For Your Lungs Only: An Overanalysis of "Oxygen"

Kill the fat one in the middle!

Okay, I have a few apologies to make.  First of all, I promised myself I wouldn't use two song titles from the same band in the same season, because I think of it like a playlist.  But Alkaline Trio's "For Your Lungs Only" is too perfect of a title for this episode.  The second apology is that I'm monumentally late with this blog.  Another episode has already aired since this episode aired, and another one airs today.  I was moving into a new apartment and my life became chaotic for a few weeks there and I didn't have time to blog.  Believe me, it was not out of disinterest in the episode, "Oxygen," because honestly, "Oxygen" may be my new favorite episode of the Capaldi era.

We haven't had an episode as dark as "Oxygen" since at least "Dark Water," if not longer.  Actually, the only episode I can think of that's as grizzly, dark, and horrific as "Oxygen" isn't even a new series episode.  We have to go all the way back to the 6th Doctor serial, "Vengence on Varos."  "Vengence on Varos," a disturbing dystopian nightmare about a reality where people are tortured on live television and politicians put their proposals up to a reality show style vote and if they lose the vote, they could be killed.  "Vengence on Varos" was so violent that it became the first time fans of the show started to agree with parents' groups that called the show inappropriate for children.  The show survived a few years after "Varos," but I believe that the slow death it suffered began with viewer outrage over "Vengence on Varos."  Now, Jamie Mathieson, Steven Moffat's only true peer on the Doctor Who writing staff right now, gives us an episode that leaves the viewer deeply disturbed, and with a haunting political message to go with it.

Can you imagine if an American television show had an episode where a character said "And that was it for Capitalism"?  Yes, Star Trek basically lives in a socialist utopia and does talk about how unfair conditions for the poor put an end to Capitalism, but they go out of their way to avoid using words like "Capitalism" and "Socialism" and somehow people fail to notice that that's what happened in the Star Trek universe.  Jamie Mathieson's script said the word "Capitalism" multiple times.  And before you go thinking that it's absolute absurdity for a company to sell us the air we breathe, is it really any different than charging for food, water, shelter, and clothing?  This is why I work in the non-profit sector.

And how about "Oxygen"'s cold open? Have we ever cut to the opening credits on a darker, more violent note?  A woman trying to tell her husband she wants to have a baby is attacked and murdered and turned into a zombie that, along with other zombies, tries to kill her husband.  Jesus Christ, you couldn't just make her eight months pregnant to really make it horrifying.  I like when I get scared by an episode's setup because I know it's just going to make me even happier when the Doctor stops the bad guys.  This time, the real bad guys were a big corporation off screen, but those are the bad guys in real life so it was still satisfying.

The fluid link hasn't been mentioned on the show since the Second Doctor era, but in every mention of in in canon, it has always been essential to the function of the TARDIS.  The 1st Doctor met the daleks when he lied to his companions that fluid link K7 (as opposed to fluid link K57 that Nardole steals, because the naming conventions on these things are completely random) had run out of mercury and needed to be refilled as a ruse to get them to go out and explore the planet of Skaro.  It's hard to believe, because of the history of fluid links, that they aren't all essential to the function of the TARDIS.  It's more likely that, when the Doctor says that he lied about the link being essential to the TARDIS taking off, I'd guess that what he really means is that he lied about the thing Nardole took out being a fluid link.

Speaking of Nardole, I still hate him, but thankfully so do the writers and the Doctor himself.  Nardole's entire function in the show seems to be to be a stick in the mud and to try to stop the plot of the show from happening.  "Oxygen" has more of Nardole than any episode so far in the regular season, and I still love it in spite of that.  When Nardole isn't trying to ruin everything, he's giving explanations that the Doctor could have easily given if he wasn't in the episode, or making really weird jokes about an ex-girlfriend that don't really pay off.

The only thing I didn't like about this episode was the hyperbolic, overacted, soap-opera-style overdramatic way that the Doctor announces he's still blind at the end of the episode.  I don't know who directed the great Peter Capaldi into that terrible performance, but they need to be fined for that stupidity.  I'm sure the blindness is a setup for something big in the overall plot, but I can't for the life of me guess what it's going to be.  It's interesting that it happened because of how long the Doctor was exposed to the void of space, because a Fifth Doctor episode that I can't remember the name of right now established that the Doctor can survive in the void of space longer than humans can.  But perhaps that's why that other character said that he should have died; it's almost as if he isn't human.

But the blindness will be discussed in the next overdue blog.  So until then...

Safe European Home: An Overanalysis of "Knock Knock"

"Now that we have a black person, we're officially a Benetton ad!"

Once upon a time, in the Russel T. Davies era, Season 4, there was a plan for a Cops-style episode, where the Doctor goes on a reality show like Cops and solves a mystery while Donna watches the episode from home.  Davies, however, scrapped the episode because he felt like it was too similar in tone to "The Unicorn and the Wasp," even though the two episodes would have taken place approximately 82 years apart.  Instead, he quickly wrote "Midnight," his best episode, and put that in its place.  I tell you this story because I don't understand how Davies could see the similar tones in what sound like very dissimilar stories, and Steven Moffat (admittedly, one of my heroes) couldn't see that within three weeks he had two episodes with similar monsters with the exact same way of killing people.  In "Knock Knock," the monsters are tiny creatures that make up the very structure but can come loose to form a swarm that eats people.  Where have I heard of that before?

The two robots represent the old man

This was a pretty mediocre episode, with a lot of plot holes.  Why does he need to let the bugs eat people in order for them to keep his mother alive?  Those seem like pretty unrelated things.  As Shelley pointed out, why does the mother only restore this particular group of young people and not the hundreds of others that he's done this to?  Why do the bugs kill everyone else but for the mother they keep her alive?  Why did everyone accept the Doctor as Bill's grandfather without asking the inevitable racist question, which is easily answered by anyone with half a brain, but still would inevitably be asked in that situation?

This was an interesting to see, though, in the week before I move in with some new roommates.  Oh, and it was the week before Mother's Day.  Ew.

Is it my imagination or, when Bill claims to be the Doctor's granddaughter, it's on a day where her clothes and hair look rather Susan-ish?  They've been trying to remind us a lot of Susan this year.  Could they finally be hinting at some sort of return?

After this episode, I'm more certain than ever that the Master is in that vault, and it's probably Missy.  I mean, could that have been a more obvious hint?  It's someone whose company the Doctor enjoys who delights in the suffering of others.  That's Missy.  I know that John Simm is coming back to play the Saxon Master at some point this season, but I can't imagine Simm's Master playfully communicating with the Doctor through piano music.  I'm thinking that Simm is just back to film a flashback scene where we see his Master regenerate into Missy.  I don't want to see him steal Missy's spotlight.  He was a great Master, but his Master was very much designed to play against David Tennant's Doctor, and Missy was just made for Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor.

