Doctor Who: The Name of the Doctor
May. 19th, 2013 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the Moff indulges his fondness for creepy fairy tale rhymes again, and also I'm ever so tempted to use an icon making a complicated joke about roles of actors in other shows, but for plot reasons, a River Song icon it has to be.
Not least because I think that was it for River. At least as far as Stephen Moffat is concerned; he left the door open for later show runners to use the character again if they should wish, given the nature of River's story and the fact she's a time traveller, but this is actually where something he said on the original commentary podcast for Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead becomes on screen canon. If you haven't heard it: back then he said, apropos River Song's fate (and bear in mind this was before he knew he'd become the next show runner, though he probably knew that was likely), that he leaves it up to the audience and their own belief system as to what the Doctor saved and stored into the Library was River - i.e. her soul/true self, if you like - or her electronic echo, the way it worked with Miss Evangelista. He added that he personally believed the later, that River died in the act of saving the Doctor and the River in the Library was her echo, but that it was up to the invidual watcher to go with his own interpretation. Now I'm aware there was a lot of speculation as to whether Eleven would eventually "upload" River again from CAL (though whereto, I don't know, given her body well and truly died; as opposed to Donna and the other people CAL had stored only temporarily, who physically disappeared), that River's last scene in white from Forest of the Dead couldn't really be the last thing we'd see of her in her time line.
Well, The Name of the Doctor for the first time gave us actually post-Forest of the Dead River - while also making it clear she is indeed an electronic echo. (Unless you want to go with the interpreation that the Doctor is absolutely wrong about that, which I suppose you can, but at the very least this makes it clear he won't go to visit CAL and the Vashta Nerada in order to extricate River there any time soon, because he considers what he saved there an electronic ghost who by now should have faded. But doesn't, because it's River's ghost, after all, and she goes on her own terms. I found their goodbye scene very poignant, and very characteristic, especially her insistence that she wouldn't consider it a goodbye unless he said it as if it was only a temporary farewell till their next meeting.
Considering River's fate here to be final is a good thing to me because otherwise the show wants to have its cake and eat with everyone else. I mean, I'm glad Clara isn't dead (again), and that Jenny isn't. But it still feels like cheating to me; basically the joyful "just this once, everyone lives" from Moffat's first New Who outing has become the expected cliché by now, and if there are never any true stakes, well, it's hard to feel truly worried. And while I'm complaining (I mostly liked the episode, I hasten to add, and will get back to the praise in a moment), the explanation for Clara being split all over time is excellent, except for the part where her motivation to do this would work better if we'd seen her (this version of her) and the Doctor bond over an entire season, not just a very few episodes. So here's what I think Moffat should have done: let the Ponds' exit in season 6 be permanent, with the end of that Christmas Special (the one with Marge & kids) a farewell dinner between them and the Doctor. (They had enough reasons not to want to travel through time and space anymore after s6 without adding plot devices to strand them in the 40s.) Then introduce the two alternate Claras at the start of s7 and let the Doctor find and meet the third one in 7.3, giving us an entire season with this particular team TARDIS and this particular Clara. Same ending of the season.
Great Intelligence, Richard E. Grant edition: very plot devicy with no personality, but I am prepared to change my mind this John Hurt thing plays out in a way that provides genuine motivation to the Great Intelligence and the Silence etc..
Poor, poor TARDIS. Last season she ended up in a graveyard full of dead TARDIS-es, this season she ends near her own dying self. Triple ouch. Mind you, a dying TARDIS growing into infinity because the bigger-on-the-inside system starts leaking is a cool touch.
Kilgarrah! That's where you went after leaving Merlin! John Hurt!Doctor: my own first assumption when watching was that this was the Valeyard, but for all that the Sixth Doctor had the dubious pleasure of meeting him, the Valeyard is a possible future of the Doctor, and also not a secret. (Leaving aside lots of Time Lords including the Master being witnesses to the whole Valeyard thing, so was Mel.) (Still, I suspect when Moffat & Co. brainstormed this storyline, it started with someone saying "we should do the Valeyard, only properly.) So it's more likely this is a past regeneration. Which either means a pre-William Hartnell! Doctor (which would ruin lots of fanfiction, but I suppose you could find ways...), or, most likely, a regeneration between Paul McGann and Christopher Ecclestone. To be specific, the very one in the Time War. After all, RTD left it conveniently open which regeneration fought in said war and ended up wiping out (or so he thought) both Time Lords and Daleks, and the Doctor himself never numbered his Eccleston and Tennant shaped regeneration.
