Meta: Swift musings on the Moffat era

[elisi]

Cautiously opens the door to the meta café a tiny bit...

I have been saying for years now that Moffat has been re-booting the show… Here is how he did it.

Of course this was a sort of backwards re-boot, as it was RTD who brought the show back and in the process transformed it. He came up with the Time War, and we saw the fallout from that mostly in the Tenth Doctor.

However that was clearly not a sustainable way for the show to function – Ten was a hollow shell by the end of his run.

So Moffat began his reboot. It’s easier if we divide it up by Companions, than Doctors, because it’s in the Companions’ roles that we most clearly see how he has progressed things - this is a VERY quick run-through, but I thought it'd be helpful now we stand at the brink of the new:


Ponds (family)
The first project was to look after the Doctor himself. He was a lonely, volatile creature by the end of The End of Time, and the Ponds gave him an intensive course of family therapy. He (re-)learned to trust, and to love and to just be happy. It gave him ties to the world that he had not had since the loss of Gallifrey, and in River a wife with abilities very much like his own; and she had a lifespan long enough to become a genuine partner. The Doctor once more became the Trickster character/wizard he is supposed to be.

Rather than Time Lords, we had The Church of the Silence, and Eleven’s life revolved around a crack in a wall, at the other side of which was Gallifrey…


Clara (home)
Clara was the one who brought back Gallifrey, and was at the heart of the reboot (which is one reason why she was such a complex and highly capable character. She literally is the ur-Companion). This was a long project, and a complicated one, and from the first she was mirrored with the Doctor himself (and would of course in the end get her own TARDIS). She was also intimately tied up with the Time Lords and Gallifrey and the Time War. She was the one who was there when the Doctor saved Gallifrey in The Day of the Doctor and the one who in The Time of the Doctor answered the question, as well as demanding that the Time Lords save the Doctor.

And so Gallifrey was found, and the Doctor got a new lease of life. But these things don’t come cheap. Twelve was in many ways a reboot of the Doctor himself; grouchy and short tempered with humans. Clara – as predicted (see icon, and who she is mirrored with) – stepped into the granddaughter role, smoothing out and helping and becoming generally indispensable. Of course she was also Missy’s pawn; specifically chosen for the Doctor, and Missy heralded the proper return of Gallifrey (as well as being mirrored with Clara - Clara is All The Things). Clara’s death was the starting point for Gallifrey’s actual return, and the Doctor’s atonement. He spent 400 years thinking he had murdered his own kind, and then four and a half billion years punching a path back through to them (although of course he is doing it for Clara. Still. Atonement). Nevertheless, it’s a hard road and one that makes Gallifrey’s return ‘earned’ in a way that would otherwise be hard to justify.

And then – he dies. (Well, if we see a mindwipe as a kind of death.)


River (love)
After that comes the Singing Towers and a night that lasts 24 years… The Doctor emerges from this older, kinder, more melancholy and also exactly what the Doctor should be. River loves him unconditionally, whilst also seeing him clearly, and that kind of intense TLC is what his Ponds were there for, and he gets one last infusion before setting him on his path anew… ♥


Bill (new start)
All of which brings us up to Bill and The Pilot. The show has now been thoroughly, properly, re-booted. And is back exactly where it was in the beginning. The Doctor is a renegade, the Time Lords are mostly stuffy and pompous and the Doctor doesn’t get on with them. The Master/Missy is knocking about somewhere, brewing up something to attract the Doctor’s attention and the Doctor is inviting a new companion along, excited at the possibilities and ready for new adventures.

Comments

Re: Still though, fuck the Time Lords

[(Anonymous)]

