Doctor Who: Journey to the Center of the TARDIS

[rabid1st]

The word for this episode is derivative. But to avoid spoilers...

So, we have seen that crack before in Amy's wall. We have seen the TARDIS explode, too. We have seen these corridors and it is very easy to see that the burned creatures were future versions of the people in the story. Hands are held. Hugs are given. Clara is reassured and we all want to know the Doctor's name. Doctor Who? Only we don't, because that's when the story ends. And it should end just before that name is spoken...because...the Doctor is losing his mystery. He's acting out a dance that is no longer vital or even slightly diverting. We know these steps. And only Jenna adds a little life to them.

My buddy Cat has given me a hint that she wants to discuss the shape of the narrative. And this is, as my loyal readers know, a subject very close to my heart. Stories have a progressive pattern. You can't just throw anything in there and expect your story to work. Writers try to tweak the pattern, change it up, surprise the audience. But, there comes a time when you are just jerking an audience around, if you promise one story and deliver another. You become a player in your own play. Doctor Who worked for decades by keeping true to the idea of a man/being who made things better, couldn't help meddling and loved humanity in a way that was quite pure and profound. Moff has been screwing around with the essentials of premise that doesn't need his input. And you know what, he hasn't added anything of import to the show. RTD added a lot of new twists. Moff just copies stuff. He made the Doctor a different, shallower character, to avoid the idea of character growth that RTD tried to introduce. Moff, to me, is the master of resets. And in Journey we see his true colors on display.

The ship that is crucial to this show can be blown to bits...and, yet, saved, because the last Time Lord can do anything. Ah, but there's the rub. If he can do anything, why not just fix it all with a snap of his fingers? Once we establish those rules for the story, that the fabric of time and space can be bent to give us any eventuality, then, we must ask ourselves if any of the things we have seen and done with Eleven matter. Isn't it just as likely that the Rose we saw return to Ten was an alternative Rose? And somewhere out there she and the Doctor had a long happy life together? Or she and Nine? Perhaps we should go back to where River arrives, knowing his name, because that led us into a preordained reality where the Doctor must marry River and must become a finger-snapping God. But after he's done that...he can reset all of it, right?

He can reach thorough a crack in time and rewrite his own story...and become mysterious again. Only he really can't. Sure, Moff could write that. But you can't regain mystery. The audience would know what it knows. We know that the Doctor isn't brave. He abandoned and betrayed his most loyal companions in JE. We know he doesn't truly admire humans, because he is so capricious and cruel. We know now that he is shallow. We don't believe he can love, in any sense that we recognize.

Or none of this is real. As I've said, if that is the story Moff is telling. If it turns out that Eleven exists only in the moment of many realities colliding as the TARDIS exploded at the start of his run...then...okay...that's a story that is complete. But, if Moff is, as is far more likely, simply manipulating the same tinker toy pieces into something timey-wimey, well, we have seen this all before, right? And it undermines the future of the show. We need to look to a new show-runner to set things right, creating a new set of boundaries for our story. Really, I feel it is time to take Who off the air for a bit. I think it is starting to look like Joan Rivers will all of the plastic surgery that's been going on these last couple of seasons.

On the plus side, I still like the new Matt. And the memory card was played hard in this one, wasn't it? It is possible that wonderful room with the exploding TARDIS means something. And, just for second, I thought Clara might actually be malicious, when she found his name in the book. I thought, oh, she IS a spy. Because what better way to get some secret out of the Doctor than to give him a trusty companion? However, in keeping with the family tree idea, we have another tree symbol as the TARDIS engine. We also have that lovely Time Lord style cradle and puffy TARDIS. Babies on board it seems. And Grandfatherly Eleven continues. So, I'm still thinking Clara is some distant relative. There were shades of The Edge of Destruction in this one, especially Eleven's paranoia just before the leap of faith.

Comments

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Well, if you happen to look at the time of my last LJ post, GMT, you will see this is eating away at me to the point of severe insomnia. Reading the best book on narrative I've come across in a long time, maybe ever, has opened it all up again for me. I'll expand a little further. This would work better with diagrams, but they aren't my strong point.

