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Post by Simon Smith on Nov 30, 2015 5:01:35 GMT
I doubt if any previous Doctor, or very many actors at all, could have pulled off what Capaldi did here, carrying an entire episode by himself and keeping the audience gripped throughout. Now that is skill. I don't think Capaldi did pull it off. I found Heaven Sent to be tedious, and also full of plot holes. The biggest one of course being..."If the castle/structure resets to its original settings every time a new Doctor appears in the teleport, then how was he able to slowly destroy the Final Wall?" Capaldi's talking to himself, as well as 'Clara', and constantly going into the TARDIS-in-his-own-mind were just silly. The ending also made him look bad. He spent two billion(?!) years refusing to tell his secret, then at the end he emerges and the first thing he does is....tell his secret! Just to do it on his own terms? That really makes him look bad. All in all, this was an episode that tried to be clever, but fell flat on it face in failure. 55 minutes of the Doctor running through corridors, digging and talking to the back of Clara's memory....all to go through a door. Because he refused to give up his secret. But then that's just what he did!
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Post by Paul McDermott on Nov 30, 2015 7:42:27 GMT
Glad to read your unabashedly contrarian views Simon! I don't share them, but they're interesting to read. Surely it's a fair thing to surmise the wall is something that doesn't change except through the Doctor's fists? The ep demonstrated it, and any of us can conceive of a Who science reason for it with little effort. What matters is that the story showed that's what it did. Likewise, the clue under the soil. Maybe the changing force only effects the location up to a certain level - the skulls kept mounting up in the deep. And maybe Time Lord skulls are especially hardy, compared to the rest of their skeletons! Again, we saw enough to make educated guesses, if we want. Was whomever it was that put the Doctor in this situation expecting him to just give them all the secrets they sought? Or had they known him well enough to anticipate he'd solve it the way he did, knowing it'd make him even angrier than he already was, the better to use him to their advantage when he reached Gallifrey in that state? We're only 2/3s of the way through this so I don't think we can tell yet. Likewise, the statement he makes upon arrival home - it may not mean what you think it does. As for Clara - he's just lost someone who's been a big and important part of his life, and he was powerless to prevent a tragic death he'd surely inspired her to grasp for. Is it any wonder she's on his mind? Any wonder he'd find some brief solace in his memories? Without wanting to come off like the Typhonian Beast, your silly is my ingenious and your tedious is my captivating!
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Post by Tony Ingram on Nov 30, 2015 8:23:33 GMT
I doubt if any previous Doctor, or very many actors at all, could have pulled off what Capaldi did here, carrying an entire episode by himself and keeping the audience gripped throughout. Now that is skill. I don't think Capaldi did pull it off. I found Heaven Sent to be tedious Of course you did. I would expect nothing else.
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Post by Tony Ingram on Nov 30, 2015 8:33:13 GMT
Presumably the scrawled BIRD in the dirt wasn't a reference to Clara's demise, but the phoenix? It was actually a reference to the story of the bird sharpening its beak on a rock a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide once every thousand years, and how when the rock has finally worn away, one day of Eternity will have passed.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Nov 30, 2015 8:35:09 GMT
You're quite right Tony, of course it was. I was dazzled by all the awesome! Still, the phoenix and the Bradbury passage to me seemed in tune with proceedings!
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Post by Paul McDermott on Nov 30, 2015 13:19:11 GMT
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Post by Dale Rumbold on Nov 30, 2015 19:55:40 GMT
Finally got round to watching Heaven Sent : have enjoyed most of this series (apart from the Mark Gatiss drivel), and very much like Capaldi as The Doctor, but this episode was awful. So he's now aged 2 billion years? Or some sort of hologram of him has?? I didn't even 'get' what secret he was holding on to : was there one?
Have to say, after watching every episode since it started in 1963 (apart from The Space Pirates, documented previously), it may now be time to give up, if this is how it's going to be. "Next Time" seems to feature the Timelords : I thought they didn't exist any more? (No doubt they resurrected them during an episode when I'd lost track ...)
