Entry tags:
Twice Upon a Time
I realise it's been more than a month, and this is... Well, it is what it is. It was a lovely, lovely episode, but rounding up the end of an era is hard. So this isn't that, it's just a heap of scattered thoughts strung together. I will also post a take that is all poetry, but this one is probably better for talking about. :)
First of all, this is the best 'Previously on...' on anything, ever. (Although how did they count the episodes? And what poor sap had to do it?)
1966 vs 2017
Of course the real joy lies in watching Twelve and One interact, allowing the past and the present to meet in a more fundamental way than we usually see. Some people thought it was funny and others have taken issue with One's lines, saying he was never that sexist (although the smacked bottom line f.ex. is taken pretty much verbatim from The Tenth Planet). My thoughts are that the point of the attitude may have been a little more meta...
Our new Doctor is a woman, and this episode is an opportunity to take stock at how far we have all come - both the show itself, and as a society. The First Doctor and the Captain are obviously not bad people, despite their - to our ears - very outdated attitudes. And when it comes to actual women they know, they clearly value them for who they are:
CAPTAIN: [My wife]'s a solid woman, remarkably solid
And once One gets talking to Bill properly he engages with her with genuine interest:
BILL: I don't mean what you ran away from. What were you running to?
ONE: That's rather a good question.
But the society they live in has imbued them with ideas that they have unthinkingly accepted as part of their world view (ONE: Well, aren't all ladies made of glass, in a way?). Wrt One then he may just be speaking of humans more generally, it's unlikely that he'd ever think of Time Ladies in such terms (higher species and all that).
Mostly though, I am an easy mark and I find it HILARIOUS to watch Twelve squirm.
On a more serious note, we see how this attitude (and the corresponding 'stiff upper lip' for males) can also hurt people:
CAPTAIN: ...and my boys. Well, sons are supposed to move on from their fathers. It's the proper way.
The Captain uses it as a crutch to comfort himself with, but it's not a happy one.
Miscellaneous
- Thanks to a very old Doctor Who fact sheet we know that the Doctor's body temperature is 60F, which is only 15.5C! No wonder he never puts on a warmer coat.
- When they are in the old TARDIS, they film it like in the old series. That is - from the outside the doors are blue & slim, but inside they are white and a foot thick. It makes no earthly sense, except I guess there's a perception filter on the outside. (Yes I notice stupid details and I had to think up an explanation it bothered me that much.)
- It's immensely pleasing that the First Doctor has just come from an adventure featuring cybermen. And the ones in Twelve's finale are so exactly like those old ones (that we catch glimpses of in the 'Previously On...') that it's uncanny. It just thrills me to tiny bits.
- This exchange, from the very start of the ep:
TWELVE: You know who I am. You must.
ONE: Hmm. Have you come to take the ship back?
I don't think I caught that initially - that One thinks Twelve is from Gallifrey & he's finally been caught.
- TWELVE: Over to you Mary Berry
This line is wonderful on oh so many levels. And not just because now I'm imagining Bill, Nardole & Twelve watching Bake-Off. <3
A Good Dalek
I totally called that it'd be Rusty in that tower (from when I realised that the scuttling things were Daleks) and nearly jumped in delight at being right. SO perfect.
Rusty ties back to both Twelve's initial struggles (it's his first adventure after Deep Breath), and [within that story] back to One's first proper story (after the episode with the cavemen). From Into the Dalek:
TWELVE: See, all those years ago, when I began I was just running. I called myself the Doctor, but it was just a name. And then I went to Skaro. And then I met you lot and I understood who I was. The Doctor was not the Daleks.
As a farewell and a celebration of the end of this particular era (Twelve/Moffat/male Doctors - take your pick), it's very fitting that we should visit this Dalek, the one Dalek that changed, the one Dalek that learned to see further than the rest...
TWELVE: What? What did you see?
RUSTY: The birth of a star.
TWELVE: Stars are born every day. You've seen a million stars born. So what?
RUSTY: Daleks have destroyed a million stars.
TWELVE: Oh, millions and millions. Trust me, I keep count.
RUSTY: And yet, new stars are born.
RUSTY: Resistance is futile.
TWELVE: Resistance to what?
RUSTY: Life returns. Life prevails. Resistance is futile.
TWELVE: So you saw a star being born, and you learned something. Oh, Dalek, do not be lying to me. Come on.
For me, this brings to mind the conversation between One and Bill:
ONE: There is good and there is evil. I left Gallifrey to answer a question of my own. By any analysis, evil should always win. Good is not a practical survival strategy. It requires loyalty, self-sacrifice and er, love. So, why does good prevail? What keeps the balance between good and evil in this appalling universe? Is there some kind of logic? Some mysterious force?