Yorke argues that the classic underlying template for a story is the five act structure. Act One, The Call, via an inciting incident. Act two, resistance then eventual commitment to the Call. "I'll take the Ring, though I don't know the way." Act Three, the crisis - is the character going to stay with Ego or commit to personal growth? The choice is made, then tested in Act Four, before the final resolution mirrors the start and returns us, with changed protagonist, to the start of the circle.

All this is very familiar to narratologists. Yorke also points out that good stories have what he calls "a fractal structure." The central conflict is mirrored in every scene, even every beat. Here, right in this analysis, I see the ongoing problem with New Who. In Classic days every story was complete in itself and mostly, the Doctor was reset to zero. RTD reinvented the show by blowing all that out of the window and making it about his character, via the relationship with Rose. But he had no idea how big the relaunched show would get. It is okay to do a series arc if there will only be one series. But as things progressed, it became a multi-series arc. He kept trying to rework it without going back and mirroring the fractal structure he'd begun with. First it was about Doctor/Rose, then it was about Doctor/Master, then it was about the Doctor vs the whole bloody universe.

Expanding on my brief analysis of RTD-era DW, you could have seen Doomsday as closure of a sort. But to do this, you'd have to present the Doctor as learning something from his relationship with Rose, and ideally Rose feeling the same way. It's over, but they are better people, with no regrets. Instead, Ten wallowed in grief all through S3, which dliuted the impact of him meeting his shadow self in the Master, and hence closure was retrospectively denied to Doomsday and transferred to the return of Rose at the end of S4, which in its turn detracted from (a) the conflict with Davros and (b) Donna's arc. Narrative closure was repeatedly denied, and nobody saw that better than RTD himself.

It is possible, just about, to reset the Doctor between regenerations. RTD's failure to do that by concluding his story with a happy ending for the Rose/Doctor romance was a huge wasted opportunity. The genie was out of the bottle. It wasn't possible to forget that the Doctor had once been a real person in love. So Eleven began with a mountain to climb, and instead he was pushed into an iconic Doctor as Trickster mould. The show is now in the process of celebrating a backstory it has denied to its central character. He is in a shooting gallery filled with cardboard cut-outs who pop up from narrative E-space whenever it suits the story and then obligingly lie down again (I'm looking at you, River Song). Meanwhile, even as at promotes itself as a series of self-contained mini-movies, the story continues to cock-tease, denying narrative closure, using devices which make the characters more and more echoes of themselves.

And you know what happens when people are cock-teased for too long. They start to masturbate. We are now into the universe of empty fanboy wanking.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

We are now into the universe of empty fanboy wanking.

Exactly. And that is why I find it so tedious. I am not being astounded by anything. I am just nodding to myself and going, "Yes, that is very cool." But is it enough for fezes and bowties and River and the TARDIS and Amy to be cool?

I think you are spot on in your analysis of each of the RTD seasons. He couldn't let go of his love story. And that would have been okay, if he'd served it properly at the end. A simple...well...the Doctor grew and changed...and spent some time with an Earth Girl...none of your business what happened...it's a further mystery. But, instead, he tried to have his cake and eat it, too, by creating a pseudo-happy ending and a Doctor who COULD, we must assume, grow and change.

But, where does that leave the character we must go on watching? Well, that leaves him as a character who cannot change in any significant way, who has yet to learn all of those lessons that RTD tried to teach him. Eleven, as you say, has a mountain to climb and he pretends the mountain isn't there.

I do love this sort of conversation, btw, Cat. I am, of course, familiar with the five or three act story structures, but not that particular book. I do try to present a fractal structure for my stories, with repeating themes that lead to an inevitable conclusion. I feel, as I've said, that the essential pattern of a story should be present within it. And, while I, unlike you, tend to be very hard on show-runners, I will say that Moff does generally have a reflection of his final solution in his work.

