So, Christmas Doctor Who happened.
As usual, my brain was COMPLETELY TAKEN OVER with DW-related thoughts for pretty much the whole of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. This year I thought I might keep them here for posterity. So:
My first thoughts, as ever, run to parallels. I LOVE PARALLELS. I think I have an addiction. Anyway, there are so many parallels between this ep and A Christmas Carol (a frozen woman, a grumpy old man who wants to ruin Christmas because of his Lonely Childhood, a man who lives high up in a tower and initially refuses to help those who explicitly beg for it, mention of FISH (which are always metaphors for PEOPLE), frozen time represented as ice, memories re-written, a steampunk aesthetic….) lots of deliberate references, I think. Hopefully this means this ep is going to be as significant for the forthcoming series as ACC was for S6.
But the parallels make it very easy to spot the differences. Obviously the Doctor’s whole demeanour is different here – the circumstances have changed. Last time he was celebrating a wedding, this time he’s in mourning. The differences in the ways the Doctor deals with Kazran and Simeon, I think are particularly interesting - he takes the time to rewrite K's whole life to make him better. He doesn't even bother with S, he just mindwipes him. Given that both K and S are intended as mirrors for the Doctor, this surely has deeper meaning - the Doctor is a lot less forgiving of himself, now? It also reminded me of the way he treated Solomon in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, and the way he initially treated the other doctor in Mercy - he recognises his mirrors now, and doesn't like them very much…Poor Doctor. He needs to start learning to recognise the POSITIVE mirrors too. Clara is one. 'Clara' = 'light', 'clarity', 'fame' - Clara will help the Doctor see clearly again? He needs more than those round glasses. Looking through Amy's glasses he's just looking into his past. He needs someone to illuminate his present again. Surely ‘Oswin’, ‘God’s friend’ will help with this? And if my theory (one of them) that she is somehow one person split and splintered throughout time, then surely *he* will help fix *her* and make her whole again, which is what doctors do. He is 'here to help'.
On the subject of Clara and parallels, I've seen several people point out how Clara was working at the Rose and Crown, and she wears a rose in her hair as Dalek!Oswin, and there's a rose engraved on her gravestone - she is very like Rose here, the perky, peppy, curious girl who meets a tired, grumpy old man who wants nothing to do with the human race, and manages to convince him to see the wonder in the universe again.
She is, of course, also Martha - the first companion to join the Doctor after his best friend was sucked away into nothingness before his eyes (there are very clear visual parallels between Rose in Doomsday and Amy in Angels) - and is super-smart enough to deal.
She is Donna, in Partners of Crime - sees something weird going on, marches out to investigate! No sitting back and letting things happen for HER. She even manages to steamroller the Doctor into submission via gesticulating through a window. Also I suspect she may well get to be The Most Important Person ( / People?!) In Creation (tm) at some point on or before the 50th anniversary.
And she is Amy - with her magical brain and magical tears and impossible life that Doesn’t Make Any Sense and her penchant for dressing up.
She is Rory, with her multiple deaths and rebirths, and the duality of her nature (nurse/warrior - barmaid/governess).
She is River, with her hyper-competence and flirtyness, and in fact her whole demeanour. Like River, her life is a timey-wimey mystery just tantalisingly beyond the Doctor's grasp, and she may or may not have been created by a higher power for a purpose...
She is Jack, as we've already seen her live in the past and in the future, and she likes to dress up and play other people. (she's a con artist!)
And she is Micky - computer whizz, hacker extraordinaire.
As the 50th Anniversary Companion, she should be the sort of 'archetypal' companion. So she should represent all the things they've ever been, as much as you can fit them in one person. She's an individual but also maybe a symbol of what that role is all about, as well as being a refreshingly old skool trope – the super-clever companion! We haven’t had one of those in New Who yet (River doesn’t count. She is not a ‘full time’ companion - River is a whole category to herself!)
