The Doctor was completely on his own this week, and the results were positively chilling. And important. Safe to say, we’ve been building up to this episode for a long time.
Summary
The Doctor is teleported to a large, spoke-like castle in the middle of an ocean. He searches around and finds that there is a monster (referred to as the Veil) slowly stalking him. It corners him, and the Doctor escapes only after admitting that he’s afraid to die, causing the Veil to freeze and the castle to reorganize itself like a shifting maze. The Doctor gets cornered again, this time choosing to jump out the window and finding that the water below is populated by countless skulls. When he’s falling out of the window, he retreats to a safe “room” of sorts in his head that looks like the TARDIS console room and contains a still figure of Clara who writes questions on a chalkboard to prompt the Doctor into thinking; while doing so, he comes to the conclusion that this place has been designed to frighten him. He gets out of the water and finds that there are dry replicas of his clothes waiting in a room with a fireplace. He arrives in a courtyard, where there is a mound of earth that he is meant to dig up. As the sun sets, the Doctor notes that the stars are in the wrong position for the teleport’s supposed range. He digs until he discovers a message: the words “I am in 12.” He begins searching for Room #12.
It becomes apparent that that rooms in this castle reset themselves as soon as he leaves them. The teleport room has a skull hooked into some electrodes at the console and the word “Bird” written in sand on the floor. The Doctor has realized that the Veil freezes only when he tells a truth that no one else knows, so the next time he’s caught, he tells the thing that he ran from Gallifrey because he was scared—not bored, as he used to say. He gets to the top tower of the castle and notes that the stars reflect a sky 7,000 years in the future, but knows that the teleporter could not have cause him to travel through time. He drops the skull he found in a teleportation room into the water below. The Doctor eventually finds Room 12, but he needs to castle to shift again before he can enter, so he waits for the Veil and tells it another truth—that Gallifrey has a prophecy about a “hybrid” made up of two warrior races that will destroy Gallifrey. The Doctor admits that he knows what the hybrid is.
This opens Room 12, and the Doctor finds a large block of Azbantium—400 times stronger than diamond—blocking the way, and the word “Home” on it. He assumes that the TARDIS is on the other side. Suddenly, the Doctor realizes that the word “Bird” was a reference to a Brothers Grimm story called “The Shepherd Boy,” featuring a bird who wears away a diamond mountain with his beak over countless ages. He is quickly losing his will to continue, but Clara’s voice reaches him, telling him not to give up. As the Veil approaches, the Doctor begins punching at the Azbantium wall, destroying his own hand. The Veil burns him, destroying his ability to regenerate and causing a slow death. As he’s dying, the Doctor crawls back to the teleport room; the teleport has a copy of himself inside, just as he arrived, but it needs power to work—so the Doctor hooks himself into the teleport after drawing the word “Bird” in the sand. The Doctor replays this exact scenario over and over for billions of years, each time chipping just a tiny bit out of the Azbantium until he finally breaks through one day.
The castle turns out to be contained within his confession dial, and on the other side of the Azbantium wall… is Gallifrey. The Doctor encounters a boy, telling him to head back to the Citadel and tell them he’s returned. He also claims that the prophecies are wrong: The Hybrid is not half-Dalek, half-Time Lord. He is the Hybrid.
Commentary
Okay. So I had this pegged as the Time Lords before the episode started. Because we know we’ve been leading up to this since the 50th anniversary special, and it made sense to me that this would be the point where it occurred. (It also makes sense that a plot by the Time Lords to get the Doctor to punch through to Gallifrey would accidentally result in the death of his companion, since they are typically callous in that regard. And that’s a definite possibility, though we still don’t technically know who set the trap.) I don’t feel like the episode was going out of its way to hide their hand in the plot, either; the teleporter has a console with Gallifreyan symbols on it, and too much of the castle concerned the Doctor’s very early past.
And I’m glad that the episode didn’t set much store by the mystery, because this was an atmospheric piece if ever there was one. In that regard, it might be one of the best episodes Moffat has ever written for the show. The pacing, the setting, the music, everything was terrifying, and not because of some creepy alien conceit like we get with the Weeping Angels or the Silents. The whole plot reads like one of those “trapped in a room” video games. It’s scary because we key into that loneliness, that slow sense of foreboding.
The absence of the companion here is keenly felt because it’s clearly the central reason why the Doctor is afraid—companions provide him with the ability to bluster about importantly, to show off so he can forget how dire the situation is. Without Clara, he’s truly alone. Moffat employs a device that he’s used previously in Sherlock with the Doctor’s ability to slow time in his own mind to work things out, and the use of Clara as a voice in his head is heartbreaking but effective. The sound of her writing on the chalkboard solidifies the Doctor’s isolation, yet manages to be comforting at the same time.
