disappointed in “Kill the Moon” in Series 8 and still badmouth it to this day — but that’s because my standards for what constitutes “good Who” and “good sci-fi” were violated in the extreme.
Now to address a favorite “troll” topic…. I love Moffat. More than RTD. But I think I find more fault with Moffat’s approach to Who than RTD’s, just because I think Moffat gets in over his head — and budget — with timey-wimey story arcs. In other words, I enjoy “what Moffat does” more than “what RTD did”, just due to its more cerebral nature, but I don’t think Moffat handles it particularly well technically (dramatically, he excels). If you try to logically connect all of the season beginnings and endings (as well as the important Christmas episodes and “Day of the Doctor”) in Matt Smith’s run as the Doctor, I think you’ll see the technical issues I’m alluding to. To some people, this failing might incite resentment, because they’re expecting the show to hold together better logically. Maybe this expectation comes from not having seen BG Who, but I can only speculate. Personally, the drama and particular plot elements make up for these deficiencies. Plus, the perceived deficiencies provide me with the kind of mental puzzle that I enjoy piecing together. But again, different strokes for different folks. And I’m not sure I can speak to people’s other reasons for disliking Moffat, since my only real criticism is the one articulated above.
To conclude this overly-long post:
I don’t think sarah-jane109 was a troll, and he/she did have at least one valid point about the forum.
It would be nice if a greater diversity of viewpoints were responded to, and responded to in good faith. I’m not saying we should “feed the troll”, but rather to recognize that Doctor Who doesn’t occupy the same place in everyone’s minds, and that everyone likes to be engaged with.P.S. : <span class=”useratname”>@purofilion</span> Was your issue with the episode’s paradox resolved, or would you like me to go through how I see it? I will reiterate something I mentioned above: if you want extremely confusing paradoxes, watch the season openers, season finales, story arc-important Christmas episodes, and “Day of the Doctor” from Matt Smith’s run, and try to logically piece together their events.
11 October 2015 at 15:07 #44488Under the Lake was great, and the suspense ramped up enough at the end to make me really anticipate the conclusion. It’s exactly for that reason — the suspense — that I enjoyed it more than Before the Flood, however. That said, this episode wasn’t bad at all, and its positives were different from its predecessor’s. Moffat-era Who just wouldn’t be as entertaining as it is without some paradoxes thrown in from time to time, after all. Heck, Matt Smith’s entire run, as well as Clara’s existence, are giant paradoxes. Thanks for some nice brain fodder, Whithouse! Are we seeing showrunner material here? (Though, as Who paradoxes go, it was quite tame and logical — easy to follow.)
In both parts of this story, I caught on to Clara’s attempt to distract herself from her grief. At the end of Last Christmas, she didn’t seem to be grieving anymore, but rather genuinely interested in traveling with the Doctor for the sake of adventure. I also don’t remember noticing any signs of grief in the first two episodes this season. But here… man, just look at her at the beginning of Under the Lake when she begs the Doctor for more adventures, he pulls her into the TARDIS, and the camera lingers on her huge smile. To me, that screams “reckless abandon as distraction from pain”. Yes, I think she’s running. Especially when we’re given so many references/allusions to her loss, such as the whole Cass-Lunn-Bennett-O’Donnell love thing at the end of this episode.
The main part of the episode that I thought was lacking was the Doctor’s encounter with the Fisher King and the latter’s subsequent death. I kind of expected and wanted for there to be more to it all, almost as if the immediate threat of the Fisher King was too quickly dealt with (the story may have been a good candidate for a three-parter). In retrospect, if he hadn’t killed O’Donnell, he would have appeared much less dangerous. And I have to say that as soon as she split up from Bennett and the Doctor, I was certain that she would die. A little too telegraphed, Whithouse. A small blemish on an otherwise above-average episode.
So this running theme of tarot and arthurian legend… where do you all think it’s going to lead?
7 November 2014 at 05:23 #34906Ok, after seeing that screencap of the hand in Day of the Doctor, I definitely think it’s Clara’s, and she’s actually turned toward the camera — a fact concealed by whatever she’s grabbing. I’m still wondering how it makes sense for 12 to turn up in that episode, though, and what he might be there for if his presence isn’t necessary to “pocket” Gallifrey. Hopefully Moffat will return to that, and maybe it has something to do with Missy.
