This topic contains 209 replies, has 24 voices, and was last updated by Craig 2 months ago.
Surprised no-ones mentioned this yet … What does everyone make make of the letter marked DELSA also in claras book ?
Wow, this site has really kicked off now, hasn't it? Loving it.
@phaseshift — hope the lumbago isn't playing up too much and that you're not in too much discomfort.
Comming in late, having watching the episode last night and has taken the better part of today to catch up on the wonderful comments. Now I really need to watc h the episode again to catch all the details which I missed.
Re Clara I suspect this is the original Clara. In this episode she acquires the computing skills on display in "Asylum" and the child minding skills of "Snowman". Victorian Clara appears to be without family. On re watching "Snowman" the other night I noted that she recalls a passion for Souffles on entering the Tardis as though a memory had been triggered.
I assumed the autumn leaf was a reference to the prequel. Autumn is also the fall of summer.
Another thought, which somewhat contradicts my earlier statement. Clara's ignorance of computers and the web could be more than a story device. She is of a generation that grew up with computers.
There is also an association with stories. In Snowman her ability to tell wild tales is remarked upon. Here she discusses Amy's book with the children. Could Clara herself be a character who comes to life, maybe through the G.I?
Just finished watching with the kiddos–the eight year old immediately picked up the chapter 11 reference (faster than I did!) A proud moment in parenting.
@janetteb, I agree about Clara, there is a lot pointing to it, among other things the differences between her reactions to the Tardis in the Christmas Special and this episode. Here she is pretty shocked and inarticulate, the doctor fast-walking her through it. The smaller on the outside comment sounds more like what you would like your reaction to be, if you ever got a second chance.
Her advice to the father in the Christmas special also sounded quite experienced. And this episode does partly explain how come, screaming genius or no, she could hack the daleks.
Wasn't trying to nick your great thoughts, just noting that, alas, alas and woe is me, Amelia Williams' book lends credence to them.
This is the damn trouble with trying to post in two places!
The fall of the Eleventh (Trenzalor)..
The current Clara is now the original ( I think we're all agreed). There's nothing special about her except her knowledge of IT is enhanced. The crux is that as a companion she's simply in the tardis when it explodes ( possibly "run you clever …" are her last words). But instead of killing her, she's simply scattered through time with no memory except an affinity for kids (Note that in her Dalek guise, Clara was ships entertainment officer, so also probably spent a lot of time minding kids – so a nanny in all 3 incarnations.) and a fixation on her last words. That's fairly tragic and fits with the tone moffatt seems to be promising. It also fits with her doomed incarnations being slightly older and therefore in the current versions personal future.
After the explosion (and presumably somehow getting the tardis back together) the doc sets out to find one last Clara fragment, and this time not let her die. This may be the plot of the anniversary special. Maybe the numbers in van goths painting give the doc a clue how to reunite the tardis?
I still think outside the narrative, Clara represents the show. Maybe being "exploded" into books, audio, fan fic etc at age 26 is part of that?
It also means if the special is about getting a new tardis and saving a fragment of Clara, it will also be an allegory for how the show was saved from apparently complete, irreversible destruction. Which I likes, a lot.
I might be wrong but I think this is the first theory which ties exploding tardis (and the painting of it), a great fall/tragedy, fear of killing a companions, clara as "the show" and how Clara fragmented into one theory?
To paraphrase heroes: save the girl, save the show. Thoughts?
@haveyoufedthefish – I salute you!!
Thank god Craig closed the "speculation" thread, as I now think speculation is over!!
Many thanks for the charitable good wishes people! Your thoughts have kept me intruiged and I've now watched it about four times to pick up the bits I missed.
Well done to @scaryb for the entire Doctor Who and the inter-Webz of Fear. Made me laugh.
I like the speculation on the leaf. Coupled with the "Summer Falls" references here, and The Snowman's repeated "Winter is Coming" it does see oddly suggestive. For some reason, the end of "The Christmas Carol" keeps coming back to me. The line from the Doctor about "How can something start if nothing ends". The cyclical look reminds me of SMs comments about the anniversary – not looking only back, but also forward. Hmmm.
I guess there are some things to speculate about, but feeling like @haveyoufedthefish has nailed a key ponder.
and before I forget @bluesqueakpip – that was some mighty numerology!
Seems small beer to wonder "will it be DT who's responsible for the screaching tyres in the background, when the Dr and Clara are on the cafe balcony?".
or maybe a wandering Dalek from when they were filming AAISAT on Waterloo Bridge…?