Then there’s the payoff, the realization that the Doctor has gone through this endlessly, over billions of years, just to keep cracking away at a substance 400 times harder than diamonds, to break through to Gallifrey. (I actually screamed aloud to my wife “ALL THOSE SKULLS ARE HIS” at which point she started cursing emphatically at the screen.) Moffat has used fairy tales and nursery rhymes in Who before, but never has it played out so stupendously well, with such purpose. I do wonder if its use is more effective if you’ve already heard the Shepherd Boy story—for my part, as the Doctor started telling it in the montage, I got more and more excited.
This episode was the perfect way for Moffat to use all his favorite storytelling tropes and come out clean—it doesn’t matter that the Doctor keeps resetting himself by using the teleport, because the effect it has on him is still real and sickening. It’s not a cheat to get away with some neat plot. (The revelation of the slow nature of Time Lord death was especially wrenching.) The Veil as a monster is something relevant to the Doctor’s history, created especially for him, but it doesn’t need to have any purpose beyond this episode. The convenience of the confession dial works even though it only showed up at the start of the season because it was sent to Missy, making it likely that the Time Lords sent to it her to get things in motion, or that she herself is behind all of this. For the confession dial to be housing this torture chamber is exactly the sort of awful thing you would expect of the Time Lords of the classic series. It’s like Rassilon’s Tower all over again to the max.
Peter Capaldi pulls out all the stops here, and while fans may prefer to think of him as the old and crotchety New Who Doctor, what struck me through this episode was how young and raw he seemed. Like the same Time Lord who fled his home all those years ago. And to have an script that engages so well when he’s the only person talking is a feat in and of itself.
My only real concern is the hybrid storyline. The suggestion that the Doctor isn’t all Time Lord is one that has been brought up before and was semi-canonized by the terrible Doctor Who movie (which gave us nothing good aside from the blessing that is Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor)—where it was said that the Doctor was part human. Which is a suggestion I’ve always hated, mostly because it removes the touching nature of the Doctor’s relationship with humanity. It’s one thing for this weird powerful alien to look at humans and see something amazing in us as a species… if he happens to be one of us, then that affinity becomes an obvious and boring thing. This is similarly true for his renegade status among the Time Lords. It means something for the Doctor to go against his own people, but if he’s half-human (or really half-anything else), then that half of him becomes the reason behind his rebelliousness. Hopefully there’s a little more to it than that, but we won’t know until next week….
You guys, we’re going back to Gallifrey. I’m really nervous. Going back to Gallifrey never goes well.
Little echoes and highlights:
- The Doctor tells the Gallifreyan boy that he came “the long way around,” which echoes the Eleventh Doctor’s final line from the 50th anniversary special.
- The Doctor tells himself to “assume that he’s going to survive,” a tactic that Clara noted with she was talking to Missy in “The Witch’s Familiar.”
- The suggestion that the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey because he was bored is something that the Second Doctor told his companions.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is still completely freaked out by all those skulls. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I took the “half-Dalek hybrid” to be a metaphor for the Doctor, in the end, not literal.
He has a touch of the Dalek violence and hate. (But then, don’t we all? The Daleks began as a Nazi metaphor, and the Nazis were 100% human.) And he won the Time War for the Daleks, locking the Time Lords away, while the Daleks survived and multiplied in the rest of the universe.
He’s a Time Lord, but there is a touch of human in him, and a touch of Dalek, not in terms of origin, but in terms of his mind.
Note: The Doctor did not say “I am the Hybrid.” He said, “The Hybrid is Me.” Who do we know who calls herself Me, and who has already been described as a hybrid because of the alien tech in her human body that makes her immortal? It’s been pretty obvious all season that Ashildr/Me was the big central figure of the season’s arc.
I like the way the “TARDIS mind palace” scenes recontextualized the bits in “Listen” and “Before the Flood” where the Doctor monologued to the camera in the TARDIS console room. I guess now we know that those (or at least the latter) were taking place in the Doctor’s mind all along.
I saw the “Gallifrey is behind the wall” ending coming the moment we saw the word “HOME” printed on the wall. The repeated-lives ending was pretty clever, but dragging it out for billions of years was a stretch; would any system remain functional that long? Unless it was all just a simulation inside the Confession Dial. (And that’s one I didn’t get — once the Doctor realized the place was designed to extract confessions, I figured it was connected to the Dial, but I didn’t realize it was the dial, despite it being a circular castle that functioned as a clockwork mechanism.)
