Silence messed up big time. They are suppsoe to know their history and prophecies.
Doctor was allways going to end up at Trenzalore no matter what they did. It is his final resting place. After a final battle he dies and his beloved tardis becomes his tomb.Kovarian also kidnaped the wrong mother/daughter. She should have known it would be Clara not River/Melody who saved the doctor from the GI and rest the timeline (again). Ellie Oswald not Amy Pond should have had her baby in that cell. Kovarian could have then smothered the child before she grew up to be "the impossible girl".Maybe they can come back in S8 for a final confrontation with the doctor. He can defeat them and lay that ghost to rest.
Dont know if anyone has seen this yet, but its a prequel (an actual prequel as its on the DVD and hasnt aired) Clarence & The Whispermen has been posted online
Has anyone wondered if Simeon knew himself in the timestream? Clara didn't know (some of the time)
Well I would think so, he wasn't really human like Clara. So Simeon was probably replicated in the form of the GI. Though I have a theory that because Clara was splintered, perhaps her knowledge was too since she seemed far more clued in shouting after Pertwee than she did in The Snowmen (although I realise that's probably just a goof on Moffat's part) - so perhaps by that logic the GI's knowledge was also splintered making him more powerful in some parts of the timestream and less so in others.
Enjoyable episode (which I've only just made myself sit down and watch), probably the best of the second half of this series, (which wouldn't be difficult, sadly).
I'm interested to see where the John Hurt thing goes - I wasn't overly shocked, surprised, blown away by the last scene like a lot of people seem to have been. But then I haven't had any sort of emotional connection to the series this year - apart from River and the Doctors goodbye kiss. I may be annoyed with how the writers handled the evolution of their relationship over the last few series, (and I do think the Doctor has treated River pretty appallingly at times), but these two have always produced stunning, mesmerizing scenes whenever they share a poignant moment. It was the best scene of the episode IMO (that and any scene with Jenny in). I'd be happy to see River pop up from time to time, but if not, it was a fitting ending.
In theory I think I quite like the idea of Clara scattering herself throughout his timeline, but I, personally, don't think they pulled it off. I've always said she's lacked characterization, so it didn't have the emotional punch it needed. I didn't really care that she sacrificed herself (unlike the first time we saw River at the library, for example - that sacrifice I believed wholeheartedly and still chokes me up). And it didn't mean all that much anyway since within 5 minutes he'd rescued her.
More importantly, I'm not quite sure why she was so willing to sacrifice herself All for a guy she pops off with for a brief time trip every now and then? Rose, River, Amy - yes, I can see why they would. But not Clara. They haven't had enough scenes together and they haven't built up a believable friendship or connect between the two to make this work.
(I also found the old scenes they plonked her into badly edited and a bit cheesy - but I can see why old time Doctor Who fans enjoyed them).
Also - we've only seen her echo twice. This sort of plot would have been fantastic, had Clara, or hints of Clara, been interjected way back into the earlier series. As it was, apart from the Tardis scene, we just had to sort of take the shows word for it that she's always been there, helping out. *shrug*
On another note - what a shame we have yet another main female character perfectly willing to sacrifice herself for the Doctor and whose whole life, it's revealed, revolves around him. Typical Moffat. :rolleyes:
More importantly, I'm not quite sure why she was so willing to sacrifice herself All for a guy she pops off with for a brief time trip every now and then? Rose, River, Amy - yes, I can see why they would. But not Clara. They haven't had enough scenes together and they haven't built up a believable friendship or connect between the two to make this work.
She wasn't just sacrificing herself to save the Doctor. She was sacrificing herself to save billions of people who would otherwise have died (including on Earth). In fact, if she hadn't done it she'd probably be one of the billions herself!
On another note - what a shame we have yet another main female character perfectly willing to sacrifice herself for the Doctor and whose whole life, it's revealed, revolves around him. Typical Moffat. :rolleyes:
Why single out Moffat when Rose, Martha, Donna, and (albeit a one-off) Jenny's lives all revolved around the Doctor, with all of them willing to sacrifice themselves for him? It's just as much RTD as Moffat.
Why single out Moffat when Rose, Martha, Donna, and (albeit a one-off) Jenny's lives all revolved around the Doctor, with all of them willing to sacrifice themselves for him? It's just as much RTD as Moffat.
Don't forget Leela. She was always throwing herself in harms way to save the Doctor!
I thought the episode was good. Not excellent, but above average just enough for me to vote "good".