6. In my opinion, to say “he thinks she’s the Hybrid” makes sense by Heaven Sent, or at least is not contradicted and can be a valid option, and is something that can be seen through his actions and dialogue. An additional reason to not want to confess could very well exist, like I had said. Because who knows who is asking and what they could use the nearly immortal and ageless, “superb”, and morally dubious woman to do if he is right? He does after all confess truthfully to the Veil that the knowledge of the Hybrid’s reality and the general situation make him afraid. And that can very well equal in my opinion “Yes, I don’t really care about its identity like you lot do, it doesn’t matter, I have ulterior motives right now, but oh crap, it’s not just a legend, the prophecy’s real after all and it will come true, I’m sure, I was right to be scared”. And even if it’s the Time Lords who are asking, they could *still* decide to use her for destruction, as a weapon, since they would learn that they were wrong about the half Dalek/half Time Lord bit. Or who knows to what extents they would go to kill her because they are afraid? –and she is on Earth as far as he knows, and the Time Lords never really gave a crap about what happened to it, especially if they are threatened. I think it is a possible interpretation –but who cares, that’s not his reason for going through all that anyway.
7. “You see, the problem is, Clara, there are truths that I can never tell. Not for anything. But I'm scared and I'm alone. Alone, and very, very scared”.
Now, this is where my opinion is based on what seems more consistent with the logic of the text, and not just “eh, I like it”:
The Doctor seems to consider this a genuinely dangerous secret, something that he places above his personal well-being. Therefore he probably can’t believe that he is the Hybrid, because then he has no incentive to be tempted –and he is- to confess out of fear: Like you said, they’ll kill him anyway, and it isn’t dangerous for anyone except himself. And given his pissed off stubbornness to not play along, and the fact that he doesn’t remember the plan to save Clara yet , I’d say in such a scenario, he might have just let the Veil kill him to spite his captors –your definition of “winning” may depend on what can be done. Of course in any case, he *must* survive, win, because Mind!Clara says so and he hasn’t run out of truths, so he just gives other information in order to escape at that point.
Also, on the above, he seems to say that the Time Lords would genuinely appreciate the information: “It doesn't matter what the Hybrid is. It only matters that I convinced them that I knew. Otherwise they'd have kicked me out, I'd have had nothing left to bargain with.” You can say that they are not alone so he can’t speak openly, but still, he doesn’t appear to believe that they’d kill him if he said “bugger the wall” and confessed. So the truth can’t be that.
8. Finally, to my mind, even if you go “half-human, he thought he was the Hybrid, he run away”, well, he is not obliged to *never * change his opinion after all this time (and subconsciously, he’d like to think that he is not the Hybrid, so incentive to do so). Yeah, okay, that might have been the *initial* fear and theory. But these are a lot of years and too many sudden “coincidences”, fuckups on his part, and signs by the universe and other people to ignore. So now after Ashildr, he was like: “Oh. (facepalm) Talk about self-fulfilling, well done, arsehole. Rush in like an idiot next time too, why don’t you”.

And I could probably go quote by quote and analyse, but really: No matter what interpretation you choose to go with, this is about the ultimately wrong theory a fictional character had about something, which he basically chose to ignore because his best friend died on him, his people are dicks, and he had a wild idea while being completely desperate in Hell. I think we all have better things to do.

Re: Still though, fuck the Time Lords

[(Anonymous)]

I did want to say however –because one has to admit his failings and I am a bad person– that after reading your take on it, I was almost tempted to accept it out of sheer sadism: Because the Doctor has a crazy plan that granted, has a billion different ways to fail and his goal is unrealistic and so far out of reach. But he is determined as hell and he does have one. And despite that, this would mean that he is so desperate, what he is enduring is so hellish and so unbelievably horrifying, that every single time poor Twelve remembers and has his breakdown in his mind palace, and pleads with Clara to be allowed to confess, to lose just this once, he is begging for that swift death sentence, he is basically asking permission to die. Because he just can’t take this anymore, that much.

Yeah, bad person.


(Sorry for the Walls of Text, please don’t feel you have to reciprocate.)

Re: Still though, fuck the Time Lords

[elisi]

Not bad, it's compelling.

Also, my final argument is the Doctor in S10.

He is more calm, grounded and relaxed than... well, Classic Who.

You could go straight from the Classic show to S10 and never know there had been a Time War.

There are many reasons for this: Gallifrey is back, he punched a wall for 4 billion years (great atonement, great anger therapy), and - if the hybrid theory is correct - he is no longer running. At least not for the reasons he was before.

With Bill he is far more open & straightforward about his motives, and his reasons than we have ever seen him.

And it's wonderful. ♥

Thank you again for helping me get all this more straight in my head.

ETA: Meant to say - Me is a mirror. A Doctor (and Clara) mirror, there to highlight the issues.

Re: Still though, fuck the Time Lords

[elisi]

6. In my opinion, to say “he thinks she’s the Hybrid” makes sense by Heaven Sent, or at least is not contradicted and can be a valid option, and is something that can be seen through his actions and dialogue.
We shall have to disagree. And I must thank you for helping me to really set it all out in my mind properly. I hadn’t thought of it in this much detail before, but it all makes sense now, and it just *fits! (I love it when things *fit.)

I prefer Dr AND Clara to be the Hybrid, to it being Me. That Clara uncovers – or hits – a weakness that’s always been there.
That’s what I mean. Whether he’s the hybrid because of a human mother or not, the Doctor being the hybrid is the only thing that makes sense. If he DOES have a human mother, every box it ticked, the whole thing hangs together beautifully, it works with ALL the evidence. If it’s Doctor + Clara, it’s more of a botch job, but it works if you squint.

!!

Although Clara jumped into his timestream, so she *is the Doctor, you can get your hybrid that way if you are completely opposed to the human mother theory.


7. “You see, the problem is, Clara, there are truths that I can never tell. Not for anything. But I'm scared and I'm alone. Alone, and very, very scared”.
Now, this is where my opinion is based on what seems more consistent with the logic of the text, and not just “eh, I like it”:
The Doctor seems to consider this a genuinely dangerous secret, something that he places above his personal well-being. Therefore he probably can’t believe that he is the Hybrid, because then he has no incentive to be tempted –and he is- to confess out of fear: Like you said, they’ll kill him anyway, and it isn’t dangerous for anyone except himself.
But the reason he doesn’t confess is because he NEEDS to save Clara. That’s what keeps him going. His knowledge is his bargaining power (and he may well have other secrets too). If he tells, then he has killed her all over again (because saving her is all he has left).