1) I was hoping “I am in 12” would be a reference to something (a hybrid, perhaps?) being inside the 12th Doctor…
2) I was hoping that the Veil would be waiting for the Doctor in the yard. After all, THE Doctor (by which I mean #4) met an enemy called the Valeyard, who said he was the Doctor’s final regeneration…
3) Not all visits to Gallifrey end badly; at the end of the Five Doctors (set on Gallifrey) he won the day (all five of him) and was offered the Presidency of the Council of Time Lords. Of course, he immediately slammed the TARDIS door shut and headed for the horizon. Perky Companion asked if he really intended to run away from the glory and reward, he said “Of course. After all, that’s how it all began!”
I’ve heard the Shepherd Boy tale in a few other versions. And yes, knowing how long it takes to wear down a mountain makes it even more wrenching. I’m sitting there crying and my husband was clueless.
WHAT AN AWESOME EPISODE!!! Instant classic, Capaldi outdoes himself in this episode, I tend to hate one-man shows where it’s only the Doctor, but this was AMAZING. The moment when my son realized all the skulls where the Doctor’s… we had to pick up our jaws from the floor. I really loved the fact that he counts each second, that he can feel the pressure of the atmosphere, etc, and that he calculates everything around him. He’s not improvising, even if it looks like that to us.
Doesn’t the Doctor say “The hybrid is ME.”? Don’t we have a character who’s made a very unsubtle point of calling herself ME? (Oh, Chris mentions that.) And what if it wasn’t the Time Lords who set this trap, but a future version of the Doctor, and he indirectly caused the death of Clara?
Is this the first episode that confirms that the Doctor NEEDS to eat and sleep?
As for the Doctor going through copy after copy of his own body, rebuilt in a teleporter a la Star Trek caused the question to arise in a FB group I’m in regarding if the Doctor is actually now billions of years old. I was reminded (and brought it up) of the theory that Chris has mentioned in Star Trek rewatch threads about the consciousness, the being, the “soul” of a person being held together in a quantum level, independent of the atoms that make up its body. So yes, the Doctor sort of remembers of all of this, but quite possibly in a diffuse, compressed way. A lot like Ashildr’s human brain has had to store up and recall centuries of memories.
Regarding the Doctor being half human, I don’t think they’ll really go there, they’re just teasing us.
@2 – Chris: Nice point about it maybe being just a simulation.
THE Doctor, who was SIX, is the one who encountered the Valeyard. And he turned out to be a lawyer.
6 Lisa,
I stand corrected on which Doctor met the Valeyard (but not on which one is THE Doctor).
And is being a lawyer incompatible with being an evil regeneration?
This episode was so fantastic, breathtaking, jawdropping and some other things for which no words exist. Just… wow. At one point I thought: this looks more like Terence Malick’s film than Doctor Who episode. :)
@Dr.Thanatos: If I recall “Trial of the Time Lord” correctly, the Timelady says that the Valeyard happens somewhere between Doctor’s 12 and final incarnation. Which means he may be something like the War Doctor, and since the Doctor has whole new set of regenerations, he may come between any of the future ones… the next one, the one after, the one after that… at least that’s how I understand it.
If it was real, technically the Doctor is dead and there’s only a clone left.
@5 “Sleep No More” had the Doctor saying he slept. To which Clara asked, shocked, “When?” At the end of “The Doctor’s Wife,” Rory asked where the Doctor sleeps and Amy dragged Rory off before the Doctor could answer.
@3/Dr. Thanatos: Except that the first syllable of “Valeyard” does not sound like “Veil,” but like the first syllable of “Valentine” or “valedictory.” And it was the Master who explained that “The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation.” Although, given what was revealed in “The Day of the Doctor” and “The Time of the Doctor,” that would’ve been between Tennant and Smith, so that’s kind of been skipped over. (Unless the Dream Lord was an embryonic version of the Valeyard…)
And I don’t think anyone’s ever described Tegan Jovanka as “perky” before. She was pretty much the opposite of perky.
@5/lordmagnusen: “Is this the first episode that confirms that the Doctor NEEDS to eat and sleep?”
It was established way back in the first few episodes in 1963 that there were sleeping quarters and a food machine in the TARDIS, and the only people who would’ve had need of them beforehand were the Doctor and his granddaughter. And the second-season story “The Rescue” opened with the Doctor dozed off in a chair and sleeping through a TARDIS landing.
And just two weeks ago, we saw the Doctor monologuing about what a wonderful gift sleep was.