Amy was still a child in S5. The Doctor who dies in S6 is a copy. And in S7, I am sure we are dealing with the Doctor's memory and false reality. Perhaps something is wrong with the TARDIS as well, she is featuring heavily. Did you happen to notice Eleven is back to being 900 years old? I feel that when Moff does things, they mean something. That's not small potatoes there. It's just that a puzzle isn't the same thing as a story.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did notice the age disparity, amongst many others. It all adds up to a sense of unreality, and some sort of reset seems possible, but that would be much more interesting and convincing if we'd any reality to compare it to, don't you think? The problem is, everything Moff writes is in that kind of bottle universe to me. Amy's parents, for example. Briefly introduced in one episode, never mentioned since. I kept thinking, don't they have any feelings about this baby she's meant to have had? Do they ever go back home and visit them? I could go on and on.

One of the points Yorke brings up is that there are differences between American and British approaches to writing popular TV shows. I think it's fair to say that in America it's viewed as an artistically respectable thing to do, a worthwhile challenge for talented people. It's one of the things I really like about your system. In England there is still a good deal of snobbery about perceived "junk" TV. No matter how successful it is, the series is never granted the respect of the serial, or better still the standalone drama. If something's popular, people in the industry feel it's junk at some deep level. So it gets pseudo-inellectualised, because clever writers feel undervalued just turning in good, well-made episodes of a much-loved show.

How very silly all that is. Shakespeare was incredibly popular in his day. It is the passage of time that has given him cultural authority. And so much about Moff's writing shrieks insecurity, don't you think? His misogyny is based on a deep fear of the feminine, and I think he is continually shrieking, "Look how clever I am!" You are so right - a puzzle is not the same as a story. A puzzle has a complete and perfect solution. A story ends by synthesis of opposing forces, or at least a recognition that some ambiguities can never be completely explained.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

A story is based on conflict, as well. Often internal conflict. You have a character that wants something and you stymie him. And while conflict can be generated by a puzzle...where are all the pieces, for example...good stories require characters with internal lives. Something that Moff simply can't seem to deliver. Going back to my work, Rose and Ten have clashing cultures and expectations and trouble communicating. All of this adds to the conflict within the story. The story is about...rescuing a world from destruction. But, there is also how that will effect the characters.

In Clara we do see Moff at his most vulnerable, I think...and what is she? She's a puzzle. BTW, I think you are spot on about him and Sherlock. He can't change Sherlock's reality, so that holds his impulses in check. We all would have been better served if he'd taken the same approach with Doctor Who, if he'd thought, well, I can't change what has worked for 50 years. Instead, he saw RTD had made sweeping changes, and thought he would just apply his own cleverness to it all. And he's made a muddle of it.

That is a very interesting observation about English vs. American TV writers. English writers do some extraordinary work, like Broadchurch, that would have trouble getting off the ground here. But we do respect our TV writers and compensate them, accordingly, sometimes too much. Though, to be fair, most Americans have no idea who Joss Whedon is. Internet users are naturally geeky.

Someone, on my Flist, just remarked that our seasons run too long. I feel your seasons are too short. Too short to satisfy my need to interaction with the characters, that is. I think they might be just right to tell a competent story without a lot of filler. In any season of American TV there will be about five very bad episodes, ones that make you wonder what the writers were smoking. And my other LJ friend was saying, in a comment to my post about Castle, that she thinks writers don't react well to having to continue writing even when they have no new ideas. They burn out.

Writing is such an organic process. Even if you are machine, like Isaac Asimov, you start repeating your personal themes. We all need time to regroup. Your writers, though, seem to write for several shows. The same way that your actors move from one show to another in the same year.

And I often point that out about Shakespeare, that he was a hack writer in his day. Sometimes I think removing the snooty mystique from his work would help people connect with it. We went to see Titus Andronicus last month. I'd never read it, but had been warned that I would hate it. And a lot of people had issues with the graphic novel meets Mad Max, blood-saturated, approach that the director took with the play. But it did allow us to revel in the pure spectacle of entertainment, rather than thinking..."What is the deeper meaning here?"

