The Lie of the Land (DW S10.8)

[elisi]

I feel this only addresses about three things, but it's already Thursday and my head just won't wrap itself around things the way they should. So further thoughts might follow. Please talk to me about stuff you think I should look at!

Weekly Meta Cafe is hereby open. :)

First of all, I feel I should point out that half my notes from this episode are just ‘I LOVE NARDOLE’.

He just has to open his mouth to make me smile. Honestly, Matt Lucas has the best job in the whole show. <3


STRUCTURE
I think the most surprising thing about ‘The Lie of the Land’ is how straightforward it was on a surface level. Drab authoritarian regime. The Doctor appears to be working with the Monks. Bill & Nardole go rescue him. He gets Bill to jump through hoops to make sure she’s not been brainwashed. The Doctor talks to Missy, who has information. Bill realises she needs to die. The Doctor tries to take her place. It doesn’t work, Bill goes to sacrifice herself, but her love for her dead mother proves to be an obstacle the Monks can’t overcome. Monks run away, world is saved, people barely remember a thing.

It’s almost Doctor Who by numbers: World in peril, love saves the day.

People have pointed out the similarities to the resolution in Rings of Akhaten - the Doctor giving his all, but it’s not enough. And then the companion steps up and (through her very particular history/her dead mother) saves the day.

There are also parallels back to S3, although this wasn’t ‘the Doctor Saves Us All’. The plan in the S3 finale was basically the same as Bill’s was here: Get the Doctor back. And it worked a treat then – they used the Archangel network to restore the Doctor, and then he dealt with the Master.

Here, however, ‘getting the Doctor back’ only works up to the point of ‘the Doctor can work out what’s wrong’. What he can’t do is save the world, as the structure is very different, and Bill – as the responsible party – has to be the one to undo the damage.

Since we’re talking about parallels, there is also Bill talking to her mother to keep sane, much like Oswin did in the Dalek Asylum.

And Bill ties the Doctor up so he can't keep her from sacrificing herself, much like River handcuffs him in the Library. Ditto the nice argument about who should have the privilege of burning their brain out…

But there is more to it than parallels to the past, so I am going to attempt look at the three-part structure.

Here’s what I laid out earlier:

Ep 6: Here is a concept
Ep 7: Now let's put it into action (the whole world in extremis)
Ep 8: The fallout (1984)

Looking at this episode in isolation doesn’t work. I shall hand over to promethia_tenk as she had an excellent insight:

The thing that really struck me is what a postmodern pastiche they are. The tone, the setting, and the storytelling devices jump around wildly both between the three episodes and within them. I mean, Moffat's writing is obviously . . . Moffat. So that's to be expected. But in Pyramid at the end of the world, not only do you have the long-unexplained juxtaposition between the army/pyramid scenes and the lab scenes, you also have the unique inter-cutting of the previously-on scenes with Bill's date and you have a classic Twelfth Doctor fourth wall-breaking soliloquy and voice over. I remember thinking how awkward it was to do both in the same episode--it was like getting two episode intros in the same episode. But I chalked it up to clunky writing. And then in this episode, I think I'm right, there are basically three distinct sections . . . and they don't quite fit together. They are all kind of saying different things, and they all feel quite different. And we start the episode watching one of the Doctor's broadcasts, which is kind of like . . . a nature documentary? Mixed with Mr. Rogers. And we have Bill narrating major parts of the episode, which is a very infrequently used device on Doctor Who. It rather jars, really. And that scene in the Doctor's broadcasting room on the ship is . . . it is *weird*. The tonal shift after the fake regeneration is just bizarre, and it feels highlighted by the white room. They were literally putting on a play for Bill and it feels like they are laughing about it 'backstage' afterwards. These are a weird pastiche of episodes that are doing everything they can to break our sense of narrative continuity.

… so you know what book does the same thing?

Moby Dick. Conveniently brought up by the Doctor in Extremis. Does all kinds of strange things. Chapters that are excerpts from nature journals, or written as acts of plays--that kind of thing.

I should probably go and look up what that book was actually about . . . it was all a bit of a blur by the end. Something about the struggle of the old world against modernity.

So that could work.

And, I mean, post-modernism is entirely appropriate to the challenging of reality and truth we get in these episodes. Tired, so copy/pasting from Wikipedia:

While encompassing a broad range of ideas, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of scepticism, irony or distrust toward grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality. Instead, it asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and are therefore contextual or socially constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence and self-referentiality.

The baseline throughout is Bill’s question:

“I need to know what's real and what isn't real.”

The Doctor calls the Monks’ pyramid ‘Fake News Central’, and it’s interesting to note that the simulation in ‘Extremis’ was more true to the actual world than the broadcast version the Monks beamed out in ‘Lie of the Land’.

The kicker is the ending:

DOCTOR: This thing that we're sitting on. What is it?
STUDENT: Er, we thought they were just like filming something here or something?
DOCTOR: Thank you. Very helpful. Now go away, or something. You see? The Monks have erased themselves. Humanity's doomed to never learn from its mistakes.
BILL: Well, I guess that's part of our charm.
DOCTOR: No, it's really quite annoying.

Which ties in with the Doctor’s rant when Bill confronts him in the ship:

DOCTOR: Yes, well, I mean, you had free will, and look at what you did with it. Worse than that, you had history. History was saying to you, look, I've got some examples of fascism here for you to look at. No? Fundamentalism? No? Oh, okay, you carry on. I had to stop you, or at least not stand in the way of someone else who wanted to, because the guns were getting bigger, the stakes were getting higher, and any minute now it was going to be goodnight, Vienna.

