OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY: nu-Who season 8

I thought it was a nice touch to throw the 'broom' question at the clockwork man from a Doctor who has just changed all of him and is trying to figure out what's unchanged.

Just so no one misses the point, in this scene they have the Doctor holding a plate as a mirror in front of the cyborg guys's face - but the flipside of the plate is also reflective, so the Doctor sees his own face there. It was such an obvious thing, but still a nice touch.

Also, my first thought about the end was that heaven looked like the place in 'the Girl Who Waited', but that totally isn't it, at all, right?

Turns out it actually is the same garden! That's probably a coincidence, though: apparently the real garden they used is conveniently located just outside Cardiff, so it's been used in Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures too. Still, the visual parallel between this ep and "The Girl Who Waited" made me think of another theory regarding Missy's identity... In that episode, Old Amy felt she was abandoned by the Doctor on that planet; what if Missy is some previously unseen companion that the Doctor did actually abandon? We know he can be a bit of a dick, and that he has a short attention span, so it's perfectly he has had some companions he'd totally forgotten about, left behind in some planet or era they don't belong to.

Furthermore, there's a clear parallel between the Doctor telling Clara he's not her boyfriend, and Missy telling the cyborg guy the Doctor is her boyfriend. What if Missy was a companion who, just like Clara, thought the Doctor loved him, but this time, unlike with Clara, the Doctor never bothered to clear things up? If the Doctor forgetting her made her go a bit crazy, that would explain why she still thinks the Doctor is her boyfriend. Also, based on the first ep the theme of this series seems to be the Doctor facing his old mistakes, so having an abandoned companion as the villain would fit into that.

Of course all of the above would also fit if Missy is some kind of a parallel timeline version of Clara... But that wouldn't explain why she has a different face.

Completely out-there guess - she's the Valeyard of River Song. Largely based on her 'real' name (Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere), which is all a bit Trial of a Timelord/Matrix related; also that Moffatt doesn't seem to be able to leave his favourite characters alone so I doubt we've seen the end of either the Weeping Angels or River Bleedin' Song.

Well, TBH, I don't think River's story ever got a proper conclusion... Okay, she doesn't have a body anymore and is stuck in a computer simulation, but it remains unclear why the Doctor doesn't even try to get her out of there? You'd think a person with his resources would be able to do it somehow?

Weeping Angels, OTOH, are such a case of diminishing returns you'd think even Moffatt had understood it by now? What a way to ruin a brilliant one-off concept, let's hope we never see them again.

Anyway, can someone explain this whole Valeyard/Matrix business to me? I see people refer to them every once in a while, but not having seen any old-Who, they're a mystery to me.

I semi consciously put together a theory where Missy is in the core drive of the TARDIS which I think i remember being described as being a black hole type set up. Think this was from one of the few Doctor Who novels I've read as an adult, which makes me think it's the one where they are at Los Olvidados or whatever the name of the place where Oppenheimer was working on the nuclear bomb was.

She meets both robots and humans when they die in connection to the Doctor. Sorry will make that the only spoiler.

Trying to remember what happened to Idris the previous embodiment of the TArdis at the end of the Doctor's wife. Was the entity destroyed as such by being reintegrated with the machine? Which might explain why there was a different personification of that character introduced.

Anyway looks like whoever that entity known as Missy is she's more benevolent than malevolent though I've only seen her twice so could be further development later in the series.
I think there have been other people who've been sucked into the TARDIS's drive, though they were far from benevolent to the Doctor etc. Trying to think exactly what the stories were that happened in.

Actually to clarify I think the black hole set up is the power core driving the TARDIS. Just got the idea that the TARDIS has its own little world inside that. Though there would not be a need for a spatial presence for a world that data/spirits /whatever inhabited when there is a series of dimensions at play anyway.
JUst wondering, thinking about that, how stable the insides of the TARDIS are actually supposed to b.
If rooms etc change locations which I think they do, did the Girl Who Waited see a Tardis reconfiguring alongside its Doctor? I think earlier Doctors have ejected large amounts of rooms like Peter Davidson in Castrovalva I also think there were some references by Tom Baker to rooms moving.