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Post by Paul McDermott on Nov 30, 2015 23:28:22 GMT
Hey Dale, given you say you've seen all sans The Space Pirates, not sure how much you remember of the last few years... Did you catch the 50th special? Surely you did? Or was this a "lost track" moment? Gallifrey's fate is referenced in last year's finale and the last two Christmas specials, and this year's opening two parter. It's been a central plank since RTD brought the show back in '05. Moffat put a twist on what the Doctor (and the audience) thought they knew about its final days in The Day Of The Doctor. Bottom line, it's not destroyed - just saved by the Doctors in a way that made it lost in a pocket universe and an act that Eccleston and Tennant's Doctors can't remember doing, hence the guilt. Capaldi's version has been searching for it, as Smith was inspired to do by his meeting with The Curator. As you saw, he got back home in Heaven Sent. And as Smith's Doctor spoke of his quest to get back home "the long way round" in the 50th, that's just what he did. Not exactly in the way they or the audience was expecting, but there you are. As to what happens next, hard to say - but it looks like a tumultuous reconnection with his roots and a bit of score settling, with a Doctor who's not as restrained in his impulses as he might once have been. I'm guessing the Doctor's current state of mind is letting himself wide open for those who've orchestrated this whole affair. Without a stalwart friend to give him balance and perspective, he may yet come a cropper. For that reason, I suspect Missy brought Clara to him as a double edged sword back in Series 7. Sure, Clara saved him from the Great Intelligence by letting herself be splintered in time. But it also would serve as the means to stop him going too far when he got home. So I think Missy has foreknowledge of the Doctor's timeline. (Which version of Capaldi's Doctor told Ohila to give his confession dial to Missy, and when did she receive it? Might just be it had a primer on what was coming and what he needed her to do, to be opened on the event of his death - but again, the earlier or later Capaldi?) Even though Clara's now dead, the chance to prevent that may be what motivates an earlier version of Capaldi's Doctor to risk everything by confronting his future self. I don't see another way to resolve this, and it'll dovetail nicely with his impromptu leaving before she got back to Vastra's at the end of Deep Breath. Maybe that one will die and the older version - suitably stopped again by himself from doing something terrible (with a little help from his friends) - will return to fill his earlier self's slot, with no memory of the event and lingering doubts as to his goodness. The hybrid stuff is also chock-a-block throughout the season, thematically and in spoken dialogue between the Doctor and Davros in The Witch's Familiar. It's really hard to miss this stuff, and like Bad Wolf back in Series 1, it's pivotal to the entire set of eps this year. Whatever happens, we'll find out next week! But sure, if you really and truly couldn't see much of anything to like in ep 11, sorry to hear it. Maybe you'd be happier not watching, as you say. I took a sabbatical a few years ago, and it did wonders.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Nov 30, 2015 23:41:27 GMT
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 2, 2015 14:17:47 GMT
Just rewatched The Zygon Inversion. I'm struck by themes that resonate with where things look like they're headed into the finale. As was pointed out in that story re the Zygons, not all of Gallifrey would choose to kill the Doctor or stay lost/dead to keep themselves safe for fear of him. Whatever retribution he intends to dole out on returning home, it's plain those who were fleeing the Daleks in the 50th weren't his persecutors. It seems we're going to get a better feel for what the War Doctor was like in the years before he reached for The Moment. Will they all be so ready to forgive whatever acts that so troubled Capaldi in his remarkable speech during The Zygon Inversion? Perhaps he'll now be seen not as surplus baggage after winning the Time War, not as a hero, but a risk. He might not have carried himself as Omega once did, but his pre-emptive sentence in Heaven Sent has put a serious dent in his sunny disposition. Moreover, maybe what we saw in the resolution of the 50th special isn't how it looked to most folks on Gallifrey. I can't help but suspect that there must be a large amount of fear amongst Gallifrey's people or at least, their rulers. In some ways, Gallifrey comes across as a sort of ultimate gated community. Leaving aside the horror of the Time War (however that started), the idea of being pretty much the pinnacle of sapient development surely meant to more than a few that they'd be nervous of others trying to steal their secrets or force their way into usurping them. What's the point of living forever barring accidents and having mastery over space-time travel if every minute you're sweating the emergence of new and potentially contentious aliens who are just as capable? The Two Doctors offers hints of such concerns. From