Sci-fi always reflects current events. If people look back thirty years from now, these episodes will be as easy to place historically as The Happiness Patrol is for us. And – being human – might be battling the same issues all over again. (Humanity's doomed to never learn from its mistakes.) Just look at how Britain seems incapable of learning from what they went through under Thatcher…

Why do people vote the way they do? Fear? Strategy/ Self-preservation? Love?

(Take my rights, just keep me safe…)

What is real? What is real for me? Is there such a thing as subjective truth?

~

Finally, then both Extremis and Lie of the Land are resolved in exactly the same way:

DOCTOR: There's always one thing you can do from inside a computer. Even if you're a jumped-up little subroutine, you can do it. You can always e-mail!

DOCTOR: All those years you kept her alive inside you, an isolated subroutine in a living mind. Perfect, untouchable. She's a window on the world without the Monks. Absolutely loved, absolutely trusted. And that window is opening everywhere.

Which strikes a hopeful note – the systems can be practically perfect, but there will always be a way through. We might be stuck in an endless cycle, but it is a cycle. It will get dark, but then lighter again. Or in other words:

Intellect and romance triumph over brute force and cynicism.

(Now, as long as we don’t destroy the planet…)


MIRROR, MIRROR
So, for the past two seasons we had Clara as the main mirror. She was all the things and reflected all the things, and it was quite delightful. Missy was a dark Clara mirror (see this post), and the Doctor & Clara got caught in a reflective loop.

HOWEVER. Clara has gone off to be a Doctor all of her own, so what now? Bill is still much too fresh and innocent to go dark (and will hopefully never go as dark as Clara). So, where are our Doctor mirrors?

Well, they’re in the bad guys. And very disturbing mirrors they make, because they are so very accurate. You thought this was an episode/triptych about some aliens that started out promising but then had a mildly unsatisfactory ending? Well, let me pull back the top layer and see what lies beneath.

First of all, let me quote the following exchange from ‘Rose’. Clive is the conspiracy theory guy she finds on the internet and then goes to meet:

CLIVE: A lot of this stuff's quite sensitive. I couldn't just send it to you. People might intercept it, if you know what I mean. If you dig deep enough and keep a lively mind, this Doctor keeps cropping up all over the place. Political diaries, conspirisy theories, even ghost stories. No first name, no last name, just the Doctor. Always The Doctor. That's your Doctor there, isn't it?
ROSE: Yeah.
CLIVE: I tracked it down to the Washington public archive just last year. The online photo's enhanced, but if we look at the original
(The original is a picture of Kennedy's cortege going through Dallas. The Doctor is just one face in the crowd.)
CLIVE: November the 22nd, 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy. You see?
ROSE: It must be his father.
CLIVE: Going further back. April 1912. This is a photo of the Daniels family of Southampton, and friend. This was taken the day before they were due to sail off for the New World on the Titanic, and for some unknown reason, they cancelled the trip and survived. And here we are. 1883. Another Doctor. (a sketch) And look, the same lineage. It's identical. This one washed up on the coast of Sumatra on the very day Krakatoa exploded. The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he's there. He brings the storm in his wake and he has one constant companion.
ROSE: Who's that?
CLIVE: Death.

Why am I pulling out that long quote? Well, allow me to do a little experiment. I am going to alter the Doctor’s documentary speech a tiny bit. Actually, I’m only going to change one word. Instead of 'Monks' I will use the word 'Doctor':

The Monks haveThe Doctor has been with us from the beginning.





They He shepherded humanity through its formative years, gently guiding and encouraging, like a parent clapping their hands at a baby's first steps.





They have He has been instrumental in all the advances of culture and technology.





They He watched proudly as man invented the light bulb, the telephone and the internet.





They were He was even there to welcome the first men on the moon.





And they have he has defended us too. Who can forget the time the Monks Doctor defeated the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Weeping Angels?







Two species, sharing a history as happily as they share a planet, humanity and the Monks Doctor are a blissful and perfect partnership.



How lucky Earth is to have an ally as powerful and tender as the Monks Doctor, that asks for nothing in return for their his benevolence but obedience.







I am sure you could suggest dozens upon dozens of other examples to add to this list. He is woven through Earth's history in ways that cannot be changed without dire consequences - f.ex. look at Pompeii, a fixed point, but one that the Doctor helped make happen. The Monks inserted themselves through lies, but the Doctor is embedded properly. We could even say that the Monks copied the Doctor.

(Again, this is where Clara is the fascinating flipside to the coin; as deeply enmeshed in the fabric of the Doctor's life as he is in the history of the world. If the Doctor shaped the history of humanity, then Clara shaped him right back. But that's a different topic.)

Of course the Doctor helps because he cares, and doesn't particularly want worship or anything else in return, but last week I noted the Monks' similarities to Time Lords (the outfits, the superior technology, their ability to change their bodies), but it's taken further this time, as I demonstrated above.

However the Time Lords always had a strict policy of non-intervention. But the Doctor - oh the Doctor just can't help himself...

OCTAVIAN: Two hundred years later, the planet was terraformed. Currently there are six billion human colonists.
DOCTOR: Whoo! You lot, you're everywhere. You're like rabbits. I'll never get done saving you.
Time of Angels

But being 'the Savior' can also be problematic. Look at the Doctor's initial idea for how he would save the day:

DOCTOR: Somewhere in there, the Monks must have some kind of a machine that creates and broadcasts the myths of their history. The ones that are powered by, carried by, fed by your brainwaves. So, we get in, I plug myself into it, and replace the signals that they are receiving with my brainwaves and beam out the true history of the world. Oh, yes! I could even throw in some other stuff. The things that I could change just by thinking. Racism. People who talk in cinemas.