That's going to have to be it for now.  I've got packing to do for my move this weekend.  Next week we have an episode from Jamie Mathieson, so that looks promising.  Until next time:

The Unseen Tears of the Albacore: An Overanalysis of Thin Ice

"Trust me, nice clothes cover up racism"

Sorry I'm late this week.  I'm packing to move next Saturday (13th) and I was a little behind on my reviews over at Punknews. (Go check out my reviews of Conor Oberst, Kendrick Lamar, and Cayetana from this week, because I'm weirdly eclectic.)  Also, there's this show on Netflix called Girlboss that I'm already on my fourth time through watching, so I've had things to do.  So I'll probably get this out after the new episode airs in England, but before it airs in the US.  So here we go!

I liked this episode a lot, even though others thought it was was a knock off of "The Beast Below."  I admit that there are similarities.  Most notably that you could just as easily call this episode "The Beast Below" is the name wasn't already taken.  Of course, the beast in "The Beast Below" didn't eat the children.  But the biggest similarity between "Thin Ice" and "The Beast Below" is that the monster is almost a B-story to the more important story of the Doctor bonding with his new companion.  Bill had to deal head on with the darker realities of traveling with the Doctor.  It's something everyone eventually realizes about the Doctor.  But as Bill is likely to be a one-season-and-done companion, she needs to learn it faster than  the others.

I'm glad they addressed the fact of Bill's race.  They did it a little bit with  Martha's first trip into the past with "The Shakespeare Code," but the 10th Doctor seemed oblivious to her concerns.  The notoriously oblivious 12th Doctor understood it a lot better.  I know some people who found it too preachy, but I loved the moment when Bill pointed out there were more black people there than in the  history books, and the Doctor said "History, it's a whitewash."  My hope is that when they finally hire the first black Doctor they address these sorts of things.  I'm really hoping that happens next season and that despite the rumors it's not this guy:

I'm bringing fugly back.

But this guy:

Have you tried turning the Dalek off and on again?

Last week, I had a theory after I published the blog that what was in the vault was Gallifrey, since the creatures trying to destroy it in "Time of the Doctor" presumably don't know it's back yet and that confrontation is yet to happen.  But "Thin Ice" seemed to imply from the interaction with Nardole (who was thankfully in this episode very little, and only to be the big fuddy-duddy) and whatever's in the vault, that there's a single creature in that vault.  My new theory is that one of the versions of the Master we're promised to see this year, was sentenced to death by the Time Lords and the Doctor negotiated with them to put him/her under his custody.

Next week's episode (which isn't really next week because it's airing in the UK as I type this) is by a brand new writer, so who knows what it'll be like.  So until next time:

Calling All Skeletons: An Overanalysis of "Smile"

It's basically an early predecessor to the sonic screwdriver, yet the Doctor always looks at a smart phone with such contempt.

I made myself a rule last year that I was going to make the rest of my overanalyses in Peter Capaldi's tenure from that point on were going to be named after punk songs, in honor of the 12th Doctor's guitar playing and Peter Capaldi's actual punk band he had with Craig Ferguson.  (Except I already know what I'm going to call the overanalysis of this year's Christman special, and it's alternative, not punk, but I have to use it because it's so perfect.)  Hey, guess what?  Do you know how many punk songs have the word "smile" or "happy" in the title?  Very, very few.

But this episode was goddamn amazing, especially considering it comes from the writer of "In the Forest of the Night"!  This is good, old fashioned sci-fi.  Machines coming after humans, entirely because of a lack of understanding of human emotions.  This is like something pulled out of I, Robot, only with more action.  There's an old classic series serial called "The Happiness Patrol" about a society that policed happiness and punished sadness severely, and I was worried that this episode would turn out too much like that.  But, where "The Happiness Patrol" is about the political suppression of negative emotions, "Smile" was about robots making a mistake that lead to them suppress negative emotion, so it didn't actually feel anything at all like "The Happiness Patrol."

It also didn't have The Candy Man, which is simultaneously the most goofy and most fucked up villain the classic series ever created.

I missed a lot of hints and clues and build ups for the bigger story arc of the season last week and I'm kicking myself for it.  For one thing, I completely ignored all of the Doctor's talk about an oath he swore.  Why did I skip all that?  Because honestly, he said it with so much conviction I actually thought it was something I was supposed to already know about.  Me, the girl that writes a literal "overanalysis" blog, thought she missed a big oath the Doctor swore at some point.  Yeah, that sounds like me.  So, now, we do have an ongoing question of the season:  "Why did he make this oath, and what the fuck is in that vault?"

I loved that Nardole was barely in this episode.  Let's keep it that way.

I love in this episode where the colonists figure out that The Vardy killed their families, so they start grabbing guns.  You're inside an enormous building made out of them, what's a half dozen laser guns going to do?

How long until Think Geek starts selling Bill's rainbow top?

I loved the Doctor pointing out that there was an evacuation of Earth, and that he's run into a few of their ships over the years.  Besides running into one in "The Beast Below," there's also the classic series episode "The Arc in Space," and probably several others I can't think of right now.  But if he even points out that there were multiple ships, that he's been to a few before, why does he literally say that The Vardy are threatening to kill what's left of the human race?  You've already explained in episode why that's not true, Doctor.  Pay attention!

This week, I got a Facebook message from some of the members of my old podcast, The Mile High Who Podcast.  It's been on indefinite haitus for a while, and that will probably be a permanent haitus now that Shelley, the founder of our whole group and the originator of the podcast, moved back home to Kansas City.  But as soon as we finally got a new episode last week, Shelly wished we could still podcast.  So she messaged us all to talk about the new episode, and she pointed out to me something that I missed:

Okay, so my disagreement with Shelley over terminology here is that I, and I think a lot of other people too, use "Mondasian Cybermen" to differentiate from Russel T. Davies's idiotic invention, the "Cybus Cybermen," or "Pete's World Cybermen."  It's been implied that "Nightmare in Silver" was a return to (what I call) Mondasian Cybermen instead of Cybus Cybermen, primarily because the former are the only ones ever shown to have a weakness to gold.  But other people, like Shelley, and apparently all the press that's come out about this season, us "Mondasian Cybermen" to refer only to Cybermen from the era before Mondas was destroyed.  That encompasses only one serial of the classic series, The First Doctor's final serial, "The Tenth Planet," and one Big Finish Audio story called "Spare Parts."  My argument is that they're still Mondasian when they're homeless, and they're still Mondasian when they forcibly take over the planet Telos and make that their new home, in the same way that I'm Irish even though I don't live in Ireland.  So a lot of reports have come out lately about "The Mondasian Cybermen," but I'm going to refer to those, in this blog, "Tenth Planet Cybermen."