One's starting point is different to Rusty's obviously, but the two feed into each other. The First Doctor had questions, and the Daleks provided the first answer: It would be easy to let the Daleks win, but he refused to be like them. Good might be an impractical strategy, but he chose it nonetheless. And in turn, many years down the line, fed that belief back to Rusty:
RUSTY: I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see hatred.
TWELVE: Hatred?
RUSTY: I see your hatred of the Daleks and it is good.
TWELVE: No, no, no. You must see more than that, there must be more than that.
RUSTY: Death to the Daleks. Death to the Daleks. Death to the Daleks.
TWELVE: No, there must be more than that. There must be more than that. Please.
RUSTY: Daleks are evil. Daleks must be exterminated. Daleks are evil.
One of the things that pleases me most about this episode, is that Rusty and the Doctor have the following exchange:
TWELVE: Because people don't believe there could be any such thing as a good Dalek.
RUSTY: I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek.
Twelve has laid his demons to rest, and it's probably good that he left One at the bottom of the tower as those lines might have pushed him over the edge. He found it difficult enough as it was...
Early Days
I loved the gulf/growth between One and Twelve, particularly how it was demonstrated in these lines:
ONE: Not human, I think. State your planet of origin and your intentions. This is Earth, a level five civilisation.
TWELVE: And it is protected.
ONE: It's what?
(The transparent figure and the light disappears.)
TWELVE: Oh. Okay. That doesn't usually work.
ONE: Protected by whom?
TWELVE: Oh, it is early days, isn't it?
And a little later One gets a proper preview of his future:
TWELVE: Oh, I'm going to do way more than escape. I'm going to find out who you are and what you're doing, and if I don't like it, I will come back and I will stop you. I will stop all of you!
ONE: Who the hell do you think you are?
TWELVE: The Doctor.
ONE: I am the Doctor. Who you are, I cannot begin to imagine.
Love, love, love One's reaction here. He almost physically recoils. And a throwaway line later sheds further light on just how different their worlds are:
TWELVE: That thing up there won't miss the chance to kill me twice. The paradox would rip the universe apart, and you know how much hard work it is putting it back together again.
Twelve speaks without thinking here - as One has obviously never put the universe back together (ETA: I stand corrected, apparently this is a reference to The Three Doctors) - but it's something Eleven did for the sake of a little girl getting her parents back (and because the universe was blowing up of course). We see One's natural self-assurance, but the power Twelve wields without thinking is foreign to him, the power that lies in his name alone:
TEN: I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up.
(There is a pause, then the shadows withdraw.)
Of course the reason for that power is something much darker than the First Doctor can imagine:
GLASS WOMAN: The Doctor has walked in blood through all of time and space. The Doctor has many names.
DAVROS [OC]: The Destroyer of Worlds.
GLASS WOMAN: The Imp of the Pandorica. The Shadow of the Valeyard. The Beast of Trenzalore. The Butcher of Skull Moon. The Last Tree of Garsennon. The Destroyer of Skaro. He is the Doctor of War.
(Sidebar: The IMP of the Pandorica??? I think I died. Like - THE IMP, TREMBLE ALL YOU PEOPLES! It's v accurate though, Eleven is impish. <3)
(Also 'The Last Tree of Garsennon'? Is that going to be relevant in Chibnall's era? I hope so. I presume 'The Butcher of Skull Moon' was the War Doctor.)
Anyway, this neatly brings me to:
Twelve was borne out of battle. Battlefields dominated Eleven’s last episodes, and were a repeated theme of Twelve’s run. (The change in colour palette is particularly evident in these caps btw.)
Name of the Doctor
Day of the Doctor
Time of Doctor
The Magician’s Apprentice
The Doctor Falls
Twice Upon a Time
Of course, one of the biggest battles Twelve has faced is with himself. He spends S8 querying who and what he is (Am I a good man?), and it is only when Missy hands him an army, gift-wrapped, that he finally cracks the big issue that’s plagued him. (I am… an idiot! With a box and a screwdriver…)
Another big watershed moment is in The Girl Who Died, where we have Twelve realising why he chose his face (and again playing with that power One so disapproves of):
CLARA: You did your best. She died. There's nothing you can do.
TWELVE: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. But I'm not supposed to. Ripples, tidal waves, rules. I'm not supposed to. Oh. Oh!
CLARA: What? What's wrong?
TWELVE: My face. I think I know why I chose it.