Also, the Nethersphere is the sphere, or the virtual world contained in the sphere. Hence why I asked about a baby… coming out of it. But speaking of babies, the only thing I would conceivably count as evidence of a Clara pregnancy is the line from the female astronaut in Kill the Moon, concerning children.
I had more, but fatigue keeps wiping it from my consciousness. That, and the fact that I want to respond to so many posts all in one go. T_T
5 November 2014 at 21:04 #34810i just went back to investigate, and the hand on the picture frame is clara’s. as awkward as the angle is, it’s her right hand, and she’s pulling herself around the edge of the picture, as if she had been hiding just to the inside of it (to avoid the exploding dalek, i assume).
That’s unfortunate. I was hoping it was Missy, because then it might explain why the 12th Doctor was there, supposedly helping to seal Gallifrey away, even though the Name of the Doctor‘s history had not yet been rewritten (such happening in Time of the Doctor, of course) to show that the Doctor didn’t die.
Other things:
1. I really don’t think that Clara is pregnant. I figure that the “three months” post-it note indicates how long she’d been traveling with the Doctor after Danny thought she had ceased. The call at the beginning of Dark Water seems, upon reflection, to be Clara’s very anxious confession, although for a good while I thought she was trying to figure something out, as if she didn’t fully remember the events of previous episodes and just wrote down the snippets she did remember. I’m still very open to that being the case, but I think I was just misleading myself (that’s quite an interesting thing to say, given my chosen user name).
2. The Capaldi hair thing is probably just reflective of the actor’s hair style at the times the different scenes were shot. I remember reading about Matt Smith having multiple hair styles in the course of individual episodes, such as The Time of Angels. Such was not indicative of anything, and was really just a point of amusement, should the viewer notice it.
@purofilion
In one way, then, their gender is redundant?
Sure you don’t mean “irrelevant”? I’m not sure how being female, as opposed to male, or vice versa, could be considered redundant.
I don’t think people age inside the TL matrix. So maybe Clara gives birth there and Danny and Clara raise Orson for 70 years or so, then the Doctor takes the baby into the real world with him.
How could the baby go from the Nethersphere to the real world without a body to inhabit? o_O
I’m still against a Clara pregnancy and will be disappointed if that is the case. It would suggest (after Amy) that Moff believes that women are just baby-making machines.
No, it wouldn’t. -_- Pregnancy makes for good drama, most women have children, and the best time to have a child is in one’s 20’s. We know that Clara likes children, and she’s in the latter half of her 20’s, if I recall, so it’s a good, realistic, time. I would like to see this kind of complaint about Moffat disappear, because it’s making a mountain out of a something that’s not even a molehill, and assuming that the writer is trying to propogandize. The only problem I would have with a Clara pregnancy would be that Moffat just used pregnancy as a plot device with the preceding companion — we don’t need another pregnant companion so soon, if only because it would seem “old hat”, as it were, even if something entirely different became of it.
If there has been enough time for a memorial to be built, why is Danny only just now being inducted into the nethersphere?
I was also wondering that…. I figure it’s just a true plot hole, and will never be referred to or resolved.
4 November 2014 at 14:42 #34732Someone earlier got me to thinking about the hand in Day of the Doctor: when the Doctors emerge from the painting, Clara follows them out, but we first see a hand that, if I remember correctly, seems to be the hand of the opposite side. Who would reach across themselves to grab onto something like that? It always looked weird to me, because it looked like an awkward thing for Clara to do. Now, given that Missy said she chose Clara for something, I’m wondering if, maybe, Missy came out of the Gallifrey Falls No More painting with the Doctors and Clara, and is somehow connected to Clara (think of a specific line from the finale trailer, which I won’t mention because it’s a spoiler). Maybe Missy is responsible for the painting in the first place (it’s been a mystery for a year now)! The Simm Master went back to time-locked Gallifrey on the second-to-last day of the Time War, if I recall. The painting was — again, if I recall correctly — of the last day of the Time War. The Master could have made the painting and, I suppose, tossed it through the high council’s hologram thing that Rassilon threw that powerful diamond through to reach Earth. That’s when Queen Elizabeth I could have obtained it. Missy could have been with us for a year now, and no one suspected a thing!