Yes, the reports have confirmed that the Tenth Planet Cybermen are coming back this season, and boy am I excited to see them.  And with the clue that Shelley showed me, it implies that they're going to be the main villain of the season.  The original, Tenth Planet Cybermen had a much campier design than the sleeker, modern Cybermen, and they were much easier to defeat, but there was something really retro cool about their look.  I also really loved their bizarre speech patterns, but if the voices coming from the puddle in "The Pilot" were any indication, they won't have those speech patterns.

But what are they up to?  The Mondasian Cybermen come from Mondas, which is a twin planet to Earth that drifted away from the sun and needed to augment their people to continue to survive.  But when that proved to not be enough anymore, they came to Earth for...some reason.  Invasion?  Spare parts?  I don't rewatch First Doctor serials very often.  But it resulted in Mondas being destroyed.  This is why I prefer Mondasian Cybermen, because they actually have a very sympathetic back story.  Everything they did, they did to try to survive.   They were just willing to kill innocents to do that, something the Doctor will never abide.  If they've jumped forward 11 Doctors to come for the Doctor's 12th incarnation, I'm guessing their goals are back to what they were in their first few appearances after "The Tenth Planet":  changing the timeline to bring back Mondas.  But why did they need a pilot who was made of water and not metal?  She's definitely coming back.

The ending, where the Doctor landed in the wrong place and time and that leads us into the next episode, is a very Classic Series style ending.  The first two Doctors didn't have the ability to steer the TARDIS, and once the third Doctor figured out how to do it, he and his successive regenerations were still not great at it, and the accidental landings often set up for the next episode.  Next week's episode is written by Sarah Dollard, who gave us the beautiful first part of last season's three-part finale, "Face the Raven," so I trust it will be pretty good.  Until next time!

Drown With the Monster - An Overanalysis of "The Pilot"

These are actually all companions, including the Dalek

Last time we were starting a new season, things were very different.  I was deeply in love with a girl named Tanya who loved me back.  Tanya doesn't speak to me anymore.  Last time I was a man named Trevor, and now I'm a woman and prefer you call me Julie.  Last time the President of the United States of America was Barack Obama, and now we're all going to die.  The year 2016 fell into utter and unadulterated chaos from which we may never recover, and coincidentally, who wasn't here to save us?  The Doctor!

But now it's two years later and we finally get a new season, as we say prepare to say goodbye to both Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat, both of which will be missed by anyone who isn't an Internet trolling twatwaffle.  And how appropriate that for Moffat's last season as head writer, exactly like his first season back in 2010, starts on the day before Easter.  It's going to be a sad goodbye to both of them, and I'm going to cry more than usual for this regeneration.  But before that happens, we have a whole season of the 12th Doctor and his new friend, a girl named Bill.  Bill Potts, to be exact.  A Bill P. who's not a Piper.

Bill was announced as the first openly gay companion recently, to the consternation of many people who were obviously watching the show with their eyes closed, with the sound off, or while coked out of their minds, because, much like when we saw Vastra and Jenny's kiss in "Deep Breath," I have to ask "Why the fuck were you surprised?"  Since Russell T. Davies, the motherfucking creator of Queer as Folk, brought the show back in 2005, he and his successor, Steven Moffat, have both gone out of their way to make the show aggressively LGBT friendly.  Jack was pansexual, River was at least bisexual, Clara was implied to be bisexual and Jenna Coleman refused to deny it, there's an interspecies lesbian couple, there are background gay characters in "Midnight" and "The Rule of Three," and you can argue me on this if you want, but both Missy and The General are transgender.  So not only are the people who are complaining about Bill's sexuality ignorant bigots, but they don't know what show they're fucking talking about.

Amy and Rory when the Doctor's not around

Pearl Mackie, who plays Bill (brilliantly), said that Bill's sexuality would be brought up in about her second line of dialogue on the show and that it wouldn't be treated as a big deal.  And she's right, Bill's sexuality isn't treated as if it's unusual, as if it's a big deal that she's not straight, that she's anything but just another companion.  And yet, simultaneously, it was central to the whole story.  It was a small-scale love story (I guess you could call it a "like" story, since Bill and Heather didn't get to know each other very well) that could have just as easily been told with heterosexual characters, but it simply wasn't.  Because it's 2017 and you can do that sort of thing.

I still hate Nardole.

I'm Matt Lucas and I'm a big, racist, human chode.

Am I the only one who thought "Waters of Mars" in this episode?  Heather didn't react exactly like the infected in "Waters of Mars," but there was a definite similarity in the way she dribbled water from the mouth.  And then there's the other episode it reminds me of:  "The Lodger."  It's kind of a really chopped and screwed, highly postmodern version of "The Lodger," with the ship looking for a new pilot, but unlike "The Lodger," this is nothing like a normal ship.

I was curious about the picture on his desk.  Not River, that's understandable, he just lost her.  But there's a picture of Susan on his desk.  He hasn't hardly mentioned Susan since the 1st Doctor era on the show.  There are some (canonical) 8th Doctor audio stories where he meets up with her again, so he has seen her somewhat recently, right before the Time War.  But I still feel like Moffat wants to do something with Susan.  It's still strange, though, because he's been hinting at it his entire run, and this season is somewhat of a "clerical error," to quote the Doctor from last season.  Season 9 was designed to be Moffat's last season because he didn't know he was going to need to make a 10th one to give Chibnal time to finish up Broadchurch.  So everything we're seeing now wasn't planned that far in advance.

For those wondering which Dalek war the Doctor brought them to, it wasn't the Time War.  Those people they were fighting who looked like Milli Vanilli were a robot race called the Movellans from the 4th Doctor episode "Destiny of the Daleks."  They got stuck in a stalemate with the Daleks because each side could predict the others' moves perfectly, and neither had the imagination to come up with something the other side didn't expect.

I read an article that said that the stakes are low for this season because everyone knows that they're going to throw out the Doctor, the head writer, and most likely the companion at the end of the season.  But if there's one thing that "The Pilot" showed, it's that Moffat isn't writing this season like nothing's at stake, or like it's a "clerical error," but he's writing it as brilliantly as he always has.  I was a little worried that this might fall short the was Season 7 did when a lot was changing on set and Moffat was depressed and the writing suffered.  But Moffat seems to be writing from a place of confidence as he heads out the door, and I think we're in for another great season.

I'm continuing my rule this season of naming every blog after a punk song, and so:

Fairytale of New York: An Overanalysis of "The Return of Doctor Mysterio"

The Ghost apparently has a severe hatred for glass.

2016 has been a terrible year all around for everyone.  Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.  That alone would be enough to relegate 2016 to the worst year of all time, but instead, we also got Brexit and the death of countless beloved celebrities, the latest of which, George Michael, died on Christmas day.  In my personal life I went through the worst breakup of my life, and got forced out of my apartment because my landlord was a greedy asshole and wanted to make it a condo.  I also came out as transgender to most people in my life (you can call me Julie now) which is mostly a positive, but has also come with a whole host of new terrifying experiences and constant fears about the future.  So why has 2016 been such a shit year?  Well, to paraphrase Mels, because the Doctor wasn't there to stop it.