I think it will be very interesting to see what job presentday!Clara has, because the Companions' jobs have usually been significant in some way - there was Donna's whole issue with being a 'temp', and that reflecting how she felt about herself (which was tragically ironic at the end, when all the wonderful character arc she went through in S4 turned out to be temporary...); there was Martha, the doctor-in-training, who restarted both the Doctor's hearts in her first 2 eps, and brought him back to life post-Rose; Rose was, of course, a shop assistant - and therefore in the later mythology of the show, 'here to help' - first the Doctor, and then she went on to dedicate her life to rebuilding TW and helping the whole of her new world. Rory is a nurse, with all of the nurturing, healing power that implies, Mickey is a mechanic, which is good because he ended up with the job of helping to rebuild a world. River is an archaeologist, who spends much of her life uncovering the mysteries in her own history, and she's also a professor - she has a lot to teach the Doctor. Jack is initially a con-man, which...well, that one doesn't really need explaining. And Amy! Amy goes through lots of jobs, but settles on being a storyteller, in charge of finding herself and others, and saving the world through the magic of words. Though of course, when we meet her, she's a kissogram (who has been known to bite people) in disguise as a police officer....it's no wonder she shares motherhood of her child with the Tardis. So much foreshadowing.
And Clara? We will see! So far she's been a 'Junior entertainment manager', a barmaid and a governess. The Governess part is easy - not only is she channelling Mary Poppins (continuing the Moff's quest to INCLUDE ALL THE BRITISH ICONS EVER in his show) but she is a *teacher*, in charge of caring for (unruly?) children. The perfect person to take the Doctor in hand - she DOES teach him things in this episode, and she helps him return from being a crochety old man to a delighted kid. A Governess. perfect. Barmaid...the opposite of Governess. Someone who serves people something that makes them release their inhibitions, talk more freely. Looking at you again, Doctor. She is also not ashamed of her working class roots, the way Rose sometimes was (‘I work in a shop!’) but also not afraid to aim for something other than what is expected of her. Junior Entertainment Manager - ie. Highly Technical Person In Charge Of Fun On Long Journeys! Also sounds familiar, n'est pas?
At the moment she is rather like a set of Russian dolls - there is CLARA OSWIN OSWALD, who breaks down into Victorian Clara, Modern Clara, and Future Oswin. Victorian Clara is a barmaid and a governess, and the governess even has a 'secret voice'. Oswin is a human and a Dalek. Modern Clara....is a mystery. So many doubles….
It’s all about duality, as ever. Moffat’s favourite theme - snow is both a solid and a liquid, and we encounter both Clara AND Oswin in places covered in snow (Oswin = an anagram of ‘I snow’ ! Takes one to snow one I guess…sorry.) Oswin is a human and a Dalek. (The monsters and the Doctor - you can't have one without the other. The same goes for Oswin) Clara is a barmaid and a governess. The Doctor loses his new companion to Death just as he learns to Love her; she falls down to earth in the very moment he invites her to join him up in the stars. Her death inspires him to look for her life. There are two children, two governesses, everything is a mirror, as we've known for a very long time. The Doctor sees himself in a mirror, again. Everything - once again - is doubled. Last time, in S6, it was predicted that the endless doubling was foreshadowing some sort of parallel world situation, and this turned out to be pretty accurate. So what is this lot of doubling leading to? Two Doctors? (please please please…) Two planets? Earth and Gallifrey? If Clara is not a time-spliced, fobwatched Romana in some form (my previous crack theory), perhaps she will at least get to live out Ace's intended storyline, the last unfinished business of Classic Who, and Gallifrey will come back - better than before, as I have already discussed here - and she will end up there, studying at the Academy, or even founding it. As well as being the most beautiful nod to Classic Who, it would be the perfect way for Clara to stop travelling with the Doctor without it being another epic GOODBYE FOREVER parting, which would just undo all the emo-angst she is supposed to have fixed. Speaking of fixing, that’s what I think all this duality is about - it's about bringing different parts together into a whole, rather than doubling and split realities. It’s about making something splintered WHOLE again - both Clara (in all her forms) and the Doctor, and in the process probably the Universe/Time/Gallifrey. And maybe we’ll have two Doctors…
….though I'm still holding out for three! (Nine, please come back, I love you.) As we know there are actually at least 3 Claras – a magic fairytale number, and a holy trinity! A holy Trinity of girls who are all one girl, who die and are reborn, who are bringers of Light and who save the Doctor and come from humble beginnings but go on to be saviours. Christmas is a very apt symbol. I talked before about how I thought the repeated references to eggs/lightbulbs/Christmas were foreshadowing New Gallifrey, but they are also foreshadowing Clara.
