The Doctor Who Club v.4

[Becoming]

Spoiler: Hide

Hmm, where to begin? I guess with Clara. I was expecting the Doctor to tell her about her other selves in that scene in the TARDIS. I think Clara's definitely gonna question him later about that 'you're the only mystery worth solving' line he said. And I liked Clara's little speech about everyone being a ghost, and again, I was thinking that would tie into her past selves. However, it did not...and after this, I'm wondering how Clara would react to finding out about her other selves. Would she want to meet them, or at least see them? Would she be angry at the Doctor for not telling her? So many questions...and more on this later when I say stuff about the finale...

I liked how we saw the TARDIS interacting with Clara, and that's the first time it's really done that with any companion before, I think. To that extent, anyway. I was surprised that the TARDIS took Clara's form, and for a second I thought that it was going to tell her about her other selves. I really do wonder why the TARDIS is interacting with Clara at all. Is it possibly to do with her being her, like whatever her story is?

Right, the plot. Well this is DW, so we know that the ghost isn't actually going to be a ghost, and I liked how it turned out that it was a time traveler trapped in a pocket universe. Never would have guessed it, but it was cool. However, I don't quite understand how the ghost woman (I don't remember her name sorry!) was able to influence the main universe, like writing 'help me' however. But it was cool to see the Doctor go and rescue her and the scenes in that forest were pretty scary. And then it turns out that the monster that was chasing her just wanted to find its mate...and the TARDIS managed to get in-and-out of that universe twice without dying...it kinda makes me wonder what the stakes were in that episode. Everything turned out just fine! But even so it was a pretty good episode. Possibly my favorite of series 7 part two. It wasn't quite what I expected, but it was good.

Oh, and I was totally freaked by those statues in the house. I was convinced that they were going to come alive.

Spoiler: next time

This is the episode that I've been looking forward to the most because I'm curious as to what the TARDIS is actually like. I wonder if we'll get to see Amy and Rory's bunk beds. And the swimming pool. And hopefully it won't be all corridors like in The Doctor's Wife.

So the basis premise is that Clara is trapped in the TARDIS while this crew want to turn the TARDIS to scrap metal (or something), and the Doctor wants to get Clara out of there. But she must run into the TARDIS for some reason because otherwise they'd just go into the console room and find her. And what is the Doctor keeping on the TARDIS that Clara wants to know about!? I also wanna know.

This is also the episode with 'are you a trick, are you a trap' so is THIS the one where the Doctor tells Clara about Clara and Oswin? Because that'd be great!

Spoiler: The Doctor's Name

So I think it's safe to say that they won't reveal the Doctor's name to us. Because it's something so important and I don't think any name would actually suffice. Like anything would be underwhelming. I think that what will happen is that this episode will take place (in part) on the Field of Trenzalore and, because River is there, this will be where the Doctor tells her his name. He'll whisper in her ear or it'll go silent when he mouths it or something; we won't find out but River will.

This episode has the Whispermen and I think they'll be utterly creepy, probably inhabitants of the Fields. What they do well I dunno...but what do the Silence have to do with this? Do they like get the Whispermen to try and kill the Doctor? Well, I definitely hope that the Silence will appear because 1) they're cool and 2) they're all connected with this whole plot line. So yeah, hope they appear.

Finally, if the finale is all to do with the Doctor's name, then I guess it wouldn't be centered around the mystery of Clara; that probably means that'll be the big plot of series 8. I'm just wondering how the transition from The Name of the Doctor to the anniversary is going to go. Mainly, will the anniversary be a continuation of the series 7 plot, or will it focus on more anniversary-y plots, like that of the Daleks or the Master or some other well known villain. I'd kinda hate for the anniversary to be about series 7 and not the whole series, you know?

Becoming/Clara Oswin Oswald/Clara Oswald/Oswin Oswald

 

[Poetry]

Spoiler: Hide

There was a lot to take in with this episode because so much was going on at once but somehow it never felt overwhelming or cluttered, which was a good sign.
I could just tell from when the Doctor declared he was from Health and Safety that this was going to be a killer episode. And I was right, for once (usually I'm a terrible judge of episodes; what looks like a really good episode to me turns out to be terrible and episodes which look awful turn out to be brilliant when I actually get round to watching them). What really made me love this episode was the distinct Britishness of it - DW as a series is very British obviously, but the references to Health and Safety, Kendal Mint Cake, make do and mend, etc were just really nice touches to the episode. It doesn't beat the Unicorn and the Wasp in this respect though, but overall I liked the episode's sense of style and awareness of setting. Everything from the character costume designs to the props like the candelabra all came together seamlessly.

As for the storyline... I think the series 7 storylines in general have been consistently average, but Hide is definitely one of the better ones, possibly knocking off Asylum of the Daleks as my personal favourite. In a manner similar to Curse of the Black Spot, of course the ghost had a back-story and was something totally different to what the scenario made us believe, but the premise of the pocket universe and the strange misty forest setting didn't sit well with me, for some reason. It felt cohesive with the rest of the episode but even with the Doctor's explanation with the two balloons, I still wish they had explained further some of the more finer points of the structure and technical aspects. But still, the episode felt like it had done its job well, and the ending was a nice touch, if not just a tad too abrupt and too neat and tidy for my liking.

And yeah... other than what I've already mentioned, it was a good episode. I wish we would have seen more of the TARDIS and Clara interacting with each other, but I suppose we'll possibly see more of that next week, which I am very much looking forward to. The scenes where Clara questioned the Doctor about him not being affected by the end of the world and the millions of untold deaths going on around him felt a little tired, as we've seen pretty much every companion deal with the issue of the Doctor's morality in one way or another.

Oh, and the umbrella bit was quite nice. Health and safety FTW.

 

[elyvorg]

ninjanerd: Hi, and welcome! Is Doctor Who really still a sort of nerdy cult thing in America? I gathered it'd been growing in popularity in America a lot recently - I mean, you guys now get the episodes on the same day we do, when you used to be weeks or even months behind. I guess it's probably mostly just popularity with people who already have nerdy interests, though, perhaps? It'd certainly be difficult for the show to ever become as ingrained in America's culture as it is in Britain's.

Spoiler: Hide

So this was a really good episode! There were plenty of creepy, unnerving scenes, lots of the Doctor and Clara acting like big kids, which I always find fun, and it was a little cheesy but still kind of sweet how in the end it was all about love. Alec and Emma were both nice characters, too. I appreciated the parallel between Alec's survivor guilt and the Doctor, and I enjoyed Clara's interactions with Emma - though I'm less fond of the way these parallels encourage people to also draw parallels between Alec and Emma's relationship and the Doctor and Clara's. Although I admit there's a certain amount of frission going on on the surface for the Doctor and Clara, at its heart, their relationship is really not that similar to Alec and Emma's at all.

Like others, I enjoyed the scene in the TARDIS with Clara being unsettled by the Doctor's flippancy at the birth and death of planets. It's good that she's getting to know him and understand him better, even if it means he kind of freaks her out. To be fair to the Doctor, it seems he was trying to reassure her and just utterly failing because he can't possibly understand her point of view. It's a shame, though, that he couldn't have been a little bit more clear and less vague about it when Clara asked if she's just nothing to him, because that's completely the opposite of the truth. His companions are always so important to him, and she deserves to know that. I think the Doctor wasn't able to be direct with her about that here because, as I'll probably go into more later in this post, I don't think he completely trusts her. It's also interesting how Clara compares it to being like a ghost because she's essentially already dead, since of course in Clara's case that's far more fitting than she even realises - I get the feeling that when she asked if she was buried out there somewhere, the Doctor was thinking of a very specific Victorian grave. So even though Clara still hasn't yet found out the truth about her other lives (gah preview stuff why you such a tease), she's definitely getting more unnerved by and suspicious of the Doctor and this has to come to a head sometime soon, surely.

I also like that the TARDIS felt like a participating character in this episode - ever since The Doctor's Wife I've always enjoyed being able to get a sense of how alive she is. The supposed little feud between her and Clara throughout was amusing. The TARDIS has always been indifferent at best towards the "strays" her Doctor brings home, so I can imagine it'd take her a while to warm up to a new one. Then when the Doctor got trapped in the pocket universe, Clara wasn't the only one who immediately panicked and wanted to save him; the TARDIS was freaking out as well, Cloister Bell and all. She only let Clara in - in a very begrudging kind of way - because she can't fly without someone inside her and she was desperate to rescue the Doctor. As for the TARDIS's voice interface taking Clara's form, it seems that after the voice interface scene in Let's Kill Hitler (remember that? I remember that, but then it is basically my favourite scene ever) the TARDIS apparently decided that "someone I like" should be the default form the interface takes for whoever it's going to talk to. Out of all the people in the world that Clara likes, the TARDIS selecting Clara herself probably was a bit cheeky of her, as she's essentially implying that Clara is full of herself. xP

So, I was inevitably going to want to talk about the scene in the forest with the Doctor being afraid. What I actually find most interesting about it is the realisation after reaching the end of the episode that the monster (the Crooked Man, according to the credits) didn't actually mean him any harm. The Doctor did not need to be afraid of it. Usually when the Doctor is scared by something it's because he has a very good reason to be - not here. True, he was also quite sensibly afraid at being trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension, but that was separate, and his fear of the creature continued even after Emma had opened a way back. It's quite something to learn that even the Doctor of all people can sometimes get scared at essentially nothing, jumping at shadows, frightened of the non-existent bogeyman under the bed. All it took was being in an inherently unsettling situation and already afraid for a different reason, as well as the fact that he didn't know what the creature was, and his scared mind projected the worst possible intentions onto it. Though its actions came across that way, the Crooked Man wasn't ever actually trying to frighten him (heck, it might have been hiding because it was just as scared of him). Ultimately it was the Doctor who made himself afraid. I also really like how he starts outwardly telling the creature - but really himself - what it's trying to do to him as a way of trying to justify why he's getting so frightened.

Yeah. The rest of the episode was really nice too, but that scene in the forest just presses my instalove buttons like I knew it would. I'm very happy it exists.

Additionally, a couple of things that went on in this episode led me to thinking about stuff that isn't all that connected to this episode itself. So here are some tangential rambles, not really that relevant to Hide but will contain minor spoilers for certain things in it.