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-04-01/entertainment/os-titus-andronicus-review-orlando-shakes-20130330_1_orlando-shakespeare-theater-titus-andronicus-esau-pritchett

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds like the perfect production of Titus! It's so totally the work of a young lion trying to be more shocking than his contemporaries. Stories about of people fainting en masse in various productions. And indeed, I very much doubt if there is a deeper meaning.

Rock and roll and Shakespeare can work quite well together. There was the delightful scene at Hero's tomb in the recent Much Ado production, when Claudio plays a heavy metal version of "Pardon Godess of the Night" on his ghetto blaster and wallows in adolescent angst.

Rather apprehensive about the Politician's Husband tonight, which features Tennant brutally raping his wife. (Won't be the first time, he did it in Recovery). He is certainly versatile.

Oh, Alan Wilson commented on my blog and claims that there was a plan originally for Rose to die in POTW, either immediately (if the show wasn't renewed) or slowly through S2. It was cancelled when CE left, he says. That is a very interesting idea and could explain some of the febrile behaviour in S2, if the Doctor was travelling with Rose and knew they were on borrowed time. It puts Tooth and Claw, particularly, in a whole new light. I've never thought of it as a CE episode, but I can see it now - Eccles antagonising Queen Victoria because he's losing Rose anyway and doesn't give a shit what happens. And thence comes Torchwood.

As for US TV seasons being too long, I tend to agree - and isn't it the case that everyone wants to make it to S7 because then they get syndication rights? Off the top of my head, about the only series I can think of that manages to keep the UST going successfully for that long is Bones.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I try to avoid David Tennant in his meaner versions. I'm sure he does a stellar job, but I don't want that face freaking me out. :grin:

As for the original plan for Rose to die, I know that was certainly the original rumour. But RTD said he never had any intention of doing that. So, I don't know. RTD said he let that out, that she would die, to increase the tension. Of course, who can say what might have happened if Eccleston stayed. I do think part of Rose's story is her mortality. I think that is the obvious limit to the love story. You don't need artificial limits when an essential immortal person falls in love with a mortal. So, all of the arguments people make against Rose are nonsensical. If Rose stays mortal...and we have a Time Machine...then there is no reason at all we can't have Rose/Doctor with a full life off screen. If you, for whatever odd reason, want to complicate it by having an alternative dimension...so much the better for it happening in the space of however long it takes to fix afternoon tea.

All of the arguments that people put forward...Billie had to leave, we can't have the Doctor just dandle babies on his knee in every show, we can't change the format of the show to a silly romance, the Doctor can't have sex, the Doctor can't fall in love, Rose can't be special because no other companion was, whatever...all show an incredible lack of imagination. And, yet, we get Moffatt creating a Doctor robot and a bubble universe with a little girl all alone, and have River go from baby to sex kitten 40-something in the space of one episode. And everyone is like...okay, that can happen.

I went looking for that quote from RTD...I think it is in the Doomsday commentary...but I can't find it written down anywhere. I shall have to watch the commentary again for it. However, I did find some lovely stuff. Which, I'm sure you have seen before, but...I'll still share.

In the end I sort of though we created a companion who was so alive and dynamic and so wedded to the doctor that you’d need a whole universe to contain her in. The only way to get rid of her is to send her into a parallel world from which she can never return; otherwise she would stay with the doctor forever.”
― Russell T. Davies

But here is one for every person that claims Moff hates Rose... “Obviously and quite overtly, really, the subtext of this show is that the Doctor is hopelessly in love with Rose.” – Steven Moffat

And this goes to what we were recently saying about Moff-- Steven Moffat declared at a convention in 2008 that, "It is impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time traveller to have a canon."

