OK, so I have just re-watched the whole of series 9.
I have to say - I would recommend anyone a re-watch. You certainly see things you missed first time and actually appreciate the stories a bit more. It is very easy to get caught up in the pre-episode hype and then the mass-disappointment post-episode especially if you read forums - it almost dulls your enjoyment of it at the time.
For example, Sleep No More was actually really good - it was a total departure in the style of story telling and it made sense in its own context - you have to bear in mind that the story probably continued well past that episode and we might get to see how the Doctor stopped the sandmen when he got to Titan (thats where he was headed at the end)….

However… On the re-watch there are a couple of things that dont make much sense and I wondered if anyone had any theories - as I dont think it was explained.
Now, these aren’t whines and gripes… just wondering out loud.


1. The confession dial.

OK, so we know what it is, and that it was used to imprison the Doctor, but why did he have one and what was the confession?

We know he had it as he was voluntarily going to meet Davros and assumed he would be killed in doing so.
Do we assume its something to do with leaving Gallifrey ? - if so this wasn’t explained.
We know it wasn’t the ‘secret of the Hybrid’ as the Doctor himself didn’t really know what it was. Only at the end did he surmise it was him and Clara.

2. The return of Gallifrey

So, we were all waiting for that big story when the Doctor re-discovers Gallifrey as it returned to our universe….. but - we didn’t get to see that.
Instead it returned at some point - the cities rebuilt and no sign of post war debris….Rassilon had regenerated.
…and then after a while the Time Lords got a bit paranoid about the Hybrid legend and decided to forcibly get the Doctor back and imprison him in his own confession dial.
Why didn’t they just ask him? I know the Doctor asked that very question but they have a fleet of Tardises and much more advanced ones than the Doctor’s - they could have come and found him and asked!
How did the Sisterhood of Karn get to Gallifrey, and how did they know where it was - and how could they time-travel to its current point at the end of the universe - and so quickly once they knew the Doctor was out of the Dial.

3. Immortality

If its as easy to become an immortal as to steal one of the Mire’s medical kits…. why aren’t there more immortals?!
And why aren’t there thousands of Mire soldiers at the end of the universe with Me.
How did Me last all the way - billions and billions of years living through every one of them - and ending up pretty much as she always was, wearing 21st century contemporary clothes and the last surviving being. She must have looked pretty odd in Casandra’s era (who by the way was not the last human alive at that point any more )
Having lived billions of years, why I wonder would Me use the stolen tardis then travel back and forth in time and perpetuate her existence even longer - she must be a bit bored of living by now! Quite handy she got a Tardis with 5 minutes to go until the universe ended. Makes you wonder why she didn’t get one before.

4. Super-Clara!

So - she really does know and can do everything eh!…. not knocking it but after the Doctor’s memory was wiped, he said that someone moved his Tardis from London where he left it.
Had he been back to the UK post - wipe? How did he know it had been moved if not.
So - we are to assume that Clara or Me piloted the doctors Tardis to the American desert. Since when did either of them become Tardis pilots!? What am I missing here?



Anyway - any theories to explain these?

I often find that with TV, Doctor Who especially, it usually is more enjoyable off-air when the run of episodes is over. When a series is still running you have the people with the loud voices complaining all over the internet on a weekly basis with exaggerated stories of how that episode was the worst experience of their life and it gave them an STD, and how they've never watched something so bad before. One year later and you're more likely to hear people saying how much they liked that series. I remember how Series 5-7 came across as the bane of everybody's existence and you could look anywhere on the internet without seeing people tearing into them, yet now you see people looking back on them as "the good old days" Likewise with Series 1-4, which also came under heavy fire from internet fans.

On the subject of Gallifrey, I think we're going to see more of it next series, and the Doctor knows where it is now. It's not unlikely Hell Bent set up a few points to be picked up on, such as Rassilon being exiled and possibly seeking revenge.

1) He was afraid (after escaping the sliders) that he indeed was the hybrid ... because his half - .........
2) Yes, all very good questions - including, why construct elaborate ruse including an immortal girl that should not exist and let Clara die as a result
3) Yes .. exactly
4) It seems many "companions" pick it up over time, River, Tasha Lem, and "Me" has had forever to learn ...