As for the Doctor’s age, the premise used here was not mine, but rather that the Doctor’s pattern was stored in the “hard drive” and reconstituted in the same state each time. So physically and mentally, he hasn’t aged more than the few days or weeks he spent in the castle in each iteration. Whether there’s any continuity of self is not addressed by the episode.
We’ve seen him sleep and eat before, but he never actually said he needed it. The sleep speech could be a sign in that direction, though, but he was talking to humans, not necessarily about himself.
@11 The episode does rather obliquely address it. Note that moment where he claims to ‘remember’ everything.
@11 To be fair, the First Doctor was sometimes “asleep” in order to give William Hartnell the occasional day or days off–this being a time when there were 40 episodes a season. I seem to remember that in “The Keys of Marinus,” the Doctor spent one episode apparently unconscious on a cot–when actually, it was just some pillows with a pair of shoes sticking out while Hartnell was on vacation.
10 Christopher,
Having never seen #6 (except one episode where Ace punched out a Dalek) I can’t speak to the British pronunciation; I had presumed Vale-yard rather than Val-yard. Nevertheless given which regeneration we’re in it seemed like fertile soil in which to plant my whacky theory.
And compared to Turlough, the stewardess (Tegan?) seemed downright manic…
So much has changed since in the concept of regeneration since corpse-Master said something about “the end of my 12 regenerations” to #4 in “Keeper of Traken” (by the way a nifty Silmarillion crossover…) that holding the concept of the Valeyard to exactly between 12 and 13 seems difficult…
@9 A difference which makes no difference is no difference.
I’ve come to loathe all forms of the argument that teleports are murder-and-clone machines, in all science fiction properties, it is an argument that presumes so much and ignores so much too.
@14/Dr. Thanatos: Tegan was energetic, sure, but in an angry, sarcastic, and irritable way. She probably would’ve been the flight attendant from hell.
And the 12-regeneration (13-incarnation) limit was introduced in the previous Master story, “The Deadly Assassin.” The Master’s motive in that story was to gain a new regeneration cycle to stave off death — something that, according to that episode, would require destroying half the universe to achieve, although subsequent stories including “The Five Doctors” and “The Time of the Doctor” have treated it as a rather easier operation. (Maybe it depends on whether it’s done with or without the permission of the High Council.)
Whether he actually remembers doing it however many times, he knows he had to have done over 2 billion years to break through the wall. He knows all those skulls were his and the sand etc. I’d think that’s traumatic enough.
@15 This case is different though because it’s not a murder-and-clone machine. It’d be just a clone machine. If the Doctor could have found a different energy source, then there’d have been nothing stopping him from duplicating himself without dying in the process.
@17 I kept expecting the falling skull to bounce off skulls just below the waterline. I mean, depending on how long each loop was, there could be hundreds of billions of skulls.
@18/noblehunter: To the first point, the scenario was probably designed so that there was no other energy source available. In fact, even as presented, it violates conservation of energy, because he’s only burning up a portion of his old body (leaving the skull intact) to create a complete new one. Also, the premise is that the room resets to the way it was when the Doctor first arrived, so an extra Doctor would’ve been erased by the reset.
And skulls aren’t indestructible. Eventually, the older skulls would be crushed by the weight of the newer skulls above them and eventually wear away to dust.
Only issue I have:
If the rooms revert back to their original state as soon as the Doctor leaves them, how did he break through the wall? He’d just be punching it for the first time…forever. Am I just being incredibly dense?
@10 ChristopherLBennett: Oh, it was the Master, right, sorry, haven’t seen the Trial for a long time. But still: that “Between 12 and last incarnation” wasn’t skipped over, it can still happen anywhere in Doctor’s future. I think it indicates that the Trial takes place in the future – after Gallifrey is saved – which explains why Valeyard doesn’t seem to recognize Master – maybe he is so used to him being Missy by that time… I mean: the last incarnation doesn’t necessarily mean “the last in this set of regenerations”, if we already know Doctor has the whole new set. It makes perfect sense to me now. I just don’t get – how could’ve it made sense back then when The Trial of a Time Lord was created?
Is there anybody who knows the strength of skulls and wants to do the math? How tall can a pile of skulls get before it collapses under its own weight? Or maybe the reset field resets out into the water so skulls above a certain depth get erased.
ETA: Tonight on Mythbusters: the creepiest pyramid you’ve ever seen.
@14 DrThanatos
Now you’re thinking of Seven, Sylvester McCoy, who traveled with Ace.
The Valeyard only appeared with Six, Colin Baker, in Trial of a Timelord, Trial of the Valeyard, and The Last Adventure. (Though the Valeyard is also in the Unbound adventure He Jests at Scars…)
And since Valeyard is actually a made-up word, the question isn’t “British pronunciation,” but “pronunciation,” which not “Veil-yard” but (as in Valve) Valeyard. Though Six has enormous fun coming up with different names for the character.
