Throw away lines that may be important.
MinkytheDog
Posts: 5,658 Forum Member
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Just for fun...
Spotted a couple of throw away lines and/or elements that may or may not be significant and thought it might be interesting to see if anyone had seen anything else that they thought may prove to be important. (I'm not including the obvious set-ups like Missy and "the Promised Land").
I'm not suggesting any THEORIES - just making note of a few bits that stood out as having the potential to fit with Moffat's habit of giving "clues" in such "minor" scenes.
(Have to add that I am aware of "leaked scripts" but am totally "spoiler free" on this series so anyone who KNOWS what's going to happen is respectfully asked to find another thread to post in)
1> The Doctor supposedly swapped his watch for a coat - presumably but not definitely the Timelord Tech "watch" that may be holding a copy of his "soul" (for want of a better word)
2> Strax warned Clara about "fluid retention". We have many previous examples of "portents" being signalled with similar passing lines.
3> Vastra claims to have "been there" when T-Rex walked the earth. That would place her at a point in time before we would have expected Silurians to have evolved. Could "was there" have actually referred to the unseen adventure that lead to the Tardis being in that T-Rex's throat?
4> That "missing story" is significant in its own right. To the best of my knowledge, it's the first time we've had a gap between a regeneration and the first broadcast story since 2005 and the only one before that left the opening for the "War Doctor". It's clear that the trip to pick-up that T-Rex happened in a very short gap between the regeneration at the end of the last series and the Tardis being in London in this series and the new Doctor had just asked Clara if she knew how to fly the Tardis
5> The Doctor's comments about the bedroom were very similar to the comments from 11th Hour - "Why do you call it a duckpond when there's no ducks" - and it was only much later that we found that it was actually a very early explanation for the way that Amy (and others) would "remember" things that had been removed from history (why else would no-one even question the "fact" that they had never had any parents, for example). When Matt made that comment, no-one knew about the cracks and their effect.
6> The Doctor repeatedly questioned Clara's identity - and it appeared that Vastra shared some of those concerns.
7> Missy was played by a (brilliant) Glaswegian actress but she spoke with a broad Lancashire accent. Odd that an episode with so much emphasis on sounding Scottish has Michelle Gomez matching Clara's accent.
8> Another "religious" theme with "the promised land" and another significant female character within that religious theme that appears to have an "intimate" connection to the Doctor - shades of Tasha Lem, perhaps?
Spotted a couple of throw away lines and/or elements that may or may not be significant and thought it might be interesting to see if anyone had seen anything else that they thought may prove to be important. (I'm not including the obvious set-ups like Missy and "the Promised Land").
I'm not suggesting any THEORIES - just making note of a few bits that stood out as having the potential to fit with Moffat's habit of giving "clues" in such "minor" scenes.
(Have to add that I am aware of "leaked scripts" but am totally "spoiler free" on this series so anyone who KNOWS what's going to happen is respectfully asked to find another thread to post in)
1> The Doctor supposedly swapped his watch for a coat - presumably but not definitely the Timelord Tech "watch" that may be holding a copy of his "soul" (for want of a better word)
2> Strax warned Clara about "fluid retention". We have many previous examples of "portents" being signalled with similar passing lines.
3> Vastra claims to have "been there" when T-Rex walked the earth. That would place her at a point in time before we would have expected Silurians to have evolved. Could "was there" have actually referred to the unseen adventure that lead to the Tardis being in that T-Rex's throat?
4> That "missing story" is significant in its own right. To the best of my knowledge, it's the first time we've had a gap between a regeneration and the first broadcast story since 2005 and the only one before that left the opening for the "War Doctor". It's clear that the trip to pick-up that T-Rex happened in a very short gap between the regeneration at the end of the last series and the Tardis being in London in this series and the new Doctor had just asked Clara if she knew how to fly the Tardis
5> The Doctor's comments about the bedroom were very similar to the comments from 11th Hour - "Why do you call it a duckpond when there's no ducks" - and it was only much later that we found that it was actually a very early explanation for the way that Amy (and others) would "remember" things that had been removed from history (why else would no-one even question the "fact" that they had never had any parents, for example). When Matt made that comment, no-one knew about the cracks and their effect.
6> The Doctor repeatedly questioned Clara's identity - and it appeared that Vastra shared some of those concerns.
7> Missy was played by a (brilliant) Glaswegian actress but she spoke with a broad Lancashire accent. Odd that an episode with so much emphasis on sounding Scottish has Michelle Gomez matching Clara's accent.
8> Another "religious" theme with "the promised land" and another significant female character within that religious theme that appears to have an "intimate" connection to the Doctor - shades of Tasha Lem, perhaps?