& was Idris's personification a result of the Tardis being in its temporary location outside the normal space/time continuum as set up at the beginning of that episode.

Anyway, can someone explain this whole Valeyard/Matrix business to me? I see people refer to them every once in a while, but not having seen any old-Who, they're a mystery to me.

You're really really better off not knowing anything about the Valeyard - even if you watch the whole 14-episode story, it makes no sense at all. This may or may not be related to the last episode being written by drastically untalented people who vocally thought Dr Who was stupid and who were legally prohibited from reading the script notes by the bloke who'd written a previous version when the ORIGINAL writer who was meant to be wrapping it up had died mid-episode.

valyard was supposed to be some intermediary regeneration before the doctor's final regeneration and was evil. it was'nt a terrible idea but it was executed horribly and was never really mentioned again (actually it was in the name of the doctor, I think). I don't expect it to come up as a plot point again

Yeah, the word Valeyard was mentioned in "The Name of Doctor", though I don't think there was anything more said about it except that it's a future name of the Doctor? I've gathered that he's an evil regeneration of the Doctor, but that's about all I know of him. Doing an evil version of the Doctor is such an obvious idea that I'm surprised if it hasn't been done than once? Though I guess the Master is kinda like that too.

SPOILER

It was also done in "Amy's Choice"

END SPOILER

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. The Dream Lord was kind of a minor character though.

Wasn't the Valeyard first introduced during the Tom Baker story Invasion of Time where he's returned on Gallifrey? It certainly appears during the Colin Baker series where he's on trial The Trial of A Timelord.

It''s been about 5 years since i watched through the serieses but I thought there was some mention during that Tom Baker story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeyard

I tried to read that, but it's still confusing as hell... The Valeyard is the Doctor's future incarnation, but he still tries to get the Doctor executed? Why would he want that, wouldn't he'd stop existing too when the Doctor dies, since the Doctor would never have the chance to regenerate into him?

OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY: nu-Who season 8

but then it was well-paced and framed

nb in contrast with all of the following bits of fight scene

watched The Krotons ep 1 last night (up on iView this week, Australian readers): Jamie slowly arm-wrestling a dude with an axe in real time >>> the Paternoster gang being trapped in a circle of robots with sword-wrists for about ten minutes, their time, while not really doing anything

I thought that I'd seen the Silurians the species that Vastra comes from in much earlier episodes.
They date back to Jon Pertwee days, though they look pretty different at that point.
JUst come across links to the Peter Davison episode I refer to earlier in the thread, it's called Warlords of the Deep and it seems they economised greatly on the way they portrayed the aliens. This is the Silurians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwExauvltnM

and this is the Myrca the creature I said looked like a hobby horse, I meant as in morris dancing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUCSlb-jhsU
you have to wait about a minute into the clip though but it is shortly followed by some of the least convincing martial arts i've ever seen.

That second clip is one of my favorite Doctor Who scenes of all time.

Warriors of the Deep is the earliest Who story I can remember watching on first broadcast (I would've been five) and I thought it was incredible so I've avoided watching it again ever since.

The Myrka is effectively frightening to a five year-old I can tell you.

My other most fondly remembered serial from childhood is Paradise Towers, haha. Which I have rewatched.

Oh god, I remember when that scene with the Myrka was broadcast - my brother and me looked at each other and laughed for a full minute, it seemed. He was a Who sceptic and would regularly rib me about the crappy monsters and effects, but even I had to laugh at that.

How old were you?

Holy shit at karate vs. Myrka, I laughed so hard!

Warriors of the Deep is alternately hilarious and GRIM AS ALL FUCK, I love it so much.

I liked Paradise Towers at the time too. I was pretty easy to please.