Uhm, no it isn't Moff! You have just twisted the canon until it is pretty meaningless. And an audience will become very impatient with a story told by someone who doesn't know what the story is about--where it is going, where it comes from, what the rules of the world are.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I believe anything RTD says publicly. Not that he exactly lies, but I think he gets very caught up in the moment and passionately believes what he's saying right then with all his heart and soul, even if he felt the polar opposite ten minutes ago. The comment about the original plan for Rose to die in S2 was from Alan Stevens, who's behind all that Faction Paradox spinoff stuff. It's an interesting discussion, drop by and take a look.

http://mefinx.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/whats-wrong-with-doctor-who/

The next post is also DW related, and contains a few teasers about Name of the Doctor, though nothing that isn't in the public domain. If you're particularly trying to avoid spoilers, you might wish to give it a miss.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about RTD. I have for the most part had a good sense of what he intended. But he does like the sudden emotional shock, so it is possible he isn't telling us the truth. I mean, John Barrowman could be right about the plans for Rose. And RTD could be offering an explanation with his denial in the confidential.

Certainly a season where Rose slowly dies would have served CE well and would have created a storyline that solved a lot of the problems that we currently face with "The Doctor in Love." The main issues is that the Doctor in love is a one-off idea. And they seem determined to make it his default position. As we can see in Moff's work, epic love isn't something sustainable for a long time. It isn't sustainable in real life, for the most part. An audience easily understands that your beloved is lost to you, but they don't easily understand replacing her immediately. Love is a fluctuating and often fading thing. Though, I must say that I love those I've lost, still, in my heart, and I feel the Doctor could do the same and still go on with his show. But if Doctor Who is really a children's show, if that is where they are aiming it, then children don't feel that way. Children expect constancy.

I do think there is an obvious attempt to recreate the love story in New Who. RTD's hope for Penny was interesting. I happen to believe that Penny would have suffered the same fate that Donna suffered had she been added to the story. This might well have given RTD an opportunity to act out the tragic love story with companion death that Barrowman suggested he wanted to do with Rose. And, then, there is the unexplained anger that CE has for the mechanics of the show. Perhaps he wanted Rose to die and the PTB changed their minds earlier. Perhaps his continued involvement was based on his doing that story in S2, but Rose became a more central figure, the way into the show. I think she did that early on in S1, rather than simply in S2 by default.

I also question Alan suggesting that David was to do a lighter Doctor, because all the way through S2, there are very dark suggestions around Ten. Ten strikes me as a Doctor you really shouldn't cross. And it was almost as if Rose not seeing that in him was what made her special. In other words, I believe Martha was more of the everywoman than other companions. If only she hadn't had that crush, she would have seen what Donna immediately sees...that Ten needed someone to stop him. To me, Ten's happiness comes from what happens in Parting of the Ways. It is a natural progression of The Doctor In Love...an infatuation stage...allowing himself to feel what he feels...without facing the consequences of Rose's mortality. There is the pall that hangs over that happiness, given full voice in Tooth & Claw and School Reunion, that a price must be paid in the end.

I decided to skip your spoiler post, because I'm not sure what is in the public domain. And I hate to be spoiled.

Do you really think we might bring the show to a close? I do agree that it is time. And it seems to me to be headed that way. But, it is also very popular and a moneymaker for the BBC. And there is lots of talk about a S8, casting and writers and such. I truly like this Doctor and Clara, now. I could tolerate a couple of seasons with that grandfatherly dynamic again. But Clara is showing signs of being nothing more than a puzzle in Journey to the Center...and that worries me for her longevity.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

My prediction for the future is that there will be a reboot (set to zero) for the mainstream American market. Julie G, Jane Espanson and possibly Neil Gaiman are all in place. RTD would have been had it not been for his partner's cancer, which made him return to the UK. They will shave off some of the quirkier, more English characteristics of the show, sweep out conflicting canon, up the production values, make it more suitable for a network 1 hour slot less commercials, do audience research and slant the demographic accordingly (because DW was never conceived from the ground up as a show that had to accommodate commercials), and make it movie-friendly. I expect BBC involvement to be minimal under the relaunch, and for the show to be taken up by one of the US networks with, probably, an American showrunner.

However....that would never play with the British fanbase. But...and this will make a lot more sense once you know more about The Name of the Doctor...it doesn't have to. They will send the Doctor down some kind of Time Tunnel where all his adventures are archived, and those will get made on BBC as the occasional crowd-pleasing Special, and also have a subscription-only presence online. Big Finish already exists as a business model, and no doubt they've been watching the precedent of House of Cards on Netflix very closely.