[clip from Fires of Pompeii]
DONNA: Just someone. Not the whole town. Just save someone.
TEN [reaching out to Caecilus]: Come with me.
[end clip]
TWELVE: I know where I got this face, and I know what it's for.
CLARA: Okay, what's it for?
TWELVE: To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people. And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you!
Now, I think he got it wrong. The message wasn’t that he could do *anything*, that he should save someone and to hell with the consequences. (An attitude that led to storming Gallifrey and going to ridiculous lengths to save Clara - HI TIME LORD VICTORIOUS I LIKED SEEING YOU AGAIN). No, it’s much more literal than that:
DONNA: Just someone. Not the whole town. Just save someone.
And here, we have that exact thing:
ONE: You've saved him.
TWELVE: Both of them. Never hurts, a couple fewer dead people on the battlefield.
ONE: So that's what it means to be a doctor of war.
TWELVE: You were right, you know. The universe generally fails to be a fairy tale. But that's where we come in.
He saved a random man (well, two) - and unwittingly saved one of his oldest friend’s grandfather… And in the process helped One to formulate an alternative to ‘War Doctor’.
Just save someone, because there is no such thing as unimportant.
As a counterpoint to the darkness One witnesses in his own future, it's beautiful.
Which very nicely ties in with my next point:
ONE: But why him? What's so important about one Captain?
TWELVE: Everybody's important to somebody, somewhere.
And this is the Doctor’s tragedy:
TWELVE: A life this long, do you understand what it is? It's a battlefield, like this one, and it's empty. Because everyone else has fallen.
This takes us right back to Deep Breath, Twelve’s first episode. He is translating the dinosaur’s words… or is he speaking for himself?
TWELVE: I am alone. The world which shook at my feet, and the trees and the sky, have gone. And I am alone now. Alone. The wind bites now, and the world is grey, and I am alone here. Can't see me. Doesn't see me. Can't see me.
Which gets repeated at the end of that episode, in his conversation with Clara:
TWELVE: You don't see me, do you? You look right at me, and you don't see me. Please . . . just see me.
All this reminded me of one of the most insightful things that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_royal_anna ever wrote:
We don't stop being human when we lose our hearts; nor when we lose our heads. And every last vestige of humanity can be drained from us, but as long as somebody, somewhere cares, we are not dust.
(x)
And the Doctor is alone… There is no one to see him. His friends are now memories, held in glass. If no one knows you, and no one cares, what does that make you? Do you even really exist?
Moffat, in this interview talks about how falling in love makes us fully human - how we are now more than ourselves, we are ‘the one who loves such-and-such, and is loved by them’.
There is a very painful connection to be made here, with Ashildr, who understood all of this instinctively:
ASHILDR: I know I'm strange. Everyone knows I'm strange. But here I'm loved. You tell me to run to save my life. I tell you that leaving this place would be death itself.
It is a point the Doctor understands far too well:
TWELVE: I'll lose any war you like. I'm sick of losing people. Look at you, with your eyes, and your never giving up, and your anger, and your kindness. One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won't be able to breathe, and I'll do what I always do. I'll get in my box and I'll run and I'll run, in case all the pain ever catches up. And every place I go, it will be there.
And then Ashildr (doomed to the Doctor's fate) throws it back in his face:
ASHILDR: She'll die on you, you know. She'll blow away like smoke.
TWELVE: Save your breath.
ASHILDR: How old are you, Doctor?
TWELVE: Older than you.
ASHILDR: And how many have you lost? How many Claras?
Clara was always about memory, and being seen:
CLARA: Run you clever boy and remember me.
TWELVE: You can't see me, can you? You look at me, and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like? I'm not on the phone, I'm right here, standing in front of you. Please, just, just see me.
Some day I will probably do a very long post about everything Clara, but I am not up to it right now. Instead I shall just (as always) point you towardspurplefringe's Never Look Away, and pull out another way in which this episode ties back to Twelve's beginning, and how it offers an answer:
TWELVE (speaking to the half-face droid): You are a broom. Question. You take a broom, you replace the handle, and then later you replace the brush, and you do that over and over again. Is it still the same broom? Answer? No, of course it isn't. But you can still sweep the floor. Which is not strictly relevant, skip that last part. You have replaced every piece of yourself, mechanical and organic, time and time again. There's not a trace of the original you left. You probably can't even remember where you got that face from.
