Doctor Who

[Speederino]

Sleep No More was the first time this season where I went "meh". The found footage aspect didn't intrigue me and I thought the explanation for the Sandmen monsters was really nonsensical, even by Doctor Who standards. But to be fair, I was (ironically) half-asleep during the second half; not out of boredom, but because I was at the end of a very long, tiring day. Maybe I'd understand it better if I watched it again while awake.

[Doctor MK]

Preview clip from Face the Raven... Rigsy's got a tattoo, and The Doctor and Clara seem to have just returned from some sort of scrape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSp1LrUDKhs

I wonder if The Doctor's red velvet coat will get a grand introduction - I just assumed he'd be wearing it from the start (he's had plenty of costume changes this series, after all!) but it looks like this one might actually be a noteworthy addition. Anyway, looking good! I'm preparing myself for one hell of a ride...

[ZERO_ninja]

12 had been costume swapping a lot both series really. Which I love, it's very like Pertwee's and Tom Baker's Doctors.

[Doctor MK]

12 had been costume swapping a lot both series really. Which I love, it's very like Pertwee's and Tom Baker's Doctors.

Yeah, that's true, I almost forgot about it in Series 8 - I suppose it was a bit more subtle there because it all remained fairly stark, whereas this series it's been a lot more free-flowing. So, putting both Series 8 and 9 together, so far Capaldi has worn...

• Series 8 "official" costume - navy coat, white shirt (Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Flatline, Dark Water/Death in Heaven)
• navy coat, black jumper (Listen, In The Forest of the Night)
• navy coat, purple shirt (Robot of Sherwood)
• navy coat, blue shirt (Time Heist)
• caretaker costume (The Caretaker)
• orange spacesuit (Kill the Moon)
• navy coat, black/white spotted shirt (Kill the Moon)
• tuxedo (Mummy on the Orient Express)
• navy coat, black jumper, black hoodie (Last Christmas, Under the Lake/Before the Flood, The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion, Sleep No More)
• navy coat, black hoodie, white t-shirt, checked trousers (The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar, The Girl Who Died)
• navy coat, black jumper, blue hoodie (The Woman Who Lived)
• navy coat, black jumper, black t-shirt (opening of Face the Raven)
• red velvet coat, white shirt (Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, Hell Bent(?))

And I'm sure that won't be the end of the costume change, either... I like how flexible his outfit is really, the navy coat with the red lining (or soon-to-be red velvet coat) is basically always there to act as the trademark piece, but everything else can change around it. I know David Tennant and Matt Smith had their varying costumes too (brown/blue suits for Ten, red/blue/purple bowties and tweed/green/purple jackets for Eleven) but nowhere near as frequent as this.

[The Tenth Doctor]

I have never felt such rage at a character before.

I hope Ashildr gets her commupance. I know the Doctor won't do it, he promised. I just hope something really takes her immortality away. I'm one of the few that is heartbroken that Clara left and because my least favourite character this series just can't make up her damn mind about what she's doing? The next few episodes will be scary, I know. Not because of the content. The Doctor is at his breaking point. A nice farewell episode overall, though I never cared for Rigsy but whatever. You did good Jenna, I hope the nasty people on Social Media will leave you alone now.

[Big Panda]

I wouldn't be surprised if she made one last surprise comeback some how within the next two episodes.

Actually, it'd make for an amusing reverse of her introduction.

 

[Doctor MK]

Wow. Just wow. Where do I begin with that?!

 

This episode was just full of crushing inevitably. We knew Clara was leaving, we knew she was probably going to die... it was just a matter of how, and when, and why... so to see her accept Rigsy's fate - to do a very Doctor-esque thing and sacrifice herself for the innocent man, albeit with the intention of getting out of it at the last minute, only to be foiled - that was a very fitting way for her to go. That final scene with her facing the raven, accepting her death... right in the feels, man! And as sad as I am to wave goodbye to Clara and I will miss Jenna Coleman being in the show, it is setting up the next two episodes tremendously - now we don't just have a lonely Doctor, we have a very very

vengeful Doctor... somebody's (inadvertently) responsible for Clara's death, and oh boy I would not want to be them when he finds out who it is.

I have no idea where to rank Face The Raven on my Series 9 episode scale, but it's definitely near the top. I think I need it to sink in a bit more, I'm currently too blinded by emotions to rate it properly. Needless to say though, this season continues to impress, and I for one hope it goes out with the bang it appears to be leading up to.