Sigh. I could have told you this beforehand. It's this kind of viewing of the show that totally distorts one's impressions of it, when you are steeping yourself in other's opinions too deeply and too quickly instead of giving your own thoughts a chance to develop.

Hopefully you will remember this next season.

Your point number 3 by the way was one of my biggest issues with the series.

The confession dial: I'm reading between the lines a little but my impression was that it was just a trap for the Doctor: a fake confession dial that the Doctor would naturally be curious about (knowing he hadn't actually 'recorded' a confession) and would therefore acquire - also evident in it being sent to Missy. Once he was lured in (on Trap Street as it happened) he would be ticked or co-erced into using the teleporter... into the dial.

In a nutshell... I do not think he created a confession and sent it to Missy. It was just a trap. But I could have missed something.

I did rewatch the whole series again while i was off over Christmas. Got a lot more out of it that way. The only Turkey in it is sleep no more which i find unwatchable. It's only a month to the complete boxset now and i will watch it a third time.

Personally I can't get anything new out of re-watching something until I've given it a while and started to forget the details a little bit, so I can watch with relatively fresh eye's, which is why I am always happy to wait for the complete series box set release, and will re watch then.

Never do personally understand the people on here who say they have watched the episode two or three times within a week of it being broadcast for example. If it works for them that's fine but I don't get it personally.

One thing I remember wondering from the time of broadcast though - I was sure in the next time trailer at the end of heaven sent there was someone regenerating in some kind of chamber and a timelord announcing 'regeneration in progress' yet that never happened in the episode (I know there was a regeneration but not that one it seemed)

Anyone have any insight on my above query? was it cut from the episode or am I just misremembering?

That line in the trailer was the general regenerating. "Regeneration in progress" What one of the guards was saying to someone. Wasn't cut.

On point 4, Clara has on several times been seen pulling levers at the control desk, even back in Day of the Doctor, but especially in S9, so it's not unreasonable that the Doctor taught her how to pilot the TARDIS, especially if the TARDIS wanted to be helpful!

On the subject of immortality, it always amuses me when science fiction writers (and Steven Moffat isn't the only one to do this of course) bandy billions of years about as if they're nothing! The Doctor trying to bash though a wall for billions of years, Ashidr living for billions of years, and yes it is a very big question why if the Mire have the technology to make at least a human immortal, why aren't there more immortal beings around?!
This conceit was wonderfully spoofed by Douglas Adams in The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy of course, when the computer Deep Thought announced it was going to take millions of years to answer the "Great Question", in the end just announcing that the answer was "42"!

... In Hell bent, the guard said it to the general when he walked into the room, just after the Doctor shot the general with his own side-arm.

Also - I know what you mean about watching a show back when it's still so fresh, for many episodes I can't do this. For example, the big reveal about the Master, the fob watch in David Tenants had a lot to do with surprise but it was still a fantastic episode. Watching it back straight away just didn't make sense.

Conversely, in the past few years - I watched both Listen and Hell Sent (and others) almost three if not four times in the same week - I just got such great excitement from them It's about how the show hits you I guess

It's not stated, or even implied, but in my own, personal "head canon", Ashildr didn't spend the remaining lifetime of the universe going the long way round to its end. Of course, given the setup, she very well could have, but it seems more reasonable to assume the Time Lords, having made the deal over the trap street with her at some point, brought her forward in time.

Or that, through that meeting, she gained access to time travel herself. I also think that she must have had access to alien, off world technology to be able to setup the trap street. The exposure to that may also have been orchestrated by the Time Lords in the course of their investigation of the hybrid threat. They may even have encountered her (and then decided to use her for the trap) because of that investigation.

I think the main issue with Ashildr is the relative ease with which she was made immortal. If it was that easy, the universe would be teeming with immortals, especially towards the end. And, why weren't all the Mire immortal also?

The immortality was a combination of Mire Technology used on an alien species (Human) and enhanced by Time Lord Science.

Even then it's probably not something that would happen every time those three things were combined as it doesn't appear that the other human (forget his name) became immortal (he did of course have the 4th factor of his life energy being drained at the time the Mire device was inserted).


On a Mire itself the unaltered technology can probably do a fair bit of healing but probably doesn't stop aging.