@21 Tessuna
It seemed unlikely that the Doctor Who would make it to 13 actors at the time, so the implication was supposed to be that he was either Doctor 13 or a Watcher-type entity between Doctor 12 and 13, but that this many regenerations wouldn’t happen for ages if at all, so ‘why worry about it?’
@20/Mesm3r: Presumably the wall was the one part of the castle that didn’t reset. Presumably the Time Lords set it up that way so there was a way out of the Dial.
@21/Tessuna: But the point is, although we think of Capaldi as “the Twelfth Doctor” because he’s the 12th actor to play the role as a series regular, “The Time of the Doctor” revealed that the War Doctor was actually the ninth incarnation, Eccleston was tenth, Tennant was both eleventh and twelfth (because of his Metacrisis regeneration where he interrupted it before he could change), and Smith was thirteenth. That’s why he needed a new regeneration cycle from the Time Lords in order to live on and become Capaldi. And remember — in the original timeline, the Doctor died at Trenzalore. Clara convincing the Time Lords to give him a new cycle changed history. So there’s no way the Master in “Trial of a Time Lord” could’ve known that the Doctor’s future would be altered.
I hope the Hybrid isn’t Ashildr/Me. If so, it would mean this would be an awesome story in service of one of the most poorly-written plot devices there is. I also hope it’s not the Doctor, because that would be silly (also, it seems a little funny that the Doctor lives billions of lives to avoid giving up that bit of information, and then shouts it as soon as he’s on Gallifrey… I can only imagine it’s because he’s now free to lie). Maybe he says it’s “Me” and means Ashildr, but only so the Time Lords bring Ashildr to him so he can make her help him and atone for her part in Clara’s death. That wouldn’t be so bad, but it still leaves the question of who the Hybrid actually is.
My wild, out of nowhere guess that’s almost certain to be wrong?
The Hybrid is his granddaughter, Susan. After all, the Doctor didn’t flee alone. What if he took her from Gallifrey because he knew of the prophecy, and that others knew of the prophecy, and that they’d try to use her if they ever put it together. The Doctor’s son/daughter married a human at one point, and had a child who really WAS a half-human Hybrid. The Doctor took her until she was ready to find her own destiny, and in order to still protect her, keeps tossing around hints to people that maybe he’s the Hybrid.
Dang, posted something and it’s not here. Guess it got eaten.
OK, on the “I’m just me” theme, we’ve actually seen three different uses of it (that I’ve noticed) so far this season by three different characters.
1) Ashildr: For her, it represents her loss of identity not just as Ashildr but of her identity as a person who belongs to a community or who has compassion or empathy for others. She’s “just me” because she doesn’t care how people around her may try to connect to her.
2) Osgood: Osgood is at the opposite end of the scale. She’s “just me” because she rejects any attempt to limit the people or community she can belong to. She identifies with both human and Zygon and rejects any effort to make her reject one or the other.
3) The Doctor: For the Doctor, the name he has chosen is about what he is trying to be, the limits and expectations he has for himself. When he tells Ashildr she won’t be dealing with the Doctor, “just me,” he is talking about discarding those self-imposed, moral limits.
So, Ashildr’s “just me” is about rejecting community. Osgood’s is about expanding community. The Doctor’s is about how he will choose to relate to community (with some scary implications about where that might lead).
Ashildr/Me is the Doctor’s Mum. There, hybrids all over.
The problem with this episode is that the rules are never made clear. If the rooms get reset after a while, how has Clara’s portrait got so old? Why would the bodies of the Doctor disappear but not his skulls? How does the Doctor know the azbantium is not being restored with the rest? In fact, if the word “Home” disappears everytime the Doctors enter the room, how is this room not being reset? Why are there two spades and two sets of the Doctor’s clothes (which mean that the first time the Doctor did all that, it was in his underwear), when they should have disappeared with the rest? This make it difficult to decide who left the clues there (apart from “bird”), and thus the point of the prison. If the Time Lords created the dial with the message “I am in 12”, it means they wanted the Doctor to find Gallifrey. So why would they block it with a 30 feet wall of azbantium? According to him, he’s supposed to confess it away like the other walls, but even if no other confession would do it, what do they gain by killing him before he chose to confess? And if it’s the Doctor who set up the clues, why is the message left in such an inconvenient place? Then if the place is really about getting the Doctor’s confessions, why are there things like a picture of Clara, but nothing more useful for guiding the interrogation toward the Hybrid?
