Near the end, we saw that the castle was actually inside the Confession Dial. I reckon that the Doctor was stored inside the Confession Dial at the end of Face the Raven, and transported to Gallifrey, by Lady Me. Kind of like how the Nethersphere worked.

All of the castle stuff was just a dream, and the diamond wall was a metaphor for him having to use his willpower to get out of the dial.

No, none of it actually happened. It was all filmed footage of an actor on set pretending to be an alien called the Doctor.

In all seriousness, though, I think it happened as a kind of virtual reality, so not entirely real but moreso than a dream. I would imagine time doesn't pass within the dial at the same speed as outside, or we're looking at a Gallifrey that's been waiting around for a very long time.

I'll be honest, at one point in the middle of watching the episode I wondered if they were trying to hint the old "Crossroads" It was all a dream plotline. But, no. He was transported into the Confession Dial prison and resides for approx. 2b years. It's a lot bigger on the inside.

I prefer the idea that the confession dial was something a bit more like the matrix in the Deadly Assassin, and wasn't real.

I don't want to be left thinking that the Doctor died 2 billion years ago and we've been left with a copy from a teleport machine. So thinking it was all a virtual world works much better for me.

It was all in his head.

Virtual for me, which I thought was clear from the way he 'came out of it' (but don't shoot me for that, that's just what I took from a first watch and some great posts on here!).

If Moffat goes for anything other than that in passing next week when that's such a simple way to resolve it, and when there should be more exciting stuff to enjoy...I'll be cross!

I really want this episode to be able to stand on its own in Doctor Who history as a separate, complete adventure (in hindsight ofc) because then I will always hold it dear as a classic

It's a plot device!

I thought it was self indulgent twaddle. Please don't hate me for this, it's just my opinion

Matrix style virtual reality for me too! Felt that way on every level.

The nature of the Confession dial wasn't established so it is open to speculation but personally I see the events as totally real, as in they actually happened in a physical universe. Remember that the Time Lords are adept with higher (or other) Dimensional technology. You can see the confession dial as being a pocket dimension pretty much just like the interior of a TARDIS.

Also, the castle and the Shade were both clearly shown to be mechanical contrivances. They weren't illusory; they were physically engineered. They worked, literally, by clockwork, not by any kind of sleight of hand or apparent 'magic' or dream logic.

This is in keeping with how Moffat has envisioned the Time Lords so far: as a race of incredibly advanced engineers, who have learned to incorporate black holes, higher dimensions and time travel into their engineering. I personally love this interpretation.

To me, yes, it all happened, it was physically real, but happening in some other dimension, a TARDIS-like space (after all, if one thinks about it, the TARDIS is outside of our conventional space-time too. One could spend a million years inside it whilst being immune to the passing of a million years outside, as it is not part of the same space-time continuum) contained within the Confession dial.

The resetting of the rooms and so on would work in exactly the same way the TARDIS deletes or adds rooms, changes the look of the console room etc.

Just out of interest, and because I don't assume that every Who fan has seen all the original series episodes, did you ever see how the inner 'reality' of the Timelords' Matrix was represented whilst the Doctor was inside? That seemed to be just as physical a universe as what was within the confession dial. Or, for that matter, the inside of Missy's Nethersphere, which seemed absolutely solid and real to everyone uploaded inside it. Both, however, are virtual.

You may well be right, of course, but the appearance of the interior of the dial doesn't prove anything, one way or another, based on other Gallifreyan tech we've seen previously.

Of course, there is no right or wrong answer here.

Yes, I have seen all of doctor Who and I rate the Deadly Assassin as one of my favourite serials. I think you're spot-on in saying the interior of the Matrix seemed to be a physical universe to the people inside it (the Doctor and Goth) but we know it wasn't because throughout we were also shown their physical bodies still inhabiting normal space. That's not to say there couldn't be something more to it but it would just be fan speculation on our part. I think what we're shown implies that events were happening within the shared mindscape of the characters.

With the Nethersphere I don't remember it ever being said to be virtual. My assumption was again that it was simply another pocket dimension ala TARDIS technology. I could be wrong on this. If you know better and it was explicitly stated as being virtual please do correct me.

But again, we simply don't know, there is no right or wrong answer here. We're all interpreting, or theorizing until the show offers a definitive answer.

Since all the people in the Nethersphere (apart from Missy) were digital copies then it had to be a Virtual environment.

Plus we were told the Nethersphere was a Matrix Data Slice which would imply the rules were the same as the main Matrix.