"I tried to read that, but it's still confusing as hell... The Valeyard is the Doctor's future incarnation, but he still tries to get the Doctor executed? Why would he want that, wouldn't he'd stop existing too when the Doctor dies, since the Doctor would never have the chance to regenerate into him?"

well, we said it wasn't well thought out or well done.

Paradise Towers is a secretly amazing story weighed down by a couple of bizarre, nonsensical production choices IMO. I was shocked at not only how well it held up when I rewatched it a few years ago, but also by how much better it was than things like The Happiness Patrol and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

correct, except Greatest Show is one of the most secretly amazing stories in the series' history

Bin POLLer: Red Kangs Vs Blue Kangs POO

I like Greatest Show too. I'm pretty fond of McCoy's stretch, even the bad stories, since they were the first ones I saw on first-run

That makes me feel old. I grew up watching Tom Baker and Peter Davison. By the time McCoy got the gig I had pretty much stopped watching.

I'm not sure how much of that later stuff I'd seen prior to downloading and watching the whole lot through about 5 years ago. I know I saw Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker as a kid. Think I saw some of the davison at least.
I may have watched bits of McCoy & the 2nd Baker. Can't remember.
Do remember that I had seen Sylvester McCoy on stage at Stratford when I was a kid, in a play called An Italian Straw Hat the poster for which I had up on my wall for a while after.
Also knew Davison from It Shouldn't Happen To A Vet.

But Tom Baker is still a pretty definitive Doctor. His autobio Who On Earth Is Tom Baker is a really really good read too.

he is oogly

I have a stupid question- If Clara The Impossible Girl has been in every phase of the Doctor's life, why does she have such a hard time reconciling how he is after regeneration? Did she get her memory wiped after the 50th anniversary show? I can't remember.

She vaguely remembers being fragmented through the Doctor's timeline but not really; they basically handwaved past this in 11th's last story.

If we care to fanwank this: she basically splintered into different times, and each of the splinters has its own discrete consciousness that isn't shared among the others, so that when she "returns" to the normal timeline, she doesn't have access to the memories of the splinters.

got it. I knew it was a handwave, just couldn't remember the circumstances. It got pretty jumbled as these things tend to do.

A simpler answer is "shitty writing".

I feel like you're not getting into the proper spirit of the Whoniverse

(says the dude who keeps making fun of various McCoy stories)

wibbly-wobbly hacky-lazy

It's also a resigned shake of the head because I was thinking about pre-showrunner Moffatt stories and quite how enjoyable and well-plotted they would be and now he just repeatedly gets himself tied up in these stupid and pointless narrative knots.

does the doctor usually have memory loss after regeneration? his confusion seemed out of place but wasn't sure if there was a precendent for it

I think so, to some degree. Think there certainly was with Matt Smith who was trying to work out pretty much everything in 7 year old Amy's house including do fish fingers go with custard.

& David Tennant had the Christmas invasion where he spends most of the episode sick in bed at the Tyler's place.

Think pre gap doctors all had at least one scene where they were trying to work out who they were through their wardrobe etc. I know Tom baker has a long scene where he tries on a load of different outfits with various levels of reality including Pierrot and viking outfits.
i've just seen a scene where McCoy does something similar. I watched the potted histories of the Doctors that were on BBC America 5 days before the Capaldi debut.

& Ecclestone is checking out his face in various reflections apparently getting used to it despite other indications that he has been in that regeneration for a while I think.

This regeneration was probably more traumatic anyway since he wasn't expecting to get one. Doesn't he just get given the power to do so after he's pretty much died of old age and other complicatons?

A lot of this makes more sense when you think that these introducing-the-doctor stories are really just to hold the hands of the audience through the trauma. Matt was so popular (he doubled the audience of the show) that they reeeeeeally needed to acknowledge that people were going to get whiplash - hence opening the show with familiar characters, characters being the voice of the audience, etc etc

I am totally down with and loving Capaldi but I'm thinking Moff needs to take off - that's where my tiredness comes from watching the show sometimes. There are way too many things that feel like he's parodying himself

Most obvious handholding being the phone call - 'please keep our ratings high and continue to love us!'