Doctor Who 7.07

[selenak]

So, depending on how you count, the mid season episode or the season opener. Anyway: the one where Jenna-Louise Coleman becomes a regular.



I thought it was okay. Neither splendid or bad. It's a pity Victorian Clara already had the best reaction ever to the TARDIS ("it's smaller on the outside"), but Clara V.3. gets to turn the Doctor down instead of saying yes at once, which no one later to be a companion since my beloved Donna has done, which is fine as well. Otoh she gets rescued twice, while most companions in their introduction episode get to do at least one rescueing, but then again this isn't really her introduction, so, hm, can't make up my mind on this one. Anyway, I did notice that the whole MacGuffin of the episode and what happens to Clara would explain Oswin's superior computer skills in the season 7 opener; Clara even creates the word "Oswin" and I think Moffat wants us to be worried that Oswin is the future version and thus the end of her timeline. However, the episode also pulls that other old Moffatian gambit, doubles, and if Clara could get computer skills absorbed into her brain while downloading, it should also be possible for a copy of her mind to exist somewhere. The only thing the Doctor physically saw of Oswin was the Dalek case. If Oswin was a virtual copy of Clara which exists/will exist due to the download, it would work both with her Dalek-isation and the fact she was able to hold on to her invididuality and create a protective virtual environment for herself. Which, however, doesn't explain Victorian Clara who was definitely physically present and human.

The Great Intelligence, from the Christmas Special as well as Second Doctor adventures which alas are among the ones I haven't watched, here gets established/confirmed as the big bad of the season. I wonder whether it will also turn out the big bad of previous seasons, behind the Silence (which I've never been keen on) and the events from The Big Bang?

The medieval Cumbria monastery the Doctor is hanging out in at the beginning of the episode: it's been two years since I watched the dvds, but could it be the one where the Meddling Monk was, only in another era (the Monk having faked the presence of other monks via record player)? I've forgotten the geographic location of that one.

Villains: all puppets of the Great Intelligence which is creepy as possession ploys go, I suppose, but what really creeps me out is to wonder what became of those people who couldn't be reloaded into their bodies anymore - presumably since we didn't hear about lots of comas, the bodies would after a while die - or were we supposed to believe all the people were recent downloads and the ones already controlled by the Great Intelligence the older uploads which had been put back into their bodies with a modified mind? I couldn't decide.

The Amelia Williams children's book was a nice homage to the past without the gratitious "I'm quitting world saving!" angst from the Christmas special.

Comments

[lonelywalker]

what really creeps me out is to wonder what became of those people who couldn't be reloaded into their bodies anymore

The conversation seemed to indicate some percentage of the people couldn't be put back in their bodies and would therefore presumably die (or become random non-corporeal consciousnesses wandering the universe, I guess). Why this was the case was unclear to me too - we didn't hear about lots of comas, but neither did we hear about lots of unexplained deaths. I thought the "people" being controlled were actually the android mind-wiping things, otherwise what you suggested would make sense...

[kalypso]

As I recall, Miss Kizlet stated that some people would die because their bodies were no longer available, and the Doctor said this was preferable to their current unhappy state. But Mahler (the second-in-command) voiced fears that they were going too fast with the uploads and that they (sc. the sudden deaths) would be noticed.

I think we saw enough backs of heads in the cafe, and "natural" reactions when those people were released from the GI's temporary control, to demonstrate that they weren't Spoonheads. We know that Miss Kizlet, Mahler, Alexei etc were possessed by the GI, not androids, so I think it was just a short-term version of that, though probably being administered via the Spoonhead Doctor. (The odd thing was that they should have noticed he'd gone offline, but there were evidently a lot of the things around, and they had various reasons to be distracted.)

[jesuswasbatman]

"The Time Meddler" was set in Northumberland for plot-relevant historical reasons - the opposite coast from Cumbria. Although I did think the "Monks! Not cool!" line was a shout-out to the Monk.

[selenak]

Ah, thanks!

[kalypso]

It's implied that Victorian Clara is also a later version. Her tombstone states that she had the middle name Oswin and was 26 when she died. This Clara denied having a middle name and appeared to invent Oswin as a user name, and the last age written on the inside cover of her book was 24. It's possible that she hadn't updated the page recently, and that Oswin is a name that all versions of the character are destined to acquire one way or another, but the combination suggests this one is earlier.

[selenak]

Good points all. This latest Clara must then be chronologically the first.

[kalypso]

Or at any rate precedes the two we've met!