'The things I could change just by thinking'. At the start the similarities are only inferred, but here they become literal. The Doctor will take the Monks' place and swap their input for his own...

Switch back to the previous episode:

ERICA: Oh, my God!
DOCTOR: No, I'm the Doctor, but it's an easy mistake to make. The eyebrows.

Humanity caught between the Monks and the Doctor. Between would-be rulers, and the appointed one. Remember, Twelve has gone Victorious before, that impulse is there if the need is pressing enough.

But then, the episode before that:

NARDOLE (dressed as a Monk): Greetings, sinner. Only in darkness are we revealed.

He then goes on to read from River's diary.

Words which Missy repeats a little later. (Missy thoughts later.)

And so, we have the two sides of the conflict - the Monks; using love in order to enslave, and River on the other; using love to remind the Doctor of who he is:

RIVER: Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis. This is what he believes, and this is the reason above all, I love him. My husband. My madman in a box. My Doctor.

And so it follows, that it is love which saves the world. Love for naught but love's sake. Not a tactical attempt at subverting the lies. (The intent has to be pure.)

Which is why it has to be Bill who saves the world, and we get not the Doctor's idea of what the world should be, but Bill's love for her mother.

And the Doctor gets a timely reminder...

DOCTOR: Look at that! All the pictures I gave you. I thought I was just being kind, but I was saving the world.

A random act of kindness can change the world, which is of course the point of all the best Doctor Who stories. In an three-parter where the Doctor has lied and manipulated and tactically maneuvered his way through the plot, this was a beautiful ending. And one the Doctor needed, I think.

As Angel once said:

"If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because - I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness - is the greatest thing in the world."

I think this is the most important thing we could possibly remember at this point (at any point) in time.



ETA: Make sure to check out Promethia's insightful comment here on DW, and also don't miss the quite ridiculously wonderful comment-fic on the LJ side: A Whale of a Tale.


PART 2

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier--was at work. Totally understand the 'well, better post something' impulse, though. And it's all good, what you've got there, but as you say, it does feel incomplete.

I think right now the one big point that I would want to make about this episode is that I think it is doing exactly the same thing that all of Whithouse's best episodes do. Which is to draw for us the portrait of a monster within a context that mirrors, with incredible detail and subtlety, some unsavory aspect of the Doctor's behavior and motivation. And he is never pat about this. We don't leave The God Complex or Town Called Mercy feeling like we have all the answers or that something has been fixed. My sense is very much that Whithouse is there to dissect and understand; not to heal. And I think this episode is attempting the same thing. I'd say the majority of reactions I'm seeing to this episode fall somewhere along a spectrum between disgust and confusion. And the longer I think about it, the more I think that that is intentional. Especially because whereas God Complex and Mercy are both relatively self-contained, this episode is also serving as a mid-season climax. So not only are we getting a deeply ambiguous and unsettling portrait of the Doctor (which is, in some ways, being unconvincingly whitewashed by the episode itself), but it's also happening at a pivot point in the season, so that what we may or may not choose to think about the conflicts that have been presented to us are necessarily going to hinge on what happens going forward.

I suspect that anybody who has watched this episode and come away confused, scared, angry, or feeling in any way resistant or uneasy with our nice happy ending . . . has probably understood the episode perfectly.

You asked me whether I thought Missy could get her own post, and I think mostly yes? Except to the extent that she is serving the portrait of the Doctor's Monk-ish-ness. The Doctor talks about free will while he keeps a woman locked in his basement, trying to bend her to his own moral preferences.

[elisi]

Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier--was at work.
There are SO MANY OTHER THINGS, that I figured what I had seemed vaguely coherent, so I'd rather discuss all the other stuff in more depth before trying to tackle it. So this is like 'part 1 of ongoing stuff'. ;)

Totally understand the 'well, better post something' impulse, though. And it's all good, what you've got there, but as you say, it does feel incomplete.
It got hijacked by politics... If there hadn't been an election happening, I suspect my thoughts would probably have been more coherent.

My sense is very much that Whithouse is there to dissect and understand; not to heal. And I think this episode is attempting the same thing. I'd say the majority of reactions I'm seeing to this episode fall somewhere along a spectrum between disgust and confusion. And the longer I think about it, the more I think that that is intentional.
This. Which I think I have sort of expressed, if a lot less coherently. (Brain like syrup.) I shall add a link from the LJ post to this comment.

I suspect that anybody who has watched this episode and come away confused, scared, angry, or feeling in any way resistant or uneasy with our nice happy ending . . . has probably understood the episode perfectly.
:D (I *do* like Whithouse.)

You asked me whether I thought Missy could get her own post, and I think mostly yes? Except to the extent that she is serving the portrait of the Doctor's Monk-ish-ness. The Doctor talks about free will while he keeps a woman locked in his basement, trying to bend her to his own moral preferences.
Yeah, there is so much there, but it seems... one step removed? Doctor-Clara-Missy was a three-way mirror, but here the Monks are reflections of the Doctor, and Missy is a reflection of the Doctor, and the Doctor is in the middle, but Missy is not reflecting the Monks in that sense.

