Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Foreshadowing

This post contains a large number of theories concerning Doctor Who. It therefore contains spoilers.

I have a lot of thoughts about Doctor Who. I have therefore complied a large number of them in one place for your reading pleasure. And so if any of my theories turn out to be right, I can prove I guessed because I put it on the internet. This mainly applies to the last theory.

The Arc Fleet
The Beast Below hinged on the idea that the earth was evacuated sometime during the 29th century because of a giant mutant star goat (or solar flares, whatever).  Starship UK is just one of the arc ships which carried the population to safety. In Asylum of the Daleks, the ship which crashes on the Asylum is called “Alaska”. They make something of a big deal about the ship being called Alaska in fact. What if that’s not just a random name? What if The Alaska is another arc ship? There’s also a line in dinosaurs which mentions a “ship the size of Canada”. Possibly not the Canada you’re thinking of.
Light Bulbs
Every episode so far has featured a flickering light bulb. There was the one in Amy’s dressing room during episode 1, the broken fitting at the Pond’s place in episode 2 and basically every single electric light in episode 3. Plus, The Doctor was finally changing the bulb of the TARDIS in Pond Life #5. You know what other episode have flickering lights in them? The ones with Weeping Angels.


Christmas
This theory bought to you by my boyfriend and sub-editor who has noticed that all three episodes so far feature a reference to Christmas and thinks that this might mean something. Thus:
7.1
The Doctor- "It's Christmas!"
7.2: 
Rory- "I don't have a Christmas list."
The Doctor- "I do!"
7.3
The Doctor- "Someone's been peaking at my Christmas list!"
This is clearly foreshadowing Christmas. Or something.

Doctor WHO
The Doctor seems to be slowly erasing himself from existence. Oswin made the daleks forget him and then in Dinosaurs, the computer had no record of his existence. On the one hand, we know that The Doctor has been intentionally trying to lie low also we're not entirely sure how much of the universe thinks he's dead following Silencio. But what if there’s more to it than that? We still don’t really know what happened with the cracks. Silence hasn’t fallen yet. And we know that that cracks in the skin of the universe suck things from existence. Given that The Doctor's identity is looking like the whole point of next year, it's pretty interesting that he's losing his.

Make them remember you
When they're in the Parliament of the Daleks, The Doctor turns to Amy and says "make them remember you". This line is almost totally without context. At the end of the episode, Oswin breaks the forth wall to implore us to "remember".  The Silence make us forget. The cracks made Amy forget Rory. The alternate universe made Rory forget Amy. There's an awful lot of forgetting going on. But what is it that we need to REMEMBER?

Time skip
There’s a lot of time gaps in the last few seasons. There’s the time between A Christmas Carol and the start of season 6. There’s the gap between River poisoning The Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler and him emerging from the TARDIS in a tux. Not to mention the multitude of gaps in series 7.  The Doctor has aged several hundreds years in the last two seasons (according to him anyway). Either this is simply Moffat correcting the fact that The Doctor didn't actually age at all during the Davies era or he's keeping some secrets from us (and from the Ponds).


Never let him see you age
So I’m pretty sure someone in a promo somewhere said to Amy “Never let him see you age.” In fact I’m pretty damn sure it was River. Now apparently I imagined this and no one ever actually said that in a promo in which case I am just physic. Every episode so far has featured something about the Ponds getting older. It’s mostly just Amy flat out saying she is old. The Doctor clearly doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like to see their mortality. This is clearly foreshadowing. Or just shadowing.
(If you remember someone saying this in ANY trailer please get in touch because all my friends think I'm crazy).


Just this once everybody lives!
I am pretty sure that the Ponds are not going to die. The reason for this is simple and it is this- Steven Moffat’s entire career thus far. Moffat has never killed anymore. Not a main character. And even the people he does kill, die in remarkably humane ways. I don’t think he’ll kill Amy or Rory. The current theory is that both of them will be sent back in time by the angels. We already know that an incarnation of River was living in New York in the 60s. Them being sent back in time would be zarking TRAGIC but in a happy/sad sort of way because they’d get to raise their child.



The rest of our lives
Having said that, I’m a little concerned by the parallels which seem to be emerging between Doctor Who and Press Gang. The ‘rest of our lives’ line is still haunting me. I can’t help thinking there’s an undertone of dreams in this series. And dreams always lead my mind to… I can’t say anything about Press Gang for those who are still watching it (or haven’t yet) but for those who’ve seen the end… yeah. I’m worried he might do that again.



The Dreamlord
There’s actually a prequel to Aslyum of the Daleks. You might not have seen it because hasn’t really been advertised. Which is weird. What’s even weirder is that, unlike pretty much every mini-episode ever, it isn’t all jolly and whimsical. This doesn’t feel like a throw away extra. It feels big. Somehow the fact that this is a dream message seems ominous. I still think that The Dreamlord (from Amy’s Choice) was passed over a little too quickly. Not that I think he’s coming back, but the idea that the person who hates The Doctor most is actually The Doctor himself is such a powerful idea. I wonder too whether that might link The God Complex and The Doctor’s greatest fear. When he opens that door he says “of course it would be you”. What if his greatest fear is actually himself?