Of course we then see the Doctor's reflection - he can't remember how he got his face either. And (like the dinosaur) he can be seen as speaking about himself. Is he just a broom, the constituent parts replaced so often he is no longer himself? He might think so, but here, in his final episode, Testimony turn up and turn it all on its head. The broom is immaterial. People consist of their memories, and the vessel doesn't matter. Pour Bill's memories into a glass container, and there she is. Ditto with Clara.
It's not an evil plan, but even so it almost breaks the Doctor. (You're just memories held in glass. Do you know how many of you I could fill? I would shatter you. My testimony would shatter all of you.)
He just wants to rest... But the universe won't let him.
NARDOLE: Don't die. Because if you do, I think everybody in the universe might just go cold.
This line reminded me of River (not surprisingly, since River sent Nardole to look after the Doctor and passed on her wisdom):
RIVER: Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment, accepts it.
Forest of the Dead
RIVER: Those reports of the sun spots and the solar flares. They're wrong. There aren't any. It's not the sun, it's you. The sky is full of a million, million voices saying yes, of course we'll help. You've touched so many lives, saved so many people. Did you think when your time came, you'd really have to do more than just ask? You've decided that the universe is better off without you, but the universe doesn't agree.
The Wedding of River Song
This time it's the TARDIS reaching out - showing him a distress call, and also reminding him that despite the fact that he loses all his friends, his box will always be there.
And so he capitulates, agrees to another turn of the wheel, and gives his next self a lovely speech about what it means to be the Doctor and how pears are horrible and 'Always try to be nice'. Which just goes to show far we've come since Twelve's beginning, when 'nice' was a pointless effort.
I think I have mentioned how Twelve was in many ways a reboot of the Doctor himself - a whole new set of regenerations and he had to try to figure everything out all over again.
At this point I can't help but bring in Ten's regeneration. Not just because Twelve in many ways addressed the issues from Ten's run (like the Victoriousness), but also because their final lines (as I am sure everyone noticed) are almost the opposite:
TEN: I don't want to go.
TWELVE: Doctor - I let you go.
Of course Ten wouldn't have been Ten if he had gone gently into that good night, but there is a beauty to Twelve's ending that I find very affecting. Because he fought as hard as Ten, screamed his fury at the universe - but managed to find a way through to the other side, finding acceptance and peace.
We see this reflected in the stories themselves - Ten’s last adventure (best review ever here!) comprised huge, big stakes, HO SHIT TIME LORDS AND THE END OF TIME ITSELF!!… Except under that ran a quiet story about a man scared of dying.
Moffat does away with the big drama, and just tells the story of a man (two men, no three men) scared of dying and change.
I have for years talked about Doctor Who and The Waste Land (most recent post - about the S10 finale - here on AO3, and I have a very short companion piece coming), and this episode was especially fitting in this light; The Waste Land is all about WWI, and that's what this episode centers on too. It's like the whole show coming full circle somehow. All that fear, all that pain, all that endless destruction, the war to end all wars. All tied up with the Time War and the Doctor's journey, and how he has managed to find peace:
Where there's tears, there's hope.
♥ ♥ ♥
Welcome Thirteen, may your adventures be spectacular and wonderful.
First of all, this is the best 'Previously on...' on anything, ever. (Although how did they count the episodes? And what poor sap had to do it?)
1966 vs 2017
Of course the real joy lies in watching Twelve and One interact, allowing the past and the present to meet in a more fundamental way than we usually see. Some people thought it was funny and others have taken issue with One's lines, saying he was never that sexist (although the smacked bottom line f.ex. is taken pretty much verbatim from The Tenth Planet). My thoughts are that the point of the attitude may have been a little more meta...
Our new Doctor is a woman, and this episode is an opportunity to take stock at how far we have all come - both the show itself, and as a society. The First Doctor and the Captain are obviously not bad people, despite their - to our ears - very outdated attitudes. And when it comes to actual women they know, they clearly value them for who they are:
CAPTAIN: [My wife]'s a solid woman, remarkably solid
And once One gets talking to Bill properly he engages with her with genuine interest:
BILL: I don't mean what you ran away from. What were you running to?
ONE: That's rather a good question.
But the society they live in has imbued them with ideas that they have unthinkingly accepted as part of their world view (ONE: Well, aren't all ladies made of glass, in a way?). Wrt One then he may just be speaking of humans more generally, it's unlikely that he'd ever think of Time Ladies in such terms (higher species and all that).
Mostly though, I am an easy mark and I find it HILARIOUS to watch Twelve squirm.
On a more serious note, we see how this attitude (and the corresponding 'stiff upper lip' for males) can also hurt people:
CAPTAIN: ...and my boys. Well, sons are supposed to move on from their fathers. It's the proper way.