(So tired. Stupid brain. Stupid worries about politics.)

ETA: Btw check out the fic-comment on the LJ side. You will like. :)

[promethia_tenk]

There are SO MANY OTHER THINGS, that I figured what I had seemed vaguely coherent, so I'd rather discuss all the other stuff in more depth before trying to tackle it. So this is like 'part 1 of ongoing stuff'. ;)
Seems like a good approach. And I have this strong suspicion that this is an episode that we're going to end up having a lot more to say about by the end of the season.

It got hijacked by politics... If there hadn't been an election happening, I suspect my thoughts would probably have been more coherent.
*hugs fiercely*

This. Which I think I have sort of expressed, if a lot less coherently. (Brain like syrup.)
Yeah, major portions of what you've written are basically saying that, but over the course of today it kinda snapped in my brain: that's it. That's the one point I'd want to make about this episode, above any other.

And I think this is also an important part of it?:

It’s almost Doctor Who by numbers: World in peril, love saves the day.
Because it is Doctor Who by numbers. It is a very nice Doctor Who story. In an episode that explicitly tells us over and over to question the narratives we're being handed.

:D (I *do* like Whithouse.)
Me toooooooo <3 At this point I'm thinking he should probably never be given the reins of the show (waaaaay too depressing), but I think the show does benefit from letting him in to savage everything from time to time . . .

Yeah, there is so much there, but it seems... one step removed? Doctor-Clara-Missy was a three-way mirror, but here the Monks are reflections of the Doctor, and Missy is a reflection of the Doctor, and the Doctor is in the middle, but Missy is not reflecting the Monks in that sense.
Yes. Well put--I think that's exactly it. Whithouse has upped his game: two complicated, multi-faceted monsters to mirror the Doctor.

(*snort* just remembered Twelve to Clara: Why've you got three mirrors? It is because your face is so wide?)

(So tired. Stupid brain. Stupid worries about politics.)
One way or another, we are getting through this week!!

ETA: Btw check out the fic-comment on the LJ side. You will like. :)
Oh. I did. And I did =D

[owlboy]

>>I suspect that anybody who has watched this episode and come away confused, scared, angry, or feeling in any way resistant or uneasy with our nice happy ending . . . has probably understood the episode perfectly.

I'm *still* angry. lol.

[promethia_tenk]

Well. Whithouse is a very good writer.

[enevarim]

Watched it a second time. Agree there are some very neat ideas in there, and I liked it better the second time than I did the first. And, primed by having read your post, I saw many more parallels to other older stories – the Monks pretending to have been there from the beginning the way the Silence had been. (Unless the Silence were lying too. It seems a long break from a war to go back to the beginning of human history and take over the race that would eventually give rise to the church that would create you, when arguably all they needed to do is keep out of sight and raise River Song to be a weapon in the mid-twentieth century. So maybe when they said they’d been there since the wheel and the fire they were lying just like the Monks are. Except that River’s scanner showed the tunnels being all over the planet, and having been there for hundreds of years, so maybe not.) But the scene of people raising their fists against a remaining Monk just before the spaceship left to Twelve’s intoned “What oppressors always do when they realise who's really in power. They run.” felt like a very efficient callback to Eleventy getting rid of the Silence in The Day of the Moon.

You keep reminding me not to ask “why?” and I keep failing to do that when stories don’t sufficiently distract me from it. We know from Doctor Mysterio that Nardole can pilot the TARDIS to pick up the Doctor, so the whole bit with the ship was unnecessary – Nardole could have taken Bill to the TARDIS (from which he got the tracking device) and they could have materialized the TARDIS around the Doctor, rescuing him that way. Bonus points if taking Bill into the TARDIS actually also breaks the Monks’ signal and stops the false memories being transmitted. Or if the Doctor can summon up regeneration energy to fake a regeneration, he could have healed his eyes long ago.

But I don’t like the Malcolm testing Macduff scene in Macbeth either, and even Macduff doesn’t seem terribly impressed with it when Malcolm explains that it was all a trick to see if he could trust him (“Such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'Tis hard to reconcile”), so, fair enough: maybe for that whole confrontation the answer to “why” can be “because”. But sometimes it’s really distracting. The humans on the supply ship are all in on the plot, so they can act in contrived ways and laugh about it later. Why did the Monk just stare at Nardole and Bill and then let the rescue continue to take place? The Monk isn’t part of the plot. It feels like Whithouse wanted a heightening of dramatic tension for a moment, and wasn’t thinking about whether it made sense or not. Also, if the Monks can simulate human history to the point of knowing when reading glasses breaking and a hangover make it most likely that the world can be ended, why can’t they also predict the plot that’s going to stop them? It feels like the plot needs them to be particularly good at seeing how time is going to work at some moments, and particularly blind to it in others. (And sure, it has to be like that because otherwise the Doctor can’t win, and I’m asking “why” again which you keep reminding me I shouldn’t do, but... it would help me if they lampshaded it, somehow. Because we saw in Extremis that the Doctor was part of the simulations that they ran, so they would have seen what he does and how he works. So do they just chalk “being booted off the planet by the Doctor like all the others” up to experience? Again, it feels like they need to be particularly not-rubbish right up until the moment the plot needs them to be rubbish.)