their inception the Time Lords must have realised that although they might not be feared, envied or hated today by those who could rise to challenge them, there would always be a chance that could change tomorrow. How would you cope? One could live distracted insular lives, or maintain a baseless faith to lull one into a special inviolable claim to cosmic invulnerability...or one might feel it was proper and right that what was best for Gallifrey would be best for all, and use any means to enact such a doctrine. The dangers for the Doctor's people and the wider universe are clear. We saw that in Genesis Of The Daleks, just for openers! One rule for Earth's guerrilla fighters in Day Of The Daleks, another for the Time Lords - or at least, the one who intercepted the Doctor's transmat beam! I'd like to think that on some level, the Doctor's explorations have allowed some on Gallifrey to see (perhaps like the Stasi agent in The Lives Of Others being influenced by those he observes) that there's a lot to be encouraged by and to inspire them to be good neighbours. I'd not be surprised if there's the equivalent of a Temporal Curtain around Gallifrey, which restricts travel off-world except for brief trips by trusted types on official business. Instead of mingling and exploring, learning about the rest of the cosmos like the Doctor, the Time Lords seem to be isolationist and exclusionist. And to be fair, that's not without some good reasons, as the missteps with the Minyans showed. But over millions of years, surely they'd have gotten beyond thinking everyone else were barbarians to be feared or ignored? Maybe the populace is managed, a phenomenon not unknown on Earth. In a way, some could mirror the Daleks in their encased twitchiness, though the origins of that weren't exactly the same to be sure! No wonder rebels like the Doctor and his old chum the Master might have been encouraged off-world, lest they shake up the prevailing Gallifreyan orthodoxy. The Doctor was sentenced to exile on Earth, not to be banged up in Shada, after all. But perhaps like Roj Blake, he may have already done time, for similar uses of State. There may well be factions, some feverish (like the Rassilon crazies we saw in The End Of Time and those like the War Chief) and more reasonable types like the General we saw in The Day Of The Doctor. I'd not be surprised if it was the latter who got the Doctor his new lease on life during Smith's exit, but perhaps that choice was not well-received and he's lost his influence to whomever's in charge now. That he gets punched by the Doctor in the trailer suggests the lead's clearly not himself and that bodes ill for what lies ahead. I suspect enough of the powerful on Gallifrey will be convinced by the Doctor's actions and/or tricked by the influence of his enemies to make problems that won't get smoothed over easily. Without guidance, he's going to be as vulnerable to temptation as Clara was when she was distraught in Dark Water over the loss of Danny. At the end of The Zygon Inversion, Clara promised Osgood she'd let the Doctor die if he got really annoying. The trailer indicates that Clara or someone very like her is in Hell Bent so I'm guessing that's the other side of her saving the Doctor through time and from himself - stopping him after her death, presumably via the earlier 12th.
Maybe Capaldi's cameo in the 50th is a face off against an earlier version of his current self, as they head into a Time Ram or some such. As with the Zygon solution, I also wonder if the Doctor won't lose some of his memory to ease the burden and safeguard him. Perhaps Clara will make him forget about her, and how she died. It'd be a sad inversion of Donna's fate, that he can't remember a friend who'd been so pivotal to him, but if the stakes were high enough, I'm sure Clara would make the choice for the greater good.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 2, 2015 14:40:55 GMT
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Post by Tony Ingram on Dec 2, 2015 17:26:47 GMT
Finally got round to watching Heaven Sent : have enjoyed most of this series (apart from the Mark Gatiss drivel), and very much like Capaldi as The Doctor, but this episode was awful. So he's now aged 2 billion years? Or some sort of hologram of him has?? I didn't even 'get' what secret he was holding on to : was there one? Have to say, after watching every episode since it started in 1963 (apart from The Space Pirates, documented previously), it may now be time to give up, if this is how it's going to be. "Next Time" seems to feature the Timelords : I thought they didn't exist any more? (No doubt they resurrected them during an episode when I'd lost track ...) As Paul said, the Time Lords have been back for awhile, just hiding somewhere. And no, the Doctor is not two billion years old and there were no holograms; he was constantly rebuilding himself from the teleporter, so he'd still be the same age he was when he went into it. And the secret, obviously, was the identity of the Hybrid, which we've been waiting to find out since the second episode this year.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 2, 2015 23:16:35 GMT
Quoting messed up, apologies!