The Doctor defining his name as "a promise" and this particular incarnation of himself as the one who "broke that promise" presumably fits with the Master taunting him about the meaning of his name - "The Doctor", that is - as "the man who makes people better", which would work if John Hurt!Doctor is the one involved in the Time War. Then again: I am really not sure the Moff wants to revisit the Time War at all, so it may be John Hurt!Doctor "broke the promise" of his name through actions independent of the Time War but in fact the reason why the Great Silence is so set on his grand vendetta (because being defeated at Christmas plus whatever happened in Two's era doesn't really cut it as motivations to split oneself through space and time go). It openes a lot of possibilities for the big 50th anniversary special, that's for sure.
Fanservice: all the previous Doctors, of course, or: footage splicing put to excellent use. BTW, I thought it was lovely touch that the first time we see One (btw, guess we'll have to recount and rename all the Doctors now, won't we?), it's in colourized footage so it matches Clara, and then when we see the same scene again it's in almost black and white, as Clara has entered his world/time. Of course, figuring out various ways Clara encountered various regenerations (or saved them behind their backs) is fanfic fodder.
Oh, and before I forget: I didn't expect the name (as in, the not-Doctor name) of the Doctor to be revealed in this episode, because for all the fondness for teasing, Moffat is a fan of old and knows he can't do that. So the title of the episode being a pun of sorts (see also: "which he will carry to his grave; it has been found") met my expectations and works for me: what is revealed isn't Name XYZ, which could never match fannish expectations anyway, but that he picked "the Doctor" as his name as a promise and that he considers one part of his existence as the breaking of said promise.
Unless I'm mistaken, Clara and the (Eleventh) Doctor are still trapped in his mind/altering timeline, aren't they, when the episode ends (though they have found each other)? Should explain how they encounter a certain living guest star or two in the anniversary special. Speaking of which, I'm now leaving casting spoiler space - I have no idea what will happen in the special and don't want to know, but I was inevitably spoiled for one particular guest star, and I guess so were most of you. If you weren't, and don't want to know anything about the anniversary guest cast, stop reading here.
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So here are Matt Smith and David Tennant, talking about being the Doctor. They don't give any plot spoilers for the special, but given how we've just ended, my current guess is that Eleven and Clara will by way of dealing with whatever happened with John Hurt!Doctor encounter Ten and unite forces to end this changing timeline thing and reenter the "normal" time flow at their respective points. Alternate guesses?
I still love the idea that what John Hurt!Doctor did was spending time as a Dragon and altering the time line of the 6th century so much there are tomatos in England and anachronistic armor galore, all so someone else, Colin Morgan shaped, gets to be Merlin, because as he found out while being Seven, that's not an easy gig.
Not least because I think that was it for River. At least as far as Stephen Moffat is concerned; he left the door open for later show runners to use the character again if they should wish, given the nature of River's story and the fact she's a time traveller, but this is actually where something he said on the original commentary podcast for Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead becomes on screen canon. If you haven't heard it: back then he said, apropos River Song's fate (and bear in mind this was before he knew he'd become the next show runner, though he probably knew that was likely), that he leaves it up to the audience and their own belief system as to what the Doctor saved and stored into the Library was River - i.e. her soul/true self, if you like - or her electronic echo, the way it worked with Miss Evangelista. He added that he personally believed the later, that River died in the act of saving the Doctor and the River in the Library was her echo, but that it was up to the invidual watcher to go with his own interpretation. Now I'm aware there was a lot of speculation as to whether Eleven would eventually "upload" River again from CAL (though whereto, I don't know, given her body well and truly died; as opposed to Donna and the other people CAL had stored only temporarily, who physically disappeared), that River's last scene in white from Forest of the Dead couldn't really be the last thing we'd see of her in her time line.
Well, The Name of the Doctor for the first time gave us actually post-Forest of the Dead River - while also making it clear she is indeed an electronic echo. (Unless you want to go with the interpreation that the Doctor is absolutely wrong about that, which I suppose you can, but at the very least this makes it clear he won't go to visit CAL and the Vashta Nerada in order to extricate River there any time soon, because he considers what he saved there an electronic ghost who by now should have faded. But doesn't, because it's River's ghost, after all, and she goes on her own terms. I found their goodbye scene very poignant, and very characteristic, especially her insistence that she wouldn't consider it a goodbye unless he said it as if it was only a temporary farewell till their next meeting.