On the first watch, it was great to see the old Doctors and Clara being put into classic episodes and I really enjoyed it overall. But over the next day or two, I was thinking back on the amazing opening scene showing the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS with Susan and realized that the scene later on in the episode sort of ruins it. The Doctor stealing the TARDIS is one of those events I would rather have kept a mystery, like most of the Doctor's past, but it was great nonetheless to see that security camera footage showing him walking into it. The reason why he chose the Type 40 (i.e. he was going to take another one, but Clara told him to take it), however, took away from the mystery and the impact of what little we had been told over the last 50 years (i.e. the TARDIS "chose him" and left its doors unlocked and the Doctor figured all the newer models "lacked personality" anyway). Clara telling him to take the Type 40 really undermines that key moment in the Doctor's life in my opinion. (Then there's also the fact that she said "the navigation's a bit knackered, but it's more fun", which also takes away from the mystery of the TARDIS "taking him where he needed to go rather than where he wanted to go".... In general, I feel like both "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" and "The Name of the Doctor" took some steps backwards from the TARDIS' own narrative development by treating it more like "the Doctor's travel machine" rather than "the magic box who stole a madman".)
Thinking back on the episode currently, I feel like the concept of Clara going to different points in the Doctor's past was really underdeveloped and more like forced fanservice, mainly because it wasn't given a lot of attention during Series 7 but also because of Clara's character. Series 7 spent no time developing her (and the attempts were inconsistent, but I believe that was because she was supposed to be "the perfect companion", adaptable to every situation the Doctor was in), so I still can't honestly say at this point whether I think she's a good character or a bad one, and I certainly can't connect with her. As a result, when the time came to have her go into the Doctor's time stream, all there was for me to care about was seeing the classic Doctors, which (as I said above) really only had a strong impact on first viewing.
The episode's plot itself wasn't particularly amazing, but that's probably my own fault; I expected the John Hurt reveal because I was lurking this forum and had accidentally looked at some spoilers, and I pretty much knew the main plot just because I watched the Next Time trailer.
Everything else in the episode was great though, and the ending tells me that Clara is going to be properly developed from this point on.
Well I finally watched TNOTD ages after the event due to being away abroad on holiday, and I thought it was the best of this series by far (although The Crimson Horror did give it a very close run!)
Loved the way they used the old "classic" footage, but why was one shot of Patrick Troughton still left in black and white, when they'd gone to all the trouble (and expense) of colourising the Hartnell footage?
I realise they had to do that to be able to integrate the modern footage of Clara with it, and it was very well done indeed, but they should have at least tinted that full screen shot of Pat.
To me that just looked like "here's a black and white telerecording shot from an old episode" which rather spoiled it for me. It just didn't integrate in as it should have done IMO.
Also, WTF happened between the Doctor and Clara being in that room talking about her memory coming back, and them suddenly for no apparent reason walking into the shot outside the tomb with everyone else?
It looked like a chunk had been cut out there to me, and was very jarring, unless I've missed something very obvious (not for the first time!)
I'm being picky though, it was a great episode, and will go down I'm sure as one of the most significant of the whole series ever.
Roll on November 23rd!
On the first watch, it was great to see the old Doctors and Clara being put into classic episodes and I really enjoyed it overall. But over the next day or two, I was thinking back on the amazing opening scene showing the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS with Susan and realized that the scene later on in the episode sort of ruins it. The Doctor stealing the TARDIS is one of those events I would rather have kept a mystery, like most of the Doctor's past, but it was great nonetheless to see that security camera footage showing him walking into it. The reason why he chose the Type 40 (i.e. he was going to take another one, but Clara told him to take it), however, took away from the mystery and the impact of what little we had been told over the last 50 years (i.e. the TARDIS "chose him" and left its doors unlocked and the Doctor figured all the newer models "lacked personality" anyway). Clara telling him to take the Type 40 really undermines that key moment in the Doctor's life in my opinion. (Then there's also the fact that she said "the navigation's a bit knackered, but it's more fun", which also takes away from the mystery of the TARDIS "taking him where he needed to go rather than where he wanted to go".... In general, I feel like both "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" and "The Name of the Doctor" took some steps backwards from the TARDIS' own narrative development by treating it more like "the Doctor's travel machine" rather than "the magic box who stole a madman".)
It's really just a question of how you look at it. Everything you assumed about the Doctor and how he chose the TARDIS (or it chose him) etc. was perfectly correct. That's how it happened. However, the GI went back in time to sabotage the Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS. How he tried to do that, we don't know but, what we saw, was Clara putting it back on track. Perhaps the TARDIS had originally put a telepathic suggestion in the Doctor's head to choose her but the GI suppressed her telepathy with his own. Clara interceded physically and nudged the Doctor towards the TARDIS' own urging.