All that said, I love the idea of the Monks being a mirror of a problematic aspect of the Doctor, just as you once suggested the Weeping Angels were – it feels very Moffat-era. And I suppose my previous collection of things that don’t fit well together could just be more evidence for Promethia’s suggestion that this is some sort of postmodern pastiche. But I want at the end of it all to have a feeling for why it all happened the way it did. I suppose one could argue that we won’t know we’re at the end of it until the end of the season (the Silence came back, after all), so... maybe it’s premature to expect sense at this point and we’ll have to rewatch these episodes in the context of the entire series. Maybe The Lie of the Land was the Monks learning first-hand the way the Doctor works just as Pyramid was the Doctor learning first-hand the way the Monks work, and the Doctor thinks he has won and they have fled but it will turn out that’s not really what happened. Hmm. That’s deeply disturbing, not least because we might be three/four weeks away from knowing how this story “really” ended.

[elisi]

the Monks pretending to have been there from the beginning the way the Silence had been.
The Daemons did it first!! It's a good trope.

take over the race that would eventually give rise to the church that would create you
Did the Church create the Silence?? I know the Church used them (as confessors, and to guide humanity), but I don't remember the Silence being their creation.

They run.” felt like a very efficient callback to Eleventy getting rid of the Silence in The Day of the Moon.
I love that bit. <333 And Day of the Moon was definitely better in that regard, but then Day of the Moon was part of a different story, with a different aim. Told out of sequence.

The Monks trilogy is mid-season, and I doubt we'll see the Monks again. Like on Buffy, they are there to highlight issues with the characters, mirroring and moving the story forwards, rather than part of the overall arc.

You keep reminding me not to ask “why?” and I keep failing to do that when stories don’t sufficiently distract me from it.
Well you can certainly ask 'Why', it's just that plot holes do not bother me if the emotional/metaphorical parts hang together. Re. using the TARDIS, then the point of the exercise was (from the Doctor's POV) to make sure that Bill hadn't been brainwashed. He needed the confrontation to test her. From Bill's POV it's almost the same - she wanted to make sure that the Doctor hadn't REALLY joined the Monks. If he had, should they hand his TARDIS back to him?

Or if the Doctor can summon up regeneration energy to fake a regeneration, he could have healed his eyes long ago.
He says he can't, so he can't. In Extremis he borrows from a future regeneration, and worries about the implications. A lightshow is very different from healing.

why can’t they also predict the plot that’s going to stop them?
For the same reason they couldn't predict the Doctor sending that email in the simulation. They're foiled by Bill's mother. (Indeed, they are there to welcome the Doctor and his helpers, being fully aware of what the Doctor wants to try to do, and the Doctor (as they would have known) fails.)

Again, it feels like they need to be particularly not-rubbish right up until the moment the plot needs them to be rubbish.)
They have one failing, and it's used both times. It's perfectly consistent.

Maybe The Lie of the Land was the Monks learning first-hand the way the Doctor works just as Pyramid was the Doctor learning first-hand the way the Monks work, and the Doctor thinks he has won and they have fled but it will turn out that’s not really what happened. Hmm.
That is very clever, but I suspect the finale will be something to do with Missy. Like I say above, this three-parter is mostly metaphorical. Like... The Beast Below teaching us things about Eleven & Amy, rather than being *about* Starwhales.

[enevarim]

The Daemons did it first!! It's a good trope.
– The Daemons, Scaroth, the Silence, ... someone must have written crack!fic about all the different alien species who have guided earth from the very beginning (arguably including the Doctor) meeting up from time to time and arguing about it, right?

Your explanation of the Monks being a metaphorical vehicle (engine?) rather than the main point of the story, like the Starwhale in The Beast Below, is very helpful. I can stop worrying about the details of the Monks. (If the point of the simulations is that the Monks learn what goes wrong with their plans in a less expensive setting so they can correct for it, it still seems odd that the Monks are fooled the same way the second time. But I get that that isn’t the point of this story.)

But it still feels... un-Doctor-ish for the Doctor to wait six months while people are being killed and taken to concentration camps. That kid whose mother was taken away at gunpoint... the human race may forget the Monks, but I don’t think that kid is going to forget that. Or the ones whose parents were killed. Yes, the Doctor waits a year in S3, but there’s a timey-wimey reset switch for most of that.

“So is this how it works, Doctor? You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there's children crying?” There were children crying. And sure, the Doctor was a prisoner without his TARDIS (like that’s ever stopped him before: “On the run, no Tardis. No friends, no help. In other words, the Doctor, happy”, or, as his friend remarks, “I once built a gun out of leaves. Do you think I couldn't get through a door if I wanted to?”), and for the first six weeks Nardole was out of action and couldn’t have brought the TARDIS anyway, but the next four and a half months?

I get that we’re exploring a different aspect of the Doctor here, and his gruff irritation at humans not learning from their mistakes (“No, it's really quite annoying”) is entertainingly different from anything that Eleventy might have said. But allowing the world six months of hell to make a philosophical point to Bill about Free Will – I hope she writes a very shade-casting essay.

Damn you, I'm late and very busy and haven't answered anything, I know; but you leave me no choice.

[(Anonymous)]

A Whale of a Tale

It was a lovely afternoon in April, sun and twittering birds and all that good stuff, when an unsuspecting Nardole casually opened the door of the Doctor’s office and narrowly avoided getting hit in the face by a heavy object that had been hurled from the desk with a loud cry of exasperation that was bordering on agony.

“Blimey!”

The Doctor slumped against the polished wood hiding his face in his hands, and snarled an uncharacteristically foul swearword in response.

“Language!”

“Sorry.”

“This is a university, you know!”

“Oh, I know that well enough, trust me.”