Apart from that, it really is a great episode. It starts with “I will never, ever stop”, which takes a completely different meaning on a second watch (same for “How long will I have to be here? Forever?”, followed by some feeling of déjà vu from the Doctor). Then you have the credits, with only one name, increasing the feeling of loneliness. As often with Moffat, lots of great lines: “Clearly you can’t make an actual psychic link with a door, for one very obvious reason – they’re notoriously cross.” “If they’re gonna threaten you with death, show them who’s boss. Die faster!”, “Imagine you’ve already survived” (hundred thousands of times actually), “Am I spoiling the magic? I work at this stuff, you know?” “What would you do? – Same as you. – Yes, yes of course you would. Which, let’s be honest, is what killed you”. And of course the best one: the Doctor’s version of The Shepherd’s Boy; it is so much like the Doctor that the two things that keep him going are Clara’s encouragements, and his need to finish his boast.
Seeing the Doctor on the verge of giving up (twice) was very powerful, especially when we see him going on hundreds billion times after that. At first, it seemed like a clever plan, as however long it lasts, the Doctor only has to do it once. But then you realise what he means when he says he remembers the third time he gets into the mind TARDIS. Like Rory, who as a human remembers the life an Auton version of him had in another universe, the copies of the Doctor remembers everything from his past copies. So even though he is always reliving thode days as the days after Clara died and these events are always fresh in his mind, he also remembers the thousands times he died and agonized for 36 hours (in that order: the wonders of Time Lord biology), and can perfectly imagine the hundred billion times more he’ll have to do so again.
@18: I wonder whether the mountain of skulls that’s filling the ocean after a few million years would be as good at cushioning his fall?
@19: When you have time travel technology, you don’t care about conservation of energy.
@25: it doesn’t seem like he’s talking to the High Council here, in which case he’s addressing a specific person. I hope so, because there are still many unanswered questions about the confession dial, and otherwise they will probably stay unanswered.
I thought the skulls might have been the skulls of all the people he wasn’t able to save, and the creature an aspect of himself demanding confession.
Looking forward to the next episode and post!
@24 ChristopherLBennett: My point is, Master in the ToTTL must have known the Doctor after Trenzalore. After the original timeline was changed. (If the Doctor can meet his other incarnations, why not other Masters? Now, an episode about two (or more) Masters, that would be someting… :) ) If he knows Valeyard – and Valeyard is still in Doctors future – it means that in the future Doctor will meet this version of Master. I know that the Tennant’s Doctor was the 12. incarnation. But if he got the new cycle – I suppose it means new 12 regenerations – then he may become the Valeyard any time between 12. and 26.
I hope this makes at least some sense even with my bad english. Not so sure about tenses – and when it comes to timetravelling, sometimes I could use one of those made up by Douglas Adams (in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, I think).
When he said he was the Hybrid my first thought went back to “Into the Dalek,” when he was told “You are a good Dalek.”
@30/Tessuna: But the Master from that earlier version of the timeline couldn’t have known the Doctor from an altered version of the timeline, because that change hadn’t happened yet. (Or, metatextually speaking, because the writers wouldn’t have known that it was going to happen.) Think about it. The Matt Smith Doctor was aware of his tomb on Trenzalore, so he must have seen the future of the timeline in which he died there — and not the future of the altered timeline in which he lived and regenerated into Capaldi. Therefore, a Time Lord traveling into the future of the Siege of Trenzalore would have seen the original timeline where the Doctor died and would have no idea that it would be changed.
Also, obviously the current or future Doctor is not going to be able to meet the Anthony Ainley Master, unless it’s in a book or comic, because Ainley died 11 years ago.
@32 ChristopherLBennett: Metatextually speaking, of course writers back then didn’t know what is going to happen. But I still think that for present – or future – writers the way Master frazed it (between 12. and last, not 12. and 13.) leaves a possibility. Also, in The Day of the Doctor we’ve seen all the Doctors, so – nothing is really impossible. And the Trenzalore thing… I just think of it like this: since the moment future was altered, it was always going to be this future. The original timeline never actually happened. Or it exists as an alternative reality. Sometimes I’m really not sure how the timetravelling paradoxes work in Whoniverse, because of their general wibbly-wobblyness, so maybe I’m wrong.
Can’t they cast another actor and say it’s the same Ainley regeneration?
@33/Tessuna: “Also, in The Day of the Doctor we’ve seen all the Doctors…”
But the Valeyard is not described as an incarnation of the Doctor per se. He’s “an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature.” That suggests some kind of being that split off from the Doctor, like the Watcher or the Metacrisis Tenth. We didn’t see those two in “The Day of the Doctor” either.