As for the crack about the navigation. The Doctor always assumed it was faulty navigation for quite some time and I think, in a way it was. It was faulty in the way that the TARDIS was able to override its operator and go where it wanted. I'd call that pretty faulty!
I'm not sure why you felt that Journey took away from the idea of the TARDIS being sentient. It was filled with references to the TARDIS being upset with them and actually deliberately trying to trap them or prevent them from going where they wanted to go.
In 'Name', as well, the TARDIS was fighting the Doctor's attempt to get them to Trenzalore. That's not the actions of a non-sentient machine. They even explained that this was the TARDIS' grave as well. The TARDIS had died. Doesn't get any more unmachine-like than that!
It's really just a question of how you look at it. Everything you assumed about the Doctor and how he chose the TARDIS (or it chose him) etc. was perfectly correct. That's how it happened. However, the GI went back in time to sabotage the Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS. How he tried to do that, we don't know but, what we saw, was Clara putting it back on track. Perhaps the TARDIS had originally put a telepathic suggestion in the Doctor's head to choose her but the GI suppressed her telepathy with his own. Clara interceded physically and nudged the Doctor towards the TARDIS' own urging.
I considered that, but Series 7 gave me the impression that Clara's appearances throughout the Doctor's life were what always happened and that there was no "original" timeline (because Clara's appearances were in the original timeline). "The Doctor's Wife" tells us the Doctor and the TARDIS chose each other, and then "Asylum of the Daleks" shows that Clara was already scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline chronologically before she actually entered the time stream, so both accounts must be true because they both come from the same version of the timeline (as they're both spoken of before Clara enters the time stream in "The Name of the Doctor" to fix whatever the GI was trying to do). I can accept that there are no inconsistencies here and that Clara telling the Doctor which TARDIS to pick merely piqued his curiosity (and so made him take a peak inside that TARDIS and decide that the others lacked personality), but it still sort of undermines the Doctor's individuality and sense of adventure when it's suggested that the decision to take the Type 40 wasn't just because he was the Doctor and this sort of Gallifreyan hipster.
Though I could definitely see this whole thing working perfectly if we say that this Clara was the previous owner of the TARDIS, happily encouraging it to steal a Time Lord because she knows how much it yearns for adventure and knows it deserves better....
Actually, I think I'm starting to warm up to the idea.
As for the crack about the navigation. The Doctor always assumed it was faulty navigation for quite some time and I think, in a way it was. It was faulty in the way that the TARDIS was able to override its operator and go where it wanted. I'd call that pretty faulty!
Yeah, the TARDIS is sort of like a god in this sense because (aside from being omniscient and practically omnipresent) all it's faults are physical, technical faults, but in a way that's more similar to when a religious person might fall out of a tree and break his arm or something and say "it's all part of God's plan". These faults are literally faults, but with a sort of consciousness behind it with some half-deliberate meddling.
I'm not sure why you felt that Journey took away from the idea of the TARDIS being sentient. It was filled with references to the TARDIS being upset with them and actually deliberately trying to trap them or prevent them from going where they wanted to go.
In 'Name', as well, the TARDIS was fighting the Doctor's attempt to get them to Trenzalore. That's not the actions of a non-sentient machine. They even explained that this was the TARDIS' grave as well. The TARDIS had died. Doesn't get any more unmachine-like than that!
Sorry, maybe I should have clarified. The TARDIS was being described as more like a machine than a sentient being, as a lot of its actions are described like they're based on animalistic instinct. The Doctor describes the TARDIS as "like a cat" in "Journey" and on the cliff he said "it's scared, it's trying to scare us away by creating this cliff" (paraphrasing here, but that was the idea). Overall it felt like it didn't carry the vast intelligence it had in "The Doctor's Wife". As for the attempt to get to Trenzalore, I thought that was just the natural laws of time making it hard for the Doctor to travel to his own future rather than the TARDIS actually not wanting to go there.
i always thought the TARDIS choosing him was not so much about whcih TARDIS he walked into, rather that she liked him enough to allow him to steal her... If she didnt choose him then she wouldnt have activated at all when he first tried.
i always thought the TARDIS choosing him was not so much about whcih TARDIS he walked into, rather that she liked him enough to allow him to steal her... If she didnt choose him then she wouldnt have activated at all when he first tried.
Jsut the way it makes sense to me.