The Captain uses it as a crutch to comfort himself with, but it's not a happy one.
- Thanks to a very old Doctor Who fact sheet we know that the Doctor's body temperature is 60F, which is only 15.5C! No wonder he never puts on a warmer coat.
- When they are in the old TARDIS, they film it like in the old series. That is - from the outside the doors are blue & slim, but inside they are white and a foot thick. It makes no earthly sense, except I guess there's a perception filter on the outside. (Yes I notice stupid details and I had to think up an explanation it bothered me that much.)
- It's immensely pleasing that the First Doctor has just come from an adventure featuring cybermen. And the ones in Twelve's finale are so exactly like those old ones (that we catch glimpses of in the 'Previously On...') that it's uncanny. It just thrills me to tiny bits.
- This exchange, from the very start of the ep:
TWELVE: You know who I am. You must.
ONE: Hmm. Have you come to take the ship back?
I don't think I caught that initially - that One thinks Twelve is from Gallifrey & he's finally been caught.
- TWELVE: Over to you Mary Berry
This line is wonderful on oh so many levels. And not just because now I'm imagining Bill, Nardole & Twelve watching Bake-Off. <3
I totally called that it'd be Rusty in that tower (from when I realised that the scuttling things were Daleks) and nearly jumped in delight at being right. SO perfect.
Rusty ties back to both Twelve's initial struggles (it's his first adventure after Deep Breath), and [within that story] back to One's first proper story (after the episode with the cavemen). From Into the Dalek:
TWELVE: See, all those years ago, when I began I was just running. I called myself the Doctor, but it was just a name. And then I went to Skaro. And then I met you lot and I understood who I was. The Doctor was not the Daleks.
As a farewell and a celebration of the end of this particular era (Twelve/Moffat/male Doctors - take your pick), it's very fitting that we should visit this Dalek, the one Dalek that changed, the one Dalek that learned to see further than the rest...
TWELVE: What? What did you see?
RUSTY: The birth of a star.
TWELVE: Stars are born every day. You've seen a million stars born. So what?
RUSTY: Daleks have destroyed a million stars.
TWELVE: Oh, millions and millions. Trust me, I keep count.
RUSTY: And yet, new stars are born.
RUSTY: Resistance is futile.
TWELVE: Resistance to what?
RUSTY: Life returns. Life prevails. Resistance is futile.
TWELVE: So you saw a star being born, and you learned something. Oh, Dalek, do not be lying to me. Come on.
For me, this brings to mind the conversation between One and Bill:
ONE: There is good and there is evil. I left Gallifrey to answer a question of my own. By any analysis, evil should always win. Good is not a practical survival strategy. It requires loyalty, self-sacrifice and er, love. So, why does good prevail? What keeps the balance between good and evil in this appalling universe? Is there some kind of logic? Some mysterious force?
One's starting point is different to Rusty's obviously, but the two feed into each other. The First Doctor had questions, and the Daleks provided the first answer: It would be easy to let the Daleks win, but he refused to be like them. Good might be an impractical strategy, but he chose it nonetheless. And in turn, many years down the line, fed that belief back to Rusty:
RUSTY: I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see hatred.
TWELVE: Hatred?
RUSTY: I see your hatred of the Daleks and it is good.
TWELVE: No, no, no. You must see more than that, there must be more than that.
RUSTY: Death to the Daleks. Death to the Daleks. Death to the Daleks.
TWELVE: No, there must be more than that. There must be more than that. Please.
RUSTY: Daleks are evil. Daleks must be exterminated. Daleks are evil.
One of the things that pleases me most about this episode, is that Rusty and the Doctor have the following exchange:
TWELVE: Because people don't believe there could be any such thing as a good Dalek.
RUSTY: I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek.
Twelve has laid his demons to rest, and it's probably good that he left One at the bottom of the tower as those lines might have pushed him over the edge. He found it difficult enough as it was...
I loved the gulf/growth between One and Twelve, particularly how it was demonstrated in these lines:
ONE: Not human, I think. State your planet of origin and your intentions. This is Earth, a level five civilisation.
TWELVE: And it is protected.
ONE: It's what?
(The transparent figure and the light disappears.)
TWELVE: Oh. Okay. That doesn't usually work.
ONE: Protected by whom?
TWELVE: Oh, it is early days, isn't it?
And a little later One gets a proper preview of his future:
TWELVE: Oh, I'm going to do way more than escape. I'm going to find out who you are and what you're doing, and if I don't like it, I will come back and I will stop you. I will stop all of you!
ONE: Who the hell do you think you are?