Within the context of the show, the Doctor's been gone 24 years spending his final years with his wife, River Song.  In the real world, the Doctor's been gone for one year so the production team could focus on a spin-off that, while excellent, has been poorly advertised in the UK and was given little international distribution to start off with.  We did see a commercial for Class during the BBC America broadcast of this special, so thankfully it will finally be coming here.  Since I've already seen it through "creative" means, I've got a post about Class that I'll but putting up soon.  Regardless, it's been far too long since we've seen the Doctor, and it felt great to finally see him again, even if the episode was good, not great.

Rather than introducing the new companion, Bill, who everyone is excited to meet, instead we're treated to a second dose of the annoying Nardole, played by unfunny racist Matt Lucas, pictured here in the role that somehow failed to end his career:

How often do you think Matt Lucas says the n-word in private

Nardole is a big, puss-filled blemish on the episode that needs to be popped.  He does nothing but bumble around and add his obnoxiously dopey voice where you don't need it.  Nardole returns because the Doctor put him back together form inside Hydroflax, which Nardole thinks was because the Doctor couldn't handle being alone without River.  I'd like to think that the Doctor put together the other guy who was trapped in Hydroflax, otherwise that would just be a dick move on his part.  The preview for the coming season at the end of the episode (the first we've gotten at the end of a Christmas special since "A Christmas Carol") we saw that Nardole is going to be in the coming season as a second companion alongside Bill.  Here's hoping his neck gets snapped by a Weeping Angel.

We start off with the Doctor setting up a machine to fix time distortions in New York that he says are his fault.  I presume he's referring to the ones created in "The Angels Take Manhattan," but that episode suggested that the time distortions only existed in the specific year they were created.  The beginning of this episode, presumably, takes place sometime in the 1990's, so I don't know why they're still there.  Oh, and the Doctor is absolutely to blame for turning Grant into The Ghost.  I'm pretty sure anyone would assume they were being handed a pill to take.

You can take the red pill or the blue pi--Oh my god, you actually took it?  That was a metaphor!  Cough it up!

The episode works because it acts as a direct sequel to "The Husbands of River Song," and tackles the Doctor''s grief for River Song head-on, rather than ignoring it.  The unspoken subtext is that he lost River right after losing Clara (it may have been 24 years, but what's 24 years when you're literally billions of years old) and so he's trying to strike out on his own for the first time in a while, battling through some severe loneliness and loss.

The love story between Grant and Lucy was cute, if a tad predictable.  I liked the foreshadowing at the beginning of the episode where the Doctor points out the obvious secret identity of Superman in the comic book, and comments that Lois Lane somehow can't figure it out despite being a reporter.  Then Lucy finds herself unable to determine the equally obvious secret identity of The Ghost.  I also liked that Grant resists the x-ray vision in puberty instead of rapeily embracing it.

"Oh my God, I can't see boobs!" - Every straight teenage boy after trying X-Ray specs

I was disappointed at how un-Christmassy this Christmas special was.  In the UK, most shows get a Christmas special, as they don't air from fall to spring like American network shows.  Most UK shows work the way that American cable and streaming shows work:  a new season is produced whenever they can get everyone together, so there's a good chance their season won't run through Christmastime.  So most shows are given a Christmas special, but not all of them are actually about Christmas.  I've never understood that.  You'll notice if you watch, say, Downton Abbey, that some of the Christmas specials take place on Christmas, while others just depict a special day for the characters.  Why on Earth would you make a Christmas special that doesn't take place on Christmas?  I've seen Steven Moffat, in interviews, share my view on this, and insist that Christmas specials should be Christmassy, which is why I was surprised that, with the exception of one brief Christmas reference at the beginning of the episode, I wasn't even sure that the rest of the episode was actually supposed to take place at Christmastime.

You'll notice that the villains in this episode are the same as the ones as the Hydroflax worshipers from "The Husbands of River Song" and that Harmony Shoal vowed revenge at the end of the episode.  While the Invasion of the Body Snatchers style plot of this episode isn't that original, I got the feeling that this is just the beginning and that Moffat is setting up this species to come back for his final season as head writer.

While the preview for the coming season did feature Captain Blackface, it also looked like an exciting season and I'm looking forward to it.  I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to Steven Moffat, but after Season 9 was the best he's ever given us, I'm excited to see what he does with Season 10.  So Merry Belated Christmas everybody!  Here's to a better year than the one we're leaving behind.

Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight): An Overanalysis of The Husbands of River Song

It could be argued that, since taking over as head writer, Steven Moffat has actually only been writing one very, very long story:  the story of Gallifrey's return.  The first episode Moffat wrote as head writer, "The Eleventh Hour," featured the ominous warning from Prisoner Zero: "The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall."  This set off an entire plotline that would span the entirety of the Eleventh Doctor's tenure, as we eventually discover that "Silence will fall" is a religious slogan from a church that is dedicated to ensuring that Gallifrey does not return.  The Twelfth Doctor's tenure, so far, has largely been about the negative consequences of Gallifrey's return to the Universe.  Steven Moffat has stated openly that the reason River Song appeared in this Christmas special was because, when he wrote it, he thought it might be the last episode of Doctor Who he ever wrote and, if so, he wanted to put River in it.  We now know that Moffat will still be heading series 10, largely because he is having difficulty picking a successor, but "The Husbands of River Song" stands as a would-be finale to the Moffat era.  Where "Hell Bent" ties up the Gallifrey plotline in a nice little bow for the next showrunner to follow up on, "The Husbands of River Song" ties up another thread in the Gallifrey return story.  While River may predate Moffat's tenure as head writer, she quickly became inextricably linked to the larger Gallifrey plotline, the deadly product of a cult dedicated to preventing Gallifrey's return by absolutely any means necessary.  A softer, gentler side of the plot, it's a perfect way to put the finishing touches to the story on Christmas day.  While there's certainly some darkness to it, "The Husbands of River Song" is one of the most beautiful, romantic, dynamic episodes the series has ever done.  It might even be my new favorite.