River said she made him say his real name. Thought there was only one time and reason he could tell anyone that. Nomatter who it was. River knew him better then anyonelse. Adoreded him even when he was "dark". Hence the pep talk at demons run. She used the truth to snap him out off his despair. Clara has actually seen his past self . Will she be able to handel it ?. Guess we will find out in the 50th. Drs biggest battle will be against his own past and darkside.
I considered that, but Series 7 gave me the impression that Clara's appearances throughout the Doctor's life were what always happened and that there was no "original" timeline (because Clara's appearances were in the original timeline).
No, I really don't think that's how it was presented to us. The GI invaded the Doctor's timeline at the end of his life with the express purpose of changing everything. We saw the effects of that change. There's no suggestion that time was circular at that point and that those events had already happened because we wouldn't have seen the knock-on effect of those changes. If it worked, as you say, the timeline already reflected Clara's actions to neutralise the GI so there would have been no planets disappearing or the Sontaran turning bad.
Clara followed the GI into the corrupted timeline to help neutralise his efforts and we haven't actually seen the results of that yet. However, I don't think there's any suggestion that nothing was changed. Neither the GI nor Clara were part of his original timeline. Everything we saw with Clara in the past represented a change to his timeline.
"The Doctor's Wife" tells us the Doctor and the TARDIS chose each other, and then "Asylum of the Daleks" shows that Clara was already scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline chronologically before she actually entered the time stream, so both accounts must be true because they both come from the same version of the timeline (as they're both spoken of before Clara enters the time stream in "The Name of the Doctor" to fix whatever the GI was trying to do).
I always figured series 7 reflected events after Clara inserted herself in his timestream and previous series reflected events before she did so.
I will admit that Clara's echoes in Asylum and Victorian England appear to be anomolous. They're the only appearances of Clara that the Doctor remembers and you could argue that Clara only ended up in the tomb because the Doctor actively sought her out after encountering her echoes. So that part, at least, seems circular. In fact, it would seem that it was the echoes and Clara remembering the Doctor telling her about them in Journey that gave her the idea of throwing herself into the timestream in the first place.
One way round that is just to assume that in the first timeline, before the echoes, Clara was a normal companion who ended up in Trenzalore with the Doctor and came to her own decision to throw herself into the timeline. After that, she manifested in Asylum and Victorian England and that changed the Doctor's path sufficiently to go seek her out earlier than he would otherwise have encountered, her. However, they still ended up on a similar enough path to wind up in Trenzalore again. So, a loop, but one that changes slightly on each iteration (like with Journey).
To be honest, I'm inclined to believe that the writers just didn't think it through and if pressed, will probably just explain it all away with "Timey Wimey" but the events that we saw when the GI and Clara threw themselves into the timestream definitely indicate that doing that changes the timestream. If you assume that the timestream at that point always featured Clara and the GI's actions then it makes no sense for all the chaos that followed after the GI dived in. Nothing would have changed as it had all already happened. For that matter, I'd have thought that if invading every part of the Doctor's timestream was just going to end up in a predestination loop then the GI (and the Doctor) would probably have known that would happen which they clearly didn't.
Though I could definitely see this whole thing working perfectly if we say that this Clara was the previous owner of the TARDIS, happily encouraging it to steal a Time Lord because she knows how much it yearns for adventure and knows it deserves better....
Actually, I think I'm starting to warm up to the idea.
If you do go with the idea that all this already happened then one possibility is that the TARDIS actually is Clara. An echo of Clara went back in time and became the sentience at the heart of the TARDIS. So when the TARDIS said she arranged for the Doctor to steal her, that's exactly what we saw. She projected a holographic image of herself (looking like Clara) telling the Doctor to choose her
I see that Matt made specific mention that his Doctor was number 11 in his resignation speech. Be interesting how that ties in with John Hurt as The Doctor?
No, I really don't think that's how it was presented to us. The GI invaded the Doctor's timeline at the end of his life with the express purpose of changing everything. We saw the effects of that change. There's no suggestion that time was circular at that point and that those events had already happened because we wouldn't have seen the knock-on effect of those changes. If it worked, as you say, the timeline already reflected Clara's actions to neutralise the GI so there would have been no planets disappearing or the Sontaran turning bad.
Clara followed the GI into the corrupted timeline to help neutralise his efforts and we haven't actually seen the results of that yet. However, I don't think there's any suggestion that nothing was changed. Neither the GI nor Clara were part of his original timeline. Everything we saw with Clara in the past represented a change to his timeline.
I always figured series 7 reflected events after Clara inserted herself in his timestream and previous series reflected events before she did so.