First, a theory about Clara.

Spoiler: Clara

It keeps being stressed in episodes how this Clara is just a perfectly ordinary girl with an ordinary life and upbringing, even though this surely can't be possible because there's more than one of her out there. So I'm beginning to form a theory: this Clara genuinely is truly ordinary; it's the other Claras (counting Oswin as "a Clara" even though that's not her name after all) who have strange, unnatural origins that make them somehow like a copy of this Clara. Possibly it came about from something that hasn't actually happened to our Clara yet. Victorian Clara was 26 when she died. Ours is 24 right now.

It seems to make some kind of sense if you think about it a certain way. Our Clara is definitely the most what-you-see-is-what-you-get Clara; she's just an ordinary girl who ended up working as a nanny because of circumstances, dreams of travelling the world and misses her late mother. She's never really tried to pretend to be anything else. But as for the other Claras, in both of their episodes there was a certain theme of them not quite being what they seemed to be. Oswin, of course, was desperately pretending she was still a trapped human when she'd actually been turned into a Dalek, but even Victorian Clara can't quite be taken at face value - was she a barmaid, or a governess, or both, or neither? If any of the Claras are going to essentially "deceive" us, I feel like it's more likely to be those two.

Interestingly, I don't think the Doctor has realised this, nor do I think he's likely to. After his investigation of Clara's childhood in Akhaten, I assumed the next logical step for his investigations would be to do the same for Oswin and Victorian Clara to see whether they also had perfectly normal origins and upbringings. But since we never saw it, has he actually done that? I kind of doubt it, now. I get the sense that, because they both died in ways he blamed himself for, and because they both meant a lot to him - Oswin because she was brave in the face of Daleks, saved his life when he was terrified and inspired him to start erasing himself from the universe, and Victorian Clara because he was horribly depressed and she was in the right place at the right time to help him out of it - the Doctor views them in a kind of idealised light and refuses to be suspicious of them. He's projecting all of his suspicion and distrust at the general enigma of Clara-and/or-Oswin Oswald onto the modern-day Clara instead, even though in a way she's the most trustworthy one, because although she's lovely and has been proving herself as a companion, she hasn't happened to do anything to inspire such unconditional attachment from the Doctor, not yet.

...okay, so this is basically just entirely interpretation on my part, and I have little actual evidence to back it up other than how much the Doctor clearly expected and even wanted Emma to tell him that Clara was not just an ordinary girl, but it seems to make sense to me for now. I'll probably be completely re-evaluating this entire thing next week, though.

And some thoughts on what things might be like from the TARDIS's point of view sometimes, because who doesn't love dear old Sexy?

Spoiler: TARDIS

The TARDIS's portrayal as a truly alive, participating character in this episode got me thinking about how much of her own input she might have given behind the scenes in some other recent episodes. For example, in Cold War, the TARDIS's choice of the South Pole as her safe bolt hole when the HADS activated? (yes, I do believe the TARDIS herself gets to choose when/where she ends up for the HADS so long as it's somewhere safe.) I bet she chose such a deliberately awkward place largely because she wanted to teach the Doctor a lesson and make sure he never left the HADS on again - because if it's turned on, then she can't stay there to protect him when he might be in danger!

I also couldn't help but think a little more about Let's Kill Hitler's voice interface scene, given the voice interface's reappearance in Hide. It seems from this that, though the TARDIS herself cannot speak through the voice interface as all it can do is state objective facts, she does get a certain amount of choice as to what form the interface takes. Which makes the LKH scene kind of interesting to think about from the TARDIS's point of view. When the Doctor asks for someone he likes, she shows him Rose, because hey, he liked her, didn't he? He brushes her off because guilt, and so the TARDIS blithely shows him Martha and Donna, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that this would give him even more guilt. Then when he clarifies that he wants "someone I haven't screwed up yet", the TARDIS, having a very unusual definition of "yet", gives him Amelia, even though Amy is very screwed up right now - and in a way this is almost worse for the Doctor, what with how badly he wants it to be the real Amelia when it's not. All of the TARDIS's attempts to give him what he wants just make everything more painful and awkward.

Poor TARDIS. She absolutely loves her Doctor to bits and wants to make him happy as much as she can, but she must find that hard sometimes because she's so incomprehensibly non-linear and alien that she just cannot understand the way the Doctor feels about these tiny, linear, mortal creatures he brings travelling with him. That Let's Kill Hitler scene must have been horrible for her, seeing her Doctor in so much pain - not just from the poison - but not understanding why and not being able to help him because she's incapable of making the voice interface say the words she wants to say to him.

So, regarding the TARDIS's opinion on Clara: possibly she's just being her usual grumpy, feline, slow-to-warm-to-people self. Possibly it might have to do with Clara's impossibility. But I also think it's possible that the TARDIS doesn't like Clara because she can sense how conflicted and worried Clara's existence is making the Doctor and isn't happy about that, so she blames Clara for it because she isn't capable of appreciating that it's not actually Clara's fault.

Spoiler: Next Time

This looks like it'll be an exciting episode! It should be very high stakes - the two most important girls in the Doctor's life, both in terrible danger. It's kind of interesting that he seems willing to let those people scrap the TARDIS so long as they give him a chance to rescue Clara - obviously Clara means a lot to him (albeit in a weird, conflicting way right now), but it's his TARDIS at stake. I imagine he's actually just saying that to buy himself some time and fully intends to save the TARDIS, too. Or he expects the TARDIS to be able to save herself; these guys definitely have no idea what they're getting themselves into trying to rip her apart.

It's also promising to get a sense of all the crazy, alien things that they'll encounter deep within the TARDIS. The swimming pool is in the trailer! You know you've been wanting to see that ever since The Eleventh Hour. And then there's other, more dangerous things - some things it seems even the Doctor isn't really sure about. His beloved ship must have far more secrets than even he knows. Hopefully there'll be plenty of the TARDIS's personality coming across in this episode, too, since she is the setting for most of it.

This episode should hopefully also touch more on the something I talked about in my other tangential ramble above, specifically the Doctor's issues regarding Clara. It looks like Clara is actually going to find out about her other selves really seriously for real this time (no, I will never stop being an optimistic fool about this), if only from the Doctor finally snapping and demanding to know if she's some kind of trap. That line of his as well as a related-sounding one presumably from the same scene were in the BBC America half-series trailer, and since seeing that I've been very excited for this scene - which I wasn't expecting would be so soon! I think the Doctor's got like this so quickly partly because he hasn't yet been fully honest with Clara about her mystery, so with no-one to discuss it with it's just been eating away at him and driving him mad. If he'd talked to her about it earlier, she'd probably have been able to reassure him that she has no idea how these other versions of her exist but as far as she knows she's just herself and certainly isn't out to get him. ...Which, I suppose, means that I'm actually perfectly okay with the fact that Clara finding this out hasn't happened as early as it seemed like it would, because the way things are turning out as a result is much more interesting.

I also wonder if this scene and whatever transpires from it might mean that the Doctor will finally be able to put his distrust aside and start truly appreciating Clara for who she is without any suspicion. In a couple of tiny clips for the week after next's episode that I've seen, he's being very affectionate towards her, more so than he has for most of this series.

Oh, and while we're discussing the finale's title, let me give a couple more thoughts, since I was pretty brief about it last post.

Spoiler: The name of the finale

Yeah, I agree that I don't actually think we're going to hear the Doctor's name in the episode. It's not because I feel like knowing it would ruin the "driving mystery" of the series, though. In all honesty, I don't particularly care what the Doctor's name is; I'm perfectly fine just calling him "the Doctor", and I feel like I know him well enough as a character without needing to know his true name.

No, the reason I don't think we'll learn his name is because I don't think anyone writing this could possibly come up with a name that truly sounded right for him, anyway. I remember a DVD commentary from back in like series 4 in which Steven Moffat joked about how underwhelming it would be if it turned out the Doctor's name was actually something really boring like "Keith" - but really, no matter how exotic a selection of syllables he could come up with, it would still sound kind of underwhelming and random and not adequate to be the name of one of the most powerful, mysterious beings in the universe. To say nothing of how it definitely wouldn't sound impressive enough to be a word that supposedly, like, breaks the universe or something when it's spoken because isn't that meant to be a thing with the Doctor's name and the reason why Trenzalore is bad news?

-elyvorg/Amelia

 

[ninjanerd]

ninjanerd: Hi, and welcome! Is Doctor Who really still a sort of nerdy cult thing in America? I gathered it'd been growing in popularity in America a lot recently - I mean, you guys now get the episodes on the same day we do, when you used to be weeks or even months behind. I guess it's probably mostly just popularity with people who already have nerdy interests, though, perhaps? It'd certainly be difficult for the show to ever become as ingrained in America's culture as it is in Britain's.

Spoiler: Hide

So this was a really good episode! There were plenty of creepy, unnerving scenes, lots of the Doctor and Clara acting like big kids, which I always find fun, and it was a little cheesy but still kind of sweet how in the end it was all about love. Alec and Emma were both nice characters, too. I appreciated the parallel between Alec's survivor guilt and the Doctor, and I enjoyed Clara's interactions with Emma - though I'm less fond of the way these parallels encourage people to also draw parallels between Alec and Emma's relationship and the Doctor and Clara's. Although I admit there's a certain amount of frission going on on the surface for the Doctor and Clara, at its heart, their relationship is really not that similar to Alec and Emma's at all.

Like others, I enjoyed the scene in the TARDIS with Clara being unsettled by the Doctor's flippancy at the birth and death of planets. It's good that she's getting to know him and understand him better, even if it means he kind of freaks her out. To be fair to the Doctor, it seems he was trying to reassure her and just utterly failing because he can't possibly understand her point of view. It's a shame he couldn't have been a little bit more clear and less vague about it when Clara asked if she's just nothing to him, because that's completely the opposite of the truth. His companions are always so important to him, and she deserves to know that. I think the Doctor wasn't able to be direct with her about that here because, as I'll probably go into more later in this post, I don't think he completely trusts her. It's also interesting how Clara compares it to being like a ghost because she's essentially already dead, since of course in Clara's case that's far more fitting than she even realises - I get the feeling that when she asked if she was buried out there somewhere, the Doctor was thinking of a very specific Victorian grave. So even though Clara still hasn't yet found out the truth about her other lives (gah preview stuff why you such a tease), she's definitely getting more unnerved by and suspicious of the Doctor and this has to come to a head sometime soon, surely.