The more you look at the carefully orchestrated publicity released for the 50th Anniversary, the more it looks like a promo for precisely this development. It turns the quirkiness and Englishness up to 11 and features Tennant heavily. There is a classic, rather naff monster for good measure (won't say which, for risk of spoiling you). It is a fanboy's dream.

Everyone is making a song and dance about not all 11 doctors being included, but I think CGI is the way forward there. Again, think Big Finish. Those actors still alive and willing could voice their CGI selves. You could create monsters and thrills galore relatively cheaply, and keep all those clever people in Cardiff in paid employment. Tennant has never really made it Stateside, but the British public love him, and quite possibly he'd be involved. Matt Smith might also be. The beauty of the concept is that it avoids the huge commitment of filming 14 eps back to back, so live actors could do lots of other things.

I don't see Moff hanging around. I think he's ready to quit and concentrate on Sherlock, which is already inked in for a fourth season.

I also wouldn't be at all surprised if the American reboot featured Barrowman in a leading role. It might even be his show. It's odd that he's been so cagey on the precise nature of his involvement lately. It seems bizarre to bring Tennant and Piper back for the 50th with no nod to Captain Jack. I'd be delighted to see an openly gay superhero in a high-profile networked show. Glee has helped blaze that trail - love or loathe it, there's no going back.

And do you know what? I think it could work. It might even be fantastic.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I would love for you to be right. As you can tell from I&B, I do think the idea of archiving the Doctor is a sound one, when it comes to removing the debris of the past. I also feel the only way out of the muddle that Moff has created is some sort of alternative reality reset.

You intrigue me with your teasing about Name of the Doctor. I think that the old school monsters are the Zygons. And they intrigue me because they were in S7 already in The Power of Three, with the Brigadier's...uhm...granddaughter? Also, they are capable of creating artificial beings, pretending to be other people and they use organic technology, like the TARDIS.

Anyway, I think there is a tie to the past there, without it actually being the same as the past. I do think that we could create something great stateside...with appropriate English quirkiness. Assuming we have some strong British input. Though, avoiding the love story might be a hard sell to our market. We make love stories out of everything. Granddaughter is definitely the way to go on companion, allowing for "love story of the week or episode." It hasn't been done here, so that is also refreshing. And Clara is much more "Avenger's Girl" already, as Carole Ann Ford put it.

Looking at it this way, I still say we retire the English version when the TARDIS explodes, offering only the hope of alternatives that Matt/Moff created for future generations. As you say, specials on online interaction. And, allow the Doctor to morph into something new and more commercial, but with trappings of the old. You are right that CGI is the way to go on the old school Doctors as well. No modern audience member is going to accept 70 year old Tom Baker as Four. It would allow too many distractions within the story to explain missing and aged Doctors. Better to just get on with it.

I would hope that Moff focuses on Sherlock. He does a great job there. And I do feel he's like a kid in a candy store with the Doctor. I know he's given ME a stomachache with all the excess. LOL

Found it!

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

It is in the Doomsday confidential. 21:14...but, I must say it is worth starting at 20:00 to see Graham gushing, again. :grin:

"I was never tempted to kill her," RTD says, "There are other science fiction shows in which you could have killed her, but Doctor Who is not about that. It is about survival and optimism. And it is never, ever, ever an option to kill her."

http://youtu.be/jHFLx2A4gSA

In some other interview he gave, possibly in print, he says that they wanted people to believe Rose would die in Parting of the Ways, but that was just to fake people out.

I do wonder, however, if he had thought about her keeping the Bad Wolf energy and changing somehow, rather than going to another universe. There are shades of Rose changing to something other than human all the way through the work.

[monkeybatz.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with your post. My husband watched this episode first and it was also the first episode of Series 7 that he saw, unfortunately....his exact words were "it was a reset, another crack and extra story lines that were crammed in with no explanation or closure". I think that's what made me watch it in reverse...to see the good episodes before the one that would really make me roll my eyes. It was predictable, like you said and I hate the idea that THIS Doctor can do ANYTHING he wants with time...wasn't that the lesson that we were supposed to learn from Waters of Mars...that you can't mess with time..etc? Also I still thing NG took your idea about the planes of time with in the TARDIS from Disheveled..I expected to see the First doctor walking around the corner somewhere...which would have been awesome.