I will admit that Clara's echoes in Asylum and Victorian England appear to be anomolous. They're the only appearances of Clara that the Doctor remembers and you could argue that Clara only ended up in the tomb because the Doctor actively sought her out after encountering her echoes. So that part, at least, seems circular. In fact, it would seem that it was the echoes and Clara remembering the Doctor telling her about them in Journey that gave her the idea of throwing herself into the timestream in the first place.
One way round that is just to assume that in the first timeline, before the echoes, Clara was a normal companion who ended up in Trenzalore with the Doctor and came to her own decision to throw herself into the timeline. After that, she manifested in Asylum and Victorian England and that changed the Doctor's path sufficiently to go seek her out earlier than he would otherwise have encountered, her. However, they still ended up on a similar enough path to wind up in Trenzalore again. So, a loop, but one that changes slightly on each iteration (like with Journey).
To be honest, I'm inclined to believe that the writers just didn't think it through and if pressed, will probably just explain it all away with "Timey Wimey" but the events that we saw when the GI and Clara threw themselves into the timestream definitely indicate that doing that changes the timestream. If you assume that the timestream at that point always featured Clara and the GI's actions then it makes no sense for all the chaos that followed after the GI dived in. Nothing would have changed as it had all already happened. For that matter, I'd have thought that if invading every part of the Doctor's timestream was just going to end up in a predestination loop then the GI (and the Doctor) would probably have known that would happen which they clearly didn't.
You do have a point, but I still feel differently about it when looking at it from the Doctor's timeline. All the events surrounding Clara saving the Doctor revolved around his personal timeline. Assuming Series 7 happened in the same continuity as Season 1 to Series 6, we must conclude that Clara's appearances in "Asylum of the Daleks" and "The Snowmen" happened in the same timeline as all the rest of the television stories we had seen previously (having happened exactly as we saw them). While my own theory (or any other theory for that matter) doesn't make a lot of sense, I just think the idea that we suddenly switch timelines for Series 7 makes less sense and unnecessarily messes with the continuity of the whole programme. If "The Big Bang" didn't write every single previous episode of Doctor Who (exactly as we saw them, not as a slight variation) out of the "current continuity" (or in other words, write the recent episodes into their own continuity), then why would this episode? It doesn't seem to be something Moffat would do.
The GI going in and causing changes in the present must have been for dramatic effect to reflect the fact that Clara still needs to go in but hasn't yet (and that whole scene never made sense anyway, as changes in the past can't logically take "time" to have an effect on the present; time doesn't take time, time is time). So with all that in mind, I can only reason that, because Clara shows up in the "normal timeline", Clara going into the time stream must be a fixed point in the Doctor's own future (which may possibly be supported by the Silence's own efforts to change it), and I'll admittedly have a pretty hard time seeing it any other way, unfortunately.
I don't expect everyone to come up with the same explanation though; Moffat's series finales haven't made a whole lot of timey-wimey sense before, so this should be no exception!
If you do go with the idea that all this already happened then one possibility is that the TARDIS actually is Clara. An echo of Clara went back in time and became the sentience at the heart of the TARDIS. So when the TARDIS said she arranged for the Doctor to steal her, that's exactly what we saw. She projected a holographic image of herself (looking like Clara) telling the Doctor to choose her
Eh... I think I'm just going to stick with the chain of events I've settled on:
Doctor is about to walk into a TARDIS -> Clara notices this and the fact that the Type 40's doors are unlocked and realizes it yearns for adventure -> Clara says: "Take this one. The navigation's a bit knackered, but it's more fun." -> Doctor thinks: "Might as well check it out." -> "You're the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." -> "The other models lack personality." -> "Susan, get in here!"
But when ya gotta go, ya gotta go and Trenzalore calls.
in the leaving press release. This hints, in my mind anyway, that the whole 'Silence will fall' thing does refer to the second visit to Trenzalore, not the first.
Comments
Doctor was allways going to end up at Trenzalore no matter what they did. It is his final resting place. After a final battle he dies and his beloved tardis becomes his tomb.Kovarian also kidnaped the wrong mother/daughter. She should have known it would be Clara not River/Melody who saved the doctor from the GI and rest the timeline (again). Ellie Oswald not Amy Pond should have had her baby in that cell. Kovarian could have then smothered the child before she grew up to be "the impossible girl".Maybe they can come back in S8 for a final confrontation with the doctor. He can defeat them and lay that ghost to rest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvZMSrktskw&feature=youtu.be
I really think it should have been put at the end of Nightmare In Silver...