In fact, the Power of Three theme (cunningly introduced in season 7a!) is pretty strong in this ep – now I think about it there are actually THREE of most things in the ep - 3 friends of the Doctor (Vastra, Jenny and Strax), 3 governesses, if you count the one in the daughter's dream (and you should ALWAYS count dreams, dreams are very important), 3 men who have distanced themselves from the world (Doctor, Simeon, Latimer), 3 children if you include young Simeon, 3 villains (the snowmen, the ice nanny and Simeon - all united by the Great Intelligence, an unholy Trinity...), 3 worlds - the heaven of the Tardis, Earth on the ground, and the hell beneath the ice where Governess 1 died (ok maybe that's stretching it a bit...) This Clara actually has 3 lives - 'sweet little Clara' the barmaid, 'Miss Montague' the governess, and Clara Oswin Oswald the adventurer, the woman who sought out the Doctor and ran after him and passed his test and generally acted in a manner befitting neither a Victorian barmaid nor a Victorian governess. She ran after him and hunted him down, like Donna in Partners in Crime (Donna, who turned out to be ‘the most important woman in all creation’…)
The power of 3...we learned all about duality and the power of doubles in seasons 5 and 6, and this culminated in various parallel worlds being created and destroyed, and, ultimately, in 2 couples finding their life partners. They also had 2 lives - River had her days in prison and her nights with the Doctor, whilst Amy and Rory had 'real life' and 'Doctor life' - lots of binaries, and lots of FALSE binaries also. In the end though, Amy and Rory found a 3rd way to live - a 'real life' but outside of their time, so it was still something of an adventure. Maybe there are more than two choices after all. Maybe we're now moving on to the most fairytale of numbers? 3 Fates, 3 wishes, 3 Wise Men....the number is important in mythology, fairy tales and religion. (DW is a fairy tale with 50 years of mythology and fans with an almost religious devotion) Clara, (whose name means Light) who the doctor met - properly, face to face - for the first time at Christmas, and who will return at Easter (eggs) has already Died So That Others Might Live and come back to life - a theme in religion, obviously, but also in myths and fairytales. (and DW - see The Doctor's Daughter, and the Library, and of course any time the Doctor has regenerated whilst saving a life). She seems to be loosely associated with roses, as I mentioned above (the same way Amy was loosely associated with apples and all they represented) - Roses are, appropriately, symbols of Christ in Christian tradition, and are also a very common fairytale motif. Most obviously, they represent Love, which is often a force used to bring people back from the edge of destruction in DW (and in stories in general.) Perhaps Clara-Oswin will be the one to CREATE New Gallifrey, build a kingdom of heaven etc etc.....
But roses are dangerous. Beauty, appealing symmetry - these are accompanied by thorns, and by layer upon layer of petals which can conceal secrets. So many layers of petals, so many Russian dolls, so many mysteries surrounding her. Is she dangerous? Does she know it if she is? Clara WHO? We speculate, yet we still know so little about her.
We know she has already heard the Call To Adventure and set out on her Quest, has been tested with riddles by Vastra, and been found worthy, and has rescued the princess in the tower (the Doctor) - but who is she? What is the Name of this rose? Is she Mary Poppins? Is she Belle (a character also associated with roses), who will save the Beast (Below) ? Is she Clara from the Nutcracker? Is she Pinocchio?
To elaborate on that last one - the whole puppetry/Punch and Judy thing in this episode – besides being representing the Trickster archetype, this continues the dominant theme of S5 & 6 actually, of people being physically or mentally controlled (the Great Intelligence does this too) – perhaps there is some sort of great intelligence behind everything, manipulating the Doctor the way the Master was manipulated? Is Clara an unknowing Time Lord puppet, who has become a Real Girl? Deposited throughout time and space with some sort of inbuilt chameleon circuit to help her blend in ….which she has naturally managed to override or break, just like the Doctor’s Tardis (how else could she be a barmaid AND a governess?)