This is pretty clearly the final episode for River Song.  I mean, are there ways they could potentially bring her back?  Sure.  They've brought so many people back from the dead it's pretty hard to believe that death is a real problem in the Doctor Who Universe.  But more than likely, River is being retired with this episode.  It puts a pretty tidy little bow on the whole story that's a bit difficult to unwrap.  Now, if we string all of River Song's episodes together in order, does it all line up perfectly?  No, not at all.  There are plenty of problems with it.  Why is River surprised that she's going to die at the end of "Forest of the Dead" when the Doctor pretty much confirmed to her that she's heading to her death at the end of this episode?  Why is she surprised to find that the Tenth Doctor is the youngest version of the Doctor she's ever met when she apparently has a rolodex full of pictures of all of his first 12 regenerations in order?  Why does she tell the Doctor in "The Time of Angels" "It's so strange when you go all baby face" when we now know that that's the only regeneration of the Doctor she had met at that point?  How does the new Big Finish audio series The Diary of River Song, in which River meets the Eighth Doctor, even work?  (It's already out, but I haven't listened to it yet.)  But of course you can kind of wave all of this away with River's admission at the end of "The Wedding of River Song" that she often lies and pretends to not know things that she does to avoid spoiling anything for the Doctor.  If anyone ever tries to resurrect River again in the future, "River lies" will surely be used as the explanation.

I have been slowly showing my new girlfriend the Steven Moffat era over the past few months, but we skipped over series 4 because I wanted to jump her straight to my favorite Doctor and, also, because fuck Donna Noble.

Pictured above:  Donna Noble

So a few weeks ago, in preparation for this episode, I doubled back and showed her "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead," and boy am I glad I did, because this episode does not make sense without that particular context.  I had no idea that we'd be going down that road in this episode, particularly because the Series 5 DVD set has a mini-episode that implied that the Eleventh Doctor was the one that took River to the Singing Towers of Darillium, but then that was explained away in this episode by acknowledging that the Doctor keeps making plans to take her to Darillium but keeps cancelling for very obvious reasons.

As soon as I got to my second viewing of this episode, I realized that the episode is telegraphing the twist from very early on.  Most notably, I can't believe that I missed the Doctor saying early on in the episode that he had a new suit and a haircut, just as River had said in "Forest of the Dead."  I have to admit, I always took her comment about a "haircut" to be a euphemism for "new regeneration," and I think, in the end, it both was and wasn't.  But, like I said about the last episode, Moffat likes to make sure that, if he's killing off a character, he finds a way to kind of save them, but not really.  River was already granted a stay of execution in "Forest of the Dead" by being saved to The Library's computer, and she's given another one in this episode when we find out that her last night with the Doctor on Darillium will last 24 years. I loved her speech about how "Happy ever after doesn't mean forever. It just means time. A little time."  I'm 31.  Personally, I feel like 24 years is a pretty nice, long chunk of time to have with the person you love.  Finally, the Doctor and River get to live together, like a real married couple, not running around the Universe and jumping from adventure to adventure, but living for 24 years with the Doctor on this beautiful planet.  And for all of those 24 years, it's Christmas night.  That sounds like a wonderful life.

"Every time a cloister bell rings, a dead companion gets its wings!"

It's a distinctly Moffat-y ending, because Moffat is pretty much the only writer of the television series who figured out that if you have an immortal character in a time travel show, you're actually completely free to do an episode that lasts as many as 4.5 billion years, let alone a mere 24 years.

The only negative things I can say about "The Husbands of River Song" was that Matt Lucas was in it, playing River's idiotic man servant Nardole.  Matt Lucas co-created, co-wrote, and co-starred in a short-lived sitcom called Come Fly with Me with David Williams, who previously appeared as the Tivolian in "The God Complex." I think you can still find Come Fly with Me on Hulu.  An ex-girlfriend recommended it to me, and she didn't even have a glowing recommendation of it, but pretty much just said "It's not good, it's just sort of generally pleasant to have on in the background while you're doing stuff."  So I watched the pilot and what I witnessed was about 30 minutes of the most boring piece of blatant racism that I had seen since The Blind Side.

I don't know about England, but in America, we call that "blackface."

Come Fly with Me is such a horrendous piece of shit that I have a prejudice against anything that Matt Lucas and David William do now, especially Matt Lucas, as he's the more annoying one.  But thankfully the rest of this episode was so good, it cancelled out Matt Lucas's terrible presence.

I think this episode has so many amazing tender moments.  The set design for the restaurant on Darillium was transcendent.  The realization on River's face as she realizes the man next to her is the Doctor is truly a wonderful piece of acting from Alex Kingston.  The episode breaks a lot of the rules, as it has virtually no connection to present day Earth, it's carried entirely by two actors over the age of 50, and it largely only make sense in the context of an episode that aired seven years ago.  It's not in keeping with what Steven Moffat said when he first started as head writer that every episode should be a jumping on point for new viewers, but then Moffat has never taken his own advice on that point anyway.  It's a terrible episode to initiate a casual viewer with.  It is a lovely Christmas present for the dedicated fans.

Also, I created a Spotify playlist out of all the songs that I named my blogs after this year, so you can listen to the whole season as a playlist (okay, technically the Christmas special counts as part of the next season, but who cares).  Click the link above to check it out!

Hybrid Moments: An Overanalysis of "Hell Bent"

If you want to scream, scream with me!

At this point, I'm starting my damn blog post so late that, by the time it's finished and published, we'll be welcoming Rupert Grint as the 16th Doctor (that sounds like a Mark Gatiss casting choice if I've ever heard one), but I guess better late than never, so here we go...

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine had an amazing episode in the fourth season in which a freak accident causes Captain Sisko to wander lost through time, never able to decide where or how long he will appear, and his son, Jake, spends his entire life trying to figure out how to save him. Executive producer Ira Steven Behr said about the episode: "A love stronger than death. Usually that's romantic love, but for this show, this series, we chose the love between a father and son. And it worked like gangbusters. Everyone could relate to it."  It's true that when people think of great love stories, they think of romantic love.  But for most of us, our significant other isn't the only person we love so much that we're willing to go to any lengths to save them.  For many of us, that's also a parent, a sibling, a child, or even a friend.  "Hell Bent" is the great story of one man's love for a friend.  Not a romantic love--well, there was a little flirting towards the beginning of their relationship--but the slightly paternal, always challenging, strong friendship between two people, and a non-romantic love between them so strong that one was willing to literally break the Universe in half to save the other.  And that makes for a beautiful story.

I watched this episode at a viewing party at a bar with my friends from Mile High Who, with a bunch of new members there to join us, so I was trying my hardest not to start bawling openly during this episode, but at the moment when the Twelfth General told Clara that the Doctor spent 4.5 billion years trapped in the confession dial, I lost it and couldn't stop myself from crying.

Mostly the Doctor was just trying to one-up Rory.

A lot of people, since this episode have aired, have claimed that this revelation now means that the Doctor is even older, clocking in at a whopping 4,500,002,000 years old.  However we need to remember that, while "Heaven Sent" takes place over the course of 4.5 billion years, it only occurred to the Doctor as 3 days.  He may have experienced it over and over again, but he was essentially reborn each time and never retained the memories of his previous times through the confession dial, so from his perspective only added 3 days to his lifetime.  I think we can still say that the Doctor is about 2,000 years old.  He didn't really live and feel the 4.5 billion years, so I don't think that can count as his age.