I always thought it was pretty obvious that's what happened. He said that the whispermen had told him in the main episode.
Did one of The Tardis eggs go missing?
The Doctor-"Clara, one of our Tardis eggs are missing"
Well I would think so, he wasn't really human like Clara. So Simeon was probably replicated in the form of the GI. Though I have a theory that because Clara was splintered, perhaps her knowledge was too since she seemed far more clued in shouting after Pertwee than she did in The Snowmen (although I realise that's probably just a goof on Moffat's part) - so perhaps by that logic the GI's knowledge was also splintered making him more powerful in some parts of the timestream and less so in others.
I'm interested to see where the John Hurt thing goes - I wasn't overly shocked, surprised, blown away by the last scene like a lot of people seem to have been. But then I haven't had any sort of emotional connection to the series this year - apart from River and the Doctors goodbye kiss. I may be annoyed with how the writers handled the evolution of their relationship over the last few series, (and I do think the Doctor has treated River pretty appallingly at times), but these two have always produced stunning, mesmerizing scenes whenever they share a poignant moment. It was the best scene of the episode IMO (that and any scene with Jenny in). I'd be happy to see River pop up from time to time, but if not, it was a fitting ending.
In theory I think I quite like the idea of Clara scattering herself throughout his timeline, but I, personally, don't think they pulled it off. I've always said she's lacked characterization, so it didn't have the emotional punch it needed. I didn't really care that she sacrificed herself (unlike the first time we saw River at the library, for example - that sacrifice I believed wholeheartedly and still chokes me up). And it didn't mean all that much anyway since within 5 minutes he'd rescued her.
More importantly, I'm not quite sure why she was so willing to sacrifice herself
(I also found the old scenes they plonked her into badly edited and a bit cheesy - but I can see why old time Doctor Who fans enjoyed them).
Also - we've only seen her echo twice. This sort of plot would have been fantastic, had Clara, or hints of Clara, been interjected way back into the earlier series. As it was, apart from the Tardis scene, we just had to sort of take the shows word for it that she's always been there, helping out. *shrug*
On another note - what a shame we have yet another main female character perfectly willing to sacrifice herself for the Doctor and whose whole life, it's revealed, revolves around him. Typical Moffat. :rolleyes:
She wasn't just sacrificing herself to save the Doctor. She was sacrificing herself to save billions of people who would otherwise have died (including on Earth). In fact, if she hadn't done it she'd probably be one of the billions herself!
Why single out Moffat when Rose, Martha, Donna, and (albeit a one-off) Jenny's lives all revolved around the Doctor, with all of them willing to sacrifice themselves for him? It's just as much RTD as Moffat.
Don't forget Leela. She was always throwing herself in harms way to save the Doctor!
On the first watch, it was great to see the old Doctors and Clara being put into classic episodes and I really enjoyed it overall. But over the next day or two, I was thinking back on the amazing opening scene showing the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS with Susan and realized that the scene later on in the episode sort of ruins it. The Doctor stealing the TARDIS is one of those events I would rather have kept a mystery, like most of the Doctor's past, but it was great nonetheless to see that security camera footage showing him walking into it. The reason why he chose the Type 40 (i.e. he was going to take another one, but Clara told him to take it), however, took away from the mystery and the impact of what little we had been told over the last 50 years (i.e. the TARDIS "chose him" and left its doors unlocked and the Doctor figured all the newer models "lacked personality" anyway). Clara telling him to take the Type 40 really undermines that key moment in the Doctor's life in my opinion. (Then there's also the fact that she said "the navigation's a bit knackered, but it's more fun", which also takes away from the mystery of the TARDIS "taking him where he needed to go rather than where he wanted to go".... In general, I feel like both "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" and "The Name of the Doctor" took some steps backwards from the TARDIS' own narrative development by treating it more like "the Doctor's travel machine" rather than "the magic box who stole a madman".)
Thinking back on the episode currently, I feel like the concept of Clara going to different points in the Doctor's past was really underdeveloped and more like forced fanservice, mainly because it wasn't given a lot of attention during Series 7 but also because of Clara's character. Series 7 spent no time developing her (and the attempts were inconsistent, but I believe that was because she was supposed to be "the perfect companion", adaptable to every situation the Doctor was in), so I still can't honestly say at this point whether I think she's a good character or a bad one, and I certainly can't connect with her. As a result, when the time came to have her go into the Doctor's time stream, all there was for me to care about was seeing the classic Doctors, which (as I said above) really only had a strong impact on first viewing.