I also like that the TARDIS felt like a participating character in this episode - ever since The Doctor's Wife I've always enjoyed being able to get a sense of how alive she is. The supposed little feud between her and Clara throughout was amusing. The TARDIS has always been indifferent at best towards the "strays" her Doctor brings home, so I can imagine it'd take her a while to warm up to a new one. Then when the Doctor got trapped in the pocket universe, Clara wasn't the only one who immediately panicked and wanted to save him; the TARDIS was freaking out as well, Cloister Bell and all. She only let Clara in - in a very begrudging kind of way - because she can't fly without someone inside her and she was desperate to rescue the Doctor. As for the TARDIS's voice interface taking Clara's form, it seems that after the voice interface scene in Let's Kill Hitler (remember that? I remember that, but then it is basically my favourite scene ever) the TARDIS apparently decided that "someone I like" should be the default form the interface takes for whoever it's going to talk to. Out of all the people in the world that Clara likes, the TARDIS selecting Clara herself probably was a bit cheeky of her, as she's essentially implying that Clara is full of herself. xP

So, I was inevitably going to want to talk about the scene in the forest with the Doctor being afraid. What I actually find most interesting about it is the realisation after reaching the end of the episode that the monster (the Crooked Man, according to the credits) didn't actually mean him any harm. The Doctor did not need to be afraid of it. Usually when the Doctor is scared by something it's because he has a very good reason to be - not here. True, he was also quite sensibly afraid at being trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension, but that was separate, and his fear of the creature continued even after Emma had opened a way back. It's quite something to learn that even the Doctor of all people can sometimes get scared at essentially nothing, jumping at shadows, frightened of the non-existent bogeyman under the bed. All it took was being in an inherently unsettling situation and already afraid for a different reason, as well as the fact that he didn't know what the creature was, and his scared mind projected the worst possible intentions onto it. Though its actions came across that way, the Crooked Man wasn't ever actually trying to frighten him (heck, it might have been hiding because it was just as scared of him). Ultimately it was the Doctor who made himself afraid. I also really like how he starts outwardly telling the creature - but really himself - what it's trying to do to him as a way of trying to justify why he's getting so frightened.

Yeah. The rest of the episode was really nice too, but that scene in the forest just presses my instalove buttons like I knew it would. I'm very happy it exists.

Additionally, a couple of things that went on in this episode led me to thinking about stuff that isn't all that connected to this episode itself. So here are some tangential rambles, not really that relevant to Hide but will contain minor spoilers for certain things in it.

First, a theory about Clara.

Spoiler: Clara

It keeps being stressed in episodes how this Clara is just a perfectly ordinary girl with an ordinary life and upbringing, even though this surely can't be possible because there's more than one of her out there. So I'm beginning to form a theory: this Clara genuinely is truly ordinary; it's the other Claras (counting Oswin as "a Clara" even though that's not her name after all) who have strange, unnatural origins that make them somehow like a copy of this Clara. Possibly it came about from something that hasn't actually happened to our Clara yet. Victorian Clara was 26 when she died. Ours is 24 right now.

It seems to make some kind of sense if you think about it a certain way. Our Clara is definitely the most what-you-see-is-what-you-get Clara; she's just an ordinary girl who ended up working as a nanny because of circumstances, dreams of travelling the world and misses her late mother. She's never really tried to pretend to be anything else. But as for the other Claras, in both of their episodes there was a certain theme of them not quite being what they seemed to be. Oswin, of course, was desperately pretending she was still a trapped human when she'd actually been turned into a Dalek, but even Victorian Clara can't quite be taken at face value - was she a barmaid, or a governess, or both, or neither? If any of the Claras are going to essentially "deceive" us, I feel like it's more likely to be those two.

Interestingly, I don't think the Doctor has realised this, nor do I think he's likely to. After his investigation of Clara's childhood in Akhaten, I assumed the next logical step for his investigations would be to do the same for Oswin and Victorian Clara to see whether they also had perfectly normal origins and upbringings. But since we never saw it, has he actually done that? I kind of doubt it, now. I get the sense that, because they both died in ways he blamed himself for, and because they both meant a lot to him - Oswin because she was brave in the face of Daleks, saved his life when he was terrified and inspired him to start erasing himself from the universe, and Victorian Clara because he was horribly depressed and she was in the right place at the right time to help him out of it - the Doctor views them in a kind of idealised light and refuses to be suspicious of them. He's projecting all of his suspicion and distrust at the general enigma of Clara-and/or-Oswin Oswald onto the modern-day Clara instead, even though in a way she's the most trustworthy one, because although she's lovely and has been proving herself as a companion, she hasn't happened to do anything to inspire such unconditional attachment from the Doctor, not yet.

...okay, so this is basically just entirely interpretation on my part, and I have little actual evidence to back it up other than how much the Doctor clearly expected and even wanted Emma to tell him that Clara was not just an ordinary girl, but it seems to make sense to me for now. I'll probably be completely re-evaluating this entire thing next week, though.

And some thoughts on what things might be like from the TARDIS's point of view sometimes, because who doesn't love dear old Sexy?

Spoiler: TARDIS

The TARDIS's portrayal as a truly alive, participating character in this episode got me thinking about how much of her own input she might have given behind the scenes in some other recent episodes. For example, in Cold War, the TARDIS's choice of the South Pole as her safe bolt hole when the HADS activated? (yes, I do believe the TARDIS herself gets to choose when/where she ends up for the HADS so long as it's somewhere safe.) I bet she chose such a deliberately awkward place largely because she wanted to teach the Doctor a lesson and make sure he never left the HADS on again - because if it's turned on, then she can't stay there to protect him when he might be in danger!

I also couldn't help but think a little more about Let's Kill Hitler's voice interface scene, given the voice interface's reappearance in Hide. It seems from this that, though the TARDIS herself cannot speak through the voice interface as all it can do is state objective facts, she does get a certain amount of choice as to what form the interface takes. Which makes the LKH scene kind of interesting to think about from the TARDIS's point of view. When the Doctor asks for someone he likes, she shows him Rose, because hey, he liked her, didn't he? He brushes her off because guilt, and so the TARDIS blithely shows him Martha and Donna, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that this would give him even more guilt. Then when he clarifies that he wants "someone I haven't screwed up yet", the TARDIS, having a very unusual definition of "yet", gives him Amelia, even though Amy is very screwed up right now - and in a way this is almost worse for the Doctor, what with how badly he wants it to be the real Amelia when it's not. All of the TARDIS's attempts to give him what he wants just make everything more painful and awkward.

Poor TARDIS. She absolutely loves her Doctor to bits and wants to make him happy as much as she can, but she must find that hard sometimes because she's so incomprehensibly non-linear and alien that she just cannot understand the way the Doctor feels about these tiny, linear, mortal creatures he brings travelling with him. That Let's Kill Hitler scene must have been horrible for her, seeing her Doctor in so much pain - not just from the poison - but not understanding why and not being able to help him because she's incapable of making the voice interface say the words she wants to say to him.

So, regarding the TARDIS's opinion on Clara: possibly she's just being her usual grumpy, feline, slow-to-warm-to-people self. Possibly it might have to do with Clara's impossibility. But I also think it's possible that the TARDIS doesn't like Clara because she can sense how conflicted and worried Clara's existence is making the Doctor and isn't happy about that, so she blames Clara for it because she isn't capable of appreciating that it's not actually Clara's fault.

Spoiler: Next Time

This looks like it'll be an exciting episode! It should be very high stakes - the two most important girls in the Doctor's life, both in terrible danger. It's kind of interesting that he seems willing to let those people scrap the TARDIS so long as they give him a chance to rescue Clara - obviously Clara means a lot to him (albeit in a weird, conflicting way right now), but it's his TARDIS at stake. I imagine he's actually just saying that to buy himself some time and fully intends to save the TARDIS, too. Or he expects the TARDIS to be able to save herself; these guys definitely have no idea what they're getting themselves into trying to rip her apart.

It's also promising to get a sense of all the crazy, alien things that they'll encounter deep within the TARDIS. The swimming pool is in the trailer! You know you've been wanting to see that ever since The Eleventh Hour. And then there's other, more dangerous things - some things it seems even the Doctor isn't really sure about. His beloved ship must have far more secrets than even he knows. Hopefully there'll be plenty of the TARDIS's personality coming across in this episode, too, since she is the setting for most of it.

This episode should hopefully also touch more on the something I talked about in my other tangential ramble above, specifically the Doctor's issues regarding Clara. It looks like Clara is actually going to find out about her other selves really seriously for real this time (no, I will never stop being an optimistic fool about this), if only from the Doctor finally snapping and demanding to know if she's some kind of trap. That line of his as well as a related-sounding one presumably from the same scene were in the BBC America half-series trailer, and since seeing that I've been very excited for this scene - which I wasn't expecting would be so soon! I think the Doctor's got like this so quickly partly because he hasn't yet been fully honest with Clara about her mystery, so with no-one to discuss it with it's just been eating away at him and driving him mad. If he'd talked to her about it earlier, she'd probably have been able to reassure him that she has no idea how these other versions of her exist but as far as she knows she's just herself and certainly isn't out to get him. ...Which, I suppose, means that I'm actually perfectly okay with the fact that Clara finding this out hasn't happened as early as it seemed like it would, because the way things are turning out as a result is much more interesting.

I also wonder if this scene and whatever transpires from it might mean that the Doctor will finally be able to put his distrust aside and start truly appreciating Clara for who she is without any suspicion. In a couple of tiny clips for the week after next's episode that I've seen, he's being very affectionate towards her, more so than he has for most of this series.

Oh, and while we're discussing the finale's title, let me give a couple more thoughts, since I was pretty brief about it last post.

Spoiler: The name of the finale

Yeah, I agree that I don't actually think we're going to hear the Doctor's name in the episode. It's not because I feel like knowing it would ruin the "driving mystery" of the series, though. In all honesty, I don't particularly care what the Doctor's name is; I'm perfectly fine just calling him "the Doctor", and I feel like I know him well enough as a character without needing to know his true name.