I predicted that the Doctor's statement at the end of "Heaven Sent" meant that he was the Hybrid because he's half human and half Time Lord according to an often ignored line from the 1996 movie where the Eighth Doctor says that he is "half human on [his] mother's side." My Mile High Who cohost Shelley said that she thought his statement meant that Ashildr was the Hybrid.  As Shelley and I were both in the same room together as we watched this episode, we both shouted "No!" at the screen when Ashildr asked if the Doctor truly was half human.  We were both quite pleased at where Moffat went with that bit of the script, managing to quite deftly avoid a huge civil war within the fandom, or a straight up Han-Shot-First style revolt, by refusing to either confirm or deny the "half human" line.  The Doctor's simple response of "Does it matter?" doesn't force Moffat to do any major rewrites of cannon, but also makes it quite clear that we are not going to explore the possibility, even if it is true, and I'm fine with leaving it there.

The episode never specifically names who exactly the Hybrid is, but I actually like Ashildr's suggestion that the Hybrid doesn't actually refer to a single person, but the combination of two people, who together become the most dangerous creature in the Universe.  I was originally skeptical of the part about the Doctor and Clara playing Russian roulette with a mind eraser, but in hindsight, it makes perfect sense.  It wasn't just because the Doctor wanted to keep Clara safe, but to destroy the Hybrid, one of them had to stop remembering the other, or else the Universe would be at risk of fracturing as the Doctor tried to save Clara.  Many people at the event I went to called this the "Donna Noble thing," but I had to correct them and remind them that, in fact, in the series as a whole, Donna was the third companion to have her memory of the Doctor erased upon departing the TARDIS.  It happened to Jamie and Zoe before her (although, admittedly, that was retconned in a weird combination of fan theories and external Universe material called "Season 6b" that the BBC has inexplicably declared to be cannon).  Still, I feel very bad for the Doctor in losing his best friend.  He'll probably need some cheering up (from River, of course!).

Fear the hybrid!

I had this inkling in the back of my head that I never quite expressed out loud that Steven Moffat might just put some sort of twist on Clara's death.  I find that Moffat, whenever he kills off a character, likes to find a way to allow them to sort of keep living but not really.  River got saved in The Library.  Amy and Rory got to live out the rest of their lives, just not in their own time period.  It only makes sense that he would have found a way to kind of save Clara while still killing her off.  As some of the people around me at the viewing party suggested, a spin-off about Clara and Ashildr traveling through time together in a TARDIS disguised as a 50's themed diner would be pretty amazing.

And I loved Clara's take on her death, because it really put a weirdly positive spin on it.  Her insistence on not having her memory erased spoke so much about who Clara is now and who she has become.  She never asked the Doctor for safety, that's true.  She wanted to live the life she could with the Doctor, regardless of the consequences.  There were episodes this season that hinted that Clara was getting to be too much of a daredevil, a thrill seeker, an adrenaline junkie, that she was starting to act like she was immortal.  Quite the contrary, she simply didn't care because the risk of death was always worth it to experience life with the Doctor in the TARDIS.  It's a different take on being a companion than I've ever seen before, and certainly gave her a dignity in death that the only other dead companion, Adric, never achieved.  The little trick of this episode bringing her back only temporarily, trapped in a moment in time, also gives her the chance to say everything that's important for her to say to the Doctor before she leaves him.  He needed more than just her warning at the end of "Face the Raven" to keep him from turning cruel and hateful from the death of his companion.  He needed a partial memory wipe combined with a big cathartic sense of closure with Clara, followed by a reminder that what made him special to her in the first place was that he was never cruel nor cowardly.  I'm not saying it will erase the pain of losing Clara completely, but it's probably just what he needed to keep him from spinning completely out of control in Clara's absence.

I have to say, from watching "The Day of the Doctor," I somewhat wondered if Moffat had forgotten about the events of "The End of Time."  I know many people are going to respond to that by saying that "I wish I could forget that episode, too," and they're not wrong.  It's not a very good episode, but it has excellent parts to it.  To be more precise, I really think there's a very good 42 minute episode in there that got excruciatingly dragged out into 2 1/2 hours.  The revelation of why the Doctor had to destroy the Time Lords was mind-blowing and perfectly dark, and I really wanted to see that followed up on, yet "The Day of the Doctor" seems to go out of its way to avoid talking about the evils that the Time Lords have committed, namely wanting to destroy the Universe.  Yet Moffat didn't forget about these atrocities, but was perhaps just keeping them out of "The Day of the Doctor" to avoid turning such a celebratory anniversary episode into a humungous bummer.  But "Hell Bent" makes it quite clear that Moffat has forgotten nothing about what happened in "The End of Time," and the Doctor's showdown with Rassilon makes that quite clear.  Rassilon has now regenerated into Donald Sumpter, as Timothy Dalton was busy, but it gave them an opportunity to make him probably the only actor to ever appear alongside both the 3rd and 12th Doctors in an episode.  That the Doctor begins by banishing Rassilon and the High Council from Gallifrey works perfectly and lines up very neatly with cannon, allowing us now to reestablish Gallifrey in the Doctor Who Universe without the complications brought into it from "The End of Time."  Gallifrey will be a rebuilding planet, certainly, and the Doctor is, again, the Lord President for the umpteen millionth time in his life, but I'm pretty sure he handed that duty off to someone else shortly after the events of this episode, most likely The General.

I do have to comment on the brand new Sonic Screwdriver.  I know a lot of crybabies complained about the temporary retirement of the screwdriver at the beginning of this season, but I liked it, as it forced the writers to find some other ways to get around things.  Plus, the Sonic Sunglasses look really good on Peter Capaldi.  Since I'm writing this after "The Husbands of River Song"aired, I know that the Sonic Sunglasses have not been retired now that the Sonic Screwdriver is back, and I'm fine with that.  The Screwdriver got a much deserved short rest.  But I do have to say that the new one, while a nice pretty blue color, is the most phallic design they've ever done for a Sonic.

It looks like a Transformer's robot penis.

One thing I'm not entirely sure about, and this is something that many of the Mile High Whovians also brought up, is where Gallifrey stands now.  Is it back in the Universe?  Or is it still hiding in a corner somewhere, terrified to reestablish its presence.  I guess that's for us to see next season.  But first, it's time to revisit our old friend, River Song, for Christmas!