elisi and lonewytch have concocted a fabulous theory that Clara-Oswin is some sort of Time Lord ‘egg’ or seed, planted throughout time and space to help resurrect Gallifrey. She is the ‘blueprint’ for the Time Lord planet, just as the Ice Nanny was the blueprint for the Great Intelligence. Eggs, seeds, containing all the information needed to create new life…I approve of this theory, not least because it sits nicely with my last epic ramble about New Gallifrey, but also because the Tardis stairs connecting Clara to the Doctor and the Tardis look like a strip of DNA….and she was born on the show’s birthday. Initially I thought perhaps she was splintered throughout time because of some cataclysmic event happening on the moment of her birth (see – the Ponds’ wedding date), but perhaps her birthday is important because she will bring about the birth of New Gallifrey. (unconnected - but the first time the Doctor mentioned Gallifrey after the Time War, he was on New Earth. Perhaps somehow he knows that New Gallifrey is possible)
Or perhaps she is supposed to help the Doctor remember something? In S5, the Doctor had to make Amy *remember*, so she could bring him back into existence. It was the last thing he said to her before he went to his (supposed) death in the Pandorica. 'Run you clever boy…and remember' - twice now, Oswin has said that to him before her supposed death. Is she some sort of aide-memoirs for him? Is she (sorry, this is a cheesy image) going to be his 'eureka' moment, when the metaphorical lightbulb goes on over his head? The Tardis bulb needs replacing, River said so in Manhattan…Is Clara the replacement bulb? Perhaps, by stripping the Doctor of his Name - a process she has already begun - she will remind him that he was once more than just a Name. He was a rebel! But without the authority of Gallifrey, he has nothing really to rebel from….sorry, this got away from the point somewhat.
Perhaps Oswin will dream Gallifrey into existence. If she can remember it….doesn't Simeon talk about the dream outliving the dreamer? And that, in turn links back to one of my favourite scenes of the whole show: 'what if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if one day our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us. The time of Angels.' The Time Of Angels...the Doctor is an Angel, and has been (in Moffat's writing) since Girl in the Fireplace ('lonely Angel..). Oswin, 'God's friend', is surely also an angel? The time of angels maybe is their time, the time of the Doctor and Oswin and their dreams that no longer need them.
Speaking of which - I read some very interesting meta by ibishtar about how Oswin is a metaphor for DW, the tv show. My summary would be a poor substitute for original brilliant essay, which can be read here She makes lots of really brilliant points, and it made me reinforce some thoughts I've always had about Amy Pond. (this is a bit of a digression). DW Companions have always represented 'the viewer', but I have thought since early in S5 that Amy represents FANDOM specifically: she something of an outsider, and is introduced to the Doctor as a child, and grows up dreaming of time and space, making up stories about him, dressing up, making models and art - she's a fangirl! She drags Rory into her fandom, and when she grows up, she has, as I have already mentioned, 2 lives - 'doctor life' and 'real life', which she tries to keep separate (and in particular her 'doctor life' is a secret in her real life, whilst the Doctor does actually know something of her 'real life') just as many fans have their fannish and RL circles. 'If something can be remembered it can come back' - Amy remembered the Doctor back into existence, just as fandom's collective memory is ultimately responsible for bringing the show back to life in 2005. The show would never have come back without the fandom.
Just as most hardcore fans of this epic tv show whose convoluted cannon spans 50 years and multiple formats, Amy and Rory grapple with multiple, contradictory lives/memories (/plot lines) that don't make any sense. Does it bother them? No! They pick their own canon. They know it's all there, but they choose the memories that make the most sense, whilst acknowledging the existence of the others, just as fans often handwave dodgy bits of story. Moffat, the fanboy who is living the dream of RUNNING his own fandom, is as big a fanboy nerd as they come - he LOVES his geeky facts and obscure references and nostalgia trips. But he knows that the Show must go on, and if its too weighted down by the knots and tangles in its mythology it's going to die a death - so he writes that things 'fell into a crack in time', or that things are 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey'. Amy and Rory rewrite their lives. They choose their memories - as should the fans.
Going back to the original point about Oswin being a metaphor for the show - like the show, she has existed in multiple 'formats' (human, Dalek, past, present, future), she is smart and entertaining (Junior entertainment manager), educational (Governess), good for children and adults (Governess/barmaid) - but most of all, she is 'God's friend', an Angel, an idea that can think for itself and no longer needs its creators - just as DW, the show, is now something so vast and extraordinary it is bigger than its creators, bigger than its cast and crew and writers, bigger than its fans……it really has taken on a life of its own. But it's still the same show that's always been there since that very first episode - in the beginning, God said 'let there be light', and there was Clara, at the dawn of creation.
So what next for the show, the Companion, and the Doctor….?