No, the reason I don't think we'll learn his name is because I don't think anyone writing this could possibly come up with a name that truly sounded right for him, anyway. I remember a DVD commentary from back in like series 4 in which Steven Moffat joked about how underwhelming it would be if it turned out the Doctor's name was actually something really boring like "Keith" - but really, no matter how exotic a selection of syllables he could come up with, it would still sound kind of underwhelming and random and not adequate to be the name of one of the most powerful, mysterious beings in the universe. To say nothing of how it definitely wouldn't sound impressive enough to be a word that supposedly, like, breaks the universe or something when it's spoken because isn't that meant to be a thing with the Doctor's name and the reason why Trenzalore is bad news?

-elyvorg/Amelia

It's not obscure as such, it's just that the people who watch it tend to be nerdier. I won't pretend I'm not a nerd, but I absorb so much British literature and television it shouldn't be odd that I've heard about it. I haven't had a chance to watch Cold War or Hide yet, but so far, this season's been.... disappointing. The special effects of Rings were so cheesy I was embarrassed to watch it in front of my family... I've heard only good things about Hide, though, so I'm optimistic. The next episodes look promising, though. All have strong writers and I'm looking forward to them.

 

[elyvorg]

Stuff about the upcoming episode: as always, there's a general gallery, and also one showing one of the monsters we'll be seeing. Then there's the usual two preview clips.

I feel like putting my thoughts on all of the above into one big spoiler this time, so...

Spoiler: Things about the Centre of the TARDIS

Okay, first things first: I really like the scene in the second preview clip. The Doctor comes across as terrifying and borderline insane - and though I cannot begin to explain why and have myself sound remotely sensible, I really enjoy seeing that side to him. The Doctor even describes himself as a madman, and although he's done so many times before, in this context it sounds like he very much means the dangerous kind of "madman" as opposed to the more fairytale sense of the word. Those salvage guys had absolutely no idea what they were getting themselves into when they blithely endangered the two most precious things in the Doctor's life. It's also exciting because this scene is presumably pretty early on, giving the impression that the Doctor is going to continue to be this dangerous and unstable for most of the rest of the episode - or, well, perhaps he'll calm down a bit once he's found Clara, but still - which I just know I'm going to love.

Plus, this is pretty interesting because it goes against something I assumed in my thoughts on the Next Time trailer: that he must be bluffing about being willing to give up the TARDIS. Well, technically it appears he is bluffing to the salvage men when he offers them the TARDIS if only they'll help him find Clara - but he still is putting Clara's safety above the TARDIS's here. I suppose it's possible that this is also a bluff and perhaps he didn't really set the self-destruct after all, but... I dunno, he seemed pretty serious about it to me. He is actually willing to put the TARDIS's life at risk in order to have a better chance of saving Clara - that says a huge amount about how much she means to him and how desperate he is not to lose her again. Also worth noting is that if the TARDIS does self-destruct, the Doctor will die too; perhaps that's why he's okay with possibly destroying the TARDIS, because he won't be able to care about it when he's dead. So basically what this amounts to is that if he doesn't find Clara safe and sound, he's going to kill himself. That's... quite a thing. I am already massively enjoying the way the Doctor is dealing with the desperate situation he's been forced into by these salvage men; I cannot wait to see more of this in the actual episode.

I also can't help but think that the Doctor's insane overprotectiveness of Clara here makes for an interesting and somewhat puzzling contrast with the Next Time trailer's indication that this is the episode where his suspicion and distrust of Clara due to her impossibility reaches breaking point. On the one hand he's so desperate to save Clara that he's putting the TARDIS's life, and his own, on the line to do so, and yet while this is going on we know he's also got to be wondering if Clara is actually just some kind of trap. I find this really intriguing, and I look forward to being able to make more sense of it when I see the episode.


As for that gallery, it shows Clara in the TARDIS's library, which is cool - especially the fact that it contains a book entitled "History of the Time War". I wonder if Clara's curiosity will get the better of her? I'm imagining it will, knowing her - and she'll probably regret it. But then there's always a chance she might not peek inside after all out of respect for the Doctor's privacy, since she is vaguely aware of what the Time War did to him thanks to events on Akhaten. We'll see. Also, unrelatedly, in some of those library pictures Clara seems to be speaking into her hand in a manner that reminds me of the nanorecorders from Day of the Moon. She seems to be doing it in the first preview clip, too, even though that must take place before she meets up with the Doctor (the preview clips are always released in chronological order). Hmm.

Those egg-like things the Doctor's holding in a couple of the images are circuits from the architectural reconfiguration system, according to the Radio Times. So it's those things that rearrange the TARDIS's rooms and stuff (when she's not doing it herself, that is)? They could come in handy for him, then.

That monster in the other images looks rather creepy. What exactly is it? In all honesty, the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw it was that it was once a pair of humans who'd got lost in the TARDIS and become horribly deformed and fused together by all the crazy radiation and stuff that they must have encountered in her depths. But that can't actually be what it is, though. *shudder* Right? Surely the Doctor wouldn't have let that happen? And yet, after how terrifying the Doctor was in that preview clip, right now I'm not really willing to put anything past him.

In completely unrelated news, as yet another part of the 50th anniversary celebrations this year, they're doing a Doctor Who Prom again! It'll be on the evening of Saturday July 13th, and the morning of Sunday July 14th. I'm pretty excited just at the prospect of there being another Prom, as I always love the show's music, added to which certain information I've come across has all but indicated that this Prom will probably feature an appearance from the Doctor just like the last one did, so that'll undoubtedly be delightful and fun just like his silly non-canon appearances always are. But this time around I'm extra-excited, because I'm actually going to attempt to get myself tickets to one of them (probably the Sunday one as it's way cheaper). To actually be there as they play would be truly amazing - and if a certain someone does indeed show up, to be physically in the presence of the Doctor (technically Matt Smith acting but shush it's totally the Doctor where is your imagination) would make me the absolute happiest shameless fangirl ever. =D


It would appear they are still busy filming the 50th anniversary special; a photo of a certain two characters' footwear was put up on Twitter the other day, and that alone made me ridiculously happy to see. Possibly even more so than that picture of a certain two actors hanging out at the readthrough did; these feet are in-character feet. =D

-elyvorg/Amelia

 

[The Joker.]

Haven't posted here in a while, but I'm looking forward to the latest episode tonight, I'm hoping that they'll try and develop the relationship between Clara and the Doctor because I feel that their relation ship isn't as dynamic as past companions and almost feels a bit cold, just in my opinion though. I doubt there will be much opportunity for development as the plot device is centred about them being separated but I hope that will happen in later episodes.

Also I thought I might share this here, for the 50th Anniversary, my brother is doing this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-22280890

-The Joker./Dream Lord

 

[elyvorg]

Haven't posted here in a while, but I'm looking forward to the latest episode tonight, I'm hoping that they'll try and develop the relationship between Clara and the Doctor because I feel that their relation ship isn't as dynamic as past companions and almost feels a bit cold, just in my opinion though. I doubt there will be much opportunity for development as the plot device is centred about them being separated but I hope that will happen in later episodes.

Oh, don't worry - I think there actually will be! Seriously; although I obviously can't say for certain and might be totally wrong, I've been getting the impression that this episode in particular is going to develop the Doctor and Clara's relationship more, in that they should hopefully both learn a lot more about each other throughout the episode, despite spending a chunk of it separated. I can kind of see where you're coming from saying that their relationship so far hasn't quite been as dynamic as a Doctor-companion partnership should be, which I think is mostly down to how they haven't quite been truthful with each other - or, well, the Doctor hasn't been entirely truthful with Clara. But I have what feel like well-founded hopes that that will finally begin to change today!

Also I thought I might share this here, for the 50th Anniversary, my brother is doing this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-22280890

-The Joker./Dream Lord

Hee, that's really awesome of your brother, both to have a room like that and to be using it to raise money for a good cause. I hope lots of people take him up on his offer! I'm also amused at how that TARDIS of his gets hired out for weddings a lot. Of course everyone would want a TARDIS at their wedding! Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, right? =D


~just over two hours!~

-elyvorg/Amelia

 

[Will-powered Spriter]

Well OK I suddenly don't understand anything.

I'm not even going to bother talking about the episode because my brain simply hurts too much.

Edit: OK, brain hurts a little less.

Spoiler: Only a little, mind

OK, so what? Why were the time zombies always so blurry on camera? How did Clara end up so far in the tardis? What caused the older guy to fall to his zombie-y death? Why did the Doctor decide to pretend to be evil to manipulate the salvage guys? What was with the music during the magnet beam thing? Why was the Tardis suddenly so evil?

Also the spoilery thing Clara saw in the book is worryingly suggestive that the final episode will actually reveal its namesake. I don't want it to do that.

 

[Armando Payne]

Spoiler: Quick Question About (Seemingly) Every Single Dr Who Episode Ever.

Why are the endings so anticlimactic? (This episode the well, time rift, last week's everybody's in love, the week before Singing Duran Duran stops Nuclear Holocaust and there's plenty of others, just why can't people write a Dr. Who epi where the ending is great. (Note this is a legitimate query so no moaning about how my opinion is stupid because I'm not saying howawesomedrwhoislikesrslygr8tstthingevr and stuff.) Also love the fact how the TARDIS is 99% Corridors also the Swimming Pool reference. (I'm pretty sure there was supposed to be a swimming pool scene in an earlier Doctor Who episode wasn't there.)

The reason why I wasn't around the last week was because I absolutely detested Hide for the simple reason as in I had that same basic idea for a Dr. Who episode 2-4 years ago. (The only difference was it was just 1 man in 1980s Miami and the monster thing wasn't a horny demon but instead the man himself. (Basically it's 1980s Miami this man's being haunted by a ghost it turns out it's a ghost of his wife because he murdered his wife and his best friend because he misinterpreted their surprise birthday party plans for the man for an affair. Also it's a Doctor-lite episode and the man gets brought back in time to stop him from murdering them thus making everything correct. (The whole episode would've taken place in his manor house.))) Also if I did mention it I'd probably get moaned at because 11th Doctor's Jesus according to the main dude here.

 

[Becoming]

Spoiler: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

I'm going to start off by saying that I feel cheated. There was all this development - and the Doctor telling Clara that he's met her previously - and it was erased. But at the same time the crew members were acting differently at the end, as if the development from the episode did happen, so I'm hoping that Clara will somehow remember. And does the Doctor remember? He said something about two days fitting into the space of one, so I have a feeling he does. I just wish we got to see more of Clara's reaction to finding out about her other selves, because she was mostly confused. She didn't quite believe the Doctor.

I will say that I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't see much of the swimming pool, but the places they did show us were interesting. There was a room of important items (for lack of a better name), like the Doctor's cot and a mini-TARDIS that I'm 99% sure that was made by Amy. (I'm thinking back to that bedroom scenes in Let's Kill Hitler where Mels is tossing the mini-TARDIS around). If that's the case, it was a nice throwback. And then there was the library! I'm intrigued by those bottles with 'Encyclopedia of Gallifrey' on them. I'm guessing one drinks it and gains the knowledge? And I think this library is solely about Time Lords and Gallifrey - the whole library is dedicated to that. Surely there's another library for earth books, and another for other planets...but then again there's THE library for Silence in the Library...never mind. And of course there's the 'History of the Time War' book that contains the Doctor's name (which Clara forgot). I'm not going to think into this too much, I think it's just a little hint for the finale. But it's concerning that someone could just read the book and find out the Doctor's name. Some secret.

The interactions between the Doctor and Clara in this episode were nice. It was cool that he put the TARIDS on basic controls (or something like that) for her...it proved to be a bad idea, but it was nice of him to try and bring his two girls together (the other girl being Sexy). And I was surprised that Clara punched the Doctor. Twice. And of course there's the scene where he tells her about Oswin and Victorian Clara. He realizes that Clara is herself, it's about time. And he took her on the TARDIS to try and protect her, apparently. As for the TARDIS herself, I like how she's becoming more of a character. She still dislikes Clara, and she's screwing about with the crew members. I don't quite understand why she didn't help the Doctor though. She seemed content with screwing him over too.

The story with the crew was a bit weird. Tricky had an accident and lost his eyesight, voice, and memory, and now has artificial eyes and a voice box? Okay...Although I guess there are some parallels with this (where is was being kept a secret from Tricky himself) and the Doctor not telling Clara about her other selves, because both Tricky and Clara had past lives that were kept from them.

I'm not sure I understand those monsters. If I interpreted it correctly, they're the result of the characters staying in that room too long and their cells liquefying and there skin boiling. That explains the conjoined one, because it was a fusion of Gregor and Tricky. The reason they appeared beforehand was time leaking through the TARDIS and bringing them to the past. Clara escaped that room in time, so her monster self was never created, right? (From the previews, I was under the impression that the Doctor had created them before. Like it said 'contains Clara' and I thought the Doctor had gotten DNA of Clara to try and figure out what was up with her, and ended up creating those things.) They were definitely human, but unless the deep frying made them evil, I don't think Clara would have killed that other guy. But it didn't attack her so much, so maybe it on some level recognized her and wanted that not to happen. And now I realize the Doctor was actually really freaked! Because he realized that it was Clara and he thought that he was going to lose her again!

Spoiler: next time

Vastra, Jenny and Strax return! They're actually playing quite a big role. AGMGTW, The Snowmen, this episode, and the finale...it's nice to have recurring characters again. One thing I missed during the Pond era was the lack of friends/family of the characters. It was just Amy, Rory and River. Compare that with the first four series. Mickey, Jackie, Jack, Wilfred...it's good that the Doctor's making friends again.

Does anyone know when this episode is meant to be set? I think it's during Victorian times, but there's also a spaceship. But then again time travel. You know the room with the plants that you see on the trailer? Is that the same room that Vastra interviewed Clara in during The Snowmen? Because that would mean it's around the same time. This also means Clara dresses up in Victorian clothes. Will she possibly have some interaction with people Victorian Clara knew?

Also, according to Wikepedia, this is meant to be the 100th broadcast episode since the start of the new series!

Spoiler: more stuff about the finale

So the most interesting thing to mention is this quote going around from Jenna: "all I can say is that Clara hasn't just met the Doctor three times before." Tenses aside, I think it's safe to say that a fourth incarnation of Clara will be appearing in the finale. This will probably be where Clara finds out about her other selves (and remembers this time) and might shed some light on what the hell is up with Clara. But the finale is also very much about the Doctor's name, and presumably is set on the Fields of Trenzalore, and possibly features River finding out the Doctor's name...is Clara connected to this at all, or is she connected to something completely different (like the Great Intelligence)?

The thing that unsettles me is that the 50th comes right after. So Clara finds out about whatever and then it's onto Ten and Rose. Unless the 50th is a continuation of the finale? We're all familiar with Sherlock and the fact that Moffat writes it, right? I wouldn't put it past him to have a six month cliff hanger at the end of the finale that's resolved in the 50th. And it it's epic and about the Doctor's name and everything, it might explain why we're seeing Ten and Rose again. Epic events call for extra companions.

Finally, River. She's appearing in the finale, so I'm trying to guess where she might be in her timeline. I think after The Wedding of River Song, because the Doctor said 'I just told you my name. He didn't, but I'd find that a strange thing to say if River already knew his name. I think the River we see here is going to be at a very late point in her timeline, nearing her trip to The Towers. Obviously River's not going to be killed off, but I think she'll be written off with the Doctor taking her to The Towers. We saw that he was taking her there in that short (I don't remember the name, but it had like three versions of the Doctor appearing) but I think it would need to take place on the actual show for everybody to get it. I mean River could appear with future incarnations of the Doctor, but I'd prefer her to be written off during Eleven's tenure on the show. But not too soon mind you, because I'm hoping to see more of her in series eight!

EDIT: Okay so today I bought a HDMI cable. I had to play about for a while to get the right resolution on my laptop, but now I can project my laptop screen onto the TV. So I can watch new DW on the BBC iPlayer on the TV screen. Pretty neat. And seen as I can play it on the TV I can get mum to watch the latest episodes when they come out instead of waiting for them to air here (because we're like two weeks behind).

Becoming/Clara Oswin Oswald/Clara Oswald/Oswin Oswald/possible fourth incarnation of Clara Oswin Oswald

 

[Poetry]

Spoiler: Journey to the Centre of Awfulness

Ok... what?

So we get all this incredibly dramatic build-up and danger with the zombie-type creatures and the self-destruct sequence and Clara missing and the three scrap guys threatening to tear the TARDIS apart... and all we get at the end is a simple, re-write the past, nothing ever happened resolution? It appears that everything about this episode (including the afore-mentioned self-destruct sequence) was a lie.

I had a funny feeling that the zombie creatures were something typically shocking and plot-twisting like being Clara in the future (my personal hypothesis was that they were corrupted memories of the TARDIS' or the Doctor's past companions or something similar) and we got confirmation that three people turned into them: Clara and those two guys who were stuck together... but there were definitely more than three pursuing the group at one time. I seem to remember seeing more than one individual zombie on screen at a time (which we weren't given an explanation for) so... who were they? Were they copies of Clara? Was it that other guy who died underneath the console room? Was it the result of the TARDIS throwing a tantrum because it misses Donna? WHAT'S HAPPENING?

And then there was the promise of us seeing more of the TARDIS than ever before; what came of it? A library, the weird sun room, the engine room, the fake "snarl" room before the engine room, a glimpse of the very intriguing pool and of course, a helluva lot of corridors. So. Many. Corridors.
Oh, and not forgetting that room with the cot and the little model TARDIS. Although it did bug me slightly that we never got a wide shot to see what the entirety of the room looked like to get a sense of scale and... you know, what it actually was. I don't understand; was it suggesting that the Doctor was raised in the TARDIS as a baby, or was the cot for someone else? Someone please elaborate.

The library portion was interesting, I have to admit, but it was frustrating how they employed the mechanic of "character discovers something important but is interrupted by an enemy just before they can say it out loud to inform the audience what it is they found out". I think Doctor Who employs that mechanic more than any other television show I've ever seen and it drives me absolutely mental. It was pretty similar with the Encyclopaedia of Gallifrey thing as well. Unless the writers are planning to return to that particularly confusing element of the library later on in the series then a proper explanation for what it was would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much.

So yeah, all in all... not a terrible episode (I don't think I'll every come to detest an episode more than I did with Cold War) but it just didn't deliver at all. The plot was messy, the resolution was a joke and there were too many questions, not enough answers. And I have to admit, I'm not remotely interested in Clara's backstory anymore, it seems like they've been dragging it on for too long without any progression that I've just lost interest (rather like a laborious storyline in Eastenders). How will it end? I dunno, probably with some cop-out ending where it's revealed that her incarnations are just an illusion or that she's actually a hyper-intelligent time-travelling Cyberman or something.

Frankly, I'm not expecting great things to come of this series' finale.

 

[elyvorg]

...whoa, was I seriously almost the only person who thought this was a really great episode? Because this was a really great episode.

Spoiler: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Fun, clever, timey-wimey plot! It's always a lot of fun when an episode's plot actually centres around time travel, like this one's did. The Doctor constantly refusing to tell Clara what the zombie creatures were fits with the way time travel was established to work in The Angels Take Manhattan: once you know your own future, it becomes very difficult to change it. On the other hand, that episode also showed that you can still change your own future if you create a situation that's paradoxically inconsistent with how you know your future is meant to go, which is how the Doctor managed to save Clara and himself (and tried to save the brothers) from being zombiefied here. And yes, in the end the main problem was all erased by pressing a reset button - a literal button at that - but, it actually made sense for the button to do that! That button was the remote for the magno-grab which damaged the TARDIS at the beginning. Had there incidentally happened to be another version of the same remote in the Doctor's hands at the exact moment the magno-grab was about to happen, the Doctor would have been able to use the remote to stop it happening and the TARDIS would never have been damaged in the first place. It just so happened that the Doctor, in the timeline in which the TARDIS was damaged, pocketed the remote when he found it in the salvage bay. This meant he had it on him throughout the episode and was therefore able to throw it to his past self through the crack, enabling this whole disaster to have been prevented in a different timeline, which is the timeline we ended up with. It may have been jokingly presented as a Big Friendly Button which Magically Fixes Everything, but there is a proper, well-plotted-out reason why it does so, and I find that really clever.

Another thing I like about this episode - which admittedly only really applies on rewatches, but still - is that its monsters were examples of ones you could feel sorry for, once you know what they are. It's hard not to cringe in sympathy at the hideously melted zombie that you know is actually Clara, and to wonder if she might still have a tiny spark of humanity left in her (which would just make it even worse, really). Similarly, for the zombie that stalked Clara through the library, the one with its hand over its face - in other words, the one that used to be the Doctor - I can't help but imagine that it - he? - probably never actually wanted to hurt her. What if some semblance of the Doctor was still in there, and he was only following her because he was desperately trying to somehow apologise to her for letting her die again? This may not actually be what was going on there, but it's still interesting (and kind of heartbreaking) to think about. Although we didn't exactly experience it ourselves, there was a third timeline here in which the Doctor didn't manage to prevent anyone from being melted by the Eye of Harmony, and the glimpses we get of it from the second timeline in which it never happened is enough to show us how horrible it must have been.

(Seriously, this episode! It has multiple timelines! It has flashes of events from a horrific alternate future that was thankfully averted! It has changing past events in order to enable the best possible future where nothing bad happened at all! These are all really neat storytelling elements that it's only possible to have in a story about time travel, which Doctor Who honestly does pretty rarely, even though it's a time travel show.)

I should probably mention the Doctor's self-destruct bluff and how foolish I now feel for being completely convinced by it when I saw the preview clip. (To be fair, on watching the actual episode, I did start to somewhat doubt myself after he casually flicked it down to thirty minutes and was even willing to go to fifteen.) The reason I feel so silly about this now is the way the Doctor joked about putting on the frowny face to make it convincing, and that he didn't even think he did it that well. Apparently I found it really convincing anyway - the Doctor is scarily good at doing impressions of himself in a mood he's not actually in. Either way, it was still fun how he deliberately made himself seem terrifying in order to get the brothers to do what he wanted. Also much love for the "salvage of a lifetime" actually meaning Clara - of course she's immeasurably more precious to him than any amount of monetary value. But apart from that scene, the Doctor didn't really spend any of the rest of the episode being terrifying at all - however, I'm okay with this, because I equally enjoyed seeing him being kind of frantic and desperate to both save Clara and to stop the brothers from hurting the TARDIS any more than they already had.

Yay for more of the TARDIS being a participating character! In this particular instance she came across a lot like a wounded, frightened animal, poor thing, lashing out to try and protect herself, even sometimes at the people who she should know are trying to help her. At least she held onto her senses enough to try and keep Clara safe - it's kind of sweet that the TARDIS understands that Clara is precious to the Doctor and so tried to protect her even though she doesn't personally like her. I wonder if the TARDIS and Clara have got over their little tiff now after the events of this episode, given how the TARDIS helped the Doctor save Clara, and Clara helped the Doctor save the TARDIS. (The beginning of the episode with the Doctor trying to encourage them to make friends was kind of adorable. Of course he'd want the two most important girls in his life to get along. x3)

As for Clara herself, I enjoy how she became thoroughly freaked out at the Doctor apparently keeping zombies in his TARDIS and therefore spent a good deal of the episode decidedly not happy with him for not telling her the whole truth. I think I like seeing behaviour like this from her probably because it's such a contrast to how Amy would have been in the beginning of her run - not that I minded Amy's outlook, of course, but it's refreshing to have a companion who is well aware that the Doctor isn't perfect and isn't afraid to show that she knows this. But at least her distrust of him didn't last, and she ultimately understood that he was only hiding the truth to protect her. I also adore how, when the Doctor was clearly upset about not knowing how to save the TARDIS from exploding, Clara went and held his hand. She had no idea that doing so would give him the eureka moment he needed to solve this; she just did it to comfort him. Aww. Clara is lovely, and I am enjoying seeing her increasingly care about the Doctor even though she's well aware of some of his flaws.

On the Doctor's end, just as I'd earnestly hoped it would, this episode did indeed see him finally resolve his issues about Clara. Him manically demanding to know if she's a trap and then barely a moment later desperately clinging to her to stop her falling off the cliff just goes to show the conflict he's always had regarding Clara. On the one hand he's deeply attached to her and just wants to believe in her and travel with her and be happy, but he hasn't been able to truly do that because he can't help but think that her existence is too good to be true and things would never really be that easy for him. It seems like he's spent the past four episodes with part of him honestly believing that Clara was just acting, pretending to know nothing about meeting him before, and so he never told her he'd met her before either in case it made her drop the act and spring whatever trap she had. It took being in a situation where he thought they were about to die for the Doctor to finally tell her the truth - at which Clara's utterly confused reaction was all he ever needed to realise that she'd never been hiding anything from him at all.

So! Despite that, in the end, the events of this episode technically never happened, I personally do not feel that cheated by this. Well, I am slightly disappointed that although we got the long-awaited moment of the Doctor telling Clara the truth about her past lives, it didn't stick. However, it seems like the Doctor had a very important reason to want her to forget everything: not because of her learning about her other selves, but because she'd also learnt something about his name along the way. So even though she's forgotten that, I'm sure that's a very deliberately-sown seed for the finale here; it'll probably be lingering around in her subconscious even though she can't consciously remember it. Additionally, the shot of the Van Baalen brothers at the end, having still resolved their issues even though they don't remember the events that led them to do so, proves that feelings are still retained from the now-never-happened timeline even though memories aren't. So whether or not the Doctor remembers the events of the episode (it's left kind of ambiguous, but I wouldn't be surprised if he actually does, what with being a Time Lord and all), he will still definitely retain the resolution of his issues about Clara. That is a development which still did happen despite the erasure, and a very important one I find it to be, too. Here's to more heartmeltingly adorable affection from the Doctor towards Clara now that he completely trusts her, like he always should have done! Next week's episode is going to be lovely.

Spoiler: Next Time

This looks like it'll be fun, with that seemingly sweet old lady being a villain and people being... dipped into vats of venom, or something? That's what it looks like. Bleargh. And that rocket is presumably also part of the villain's plans, since, although this is Victorian times, she's probably an alien of some kind. But aside from that, more importantly - more Vastra, Jenny and Strax! I really love those three, and they already feel like such a staple of the current series even though they've only appeared twice before.

Also more importantly, this is the same time period that Victorian Clara came from, and our Clara is going to be dressing the part in this episode. So, hmm. The big question is: even though the events of Journey were erased, is the Doctor now going to tell Clara about her past lives anyway? I really think that the main reason he never did up until now was because he didn't fully trust her, but now that he does, he should have no reason not to tell her, right?

Possible reasons he might not tell her after all could be that he might be worried it'd trigger her memories from the events of Journey when he told her on the cliffside, and therefore she might also end up remembering stuff about his name that he doesn't want her to. Alternatively, he could keep it from her simply because he seemed to think she'd be happier not knowing; worrying about having died twice before and whether it'll happen again might not be something he wants her to have to deal with. (I would be somewhat disappointed in him if he did it for that reason, though, because withholding the unpleasant truth from his companions in order to keep them happy was a tendency he had back in Series 6 that I thought he'd long since got over.)

So, let's assume that the Doctor doesn't tell Clara about who she is in between episodes. Why, then, is Clara dressing in Victorian clothes for this episode when she doesn't usually bother to blend in? Was it Clara's decision, and this merely coincidentally happens to be the one time she decides she wants to dress era-appropriately? Or is it that the Doctor suggested to her to dress the part this time, for reasons that on his end would probably have to do with Victorian Clara even though he hasn't told her about her other selves and that would be kind of underhanded of him. Hmm.

Another relevant thought: even if the Doctor doesn't tell Clara about her other selves, what's to stop Vastra or Jenny (or possibly Strax, but I doubt he remembers her name) from letting something slip simply by seeing her and being all "Clara! But how is that possible?" That'd definitely make Clara wonder how on earth they know her name and yet why they seem so surprised to see her, and she wouldn't let that go until she got answers. It is possible that the Doctor could try and avoid this outcome by going to Vastra and Jenny by himself first, explaining the situation and asking them not to give any indication they know her - but I imagine that would probably just result in Vastra pointing out that he really shouldn't be trying to hide this from his friend in the first place.

So basically, although yesterday's episode was technically yet another false alarm for it, and although there's been no indication of it in the Next Time trailer for this next episode, I think that having the same setting as The Snowmen means that it's at least decently likely the next episode might finally finally have Clara find out about herself.

(yes I am still being an optimistic fool about this; it is fun to be. :3)

To the people who liked the episode less than they might have done because they didn't understand certain parts of the plot: I'd recommend watching it again sometime, if you want to clear some things up. Seeing it a second time makes it a lot easier to piece things together and figure out how it all worked. I truly believe that everything about the plot of the episode does make sense and is honestly pretty cleverly-plotted, even if it might be hard to grasp it all the first time around because there's a lot going on. I didn't fully understand everything until my second viewing myself.


Armando Payne, regarding Cold War's resolution, which I didn't bring up at the time of the episode because I assumed you'd figure it out yourself, but you still seem to be misunderstanding it: Clara singing Hungry Like the Wolf was not what stopped the missiles. Of course it wasn't. The missiles stopped because Skaldak decided to be merciful, like the Doctor and Clara had been persuading him to be. Clara singing was a completely separate thing - the Professor had previously suggested she sing to keep her mind off her fear, and in that moment she was terrified that she might have been about to die.


Also, Becoming, I'd like to reply to a few of the things in your episode spoiler, because you said some interesting stuff that gives me an opportunity to bring up some things I didn't get around to mentioning in my own main episode ramble.

Spoiler: Becoming

And does the Doctor remember? He said something about two days fitting into the space of one, so I have a feeling he does.

Yeah, that made me think so, too - but then again, it's possible that the Doctor only said that because he had some vague flicker of memory that told him they'd just had two days compressed into one even though he didn't remember why. As the scene with the brothers showed us, little bits and pieces of recollection do still remain even if most of it gets erased. So it's pretty ambiguous with the Doctor there, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he does remember.

and a mini-TARDIS that I'm 99% sure that was made by Amy. (I'm thinking back to that bedroom scenes in Let's Kill Hitler where Mels is tossing the mini-TARDIS around). If that's the case, it was a nice throwback.

Oh, I'm sure that must have been one of Amelia's model TARDISes. I'd have to check to be certain, but I think it might perhaps come from the scene at the end of Flesh and Stone where they go to Amy's room and she tries to come onto him - I feel like he might have picked up one of her model TARDISes and brought it with him into the control room at the end? Not sure. Either way, I find it adorable that he kept it. :3

I'm intrigued by those bottles with 'Encyclopedia of Gallifrey' on them. I'm guessing one drinks it and gains the knowledge?

Hee, I thought that too. Liquid encyclopedias! That's such a delightfully abstract way for a book to work, which is only fitting for information about Gallifrey found in the TARDIS library.

But it's concerning that someone could just read the book and find out the Doctor's name. Some secret.

Hm. I don't think it's entirely clear on whether she literally read the Doctor's name, or whether she just read something along the lines of "The Doctor has a name. It is hidden at *insert weird place somewhere in the universe*." and therefore got curious enough that the Doctor became worried she'd want to try and find it.

Clara escaped that room in time, so her monster self was never created, right?

Right. The Clara monster (and the Doctor one) were still there throughout most of the episode because of the alternate timeline in which they didn't escape. Before that point in the Eye of Harmony room, everyone turning into monsters was how the future was going to happen, until the Doctor averted it; it was only then that his and Clara's monster stopped existing.

They were definitely human, but unless the deep frying made them evil, I don't think Clara would have killed that other guy. But it didn't attack her so much, so maybe it on some level recognized her and wanted that not to happen.

Yeah; I doubt the deep-frying would have made them evil, but I imagine it must have sent them mad with the pain and the horror of it all, such that they wouldn't really have been in control of their actions even if they did kill anyone (I think the Clara one killed Bram, didn't she?). I agree that I think she recognised herself and that seemed to make her hesitate there.

Oh, yes, and about that hint Jenna gave regarding the finale...

Spoiler: Claras

So there's more Claras that the Doctor has already met? Huh. The only thing I can think of is that the Clara the Doctor met on the swings in the prequel was actually a different Clara to the one he's travelling with now. It makes slight sense to me in that, assuming she is the same, I'm actually kind of surprised she still hasn't recognised the Doctor as the sad man she met that day. Her being different would, however, somehow mean that each Clara has exactly the same mother, because we got a glimpse of Ellie Oswald in the prequel, too. So eh. I'm probably talking rubbish here; they'd be unlikely to plant such an important clue in a prequel that most people won't even see.

Jenna also mentions that Steven planted hints about this a couple of years ago, so apparently we should be looking as far back as Amy's time in the TARDIS to find these other Claras? Unless Jenna isn't talking about the Clara part there and those hints were to do with the Question, which would make more sense.

Spoiler: Brief spoilers for yesterday's episode

I find it somewhat plausible, now that Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS has given Clara a potential future connection to the Doctor's name, that it could be something weird and timey to do with his name that ultimately results in multiple Claras being created all across the universe. Otherwise I don't really see how Clara's mystery and the Doctor's name, two entirely different overarching plot threads, could both fit together so nicely as the plot of the same episode.

-elyvorg/Amelia

 

[Armando Payne]

Yeah I knew that I still believe that version's more random and so better. Also if I was going to change Cold War, the main thing I would've changed was One Of Our Submarines and Dodo/Lurker would've been on the soundtrack (because '80s and Submarines, g'doy!) instead of Vienna. I liked the epi only crap ending like every single other Dr. Who epi. OK Cold War, Random Spaceship transporting them because.

Spoiler: Concerning Next Time Elyvorg

There not venom, they're sweety liquids, haven't you ever seen The Happiness Patrol? It's the same basic plot only instead of Killer Liquorice Allsorts Robot Thing it's all Django Unchained-y.

 

[VampirateMace]

I haven't posted much lately, because I've been an episode behind everyone for a while now... but I feel this:

And some thoughts on what things might be like from the TARDIS's point of view sometimes, because who doesn't love dear old Sexy?

Spoiler: TARDIS

The TARDIS's portrayal as a truly alive, participating character in this episode got me thinking about how much of her own input she might have given behind the scenes in some other recent episodes. For example, in Cold War, the TARDIS's choice of the South Pole as her safe bolt hole when the HADS activated? (yes, I do believe the TARDIS herself gets to choose when/where she ends up for the HADS so long as it's somewhere safe.) I bet she chose such a deliberately awkward place largely because she wanted to teach the Doctor a lesson and make sure he never left the HADS on again - because if it's turned on, then she can't stay there to protect him when he might be in danger!

I also couldn't help but think a little more about Let's Kill Hitler's voice interface scene, given the voice interface's reappearance in Hide. It seems from this that, though the TARDIS herself cannot speak through the voice interface as all it can do is state objective facts, she does get a certain amount of choice as to what form the interface takes. Which makes the LKH scene kind of interesting to think about from the TARDIS's point of view. When the Doctor asks for someone he likes, she shows him Rose, because hey, he liked her, didn't he? He brushes her off because guilt, and so the TARDIS blithely shows him Martha and Donna, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that this would give him even more guilt. Then when he clarifies that he wants "someone I haven't screwed up yet", the TARDIS, having a very unusual definition of "yet", gives him Amelia, even though Amy is very screwed up right now - and in a way this is almost worse for the Doctor, what with how badly he wants it to be the real Amelia when it's not. All of the TARDIS's attempts to give him what he wants just make everything more painful and awkward.

Poor TARDIS. She absolutely loves her Doctor to bits and wants to make him happy as much as she can, but she must find that hard sometimes because she's so incomprehensibly non-linear and alien that she just cannot understand the way the Doctor feels about these tiny, linear, mortal creatures he brings travelling with him. That Let's Kill Hitler scene must have been horrible for her, seeing her Doctor in so much pain - not just from the poison - but not understanding why and not being able to help him because she's incapable of making the voice interface say the words she wants to say to him.

So, regarding the TARDIS's opinion on Clara: possibly she's just being her usual grumpy, feline, slow-to-warm-to-people self. Possibly it might have to do with Clara's impossibility. But I also think it's possible that the TARDIS doesn't like Clara because she can sense how conflicted and worried Clara's existence is making the Doctor and isn't happy about that, so she blames Clara for it because she isn't capable of appreciating that it's not actually Clara's fault.

Could be expanded upon:

Spoiler: Because she did...

I agree the voice interface probably frustrates her, but Sexy eventually did figure out how to talk to him through the voice interface, "Fish Fingers..." and that give us the knowledge that she knows she can, in fact, use it to communicate, even if it was only designed to state facts. So the voice interface's explanation of why it picked Clara as 'the person you hold in highest esteem' could very well be a legitimate insult.

It also suggests the voice interface first appeared as the Doctor, because he really does think of himself as the most superior being around. Remember the 3rd Dr clip, where when offered help, he says yes and asks for a silicon rod... so he can stir his tea?

 

[elyvorg]

Spoiler: Because she did...

I agree the voice interface probably frustrates her, but Sexy eventually did figure out how to talk to him through the voice interface, "Fish Fingers..." and that give us the knowledge that she knows she can, in fact, use it to communicate, even if it was only designed to state facts. So the voice interface's explanation of why it picked Clara as 'the person you hold in highest esteem' could very well be a legitimate insult.

It also suggests the voice interface first appeared as the Doctor, because he really does think of himself as the most superior being around. Remember the 3rd Dr clip, where when offered help, he says yes and asks for a silicon rod... so he can stir his tea?

I'd never considered before that the voice interface saying "fish fingers and custard" could have been Sexy managing to make her voice heard. I don't personally think that can be it, though. As I talked about in my ramble that you replied to, I don't think Sexy comprehends the way the Doctor feels about his companions, so I doubt she'd understand the significance fish fingers and custard has to him, since that's very strongly connected to his attachment to Amelia. Even if she could manage to speak a few words of her own through the voice interface - which I also doubt thanks to The Doctor's Wife making it clear she can never talk to him again - that she'd specifically choose to say those words doesn't make any sense to me.

The reason I believe the voice interface told him "fish fingers and custard" was because, not too much earlier, he was asking it for "something for the pain"; I believe fish fingers and custard works like a painkiller to the Eleventh Doctor. It may sound strange, but it's the only thing I can think of that makes sense of both why the voice interface said that and why, although he was in so much pain in the TARDIS, when he showed up at the restaurant later in the episode he seemed to be fine, at least to begin with. I do not believe that he would have been able to block out that much pain through sheer mental willpower alone. And although fish fingers and custard is one weird-as-heck painkiller, if we accept that it does work like that to him, it would also explain why he was craving it shortly after regenerating, as well as why his regenerative trauma seemed to be mostly in check after he'd had some.

(Because of this, I have this little pet theory that, due to wacky Time Lord biology, every different incarnation of the Doctor has a different foodstuff that happens to work like a painkiller to him in specifically that incarnation, which he may possibly find himself craving shortly after regenerating to help fix his post-regenerative trauma. If you remember The Christmas Invasion, the Tenth Doctor spends most of the episode either comatose or struggling to articulate what exactly he needs, and then it turns out that what he needed was tea, and as soon as he's had some he's completely recovered. So tea would be the painkiller for the Tenth Doctor! This is a totally silly theory that is probably not remotely meant to be true, but I like it anyway. I'm not sure as I've never actually seen the relevant post-regeneration episode, but am I right in what I've gathered that celery could possibly work the same way for the Fifth Doctor?)

As for the voice interface first appearing as the Doctor... well. While the Doctor generally is the most superior being in the room, there's a difference between "acknowledging as superior" and "holding in high esteem". I'm aware the Doctor has been known to be genuinely pretty arrogant sometimes, but it varies between and even within incarnations. Around the time of Let's Kill Hitler, he absolutely hated himself. There is no way the voice interface chose his image because he holds himself in high esteem. Presumably the original default setting for it was simply "the same face as the person it's talking to".

But even though I don't think the TARDIS herself can actually speak through the voice interface, I still agree that her choosing Clara as the image for the voice interface in Hide could have been meant as an insult. Sexy would know that, if Clara asked, the interface would explain that it was set to select someone held in high esteem, so by choosing Clara out of all the possible people Clara likes she's still essentially giving off the message of "I think you're full of yourself", even if Sexy isn't the one saying the voice interface's words.

-elyvorg/Amelia

 

[VampirateMace]

I'm sorry, but I don't buy your theroy, he was clearly still in pain. Though, I believe hearing those words from what appears to be young Amy, gave him the motivation to do stuff even though he was in pain, so in that way the words may have, in a way, been a painkiller. Like a Tae-Kwon-Do fighter shounting 'Chi' when they go to break a board. It may hurt, but if you pych yourself up a bit, it's done before you know it. Besides the offical explaination was that his tastebuds had changed, and he was looking for a food he liked, which to me, tells us Doctor 11 is a picky eater.

Personally, I think Sexy did pick those words, because she repeats them in 'The Doctor's Wife'. She may not fully understand human and timelord relationships, but she can see all of time and space.

 

[Aegon]

Spoiler: Journey

I really liked Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. It was disappointing in some ways, sure, but I still thought it was great. I wish we had seen more of the TARDIS, though. The various references scattered throughout were fun (what was with the telescope? It reminded me of the one from Tooth and Claw, but there'd be no reason for it to be on the TARDIS). Aaah -- "The History of the Time War"! Since Clara was about to say the Doctor's name, I guess that finally proves that humans are capable of speaking it aloud; it doesn't appear to be unpronounceable. Hm... What language was the book in, since Gallifreyan doesn't translate via the TARDIS' translation matrix? Strange.

The time zombies were excellent enemies, particularly due to the mystery surrounding them. I initially thought they were memories of past companions or something like that. So the Clara-zombie was never created? Yet it existed throughout the episode. Time is wibbly-wobbly confusing, particularly when there appears to be more than one way of it progressing. Take The Big Bang for example; the Doctor escaped the Pandorica due to Rory being given the sonic from the Doctor who had been rescued by Rory who had been given the sonic, ad infinitum. Here, though, events were completely rewritten. Which was annoying since Clara developed so much! We shouldn't have long to wait for her to return to that state, as long as we do find out how she's possible in the finale.

I'll definitely be watching the BBC Three repeat this Friday. Journey needs a second watch so that I can get my head around things. There was an infinite amount of potential with this episode, so it kind of shot itself in the foot. The past versions of the Doctor and Clara wandering the TARDIS corridors come to mind. It wouldn't have hurt to have included some future ones with hints to the conclusion for some additional time-wimey-ness. Still, it was very enjoyable.

Spoiler: Next Time - The Crimson 'Orror

This looks set to be some perfectly good, classic Who. Mrs Gillyflower will be fantastic. I can't wait to see what she turns out to be. Ooh, vats of suspicious pink liquid! And Jenny, Vastra and Strax! I won't be surprised if the Great Intelligence is involved again, but would they use it so soon after Bells?

Spoiler: The finale

Jenna's comments are very intriguing. "There are little bits and pieces which Steven planted a couple of years ago." Could this even predate the Pond era? I've seen people speculating about CAL, the girl from Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. What's with all this talk of the finale being a "game-changer"? What could be so momentous? Please don't reveal his name.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams

 

[fitzy909]

Spoiler: journey to the centre of TARDIS

i loved this episode. best one so far this year/series. the time zombies were cool and i liked the story. The 'attitude' of the TARDIS keeps developing. the only problems i had with it, was that the supporting cast seemed slightly just lumped in there. they didn't seem to have much of a purpose. i also thought that clara reading the doctor's name would affect her, but no...nothing. don't know what i expected to happen.... i just expected something.

Spoiler: the crimson horror

first things first...it's the return of strax. already looks good. i have to admit that sweetville is a very suspicious name to start with. also, do we know the name of the enemies in this episode?

 

[VampirateMace]

Spoiler: Journey to the Center of the TARDIS

Okay, so, reset button was kind of cheap and 99% of the TARDIS is corridors. But, I LOVE episodes taking place inside the TARDIS (or House-TARDIS), because we finally get a glimpse of this crazy-beautiful ship. And her attitude, I love seeing the Sexy show her intelligence. (That sentence wasn’t weird at all.)

@The Eleventh - Oh, wow. Why did we see the ‘History of the Time War’ in English? That’s almost like there’s a human who he intends/intended to see it.

Unfortunately my recording got cut short, so I didn’t see the next time…

Spoiler: Finale

I figured there were more Claras… He dropped a hint? She is the child of Boe! No, wait, we’ve seen her parents… Hmm… Time to watch every episode we can find, looking for hints.

I’m hoping they don’t reveal his name, but if they have to, I hope it doesn’t end up being something that ends up ruining the show for everyone.

 

[elyvorg]

I'm sorry, but I don't buy your theroy, he was clearly still in pain. Though, I believe hearing those words from what appears to be young Amy, gave him the motivation to do stuff even though he was in pain, so in that way the words may have, in a way, been a painkiller. Like a Tae-Kwon-Do fighter shounting 'Chi' when they go to break a board. It may hurt, but if you pych yourself up a bit, it's done before you know it. Besides the offical explaination was that his tastebuds had changed, and he was looking for a food he liked, which to me, tells us Doctor 11 is a picky eater.

Personally, I think Sexy did pick those words, because she repeats them in 'The Doctor's Wife'. She may not fully understand human and timelord relationships, but she can see all of time and space.

The Doctor really did seem to be completely fine for a couple of minutes upon first entering the restaurant. He's all waving his sonic cane around and generally being his usual daft self, and if one didn't already know he'd been poisoned then it'd have been impossible to tell. True, after a little while he does start collapsing and being visibly in pain despite clearly trying to block it out (which may be the part of the scene that you're thinking of), but I put that down to the fact that, since his body is shutting down bit by bit, after a point there's only so much a painkiller can do to help. I still do not believe he could have blocked out the pain so well through willpower alone to be able to come across like he did in the beginning of that scene, given that in the TARDIS it was so bad that he could barely move. He even stopped to change into his tailcoat, which there's no way he'd have wasted his time doing if he was only just managing to drag himself through the pain.

And that's not to say I don't agree with the idea that hearing the words "fish fingers and custard" from what he'd convinced himself was Amelia was a big help to him. I absolutely understand (and really enjoy) the concept of characters gaining an extra burst of strength when they focus on certain things; the Doctor's faith in Amelia thanks to those words definitely gave him the strength to drag himself up from the floor and fly the TARDIS. But while that may be enough for him to fight past the pain and keep going, it certainly isn't enough for him to completely hide all signs of it from the surface. Like, seriously, I almost want to believe that there was no painkiller involved and it was solely "Amelia"'s words that kept the Doctor going, because I'd find that really adorable. But I just can't buy it. It doesn't work out in my head as possible, no matter how I think about it.

Buuut that last part is something which really does come solely down to personal interpretation and the way my brain happens to see things, so if you still disagree with me by this point then I guess we're at the "agree to disagree" stage. This was an interesting discussion, though!

Spoiler: The book in last week's episode

Why would The History of the Time War have been written in Gallifreyan, though? The only person capable of doing so would be the Doctor, and I can't imagine he'd have wanted to. It was probably written by a member of one of the races that took part in the Time War and survived it - I'm pretty sure there were some of those, right? The Doctor was only aiming to destroy the Time Lords and the Daleks.

Spoiler: The Eleventh

The past versions of the Doctor and Clara wandering the TARDIS corridors come to mind. It wouldn't have hurt to have included some future ones with hints to the conclusion for some additional time-wimey-ness.

That would have been a neat thing to have, I agree. However, I'm not sure it would have been possible within the time travel logic of the episode. All of the future echoes we did see were from the timeline in which everyone got melted in the Eye of Harmony room. To also have future echoes from an entirely different timeline that, at this point, wasn't how things were "going to happen", wouldn't really have seemed right.

While trying to dig stuff up on Youtube, I found this little video with the cast discussing Clara and the TARDIS's mini-feud. It's amusing.
[spoil]According to this, the main reason the TARDIS doesn't like Clara is because she's kind of jealous of her. She's all "No! He's my Doctor!" and doesn't want to share. D'aww. x3 Seemingly she's like this with pretty much all his companions, and Clara is just the first one who's actually picked up on it.

(But it's only a petty, on-the-surface kind of jealousy really, since we've seen the TARDIS is willing to protect Clara for the Doctor's sake if it comes down to it.)

Also, according to Matt, the Doctor actually kind of likes having his girls arguing over him. Pfft.[/spoil]


Let me mention some thoughts of mine about The Crimson Horror, mostly regarding a certain someone's outfit, based on one of the preview clips and a couple of other tidbits I've picked up over the week.

Spoiler: Crimson things

Apparently the Doctor and Clara will be investigating the strange goings-on at this mill by going undercover as a married couple. Bahaha. That'll be incredibly amusing. x3

Knowing this alone initially led me to assume that this is the reason for Clara wearing Victorian clothes - that they came here specifically to investigate the mill and therefore knew Clara was going to have to look the part. I was somewhat disappointed to learn that apparently Clara's outfit in this episode doesn't actually have any connection with Victorian Clara.

However! Now that I have also seen the first preview clip, it would seem that that is not the case. The Doctor was aiming for London, 1893 (which'd be less than a year after Victorian Clara died) and only accidentally ended up in Yorkshire. This must mean that the TARDIS brought him to Yorkshire instead of London because she knew he was needed there, and the Doctor knew nothing about the mill before arriving. So then why is Clara wearing Victorian clothes? It must be somehow connected to Victorian Clara after all, given precisely when and where the Doctor was intending to take her. I look forward to finding out exactly what is up with this.

Also note that the Doctor is visibly annoyed that he didn't end up in London. Usually, he doesn't particularly mind when the TARDIS takes him somewhere other than where he wanted to go, because no matter where he ends up it's bound to be exciting (Las Vegas? Nah, a sinking Soviet submarine is way better!). But it seems that this time he specifically wanted to go to London in 1893. So... yes. I am sure there is something going on here.


A lot of the synopses of the episode I've come across have mentioned something along the lines of the Doctor and Clara being "missing", implying that during their investigations, they get themselves into some trouble, and Vastra and Jenny end up having to save them. That should be fun if true, both to see Vastra and Jenny saving the day, and because any peril that the Doctor and Clara can't get out of themselves would presumably be pretty threatening. (And that means the Doctor will be all adorably worried about the danger Clara's in; no I am still not tired of mentioning his overprotectiveness towards her, especially given recent developments.)

Overall this looks like it's shaping up to be a very amusing episode. It's bound to be, given who it's got in it.

-elyvorg/Amelia