The episode's plot itself wasn't particularly amazing, but that's probably my own fault; I expected the John Hurt reveal because I was lurking this forum and had accidentally looked at some spoilers, and I pretty much knew the main plot just because I watched the Next Time trailer.
Everything else in the episode was great though, and the ending tells me that Clara is going to be properly developed from this point on.
Loved the way they used the old "classic" footage, but why was one shot of Patrick Troughton still left in black and white, when they'd gone to all the trouble (and expense) of colourising the Hartnell footage?
I realise they had to do that to be able to integrate the modern footage of Clara with it, and it was very well done indeed, but they should have at least tinted that full screen shot of Pat.
To me that just looked like "here's a black and white telerecording shot from an old episode" which rather spoiled it for me. It just didn't integrate in as it should have done IMO.
Also, WTF happened between the Doctor and Clara being in that room talking about her memory coming back, and them suddenly for no apparent reason walking into the shot outside the tomb with everyone else?
It looked like a chunk had been cut out there to me, and was very jarring, unless I've missed something very obvious (not for the first time!)
I'm being picky though, it was a great episode, and will go down I'm sure as one of the most significant of the whole series ever.
Roll on November 23rd!
It's really just a question of how you look at it. Everything you assumed about the Doctor and how he chose the TARDIS (or it chose him) etc. was perfectly correct. That's how it happened. However, the GI went back in time to sabotage the Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS. How he tried to do that, we don't know but, what we saw, was Clara putting it back on track. Perhaps the TARDIS had originally put a telepathic suggestion in the Doctor's head to choose her but the GI suppressed her telepathy with his own. Clara interceded physically and nudged the Doctor towards the TARDIS' own urging.
As for the crack about the navigation. The Doctor always assumed it was faulty navigation for quite some time and I think, in a way it was. It was faulty in the way that the TARDIS was able to override its operator and go where it wanted. I'd call that pretty faulty!
I'm not sure why you felt that Journey took away from the idea of the TARDIS being sentient. It was filled with references to the TARDIS being upset with them and actually deliberately trying to trap them or prevent them from going where they wanted to go.
In 'Name', as well, the TARDIS was fighting the Doctor's attempt to get them to Trenzalore. That's not the actions of a non-sentient machine. They even explained that this was the TARDIS' grave as well. The TARDIS had died. Doesn't get any more unmachine-like than that!
I considered that, but Series 7 gave me the impression that Clara's appearances throughout the Doctor's life were what always happened and that there was no "original" timeline (because Clara's appearances were in the original timeline). "The Doctor's Wife" tells us the Doctor and the TARDIS chose each other, and then "Asylum of the Daleks" shows that Clara was already scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline chronologically before she actually entered the time stream, so both accounts must be true because they both come from the same version of the timeline (as they're both spoken of before Clara enters the time stream in "The Name of the Doctor" to fix whatever the GI was trying to do). I can accept that there are no inconsistencies here and that Clara telling the Doctor which TARDIS to pick merely piqued his curiosity (and so made him take a peak inside that TARDIS and decide that the others lacked personality), but it still sort of undermines the Doctor's individuality and sense of adventure when it's suggested that the decision to take the Type 40 wasn't just because he was the Doctor and this sort of Gallifreyan hipster.
Though I could definitely see this whole thing working perfectly if we say that this Clara was the previous owner of the TARDIS, happily encouraging it to steal a Time Lord because she knows how much it yearns for adventure and knows it deserves better....
Actually, I think I'm starting to warm up to the idea.
Yeah, the TARDIS is sort of like a god in this sense because (aside from being omniscient and practically omnipresent) all it's faults are physical, technical faults, but in a way that's more similar to when a religious person might fall out of a tree and break his arm or something and say "it's all part of God's plan". These faults are literally faults, but with a sort of consciousness behind it with some half-deliberate meddling.
Sorry, maybe I should have clarified. The TARDIS was being described as more like a machine than a sentient being, as a lot of its actions are described like they're based on animalistic instinct. The Doctor describes the TARDIS as "like a cat" in "Journey" and on the cliff he said "it's scared, it's trying to scare us away by creating this cliff" (paraphrasing here, but that was the idea). Overall it felt like it didn't carry the vast intelligence it had in "The Doctor's Wife". As for the attempt to get to Trenzalore, I thought that was just the natural laws of time making it hard for the Doctor to travel to his own future rather than the TARDIS actually not wanting to go there.
Jsut the way it makes sense to me.