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Comments
Anything Roman is worth noting, now.
But with 3 we don't know how long the Silurians lived for, it's possible, if not probable that they lived at the same time. It's also possible that Vestra misidentified it for another similar looking dinosaur? Or just that the production team didn't realise that stegosaurs & T. Rex didn't live at the same time?
I would have thought the Watch would have been the wrist watch the 11th Doctor wore (though I'm not sure if he wore it with his purple outfit) . Clara knew which watch the Doctor meant and there's no evidence she knew of the Fob Watch.
Even if it doesn't make sense it's established fact on the show that the Silurians co existed with Dinosaurs. Remember the big spaceship full of Dinosaurs the Silurians sent off into Space, they even had a small Dinosaur back in Pertwee's time.
One possible explanation is that the Silurians recreated the Dinosaurs by cloning after they went extinct.
Best to ignore it entirely.
if memory servers (and that's often debatable) wasn't there a T-rex in the original Silurian story (or maybe just the novelisation) ?
I don't know if it does - I don't think anything rules out the Silurians existing at the same time as dinosaurs, even T-Rex's, although my knowledge is sketchy. Are you meaning that T-Rex probably wasn't around towards the end of the Cretaceous period, with the assumption that the dinosaur-extinction event was the one the Silurians hibernated to avoid? So that Vastra couldn't have hung around with a T-Rex but still be young enough to hibernate?
I think the script is playing fast-and-loose with million-year timescales just for a joke.
It was on TV as well.
It was actually a man in a T Rex costume, which proved to be really awkward to move. He was then inserted into the action via the first real use of Green Screen / Chroma Key technology on Doctor Who.
Only after a lot of complicated work did Barry Letts realise that as superimposition was being used then they could have just had a model T Rex, and not gone to all the bother of a full suit.
(This sort of thinking indirectly led to Invasion Of The Dinosaurs where the models were SO convincing...)
According to a quick internet search apparently we are closer to the time of Stegosaurs ( seen in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) than they are to T Rex. Basic misconception that all dinosaurs lived at the same time.
I'm Scottish, and she sounded Scottish with an English edge to me! I can't detect any Lancashire at all.
But there was something odd about the "I'm not your boyfriend,...I never said the mistake was yours' exchange.
And we thought that the UNIT dating problem was tricky! At least with UNIT we are only quibbling about a few years.
Take a deep breath, this could get messy.
In 1970 Malcolm Hulke called his lizard creatures Silurians basically because he thought it sounded good. He knew that there was an ancient era of time that scientists called the Silurian Era, but he didn't worry too much about the details when writing the debut serial (which also explains why the Silurians had a pet T Rex and yet also knew about early apemen - separated by ay least 60 million years...)
Two years later when Hulke wrote The Sea Devils, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks pointed out that they'd received letters explaining that the Silurian race couldn't possibly have originated in the Silurian Era and so Hulke wrote a line for the Doctor to explain how they were misnamed in the earlier story and "they should really be called Eocenes" (named after a more recent Era of time, but actually still chronologically wrong).
Of course, this all got blown out of the water completely when the Silurians actually start calling themselves Silurians in Warriors Of The Deep (which was something they didn't do in their debut serial).
And since then it's become established that Lizard People From The Dawn Of Time are called Silurians, regardless of when they actually originated.
A similar problem afflicts the Sea Devils - they were actually only called that by a half mad mechanic on a sea fort. Until Warriors of the Deep again had them referring to themselves as Sea Devils! See also Ice Warriors...
You have totally destroyed my belief in the scientific accuracy of Doctor Who and how it reflects real geology...sob sob
With his eyebrows.
I'm also thinking Missy could be a version of Clara but if this is the case how did she create the promised land and how does she bring dead people (or things) to it??
5) I think the duck pond comment was picked up on when the episode first aired. I remember a lot of people questioning the significance of the line. By this point in the episode, Matt's Doctor was pretty much baked. He didn't have the same confusion as Peter, not by a long shot, he was fully aware of everything that was going on and it was more a journey of discovery; ie, the Doctor discovering his new persona and what he liked (fish fingers and custard scene) and just how he worked. I don't think there's anything more to Capaldi's scene; the Doctor was simply (incredibly) confused.
Oh, he was definitely very shifty about it. What's the betting said watch will turn up safe and sound?
12 also calls them 'rubbish robots from the dawn of time'; anyone else think of Earthshock?
Cybermen crash into earth, droids from the dawn of time, Cybermen in the season finale.
Is the Promised Land, Mondas??
Can't decide which she said.
yes, I agree. I think we're going to get an explanation about where he got that face from...