Monday 31 December 2012
Tuesday 18 September 2012
More thoughts post-A Town Called Mercy
Pondering (ha!) more overnight has lead me to more overt parallels in this episode. But first, a theory:
I think we are in for a New Gallifrey, come the 50th Anniversary. All these symbols - eggs (which explode), lights (which flicker), christmas - these are symbols of creation and destruction, death and rebirth. They are symbols of regeneration. They could be pointing to the departure of the Ponds, or to the advent of the next Companion, but they could be pointing further afield. We know Moffat likes to play long games. You can't kill an idea. If something can be remembered it can be brought back. "The idea became flesh" (a biblical allusion made in the prequel to 7.3) - to (completely irrelevantly) quote one of my favourite plays, 'Translations' by Brian Friel, "Name a thing and - bang! - it leaps into existence!'. I think Gallifrey is coming back. Maybe not Old Gallifrey - because that's happened once before already, and let's face it the Doctor wasn't actually too happy about that. But somehow we're going to get a Gallifrey with a clean slate, I think. The Doctor is erasing his name from the universe, he's going back to how it all began, all those years ago, when he was stolen by a magic box and ran away. I think he's going to give his 11th regeneration to help bring Gallifrey back, just as he gave his 8th regeneration to destroy it. I'm therefore hoping this doesn't happen for a while, because NO MATT STAY FOREVER PLEASE. Ahem.
Moving on to less speculative meta:
In 7.3, the Gunslinger is a mirror for Oswin. This much is pretty clear - everyone in that episode is a mirror for everyone else (which I would have enjoyed even more if they hadn't actually pointed it out in the dialogue). But more interestingly, the Gunslinger and Oswin are mirrors for River and Rory - specifically, River/Mels the 'bespoke psychopath' and Rory the Last Centurion. All four characters are human beings who are turned into robot (or robot-like, ie. brainwashed) killing machines BUT ultimately embrace their humanity, and prove that they are more than what they have been made into. They choose what they are. Rory and the Gunslinger become guards, standing watch over something they once endangered, but have now sworn to protect. River and Oswin subvert their prisons (their boxes, to return to one of my *favourite* themes from last season - an egg is a kind of box...) and use them as a source of power: Oswin hacks into her Dalek nature and uses it to destroy the Asylum and wipe the Daleks' memories of the Doctor. River uses her Stormcage cell as a convenient base in between time-travelling jaunts, and in so doing manages to safeguard the secret of the Doctor's death.
Both River and Rory first kill, then marry the one they love. Love and hate and life and death - as I said yesterday, these not the binary opposites, especially in the Doctor's wibbly-wobbly universe. River and Rory both have memories of being someone else - a plastic robot, a would-be-killer - and these are now an irremovable part of them. But they have chosen to be other than what they were created for: they have chosen to embrace their humanity.
This will also be Amy's choice. Not her 'humanity', perhaps, as she's always had that - but her 'humanness'. The travelling is starting to feel like running away, she says in the series trailer. We know she is going to be leaving at the end of this series, and although we don't yet know how, I have very high hopes that it is going to be on her terms. Unlike Rose or Donna - or even Martha, whose decision to leave was motivated more by self-preservation than anything else - I hope Amy will make positive decision to stay and live life in the right order, on Earth, and she will enjoy being a human with a regular human life.
Until now, she has been - like Queen Nefertiti - the 'Lady of the Two Lands'; the Crack in time and space has run through Amy's life like the Nile, dividing her ordinary human world from her space adventures, dividing her memories and her many lives ("does it ever bother you that your life doesn't make any sense?") Her 'two lands' are presented as diametrically opposed. "Goodbye Leadworth, hello everywhere" - how do you reconcile that? Of course you can't. But in this next episode, which I am INORDINATELY excited about, we will see those two worlds reconciled, as the Doctor comes to live with the Ponds (for a year?! God, I hope so!) I have no idea how it will be handled, or how it will turn out, but it is the first indication since the Tardis landed at their wedding that 'real life' and 'Tardis life' can co-exist happily, and don't have to be opposites. Amy will choose which of her two lives she wants to live to the full, but that doesn't mean completely giving the other one up completely - she will still have her memories, and everything she's learnt. So much of who she is comes from her life with her raggedy doctor - the two little children who used to dress up as the raggedy man have now become like him, and they will stay this way whether or not they are travelling in time and space.
Amy has not been turned into a robot killing machine, but she has been through more physical transformations than any other companion - she was almost a dalek, almost a vampire-space-fish, almost an Angel, she was a ganger and an old woman and a wooden doll and a worshipper of the Minotaur, she was the tesselector, she was an orphan and not an orphan, dead and alive again, pregnant and not pregnant at the same time, married to a plastic roman, mother to her best mate and mother-in-law to her imaginary friend - like Oswin and like the Gunslinger, she didn't choose how her new life began, but she will choose how it ends. When the war is over, the war machine still has a role to play. When the waiting and the travelling's over, the 'Girl Who Waited', the girl who travelled amongst the stars will still have a role. It's Amy's choice.