@34/lordmagnusen: The only times we’ve seen the same incarnation of a Time Lord played by two different actors were Richard Hurndall playing the First Doctor in “The Five Doctors” (and John Guilor dubbing his voice in “The Day of the Doctor”) and Peter Pratt taking over from Geoffrey Beevers as the decayed, walking-dead Master in “The Keeper of Traken” (but both actors were hidden under heavy makeup so that the change wouldn’t be as evident). I suppose it’s not out of the question, but part of the point of the Ainley Master was that he’d taken over the body and wore the face of Nyssa’s father (who was coincidentally named Tremas, an anagram of Master). Giving him a different face and voice wouldn’t seem quite right. Not unless there was a very good reason to bring back that particular Master. And I’m not sure it would be a desirable prospect to find an Ainley imitator just to satisfy continuity-nut fans’ preoccupation with the niceties of the Valeyard issue. Doctor Who continuity has always been mutable; if Moffat or his successor did want to do a Valeyard story, they’d no doubt retcon the facts and rules to fit their story just as DW creators have always done.
@35: Well, I think it would be interesting to have one season where a young woman helps a Time Lord in a blue box to stop an alien invasion, and progressively realise that the Valeyard is in fact not a good guy and she has to stop him. The Valeyard is not very interesting as an antagonist (there is the Master for that), but I do think it could work (for a short time) with him as the protagonist.
@35: By mentionig The Day of the Doctor I actually meant the use of archive footage, which could also bring Master back. Or, what lordmagnusen said. Continuity-nut fan preoccupied with the niceties of the Valeyard issue – that’s me, and I’m proud of it! What else is there to do on long winter evenings than to create wild speculations about classic Doctor Who episodes, right? :)
@36: Yes, I like this idea! :)
Back to the current episode – the skulls, room-resetings and other stuff didn’t bother me, because I felt it was all sort of virtual reality (almost like a Matrix – it might even be the same Timelord technology) – a world with it’s own rules, and those rules were what they needed to be so this story could happen. It was more like a fairy-tale logic than sci-fi logic, and I don’t feel the slightest need to explain it all.
I knew I heard of The Shepherd boy somewhere (else than the original book), and finally I figured out where: Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men.
@37/Tessuna: “What else is there to do on long winter evenings than to create wild speculations about classic Doctor Who episodes, right? :)”
If you’re a fan, sure. If you’re actually producing the TV show, there are better things to focus on. Although Moffat’s approach to writing Doctor Who (or Sherlock) is pretty much canonical fanfiction as it is. Which is perhaps its biggest problem. As I’ve said before, this has ceased to be a show about the Doctor exploring the universe and has become a show about the universe obsessing over the Doctor.
If we are going to use archival footage to bring back a classic Master, can I suggest Roger Delgado? I always thought that he was seriously way more sinister than Ainsley.
I’ve actually always been more curious about the incarnations of the Master we didn’t see. “The Deadly Assassin” established that the Master had used up all twelve regenerations and was seeking a way to escape death. But up to that point, we’d only seen one incarnation, Delgado. So what were the other twelve Masters like? I’m rather fond of the theory that the War Chief in “The War Games” — an evil renegade Time Lord — was actually an incarnation of the Master. But that still leaves another eleven unaccounted for.
@38: Well, I was talking about myself, not Moffat… and I remember what you’ve said before, couldn’t agree more. Actually I think Moffat’s approach to writing was part of the reason why I started to write some fanfiction of my own – and it’s all about the Doctor exploring the universe, because that’s what I miss in the show. But to be fair: this episode was all about the Doctor, and written by Moffat, and I loved it.
@39: I also like Delgado’s Master more, but we were talking about Trial of the Time Lord, and Ainley’s Master is the one in it.
I like this episode. It has a few plot holes but I have noticed things like that are unavoidable. I felt the dying and regeneration in the box was an interesting kind of punishment.
@41/Tessuna: I’m certainly not saying Moffat writes badly about the Doctor; he often does so marvelously. I just wish every single one of his major story arcs didn’t somehow involve someone’s reaction to the Doctor’s existence or some consequence of his actions.
Speaking of The Trial of a Time Lord, didn’t Colin Baker’s Doctor indignantly tell the Time Lords yet another supposed reason he left Gallifrey, in order to fight corruption in the universe? (“I should have stayed HERE!”)