Considering River's fate here to be final is a good thing to me because otherwise the show wants to have its cake and eat with everyone else. I mean, I'm glad Clara isn't dead (again), and that Jenny isn't. But it still feels like cheating to me; basically the joyful "just this once, everyone lives" from Moffat's first New Who outing has become the expected cliché by now, and if there are never any true stakes, well, it's hard to feel truly worried. And while I'm complaining (I mostly liked the episode, I hasten to add, and will get back to the praise in a moment), the explanation for Clara being split all over time is excellent, except for the part where her motivation to do this would work better if we'd seen her (this version of her) and the Doctor bond over an entire season, not just a very few episodes. So here's what I think Moffat should have done: let the Ponds' exit in season 6 be permanent, with the end of that Christmas Special (the one with Marge & kids) a farewell dinner between them and the Doctor. (They had enough reasons not to want to travel through time and space anymore after s6 without adding plot devices to strand them in the 40s.) Then introduce the two alternate Claras at the start of s7 and let the Doctor find and meet the third one in 7.3, giving us an entire season with this particular team TARDIS and this particular Clara. Same ending of the season.
Great Intelligence, Richard E. Grant edition: very plot devicy with no personality, but I am prepared to change my mind this John Hurt thing plays out in a way that provides genuine motivation to the Great Intelligence and the Silence etc..
Poor, poor TARDIS. Last season she ended up in a graveyard full of dead TARDIS-es, this season she ends near her own dying self. Triple ouch. Mind you, a dying TARDIS growing into infinity because the bigger-on-the-inside system starts leaking is a cool touch.
The Doctor defining his name as "a promise" and this particular incarnation of himself as the one who "broke that promise" presumably fits with the Master taunting him about the meaning of his name - "The Doctor", that is - as "the man who makes people better", which would work if John Hurt!Doctor is the one involved in the Time War. Then again: I am really not sure the Moff wants to revisit the Time War at all, so it may be John Hurt!Doctor "broke the promise" of his name through actions independent of the Time War but in fact the reason why the Great Silence is so set on his grand vendetta (because being defeated at Christmas plus whatever happened in Two's era doesn't really cut it as motivations to split oneself through space and time go). It openes a lot of possibilities for the big 50th anniversary special, that's for sure.
Fanservice: all the previous Doctors, of course, or: footage splicing put to excellent use. BTW, I thought it was lovely touch that the first time we see One (btw, guess we'll have to recount and rename all the Doctors now, won't we?), it's in colourized footage so it matches Clara, and then when we see the same scene again it's in almost black and white, as Clara has entered his world/time. Of course, figuring out various ways Clara encountered various regenerations (or saved them behind their backs) is fanfic fodder.
Oh, and before I forget: I didn't expect the name (as in, the not-Doctor name) of the Doctor to be revealed in this episode, because for all the fondness for teasing, Moffat is a fan of old and knows he can't do that. So the title of the episode being a pun of sorts (see also: "which he will carry to his grave; it has been found") met my expectations and works for me: what is revealed isn't Name XYZ, which could never match fannish expectations anyway, but that he picked "the Doctor" as his name as a promise and that he considers one part of his existence as the breaking of said promise.
Unless I'm mistaken, Clara and the (Eleventh) Doctor are still trapped in his mind/altering timeline, aren't they, when the episode ends (though they have found each other)? Should explain how they encounter a certain living guest star or two in the anniversary special. Speaking of which, I'm now leaving casting spoiler space - I have no idea what will happen in the special and don't want to know, but I was inevitably spoiled for one particular guest star, and I guess so were most of you. If you weren't, and don't want to know anything about the anniversary guest cast, stop reading here.
I
M
E
A
N
I
T
!
!
!
So here are Matt Smith and David Tennant, talking about being the Doctor. They don't give any plot spoilers for the special, but given how we've just ended, my current guess is that Eleven and Clara will by way of dealing with whatever happened with John Hurt!Doctor encounter Ten and unite forces to end this changing timeline thing and reenter the "normal" time flow at their respective points. Alternate guesses?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 08:41 pm (UTC)But whereas I could identify all the Doctor's victims in the GI's second statement (eventually - it wasn't until the second watch that I remembered Solomon was David Bradley!) I couldn't place the ten billion from his opening speech, so I took it that their slaughter was the unknown and possibly future event.