No, I really don't think that's how it was presented to us. The GI invaded the Doctor's timeline at the end of his life with the express purpose of changing everything. We saw the effects of that change. There's no suggestion that time was circular at that point and that those events had already happened because we wouldn't have seen the knock-on effect of those changes. If it worked, as you say, the timeline already reflected Clara's actions to neutralise the GI so there would have been no planets disappearing or the Sontaran turning bad.
Clara followed the GI into the corrupted timeline to help neutralise his efforts and we haven't actually seen the results of that yet. However, I don't think there's any suggestion that nothing was changed. Neither the GI nor Clara were part of his original timeline. Everything we saw with Clara in the past represented a change to his timeline.
I always figured series 7 reflected events after Clara inserted herself in his timestream and previous series reflected events before she did so.
I will admit that Clara's echoes in Asylum and Victorian England appear to be anomolous. They're the only appearances of Clara that the Doctor remembers and you could argue that Clara only ended up in the tomb because the Doctor actively sought her out after encountering her echoes. So that part, at least, seems circular. In fact, it would seem that it was the echoes and Clara remembering the Doctor telling her about them in Journey that gave her the idea of throwing herself into the timestream in the first place.
One way round that is just to assume that in the first timeline, before the echoes, Clara was a normal companion who ended up in Trenzalore with the Doctor and came to her own decision to throw herself into the timeline. After that, she manifested in Asylum and Victorian England and that changed the Doctor's path sufficiently to go seek her out earlier than he would otherwise have encountered, her. However, they still ended up on a similar enough path to wind up in Trenzalore again. So, a loop, but one that changes slightly on each iteration (like with Journey).
To be honest, I'm inclined to believe that the writers just didn't think it through and if pressed, will probably just explain it all away with "Timey Wimey" but the events that we saw when the GI and Clara threw themselves into the timestream definitely indicate that doing that changes the timestream. If you assume that the timestream at that point always featured Clara and the GI's actions then it makes no sense for all the chaos that followed after the GI dived in. Nothing would have changed as it had all already happened. For that matter, I'd have thought that if invading every part of the Doctor's timestream was just going to end up in a predestination loop then the GI (and the Doctor) would probably have known that would happen which they clearly didn't.
If you do go with the idea that all this already happened then one possibility is that the TARDIS actually is Clara. An echo of Clara went back in time and became the sentience at the heart of the TARDIS. So when the TARDIS said she arranged for the Doctor to steal her, that's exactly what we saw. She projected a holographic image of herself (looking like Clara) telling the Doctor to choose her
You do have a point, but I still feel differently about it when looking at it from the Doctor's timeline. All the events surrounding Clara saving the Doctor revolved around his personal timeline. Assuming Series 7 happened in the same continuity as Season 1 to Series 6, we must conclude that Clara's appearances in "Asylum of the Daleks" and "The Snowmen" happened in the same timeline as all the rest of the television stories we had seen previously (having happened exactly as we saw them). While my own theory (or any other theory for that matter) doesn't make a lot of sense, I just think the idea that we suddenly switch timelines for Series 7 makes less sense and unnecessarily messes with the continuity of the whole programme. If "The Big Bang" didn't write every single previous episode of Doctor Who (exactly as we saw them, not as a slight variation) out of the "current continuity" (or in other words, write the recent episodes into their own continuity), then why would this episode? It doesn't seem to be something Moffat would do.
The GI going in and causing changes in the present must have been for dramatic effect to reflect the fact that Clara still needs to go in but hasn't yet (and that whole scene never made sense anyway, as changes in the past can't logically take "time" to have an effect on the present; time doesn't take time, time is time). So with all that in mind, I can only reason that, because Clara shows up in the "normal timeline", Clara going into the time stream must be a fixed point in the Doctor's own future (which may possibly be supported by the Silence's own efforts to change it), and I'll admittedly have a pretty hard time seeing it any other way, unfortunately.
I don't expect everyone to come up with the same explanation though; Moffat's series finales haven't made a whole lot of timey-wimey sense before, so this should be no exception!
Eh... I think I'm just going to stick with the chain of events I've settled on:
Doctor is about to walk into a TARDIS -> Clara notices this and the fact that the Type 40's doors are unlocked and realizes it yearns for adventure -> Clara says: "Take this one. The navigation's a bit knackered, but it's more fun." -> Doctor thinks: "Might as well check it out." -> "You're the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." -> "The other models lack personality." -> "Susan, get in here!"
in the leaving press release. This hints, in my mind anyway, that the whole 'Silence will fall' thing does refer to the second visit to Trenzalore, not the first.