TWELVE: The Doctor.
ONE: I am the Doctor. Who you are, I cannot begin to imagine.
Love, love, love One's reaction here. He almost physically recoils. And a throwaway line later sheds further light on just how different their worlds are:
TWELVE: That thing up there won't miss the chance to kill me twice. The paradox would rip the universe apart, and you know how much hard work it is putting it back together again.
Twelve speaks without thinking here - as One has obviously never put the universe back together (ETA: I stand corrected, apparently this is a reference to The Three Doctors) - but it's something Eleven did for the sake of a little girl getting her parents back (and because the universe was blowing up of course). We see One's natural self-assurance, but the power Twelve wields without thinking is foreign to him, the power that lies in his name alone:
TEN: I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up.
(There is a pause, then the shadows withdraw.)
Of course the reason for that power is something much darker than the First Doctor can imagine:
GLASS WOMAN: The Doctor has walked in blood through all of time and space. The Doctor has many names.
DAVROS [OC]: The Destroyer of Worlds.
GLASS WOMAN: The Imp of the Pandorica. The Shadow of the Valeyard. The Beast of Trenzalore. The Butcher of Skull Moon. The Last Tree of Garsennon. The Destroyer of Skaro. He is the Doctor of War.
(Sidebar: The IMP of the Pandorica??? I think I died. Like - THE IMP, TREMBLE ALL YOU PEOPLES! It's v accurate though, Eleven is impish. <3)
(Also 'The Last Tree of Garsennon'? Is that going to be relevant in Chibnall's era? I hope so. I presume 'The Butcher of Skull Moon' was the War Doctor.)
Anyway, this neatly brings me to:
Twelve was borne out of battle. Battlefields dominated Eleven’s last episodes, and were a repeated theme of Twelve’s run. (The change in colour palette is particularly evident in these caps btw.)
Name of the Doctor
Day of the Doctor
Time of Doctor
The Magician’s Apprentice
The Doctor Falls
Twice Upon a Time
Of course, one of the biggest battles Twelve has faced is with himself. He spends S8 querying who and what he is (Am I a good man?), and it is only when Missy hands him an army, gift-wrapped, that he finally cracks the big issue that’s plagued him. (I am… an idiot! With a box and a screwdriver…)
Another big watershed moment is in The Girl Who Died, where we have Twelve realising why he chose his face (and again playing with that power One so disapproves of):
CLARA: You did your best. She died. There's nothing you can do.
TWELVE: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. But I'm not supposed to. Ripples, tidal waves, rules. I'm not supposed to. Oh. Oh!
CLARA: What? What's wrong?
TWELVE: My face. I think I know why I chose it.
[clip from Fires of Pompeii]
DONNA: Just someone. Not the whole town. Just save someone.
TEN [reaching out to Caecilus]: Come with me.
[end clip]
TWELVE: I know where I got this face, and I know what it's for.
CLARA: Okay, what's it for?
TWELVE: To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people. And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you!
Now, I think he got it wrong. The message wasn’t that he could do *anything*, that he should save someone and to hell with the consequences. (An attitude that led to storming Gallifrey and going to ridiculous lengths to save Clara - HI TIME LORD VICTORIOUS I LIKED SEEING YOU AGAIN). No, it’s much more literal than that:
DONNA: Just someone. Not the whole town. Just save someone.
And here, we have that exact thing:
ONE: You've saved him.
TWELVE: Both of them. Never hurts, a couple fewer dead people on the battlefield.
ONE: So that's what it means to be a doctor of war.
TWELVE: You were right, you know. The universe generally fails to be a fairy tale. But that's where we come in.
He saved a random man (well, two) - and unwittingly saved one of his oldest friend’s grandfather… And in the process helped One to formulate an alternative to ‘War Doctor’.
Just save someone, because there is no such thing as unimportant.
As a counterpoint to the darkness One witnesses in his own future, it's beautiful.
Which very nicely ties in with my next point:
ONE: But why him? What's so important about one Captain?
TWELVE: Everybody's important to somebody, somewhere.
And this is the Doctor’s tragedy:
TWELVE: A life this long, do you understand what it is? It's a battlefield, like this one, and it's empty. Because everyone else has fallen.
This takes us right back to Deep Breath, Twelve’s first episode. He is translating the dinosaur’s words… or is he speaking for himself?
TWELVE: I am alone. The world which shook at my feet, and the trees and the sky, have gone. And I am alone now. Alone. The wind bites now, and the world is grey, and I am alone here. Can't see me. Doesn't see me. Can't see me.