Oh, and can we just mention this beautiful thing?

Can this be the TARDIS forever now please? Surely The Doctor wouldn't wash that memorial off...

Lovely to see Rigsy marking his respect though, and a nice callback to his artistic skills from Flatline. Oh my god, the feels. Too many feels.

Trailers for part one of the grand finale: Heaven Sent, which sees The Doctor all alone to face his greatest challenge (and holy cow does it look amazing)...

Next Time trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biQb3WRQpw8

"If you were any part of killing her, and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all... I am The Doctor, and I'm coming to find you. And I will never, ever stop..."

TV trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47-RFzZutkc

Roll on next Saturday!

Edited November 21, 2015 by Doctor MK

[Salamander]

It's really interesting that this was originally going to be episode three...

...and then they bumped it up to episode ten and made it Clara's leaving do and brought in Ashildr.  Because you can see the traces of the ordinary episode it would once have been - the mayor didn't need to be Ashildr, it didn't need to be a complicated plot to get the Doctor's attention, no idea how it would've been resolved though - and yet the final product is so very continuity-heavy.

It's a really hard episode to judge, for me.  I liked the very scientific, methodical approach they took to finding the trap street, but the added continuity kind of disguised the street's original purpose, that of being an alien refugee camp, and that's really not very important any more except to make the street seem alien-y in a low-budget way.  Ashildr, puppet though she was yet again to a more powerful and mysterious force, continues to be a pretty despicable piece of work who I agree deserves a heavy dose of just deserts, and it's hard to tell if we're meant to hate her quite as much as we really do after this episode.  Clara's death was handled pretty uncompromisingly and I like that it was tied very believably into her characterisation this series as a more reckless, Doctoresque personality.  That worked, for me - even if I am a bit suspicious of it, as we didn't see her for long afterwards and the production team were doing everything they could to imply that she wouldn't die, so.

On balance, though, I'm pretty sure she's really dead - or if she isn't, that post-credits scene with Rigsy needs a heck of a lot of explaining.  Don't just throw away an actual permanent companion death, New Who hasn't had that before (and no, Amy and Rory dying from old age and Victorian Clara's deaths do not count).  Sadly, this episode also kills stone dead the actually really logical theory that this episode happened before the previous episodes for the Doctor and he was just working through his grief - which I think is kind of a mistake as tying it up that way would have made a lot of sense and been quite satisfying.  Oh well.

So, what's going on, then, eh?  Who's been messing about with Ashildr and luring in the Doctor?  "The Time Lords" seems kind of too obvious, considering that they're locked in another dimension and also officially guaranteed to be showing up in the finale, which wouldn't really fit the bill for the massive penultimate-episode twist-ending Moffat was talking about last year.  I don't know who else it could be, though.  ...The past Doctors, maybe?

On the whole, a good episode.  The second half of the season is working a lot better for me than the first.

Edited November 22, 2015 by FFWF

[PSI Wind]

I was looking through the recap pages of TV Tropes just to check some things and, looks like BBC blew the lid on the finale for some fucking reason. What I'm about to say is HUGE, HUGE Spoilers.

The Doctor finally finds Gallifrey and returns. We finally get to see it and the major plot of the Doctor since Series 1 comes to an end.

[Salamander]

I was looking through the recap pages of TV Tropes just to check some things and, looks like BBC blew the lid on the finale for some fucking reason. What I'm about to say is HUGE, HUGE Spoilers.

 

Hidden Content

Yes, they do publish brief official synopses for the listings magazines and so on, but sometimes they do seem to be far more explicit than they need to be - Moffat's own synopsis for The Witch's Familiar completely gave away the cliffhanger of the previous episode, and if the finale synopsis blows the eleventh episode cliffhanger, one which Moffat was personally hyping up last year as absolutely mind-blowingly unexpected ("ohh, I don't think you'll see this coming!"), then that would be a huge waste.  They also acknowledged openly that last night's episode was Clara's formal departure episode, so there's another surprise gone.

I've noticed lately that fiction marketing in general, and not just for Doctor Who, has gotten a lot more spoiler-based in recent years, and it's a trend that I hate.  Let me find out for myself, thank you.