Room Without a Window: An Overanalysis of "Heaven Sent"

The Simpsons used to have a rule that every season had to have one episode that pushed the boundaries of what a Simpsons episode should be.  Personally, I think every show should have a rule like this.  Not every episode should be an experiment, but once a season I think every show should push themselves and see if they can go somewhere very different creatively.  "Listen" was probably Steven Moffat's most obvious attempt at an experimental episode, as it really was, in every way, a complete deconstruction of a Doctor Who episode.  It took the most basic concept of a stereotypical Doctor Who plotline, broke it down to its basic components, and reassembled it in a very different way that challenged the very premise of what this show is and what it's about.  Perhaps it was Steven Moffat's confidence after three seasons as showrunner that gave him the confidence to push the boundaries of the show's structure.  I would argue that there are a number of moments when Moffat deconstructed traditional narratives that were not necessarily looked at as "experimental" episodes, such as "A Christmas Carol" and "The Day of the Doctor," but "Listen" is where he really stretched himself.  "Heaven Sent" is the work of a writer at the top of his game, confident in the abilities of his lead actor, sure of the BBC's confidence in him and his show, and confident in his audience's ability to grasp the complexity of the episode.  Sure, a work of genius like this will not silence Moffat's haters, but nothing ever does.  They will talk about how much they love the 11th Doctor, Amy Pond, Rory, River Song, Danny Pink, the 12th Doctor, "Listen," and now, certainly, "Heaven Sent," but will still insist that Moffat is ruining the show.  But while I'm still not entirely sure why Moffat chose to call the episode "Heaven Sent," I do know that it is a work of pure, unadulterated brilliance that will forever be remembered as one of the most important episodes in the show's history.

The show has been dangling out a few mysteries this season hinting at the plot of the finale, and I haven't entirely understood them all, or even cared to understand them all.  I've been more interested in figuring out who the Minister of War is or what Missy's "clever plan" was, but it now seems like those are setting up for farther down the road so let's focus on the mysteries that seem to be setting up for this finale.  The first was The Hybrid.  It's interesting, but incredibly vague, and leaves me with very little to chew on.  But, more importantly, it completely destroys the premise of the show.  We've always known the reason for the Doctor's departure from Gallifrey, and the story of The Hybrid throws that reason out entirely.  To be honest, the original explanation we've had all these years, that the Doctor was simply bored, makes complete sense to me.  It speaks to the true spirit of the character.  Regardless of which generation we're talking about, the Doctor is always insatiably curious.  So why throw out his original motivation when it fits so perfectly with the character?  Unlike Davros, I never once doubted that the Doctor was just bored.

But the revelation at the end of this episode that the Doctor is The Hybrid does give us an explanation that is more in keeping with the Doctor's character.  The Doctor running from a prophecy is silly.  The Doctor doesn't run from enemies, no matter how deadly they are, at least not for very long.  But running from responsibility?  Yeah, the Doctor has done that many times, and that is quite in keeping with his character.  The Doctor has been offered the position of Lord High President of Gallifrey on multiple occasions and turned it down because...well, because damn the man.  The Doctor doesn't want that kind of power over his own people.  But if he needs to set them straight about a few things, which would be necessary even if Clara hadn't been killed in the trap that they set for him, then he's willing to show up and accept his responsibility as the one destined to fix Gallifrey.

Remember that "Day of the Doctor," taken on its own, is a very happy episode, but when you remember the events of "The End of Time," "Day of the Doctor" seems to be glossing over a few things.  Great, the Doctor has saved his own planet, and the Time Lords have been restored to the Universe.  Except that he destroyed them because they were about to destroy the Universe and rise to a higher level of consciousness.  So when the Doctor did finally find Gallifrey, we knew one thing for sure:  The Doctor was going to need to lay a serious smack down on some people.  I'm guessing Timothy Dalton was not available for "Hell Bent," but there are still some people who are going to need to be dealt with.

But how is the Doctor a hybrid?  I was really, really hoping we weren't going to go here, but I think I know what Moffat is referencing, and I'm not the first Doctor Who fan to have noticed it.

There are a lot of things that are wrong with the 1996 movie.  Somehow it manages to be too simplistic and too complex at the same time.  The line about him being half-human on his mother's side was so despised by fans that it has pretty much been rejected.  Expanded universe materials have retconned the line and explained it as an elaborate ruse to fool the Master.  Russel T. Davies pretty much ignored the line when he wrote "The End of Time," and fully admitted that the mysterious Woman was supposed to be The Doctor's mother, but also insists that that shouldn't be considered canon as he never got around to actually putting it into dialogue.  You wouldn't think that Moffat would even want to touch such a controversial line, but I have a bad feeling that that's what it means. 

If this is where Moffat is going with the whole Hybrid plotline, then there are far reaching implications for it.  The Doctor may have been established as half-human almost 20 years ago, but the show has refused to acknowledge it as real, and fans refuse to accept the line.  A half-human Doctor means something very different.  It means the Doctor's tie to this world is not just a fondness for it, but a birth connection.  I always liked the idea that it isn't his planet, but his adopted second home.  I don't know if I like the idea of it being just where his mother was from.

 My co-host from Mile High Who Podcast, Shelley, pointed out the other possibility that he's not saying "Me" as in he himself is the Hybrid, but rather referring to Ashildr by the name that she insists on calling herself, "Me." It's not a terrible theory, but I don't understand why Ashildr would show up on Gallifrey, unless she now feels really bad about what she did to Clara.  I don't think that the Doctor is going to literally "stand in the ruins" of Gallifrey.  To do that to the planet would be to really spit on Clara's legacy.  She saved the Time Lords from him and, even if they're partially responsible for her death, he would never take that legacy away from his good friend.  I think "stand in the ruins" refers to the fact that he's going to completely dismantle their government and institute a new leader, and maybe he's going to decide that Ashildr is just who should do it.  Or maybe one of the Osgoods, another Hybrid the Doctor created.  But he won't do it himself.  The Doctor is the most fit to govern Gallifrey precisely because he doesn't want to do it.

I'm just going to leave this riiiiight here.

I was also surprised about the Confession Dial.  The Doctor kept referring to it as being similar to a human concept of a "Last Will and Testament," but that wasn't true at all.  It was an interrogation chamber to get him to admit his final secret.  There's one thing though:  even if he is the Hybrid, the Doctor went through a lot of trouble to keep from telling the Time Lords something that he knew about the prophecy of the Hybrid, which means that there's still something we don't know yet.  So I'm really excited to see what it is now.  Regardless, I'm really excited for "Hell Bent," but I'm also a little skeptical.  "Heaven Sent" only really stands up if "Hell Bent" answers a lot more of the questions that it brought up.  So here's hoping it does!