Which gets repeated at the end of that episode, in his conversation with Clara:
TWELVE: You don't see me, do you? You look right at me, and you don't see me. Please . . . just see me.
All this reminded me of one of the most insightful things that
the_royal_anna ever wrote:We don't stop being human when we lose our hearts; nor when we lose our heads. And every last vestige of humanity can be drained from us, but as long as somebody, somewhere cares, we are not dust.
(x)
And the Doctor is alone… There is no one to see him. His friends are now memories, held in glass. If no one knows you, and no one cares, what does that make you? Do you even really exist?
Moffat, in this interview talks about how falling in love makes us fully human - how we are now more than ourselves, we are ‘the one who loves such-and-such, and is loved by them’.
There is a very painful connection to be made here, with Ashildr, who understood all of this instinctively:
ASHILDR: I know I'm strange. Everyone knows I'm strange. But here I'm loved. You tell me to run to save my life. I tell you that leaving this place would be death itself.
It is a point the Doctor understands far too well:
TWELVE: I'll lose any war you like. I'm sick of losing people. Look at you, with your eyes, and your never giving up, and your anger, and your kindness. One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won't be able to breathe, and I'll do what I always do. I'll get in my box and I'll run and I'll run, in case all the pain ever catches up. And every place I go, it will be there.
And then Ashildr (doomed to the Doctor's fate) throws it back in his face:
ASHILDR: She'll die on you, you know. She'll blow away like smoke.
TWELVE: Save your breath.
ASHILDR: How old are you, Doctor?
TWELVE: Older than you.
ASHILDR: And how many have you lost? How many Claras?
Clara was always about memory, and being seen:
CLARA: Run you clever boy and remember me.
TWELVE: You can't see me, can you? You look at me, and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like? I'm not on the phone, I'm right here, standing in front of you. Please, just, just see me.
Some day I will probably do a very long post about everything Clara, but I am not up to it right now. Instead I shall just (as always) point you towards
purplefringe's Never Look Away, and pull out another way in which this episode ties back to Twelve's beginning, and how it offers an answer:TWELVE (speaking to the half-face droid): You are a broom. Question. You take a broom, you replace the handle, and then later you replace the brush, and you do that over and over again. Is it still the same broom? Answer? No, of course it isn't. But you can still sweep the floor. Which is not strictly relevant, skip that last part. You have replaced every piece of yourself, mechanical and organic, time and time again. There's not a trace of the original you left. You probably can't even remember where you got that face from.
Of course we then see the Doctor's reflection - he can't remember how he got his face either. And (like the dinosaur) he can be seen as speaking about himself. Is he just a broom, the constituent parts replaced so often he is no longer himself? He might think so, but here, in his final episode, Testimony turn up and turn it all on its head. The broom is immaterial. People consist of their memories, and the vessel doesn't matter. Pour Bill's memories into a glass container, and there she is. Ditto with Clara.
It's not an evil plan, but even so it almost breaks the Doctor. (You're just memories held in glass. Do you know how many of you I could fill? I would shatter you. My testimony would shatter all of you.)
He just wants to rest... But the universe won't let him.
NARDOLE: Don't die. Because if you do, I think everybody in the universe might just go cold.
This line reminded me of River (not surprisingly, since River sent Nardole to look after the Doctor and passed on her wisdom):
RIVER: Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment, accepts it.
Forest of the Dead
RIVER: Those reports of the sun spots and the solar flares. They're wrong. There aren't any. It's not the sun, it's you. The sky is full of a million, million voices saying yes, of course we'll help. You've touched so many lives, saved so many people. Did you think when your time came, you'd really have to do more than just ask? You've decided that the universe is better off without you, but the universe doesn't agree.
The Wedding of River Song
This time it's the TARDIS reaching out - showing him a distress call, and also reminding him that despite the fact that he loses all his friends, his box will always be there.
And so he capitulates, agrees to another turn of the wheel, and gives his next self a lovely speech about what it means to be the Doctor and how pears are horrible and 'Always try to be nice'. Which just goes to show far we've come since Twelve's beginning, when 'nice' was a pointless effort.
I think I have mentioned how Twelve was in many ways a reboot of the Doctor himself - a whole new set of regenerations and he had to try to figure everything out all over again.
At this point I can't help but bring in Ten's regeneration. Not just because Twelve in many ways addressed the issues from Ten's run (like the Victoriousness), but also because their final lines (as I am sure everyone noticed) are almost the opposite:
TEN: I don't want to go.
TWELVE: Doctor - I let you go.