Other than that, I’m thinking that Gus (GUS?), hard light holograms, and the thing that kept the mummy going are going to figure into the next episode somehow. I actually think that the revelations and events that we got in Dark Water will absolutely pale in comparison to what’s coming up in the next episode, which I think will contain at least one or two HUGE Moffat moments, ripe for the Who history books. Maybe the mummy’s device or an improved derivative of it can be used to “resurrect” Danny’s body.
26 October 2014 at 21:03 #34165@arbutus I had actually been thinking of the two episodes with Craig while I was writing that post! I really did like them, although I must admit that the second could have been better (it was a “the power of love” episode).
I like either approach. But see, I only started watching DW as it came out with The Snowmen. Before that, I had breezed through all six series of New Who in a single month (being unemployed gives one such time). Things went really fast for me because I was watching it all pretty much back-to-back. Maybe Series 8 just seems too slow to me. I dunno. Still enjoying it. I think I would group it with Series 4, 5, 6, and the 2009 Tennant specials, as having most of my favorite episodes. Series 1,2,3, and 7 were pretty bland for me.
26 October 2014 at 17:21 #34157I was also very taken aback when I saw the huge negative response to this episode, especially considering that Kill the Moon seemed to have been praised about as much as this one is being scorned (moreso, actually). As some others upthread have elaborated upon, I also felt that the bad science in this episode was excusable, unlike in Kill the Moon. The child actors were also more convincing than Courtney was (“Miss, can we go home now? I’m scared,” she says with a straight face that doesn’t show the slightest bit of fear.), as well as more entertaining.
While I don’t see In the Forest of the Night as being very memorable, I don’t think it was bad at all. Perhaps not quite what we were wanting right before the finale, however. I was hoping for something more similar to Turn Left, which merged quite nicely into the Series 4 two-part finale. Still, I enjoyed it, and I think having the finale right after two tense episodes like Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline might have been a bit too much suspense in a row. This episode could have turned out a bit better, but I don’t feel compelled to complain at all. Kill the Moon will retain my award of “Worst Episode of the Season”, and it falls into a category quite nicely with Fear Her and Love & Monsters — that category being “Worst of New Who”.
I really enjoyed Clara’s interactions with Danny and the Doctor.
12 October 2014 at 15:35 #33438Before I read anyone else’s posts on this thread, I just have to say that, whereas I had extreme disappointment for the last episode, this one was awesome! Looking forward to the next (and the “wall people” remind me of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, where you can merge with walls and move along them before emerging).
6 October 2014 at 08:22 #33126Ok, here’s a bonkers theory that was mentioned previously by others, but which I think we have more evidence for now:
Clara is both a Time Lady and Missy.
We know that exposure to the Time Vortex can produce Time Lords. The Doctor, in A Good Man Goes to War, said that it took many years for that to happen with his own race, but all it may have taken for River to possess the relevant attributes (altered DNA and regeneration) was to be conceived inside the Time Vortex. Now, Captain Jack may have become the Face of Bo later in life. If so, there are two possible explanations for this, and either could suffice: Bad Wolf was a timey wimey entity that did something to him (we know one effect, at least: seeming immortality); he also rode on the outside of the TARDIS in Utopia. Guess who else rode on the outside of the TARDIS: Clara (Time of the Doctor). She also went inside the Doctor’s time stream. The only flaw in this idea is that Jack didn’t regenerate each time he died on-screen. However, this could probably be waved away just by saying that Rose, as Bad Wolf, gave him more than one gift, and that we only saw one. Maybe his regenerative abilities only manifested after his on-screen time concluded, with his DNA taking some time to change, as River’s might have (she was somehow modified by the Silence, but we don’t know in exactly what ways, aside from brainwashing).