My hubby showed me another theory on Clara that I found interesting... she is actually a recreation of the Emperor Dalek from Series 1. Odd...I thought, but they broke it down saying Clara was Oswin..Oswin was a Dalek...what if Oswin went insane, became the Dalek Emperor. Then when Rose took in the vortex, seeing all time and space in her fiery brain, she knew Oswin was by nature good and had helped Eleven..so because Rose couldn't be with the Doctor forever when she "bad wolfed the Emperor's ass" (not my wording..theirs..and I think I want it on a Tshirt) she scattered the Emperor/Oswin across the galaxy to help the Doctor when he was in need (aka her different personas). So the reason why we are seeing so many "Rose" references is because Rose isn't her mother...but her creator and why the Tardis is shunning her, because she is "impossible" (per the Doctor) like Jack was.

Probably not true..but interesting all the same...

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I have seen the Oswin/Emperor theory. And, I thought it was really cracked. Sorry to say. Very neat if it happened, but reaching a little too far into the past, I think.

To me, this is all about alternative time lines and the Doctor's memory of who he is. The only question I have is why he's forgotten and if we should be urging him to remember. The more I consider it, the more I am pretty sure we won't have Ten/Rose in the Anniversary special, which really, really sucks, but is better than Ten2/Rose in it. I think it is entirely possible to have Rose represent Nine, or another dimension/alternative all together and so have a different story of the Doctor presented to us.

Of course, again, if Moff does something like that, he's playing with a formula that has held up for years. I remember part of the reason I was so very disappointed by JE, was the idea, presented in Turn Left that the Doctor was only one of a several alternative Doctors. And we have seen Moff create a Flesh!Doctor and a Robot!Doctor and now...really...some sort of Sane!Doctor to balance Moff's more childlike one. If we pull Ten in from an alternative dimension, we are really saying that no part of this canon is fixed.

Great! Yes! I know people in the fandom are thinking, this will free us to do anything, now we can have any story we like. But, the source of those stories would become corrupted beyond repair and essentially irrelevant.

It is rather like eating from the tree of knowledge...you'll have too many ideas to have a coherent paradise anymore.

Rae

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I think Clara is CAL and we're going to rewind right back to the SITL computer. And I've a hunch that things are building up to a reset that won't just get rid of Eleven, but start over, thus eliminating the Twelve Regenerations limit.

It also wouldn't surprise me at all if Tennant popped up in the S7 finale. They could easily film it and pass it off as an Anniversary scene. All that high-profile filming in the castle with the Zygons a few weeks back felt very set up as a diversion to me.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I think Clara is CAL and we're going to rewind right back to the SITL computer. And I've a hunch that things are building up to a reset that won't just get rid of Eleven, but start over, thus eliminating the Twelve Regenerations limit.

See? That is the sensible thing to do. If they are sensible they will want to address the idea of new regenerations. Of course, they could just hand wave it as something that changed with the Time War. I do not put massive hand waving beyond the scope of this crew.

But, using the great library to archive Eleven makes perfect sense. He would be with River. And, following my example in I&B, they could say that Ten2 was also an archive for the previous Doctors. They wouldn't even have to make it as complicated as I've made it. Again, it could be hand waved and I think the audience would go along with it. If they just say, that meta-crisis regeneration was an archiving of Ten, then they could now archive Eleven to the machine. Or, they can reset it all...with the idea that the Doctor becoming a God isn't a good idea.

I think that one picture of Ten running and the pillows and Queen Elizabeth...is going to reference that part of the story that Ten was romancing Queen Elizabeth. And I feel the Zygons are part of that story, so you could be right about Ten appearing in S7. Certainly, the Zygons have already appeared in S7, though off screen. So, they could be involved in whatever is wrong with Eleven.