Of course Ten wouldn't have been Ten if he had gone gently into that good night, but there is a beauty to Twelve's ending that I find very affecting. Because he fought as hard as Ten, screamed his fury at the universe - but managed to find a way through to the other side, finding acceptance and peace.
We see this reflected in the stories themselves - Ten’s last adventure (best review ever here!) comprised huge, big stakes, HO SHIT TIME LORDS AND THE END OF TIME ITSELF!!… Except under that ran a quiet story about a man scared of dying.
Moffat does away with the big drama, and just tells the story of a man (two men, no three men) scared of dying and change.
I have for years talked about Doctor Who and The Waste Land (most recent post - about the S10 finale - here on AO3, and I have a very short companion piece coming), and this episode was especially fitting in this light; The Waste Land is all about WWI, and that's what this episode centers on too. It's like the whole show coming full circle somehow. All that fear, all that pain, all that endless destruction, the war to end all wars. All tied up with the Time War and the Doctor's journey, and how he has managed to find peace:
Where there's tears, there's hope.
Welcome Thirteen, may your adventures be spectacular and wonderful.
Re: And here we go
(Anonymous) 2018-03-01 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)'Doctor? Sweetie?"
River's voice seemed like a great booming call to and he could feel the ground shake as she walked into the room. "Sweetie?" she called out again. The tiny Doctor waved his arms and yelled back.
"River! River, down here! River! Look! Look over here!" Eventually his admittedly squeakier-than-usual yelling got her attention, and she knelt down to get a better look at him.
"Oh for heaven’s sake, how did you manage this?" She huffed, partly in exasperation and partly in amusement. The Doctor ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, sulking just a little.
"I poked the big flashy lighty thing. To be fair, River, before you say anything, I had no way of knowing this would happen" he pouted. River rolled her eyes.
"Oh good God." She scooped him up -"Woah!"- and dumped him on her shoulder. "You can stay there till we figure out how to turn you back to a reasonable size, Sweetie. Don't want you getting stepped on. Now, let's find Mum and Dad, before they can get themselves in too much trouble."
She began to stride off, and the Doctor clung to her shirt desperately, suddenly more scared of heights than he'd been since his fifth body. The rocking, swaying motion of her walk made him feel simultaneously seasick and dizzy with vertigo. He huddled closer to her neck, curling up against the collar of her shirt, knuckles white as they gripped the material.
The world took on a distorted, disorienting appearance from his new vantage point -everything was so much bigger and more sinister looking, and all the sounds were louder and shook the air around him. If the Doctor was prone to being scared, then he certainly would be right now.
Not that he was, or anything.
And then River turned a corner and came face to face with some sort of horrifying guard animal, with dripping fangs, snapping jaws, and bristling fur. The Doctor took one look at it -all the more terrifying for it being preposterously bigger than him- and started scrabbling for somewhere to hide. He flicked his gaze around desperately, before his eyes landed on River's mass of golden curls.
Her hair was so...magical. And big.
He scrabbled his way up into her hair and nestled into the soft, safe bed of spun sunlight, hiding away in the curls. He heard the sound of gunfire and a body hitting the ground, but he wasn't coming out any time soon. It was safer here.
"You alright up there, Sweetie?"
The Doctor snuggled into her tresses some more. "Yup," he replied simply. River chuckled and shook her head gently.
---
“River!” Amy sprung up from her seat in the crude, metal-barred cell, and River shot the lock to let her and Rory out. They both hugged their daughter.
"Where's the Doctor?" Rory asked, looking around as though expecting him to melt out of the walls or explode out of the ceiling. River grinned and called out in a sing-song tone.
"Oh, Swee-tie!" There was movement amongst her curls, and then the Doctor poked his head out and waved at the Ponds.
"Hello!" He chirped. Amy and Rory gaped at him.
"He's tiny. He's the Doctor and he's tiny. He's tiny and...in your hair. The Doctor's in your hair," Rory babbled. River smiled sweetly.
"Yes, Dad. We'll figure out how to turn him back when we're not being chased by guards, shall we?" As if on cue, sirens began to go off through the complex. The Doctor squeaked, and ducked back into River's hair. She grinned. "Let's go."
---
Later, after they'd returned the Doctor to his proper size -by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow of the big flashy lighty thing that had shrunk him- and were safely back in the TARDIS, Rory had bustled off to make tea (trying to brush off the image of his son in law -which was still weird as hell- hiding in his daughter's hair), and Amy was teasing the Doctor, calling him 'Pixie' and 'Munchkin'. He didn't really notice.
He was busy running his fingers through River's big, magical, spun-sunlight hair.
Re: And here we go