Missy of course did seem to actually travel to the Nethersphere (converting her matter into data presumably) rather than just hooking her mind up to it but we saw the 6th Doctor do the same with the main Matrix so it's possible.

The Doctor: "They're not holograms, they're not Flesh Avatars, they're not Autons, they're not digital copies bouncing around the Nethersphere."

That's the closest we've had to real confirmation, from Under the Lake

I would correct you, Tom, but Corwin and Koquillion just beat me to it!

Kidding aside, what Corwin mentioned there about Missy converting herself into energy to enter the Nethersphere seems like the closest thing to what we saw happen to the Doctor upon leaving the confession dial. He didn't step out of an object but instead walked through an energy portal, in exactly the same way we saw the young boy that Danny Pink saved in Death in Heaven leave the Nethersphere and return to a corporeal existence. For me, that's further evidence of the dial reality being a virtual one. But YMMV, as ever.

That's fair enough. I didn't remember the detail that well obviously. Clearly, with the inhabitants like Danny Pink their physical bodies bodies were dead and the digital copies sounds fine but the Doctor, Clara and Missy seemed to inhabit the Nethersphere in their actual, physical bodies, as you say. An apparent inconsistency. Perhaps the digital copies thing was only meant to apply to the 'deceased' inhabitants? (I'm rather groping in the dark here without rewatching for the context)

After all, none of the 'living' people (Doctor, Missy, Clara, Dr Chang) ever physically interacted with the 'dead' at any point so the visual appearance of Danny Pink, the child etc could have been insubstantial (basically a realistic hologram), just like Missy's obsequious servant (I forget the character's name; the 'squeeeing' one) was shown to be: a digitally presented image.

So again we have to assume that the Nethersphere IS a form of actual, physical space if the Doctor et al were actual, physical people, as they appeared to be (nothing was presented to imply they were virtual, even if the other inhabitants were). That doesn't fit with the 'Matrix Data Slice' line though so we're somewhat in the dark here. In the Deadly Assassin it was fairly clearly implied that the Matrix was a shared mindscape, or sub-conscious. The character there were not even necessarily 'digital' in the sense we would understand today. I don't remember Trial of a Timelord well enough off the top of my head to recall exactly how it was presented there. Maybe the Matrix does in some way have some form of physical expression on some level.

Dare I say there would be no problem here if only Moffat hadn't chosen 'Marix data slice' as his piece of techno-babble? :P

Not really, as the Doctor, Clara and the rest never actually entered the Nethersphere. Missy was the only one who had the ability to switch from physical to data form, via her bracelet. The same bracelet that Danny gave to the young boy in order to return to the real world.

Missy was the only living person we saw inside the Nethersphere.

Where the Doctor and Clara met Dr Chang and Missy wasn't the Nethersphere.

The Tombs hidden in St Pauls were probably created with TARDIS technology but they were real. The Nethersphere was the big sphere in the middle of the Tombs.

It was (to me) a pile of pap and nonsense like 'The Mind Robber' was in the 60's - and was a simple 'Filler' before the actual finale next week.
Peter did a wonderful one-hander all the same! Tom Baker would have loved to have done that!! I think it best that the Doctor has a companion myself!!

It was all just a bad dream after too much beer and cheese ......... or do Time Lords not eat or sleep or have indigestion ?

I'm sure we'll know soon enough if it really happened.. Moffat can't resist a big wanky line; "I'm the Doctor, I'm 2 billion years old and I'm going to save you" etc..

To be fair, it was RTD that started this sort of boasting.
If you're gonna bash Moffat then at least bash him for the stuff for which he's actually culpable.

Yes, it happened

Yep, I think what seemed like billions of years to the Doctor was probably only the actual amount of time it look for the confession dial to end up on Gallifrey, if that.

It did get me wondering if it was the same sort of time-elapse science that was used in Interstellar. In order to travel across vast distances of space, time was essentially "folded" as you would a sheet of paper and you pierce your way through from A-B rather than going the long way around and traversing the whole of space/the paper. You get time progressing at different speeds in different places (More about it here, which I doubt the show would try to tackle, but interestingly it has a lot to do with black holes - which the Time Lords are purportedly responsible for).

In this case, billions of years passed within the confession dial but in reality very little time has passed at all. The Doctor went the long way round inside the confession dial, but whoever took the dial itself to Gallifrey (best bet is still Me) did so considerably faster - either at typical progressive speed, or via time travel.