[Doctor MK]

Yeah, there's definitely some stuff in the finale synopses that I really didn't think they'd put in there, so I'm hoping the cliffhangers and their resolutions aren't as clear-cut as they may appear. Personally I think there must be something else bubbling away underneath the surface - Heaven Sent is 55 minutes long and Hell Bent is an almighty 65 minutes, so there better be some secrets left within the two-hour climax to the series.

If nothing else, we at least don't know what the Hybrid is yet - and even if we can hazard a guess, we have no idea what it looks like, where it comes from, or what purpose it will serve. So there's always that.

Needless to say though, whoever and whatever is involved, the next two episodes are going to feature a very unhappy Doctor indeed...

[The Tenth Doctor]

There's definitly a few unsolved mysteries. I've seen confusion popup in a few places now over a certain matter.

Well it's about Clara. Remember this?

Yeah, we haven't seen her dressed like this yet have we? Could we see her one last time? Will it be yet another version of her? How upset will the scene make me this time?

[Doctor MK]

There's definitly a few unsolved mysteries. I've seen confusion popup in a few places now over a certain matter.

Hidden Content

That's definitely from Episode 12, Hell Bent. There's been filming pics showing Peter Capaldi (with a guitar) and Jenna Coleman in an American diner, so Face the Raven definitely isn't her last appearance in the show - though whether or not it's the real deal, a flashback, or another Clara echo (like Oswin or Victorian Clara) remains to be seen. We do however know that they share this conversation:

CLARA: Is it a sad song?

DOCTOR: Nothing's sad 'til it's over. Then everything is.

CLARA: What's it called?

DOCTOR: I think it's called Clara.

Either way, it's clear Clara is gone but not forgotten as we head into the finale - a portrait of her appears in the Heaven Sent trailer, and no doubt her demise is what's going to lead to The Doctor losing his moral compass and rain merry hell on whoever is responsible.

I'm torn on how I want it to be resolved, really - I feel that Clara deserves a happier fate than the one she's just met, and The Doctor finding a way to restore her (but ultimately force her to leave the TARDIS for her own safety) would be a fitting reward for the agony he's going to have to go through over the next two episodes. After all: "I'm The Doctor, and I save people...!"

However, the sorrow and the sheer weight of her sudden death in Face the Raven are in a way what makes it all so memorable and powerful. A get-out clause might undermine its impact, so in a way I want it to be left untouched. In the end, she essentially gave her life so that a child wouldn't have to grow up without a father, and to save the life of her very own 'companion' - it doesn't get more fittingly Doctor-y than that.

[Big Panda]

 

Wouldn't the idea of Clara having any more splinters in the Doctor's timeline post-eleven be kind of impossible? Clara went into the Doctor's timeline back when time was written so that the Doctor would die after eleven, meaning the version of his timeline she dove into would only go up to that point.

Also what if the pics of Clara in the diner are just photos taken specially for the magazine?

Edited November 22, 2015 by TheFatPanda

[Doctor MK]

Hidden Content

I suppose it wouldn't make an awful lot of sense to be a Clara echo if you put it like that, but it's never been outright stated that it's impossible (in fact there was a comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine recently that actually had Clara coming face to face with another of her echoes). If you really wanted to pick it apart, you could say that since The Doctor never died on Trenzalore and therefore wasn't buried there, his time stream never appeared for Clara to jump into and splinter herself into millions of pieces anyway. Paradoxes abound. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey an' all that...

As for the American diner - it's definitely in the episode. A promo image of The Doctor in the diner with his guitar accompanies the BBC's official synopsis for Hell Bent, and there's no way they'd have had a whole filming crew out just for the sake of some magazine photos they could easily have mocked up in a studio.

Actually, on a related note, I may be wrong but I think I vaguely remember an interview with Murray Gold saying he'd written a song (with lyrics) for some point in Series 9. Who wants to bet (if true) that this is the "sad song called Clara" that The Doctor is going to perform in that diner? Peter Capaldi on guitar and vocals, anybody...?

[Big Panda]

 

Hidden Content

Then again, maybe that splinter was one that had already served their purpose (she's already encountered a pre-twelve Doctor somewhere did what she was meant to do to save him) and was just continuing to live their life.

I guess the same could be said for this potential Clara splinter too.

Speaking of which, I really wish somebody would write a book detailing who all the Clara splinters were and how they impacted the Doctor's life.

[Salamander]

 

Hidden Content

Regarding that Murray Gold interview, then, if so:

Between that quote, Moffat's script excerpts, and the like, they've pretty well given away what's probably going to be the final scene of the season.  Good job!