And then he woke up, and it was all a dream
All of which leads us rather nicely to my BIG theory!
The Doctor is actually a Dalek who dreams of a normal humanoid life. His entire existence to date has been the pathetic delusions of a deranged mind. The reason he’s constantly fighting the Daleks is because, like Oswin, he’s battling his Dalek subconsciousness. The reason he can never beat the Daleks despite trying REALLY REALLY hard is that he can never truly defeat his true nature. Plus whenever he dies in his imaginary adventures he just comes back as a different guy because THIS IS MY DREAM AND I DO WHAT I WANT. Asylum of the Daleks is foreshadowing the fiftieth anniversary when it turns out the answer to the ultimate questions (Doctor WHO?) is actually DALEK.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Asylum of the Daleks



THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!

This morning I woke up at 4:58am. That is just nuts. We woke my brother up by way of sonic screwdriver, made tea and settled ourselves on the lounge. We watched Doctor Who and then we made pancakes and ate them in the sun.

I was sceptical about this whole iView thing. But I loved this morning.

iView turned out to be kind of excellent. First of all the ABC’s servers didn’t crash, which I thought might happen. Plus the picture quality was actually really decent. Massive kudos to the ABC for orchestrating the whole thing, and doing it RIGHT.

One of the things that makes me mourn the decline of broadcast television is the loss of the shared viewing experience. One of my favourite things about TV is the collective building of excitement and the ongoing speculation. There was something so special about arriving at school on a Monday morning and yelling at each other about Doctor Who. I miss that. I miss everyone falling in love with shows at the same time.

Today, Doctor Who was basically a global experience. There are an awful lot of countries that are going to be, LEGALLY, watching the new episodes within hours of each other. That’s kind of great.
There’s something really amazing about getting to be in the thick of the whole Doctor Who experience for the first time in years without sacrificing my morals.

And what a year to be in the thick of.

I loved Asylum of the Daleks. I thought it was just the right mix of warm honey, magic and gung-ho action. There was romance and drama and suspense and funny bits and sad bits and EVERYTHING.

The fact that Jenna Louise Coleman (henceforth know as J-Lo) is in this episode was kept spectacularly under wraps. That was such a wonderful surprise. I loved her character too. Clara (I’m calling her Clara, even though she was Oswin in this episode) is going to have such massive shoes to fill and it looks like she might actually pull it off.
The soufflé part was beautiful. I loved that she took that seed of doubt and uncertainty and made it into soufflés. She turned Dalek into human. With nothing but hypothetical eggs.

I’ve got no idea where Steven Moffat is going to take it from here. The obvious thing is that he’ll travel backwards along Oswin/Clara’s personal timeline and meet her before she crashed on the Asylum. But somehow that’s all a little too River Song. It’s too simple and… I just don’t think that’s what they’ll do. For some reason I sort of like the idea of there being two of her. Maybe that’s a hangover from my “River is Lintilla” theory (which never really took off because no one really understood the complicated cross-references involved and also it was stupid).

My favourite theory is one Alex and his friend Ian came up with – the new companion is actually a Dalek. So everything that happens involves her being a human in her imagination and a Dalek in reality. This would be very hilarious and cool.

But before we meet Clara/Oswin for real, we have to say goodbye to the Ponds.

Rory: How long can we wait for him?
Amy: For the rest of our lives.
Anyone who’s familiar with Press Gang will know that “the rest of my life” is an awfully loaded and inherently tragic phrase. I really hope it’s not foreshadowing.
That line right there gave me an awful lot of Spike and Lynda feels. I’ve never really noticed the parallels between Amy and Rory’s relationship and Spike and Lynda’s but now they’re there, clear as day, and I’m really unsure where Moffat is going to take them. Having addressed the tension in their relationship so beautifully, I really hope they run with it.

I cried a bit when Amy talked about not being able to have kids. What did happen to Amy at Demon’s Run? We don’t know. Not really. But her infertility hints at all sorts of horrors. The Doctor hasn’t exclusively been a blessing in their lives. You could argue that he hasn’t been a blessing at all. I get the feeling they’ll be a lot more crying before Moffat is done with us.

On top of all that we’ve got this huge thing of The Doctor being wiped from the Dalek mainframe. Seriously guys. THAT IS SO HUGE. It raised the issue that The Doctor’s reputation is a destructive force. The Daleks are more powerful for their hatred of him. Is he constantly saving the human race from enemies that he himself has helped create?

The Doctor said “Doctor who?” for only the second time in this episode (Let’s Kill Hitler was the first). I still think that him saying it is more important than anyone else uttering the words. It isn’t simply the phrase that will cause silence to fall, it’s the question. The actual question. Which no one really asks. Doctor WHO? The Doctor himself saying it is a contradiction to his usual denial. He ignored the question because it can’t be asked.

What Moffat has done is set the series up magnificently. He’s addressed a lot of things that have only been hinted at before now, suggesting that there’s a lot more stuff to come. The last two series have been loaded with a lot of awful loose ends and it’s starting to look like an awful lot of those will be tied up by the end of next year.



SPECULATION CORNER:
The issue of Matt’s regeneration, and when that will happen, is still a contentious and difficult one. Thing is we just don’t know what the deal is. BUT there’s another big change that looks like it might be on the horizon – a new show runner. While there’s no official word of this, I think it’s pretty unlikely that Moffat will stay beyond next year. He’s done his dash, written a mammoth story arc and once it’s finished I think he’d actually be ready to bow out. At the moment we’ve got two theories about who’ll take over-
Chris Chinball. 
More to come on this later.