@whisht – thanks for the positive feedback! It does feel like its ticking a lot of boxes, and meeting 2 fragments before the explosion is very moffatt with his habitual non-linear timey wimey shenanigans. Credit where it's due though, @bluesqueakpip's inspired "clara is the show" insight is the keystone to all my reasoning. Respect, respect, respect.
@phaseshift – winter is coming, summer falls, looking forward not back (even "eggs") etc. That suggestion of "full circle" sounds like hints of a complete reboot to me (a theory I know you're a fan of).
So 'The Lord of Winter' is a painting of a seascape in the book. And it is a puzzle. The Lord of Winter is very probably a reference to the GI. Amy probably wrote the book sometime after River experiences the end of this season & if River is still alive by then she probably tells Amy the story.
But my question is – Is the book you can buy soon the same as the book in the show? Because the Melody Malone book wasn't apparently.
It's only coming out as an ebook just now (annoying) but these have been ending up on audio too.
… an amazing passage simply in that it spawned 2 (if not 2.5) distinct aphorisms … but also pertinent – it's all of a call to arms (at least that's how Hemmingway saw it), a realisation that you can't truly be a recluse, that the death of friends diminishes us as much as our own and an acceptance of the inevitability of approaching death.
If Moffatt is half the smart-arse English graduate I/he thinks he is, I think he's obliquely referencing this and maybe the title wasn't quite as throwaway as it first appears.
@haveyoufedthefish – brilliant on the John Donne deduction front (I've loved his poetry for a long time myself). I am sure you are right!
Maybe that deduction is one to post back on The Grauniad?
What if River was pregnant with Clara at the time of the explosion?
Overall, I thought it was a bit disjointed but, as @phaseshift suggested, that may be the point of the series if Clara is disjointed. And I really enjoyed it anyway, mostly because Who is back! It wasn't a patch on The Eleventh Hour, which introduced a new Doctor and a new companion in one episode, but Moffat was maybe trying a lot harder then as the new show runner. One can only hope the weight of the 50th has made him try especially hard once more for that episode (or episodes).
So it seems I was wrong about the prequel (sorry @chickenelly). From what I can tell from this episode The Doctor didn't know he'd met Clara on the swings, but he did take her advice and go and find a quiet place to think about things. Can't get much quieter than a monastery. So she did have an effect on his actions (is she guiding him?).
And while he was at the monastery he did a painting of Clara. Hmmm… "Paintings"… A recurring theme in Moffat's run and Matt's clue on Jonathan Ross about the 50th Anniversary. It also feeds into @bluesqueakpip's "If you can remember it…" Is he now going to do a painting of Tennant, or take a look at River's drawings again to remember his past self (selves)?
Banging on the door was also an early theme in the episode. It starts with a Monk banging on a door that has a little window in it, a bit like a TARDIS window. Then slightly later we have The Doctor, dressed as a monk, banging on the door, asking to be let in. Banging on doors could be another theme. Imagine The Doctor locked out of his TARDIS when he desperatly needs in, perhaps on a certain field of battle (where he now seems to not want to take the TARDIS). That line is really weird as well: "I don't take The TARDIS into battle", and we know a battle is coming up. More hmmm…. from me. And falling into the wrong hands? Who's hands does he have in mind? Only a few people can pilot The TARDIS.
"He's definitely not a monk"… what does THAT mean. Has he been drinking and fornicating? Or does he just not act like that other monk? Two Time Lords, different personalities, two Doctors?
Then there's asking Clara to say "Doctor Who". He's never realised how much he enjoys hearing that said out loud? So is he going to enjoy it when the question is asked? Or is it hubris before "the fall"?
Artie and Angie Maitland? Who names their kids Artie and Angie? Are they both a.m.? Is there going to be a p.m.? Must check what the kids were called in The Snowmen.
This Clara said "bigger on the inside", but she was prompted. Nevertheless, I don't think she's the more worldly-wise Clara of The Snowmen. Does the Clara of The Snowmen know that "smaller on the outside" is going to interest him – is she playing with him?
"People always have plans…" then an ominous bell rings. Not sure what that might mean yet. Knowing Moffat, probably nothing.
It featured a lot of Moffat tropes. "Don't click" being very "Don't blink", and "I don't know where I am" being very much like being zapped somewhere else just as The Weeping Angels do to you. As I said when the poster for the new series was released the faces reflected in the spoonheads remind me of Donna in the library. And if The Doctor can rescue a "soul" (not comfortable with that word) from a spoonhead then can he enable a spoonhead to retrieve River from the datacore (if that was what it was called)? He has already started to dismantle/reprogramme one outside Clara's home.