I quite like this theory.

Its a much more plausible way of interpreting what we were presented with.
It would have been nice to throw in a line from the Doctor, on finding Ashildr at the end of the universe, 'how did you get here' and then a one line explanation.

Without it.. we ask these questions!

I think Moffat himself said somewhere that Ashildr in fact existed through all that time in a linear fashion with no jumping or time travel and hence by the time of their 'final' meeting she had actually long since surpassed the doctor in years spent alive.

Which is just ludicrous, even if her body could survive that long (unlikely as think how many of our population dies through accident and most of us live for about 80-90 years, try going billions of years with out falling prey to one of lifes accidents) her mind would not, the fact she was basically the same was shoddy writing IMO, she should make the Joker look sane and rational and Marvin the depressed robot look positively upbeat.

All of the points in the OP were problems I had with series 9, and I had many more. No amount of time and re-watching is going to fix the problems with series 9, it was very poor thought out and done IMO.

The Immortal stuff is something that really bugs, its just very very cheap, it cheapens the who-verse and continues something that Moffat has done which is death is nothing, its cheap it doesn't matter its easily defeated and there's no consequences.. resulting in the verse (and the drama within it) to feel hollow, there's no dramatic stakes as death has no wait and people can easily be plucked away safe after we thought they had died.

Its hard for an audience to engage with a world/verse that feels lawless and waitless, and that's something Moffat has created and which I think with hindsight will be looked back on as a massive flaw of his tenure and be thought on poorly like 80s DW is.

The choices of S9 also plays havoc with the universe as really the Daleks and a lot of the other species should all be immortal, I mean the Mere or whatever they are called are around in the universe when it was Viking times on Earth, if they have this amazing self healing tech back then surely when we go into the future other species would have that tech, the universe and the alien inside it are all very connected, tech will be passed along or stolen, and of course tech marches on, so if the Mere can do it in Viking times then with thousands or millions of years of advancements then humans and zygons and sea devils and whoever should also be able to do it....... so where's all the immortals... It also cheapens Jack Harnesses storyline, The Tardis run away from him because he was this strange anomaly, and yet no he's not that unique or strange, just get a chip upgraded and we can all be immortals YAY...

.. which is a bit of a shame due to how ludicrous it really is!

Not that I'm an expert on the subject - but at the point the universe ends in several billion years time - all life and habitable planets will have long ceased to exist (presumably) - so I hope Alshilda stocked up on some decent box-sets and packets of crisps to keep herself amused for the last several million years left all alone with no planets or other life forms waiting for the last few minutes of the universe!

I don't really find it too perplexing or ludicrous to be honest, seeing as it's a show about a shapeshifting loony who owns a police box that's bigger on the inside and can go anywhere in time and space, and his greatest enemies are pepper shakers armed with a plunger and an egg whisker.

There are limits, of course. The magical lunacy of The Last if the Time Lords where everyone in the world prays over the Doctor and he turns young again in a puff of light... that went over the line. An immortal girl alone at the end of the universe? Doesn't sound that far-fetched compared to the show's premise. More poetic storytelling I think.

Annoying it may be to some but it's fairly typical of Moffats broadstroke romanticism which has been a feature of his era. He seems to prefer that fairytale/legend/myth approach as seen with the Rory the Centurion, The Girl Who Waited, the Doctor on Trenzalore and Heaven Sent. Ashildr is just another example of that. I happen to like the fact he realises the inherent crazyness of the show and often doesnt even try to make it adhere to real world logic. Instead he does whatever the hell he wants. Quite right to. Lets leave the boring nit-picking to Star Trek fans. What did Ashildr do for all those years? Who cares. That wasn't the point.

It does make me laugh how some Doctor Who fans like to draw these arbitrary lines and rules about what the show can and can't do. It's ludicrous? Of course it is. It's Doctor Who.

There's got to be some internal-logic otherwise the show becomes waitless and pointless, it won't feel like your watching a exaggerated reality but instead watching some people reading out a story a 6 year old has scribbled on some paper *then she woke up, and jumped from her bed in to a pond that was on the other side of the world* ... it becomes panto rather than drama.