Also, just thinking out loud on the “hybrid is me” thread: there is one other being (well, two actually) we’ve seen this season that refer to themselves as “me” and that’s both Osgoods. Not that I seriously think Osgood could possibly be the hybrid that Moffat is unleashing on the Whoniverse, but it’s no better or worse than the idea that it could be Ashildr,
@44/richf: The Doctor’s actual line was, “In all my travellings throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here!” Which was more a rhetorical device than anything else. He didn’t actually say he left in order to fight corruption, and it’s pretty clear that he didn’t. Early on, the First Doctor was not heroic at all, but was selfish and amoral. (Indeed, in one version of the original premise, he was going to turn out to be the villain, essentially.) It was only through his eventual bonding with Ian and Barbara, and through their own example of heroism, that he became more selfless.
Although, of course, “Remembrance of the Daleks” established that the Doctor took the Hand of Omega with him when he left Gallifrey, and hid it on Earth in 1963. So he did have some purpose other than boredom for leaving.
(Sorry for the small text — the formatting came through from where I copied the quote, and I don’t know how to fix it.)
Partly @@@@@ 40 but also others: I like the idea that they could do all the things the master knew about the Doctor’s future being seen by one of the regeneration’s we never meet leaving no need for recasting!
Also can you please stop saying that the Doctor was cloning himself he bought back a past version of himself like he did in ‘The Impossible Astronaut’!
Also I know you’re all going to be like why are you commenting on last weeks when this weeks has come out, well I accidentally discovered this when looking for whonthe boy the Doctor gave the message to was at the end of ‘Heaven Sent’ and hoped he might make an appearance in this weeks but as he didn’t if you happen to know could you reply I recognise him from something else and its bugging me what!
PS: If I got any facts wrong about the original series’ I’m not actually old enough to have seen more than the odd episode so I’m just saying it from what I’ve read on here and previously! So apologies to any experts who spot I’ve got something wrong!
Sorry just realised how much I’ve said I could go on for hours none of my family care enough to listen for hours so when I get the opportunity to I just go on! And here I am again!
@35 – Christopher, you got Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers mixed up – Pratt was the first dessicated-Master in “Deadly Assassin” and Beevers replaced him for “Keeper of Traken” (and then of course, in several Big Finish audioplays later on)
@46/SarahAG16: The Doctor was neither cloning himself nor bringing back a past self through time travel. Rather, his pattern was stored in the transmat buffer, and the transmat kept materializing new, identical copies of him as he existed at the moment he was teleported there. I believe he actually likened it to a 3D printer making multiple copies from the same template. That’s pretty much exactly right, except it could only make one at a time using the energy from the previous one’s destruction. (Although that wouldn’t work as a closed cycle, because it would be a perpetual motion machine. There would have to be an external source of energy to replenish the losses in the system.)
@32: This is not incoherent with the timey-wimeyness of the show. At the end of The Day of the Doctor, it is established that the Doctor will die at Trenzilor (although no viewer believes that of course). Yet he is visited by a version of him from the far future, a version that can’t exist in this timeline since he’s out of regenerations. It’s also a version that will never exist in the show, since it is highly unlikely that Tom Baker will ever take back the role for even one entire episode. Considering that, we can say that in a possible future, the Valeyard is created between the penultimate and the last regeneration of the second cycle, and goes back to season 23, where he’s not even a possibility yet. So that doesn’t mean that this version of the Valeyard will ever exist or that there has to be one even if played by a different actor between the last two regenerations, but it is not incoherent to consider that the Valeyard comes from the second cycle of regenerations.
@49/Athreeren: Yeah, that’s a fair point — although the Tom Baker “Curator” appearance was a pretty blatant bit of fanservice and how it’s justifiable in-universe is kind of beside the point. It’s not necessarily something the show will ever follow up on or acknowledge.
And the question of the Valeyard’s origin is moot unless Moffat or some successor of his actually decides to do something with the character again. If they wait another eleven regenerations to show his origin, then it’ll be our grandkids debating it on the interplanetary Web through their neural links, and it’ll be irrelevant to us in the foreseeable future. Conversely, if they feature the character in the foreseeable future, it seems more likely to me that they’ll either flash back and explain how he was already created, or ignore the Master’s line and come up with a way for him to be created as an offshoot of the current Doctor (whoever that will be at the time). So the whole “end of the second cycle” notion feels rather academic.
Late to this particular party, but… did anyone else get a vibe from this episode similar to Patrick McGoohan’s THE PRISONER series?
This reminded me of the SF short story “Been a Long, Long Time” by R. A. Lafferty (1970). It employed a similar “clock”, a block of dressed granite one cubit parsec in size, that was worn down by a bird that sharpened its beak on it every thousand years.
Both it and this episode obviously borrowed the same clock concept from the Brother Grimm tale “The Shepherd Boy”.