Also, as @handles mentions, Clara knows how to remotely open and close the TARDIS’s doors, and she now knows a little about how to fly the TARDIS (Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, Listen).
Going off of the facts that Moffat really enjoys acausal loops and that we’ve recently seen one in Time Heist, Missy — as a later incarnation of Clara — could have given her past self the Doctor’s phone number. After all, Courtney and Clara’s dialogue concerning whether the former should call the latter “Clara” or “Miss” was kept in the script for Kill the Moon, which I think may be significant. Clara would be the woman in the shop, who’s been referenced this series. Further support comes from the word “boyfriend”, in reference to the Doctor, popping up both in Missy’s Deep Breath lines and in the Doctor and Clara’s dialogue in the same episode. Clara-as-Missy then makes sense of the Doctor’s idea that someone (i.e. the woman in the shop, whom we suppose is Missy) wanted Clara and the Doctor to stick together. They were friends, after all, and each made the other what he or she is today (Time Lady, in one case, and regeneration-limit-surpassing Time Lord, in the other). Still, there must be something else, but what?
Could it be that Clara-as-Missy is attempting to save the people who died “for” the Doctor in the time since she became a Time Lady (Time of the Doctor)? The Doctor said that he wants to rectify or atone for his past mistakes, but perhaps a future version of Clara is fixing his present ones. Could the Doctor be working with Missy, and we’re only seeing their actions on the people in these episodes because… well, these are the episodes we’re watching now? Maybe it’s happening with lots of people throughout the Doctor’s life, but we’re just not privy to seeing it because Doctor Who is, after all, just a TV show.
6 October 2014 at 01:01 #33101By the way, now we have spiders everywhere! Earth formed around a Racnoss ship, and the Moon’s bacteria are “spiders”.
6 October 2014 at 00:48 #33096I keep leaving before I find the need to edit my last comment, and then I no longer have the option….
I know what bothered me about the mass thing: Eggs contain all the matter needed to grow the developing organism. Given that this is the case, how was it that the Moon suddenly started piling on the mass, which is what led to the astronauts’ mission in the first place?
Sorry, sorry. I think I’m done complaining now. :/ I just can’t get over how distant the actual episode was from its potential. Next week’s can’t come soon enough.
Edit: Whoops, never mind. One more thing. I suppose that since the creatures lay an egg as soon as they emerge from one, the egg wouldn’t be fertilized from the start. So, the Moon egg had presumably been fertilized quite a while ago. But how long ago had it started to rapidly gain mass? Was it something like 10 days? Ten something-or-other, I think I read/heard. Is it plausible that such a huge creature could undergo most of its growth in that short of a time span? Probably not, but at least it’s something I could overlook, unlike the content of the other points I’ve made.
Edit to the edit: The above edit still doesn’t tell us why the mass increases at all.
My mind is all over the place now. Apologies….
6 October 2014 at 00:13 #33090You know that if it’s in the egg or outside it the mass is still the same right? So they go to a beach, right on the sandy shore. Where the massive tides are destroying the world and all life is threatened … and watch from the edges of the lapping waves… on the side of the planet facing the moon. Odd?
Yep. I was also thinking about the mass. Geez, I hope I don’t make #12 on this list. That would be very cheesey.
EDIT: Actually, I was only thinking about the mass in the context of the creature’s growth, but then I remembered that eggs contain all the matter that is needed to grow the organism before the egg hatches. Chickens ain’t mammals! So Seventhwheel, nice observation! I don’t think I thought about that bit during the episode.
5 October 2014 at 23:47 #330868. I also had a problem with the vote. As others have mentioned, half of the Earth’s surface was made completely irrelevant in the decision. If that half (I didn’t notice while watching) included the biggest population areas, like oh, say, CHINA and AFRICA, then… whoops, Clara! But another issue, and the one that bothered me the most: shouldn’t the people have turned off their lights to keep the Moon dragon <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>alive</span> instead of to kill it? Think about the people who didn’t hear Clara, or who couldn’t make up their minds — should we expect them to blackout their entire cities and countries in order to have a better chance of living through the crisis? It seems to me that the more difficult action on the voters’ part should be associated with voting for the more dangerous outcome. As it stands, suppose that no one actually heard Clara. They would be “voting” — by keeping their lights on — to let the Moon break apart and presumably kill them, or, at the least, make Earth less hospitable.