The object that had slammed onto the wall was a large, leather bound book. Nardole picked it up and tentatively placed it on the desk with a sigh.

“They want you to teach this, don’t they?”

The Doctor had melodramatically reclined in the classic “Edwin Booth Thinking Hamlet” pose and looked just about ready to start bemoaning his too, too sullied flesh or the rotten state of Denmark, but he managed an answer.

“No, no, no, it’s just, I’ve become a masochist lately, very particular in my tastes, didn’t you notice? Yeah, baby. Bring on the pain”.

“To be fair, it is, an Earth classic.”

“Yeah, yeah, do you know what a classic is? It’s a book everyone wants to have read, but nobody actually wants to read”.

“You stole that from Mark Twain.”

“No I didn’t, he told me himself when I dropped by for an autograph. No, not recently, I didn’t leave”, he clarified, seeing the other man’s alarmed expression.

“So…what page are you on?”

“Uuuh…” The Doctor picked up the tome with great reluctance, flipped through it, and started reading aloud so dispassionately that a Cyberman would have either envied him or run away in fear. “Chapter 32: Cetology. Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored harborless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow…”

The Doctor’s expression was slowly morphing into that of a man reading his own death sentence or a particularly outrageous gas bill on his wedding day. A haze seemed to come over his eyes.

“…Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree…”

Nardole sneezed loudly and it became quite clear that the Time Lord had become completely oblivious to his presence. He wisely decided to take that as his cue to leave.

“Run over a few:— The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will show…”, the Doctor droned on, an expression of utter resignation etched on every line of his face.

Nardole felt the sudden urge to laugh and then felt slightly guilty for feeling it.

“Oh, if only the mighty Rassilon had known…” he muttered under his breath and closed the door.

-O-

“You can always use Sparknotes, or Cliffnotes, or… something”.

“Really? That’s what all the students will be doing.”

“No they won’t, the Internet still has a good decade and a half to go!”

“…True. But you know, that just means they will have no other choice. So they will read it. And trust me, the two or three bookworms of the class will actually completely enjoy it, all of it, and they will come over and be like “Oh, Professor, about chapter 96, I’ve got a question…”

“Okay, I was just saying”.

“And… it’s not fair. It would be cheating”.

“I suppose.”

-O-

Re: Damn you, I'm late and very busy and haven't answered anything, I know; but you leave me no choi

[(Anonymous)]

“Come on. Please. Just a little trip.”

The TARDIS made a clearly disapproving sound.

“Oh, shut up! I know I promised. Okay, so what? Who will notice? You’re a time machine; we can be back before we left!”

Disapproving sound.

“Look, we just pop back to the 19th century, we find the bastard, and I convince him to cut, say, 300 pages from the novel. Or else. And we return immediately, I swear!”

Disapproving sound.

“Oh, come on! It’s not that big of a change! Who noticed when I did it with War and Peace? It’s still huge in any case. And a terrific success to boot!”

Disapproving sound.

“The Web of Time can go to hell!”

An even more disapproving sound.

“Can we- can I just go brain him with the book reallyhard? Insult his beard? Something? I need to let off some steam.”

Disapproving sound.

“You know, that’s getting really repetitive.”

-O-

The weather continued to be unusually nice. And so at a narrow point of the Bristol Channel, the various sailors, fishermen, tourists, and water-sports enthusiasts took little notice of the gloomy, grey-haired, stick insect of a man who came to walk by the seaside and glared both at the dark waters and the people with a loathing that suggested they had all done him a great personal wrong.

-O-

“Susan. Forgive me. Please, will you forgive me? I never even asked. But you see, I didn’t know. How could I? I’m so sorry. Did they make you read this at Coal Hill? I’ll have a good word with them about the curriculum if they did.”

The Doctor turned wearily to the other picture on his desk.

“I mean, she chose Earth, she chose the century, she liked it here, River! And then I always went and scolded her for copying her homework from the future. If it included this, I shouldn’t have, there are limits.”

He briefly eyed the book in front of him as if it might attack him. Or vice versa.

“Oh, don’t you start! Yes, I know; a masterpiece that explores the human condition, mankind's treatment of nature, class and social status, the value of revenge, good and evil, the existence of God, blah, blah, blah. And among other things, nobody mentions this, at what point a novel becomes a whaling textbook.”

He gazed morosely at Chapter 58 in front of him, painfully aware that the book consisted of, in total, 135.

“I bet there were at least twenty copies in that Library of yours. No, I bet every single one of those people had gone there to read this, because it’s so good!”

The Doctor chuckled humorlessly and pulled the chair closer to continue reading.

“You know, we should have left all those buggers to their fate, that was really stupid of us. I mean, that was natural selection. And karma.”

-O-

“I don’t need all these details, Herman dear. Why are you doing this to me? I’ve been on every ship you can imagine. If the students are so curious, they are certainly welcome for a trip. And Nardole can guard the Vault just fine during it”.

There was a brief silence which was interrupted by a laugh.

“Or I could take them to meet you. Oh, that’d be hilarious. If they don’t murder you, that is”.

Silence again.

“You know what, this is silly. I don’t have to do this. I’ll just quit, we’ll move the Vault… somehow… This place is getting dull anyway.”

After a bit there was a murmured, half-sobbing “Oh dear God, please”, and a sound like a head hitting wood, but then the silence stretched on for quite a while.

“IT’S CALLED ‘MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE! THE WHALE! WHERE THE FLYING FUCK IS THAT WHALE?!? GET TO THE BLOODY WHALE ALREADY! GAAAH!”