Dead Friend: An Overanalysis of "Face the Raven"

Companions rarely die.  The Doctor talks about them like they do all the time, but they rarely ever do.  They wind up in parallel dimensions or get their memories of him erased (this has actually happened more than once) or they end up stuck in a specific time period that the Doctor can't get to. These things are like death to the Doctor because he can never get back to them again, but they aren't really deaths.  The companions go on to continue their lives without him.  More often than not in the classic series, they just went home, or met someone and fell in love (never, before the Moffat era, was a companion allowed to stay on the TARDIS after falling in love).  Only one other full time companion has ever died while traveling with the Doctor on the TV series without bring brought back from the dead later.  One off companions have died many times, and expanded universe sources have given us a few more companion deaths, but still not that many.  Really, Adric remains as the only regular companion to have really formed a connection with the Doctor before being tragically killed at a young age without being brought back later.  That is until "Face the Raven."

"I saw a whole planet rushing towards me.  I tried to surrender to it, but it did me no good.  That usually works!"

Much like Adric's death, Clara's isn't heroic, but more of a failed attempt at a heroic act.  Adric died trying to stop a Cybership from crashing into Earth, failing to understand that the ship he was on wasn't going to destroy humanity, but was rather the "asteroid" that crashed into Earth killing the dinosaurs, thus allowing humanity to spread and thrive.  Clara's death was something this whole season has been building up to, as we've seen the Doctor grow more and more concerned about her recklessness and thrill-seeking behavior.  In the end, it wasn't a heroic act that killed her, as Rigsy would have survived if Clara had never come up with her brilliant idea.  It was solely her recklessness that killed her.  In a weird way, it's a very disgraceful death, which is probably going to make the Doctor even angrier about it.

A few people have brought up the possibility that Clara's death isn't going to stick, and it wouldn't be unprecedented for Doctor Who to bring back a character we assumed was dead.  Moffat has insisted that Clara would not return once she left the show, but we all remember Rule 1.  One of the main reasons people are suspicious is the fact that Steven Moffat did not write the episode.  It is shockingly out of character for Moffat, who has yet to let another writer write even one word of dialogue for River Song (Big Finish's recent announcement not withstanding), to allow another writer to kill off a companion that he created.  If he were to hand that task over to another writer, you would think he'd give it to one of his close friends like his Sherlock co-writers Mark Gatiss and Stephen Thompson, not a first time Doctor Who writer like Sarah Dollard, an Australian writer whose writing credits are actually relatively sparse.  She has a lot of credits as a script editor for major BBC shows like Merlin and Primevil, but the number of episodes she's written by herself for TV shows is significantly smaller than what you'd find on most Doctor Who writers' resumes.  However, one of her writing credits is a 2013 episode she wrote of Being Human, a show that was created and run by Doctor Who writer Toby Whithouse, so perhaps Moffat had a good recommendation for her.  Also, the show has been notably lacking in female writers since the revival, and perhaps Moffat felt it would be appropriate for a female writer to kill off Clara.

Another reason that the fandom has been a little skeptical about the permanence of Clara's death is that it came at a very odd point in the season.  We've never gone into a season finale without the companion before.  In fact, only once before in the entire series, modern or classic, has there been an episode with no companion, not even a one-off companion to fill in for the episode.  That was the 4th Doctor serial with the title that is now quite appropriately mocked for its redundancy, "The Deadly Assassin," and supposedly the reason for that was that Tom Baker was trying to convince the production staff that he could carry the show on his own without a co-star.  He failed in that, and a new companion was brought in for the very next serial.

"My oversized teeth can be my companion!"

I would like to take a moment, while discussing this episode, to talk about Clara's brief reference to her "love" of Jane Austen, which she followed up with "Take that how you like."  This was a pretty obvious callback to a line from "The Magician's Apprentice" where Clara commented on Jane Austen being an excellent kisser.  When asked about this at a recent con and if this meant that Clara is bisexual, Jenna Coleman responded by simply saying that Clara's sexuality is open to interpretation.  I think it's beyond interpretation at this point.  Doctor Who is a proudly LGBTQ friendly television show, and I think this is just the latest iteration of that.  Kudos as always to the writers of Doctor Who for always insisting that LGBTQ content is appropriate in a children's television show.

I still kept holding out a thought in the back of my mind that Danny was going to come back, that "Listen" was really going to turn out to be prophetic, and that somehow Clara and Danny would live happily ever after.  Moffat went on record as saying that there were plenty of other possible explanations for how everything went down in "Listen," and that Orson Pink could be a descendent of Danny's brother, who always heard the family story of the great Danny Pink and Clara Oswald and what they went through to save the world.  Still, I assumed that was just Moffat being Moffat and bullshitting us as usual.  I guess that, unless he intends to undo two deaths very abruptly (which probably wouldn't go over well with the fandom) this is how the Clara and Danny story ends.  If there is an afterlife, that's the only happy ending they get together.

I keep thinking of all the times that the Doctor saved Clara.  This is not to claim that she's been a damsel in distress, as she has saved the Doctor herself many times.  But I think of the Doctor's promise not to let her die again after letting two other Clara's die in other time periods.  I think of the Doctor jumping into his own timestream to rescue Clara after she saved him from the Great Intelligence.  I think of all those moments, and how futile they seem now that she died anyway.  It's a dark direction for the show to go, and I'm frankly surprised that they went there.  A shadow has now been cast over so much of Clara's era, and I can't watch any of her old episodes the same way again, knowing that all of this was just leading to her tragic death.

The Doctor's fury at Ashildr was certainly founded at this moment, but Clara's insistence that he promise not to take revenge was a very important moment.  Remember Donna's warning that the Doctor needs someone to stop him sometimes.  Clara knows this better than anyone.  She's the one who stopped him from destroying his own planet and his own people.  She's seen the worst of what he can be.  Clara knows that, without her, he's likely to go rogue, and that a promise to a dying friend might be enough to keep him from turning into the War Doctor all over again.  As I'm late writing this blog (sorry) we now know exactly who set this trap for the Doctor, and we know he's not entirely keeping his promise, but the promise is what's going to keep him from completely going off the deep end.

But it was a trap, quite maliciously set for the Doctor, and one of his companions got caught in it.  There will absolutely be hell to pay, and the Doctor is going to be, as the title of the final episode of the season suggests, hell bent on shutting down whoever and whatever is responsible for this trap, even if Clara's death was an unintended consequence.  This is time for the angriest, rashest, and unfriendliest regeneration of the Doctor that we've seen in a long time to set things right in the Universe and, before its all over, things are going to get ugly.  The only way I see this lightening up is if somehow Moffat is going to pull a rug out from under us and find some way to save Clara, or at least semi-save her (think River in "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead").  Perhaps something to do with the stupid machine from "Sleep No More"?  But more than likely, this is the end for Clara, and there will be hell to pay.

But for now, in honor of Jenna-Louise Coleman (RESPECT THE HYPHEN!) and her amazing performance as Clara Oswald, a companion named in honor of Elizabeth Clara Sladen, the actress who played Sarah Jane Smith, and a companion who died with more grace and dignity than anyone in the history of the show.  If you are gone for good, which I really think you are, we're going to miss you Clara Oswald, our dead friend: