Doctor Who 9.12 Hell Bent
Dec. 6th, 2015 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakHonestly, I have no idea yet how I feel about all of this. There's probably somewhwere some great meta to be written about all echoing and contrasting and deconstructing and reconstructing of Previous Events (particularly two from the RTD era, but by no means exclusively; Moffat's own stuff comes heavily in for it as well, plus some Old Who tropes and the TV Movie Of Doom, oh, and the Big Finish canon, too). But I'm not up for writing said meta yet (horribly real life business!), so just a few impressions, as per usual. For the most part, it emotionally worked for me... I think.
To start with the most trivial, I assume they couldn't get Timothy Dalton back for what was essentially a bit part, and of course it makes sense Rassilon regenerated between End of Time and this one (probably a few times), but the new actor wasn't as good at Over The Top Megalomaniac Time Lord, for which there are glorious precedents a plenty on this show. No presence. So when the Doctor without uttering a word got everyone to turn against him, and then casually deposed and exiled him, it felt satisfying, but was missing that special something that could have come if Rassilon had been the slightest bit impressive at the start. (BTW: "I am Rassilon the Resurrected" should settle the debate whether Dalton!Rassilon was actually That Rassilon or just a power hungry Time Lord naming himself after the Founder.)
Incidentally, I do approve of the twist that the end of last episode leads the audience to assume this one would be one big Doctor Taking Over (or Trying To) Gallifrey extravaganza, in payback for Clara (despite her not wanting to be avenged), and then the actual deposing of the President and High Council happens in all of five minutes and the episode is really about something else, not to mention that what gave the Doctor the will power to keep chipping at that wall for four billion plus years wasn't the idea of avenging Clara but a plan to save her (that, and his inability to give up), for which he needed Time Lord technology.
Which leads me to the first big revisiting of a Davies era event and a huge Big Finish Audiios storyline, i.e. the Doctor saving a person meant to die as a fixed point despite the potential disaster for time and space, and the consequences promptly raining down. RTD did this near the end of both his and the Tenth Doctor's era, in Waters of Mars; there, the act was both out of hubris and out of general anger and despair piled up through the years, and the narrative solution was the woman in question killing herself. The Big Finish audios did this with the Eighth Doctor and his Companion Charley Pollard, who should have died in the 1930s but doesn't due to her encounter with the Doctor. The Doctor doesn't know at the start the disastrous effect this could have (though he can at least guess the potential), but he does find out later, and then we get a Charley versus the universe situation which eventually is resolved in different ways: Charley is ready to die despite the Doctor not being ready to let her go, but then she doesn't have to die because Plot McGuffin, but then she's separated from the (Eighth) Doctor anyway, and after some time with the Sixth Doctor (which btw is a dynamic I prefer to Eight/Charley, not least because there are no romance overtones and Six is understandably suspicious while Charley knows way more about him than he can figure out about her), there's yet another solution to resolve the paradox of Charley's continuing existence that involves amnesia (or rather memory alteration) on the Doctor's part (i.e. his memories are the ones being altered) and Charley off to adventuring on her own. You can see the parallels to the Clara situation and how Moffat resolves it.
(And don't tell me he's not aware of Big Finish canon, especially the Eigth Doctor stuff; that Time War minisode he wrote for Paul McGann to star in had the Eighth Doctor list his audio companions, Charley included.)
The Doctor being driven by affection for his Companion to potentially break the universe is something that works both better and worse for me than him doing it because of a mixture of hubris and existential anger for a stranger. Better in that it's a more sympathetic and understandable motivation, worse in that it can lead directly to This Companion Is More Special (if he does it for X, but not for the others, etc.), which I'm against, not to mention that I prefer "I love you, but the lives of everyone else are more important, so I have to let you die, even if it's killing me" to "to hell with everyone else, I'm saving you" as far as my heroes are concerned. I think what makes me land on the pro side in the case of Twelve & Clara, more so than for Eight & Charley, is that I didn't have the impression the narrative wants us to think the Doctor is right here (btw, in the case of Ten & Adelaide it's not even a question, Rusty couldn't be less subtle about how This Is A Bad Thing The Doctor Is Doing even before Adelaide kills herself), AND, most of all, because Clara gets to resolve the situation, and in a way that while it includes her readiness to die also manages to give her a potentially long (or short, but basically: we don't know, we'll never know) life to experience bfore that defined by her own agenda.
Which brings me to the other big RTD era plot point revisited, this time with some Old Who thrown in, because no, Donna wasn't the first Companion to have her mind wiped of all her adventures with the Doctor at the end of her stint as a Companion; Zoe and Jamie got this treatment before, at the end of the Second Doctor's era, courtesy of the Time Lords. The in-story, Watsonian reason why amnesia is necessary at all and becomes a topic under discussion feels flimsy, or flimsier than usual, because seriously, I don't see how Clara remembering or not remembering the Doctor should help or hinder the Time Lords to track her down, if they really want to. But the Doylist reason is evident, i.e. Moffat wanted to revisit it and offer a different solution: the Doctor makes the same decision at first, the Companion rejects it, but this time, the Companion is listened to and the Doctor then takes the mind alteration upon himself (the necessity of this, btw, Moffat did sell me on on both a Watsonian and Doylist level via the preceding Doctor and Ashildr scene as well as the season until now) while the Companion, memories intact, can be off to live her own life without him. This, of course, is a far better exit for a Companion than the Donna, Zoe and Jamie solution(s).
Mind you, Moffat cheated a bit with the whole "I can remember I had this adventures with a girl, I just can't remember her face or what she was like" which at first felt like wriggling out it narratively instead of going for full amnesia, but then I thought it's probably less of a headache in terms of continuity, because of the Twelvth Doctor remembered nothing about his time with Clara at all, we'd be right back where we started in terms of emotional development, i.e. Deep Breath, and this I would not have wanted.
Speaking of continuity, I also admire how Moffat set the whole "between one heartbeat and the next" theme up in the season opener with Missy's story about the Doctor, revisited again in the last episode when we see this is indeed how the Doctor escapes life and death situations, and now provides the pay off with Clara, whose becoming essentially another Doctor was a big part of her arc (and a big emotional reason why she and the Doctor have to part), living what's left of her life this way - which can be a second or infinity. She doesn't know anymore than the audience does, which is essentially the human condition, augmented by fantasy means (the time travel and extraction). I also loved that Clara is off in her own stolen TARDIS with an Ashildr/Me who has lived all through to the end of the universe (and thus presumably has left both nihilistic and adrenaline junkie and morally ambiguous ruler phases behind), both mortal (more than most, literally a heartbeat away from death) and immortal at the same time. Whoever joked in Ashildr's introduction episode that she and Clara should run off together got their wish. :)
More minor points and/or callbacks:
- is this the first time in New Who we see a TARDIS with a fully working chameleon circuit using just that to full effect? I think it might be, but maybe I've forgotten something? (BTW, first time a TARDIS with a fully functioning chameleon circuit shows up in Old Who is that of the Meddling Monk in One's era.)
- the white classic TARDIS interior and the neutral outside of an undisguised TARDIS were both nostalgia moments as well
- the diner as an Amy and Rory era recall, complete with Watsonian explanation that makes sense (i.e. it's really not a diner but the stolen TARDIS)
- the barn both from Listen (which is also revisited by Ashildr's four times knocking, which in turn of course is also a end of RTD era revisitation) and Day of the Doctor (the later also pointed out the Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords in the Citadel, and whom we see more of here).
- return of the sonic screwdriver (and the finger snap as a way to open and close the TARDIS)
- we still don't know which of Missy's three stories about the Doctor are true and which ones are a lie, because while he mentions two of them as well, he also says he's lying about one
- Moffat amusingly trolls the audience in the first Doctor-Ashildr scene by bringing up the two theories he had to know would be under discussion - i.e. Ashildr is the hybrid because she is Me, the Doctor is the hybrid because of TV Movie of Doom half human canon - and then offers a third one (the Doctor and Clara are the hybrid because of how similar they've grown and what the Doctor is ready to do for Clara) without settling for one, which is okay because the hybrid is essentially a McGuffin (the Doctor needed the Time Lords to believe in its existence because he needed their technology to extract Clara from the moment before her death), but otoh, did he just make the half human bit from the TV Movie canon (again)? I'm afraid he did, and I wish he hadn't.
In conclusion: a good exit for Clara, but I still wish/hope that with the next Companion, we'lll finally go back to a mutually angst-free parting. (Not counting audio and book canons, I think the last Companion who left for utterly angst free reasons was Mel who left the Seventh Doctor in Ace's debut episode - decades ago!)
To start with the most trivial, I assume they couldn't get Timothy Dalton back for what was essentially a bit part, and of course it makes sense Rassilon regenerated between End of Time and this one (probably a few times), but the new actor wasn't as good at Over The Top Megalomaniac Time Lord, for which there are glorious precedents a plenty on this show. No presence. So when the Doctor without uttering a word got everyone to turn against him, and then casually deposed and exiled him, it felt satisfying, but was missing that special something that could have come if Rassilon had been the slightest bit impressive at the start. (BTW: "I am Rassilon the Resurrected" should settle the debate whether Dalton!Rassilon was actually That Rassilon or just a power hungry Time Lord naming himself after the Founder.)
Incidentally, I do approve of the twist that the end of last episode leads the audience to assume this one would be one big Doctor Taking Over (or Trying To) Gallifrey extravaganza, in payback for Clara (despite her not wanting to be avenged), and then the actual deposing of the President and High Council happens in all of five minutes and the episode is really about something else, not to mention that what gave the Doctor the will power to keep chipping at that wall for four billion plus years wasn't the idea of avenging Clara but a plan to save her (that, and his inability to give up), for which he needed Time Lord technology.
Which leads me to the first big revisiting of a Davies era event and a huge Big Finish Audiios storyline, i.e. the Doctor saving a person meant to die as a fixed point despite the potential disaster for time and space, and the consequences promptly raining down. RTD did this near the end of both his and the Tenth Doctor's era, in Waters of Mars; there, the act was both out of hubris and out of general anger and despair piled up through the years, and the narrative solution was the woman in question killing herself. The Big Finish audios did this with the Eighth Doctor and his Companion Charley Pollard, who should have died in the 1930s but doesn't due to her encounter with the Doctor. The Doctor doesn't know at the start the disastrous effect this could have (though he can at least guess the potential), but he does find out later, and then we get a Charley versus the universe situation which eventually is resolved in different ways: Charley is ready to die despite the Doctor not being ready to let her go, but then she doesn't have to die because Plot McGuffin, but then she's separated from the (Eighth) Doctor anyway, and after some time with the Sixth Doctor (which btw is a dynamic I prefer to Eight/Charley, not least because there are no romance overtones and Six is understandably suspicious while Charley knows way more about him than he can figure out about her), there's yet another solution to resolve the paradox of Charley's continuing existence that involves amnesia (or rather memory alteration) on the Doctor's part (i.e. his memories are the ones being altered) and Charley off to adventuring on her own. You can see the parallels to the Clara situation and how Moffat resolves it.
(And don't tell me he's not aware of Big Finish canon, especially the Eigth Doctor stuff; that Time War minisode he wrote for Paul McGann to star in had the Eighth Doctor list his audio companions, Charley included.)
The Doctor being driven by affection for his Companion to potentially break the universe is something that works both better and worse for me than him doing it because of a mixture of hubris and existential anger for a stranger. Better in that it's a more sympathetic and understandable motivation, worse in that it can lead directly to This Companion Is More Special (if he does it for X, but not for the others, etc.), which I'm against, not to mention that I prefer "I love you, but the lives of everyone else are more important, so I have to let you die, even if it's killing me" to "to hell with everyone else, I'm saving you" as far as my heroes are concerned. I think what makes me land on the pro side in the case of Twelve & Clara, more so than for Eight & Charley, is that I didn't have the impression the narrative wants us to think the Doctor is right here (btw, in the case of Ten & Adelaide it's not even a question, Rusty couldn't be less subtle about how This Is A Bad Thing The Doctor Is Doing even before Adelaide kills herself), AND, most of all, because Clara gets to resolve the situation, and in a way that while it includes her readiness to die also manages to give her a potentially long (or short, but basically: we don't know, we'll never know) life to experience bfore that defined by her own agenda.
Which brings me to the other big RTD era plot point revisited, this time with some Old Who thrown in, because no, Donna wasn't the first Companion to have her mind wiped of all her adventures with the Doctor at the end of her stint as a Companion; Zoe and Jamie got this treatment before, at the end of the Second Doctor's era, courtesy of the Time Lords. The in-story, Watsonian reason why amnesia is necessary at all and becomes a topic under discussion feels flimsy, or flimsier than usual, because seriously, I don't see how Clara remembering or not remembering the Doctor should help or hinder the Time Lords to track her down, if they really want to. But the Doylist reason is evident, i.e. Moffat wanted to revisit it and offer a different solution: the Doctor makes the same decision at first, the Companion rejects it, but this time, the Companion is listened to and the Doctor then takes the mind alteration upon himself (the necessity of this, btw, Moffat did sell me on on both a Watsonian and Doylist level via the preceding Doctor and Ashildr scene as well as the season until now) while the Companion, memories intact, can be off to live her own life without him. This, of course, is a far better exit for a Companion than the Donna, Zoe and Jamie solution(s).