Nardole stopped listening at the door, and deciding that the avoidance of bodily harm was more important than the common enjoyment of tea and muffins, walked off.

Re: Damn you, I'm late and very busy and haven't answered anything, I know; but you leave me no choi

[(Anonymous)]

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me, and I will FINISH this damn book if it kills me!”

The Doctor banged his fist on the floor, immediately regretted it, and opened his eyes to observe the damage.

What he saw was the head of a long-haired, barely twenty-something young man poking through the door.

From what he knew, most of his colleagues didn’t read while sitting in the lotus position on the floor, failing to meditate, and spontaneously reciting the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear when things got tough.

Then again, from what he knew, most of his colleagues were humans, idiots, and didn’t have to read Moby Dick to prepare a lecture about it. So really, anything the boy found strange was his problem.

“Oh. You knocked. Sorry, I didn’t make an announcement, no office hours this week, okay?” he said matter-of-factly. The kid nodded. “Good lad. Remember to close the door”.

As soon as he was out of sight, he turned the page with determination. “You’re going down”, he whispered threateningly.

-O-

The thing has gotten fractionally more interesting. White whale in sight. Hallelujah. Guard the Vault carefully. It ends tonight.
The Doctor

Nardole removed the rather dramatic sign from the door of the Quantum Fold chamber and gave a long-suffering sigh.

-O-

“Well, congratulations, there goes another boat. I am all for never giving up, but doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. Or idiocy. I’ll go with idiocy.”

-O-

Re: Damn you, I'm late and very busy and haven't answered anything, I know; but you leave me no choi

[elisi]

Disapproving sound.
Brilliant x6

the gloomy, grey-haired, stick insect of a man who came to walk by the seaside and glared both at the dark waters and the people with a loathing that suggested they had all done him a great personal wrong
I love this description.

“I mean, she chose Earth, she chose the century, she liked it here, River! And then I always went and scolded her for copying her homework from the future. If it included this, I shouldn’t have, there are limits.”
<33333

“You know, we should have left all those buggers to their fate, that was really stupid of us. I mean, that was natural selection. And karma.”
Aw. This is adorable and sort of bitter-sweet.

Nardole stopped listening at the door, and deciding that the avoidance of bodily harm was more important than the common enjoyment of tea and muffins, walked off.
Nardole is a very clever man.

Re: Damn you, I'm late and very busy and haven't answered anything, I know; but you leave me no choi

[elisi]

A Whale of a Tale
100% accu-rat! (That would be a Horrible Histories shout-out/quote, apologies, but I couldn't help myself...)

Goodness, but this is delightful.

Re: Damn you, I'm late and very busy and haven't answered anything, I know; but you leave me no choi

[(Anonymous)]

100% accu-rat! (That would be a Horrible Histories shout-out/quote, apologies, but I couldn't help myself…)
Now, *that* takes me back. When I was -I think- about 10, my mum bought The Horrible (Wicked) History of the World, I started reading it, and then she changed her mind and gave it away, and she never told me for years. I was very cross.
And I mean, it’s not like I was an oversensitive kid; at the time, I was casually watching films nobody would deem age-appropriate. And I was very interested in history and already knew an unusual amount about it too!
And no, sorry, many books were not 100% accu-rat, there were mistakes (proceeds to act like the Doctor in The Caretaker)

Goodness, but this is delightful.
Thank you very much; and I’m really glad that you liked it :)


Having time now, though, I wanted to give my weirdly specific two cents.
I have a feeling –and I may be wrong, but I wasn’t wrong about Clara even though I told nobody- that apart from all this beautiful analysis, and all the reasons… the thing with the regeneration was entirely deliberate, premeditated, and will just result in Moffat twisting the knife.
I don’t know about Bill, or the Master, or anyone’s fate, I can’t predict that. But. I think he’s gonna do some horribly painful shit and/or cruel twist regarding 12’s *actual* regeneration/death/exit/whatever.
This just has some serious double bluff vibes. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a reverse Wrath of Khan with the whole “let’s add the Kobayashi Maru sequence in the beginning because word got out that we’re killing Spock”.
I don’t know; I hope I’m wrong. He’s evil.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

All of this meta is quite excellent - this all gave me a lot to think about :)

[elisi]

Thank you. (And there will be more!!) <3

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

First of all, I feel I should point out that half my notes from this episode are just ‘I LOVE NARDOLE’.

RIGHT? We are at situation level here.

What is real? What is real for me? Is there such a thing as subjective truth?

MY POSTMODERNISM MAJOR SELF IS VOMITING RAINBOWS @ THIS ENTIRE SECTION

And we have Bill narrating major parts of the episode, which is a very infrequently used device on Doctor Who.

MTE. I had Doomsday flashbacks (that other first-person narrated climactic episode featuring an alien invasion)...

How lucky Earth is to have an ally as powerful and tender as the Monks Doctor, that asks for nothing in return for their his benevolence but obedience.

lol damn, tell it like it is.

If the Doctor shaped the history of humanity, then Clara shaped him right back. But that's a different topic.

Literally me every time you start talking about the Doctor and Clara:



A random act of kindness can change the world, which is of course the point of all the best Doctor Who stories. In an three-parter where the Doctor has lied and manipulated and tactically maneuvered his way through the plot, this was a beautiful ending. And one the Doctor needed, I think.

Word.

Also, significantly, this is the second Big Bill Moment, and both of them have been about her Powers of Love. Legend.