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 2, 2015 23:20:22 GMT
And no, the Doctor is not two billion years old and there were no holograms; he was constantly rebuilding himself from the teleporter, so he'd still be the same age he was when he went into it. Like with the exploration of the bootstrap paradox earlier in the series, this was a pretty neat exploration of the philosophical aspects of teleportation. Yep, the old duffer in the pattern buffer trick! That said, whilst the Doctor's body is as young as it felt the moment he arrived at his destination at the start of Heaven Sent, his awareness of what was happening to him - and the awful choice he was stuck with in order to break free of the trap, must have given him just a few more grey hairs (at least until he set the cycle in motion anew): DOCTOR: (angry) That's when I remember! Always then. Always then. Always exactly then! I can't keep doing this, Clara! I can't! Why is it always me? Why is it never anybody else's turn? BLACKBOARD: How are you going to win?? (seven underlines.) DOCTOR: Can't I just lose? Just this once? (He hides under the time rotor assembly.) DOCTOR; Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell them. Just tell them, whoever wants to know, all about the Hybrid. (The Doctor is sitting on the ground in a channel cut part way through the Azbantium, as the Veil arrives in room 12. In the Tardis, in his head, he comes out and runs around the console room.) DOCTOR: I can't keep doing this. I can't! I can't always do this! It's not fair! Clara, it's just not fair! Why can't I just lose? I suspect that in Hell Bent, he'll get his wish with Clara's help but once again, probably not in the way he suspects. It's really been a year for Truth Or Consequences on Doctor Who!
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 3, 2015 0:25:51 GMT
Another theme of Moffat's I'm pretty sure we'll see repeated in the finale is the past coming back to mess with the future. We saw that in the opening two-parter, with the Doctor meeting Davros as a scared boy. We also saw the Doctor facing down the Fisher King: DOCTOR: If all I have to do to survive is tweak the future a bit, what's stopping me? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The ripple effect. Maybe it will mean that the universe will be ruled by cats or something, in the future. But the way I see it, even a ghastly future is better than no future at all. That willingness to roll the dice when the alternative is far worse is something I expect that'll resolve the problems that beset and have partly been caused by the Doctor, but the cost will probably broaden the scope beyond the current dynamic with Gallifrey and heighten the uncertainty about what to expect for the year ahead. If the Doctor who spoke with such passion and eloquence in The Zygon Inversion is able to find forgiveness for an older version of his current self (not a younger incarnation, as Hurt's was!), taking away his memories of both his home and Clara might be a way to prevent his going off the rails and harming others. After all, he did it more than once to Kate Stewart and the Zygons to good effect! (Of course, there's every chance that like with the Zygons, we might see those memories resurface one way or another.) In any case, the Capaldi run has seen the Doctor indeed journey into darkness and despite appearing more happy and comfortable in himself in Series 9, was put through the wringer in ways that might make even Job reach for the Book Of Dawkins! And clearly, his connection to and hurt in losing Clara is pivotal: CLARA: So, you must have thought I was dead for a while? DOCTOR: Yeah. CLARA: How was that? DOCTOR: Longest month of my life. CLARA: It could only have been five minutes. DOCTOR: I'll be the judge of time. How Ashildr plays into all this, and whether she helps resolve or inflame the situation, it'll be fascinating to discover! Perhaps she'll take custody of the Doctor's more troublesome memories, as the Osgoods did with the knowledge inherent to the resolution of the ceasefire, and she'll keep them safe as long as she lives, until a time when it doesn't matter that the Doctor knows again. After her trouble remembering things she ought to know, the better not to be played by others or act without compassion, and her desire to forget some things too painful to bear (like the deaths of her children) it might be nicely symmetrical to have such a twist!
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