I'm not being overly picky, like the star treky analogy, I'm not picky when it comes to sci fi fantasy shows I gave a lot of leeway as one should in order to have great imaginative fun stories but Moffats DW is beyond the pale a lot of the time, this is stuff that's in your face with its wall breaking, its hard to ignore and just go along with as its so obviously a big pile of cobblers... it creates a disconnect between the fantasy world and the audience, people can't buy into it because the verse is without consequence,.

I'd guess this has contributed in a big way as to why the show has lost 2 million viewers or whatever the amount was.. people can see cobblers when its put in front of them..

This is the same show that once made up the term "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" to sound clever when they needed the Doctor to whip up a solution and generally makes up whatever psuedoscience it can for the sake of the story. I think the only time it really went into heavy, realistic science was Season 7 (of Classic Who) and even then we were supposed to believe that plastic could be alive and drilling deep enough into the Earth would turn everyone into zombies (though it's worth mentioning this less fantastical approach to the show didn't do it well for the ratings). I'm not feeling a disconnect with its fantasy world at all, the story and characters are enough to immerse me, but if I wanted a show that can convince me that much of its scientific accuracy, I certainly wouldn't go to Doctor Who for it, at any point in its history.

Nothing about the Ashidlr story or arc is remotely analogous with this. It was carefully explained, seeded and plotted across 4/5 episodes. You might not like it but it wasn't a lazy quick fix or rabbit pulled from a hat. 'Then the Tardis towed the entire planet back to where it came from '- now that sounds much more like your example.

(I'm joking. Theres no need to explain to me again how RTD was a genius who truly connected with Ol' Joe & Josephine Public in a way Moffat doesn't.)

Also your reasoning that this is why '2 million viewers' (funny, that number keeps crawling upwards every time someone wants a stick to beat Moffat with) switched off is so shaky to call it spurious would be generous. It's the old Magic Bear Repelling Rock scenario that so many on here often fall into using to prove their points. No evidence to suggest this is the case. In fact there is more evidence to the contrary. Such as why didnt these same people switch off when Rory sat under stonehenge for all that time and then just brushed it off like his bus had been late? Because its Doctor Who. Thats why.

Immortal Ashildr is no more ludicrous than any of a thousand and one other ludicrous things Doctor Who has done (before breakfast at Milliways) over its years.

The actual duration that she's supposed to have existed through is so long that our puny little ape brains can't properly grasp it. For example, when see her as Lady Me she's (probably) already a thousand (10 to the power 3) years old or so and already lost many memories. The end of the Universe is another 10 to the power 1000 years away. Too large a number to grasp. How much would she remember of her first million (10 to the power 6) years after all that time?

I would like the series to return to traditional science fiction. Its gone way too science fantasy especially last year. Got a feeling going to have to wait until season 11 before I get my wish though.

What do you define as science fantasy as opposed to science fiction? Do you really want Doctor Who to be confined to the science we (think we) know about today when less than 5% of the observable universe is made of normal (baryonic) matter? And then there's the universe beyond what we can observe and the possibility of many other universes too.

The core premise of the series is itself fantasy as everything we know, even in theory, suggests time travel into the past is impossible (well, except for the idea of a wormhole with one end in the past and even then you wouldn't be able to go farther back in time than the point when the wormhole was first created nor survive the journey through it).

To quote Clarke's 3rd Law "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". As long as Doctor Who does not stray into the supernatural (by, for example having "real" ghosts that are not explained as some sort of advanced technology or scientific phenomenon), then I'm fairly happy.

Of course there are always other sorts of narrative flaws that irritate!

There are a lot of decent, and valid opinions on here.

As much as I found the idea of Ashildr's longevity ridiculous, I had forgotten the plethora of other such ideas that we have seen in the past.

The glowy-light-dobby-doctor being restored through the power of prayer was particularly silly granted.

Science fiction is good. Science fantasy is good. I think there is room in Doctor Who for both. Not everything needs a plausible science explanation and throwaway lines such as 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow' are joyfully cheesy and unexplainable - you just know he's done something 'clever'.

However, just once in a while, if you make the mistake of engaging your brain just a little too much you do tend to overthink something that is not designed to be overthought

As was the case of Ashilda, id have been bored beyond belief for the last few million years hanging onto a rock in the middle of decaying nothingness.