Sigh. Now that I’m itemizing my gripes with the episode, I’m realizing that, again despite its cool premise, this episode had really shoddy writing.
5 October 2014 at 23:31 #33082I’m not really sure what to think about this episode. The premise of Moon-as-egg was good, but there are a few things that really nag at me:
1. The bumbling, “third-rate”, astronaut. Why would anyone send him anywhere? It’s like he was actively trying to be a red-shirt. Stern-astronaut-lady-who-didn’t-react-realistically-at-the-Doctor’s-introduction didn’t, y’know, object to her comrade’s absence?
2. Stern-astronaut-lady-who-didn’t-react-realistically-at-the-Doctor’s-introduction. I’ve seen all After Gap episodes, and I still think her acceptance of the Doctor was too hasty and without issue. She reminded me, superficially, of Adelaide Brooke, from Waters of Mars, but was otherwise very different.
3. Shuttle from the United States crewed exclusively by people with British accents. Eh?
4. At first, when Courtney floated into the air, I thought “hm, gravity generator must have gone offline for that room”. Then I remembered that the Moon had abnormally high gravity, at which point… sigh. If the interior of the Moon had shifted that much, everyone would have felt the effect, what with the small distance between Courtney and everyone else.
5. I could accept the spider things as analogous to bacteria in a real-world organism, but it looked like they were being made out to be actual bacteria, as demonstrated by Courney’s killing of one with anti-bacterial spray. Sorry, can’t buy it. They’re too big and complex.
6. Moon dragon hatches, then immediately lays an egg that’s far too large for a thing of its size to lay. For one thing, with an egg of anywhere near that size, we would have noticed that the dragon looked… bloated. For another thing, are we being made to think that the new moon is the same size as the old one? Can a chick hatch and immediately lay an egg the size of the one it came out of? Not without some serious Time Lord-like technology.
7. The Doctor says something about the Moon being, what, 100 million years old? The Moon is actually thought to be billions of years old, yet no one said anything about the age he said it was?!
As I said, I like the premise. The execution just had far too many holes that really needed to be filled, even for a Doctor Who episode. The episode had potential, but I think I’m only going to take two things away from it: first, a what-if thought about the Moon-as-egg, because it’s entertaining/amusing; and second, Clara’s confrontation with the Doctor at the end.
28 September 2014 at 13:35 #32620Definitely enjoyed the episode, but the greater emphasis on drama over sci-fi made this probably my least favorite of Series 8 so far. That’s not to say it wasn’t necessary, though. In fact, it was a very humorous way for the Doctor and Danny to meet, and it got their relationship dynamic rolling.
I picked up on the Day of the Doctor fire-lighting reference! Every reference made to a pre-12th Doctor era is ok in my book! More mentions of River and the Doc’s adventures, please! “Auton” or “otter”? I thought it was the former at first. And now I’m wondering where my reasoning skills were when the 11-alike teacher first showed up, because I didn’t grasp his intentional resemblance to 11 until it was alluded to with the comment about the bow tie (even then, I wasn’t thinking of his facial structure and hair). Color me slow!
I can’t say for sure yet whether I like where Clara’s relationship with Danny is going, as far as its implications for future episodes is concerned. This episode makes it seem, to me, a stark contrast to the mania of previous Doctors’ episodes and the relationships therein. Series 8 in general seems quite a bit darker in tone, or it at least gives me a sense of foreboding for the finale that past seasons didn’t. Something is looming on the horizon, and however her departure happens, I’m now made to think that this may be Clara’s last season.
22 September 2014 at 06:12 #32348Speaking of music, did anyone else notice 11’s theme in the preview to next Saturday’s episode? It really surprised me (and pleasantly).
17 September 2014 at 10:44 #31963Probably The Empty Child, when the boy causes the typewriter in his mother’s/other children’s hiding place to operate.