Also, yet another copy of The Doctor! What is it with Moffat and multiple technological/almost flesh Doctors? All we need now is a Nesteen duplicate of him and we'll have the full set!
Then, of course, as others have pointed out, there are the camel references, who is the woman in the shop(?), and what is up with the leaf? Also the references to 2 (the bow tie), 3 (the motorbike), 4 (the scarf), 10 and 11 (the book by Amy). Is the fez a reference to 1? I don't think so myself. I looked out for any "crickety cricket" stuff but didn't spot any. Maybe next week we get 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
And may I just add you are all brilliant and thanks for contributing. This is not my site, it is yours, all yours, and always will be.
@juniperfish – good call on the cloister bell! So the thing the doctor is most afraid of … is himself?
And the cloister bell rings because of imminent disaster and it in fact literally "tolls for (because of) thee (the doctor)" – i.e. the doctor is dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
I've said elsewhere that I think the big bad (behind a proxy or two) is the Doctor himself and there's something awful is going to be revealed about him (maybe something he's suppressed even from himself). And in the new Radio Times Moffatt actually pretty much says as much!
only tiny minnow of thought is that "Artie" is a joke ("RT" as in Radio Times).
I've just had another River Song related thought (not that I'm obsessed or anything).
Clara has been a nanny with computer skills in the incarnations we've encountered, as folk above have discussed.
So – children and uploads.
I'm reminded of River tucking those kids into bed in the Library – behaviour I've always found rather incongruous regarding the River we came to know. But she is, at her end <sobs> in the Library, an adoptive caregiver as well as a computer upload. Is Clara a manifestation of River?
I think people have already speculated as to whether Clara could be a manifestation of CAL, haven't they?
These things, together with that leaf in the first page of Clara's book – a leaf in a book in the forest of the dead (the Library) where the only water is the River?
Clara could be a manifestation of River. But I never saw River looking after those children as incongruous; in her new environment she looked around for anyone who needed rescuing. The people who did were the orphaned CAL (who now remembers that her perfect Daddy is a subprogram) and the two little subroutines who had to have a parent to even exist.
So she rescued them; also making sure that her own childhood didn't repeat – these children are adopted by a loving foster-mother, not kidnapped by the EvilBitchFromHell.
There's certainly a similarity with Clara there – computers, virtual environment, looks after children. Though as a few other people have said, is the point that Clara is initially utterly clueless about computers also a clue? The Facebook generation, and she thinks there can only be one person at a time on the Internet?
BTW, @haveyoufedthefish, I also wonder if the reason for the change of TARDIS is that we'll later need to tell the difference between Eleven in the old TARDIS and Eleven in the new.
The Doctor found that leaf very odd – you could see it in Matt Smith's reaction when he tasted it. The only thing I can think of is that it's a Maple Leaf – which makes me think of 'The Maple Leaf Forever', Canada's unofficial national anthem. That ties up with the good ship Alaska in the sense that we've now collected the whole of continental North America during S7 – including Mexico. The Doctor was taking the Ponds there when they diverted to Mercy.
The leaf is page 1? Hmmm… pun on 'leaf', obviously.
@haveyoufedthefish and @juniperfish, I think you may be right. Where was the Doctor when the Bells of St John started ringing?
In a monastery. Otherwise known as a cloister.
Nice catch on the Canada/ Alaska collection.
One Glenn Bradbury on The Guardian points out that "Oranges and Lemons" was a motif in Orwell's 1984, which reminded me that it stood for the loss of a shared culture in that novel, as it was gradually forgotten.
This parallels the Doctor erasing himself from the universe, which he thinks is a solution, but which River has already pointed out is a mistake.
So more evidence that the Doctor himself is Big Brother aka The Big Bad.
Ergo dark Doctor has a full blown God Complex (something "our" Doctor has teetered on the edge of at points – thinks Waters of Mars).
BTW, the woman in the shop thing (sorry, writing a review for the other site I'm on, so bits and bobs keep occurring to me): could it be an oblique reference to Sarah Jane Smith? I believe the decision of the production team was that Sarah Jane is still alive and well in the Whoniverse – and she'd certainly be someone Clara would call a 'woman' rather than a 'girl'.