 

Edit: See TheFatPanda's post above; every time I try to include the quote itself, it vanishes once I make the edit.

Would you believe I was just writing a post with that same idea?  A book about Clara splinters actually strikes me as a really good spin-off novel, but instead they've mostly buried that aspect of her personality and have been running instead with... an Ashildr spin-off novel!  Everyone's favourite character.

Edited November 22, 2015 by FFWF
An entire quote vanished when I posted this post.

[Doctor MK]

Regarding that Murray Gold interview, then, if so:

Hidden Content

 

Edit: See TheFatPanda's post above; every time I try to include the quote itself, it vanishes once I make the edit.

Would you believe I was just writing a post with that same idea?  A book about Clara splinters actually strikes me as a really good spin-off novel, but instead they've mostly buried that aspect of her personality and have been running instead with... an Ashildr spin-off novel!  Everyone's favourite character.

I've found the Murray Gold interview and it looks like I might not have been totally accurate:

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/murray-gold-talks-doctor-who-series-9.html

"A song - there's some people playing instruments in the background and they're singing stuff. They need a song. So that's always fun!"

Doesn't sound like it'll be The Doctor singing it, and from the date of the interview and Gold's composing progress for the series (Episode 3 was the first to be filmed), I'd guess this is either something we've already seen - although I genuinely can't recall it? - or something else entirely. Who knows!

EDIT: The only possibility I can think of for this song is the Maldovarium scene in the opening to The Magician's Apprentice. It's very, very much in the background though and only plays for a few seconds, but it fits the bill of "instruments with singing" and it was the second block of episodes to be filmed after Under the Lake/Before the Flood so chronologically speaking it fits in with the facts.

The Ashildr spin-off novel has potential I suppose, her adventures are almost as limitless as The Doctor's now (albeit more Earth-centric) but she's nowhere near as likeable a character... especially after Face the Raven. The question is: have we seen the last of her now for this series, or will she return yet again in Hell Bent to face some sort of closure?

Edited November 22, 2015 by Doctor MK

[Salamander]

DoctorWhoTV pointed out this great article from the Radio Times in which Moffat discusses some of his early plans for the 50th:
Right here...
As has been rumoured in the past, the 50th went through several permutations and there were a lot of possibilities.  Moffat's original draft was, as you'd expect, all the New Who Doctors, but he anticipated all along that Eccleston wouldn't wish to participate (whilst reflecting entirely decently on Eccleston).  He also had a version that was just Jenna Coleman as she was the only one who'd been contracted at that point - adventures of the Clara splinters, presumably.  I find what-ifs and rejected drafts and the like really fascinating, so this was pretty interesting for me.

Edit: Apparently the Clara-only storyline, which some wag has nicknamed "The No Doctors," was that the Doctor was going to be erased from time and would exist only in fiction, TV shows and films as a character played by multiple different actors; Clara would recognise him as oddly familiar, and she would have to investigate and figure out what was going on.

Edited November 23, 2015 by FFWF

[The Tenth Doctor]

Can I just say, wow? Capaldi was amazing in this episode. He really earned his right to be the Doctor. Such a feeling of mystery to this and I began to piece it together towards the end.

I worked out eventually that it was the Time Lords. I said it to my bro the other day that I they hired Ashildr. When it was the Doctor's childhood monster, time resets, knowing who Clara is (Time of the Doctor) and something on the other side of a wall, I pegged it. Gallifrey stands people....for now. It may have a very angry Doctor, maybe even a Valeyard coming.

[QuantumEdge]

As someone who's been underwhelmed by this season, this episode was made only better by string of disappointments.  I'm not the biggest fan of Moffat's writing, but he luckily he decided to bring his A game here.  The suspense and mystery was fabulous, so claustrophobic all the time.  And can I say this is probably a fantastic testament to Capaldi as someone who can hold a whole episode by himself.  That takes a lot of acting chops and gravitas, so I give him my full tip of the hat.  My only worry is how they're going to top this nest week, or at least equal it.

[Doctor MK]

Holy shamoly. That was phenomenal. I know some people have been disappointed with Series 9, but me, damn, I've been loving almost every minute of it, and Heaven Sent was the absolute pinnacle of its quality so far. To quote The Doctor himself: "Every time I think it couldn't get any more extraordinary it surprises me..."