I think we are in for a New Gallifrey, come the 50th Anniversary. All these symbols - eggs (which explode), lights (which flicker), christmas - these are symbols of creation and destruction, death and rebirth. They are symbols of regeneration. They could be pointing to the departure of the Ponds, or to the advent of the next Companion, but they could be pointing further afield. We know Moffat likes to play long games. You can't kill an idea. If something can be remembered it can be brought back. "The idea became flesh" (a biblical allusion made in the prequel to 7.3) - to (completely irrelevantly) quote one of my favourite plays, 'Translations' by Brian Friel, "Name a thing and - bang! - it leaps into existence!'. I think Gallifrey is coming back. Maybe not Old Gallifrey - because that's happened once before already, and let's face it the Doctor wasn't actually too happy about that. But somehow we're going to get a Gallifrey with a clean slate, I think. The Doctor is erasing his name from the universe, he's going back to how it all began, all those years ago, when he was stolen by a magic box and ran away. I think he's going to give his 11th regeneration to help bring Gallifrey back, just as he gave his 8th regeneration to destroy it. I'm therefore hoping this doesn't happen for a while, because NO MATT STAY FOREVER PLEASE. Ahem.
Moving on to less speculative meta:
In 7.3, the Gunslinger is a mirror for Oswin. This much is pretty clear - everyone in that episode is a mirror for everyone else (which I would have enjoyed even more if they hadn't actually pointed it out in the dialogue). But more interestingly, the Gunslinger and Oswin are mirrors for River and Rory - specifically, River/Mels the 'bespoke psychopath' and Rory the Last Centurion. All four characters are human beings who are turned into robot (or robot-like, ie. brainwashed) killing machines BUT ultimately embrace their humanity, and prove that they are more than what they have been made into. They choose what they are. Rory and the Gunslinger become guards, standing watch over something they once endangered, but have now sworn to protect. River and Oswin subvert their prisons (their boxes, to return to one of my *favourite* themes from last season - an egg is a kind of box...) and use them as a source of power: Oswin hacks into her Dalek nature and uses it to destroy the Asylum and wipe the Daleks' memories of the Doctor. River uses her Stormcage cell as a convenient base in between time-travelling jaunts, and in so doing manages to safeguard the secret of the Doctor's death.
Both River and Rory first kill, then marry the one they love. Love and hate and life and death - as I said yesterday, these not the binary opposites, especially in the Doctor's wibbly-wobbly universe. River and Rory both have memories of being someone else - a plastic robot, a would-be-killer - and these are now an irremovable part of them. But they have chosen to be other than what they were created for: they have chosen to embrace their humanity.
This will also be Amy's choice. Not her 'humanity', perhaps, as she's always had that - but her 'humanness'. The travelling is starting to feel like running away, she says in the series trailer. We know she is going to be leaving at the end of this series, and although we don't yet know how, I have very high hopes that it is going to be on her terms. Unlike Rose or Donna - or even Martha, whose decision to leave was motivated more by self-preservation than anything else - I hope Amy will make positive decision to stay and live life in the right order, on Earth, and she will enjoy being a human with a regular human life.
Until now, she has been - like Queen Nefertiti - the 'Lady of the Two Lands'; the Crack in time and space has run through Amy's life like the Nile, dividing her ordinary human world from her space adventures, dividing her memories and her many lives ("does it ever bother you that your life doesn't make any sense?") Her 'two lands' are presented as diametrically opposed. "Goodbye Leadworth, hello everywhere" - how do you reconcile that? Of course you can't. But in this next episode, which I am INORDINATELY excited about, we will see those two worlds reconciled, as the Doctor comes to live with the Ponds (for a year?! God, I hope so!) I have no idea how it will be handled, or how it will turn out, but it is the first indication since the Tardis landed at their wedding that 'real life' and 'Tardis life' can co-exist happily, and don't have to be opposites. Amy will choose which of her two lives she wants to live to the full, but that doesn't mean completely giving the other one up completely - she will still have her memories, and everything she's learnt. So much of who she is comes from her life with her raggedy doctor - the two little children who used to dress up as the raggedy man have now become like him, and they will stay this way whether or not they are travelling in time and space.