Mind you, Moffat cheated a bit with the whole "I can remember I had this adventures with a girl, I just can't remember her face or what she was like" which at first felt like wriggling out it narratively instead of going for full amnesia, but then I thought it's probably less of a headache in terms of continuity, because of the Twelvth Doctor remembered nothing about his time with Clara at all, we'd be right back where we started in terms of emotional development, i.e. Deep Breath, and this I would not have wanted.
Speaking of continuity, I also admire how Moffat set the whole "between one heartbeat and the next" theme up in the season opener with Missy's story about the Doctor, revisited again in the last episode when we see this is indeed how the Doctor escapes life and death situations, and now provides the pay off with Clara, whose becoming essentially another Doctor was a big part of her arc (and a big emotional reason why she and the Doctor have to part), living what's left of her life this way - which can be a second or infinity. She doesn't know anymore than the audience does, which is essentially the human condition, augmented by fantasy means (the time travel and extraction). I also loved that Clara is off in her own stolen TARDIS with an Ashildr/Me who has lived all through to the end of the universe (and thus presumably has left both nihilistic and adrenaline junkie and morally ambiguous ruler phases behind), both mortal (more than most, literally a heartbeat away from death) and immortal at the same time. Whoever joked in Ashildr's introduction episode that she and Clara should run off together got their wish. :)
More minor points and/or callbacks:
- is this the first time in New Who we see a TARDIS with a fully working chameleon circuit using just that to full effect? I think it might be, but maybe I've forgotten something? (BTW, first time a TARDIS with a fully functioning chameleon circuit shows up in Old Who is that of the Meddling Monk in One's era.)
- the white classic TARDIS interior and the neutral outside of an undisguised TARDIS were both nostalgia moments as well
- the diner as an Amy and Rory era recall, complete with Watsonian explanation that makes sense (i.e. it's really not a diner but the stolen TARDIS)
- the barn both from Listen (which is also revisited by Ashildr's four times knocking, which in turn of course is also a end of RTD era revisitation) and Day of the Doctor (the later also pointed out the Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords in the Citadel, and whom we see more of here).
- return of the sonic screwdriver (and the finger snap as a way to open and close the TARDIS)
- we still don't know which of Missy's three stories about the Doctor are true and which ones are a lie, because while he mentions two of them as well, he also says he's lying about one
- Moffat amusingly trolls the audience in the first Doctor-Ashildr scene by bringing up the two theories he had to know would be under discussion - i.e. Ashildr is the hybrid because she is Me, the Doctor is the hybrid because of TV Movie of Doom half human canon - and then offers a third one (the Doctor and Clara are the hybrid because of how similar they've grown and what the Doctor is ready to do for Clara) without settling for one, which is okay because the hybrid is essentially a McGuffin (the Doctor needed the Time Lords to believe in its existence because he needed their technology to extract Clara from the moment before her death), but otoh, did he just make the half human bit from the TV Movie canon (again)? I'm afraid he did, and I wish he hadn't.
In conclusion: a good exit for Clara, but I still wish/hope that with the next Companion, we'lll finally go back to a mutually angst-free parting. (Not counting audio and book canons, I think the last Companion who left for utterly angst free reasons was Mel who left the Seventh Doctor in Ace's debut episode - decades ago!)
no subject
Date: 2015-12-07 08:59 am (UTC)Also loved the Time Lord who we've seen on and off in Gallifrey scenelets for the last season or two...regenerating into a (black) woman and then it turns out that the male regeneration was an anomaly. Hah! And yup, yet again it's being made canon that any given Time Lord doesn't HAVE to be a particular gender or ethnicity.
Loved Clara and the second stolen TARDIS. With Ashildr!
Oh, and nice to see the Sisters of Karn again too.
I refuse to believe the Doctor isn't 100% Gallifreyan. Unless it's like he Eighth Doctor novels, where it turns out that his backstory has been mucked about with so much due to time travel that sometimes he's half-human and sometimes he's all Gallifreyan, depending which rewrite of his personal history we're on. I guess this adventure must have happened during a version of his personal reality where he was half-human, but lalala I'm not listening. Also, Moffat was totally trolling the fuck out of everybody in that scene, so I can go nope if I want. :P