…on a side note, there is now a third Doctor Who article/comments page on the Guardian. Another review, to go with the two reviews they've already got up there.
Having multiple pages with nesting doesn't exactly make it user friendly, not like the old days when we'd all follow a train of thought (or a few at the same time) then put our fourpenneth in. Like others, I don't think I'll be adding much to the Guardian Who blogs.
Oh yes, and the new episode of Jonathan Creek sucked big time. I'd suggest @wolfweed writes a stern letter to the BBC to make him get a divorce and move back into the windmill again.
@bluesqueakpip – Ha! Monastery/cloister – love it! Ah crap though? Is it really such a bad thing?
…on a side note, there is now a third Doctor Who article/comments page on the Guardian.
You won't believe this – there's now a fourth. The video review of the week – with comments.
Is this some kind of meta-comment on the splintered Claras, or is the Guardian truly that desperate for click-throughs?
Do you think that when the GI's boss is revealed to be the Dark Doctor that there will be a similar outcry to the one when No. 1 was revealed in the (original) Prisoner? Will Moffat have to flee the country?
Random thought: can anyone put Richard E Grant as GI in BoSJ alongside the bizarro-pic-in-the-hall in The Lodger?
@pedant Yes I see what you mean about a possible resemblance – which would support @jimthefish 's theory that the Great Intelligence has been "Doctorised".
What would need to feed on souls in the way the GI seems to need to in "The Bells"? Some kind of malfunctioning Flesh Doctor?
@wolfweed — that a nice pic. If indeed the Boatyard does make a return, it's something of a shame that Michael Jayston is no longer with us to make even a cameo appearance.
@juniperfish — I hope you will remember that I was always on board with your doppleganger doc theory. Eh, fellow fish? Old bud?
@wolfweed – I can only see moffatt needing to flee the country if Richard e grant and Matt smith in a monkey suit then proceed to twist their way through Kensington on the back of a flat bed truck.
They probably won't make that mistake again.
… Did that really happen or did I just eat too much cheese before bedtime?
I think you're confusing Michael Jayston with Michael Gough.
Michael Gough (Celestial Toymaker and Councillor Hedin) is sadly no longer with us.
Ok if we look at Clara's enhancement through the lens of "Clara as show", why would the "show" need to become IT literate ? Reference to moffatts own history on usenet where the show lived on in chat and fan fic?
Or just a plot point with no meta reference at all?
@bluesqueakpip — nope, I was thinking of Michael Jayston (who was also the best Peter Guillam by a country mile, sorry, Benedict). I was sure he had popped off this mortal coil only recently. I wonder where I got that from? Sorry all. In that case, if the Scrapyard is making an appearance this year then I hope he does show up in some form, even if it's only a cameo type thing).
why would the "show" need to become IT literate ?…. just a plot point with no meta reference at all?
Could be just a plot point, or a meta-reference to Clara the programme also being Clara the program. That is, in-show she's the living repository of the Doctor's own canon.
But the joke which occurs to me is that it's a clever riff on the way Nu-Who depends heavily on computer-generated special effects. The show has had to become very computer-literate.
So Clara and the Great Intelligence are both manifestations of something (or rather, someone) else.
::Shakes fist in air:: @wolfweed!
esp. if Ecclestone doesn't want to give us a new performance.
Not hysterical puns & general terror? Actually I quite like the C/GI theory!
Why was there a 9th Dr who looked like Dr Simeon? Was that spatial multiplicity? Does the Shalka Dr become possessed by the GI? Did he break through from a parallel dimension? If Clara means light then will she also represent truth? Will the Dr start wearing a Jammie Dodger on his lapel for it's 'restorative powers'?
Did the Demon that is the GI get planning permission for 'The Great Plan'? Who from?
I incite you all to 'Carry on Theorising'!
This would be consistent with the woman in the shop being in Ealing (associated with SJS), as the network trace shown when Clara first connects to the GI's network (at about 7:53 by the iPlayer timings) shows Clara's location as somewhere near the junction of South Ealing Road and Pope's Lane.
Total newbie here – I've lurked over on the Guardian blogs for ages, but rarely posted due to the ridiculous amount of bumf and moaning that goes on in those threads. Glad to see things are far more civil here.
Realise I'm a little late to the party on this, but I have just remembered something re. the leaf, which is that Maple in a number of eastern european languages is "Klon", which is (funnily enough) also the word for "Clone" in said languages. Bit tenuous, maybe, but interesting in light of the doubles theme that seems to be running through the show at the moment.