Amy has not been turned into a robot killing machine, but she has been through more physical transformations than any other companion - she was almost a dalek, almost a vampire-space-fish, almost an Angel, she was a ganger and an old woman and a wooden doll and a worshipper of the Minotaur, she was the tesselector, she was an orphan and not an orphan, dead and alive again, pregnant and not pregnant at the same time, married to a plastic roman, mother to her best mate and mother-in-law to her imaginary friend - like Oswin and like the Gunslinger, she didn't choose how her new life began, but she will choose how it ends. When the war is over, the war machine still has a role to play. When the waiting and the travelling's over, the 'Girl Who Waited', the girl who travelled amongst the stars will still have a role. It's Amy's choice.
Monday 17 September 2012
Thoughts post-A Town Called Mercy
Oh look, I have a blog. Let me attempt to write down my thoughts about the next Doctor Who companion in a vaguely coherent manner...
Ok, so - I am really, REALLY hoping that Oswin is the next companion. I mean, actually Oswin, Dalek Oswin, not some mysteriously-similar-looking relative. Because here's the thing: the doctor takes ordinary people and turns them into weapons. He doesn't *mean* to, of course, and mostly they are more confident and badass at the end of it. But still - it happens all the time, it is one of his biggest fears, one of the things he feels most guilty about, and one of the things at least one (possibly more?) of his worst enemies has accused him of.
In A Town Called Mercy, Jex is carefully designed to be a mirror for the Doctor - besides the whole killing/healing/running/bringing death in his wake parallels, he has also taken ordinary people and absolutely LITERALLY turned them into weapons. As Sherlock would say: so far, so obvious.
SO - what if the Doctor's next companion is a weapon who he turns into an ordinary person? "Give me a Dalek any day", he says - what if what he gets is Oswin, a woman who in a very real sense "carries her prison with her". What if he reverses his usual polarity and makes her NOT a weapon? This doesn't have to mean he literally de-Daleks her. But perhaps he helps her come to terms with being a Dalek, and helps her to more permanently overcome the killer instincts that lie dormant in her Dalek shell.
Speaking of shells - all these references to eggs and Christmas and lightbulbs - they're all very glaring symbols of rebirth, new beginnings, the advent of a saviour, etc. At Christmas this year, the Doctor may get something that wasn't on his Christmas list - a weapon - and help her to be reborn as a person. And in so doing, he is also reborn, just as the 'monstrous' Gunslinger became an Angel.
Of course, we've already seen him do this to some extent with River, who is another parallel to the most recent episode. The 'Ultimate Weapon' who became his wife. Which makes Jex a rather wonderful parallel for Madame Kovarian, who also took a person and turned her into a weapon, with the aim of wiping out a perceived source of evil in the universe. Of course, we *know* the Doctor, we know he's not the evil 'Predator', etc etc that his enemies see him as. But this does not change the fact that an awful lot of problems in the universe have stemmed from his existence - "we have grown stronger in fear of you", said the Dalek, echoing River's "all this, my love, in fear of you". 'Doctor' means 'warrior' in the language of the Gamma Forest. We are not meant to sympathise with Kovarian at all, but we are encouraged to do so with Jex - just as we are meant to applaud the Doctor's decision not to kill Jex, but conversely we also applaud Amy's decision to leave Kovarian to her fate. "This is not how we roll, Doctor", said Amy - but it was, for her, just once. What a confusing message.
But perhaps that's ok. Perhaps there is not supposed to be a definitive answer on this. Right and wrong are not always so black and white, as Jex himself points out in the episode. "Humans, you're so linear" - the Doctor is anything but. Especially the Eleventh Doctor. He is wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, he is a cheat, a thief, a trickster, an escapist. Boundaries are not relevant (see - kissing all the Ponds!), which is why it is so hard for him to know what to do when he tries to force Jex over the physical demarcation line between good and evil, life and death, guilt and innocence, Mercy and the great desert beyond. Such lines are meaningless, and he should not try to pretend they really exist.