17 September 2014 at 01:40 #31946Oh, btw, while I was obviously enjoying RTD’s time as showrunner (else I wouldn’t have continued into Moffat), Moffat is probably what I like most about the show right now. I love these timey wimey, season-long, stories. I just hope I continue to be a big fan of the show once someone else takes Moffat’s place.
17 September 2014 at 01:30 #31944@lisa I’m not sure why it would need to get from the Doctor to the box, though. Its origin is in the 20th century, it was kept in Rupert’s/Danny’s family into the 22nd century, then it time-traveled with Orson to the [almost] end of the universe, then it went with Clara to the young Doctor. That’s from the toy soldier’s perspective. The only thing we don’t know about it is what happened to it after Clara gave it to the Doctor. It won’t make it into Rupert’s/Danny’s toy box again because that would make it infinitely old and getting infinitely worn.
17 September 2014 at 01:21 #31942Hello, figured I’d plop down next to some of you after having already posted three non-introductory, er, posts… in the Listen thread.
I was born in ’86, but didn’t know about — or wasn’t conscious of — Doctor Who until… probably 2011 at the earliest. In August 2012 I decided to try Doctor Who and signed up for Netflix’s 30-day trial. During that month of free shows, I gobbled up all six seasons of New Who that they had available. Since then, I’ve kept current, and am watching Capaldi’s episodes as they come out. I’m not the only one in the house who enjoys the Doctor, though — my sister is starting Series 8, and my dad did much as I did and gobbled up New Who in a short span of time. He’s currently current, as well. My mom doesn’t find much time to watch, and she’s on Series 3 — just got done with Family of Blood several weeks ago (yes, “just”). I was the vector of infection for all of them. 😀 My dad is actually a bit obsessed with the show now, which surprised me. I can talk with him about so much of it, but he admits to needing to rewatch Series 1-present to remind him of stuff.
My musings on time travel actually started around ’98 or ’99, after I’d finished the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. For those who aren’t familiar with it, its ending involves the creation of a second timeline, and the game series has taken advantage of both since (as well as a third that was inserted ad hoc to fit older games in). Even with my history of thinking about time travel, I still haven’t been able to wrap my mind around Matt Smith’s run. Has anyone written one giant document trying to make sense of it yet? I’d be extremely interested in reading such a thing.
Anyway, nice to come aboard! Pleasant place, this is.
17 September 2014 at 00:39 #31936@electrolyte That was my post you quoted, btw, not Barnable’s. 😉
Before Series 8 started, I had actually been musing about what would happen once the Doctor brought Gallifrey back. It’s not a very likely story, due to how the Doctor’s interaction with Rassilon ended in The End of Time, but hear me out on this and let me know what you think.
The Doctor manages to find Gallifrey and return it to its universe of origin. He is then summoned to take part in the Master’s trial and sentencing (since the Master could be said to have committed treason by helping to return Gallifrey to the time lock; of course, the Doctor is also guilty of this, which is a hole in my story idea, but whatever). As the Doctor follows the Master’s escort to the latter’s execution, accompanied by Rassilon, the Master attemps to take over Rassilon’s body by shooting his essence at him (again, the Master can do magic-y things, as we have ample evidence for by now). Rassilon deflects with his gauntlet, and the Master ends up in the Doctor’s body. The immediate result of this action, however, is that the Doctor promptly regenerates, and rather violently (but nothing like his Trenzalore regen). Under pursuit, he manages to escape Gallifrey. The rest of the season would be concerned with dual personalities, a condition the Doctor doesn’t know about, as he thought the Master just tried to go for a death blow. He would constantly be trying to figure out why he has gaps in his memory. The Master would, now and then, take over the Doctor’s body for his own reasons, all the while trying to hide the change in personality from the Doctor’s companions, should he be traveling with any.
The Master’s purposes, however, are to give his younger self the rest of the Doctor’s lives. For some reason I never devised, his target would be the sixth Doctor, and the story would be woven into Trial of a Time Lord, with the Doctor-Master being… the Valeyard!
Of course, the possibility of any of this happening was destroyed once I learned that the Valeyard’s history and fate had already been written/shown.
