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-
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