His prison is his guilt, which ultimately stems from his love of the universe and the people in it ("you care so much...") - and thus he carries his prison with him - as do Amy, Rory, River, Oswin, everyone - and it is also the thing that sets him free. The boundaries between his prison and his freedom are blurred. (Interestingly, Toby Whithouse's last episode was The God Complex, which is intricately associated in my mind with the Vienna Teng song 'Augustine' - "lead me now/I understand/Faith is both a prison and an open hand" - clearly this is a theme of his.) Which is why when he tries to act like the Tesselector, the "Judgement Death Machine" and push Jex over the line, he doesn't know what to do. Unlike Ten, who was always so confident in his actions, even when they were wrong, Eleven has grown enough to recognise the inherent uncertainty of things. Perhaps he has also grown enough to de-weaponise a Dalek, as Rose once did. We will see.
Ok, so - I am really, REALLY hoping that Oswin is the next companion. I mean, actually Oswin, Dalek Oswin, not some mysteriously-similar-looking relative. Because here's the thing: the doctor takes ordinary people and turns them into weapons. He doesn't *mean* to, of course, and mostly they are more confident and badass at the end of it. But still - it happens all the time, it is one of his biggest fears, one of the things he feels most guilty about, and one of the things at least one (possibly more?) of his worst enemies has accused him of.
In A Town Called Mercy, Jex is carefully designed to be a mirror for the Doctor - besides the whole killing/healing/running/bringing death in his wake parallels, he has also taken ordinary people and absolutely LITERALLY turned them into weapons. As Sherlock would say: so far, so obvious.
SO - what if the Doctor's next companion is a weapon who he turns into an ordinary person? "Give me a Dalek any day", he says - what if what he gets is Oswin, a woman who in a very real sense "carries her prison with her". What if he reverses his usual polarity and makes her NOT a weapon? This doesn't have to mean he literally de-Daleks her. But perhaps he helps her come to terms with being a Dalek, and helps her to more permanently overcome the killer instincts that lie dormant in her Dalek shell.
Speaking of shells - all these references to eggs and Christmas and lightbulbs - they're all very glaring symbols of rebirth, new beginnings, the advent of a saviour, etc. At Christmas this year, the Doctor may get something that wasn't on his Christmas list - a weapon - and help her to be reborn as a person. And in so doing, he is also reborn, just as the 'monstrous' Gunslinger became an Angel.
Of course, we've already seen him do this to some extent with River, who is another parallel to the most recent episode. The 'Ultimate Weapon' who became his wife. Which makes Jex a rather wonderful parallel for Madame Kovarian, who also took a person and turned her into a weapon, with the aim of wiping out a perceived source of evil in the universe. Of course, we *know* the Doctor, we know he's not the evil 'Predator', etc etc that his enemies see him as. But this does not change the fact that an awful lot of problems in the universe have stemmed from his existence - "we have grown stronger in fear of you", said the Dalek, echoing River's "all this, my love, in fear of you". 'Doctor' means 'warrior' in the language of the Gamma Forest. We are not meant to sympathise with Kovarian at all, but we are encouraged to do so with Jex - just as we are meant to applaud the Doctor's decision not to kill Jex, but conversely we also applaud Amy's decision to leave Kovarian to her fate. "This is not how we roll, Doctor", said Amy - but it was, for her, just once. What a confusing message.
But perhaps that's ok. Perhaps there is not supposed to be a definitive answer on this. Right and wrong are not always so black and white, as Jex himself points out in the episode. "Humans, you're so linear" - the Doctor is anything but. Especially the Eleventh Doctor. He is wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, he is a cheat, a thief, a trickster, an escapist. Boundaries are not relevant (see - kissing all the Ponds!), which is why it is so hard for him to know what to do when he tries to force Jex over the physical demarcation line between good and evil, life and death, guilt and innocence, Mercy and the great desert beyond. Such lines are meaningless, and he should not try to pretend they really exist.
His prison is his guilt, which ultimately stems from his love of the universe and the people in it ("you care so much...") - and thus he carries his prison with him - as do Amy, Rory, River, Oswin, everyone - and it is also the thing that sets him free. The boundaries between his prison and his freedom are blurred. (Interestingly, Toby Whithouse's last episode was The God Complex, which is intricately associated in my mind with the Vienna Teng song 'Augustine' - "lead me now/I understand/Faith is both a prison and an open hand" - clearly this is a theme of his.) Which is why when he tries to act like the Tesselector, the "Judgement Death Machine" and push Jex over the line, he doesn't know what to do. Unlike Ten, who was always so confident in his actions, even when they were wrong, Eleven has grown enough to recognise the inherent uncertainty of things. Perhaps he has also grown enough to de-weaponise a Dalek, as Rose once did. We will see.
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