Super, SUPER late to this party (though I did read it the day you posted and have had it open in a tab ever since, I’ve just been so unable to think lately…) This is wonderful, as ever <3 I’ve really missed all this – am so glad the meta café is back! Some random, utterly incoherent responses, due to aforementioned lack of thinking:
-Nardole has really grown on me! I resented him at first for taking time and attention away from Bill (why should the queer black girl have to share her companionship with Matt Lucas?) but I’ve really warmed to him, as I feel like the show is using him well. Also, I suddenly realised that he is effectively K9 – he is the tin dog. And that helped me contextualise him.
-BILL <3333333 god I don’t even have words for how much I love her, and her and Twelve’s relationship.
-Loved your whole section on forgiveness/confession. Nothing to add, but it is beautiful. I remember that line, ‘Do you think I care for you so little…’ made me cry the first time I watched it, and I love how you’ve tied it together with River and Missy here. (Confessing to Missy is DEFINITELY NOT A GOOD IDEA). Stray thought: he should confess to the Tardis. Isn’t the confessional a box?
-Allll the parallels and nods back to the Library/The Sound of Drums/The Wedding of River Song etc are wonderful, of course, but I particularly like the return of the Guarding Gallifrey/Guarding *from* Gallifrey thing. The Doctor’s relationship with Gallifrey by this point is SO layered and complex.
-With the TWoRS parallels, it really does look like this week we’re getting a version of that alternative universe/The Year That Never Was from The Sound of Drums. I really want to have interesting thoughts on this, but my brain is just a big blank gaping hole at the moment /o\
-‘Bill says: "I need to know what's real and what isn't real."’ – it’s interesting that this theme of reality vs non-reality is continuing, because it’s something I associate so strongly with Clara. I mean, I know all the companions experience it to some extent, especially Donna and Amy – your list is v useful! – but Clara is associated with a ‘state of dreaming’ (thinking of niyalune’s lovely vid) since her first episode, and so in my mind this question is really linked to her. Her need for control and categorisation – Real vs Not Real – and how this is continually slipping from her grasp.
-I’ve enjoyed the Doctor’s continual grapple with the nature of ‘belief’ – reminded me of The Satan Pit, waaaay back in the day, when Ten said something like ‘if I believe in just one thing, I believe in her’ (Rose). Ties in also to Eleventy’s lines about his companions – ‘you are all I ever remember’, and ‘my friends have always been the best of me’ (another of my favourite lines). What the Doctor believes in above all else is the essential goodness of the people he loves. And, as we’ve seen on multiple occasions, that continues to be true in any version of reality.
-This meta reminded me (as did a comment above about the Tardis and freedom to/freedom from) of a lovely Vienna Teng song that I’ve associated with DW ever since The God Complex – do you know Augustine ? ‘Lead me now / I understand / faith is both a prison / and an open hand’. Feel this applies v strongly to the Doctor.
-That's a wonderful bit of meta from Promethia - shows just how coherent and consistent the show has been, that it's even more relevant now, years on. The thing about knowledge, as I think someone in another context pointed out, is that it's really not much good sans context - what you really want is WISDOM. A very simplistic definition could be knowledge + context. Or perhaps knowledge + experience. You can know *all the things in the world* and still make stupid mistakes and terrible decisions if you don't know how to *use* that knowledge ('the context is all' - a quote from The Handmaid's Tale I think about a lot) ...again, my brain WANTS to go somewhere with this, and apply it properly to DW, and specifically to Bill, but it's just stalled.
-aaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaargh this is so fucking FRUSTRATING, I feel so utterly incoherent and unable to expand on any thought /o\ it’s like my brain is stuffed with cotton wool :-(
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-Nardole has really grown on me! I resented him at first for taking time and attention away from Bill (why should the queer black girl have to share her companionship with Matt Lucas?) but I’ve really warmed to him, as I feel like the show is using him well. Also, I suddenly realised that he is effectively K9 – he is the tin dog. And that helped me contextualise him.
-BILL <3333333 god I don’t even have words for how much I love her, and her and Twelve’s relationship.
-Loved your whole section on forgiveness/confession. Nothing to add, but it is beautiful. I remember that line, ‘Do you think I care for you so little…’ made me cry the first time I watched it, and I love how you’ve tied it together with River and Missy here. (Confessing to Missy is DEFINITELY NOT A GOOD IDEA). Stray thought: he should confess to the Tardis. Isn’t the confessional a box?
-Allll the parallels and nods back to the Library/The Sound of Drums/The Wedding of River Song etc are wonderful, of course, but I particularly like the return of the Guarding Gallifrey/Guarding *from* Gallifrey thing. The Doctor’s relationship with Gallifrey by this point is SO layered and complex.
-With the TWoRS parallels, it really does look like this week we’re getting a version of that alternative universe/The Year That Never Was from The Sound of Drums. I really want to have interesting thoughts on this, but my brain is just a big blank gaping hole at the moment /o\
-‘Bill says: "I need to know what's real and what isn't real."’ – it’s interesting that this theme of reality vs non-reality is continuing, because it’s something I associate so strongly with Clara. I mean, I know all the companions experience it to some extent, especially Donna and Amy – your list is v useful! – but Clara is associated with a ‘state of dreaming’ (thinking of niyalune’s lovely vid) since her first episode, and so in my mind this question is really linked to her. Her need for control and categorisation – Real vs Not Real – and how this is continually slipping from her grasp.
-I’ve enjoyed the Doctor’s continual grapple with the nature of ‘belief’ – reminded me of The Satan Pit, waaaay back in the day, when Ten said something like ‘if I believe in just one thing, I believe in her’ (Rose). Ties in also to Eleventy’s lines about his companions – ‘you are all I ever remember’, and ‘my friends have always been the best of me’ (another of my favourite lines). What the Doctor believes in above all else is the essential goodness of the people he loves. And, as we’ve seen on multiple occasions, that continues to be true in any version of reality.
-This meta reminded me (as did a comment above about the Tardis and freedom to/freedom from) of a lovely Vienna Teng song that I’ve associated with DW ever since The God Complex – do you know Augustine ? ‘Lead me now / I understand / faith is both a prison / and an open hand’. Feel this applies v strongly to the Doctor.
-That's a wonderful bit of meta from Promethia - shows just how coherent and consistent the show has been, that it's even more relevant now, years on. The thing about knowledge, as I think someone in another context pointed out, is that it's really not much good sans context - what you really want is WISDOM. A very simplistic definition could be knowledge + context. Or perhaps knowledge + experience. You can know *all the things in the world* and still make stupid mistakes and terrible decisions if you don't know how to *use* that knowledge ('the context is all' - a quote from The Handmaid's Tale I think about a lot) ...again, my brain WANTS to go somewhere with this, and apply it properly to DW, and specifically to Bill, but it's just stalled.
-aaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaargh this is so fucking FRUSTRATING, I feel so utterly incoherent and unable to expand on any thought /o\ it’s like my brain is stuffed with cotton wool :-(