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On-topic, I’ve seen some people mention the toy soldier being involved in some kind of time loop that takes it from the Doctor to young Rupert. Is that right, or am I remembering incorrectly? Anyway, it doesn’t strike me as very likely, as the toy soldier would be infinitely old — an object having no beginning and no end. I really just think that its timeline starts with being manufactured and being obtained by Rupert, and ends, as far as we’re currently concerned, with having been in the Doctor’s possession, presently or not. In other words, I’m convinced it’s Rupert/Danny to Orson to Clara to the Doctor, with an open ending after that.
16 September 2014 at 04:48 #31853This one’s quite a bit more tenuous than my last idea about the Doctor’s memory, but scrutinizing characters’ words so much got me thinking about a line from Deep Breath: Strax warns Clara to watch out for fluid retention. Combined with the two (?) mentions of Clara’s mortality in as many episodes and the Doctor’s question, in Deep Breath, of how long she can hold her breath for, I’m wondering if these are hinting that Clara is going to drown. The fluid retention need not be connected, of course, but it just seems like something that could be picked up on and run with in a different direction than the obvious interpretation, as well as the “how long” question.
Also, again concerning the Doctor’s memory: Assuming all three pieces of evidence I mentioned in my last post are true instances of memory loss, could it be that the Doctor has at least one other personality? Could the Master possibly have been hidden inside the regeneration energy the Doctor received on Trenzalore (because the Master can do weird stuff like that — consult the 90’s movie and the End of Time two-parter)? Might the Time Lords who made the decision to gift the Doctor with more lives have built something strange into said energy (doesn’t make a lot of real world sense, but this show takes plenty of liberties)? Maybe something that would prompt the Doctor to find Gallifrey ASAP (e.g. forcing regenerations at an ever-quickening pace, with bad memory being a symptom)?
I’m not particularly fond of the term “bonkers”, but I believe it might be the term used to describe what I just said. Let me know what you think.
15 September 2014 at 06:54 #31753Hello, Moffat’s brain here. I know I should already know everything about everything in Series 8, but there are some things even I haven’t figured out yet (so why did I write the script that way…?).
Ahem. Anyway, I didn’t find the episode all that complex. If you compare it to Matt Smith’s entire run, what with Big Bang 2.0, dead-Doctor-timeline Trenzalore, changing Gallifrey’s history, and the Silence-plus-regeneration-Trenzalore events all screwing with each other, this episode seems incredibly tame for one of Moffat’s timey wimey stories.
For my part, I started my first rewatch of the episode and noticed something that prompted me to check this thread. Having not seen anyone mention or, if that, elaborate on this particular idea yet, I decided to sign up and write this post.
Thesis: The Doctor’s memory is wibbly wobbly (and this is probably important for the remainder of this series).
Evidence 1: When Clara says that the “LISTEN” on the chalkboard looks like it’s in the Doctor’s handwriting, he protests, claiming he couldn’t have written it and then have just forgotten.
Evidence 2: When the Doctor tells Clara he’s going to ask her a question and she preempts him with that question, he tells her that he asked it of her first.
Evidence 3: Despite the Doctor having seen Clara as a child during Matt Smith’s run — notably, accompanied by her biological father — the Doctor tells her when they arrive at the children’s home that she must have forgotten staying there as a kid. Question for the Doctor: Why would she have been at a children’s home when she has always had at least one biological parent raising her?
There is also something else I’m suspicious of. Many people have already mentioned the sound of glass breaking when Danny’s true first name is mentioned during Clara’s second attempt at the date, but the waiter’s seemingly unnecessary interruption of their conversation reminded me very strongly of when Eccleston posed as a waiter and insisted that Rose and Auton Micky had ordered a bottle of wine, from the very first episode of New Who. Could this be a plot-related callback to that episode?
@arbutus: Minecraft’s Nether is actually that world’s Hell. It used to be called that in prior builds of the game. If we can draw an analogy to Who’s Nethersphere (whatever that turns out to be), maybe Missy’s portrayal of her locale as Heaven is a deception — not only in that it isn’t really Heaven, but also in that it’s not a good place at all. Bad place or bad people, but with nice window dressing.
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