It was a tour de force performance for Peter Capaldi - surely he has cemented his place as The Doctor now - and the script was surreal, deranged, and downright clever. When you finally work out the resolution to the puzzle, it's a real fist-punching moment (in more ways than one...) - and then the harrowing reality of it all sets in, and the stage is well and truly set for the finale.

My one gripe? The cliffhanger - well, the "what's on the other side" part anyway - was completely ruined by the official BBC synopsis. And as shocking a revelation as The Doctor being the Hybrid is - like, is he literally a hybrid or just "a Time Lord with the heart of a Dalek" because he's so royally pissed off at them now? - it definitely didn't live up to the epic proportions that Steven Moffat had been hyping up since last year. But it was the journey that mattered, and oh boy, what a journey it was.

Definitely my favourite episode of the series so far (and that's saying something!) - if next week manages to go out with a bang, this will quite possibly have been my favourite season since the revival. Certainly one of the most consistently good ones, anyway.

And speaking of next week... trailers for Hell Bent are here - beware, massive spoilers!

 

 

Edited November 28, 2015 by Doctor MK

[Salamander]

That left me shaking.  I wasn't entirely sure how I felt during the episode, but once the last five minutes or so hit then it was all vindicated.  Stunning, stunning episode, with a tremendously brave conceit for what is ultimately a family show.  I would never have expected this.

...And, yes, the BBC totally ruined the cliffhanger by giving it away in synopses.  But to me, the cliffhanger kind of wasn't the point of the episode - or rather, the Gallifrey aspect of it wasn't.  The Time Lords were always going to be up there as candidates for whoever's behind all this.  If they'd spoiled how he got through the wall, now, then I'd have been mad, as that was phenomenal.

Next week has a lot to live up to.

[Doctor MK]

Next week has a lot to live up to.

Well, it's certainly looking like it's going to be a jam-packed climax to the series. Here's an official gallery of screens from Hell Bent - view them at your peril!

There's a hell of a lot to answer in the final 65 minutes of Series 9, too...

My main one at the moment is - why are the Time Lords seemingly against The Doctor? He saved them from eternal destruction in the last day of the Time War, they gave him a new regeneration cycle supposedly because they "love" him... and now they're making dodgy deals, trapping him in his own confession dial, and seemingly wanting to destroy him? 

Come to think of it, how did they make the deal with Ashildr in the first place anyway? If Gallifrey is so "lost", how did they make contact? And how did Missy escape back to the "normal" universe, for that matter? The Doctor speculated that she had a TARDIS in Series 8 - but surely if it was that simple to just jump in a TARDIS and fly away, all the Time Lords would have done it...?

I'm sure we'll get plenty of answers - and plenty more questions, too!

[Salamander]

Well, it's certainly looking like it's going to be a jam-packed climax to the series. Here's an official gallery of screens from Hell Bent - view them at your peril!

There's a hell of a lot to answer in the final 65 minutes of Series 9, too...

 

Hidden Content

A few bits of guesswork on those questions:

Well, just for starters, it's worth remembering that the Time Lords are not necessarily a unified race.  There are lots of them, and as such can have lots of opinions.  So if there is some disagreement among them, that's not necessarily surprising.

Anyway.  Wherever the Time Lords are trapped, they need the Doctor to get them out.  They had to give him a new set of regenerations or that would be it for them.  They underestimated the Doctor when putting him through the confession trial - they assumed he would just confess his final secret and never even considered either the possibility of sacrificing himself enough times to punch through the wall nor imagined he'd be willing to die countless times to do it; in short, he was never meant to die, he was just meant to be scared of dying.

How did they make the deal with Ashildr/Me?  Pure guesswork, but it looks like they can operate through the confession dial.  It's Gallifreyan technology.  They can get the Doctor into Gallifrey through it, but they can't get their whole planet out of it by any means, it's too small.  But at any rate, if they can work through it, they can probably send messages through it.  The Doctor's been carting it around for a while, so by listening in through it they found out about Me and transmitted a message to her arranging everything.

How the Master got out?  Well, when he returned with the Time Lords in The End Of Time, that was meant to be to the last moments of Gallifrey.  He could've stolen a TARDIS lickety-split and run for his life just before the Doctors sealed Gallifrey away.  Alternatively, I don't think it's beyond the Master to have an escape route which he sabotaged on the way out so nobody else could follow...