[elisi]

RIGHT? We are at situation level here.
It's a gift of a part. <3

MY POSTMODERNISM MAJOR SELF IS VOMITING RAINBOWS @ THIS ENTIRE SECTION
PROTON IS A STAR I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'D DO WITHOUT HER!

MTE. I had Doomsday flashbacks (that other first-person narrated climactic episode featuring an alien invasion)...
! Hadn't thought of that. Guess it might be because Bill is talking to her mother, whereas Rose is talking to... Whom? The audience? Anyway, yes, that's pretty much the only example of a companion narrating. :)

lol damn, tell it like it is.
Yeah, couldn't pull any punches, it was just THAT obvious. >:)

Literally me every time you start talking about the Doctor and Clara:
♥ At some point there will be a Clara post. It's fascinating how she just crops up... everywhere. She is the counter-weight to almost everything. Love her so much.

ETA: Proton found this.

Word.
Saving the world through kindness. That's always my Doctor. <3

Also, significantly, this is the second Big Bill Moment, and both of them have been about her Powers of Love. Legend.
Bill is just delightful. (I hope she ends up having a successful date at some point.)

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the great meta! I wasn't particularly thrilled by this episode (except for Missy ♥ and Pearl Mackie's great acting), but your comments shed some light—the whole thing just felt kind of fake and predictable, but if you see it as something very deliberate and pastiche-like, it suddenly makes sense…

Remember, Twelve has gone Victorious before, that impulse is there if the need is pressing enough.
And interestingly, Missy, who used to push him in that direction ("Conquer the universe, Mister President. Show a bad girl how it's done") is no longer trying to show him he is more like her than he thinks, but the opposite… Well. She does criticize his version of "good" as "vain, arrogant and sentimental", but prods him towards a version of good that is even more god-like, as it seeks to bring the greater good while showing no regard to feelings. (Save a world by tossing someone into a volcano :D) So the apparently-influenced is still being influential… SORRY I know you're planning to tackle Missy later, but she and River are a magnet for my every thought ;)

[elisi]

Thanks for the great meta!
My pleasure. I think there will definitely be more, as there's plenty more to dig into, but I wanted at least part of it out there. :)

but your comments shed some light—the whole thing just felt kind of fake and predictable, but if you see it as something very deliberate and pastiche-like, it suddenly makes sense…
Yay. This is exactly why I write. Whithouse is a writer who usually does v. interesting things (except for "Under the Lake" / "Before the Flood" - I mean, they did the job, but I didn't like them). And this one is crunchy.

Well. She does criticize his version of "good" as "vain, arrogant and sentimental", but prods him towards a version of good that is even more god-like, as it seeks to bring the greater good while showing no regard to feelings.
She sees a trolley problem and refuses to engage. I am fascinated to see where they go with her arc.

So the apparently-influenced is still being influential…
Yes, it's a give-and-take situation. Who is the confessor?

SORRY I know you're planning to tackle Missy later, but she and River are a magnet for my every thought ;)
Oh don't apologies, I'd love to hear your thoughts! One reason I haven't tackled Missy yet, is that she's difficult to get a grip on.

[flowsoffire.livejournal.com]

I am fascinated to see where they go with her arc.
Me too :D (Haven't seen yesterday's ep yet.)

Yes, it's a give-and-take situation. Who is the confessor?
*confession dial images* There is SO MUCH stuff about redemption and being godlike about those two, going back all the way to Simm vs. Ten…

Oh don't apologies, I'd love to hear your thoughts! One reason I haven't tackled Missy yet, is that she's difficult to get a grip on.
There is just SO MUCH to chew on! I keep revisiting the whole Simm vs. Ten dynamic and pondering how Twelve and Missy are building on that, going way further on some parts and switching things around on others (Missy pursuing Twelve instead of Ten running after Simm!Master for instance). And it's interesting how some incarnations can appear to "react" to the previous one's character and experiences, sometimes in clear opposition and going their very own way—the end of Simm, from what we saw of it, had so much entangled history, with the Doctor and the Time Lords and the origin of the drumbeat that had plagued him through that whole regeneration… One could almost think that Missy is like a clean slate to him, as Twelve was with his new set of regenerations and his whole attitude at first ("I've lived two thousand years, I've made many mistakes etc etc"). So I just can't wait to see how things will play out when Simm comes back into the game ;)

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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[elisi]

And in the midst of an election too!

Thank you lurkers. <3

[sea_thoughts]

I don't have much to say about this episode, I was a bit disappointed with the execution of the dystopia. The Pyramid at the End of the World ended with everyone in a very specific place à la The Pandorica Opens and this episode gave us a timeskip instead of answering certain things like 'How did Nardole recover from what was happening to his lungs? How did the Doctor end up where he was? What exactly happened to Erica?' The Big Bang answered exactly what happened to Rory, Amy, River and the Doctor, this episode just leaves us to guess. However, I loved the resolution, with Bill's carefully preserved idea of her mother replacing the Monks. The fact that a queer black woman replaced the image of a benevolent (white) dictatorship is pretty awesome.

[elisi]

It wasn't a finale. The details didn't matter in the same way. Generally I think the whole thing is a massive metaphor, dealing with all the issues a la how Buffy used to tackle issues. :)

Anyway, more meta is coming!!

However, I loved the resolution, with Bill's carefully preserved idea of her mother replacing the Monks. The fact that a queer black woman replaced the image of a benevolent (white) dictatorship is pretty awesome.
Yes, Bill's mum for all the things. <3